The AI Con

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Some thoughts on a recently read book — and “AI” in general.

The AI Con (book cover)

I just “read” The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna. I put “read” in quotes because I got it from the library as an audiobook and listened to it as I was making my long annual drive south. It wasn’t a long book — just 8 hours in audio format — and there was some repetition, but it was a good read. I highly recommend it, especially if you believe that true artificial intelligence currently exists and it is making our world better. (Spoiler alert: real AI doesn’t currently exist — at least not at the average user level — and what is being pushed as AI is failing miserably at making most things better.)

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This Year’s Long Drive South

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I prepare for my annual southern migration, this time with a purpose.

I go south every year for the winter. Although I love my home and I’d like nothing more than to be able to spend the winter here in comfort — writing at my desk, making jewelry in my studio, editing video at my computer, and maybe even hitting the cross-country ski trails around Mazama and Winthrop — I find the short daylight hours and dreary weather depressing. It starts as soon as we change the clocks — I’m firmly in the DST year-round camp — and by the first of December, when Shadow Time starts, I’m going nuts with SAD. The only solution is to go south, so that’s what I do. I pack up my camper and drive to Arizona, where I have some friends and favorite campsites, and California, to hit my favorite hot spring.

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Getting Sucked In to the Traveler’s Notebook Craze, Part 4

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For the final (I hope) installment for this multi-part series of posts, I got lazy and just shot a 7-minute video.

My Traveler’s Notebook Saga:
– Part 1
– Part 2
– Part 3
– Part 4 (this part)

As I alluded somewhere in this blog, I’ve updated my Traveler’s Notebook solution by remaking the leather binder that holds the notebook pages. I wanted to blog about it, but I’ll be honest with you: I simply did not feel like spending a lot of time writing, photographing, and laying out a blog post show-and-tell when a short video could do the job a lot better.

So I shot the video.

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A Few Observations about Online Shopping

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I’m not convinced it’s evil — well, not all of it — but I’m getting more and more convinced that it’s dumb for some sellers.

I’ll start by saying this: I hate traffic. Now I know that everyone hates traffic — nothing is worse than bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go on a freeway — but I even hate local traffic, the kind usually created by traffic lights and made worse by construction or too many vehicles on the road.

Some Shopping Options
Some of the shopping options in my area. This isn’t all of them. There are also two Safeways, an Albertson’s, at least one other Grocery Outlet, and a Costco (which I am not a member of).

It’s for this reason that I do my grocery shopping at Fred Meyer, which I can get to by making a right turn at just one traffic light and not hit any other traffic. It’s exactly 10 miles from my house and is the closest supermarket. But it is definitely not the cheapest. That award would likely go to (in no particular order) Walmart, Grocery Outlet, and Winco, where some of my neighbors shop. I generally do not shop there because of the traffic I have to deal with on my way there and back. I know there’s traffic because I hit traffic at 7:30 AM Thursday when I had to go to Walmart. (More on that in a moment.)

So this explains why I prefer Fred Meyer, even though I know that if it weren’t for coupons that come in the mail and digital deals on the app I would definitely be paying a premium for my groceries. (For the record, though, I don’t like the attitude of the cashiers at Winco (which also does not accept credit cards) and Grocery Outlet seems pretty skeevy sometimes.)

But I had two online shopping experiences this week that have gotten me thinking more about shopping online for things other than groceries that I can buy locally.

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More Thoughts on Claude’s AI Summary of a Video Transcript

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An update to my October 13, 2025 blog post about the Claude AI system summarizing the transcript of a video I really liked.

I’ve been thinking about the 30 Habits video I shared earlier this month a lot. Maybe too much.

First of all, I really do like the 30 “habits” listed in the video. Maybe not all of them, but most of them. I really think they are good things to make part of your life. (If you haven’t watched the video and are looking for little things to make your life better, please take less than 20 minutes of your day and watch it.)

I decided that in order to make them part of my life I needed to be reminded of them. The idea was to make myself a little cheat sheet that I could put in my daily planner and look at once in a while. No one can expect me (or anyone else) to remember all 30 things on the list.

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