It’s very important to get in AI’s good books, so I’m going to be super nice about it from now on.
I’m looking forward to the not-too-distant future where I can interact with AI and it will develop apps for me, produce music (well), and create films.
Have you ever tried to explain the stock market to a child? “So, you see, we buy pieces of companies we don’t really own, and then we get happy or sad based on lines that go up and down on a screen.” The child looks at you and says, “So it’s a video game?” “No, it’s serious adult stuff.” “But you said you get happy or sad based on a screen.” “Yes.” “So, it’s a video game.”
Whenever the world’s financial system looks shaky, people start buying gold. “The world’s falling apart! Quick, let’s buy a metal that’s really good at conducting electricity!” Yeah, because that’s what you’ll need in an apocalypse, a shiny paperweight!
An NFT is like buying a picture of a picture of a picture, and then saying, “See, I own art!” Sure, and I own the Eiffel Tower because I screenshot it on Google Maps.
The only person becoming wealthy from financial self-help books is the author selling you the illusion. Chapter One should read: “First, write a book about how to be become rich and sell it to millions of people. The End.”
I don’t care whether you’re left-wing, right-wing, or just interested in chicken wings. Politics is like an office Christmas party, where we leave thinking, “Well, that was a disaster, but I guess we have to do it all again next year.”
If you can’t beat ‘em, you might as well laugh at ‘em.
It’s not a good idea to do yoga online because if the computer freezes you can be stuck in that pose for ages.
Sleeping on the sofa unintentionally is more comfortable than intentionally.
I don’t think I overthink, he thought, overthinkingly.
I’m not there, therefore I’m square. What shape are the people who are there? Octagons?
Note for fridge: “Opening this door yet again doesn’t make new things appear!”
The best way to burn calories is to use a Bunsen burner.
What if the things we’re chasing are chasing us back, but we’re both running in circles?
Small brain: Using an alarm clock. Normal brain: Using your phone’s alarm. Expanding brain: Having a cat jump on you at the exact same time every morning. Galactic brain: Realising that the waking world is only an illusion so going back to sleep.
Comedy is the universal language, even more so than Esperanto or interpretive dance. It reminds us not to take life too seriously, especially during a sock puppet presentation about fiscal responsibility. It’s a healing touch, and the best facial workout, the most fun way to burn calories without actual exercise. Plus, it’s a great excuse when you trip in public – just call it physical comedy! It’s a refuge, reminding us that sometimes, life is just funny. In the words of a wise man I once heard in a coffee shop – “If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.” And as we all know, tissues are pretty expensive. Without it, life would be a never-ending episode of Monday mornings.
In a world full of spreadsheet errors, missed buses, and mismatched socks, comedy is our shared relief, our collective exhale. It’s a way of saying, “Don’t worry, you’re not the only one who falls over.” Comedy has always been my go-to defence mechanism against awkward situations, existential crises, and confusing instruction manuals. For it has the power to unite, to heal, and to make us forget about that embarrassing thing we did last week.
Comedy shouldn’t just be about the nuances and implications of the Oxford comma, or developing a comprehensive understanding of why chickens really cross roads. Let’s ensure all voices are heard and no joke is left unlaughed. It’s paramount that everyone, regardless of background, gets the chance to groan at a bad joke.
In Whimsyville, wibbles wobble when they’re happy. If two wibbles liked eachother, they’d just wobble together in sync, at the same frequency.
At honeycomb corner, a bumble bee kept buzzing into other bee’s business about flowers and nectar, but his wings got stuck in a sticky batch of honey. “That’ll teach me to bee nosy,” said Benny. “But at least it’s a buzzworthy story.”
Unicorn startups are very rare because unicorns only want to fly when there are rainbows, glitter, and pixie dust. Phoenix startups rise and try to scale, but keep burning to ashes again. Griffin startups are never seen because they’re still trying to work out whether they should fly or walk. Dragon startups have ideas that need to be fire tested first.
We need to go beyond HTML and JavaScript. I’m thinking… QuantumScript! It’s like JavaScript but quantum… and gluten-free, GMO-free, keto-friendly, and responsive to interpretive dance.
Who would be my dream guests to a dinner party? Nobody, I’d rather not go.
How do you know if someone went to Harvard? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
X is undefined, but Y always gets asked the questions.
A clever calculator would add purpose, multiply joy, subtract sorrow, and divide misunderstandings.
Sheep go to sleep by counting humans jumping over white picket fences.
That’ll do, sheep. That’ll do. No more musings on a rock.
I keep my distance because I have an infectious personality.
Er, I seem to have millions of songs… Poems that are rhyming couplets are easy to put to music. “Soliloquy” (when adapted a bit) is very fun/funny when sung completely over the top with a rock groove.
Anything creative has come out of my diligent non-alignment with reality (insanity).
I am not party political, nor am I interested in the modern organisational versions of religious zealotry. Dislike of people based on their membership of a monolithic thought faction is bigotry. I dislike instead the premise that people should have to be claimed by these things.
When assumptions disappear, decisions and behaviour look obviously wrong. It’s better not to assume anything, and tend to the garden.
Showbiz has to be the worst professional activity for personal fulfilment. It’s also true though that people with deep sensitivity are often pulled in to it, and are paradoxically least suited to the plastic glare.
The most frustrating thing about listening to interviews on podcasts is when interviewees inject dubious facts and statistics. On one recent mainstream podcast, the guest was making all sorts of claims that didn’t seem very likely to me. Was the person being duplicitous, deliberately exploiting the situation and medium because they knew they would get away with it, or were they just severely deluded? The interviewer didn’t interject, and let the interviewee continue to rattle off probably fictional statistics in response to questions. Real-time fact checking where claims are immediately cross-referenced against sources would prevent this nonsense. For example, if an interviewee says something like “most X were Y”, what is the source for that claim and does the data actually support it?
Being successful is being happy, and making other people happy. But being fulfilled is deeper and can be found without the help of success.
Right?
– I need to write something down, right?
– Er, okay, why you asking me?
– I’m making a statement, right?
– Er, yes?
– Pardon?
– You asked me a question.
– It’s how I talk, right? Every statement is a question, right? Everybody does it on podcasts for some reason, right?
– Can you at least say “left” for no reason to make it less repetitive?
– That’s not right, right?
– This is going to get very confusing if I ask for directions.
– It’s easy, right? The pen is over there on the left, right?
– Right, left, right, right?
– No, left, right?
– Right.
True leaders inspire others to be better people. As currently stands, the best places to find them are not in prominent positions, but where kind smiles and warm laughter are usual.
You could tell me about all your heartfelt desires, darkest fears, saddest regrets. Or we could talk about the weather. The truth is, given enough distance, everything eventually becomes funny, especially the ridiculousness of the crazy little me-me-me creature that pollutes the human mind. Laugh at it and it becomes incensed, because it is being shown the truth, the opposite of its purpose within you.
What if you suddenly forget all the things you’re obsessing about? Or what if those things constantly change, disappear, transform and reappear in different ways. What are you left with?
A life lived by thought alone is filled with mistakes and misunderstandings.
If you want to feel love, project love on someone in your mind’s eye. Love doesn’t need anything in return.
A drama series playing out over lots of lifetimes would be more entertaining than one episode.
What if life situations were re-run, changing variable values on each iteration to see what happens?
A good name for the first off-world city would be Terminus 1.
In the unending echo of my thoughts, you reside, An artist who paints on the expansive canvas of my mind. Threads of reason unravel, thoughts dance in an uncontrolled sway, And from this chaotic ballet, a melody of madness begins to play.
Great question! Ah, that’s such a great question. Um, uh, er… like, you know, I just wanted to, right, well, um… say, so, okay, actually, basically, right? I mean, anyway, well, right, you see, ahem… um, yeah, so, hmm… in other words, to be honest, I guess, yeah, I suppose… I mean, um, ah, well, actually, you know, basically, I think… right? Er, um, ahem… right? So, like, I mean, well, you know, it’s, right? Right? So… so, in other words, so, er, like, erm, I guess you said something, right? Let me think, er, what did you say again? It was, right, such a great question. Right, left, right, left, such a great question etc.
My to-do list increases when I have a day off. The reason is I have ideas when I am not working.
You’re So Vain is a song about how vanity can be very perceptive 🙂
If you write code and you are not using a large language model to help you then you are either incredibly brilliant or incredibly uninformed.
My opinion is that if advanced aliens are capable of reaching Earth then they probably would be technologically able to not make themselves seen. Imagine an alien is to a human as a human is to a frog. There wouldn’t be must much point announcing ourselves to frogs in ponds and shaking their little hands, because they wouldn’t understand what we were doing. We could easily hide ourselves and observe them in their natural habitat if we wanted to.
Robert Walker 