Matisyahu's Blog

Had a pretty uneventful day, getting up at the usual time and doing my usual thing, then at around lunch time (dinner time for everyone else) I had a couple of sandwiches, did some more work then finished work tonight at 10pm. The last few hours were pretty quiet so I spent the time catching up on office work that becomes overwhelming if ignored for an extended period of time. When I finished work tonight the queue was empty which should allow the team coming in on Monday to have a fairly easy start to the week – something that I liked to do when I worked as a manager at a fast food restaurant so that the opening manager on Monday could focus on getting the the week ready for new product launches, specials, ordering stuff from the distribution centre etc.

On Monday I’ve got the order from Farmers arriving and once that arrives I’m going to head down the road to donate my old pots and pans to the Salvation Army charity store – I would sooner someone else have it and make use of it rather it them going to waste. I’m looking forward to giving the cookware a try – the cast iron frying pan should be big enough that I can cook four burger patties at the same time with the benefit of cast iron being the retention of heat and consistent distribution of heat. At the moment I am looking at a ‘Baccarat Le Connoisseur Lasagne’ (link) which will be great for things like Lasagne, enchiladas, apple and rhubarb crumble etc.

I’ve been watching plenty of AI sceptic content on YouTube primarily because it is a form of catnip for me these days because it brings me joy in knowing that I’m not the only person wondering why we’re seeing a repeat of another hype cycle and how so many people in positions of power get sucked to the BS vortex (it also simultaneously puts to rest the whole notion of ‘rational self interest’ given how irrational markets are). Billionaires spending money on space rockets wasting huge amounts of money that could be better spent on things to help humanity but god knows at least space is actually fun where as AI is just painfully boring with AI bros online being best example of why so many people hate AI. Give me a dream of spacecrafts, establishing colonies on remote outposts and living on other planets over the AI bros convincing themselves that telling a LLM to generate something some how makes them an artist or that what it produces in the form of code isn’t a giant buggy technical debt laden mess that will be impossible to maintain over the long term.

Regarding politics, as I’ve said many times on BlueSky, the choice is between bad policy and disappointment – there are only two choices and my choice every time is for disappointment rather than bad policy because at least I know with disappointment that things will improve modestly but not to the extent that I would like it vs. things getting worse. If you want to improve the situation then the solution isn’t to throw a temper tantrum followed by sitting in the corner having a sulk but instead joining up to the major political part on the left along with getting friends and family to do the same so then you have the ability to improve policy and get better candidates. Politicians do the bare minimum when you’re not holding them accountable – that means turning up to meetings, talking specifics when asking questions regarding why they voted for a particular bill or if you can quote verbatim what they’ve said in a speech or in an interview. The moment you start being specific is the moment the politician realise that the days of mediocrity and taking a captured audience for granted has ended – if they want to keep their seat then they have to do more than the bare minimum.