Worldwide Stew

Please be a Citizen and Vote

On November 3, United States citizens have the opportunity to influence our future. Not just for the next two years, but possibly for generations.

First, I ask you to vote. Ignore, please, the internal voices that say, My vote doesn’t matter. If it matters to no one else, it matters to you and your future. If you are a citizen, you can’t afford not to care, whatever your preferences are. Even if you disagree with everything this page says, I’m asking your to vote.

Having Teeth

I think I was unfailingly gentle with patients, let them rant, and tolerated their abuses. Eventually, their rant lost steam and we started to get to the core of their often legitimate frustrations. They might be directed at an unrealized hope for a dreamed of healing. Or, they might feel they weren’t understood. A pinhole in a balloon release pressurized air madly at first out of a pricked balloon. Then, the balloon eventually loses pressure and falls to the floor. That is often the way it is with our anger. For me and for patients. You just had to allow the progression of release without judgment.

My AI Partnership: why and how

About my use of AI:

• ❌ I usually use AI to improve my writing process: to check spelling, accuracy, flow, grammar, and tone.
• 🧐 Even where other sources are quoted, I cross-check with Claude.ai and other secondary sources for validation.
• 💡 My writing process usually involves finding something inspiring, interesting, coincidental, absurd, or odd. Then, I work collaboratively with my preferred AI, Claude.ai. Why? My fingers don’t work like they did. My mind doesn’t put ideas together like they did. Claude helps me care for my readers. No one wants to eat a half-baked pie. Similarly, no one wants to spend time wading through the waves of poorly connected drivel that popilates the internet. I owe it to my readers (both of you!) to form my ideas thoughtfully, to provide context, to add details, and to present other sides. Every single day of writing, Claude helps me do that. I owe it to you to use Claude (or other AIs).
• 🦮 I work with my AI collaboratively. This means that Claude looks over what I’ve written. It highlights the strengths. It also identifies opportunities. This is just like when I’m working with a person I like: I don’t have to hide because the AI isn’t coming from a critical place. I propose ideas and Claude responds with comments, counter-proposals, and other ideas. Usually, what I was first thinking forms the germ of further thought. In most cases, many further thoughts! I’m a little older so sometimes I need a little boost getting up from the floor. My ddog is more than happy to help steady me (for a price!). That’s why I began this point with a dog. I like to think of Claude as another kind of a dog (or intelligence) that wants to help.
• 📚 Claude is not a person. My use of AI builds on my strengths. It enhances my humanity. I cautions me when I might be pushing people away rather than drawing them near. My use of AI preserves, rather than detracts, from the humanity of this si te. By virtue of reading through endless documents, looking for patterns, looking for reception, Claude helps me be a better human being. Even kinder. AIs are another kind of intelligence, an alien intelligence.
• ⚡ Do I think AI is dangerous? Yes. Like a firearm is dangerous. It can provide food, art, beauty, or harm us and those who fall into using it to extract, harm, coerce, and create pain. A choice lies before us.
• 👩🏽‍🔬 AI is fundamentally a human endeavor. The creators of every AI have chosen to erect guardrails to prevent misuse. The questions about guardrails are: who erects those guardrails, what guardrails exist, why they exist, and how they are modified when misuse occurs.
• 🥽 It matters what AI you use. AIs should be designed to be helpful, honest, and harmless (see the excellent writings of Ethan Mollick). AIs should have anticipatory guardrails. The reason I use Claude.ai is because it’s governed by a Constitution with continually modified anticipatory guardrails (those it can anticipate) with open research on how it makes mistakes.
• 🦺 My use of AI is focused on safety not extraction or exploitation. I chose Claude because it seems the safest AI there is. One day, as all human things, it will chose a different path like many other AIs currently do. I will have to make other decisions at that time.

The Gossamer Cloak

I beg you tp keep reading for just a minute.

This coming week NASA plans to send three projects into space. One of them is the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. This mission wants to better understand our outer atmosphere. This knowledge will help us understand changes that occur in the area just before we get to “outer space.” Scientists call this the geocorona. Scientists love big words. And, Of course, they need a very specific definition they all know and understand. But, the rest of us need some help to understand these things. I wanted to know more about the geocorona. Sometimes, for the sake of scientific accuracey, Wikipedia obscures definitions. So, I wanted to know more. In that spirit, I’m sharing the lovely image that Claude.AI used to describe the Geocorona(Italics are mine):

Never waste an elevator trip

There’s a reason they ask entrepreneurs, what is your elevator speech?

It’s because a lot can happen in an elevator. Two or more people meet. There are limmited distractions. You have an opportunity to share messages. You might make a transaction.

Anyway, that’s the logic of it.

Like most things, there’s more than logic in promoting the elevator speech.

You’re making a mad dash to decent coffee. Your hair may or may not be combed. If you’re twelve, you may be going to your parent’s room in your swim suit.