The earth laughs
/The earth laughs in flowers. –ee cummings (born: Oct. 14, 1894)
The earth laughs in flowers. –ee cummings (born: Oct. 14, 1894)
God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way. -Leighton Ford
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. -Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel
Job-seeking AI will apply to thousands of positions for you - Boing Boing
These jobs are most at risk to be replaced by AI - New York Post
Zoom will let AI avatars talk to your team for you – The Verge
DJs are debating whether AI can replace them – Semafor
LinkedIn is rolling back its use of artificial intelligence – NPR
Will AI Make Job Recruiting More Efficient—but Less Fair? - Wall Street Journal
Busting through Linkedin’s resume screening with AI Tools – Semafor
How AI Is Helping ‘Fake Candidates’ Land Jobs - Wall Street Journal
AI may not steal many jobs after all. It may just make workers more efficient – ABC News
Video game actors go on strike over AI protections – Semafor
Rise in AI-Generated Resumes Overwhelms Recruiters with Low-Quality Applications – AllWork
Will A.I. Kill Meaningless Jobs? – New York Times
Neurodivergent workers' AI edge – Axios
In the age of AI, there's no future for workers content with being code monkeys — and they know it – Business Insider
AI Doesn’t Kill Jobs? Tell That to Freelancers - Wall Street Journal
Will A.I. Upend White-Collar Work? Consider the Hollywood Editor. – New York Times
Even if you have zero AI skills, these 3 tactics can give you an edge – Fast Company
Two-thirds of small businesses say hiring employees with AI skills could save them money - Ipsos
The A.I. Boom Has an Unlikely Early Winner: Wonky Consultants – New York Times
AI Work Assistants Need a Lot of Handholding - Wall Street Journal
How to use LinkedIn AI tools to find a job – Popular Science
OpenAI CTO: AI Could Kill Some Creative Jobs That Maybe Shouldn't Exist Anyway - PCMag
How will AI affect productivity? - Brooking
How AI Could Change the Odds of Landing a Job - Wall Street Journal
5 Critical AI Legal Issues Every Business Must Navigate – Forbes
Artist appeals copyright denial for prize-winning AI-generated work - ArsTechnica
Podcast: AI and Voice Replication - Illusion of More
YouTube Develops Tool to Allow Creators to Detect AI-Generated Content Using Their Likeness – Hollywood Reporter
FBI busts musician’s elaborate AI-powered $10M streaming-royalty heist – ArsTechnica
Supio brings generative AI to personal injury cases – Tech Crunch
Mickey Mouse Smoking: How AI Image Tools Are Generating New Content-Moderation Problems – Wall Street Journal
Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports. Will they hold up in court? – Associated Press
Watermarking in Images Will Not Solve AI-Generated Content Abuse – Data Innovation
Bill to Outlaw AI Deepfakes Backed by SAG-AFTRA – Variety
The European Union’s world-first artificial intelligence rules are officially taking effect - Associated Press
Buzzfeed sends ‘cease and desist’ letter over AI aggregator’s logo – Press Gazette
The Push to Develop Generative A.I. Without All the Lawsuits – New York Times
AI can’t make music — but that doesn’t mean it poses an empty threat to musicians – The Atlantic
The music industry is coming for AI – NPR
Judge sharply criticizes lawyers for authors in AI suit against Meta – Politico
Self-actualization is not merely a good to be desired, but rather a task, something human persons have been assigned to do and which they will be held responsible for achieving or failing to achieve.
Of course, not everyone is aware of this ethical task. (Kierkegaard) says that a great many people drift through life, “managing with custom and tradition” in their respective cities. Such people live their lives in a way similar to the way children who have not been taught table manners might get by at a fancy party: “Watch the other polite children and behave as they do.” Someone who lives life this way lacks… “authenticity” or “originality.” Such a person “would never do anything first and would never have any opinion unless he first knew that other had it.”
C. Steven Evans, Kierkegaard: An Introduction
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. -Elbert Hubbard
AI Washing - This references a company’s misleading claims about its use of AI. It’s a marketing tactic that exaggerates the amount of AI technology used in their products to appear more advanced than they actually are. AI washing takes its name from greenwashing, where companies make false or misleading claims about the positive impact they have on the environment.
More AI definitions here.
A small but detailed 2015 study of young adults found that participants were using their phones five hours a day, at 85 separate times. Most of these interactions were for less than 30 seconds, but they add up. Just as revealing: The users weren’t fully aware of how addicted they were. They thought they picked up their phones half as much as they actually did. Whether they were aware of it or not, a new technology had seized control of around one-third of these young adults’ waking hours.
Just look around you—at the people crouched over their phones as they walk the streets, or drive their cars, or walk their dogs, or play with their children. Observe yourself in line for coffee, or in a quick work break, or driving, or even just going to the bathroom. Visit an airport and see the sea of craned necks and dead eyes. We have gone from looking up and around to constantly looking down.
Andrew Sullivan, I used to Be a Human Being
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love. –Pearl S. Buck
Good questions outflank easy answers. -Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson
Can Artificial Intelligence Be Conscious? – Psychology Today
What Does It Really Mean to Learn? – The New Yorker
There’s no way for humanity to win an AI arms race – Washington Post
Three key misconceptions in the debate about AI and existential risk – The Bulletin
Is AI Really an Existential Threat to Humanity? – Mother Jones
AI Chatbot Credited With Preventing Suicide. Should It Be? – 404 Media
Who will control the future of AI? – Washington Post
The big AI risk not enough people are seeing – The Atlantic
ChatGPT and the Future of the Human Mind - Every
Here’s why AI like ChatGPT probably won’t reach humanlike understanding – Science News Explores
AI's flawed human yardstick - Axios
“AI” as shorthand for turning off our brains. (This is not an anti-AI post; it’s a discussion of how we think about AI.) – StatModeling
If we ignore AI explainability, we will be throwing ourselves to the mercy of algorithms we don’t understand. – Fast Company
Scientists Gave AI an "Inner Monologue" and Something Fascinating Happened – Futurism
Opinion: A.I.’s Benefits Outweigh the Risks – New York Times
End-of-life decisions are difficult and distressing. Could AI help? – MIT Tech Review
Generative AI is a hammer and no one knows what is and isn’t a nail – Medium
There are basically four family types that we all come from.
1 - The Traditional Family System
The old-fashioned family has a myth that “father knows best.” This family is under the control of only one member.
2 - Enmeshed Family System
The frightened family has a myth that it's “us against the world.” It is emotionally bound together and protective of itself.
3 - The Fighting Family System
The fighting family has a myth of “every man for himself.” Each member of this family is strongly individualistic, recognizing no other authority than his (or her) own.
4 - The Open Family System
The healthy family system theme is “all for one and one for all.” The open family system emphasizes the worth, dignity, and uniqueness of each individual, the importance of unconditional positive regard, and the value of positive reinforcement.
While AI can enhance individual creativity, it might do so at the expense of collective diversity and novelty in creative works. PsyPost
The AI programs aren’t necessarily doing something no human can; they’re doing something no human can in such a short period of time. Sometimes that’s great, as when an AI model quickly solves a scientific challenge that would have taken a researcher years. Sometimes that’s terrifying, as when (they appear) capable of replacing entire production studios. -The Atlantic
“On average 30% of the time the AI models spread misinformation when asked about claims in the news. On average 29% of the time, the AI models simply refused to respond to prompts about false claims in the news over the past month. Instead, the models delivered only non-responsive responses.” -News Guard
While AI models are starting to replicate musical patterns, it is the breaking of rules that tends to produce era-defining songs. Algorithms ‘are great at fulfilling expectations but not good at subverting them, but that’s what often makes the best music,’ Eric Drott, a music-theory professor at the University of Texas at Austin.” How can we be more human than an AI? Produce creative work that goes beyond the expected, the predictable, the established and popular. -The Atlantic
Recent brain scans suggest we don’t need language to think. A group of neuroscientists now argue that our words are primarily for communicating, not for reasoning. "Separating thought and language could help explain why AI systems like ChatGPT are so good at some tasks and so bad at others. These programs mimic the language network in the human brain — but fall short on reasoning." - New York Times
If an LLM can be trained on 17th-century texts, it can just as easily be trained on QAnon forums, or a dataset that presupposes the superiority of one religion or political system. Use a deeply skewed bubble machine like that to try to understand a book, a movie, or someone's medical records and the results will be inherently biased against whatever — or whoever — got left out of the training material. -Business Insider
At times, A.I. chatbots have stumbled with simple arithmetic and math word problems that require multiple steps to reach a solution, something recently documented by some technology reviewers. The A.I.’s proficiency is getting better, but it remains a shortcoming. -New York Times
Try to ignore everything that is style and not substance. We should de-emphasize things like credentials, expertise, and experience, especially when they apply to something people have done before but is not so relevant for the future. Most of us are less likely to lose our jobs to AI than to reimagine our current roles while working out how to use AI to add value in different ways. Less focus on hard skills and more focus on the right soft skills.
Imperative people can have too strong a sense of responsibility. In pushing themselves to do right, they often pay the price of burnout. When others encourage them to slow down, they won’t for fear that a bad habit of laziness might develop. Or perhaps someone will be displeased. The saying, “When you want something done, ask the busiest person in town to do it” may contain a lot of truth. Especially if the busiest person in town doesn’t have the ability to say no.
Les Carter, Imperative People: Those Who Must Be in Control
Escape the concentration camp of your own mind and become the person you were meant to be. -Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger (born Sept. 29, 1927)
Talk less, say more.
The psychologist Ray Hyman has spent most of his life studying the art of deception. Before he entered the halls of science, he worked as a magician and then moved on to mentalism after discovering he could make more money reading palms than performing card tricks. The crazy thing about Hyman’s career as a palm reader is, like many psychics, over time he began to believe he actually did have psychic powers. The people who came to him were so satisfied, so bowled over, he thought he must have a real gift. Subjective validation cuts both ways.
Hyman was using a technique called cold reading where you start with the wide-angle lens of generalities and watch the other person for cues so you can constrict the iris down to what seems like a powerful insight into the other person’s soul. It works because people tend to ignore the little misses and focus on the hits. As he worked his way through college, another mentalist, Stanley Jaks, took Hyman aside and saved him from delusion by asking him to try something new – tell people the opposite of what he believed their palms revealed. The result? They were just as flabbergasted by his abilities, if not more so. Cold reading was powerful, but tossing it aside he was still able to amaze. Hyman realized what he said didn’t matter as long as his presentation was good. The other person was doing all the work, tricking themselves, seeing the general as the specific.
Mediums and palm readers, those who speak for the dead or see into the beyond for cash, depend on subjective validation. Remember, your capacity to fool yourself is greater than the abilities of any conjurer, and conjurers come in many guises. You are a creature impelled to hope. As you attempt to make sense of the world you focus on what falls into place and neglect that which doesn’t fit, and there is so much in life that does not fit.
David McRaney, You are Not so Smart
We may have a feeling of love for mankind, and this feeling may also be useful in providing us with enough energy to manifest genuine love for a few specific individuals. But genuine love for a relatively few individuals is all that is within our power. To attempt to exceed the limits of our energy is to offer more than we can deliver, and there is a point of no return beyond which an attempt to love all comers becomes fraudulent and harmful to the very ones we desire to assist.
Consequently if we are fortunate enough to be in a position in which many people ask for our attention, we must choose those among them whom we are actually to love. This choice is not easy; it may be excruciatingly painful, as the assumption of godlike power so often is. But it must be made.
Many factors need to be considered, primarily the capacity of a prospective recipient of our love to respond to that love with spiritual growth. It is unquestionable that there are many whose spirits are so locked in behind impenetrable armor that even the greatest efforts to nurture the growth of those spirits are doomed to almost certain failure.
To attempt to love someone who cannot benefit from your love with spiritual growth is to waste your energy, to cast your seed upon arid ground. Genuine love is precious, and those who are capable of genuine love know that their loving must be focused as productively as possible through self-discipline.
M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
Becoming is a service of Goforth Solutions, LLC / Copyright ©2026 All Rights Reserved