My morning coffee recipe
Photo by Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash
I’m not one for sharing recipes because I’m not very good at cooking or making drinks. But I’ve stumbled onto a morning coffee recipe that I think is delicious. I’m not a coffee nerd, and there’s nothing fancy going on here. It’s a version of Bulletproof Coffee, which accounts for the butter and oil. It also contains LMNT, a salt supplement that I love in coffee. There’s no sugar and no cream!
Not only is this delicious, it provides nice, even energy for the morning and it’s even a bit filling.
Ingredients
16 ounces Four Sigmatic Coffee (or whatever you choose)
.5 tbsp MCT Oil
.5 tbsp Unsalted butter, like Kerrygold
LMNT Chocolate Salt Electrolyte Supplement
Directions
Brew up 16 ounces of coffee. I drink it in a big travel mug. I drink Four Sigmatic coffee, like every other tech douchebag. They’re right—it’s delicious! I buy it pre-ground cuz I can’t tell the difference when I grind beans myself. Again, not a coffee nerd!
Add about .5 tablespoon MCT Oil
Add about .5 tablespoon unsalted butter. Kerrygold is good for this.
Add half a packet of LMNT Chocolate Salt. If you like it salty, a whole pack is great too.
Froth for about 10 seconds. (I use this frother.)
That’s it, enjoy!
A few books that have inspired me lately
This list is related to a recent Midlife Remix mailing. If you’re not subscribed to that, you can do so here.
Here’s the books that inspired my recent “10 pounds in 5 weeks” challenge.
Outlive, Peter Attia
Ultralearning, Scott Young
Atomic Habits, James Clear (thanks Jordan!)
Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy, Walter Willett
The Complete Mediterranean Cookbook, America's Test Kitchen
A couple of these books come with Kindle Unlimited, which used to be a junkheap, but now has many good books.
This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.
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You have that one project, don't you? The one that haunts you, the one you believe could be truly great. But life's responsibilities keep getting in the way, and it's been sitting on your hard drive for… too long.
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When should you use ChatGPT in your writing? And how much should you use it?
What are the writing tasks that ChatGPT excels at? What are the tasks it’s weak at? And how much can you use it for each?
There are plenty of writing tasks where ChatGPT can save you precious time. But there are also plenty of writing tasks where it can cost you time. It’ll take longer to rewrite and edit ChatGPT’s outputs than just writing the piece yourself.
What are the writing tasks that ChatGPT excels at? What are the tasks it’s weak at? And how much can you use it for each?
The Three Tiers of Writing
What is your writing task? Place that task in one of these three tiers: low-level, mid-level, and high-level. I’ll explain each.
LOW-LEVEL
This is writing that just needs to do its job. It doesn’t need to withstand much scrutiny from the reader because it will get skimmed. Whether it’s “good” or “bad” is determined by whether or not it did its job. You’re not composing beautiful prose here. Some examples: most social media posts, FAQs, terms of service for your site, or summaries of existing text.
MID-LEVEL
This is quality content that should engage your audience more, but it’s not the best you can do. This is valuable content, but it’s not headline material. It’s your content for this week, and you’ll need more next week. You’re probably not going to promote this content for months. Some examples: an article or blog post, a social media thread, or a landing page.
HIGH-LEVEL
This is the best writing you can do. These are big ideas and big swings. This content requires excellent writing and storytelling. It might demand research, analysis, or creativity. You’ll continue to promote or sell this content for months or years. This is your prestige stuff, the centerpiece of your written work. Some examples: a book, video, presentation, product copy, or important articles.
Get the idea? Choose the tier for your task. Is it low-level, mid-level, or high-level?
How much can you use ChatGPT?
The tier you just chose is ChatGPT’s grade for that level of writing. In other words, ChatGPT is excellent at A Tier, good at B Tier, and decent at C Tier. You’ll use ChatGPT less the lower the tier you place it in.
With A Tier, you can use plenty of what ChatGPT gives you verbatim. (But as always, be sure to proof those outputs and edit them.)
With B Tier, ChatGPT will primarily give you raw material that you’ll rewrite. It’ll also give you some usable text.
With C Tier, ChatGPT becomes a support player, a bit like a combination of Google and a human copy editor. ChatGPT can give you information and edit your writing, but most of the work gets done by you. This is ChatGPT at its least revolutionary.
Beware of C Tier
C Tier is where ChatGPT can waste your time. You can end up typing endless prompts as you search for decent outputs or entirely rewriting and rethinking what ChatGPT gives you.
To determine if your task belongs in C Tier, ask yourself the following three questions. If the answer is “yes” to any of them, it is.
Is this a long piece of writing? (Even over a few hundred words is long.)
Is this a complex piece of writing? (Does it have a narrative? Does it have a personal perspective? Is it intended to evoke emotion?)
Is this a very important piece of writing? (Is it very important to you, your audience, or your business?)
Again, ask yourself: is this long, complex or very important?
An important note: ChatGPT is still very useful for supporting C Tier writing.
You need lots of low- and mid-level writing to market and publicize your premiere content. It’ll need social media posts, articles, product pages, summaries, etc. ChatGPT can help you do a lot of that work quickly.
Some of you might be wondering why you should use ChatGPT less and less as the writing task becomes more and more important. It’s simple: ChatGPT writes mediocre text that tends to be bland. In small doses, this works just fine. The text will be repetitive, rambling, and dull in larger doses. If you use ChatGPT where it’s not suited, you’ll just post text nobody will read.
The quality of ChatGPT’s writing might change, but that’s where we are now.
The Take-Away
ChatGPT can do most of the work for low-level writing, a good amount for mid-level, and valuable support work for high-level. You’ll use ChatGPT less frequently the higher you rank your project in these tiers. But for most of you, C Tier writing is a minority of your day, so there are a lot of tasks where ChatGPT can save you some time and spare you some tedium.
As always, be sure to verify any fact ChatGPT gives you. You’re responsible for what you publish, not ChatGPT.
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This lean and efficient guide will show how to get real writing done with ChatGPT. I do actual work, and I show you how I did it. There’s no hype and no BS. Read more about it here.
Copying: Where It All Begins
In school, we’re all told not to copy. It’s plagiarism, it’s wrong, it’s a no-go.
And I agree! When you’re young, you need to have things simplified. But there comes a time when you need to revisit copying and understand its creative power.
Let me show you how copying is an essential part of creativity. I’ll do this in the simplest way possible.
This is not a trick question: what is this?
Did you say, “Duh, it’s a circle?”
Ding ding, correct!
Now let me tweak it just a bit.
What is it now?
Yep, it’s the Moon. Still just a circle, but with a black backdrop and some stars -- which, by the way, are also circles.
This is a super basic example of creating by copying. I copied something, tweaked it, and transformed a grey circle into a moon. It’s not high art, but it is creativity in action.
That’s how you create using copying.
We’ll often interpret what we see differently than others. You might look at that original grey circle and see another possibility. Change two colors and presto, the Sun.
Some might see a ring. Take that sun image, switch that circle to a gold outline, and you’ve got a gold ring.
Some of you might see a flat disc, like a plate.
And some might not see an object at all but a round hole, like a ship’s porthole.
How you perceive is creative. We all spot various possibilities in what we see.
And these things we see then become tools in our creative toolkit. We can use these to solve creative challenges.
Circles, for instance, are the building blocks for all figure drawings, including animals.
How to draw a cat, Illustration by colomio
The comic book legend Jack Kirby used swirls of black circles as backgrounds in his panels, adding extra punch to his art.
Jack Kirby’s famous “Kirby Krackle” dot effect
Inspired by Kirby, the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse used circles throughout to create a portal to the multiverse.
Kirby-inspired dots in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
To be clear, copying by itself isn’t creative. But it’s a vital part of creativity. We take existing things and remix them into new things. We use existing ideas to solve our creative puzzles.
In our next exciting installment, I’ll use pop culture to delve deeper into copying and start to unravel this important issue: when is it wrong to copy?
In the meantime, check out “Everything is a Remix Part 1” and see how all musicians rely on copying.
Subscribe to the Everything is a Remix newsletter and get FINISH IT NOW, our free guide to finishing that languishing project.
New guide to writing with ChatGPT
Folks, I am thrilled to announce that I have a new guide to writing with ChatGPT. This lean and efficient guide will show how to get real writing done with ChatGPT. I do real work and I show you how I did it. There’s no hype about doing everything instantly or making a million dollars and I tell you in no uncertain terms what ChatGPT is good and bad at. I’ve designed this guide so you can finish it in one sitting. Then you can get to work on your own stuff!
Get it now for just $50!
We now support Apple Pay and Afterpay. if you’d like to pay in installments.
How to stop starting
Your brain wants you to go for it. But maybe… don’t.
Ready for launch? Hold up.
I have a problem with starting. I don’t mean that I can’t get started. I mean starting too quickly and starting too much. This can produce small problems like buying software or gadgets I barely use. Or it can produce big problems like unfinished projects or worst of all, projects that are way more crazy-making than they should have been.
And you’ve got the same problem. Why do I know this? Because what I’m talking about is a human bias called the action bias. The purpose of the brain isn’t just to think thoughts. Its purpose is to make things happen. Your brain wants you to do it: set that goal, buy that course, start that project. But it’s not so good at helping you achieve that goal, learn that material, or finish that project.
The action bias tricks you into thinking you’re getting something done. But all you’ve really done is begin… and that’s the easy part. Impulsive choices like these will waste your time and resources. If you fall prey to the action bias frequently enough, and you’ll find yourself demoralized and doubting you can achieve much of anything.
I got burnt by the action bias in an unusually epic way. In 2012, I was finishing the original Everything is a Remix series, which was a big success. I was hot and I wanted to capitalize. I wanted to launch something and I wanted to do it fast. I launched a KickStarter for a new series, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. I had almost no clue what it was or what I was going to deliver or how long it would take or how much it would all cost . (How many successful KickStarters have ultimately cost the creator money? I’m guessing plenty.)
This is Not a Conspiracy Theory worked out. I made the thing I wanted to make, I got to the place I wanted to go. But it took eight years and the process was far more painful than it needed to be. The premature launch took a slow project and made it even slower because I wasted time wracking my brains trying to solve problems that couldn’t be solved. If I’d slowed down and thought things through a bit more, I could have saved myself substantial time and a lot of misery.
It often requires more energy and more discipline to not act. To wait, think things through and then act is actually harder. It’s way easier to just let it rip and make something—anything—happen.
By slowing down, making sure we want to make the move we’re making and figuring out how to do it the best way we know how, we’re setting the stage for a more efficient and less painful project.
However, this problem is a shadow of what it once was for me. The big thing that has helped has been awareness. My snap decisions bounced back badly enough times that I got wise. I didn’t know anything about the action bias, I just learned through mistakes.
I learned to be slow down on big decisions first. But small decisions matter too, they add up. Something I’ve been doing in recent years is creating these little holds for these impulses. Want to buy something? I put it in a hold list and revisit again when my mood is more moderate. Then I revisit it again when I think. Still want it? Okay, it’s safe to purchase. Most things I want to buy do not make it through this gauntlet.
The practice of mindfulness helps with this, as well as countless other personal issues.
But the action bias is one of those things that you never banish. It’ll always come with inventive new ways to trick you. But I’ve got decent defense now.
NEW VIDEO: Will the Law Stop AI?
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a brand new video! This is a commission I made for Bloomberg Law. It’s written, directed and narrated by me. It explores the legality of generative AI and features a debate between copyright lawyers Mark Lemley and Ian B. Crosby. You can read more about it over at Bloomberg Law.
Why I removed Kanye West from Everything is a Remix
One of the thumbnail versions from Everything is a Remix Part 1
Kanye West is as canceled as canceled gets. He might still be a giant celebrity, maybe he can even make lots of money somehow, but he is utterly exiled and it’s hard to imagine how he returns. I don’t foresee his mind becoming more ordered in the future.
On his way down, West left a string of humiliations in his wake, both for himself and anyone he touched. His final stop on the bus ride to oblivion was an interview with Alex Jones on Infowars. It was a dumb, depressing spectacle in which Jones was actually forced to distance himself from West’s anti-semitism. (Jones typically just ignores anti-semitism and moves on, but he couldn’t pull that off with a guest this high profile.)
In my little world, Kanye West has the odd distinction of crossing over between my two major projects, Everything is a Remix and This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. West’s music was in the original Remix and he was featured in the final segment of the new Everything is a Remix Part 1. West wasn’t in This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, but he would have been if I’d made it later. Jones was in it and I also did a whole mini-series about Jones and his most outspoken champion, Joe Rogan.
Generally speaking, folks, you wanna be featured in Everything is a Remix, not This is Not a Conspiracy Theory.
A number of people have noticed that Kanye isn’t in the final edit of the new Everything is a Remix. But this is not quite what it appears. I didn't remove West because of his long series of anti-semitic remarks, which were stupid, wrong, and sad. My reasons were much more mundane. I removed West for format reasons. Let me explain.
The original version of Everything is a Remix had post-credit segments, which were inspired by Steve Jobs’ “one last thing” bits where he’d announce the biggest product after the presentation seemed over. I did one about Tarantino which was very popular, but my favorite is the one about multiple discovery. Actually, that’s one of my favorite scenes of mine, period.
In the Remix reboot in 2021, I wanted to honor the series’ original format and continue doing these post-credit sequences. Kanye West was the first post-credit segment in the new Everything is Remix. But after seeing how that played, I felt like it didn’t fit on contemporary YouTube. It was hard to make that segment but most people didn’t see it. I decided to not do one in Part 2 and see what happened.
Aaaaand… crickets. Nobody cared. So I nixed them after that. (This video about Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was initially going to be the post-credits segment for the new Part 2).
When the new Everything is a Remix was completed, the Kanye segment was the odd man out: it was the only post-credits segment in the series. It wasn’t consistent with the rest of the videos, so I cut it from the final all-in-one version, which is the version most people see.
But Kanye should be in Everything is a Remix and if the series ever gets a maintenance upgrade in the years to come, I’ll put him back in. West is a master remixer, arguably the GOAT. His music endures, with or without him.
Kanye West should be seen as someone with an ailment. Exile is probably the only place suited for a media juggernaut with fairly serious mental illness. But I don’t see any purpose in the rest of us depriving ourselves of the joy of hearing his music, or worse yet, editing him out of musical history. West’s music was beautiful when he made it, and in many ways, so was he. That segment in Everything is a Remix Part 1 honors what he did and who he was. I’m proud of it. Go watch it again.
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My Tech Make-over
Whenever I finish a chapter of life—things like moving or completing a large project—I always feel compelled to clean house in a variety of ways. I tidy up my workstation and do chores that have been kicking around for months. I organize my computer, archive old stuff, and clean up my desktop. Although even at the worst of times, gotta say my desktop is pretty dang tidy.
Just admit you envy me for my tidy desktop
But the most impact comes from the improvements I make to my software workflow. Occasionally these changes don’t stick, occasionally they end up being horizontal moves, but mostly, they’re meaningful upgrades to how I work.
Here’s my tech changes from recent years.
For writing I switched from the writing application Scrivener to the note taking application Obsidian. This was an excellent move but Scrivener is great and might work well for you.
For video editing I switched from Adobe Premiere to Davinci Resolve. Resolve is an entirely superior application, great move, many other video editors are now following suit. This also saved plenty of money. Everything after This is Not a Conspiracy Theory has been made in Resolve.
For photo editing and graphics work I switched from Photoshop to Affinity Photo. This move also saved money and it works well enough for me because I don’t use Photoshop that much anymore. But Photoshop is still the best and if I did more graphics work I would switch back.
I've also made new additions, like the Mac-only application Drafts. This is where I do transient bits of writing, like important messages or posts, handy references, notes from meetings—actually I’m writing this newsletter in Drafts! (Obsidian is more like a personal library, a “second brain.” Drafts is more like a notepad.)
And I love Text Sniper (also Mac-only) for capturing bits of onscreen text. Can’t say enough good things about this application and I use it almost everyday.
Here’s the changes I’ve made in recent months. Some of these are still on-going.
For browsing, switched from Brave to the Arc Browser, which is still a beta. It’s better, do it. You can probably find an invite in this Twitter thread. I made this video with Nick Milo about Arc.
Although I’ve run a Mac for a long time, I didn’t actually use much Apple software or services. I didn't even have an iPhone. But now I’ve now joined the Apple Cult. I realize this choice isn’t very exciting or original, but in my new dad life using Apple everywhere makes life easier. Everything works well, connects well and the user interface is consistent. I now use Apple Music, Podcasts and Notes regularly. I’m even trying out Apple News for news. I now have an Apple Watch. I love being reachable all the time by my family, and I often use it for podcasts, alarms and UV readings here in sunny San Diego. My wife got me AirPods Pro for Christmas and I love them so so much. We use Photos all the time for family photos and it’s one of our absolute favorite things. These all get synced up to an ever-ballooning iCloud account. (I tried to use Siri with my watch for a while and gave up.)
The verdict is not yet in on these current switches.
Trying Spark email client for business email. I’ve used Gmail forever, but I’ve moved my business addresses to iCloud. This is just an area where I’m looking to freshen things up and have a feeling of renewal.
I’m moving away from Notion, Apple Reminders and Asana and trying ClickUp for task and project management. The free plans have everything most of us will ever need.
I’m likely switching to the very exciting, kinda geeky launcher Raycast, which would replace three apps: Alfred, TextExpander, and Default Folder.
A lot of business and productivity books are padded and shouldn’t be 300 pages long, and I often find podcasts fluffy and meandering. I’m currently using Blinkist for 20 minute summaries. I still read the most important books, but for the next tier down, this is seeming like a great way to pick up some good bits.
And these old-timers hang in there year after year.
1Password for passwords.
iStat Menus gives me system and network stats I sometimes need.
Slack for messaging.
Breaktime for focusing. I set it to 52 minutes, then take a break. I’m sporadic at this.
Chronosync for backups.
DropBox is still the best for online file storage. I like WeTransfer for sending large files.
We need Excel for the business so we use Microsoft 365 or whatever it’s called this week.
All told, almost my entire suite of applications has been replaced over the past few years, including stalwarts like Scrivener and the Adobe suite. These changes have been overwhelmingly beneficial.
The Ideas That Made Me
Lots of you are listening to my collection of book summaries. You can read or listen to these for free on Blinkist.
Paul Vahur wrote me and said he thought the collection was missing an important book, David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I couldn’t agree more. Getting Things Done is an essential book and if you haven’t read it you should.
This got me thinking, “What are the essential ideas of my life?” What ideas have become little background applications that chug along in my brain year after year?
Below is what I came up with. This is not a list of the most important ideas or the best ideas, these are the ideas that resonated with me the most deeply and changed how I think and live. With every video I’ve ever made, I tried to do the same thing in some small way. And in a different way, this remains what I aspire to do.
These are mostly listed in the order I encountered them. The links below lead to Amazon, and most of these can be found as summaries in my Blinkist collection.
Fun Fact #1: I was 34 when I started to get into nonfiction books and ideas. Before then, I was mostly into movies, music, fiction and blogs. A few years after getting into nonfiction Everything is a Remix was brewing and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Getting Things Done, David Allen
I discovered this book in 2006
I think Getting Things Done is the first powerful work system I ever came across. I don’t think I had any formal methods at all before this. In particular, Allen’s framing of capture was a big deal for me. I actually need to re-read this book because I’m sure it’s full of stuff that I do everyday and have forgotten I got them from Allen. (I likely found this through Merlin Mann, who was an outspoken acolyte at the time.)
Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Discovered in 2006
Flow gave a name to something I blissfully experienced but never knew what it was or had any idea how to recreate the magic. “Flow” is a psychological state of heightened experience where you are performing at the outer boundaries of your abilities, where the activity is not too easy and not too hard. The entire book isn’t required to get the idea. The summary, which is in my Blinkist collection, will be plenty for most of you.
Fun Fact #2: If you can pronounce “Csikszentmihalyi” you are officially a card-carrying member of the intelligentsia.
The Waste Book or Commonplace Book, Various
Discovered in 2010
The “waste book” (Newton’s term) or “commonplace book” (Ben Franklin’s term) is simply your notes. It’s simply snippets of things you’ve encountered or thought: ideas, bits of writing, memorable phrases—anything that created a little spark in your mind and potentially can be used later. Tiago Forte popularized this idea most recently by calling it a “second brain.” This is actually something I was practicing for a few years before I had any idea it was a thing people did. I explain the wastebook process I used back then here. This is still a great way to work; you can do awesome shit with just that. (I think I might have discovered this idea through Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From but I’m not totally sure. That book was a big influence on Everything is a Remix.)
Mindfulness, Various
Discovered in 2010
This is something I found in a variety of ways and through no particular practitioner. Mindfulness is basically just being aware of the present moment and your emotional state. Meditation is a key component. It’s simple and endlessly difficult. I am actually bad at practicing mindfulness. I mostly don’t do it. But I always return to it. And being bad at mindfulness is far, far, far better than not knowing mindfulness exists.
Fun Fact #3: I haven’t meditated in… years! I’m gonna break that streak this week.
Nonviolent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg
Discovered in 2012
Nonviolent communication is a type of communication focused on expressing feelings and communicating needs. In our personal interactions, we all have a tendency to make generalized, exaggerated declarations and then defend those statements. For instance, “You’re being inconsiderate because you never put your dishes in the dishwasher.” If this is instead expressed as something like, “I feel hurt when you don’t put your dishes in the dishwasher because I have a need to have my time respected. When you don’t put the dishes away, I have to do it for you.” It might sound kinda goofy but this shit works. This is trickier to grasp than mindfulness because it’s surprisingly hard to identify emotions and needs. And like mindfulness, it’s endlessly challenging to do and keep doing. An unusual quality of this book is that I remember finding the writing kinda hippy-dippy and corny. Whatever. Deal with it, it’s worth it.
Thinking in Systems, Donella H. Meadows
Discovered in 2012
This is a titanic book for me. It’s the most accessible introduction to systems thinking and systemic thought. It’s what really gave some detail and features to the vague, amorphous concept of the system.Thinking in Systems is what spawned my series This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. If there’s a single idea that still needs storytelling development, though, it’s systems. If you’re a storyteller and want a challenge, this is a worthy one. Thinking in Systems is great but I think somebody out there can do better and bring these ideas to more people.
Hunt Gather Parent, Michaeleen Doucleff
Discovered in 2020
I’ve not read a lot of parenting books and I make no claims to be well-read, but this one resonated with both me and Nora deeply. It basically synthesizes traditional knowledge about parenting, mostly through Mayan cultures. To me, the modern Western style, typified by “helicopter parenting,” seemed excessively managerial. I think children need as much freedom and autonomy as is age-appropriate. A lot of parenting I saw seemed to both underestimate what children can do (no chores or responsibilities) and overestimate what children can do (exhaustive negotiations about things they aren’t yet mature enough to make decisions about). This book helped to clarify and systematize my values and to validate the best parts of my own upbringing.
Fun Fact #4: One thing I’m certain of about parenting is there’s a million ways to do it. Anything can work, including helicopter parenting.
Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), Various
Discovered in 2019
This is related to the “waste book” concept. Personal Knowledge Management is essentially a systemization of this concept into a varying set of methods and tools. There’s no consensus way to do it. Zettelkasten, or Smart Notes, is the formative system. Tiago Forte uses PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive). PKM is a social creation that belongs to nobody in particular. Forte has great storytelling on this topic, but my favorite methodology is Nick Milo’s. Nick doesn’t yet have a single, definitive work, but I would start with his Obsidian for Beginners series.
Fact #5: I’ve said the word “system” 11 times in this email! I mean 12! Systems are my thing. Make that 13.
From Strength to Strength, by Arthur Brooks
Discovered in 2022
This is the most recent book to change my life. It’s about the transition that takes place somewhere in midlife, where we lose some mental speed and agility and have to change direction in order to suit our strengths. My email about resentment and disappointment resonated with a lot of you. I’m still sending out replies to that one. (If you missed that email, search your email for “Everything is a Remix now sustainably fueled by disappointment and resentment.”) If that message connected with you, you should read this book.
Fun fact #6: Strength (along with length) is a word I have never ever gotten used to spelling. I still type it wrong constantly.
Fun fact #7: I asked ChatGPT what words end with “gth” and it helpfully suggested width, growth, fifth, eighth, twelfth, breath, depth and yes, highsmith. Thanks superintelligence!
Everything is a Remix, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, et al, by Me
Started creating Everything is a Remix in 2009
Started creating This is Not a Conspiracy Theory in 2012
Fuck false modesty: by miles and miles and miles, the biggest influences on my life are my own stuff. Visit this newly renovated page to ogle them all. As I’ve collected them and tidied them up lately, I’ve watched some again and I’m immensely proud of the entire lot. A couple underrated ones are the Rogan Vs. Jones series, which I happened to press play on then got sucked into watching the entire 90 minutes, and The End: In Praise of Credits, which has a new level of meaning cuz, y’know, I’ve ended making videos. Every single one of these is something I wished existed and now it exists. The influence that they’ve had on my life is immeasurable, vastly beyond anything I merely read. Nothing will change you more than the thing you create yourself.
Use this link to save 50% on This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. (Offer expires June 16th!)
Things I’m into at the moment
Blinkist
Audio book summaries are one of my main media sources right now. You can listen to the books in my shared space for free.LIT Video Books
These are mini-doc versions of popular nonfiction. Really great deal right now.Tana
I’m experimenting with merging notes and project management and it’s looking very promising. For PKM nerds, Tana is kinda like a combination of Roam and Notion. It’s still early and in beta so you need to get on the waitlist. (Sorry I have no invites!)Fathom
Using this for Zoom call transcriptions and AI summaries. Works amazingly well, with only the occasional gaffe.
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Why artists shouldn’t fear AI
“The AI hype inferno is raging out of control right now, and these narratives are just as often utopian as they are dystopian. I’m going to heave a few much-needed buckets of water on this wildfire.”
Read my latest article, “Why Artists Shouldn’t Fear AI.” This is a expansion and elaboration of Part 4 of Everything is a Remix, Artificial Creativity.