Okay okay... I'm still alive. Am on leave, in fact, and the second such Friday-leave since the one last week.
I have so many things to say, and so little time to say them, so I'll just rapid fire things to avoid a 2-kilo-word essay.
------
Earlier in the month, I went for the hololive English concert Serendipity through their live cinema watch-along scheme. It was held at GV Cineleisure. Unlike Drawn to Dawn, I went for both days, and it was awesome! Watching the hololive ladies singing and dancing on stage was really cool, and cheering on with fellow fans was the kind of social stimulation I needed during these trying times.
------
I started playing a little more with GPT-5.5, since it was offered ``for free'' at work. It is... a mixed experience. On the one hand, the fact that such large language models were trained on the vast corpus (legally obtained or otherwise) meant a decent statistical ``understanding'' of what counts as fluency and thus providing a good-enough pattern-recognition capability to ``advise'' on what works; on the other hand, this same behaviour also meant a reversion to the mean, where all writing and presentation formats end up becoming same-y, a new variant of the tyranny of the majority manifesting itself at what might originally be considered as the last bastion of individuality---the way we think and express ourselves.
I think the key take-away from this aspect of experimentation is to be opinionated enough to stand one's ground, and be willing to make the ``mistakes'' that such models highlight as abnormal just to retain that sliver of uniqueness that is being eroded away as more people cede their thinking to the machines.
And this is a thought that came over the past few weeks of trying, getting depressed fromm what I'm seeing, thinking even more, and trying differently. For those who are not the mean of the population, such generative models should be seen as one of many possible perspectives of analysis of the piece of writing that is being considered---in the end, the true arbiter of what one wants to say still lies in oneself, no matter how convincing it may be that these models are ``good enough'' to replace human decision-making.
``But MT, it has been said that generative AI should never replace the human decision-making, because only humans can be held accountable for decisions! We must always make the final call to reduce harms!''
If you believed that is the true state of the world, then I have a bridge to sell you. There is nothing inherently wrong about having such lofty ideals as a way of guiding the powers that be towards good governance. But the reality is that people are always sinful creatures---if given a chance to cut a corner without consequenes, many will take that chance.
It is only the really stupid or the really principled person who says in their own way ``fuck you system, I will not kowtow to the easy way out, especially when that is not the ethically right approach''. One will definitely have to pay pretty dearly for their principles (or stupidity).
In the modern context of generative AI use, it may mean not getting a job because lazy hiring managers just blindly reject resumes that are not conforming to the ``expected'' format that the machine model can read.
And if one thinks this is highly unlikely to happen, think again. Most people are not creative at all---they would rather happily follow standard operating procedures, and toss their critical thinking into the wind, even if they had the capability to think and assess critically in the first place.
After all, why would a person who is paid to not think be incentivised to think?
------
Cycling! I have gotten back into the groove for cycling, after having suffered from blisters from the not-so-well-planned Rail Corridor walk, and the gastro-intestinal discomfort leading to diarrhoea for a few days. I still don't know what the cause is---top two hypotheses are too much raw fish from sushi night two nights before the first day of diarrhoea, or a vegetarian bento box that was too cooled by the time I ate it. It doesn't really matter which it is, since it is all in the past now.
------
Mass Effect Legendary Edition---I finally started on this game once more, having dropped it once before. I have eventually completed the first game in the trilogy, and have just started on Mass Effect 2. Unlike in the past, I have switched over to using the controller to play this third-person-over-the-shoulder-shooter, and it does play a little more naturally.
Oh, and I don't like the third party EA app needed to run this game. Interesting innit?
------
I have finally finished transcribing all the 105 pieces from Pan's Musical Companion for Alto/Treble Recorder: Medieval to make it actually playable. The problem I faced was with the way the book was laid out---each page was A5-landscape, and the binding on the short edge, combined with the thickness of the book, meant that if I wanted to play any music in it, I had to somehow flatten that monstrosity out onto my music stand, which can potentially break the spine.
In short, it sucked to play it as is, and so I took the effort to transcribe everything, adjusting the pagination such that there were no awkward page turns for the music. Everything fits into the A4 clear holder, and I can't wait to play the music on my alto recorder soon.
------
And that about wraps things up. I could talk about how work is getting all over the place, but why bother when I'm leave?
Till the next update.
