[This is a thought exercise. This is a mental construction. This is something different because sometimes we need to try something different in order to grow.]

[Imagine instead of a fully coherent newsletter, I mistakenly sent a post that was a placeholder.]

[Maybe it was an accident. Maybe I drafted something and there was some syncing error in the platform. Maybe when I hit to schedule at the usual time, it didn’t save correctly, and the post sent with a title and no text. Maybe I was tired and ignored the warnings, the safeguards. Sometimes, it’s easy enough to do such things. It’d be a funny error. I’d catch it eventually. I’d struggle to recreate the post because when it comes to personal endeavors, I’m not exactly known for keeping copies and copies. Somethings are meant to be bespoke, meant to be exercises in capturing flashes of inspiration. Is that not the point of the work?]

[Maybe it was intentional. A pseudo-deception. A way to say I met my imaginary metric, the bar I set that no one holds me accountable for. Maybe the placeholder title with placeholder text was just to check a box that existed in my own mind, just a way to say “I didn’t forget” to no one in particular. This after all is mostly for my entertainment, and you, dear reader, are along for the ride.]

[Maybe it was/is meta. Blocks of words that represent different words yet formed. A template in a different way to offset and unsettle. Maybe all of this metafiction, all of this writing about writing, all of this metacognition of identity and self and actions collapsed/collapses into itself like a literary event horizon. Perhaps enough naval gazing results in self-absorption, not quite an Ouroboros but the self consuming cycle is self-evident.]

[I have been in a rut the last few units of times. I feel like I am writing the same things over and over, and I know that logically means I am not done with these things. It means these things still have a hold, still want to carve themselves into digital stone. We made rocks think with lightning, but the act of writing is still one of sculpting. There are many things that can be said. There are only so many things that need to be said.]

[I am tired of yelling about generative AI and large language models. I am tired of toiling and trying to convince people that there is a human cost associated with things and that yes, up until four years, I was staunchly pro-robot but that was because it was a thought experiment and not the reality and also the difference between probabilistic models and AGI, and AGI is thing of fiction and so much farther away than what is staked. “But what if gets better” is the most infuriating proposition because right now it’s bad and it’s mostly made things worse, and my nuance is being worn like a dull razor, and I won’t apologize for becoming blunt.]

[There are good things though. There are moments of hope and things we grasp at, and are within reach, but it’s weird to write about the good when it feels like there’s a lot more bad and it feels weird to write the bad without wearing away even further.]

[I won’t apologize for sounding like a broken record. I won’t apologize for trying to figure out how to get out of the cycle/spiral. I think sometimes the strangest things allow us permission to breath and I think today was brackets. A slightly different style parenthetical.]

[This isn’t a placeholder. This is a post that is maybe a half-step above a placeholder and a half-step down from a fully coherent thing. But not everything is going to be polished every time. And by writing this, sparring a couple rounds with the ennui and the dissonance, I feel better and maybe that’s the point.]