Random bits and bobs
Over the last week I've jotted down a bunch of notes in a "Things to Blog" text file so I'm just gonna dump them here in no particular order.
Bleeding edge, AI-fueled fraud
One of my favorite mountain bike YouTubers, Seth from Berm Peak recently learned someone spent a year posing as him online to scam companies out of thousands of dollars worth of gear. The person claimed to work for the YouTube channel as they reached out to bike companies and got dozens of bikes sent to them for free to "review". Eventually, the scam as noticed, the person doing it was identified and now they're being sentenced to some jail time. What's really fascinating to me is I bet this is a small peek into our future, 5-10 years from now when stuff like this might be rampant.
The scammer who did it leaned on ChatGPT to craft their emails so they sounded like Seth's writing, as he's been publishing online for over a decade. It's not hard to imagine someone taking this concept further, someday leaving voice messages that sound uncannily like someone else based on their hundreds of hours of videos and podcasts online. You could even create fake videos posing as someone else using current bleeding edge tools.
Scams like this are way more believable and they will definitely trick more people into all sorts of chicanery in the future. This honestly feels like the tip of an iceberg that is unfortunately coming for all of us who have years of writing and content posted online. I don’t know what the solution to this problem is, but I hope someone is working on ways to someday combat it.
Ken Burns' American Revolution documentary series is an amazing podcast (that doesn't know it yet)
Over the past couple weeks, each night before I'd drift off to sleep I'd watch about an hour of Ken Burns' newest series on the American Revolution.
It's roughly 12 to 13 hours in total spread over six episodes and honestly after finishing it I can say two things about it:
- I loved every second and even though it's long. I was riveted while hearing so many stories I never heard in any history class, even the US history courses I took in college. It draws a fuller picture of all the issues and various forces and factions involved in the war, and it gives great context for what the world was like when this war was taking place. I learned a great deal more about the revolution than I ever knew.
- More importantly: this series would make for a really great podcast and you'd barely lose anything by just listening to it. Unlike Ken Burns' other work, the visuals played a fairly minor role in the overall storytelling. Since there's no photos or videos of the 1700s, most visuals ended up being lots of slow pans over oil paintings and about the only time I paid attention to the screen was when they showed maps of troop movements in a battle. Honestly, someone should just make the whole thing into a series of MP3 files and I'd say next time you've got a long road trip you should give it a listen.
"Cities aren't loud, cars are"
Harry Nelson
I've mentioned that one of my recent favorite new podcasts is Walkin' About and in this episode, Allan the host is walking around with Charlie Todd of the Improv Everywhere group on the streets of Manhattan. The whole time they're recording with lapel microphones and walking around the city but they also accidentally capture an amazing moment right around the 30 minute mark, as they turn a corner to head down a quiet residential avenue.
The audio up to that point is thirty full minutes of occasional sirens, constant road noise, and general NYC ruckus but it drops to almost nothing when they enter a residential neighborhood and Charlie utters a phrase I've never heard before but rings true, especially in this instance: "Cities aren't loud, cars are."
Updates on my GLP-1 experiences
A few months ago I started taking Zepbound to control my weight and type 2 diabetes and a few people have asked for an update so here it is.
Months later it's been mostly a good experience. I still have way less hunger cravings than I used to but I've taken things very slowly and only upped my dosage one level up from the baseline to date. Side effects are still not fun (constipation and heartburn, mostly) and I still feel terrible if I ever eat like I used to, which is tough when you love to cook and eat. I've lost about 20 pounds and have another 20-30 to go and it's a pretty slow rate of just a pound or two a week. My clothes are fitting better now but the one time I actually felt any different post-zepbound was a recent bike ride around the local hills. Riding up steep grades felt SO MUCH easier with some weight gone and I can't wait to ride more now that we're mostly done with Winter up here.
My first woodshop class is coming to an end
Tomorrow is the final meeting for my intro woodworking class and we're almost completely done with our first project, a step stool. We learned how to use a bunch of tools while also picking up a whole host of furniture building techniques. I had a blast and I'm currently working on a few custom furniture projects around the house I hope to share soon. I'll probably jump into another class or two taught in the same workshop, to keep the lessons going as I continue to build out my own shop space at home.
Speaking of woodworking, after learning how to use a bunch of tools in a working shop, I was totally blown away by this video above, about how an old shipbuilding trick from hundreds of years ago can help people make unique, awkward shapes without using any sort of rulers or calipers or anything fancy to measure things. The video above is really remarkable.
A brief break at Disneyland
Last month I got to spend a day in Disneyland, which was a nice break from the long Oregon winter. It felt like the first vitamin D I soaked up in months.
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