On Blogging (And Its Demise Or Renaissance)

Patrice Lewis over at Rural Revolution wrote a rather thought provoking article last week entitled "The dying art of writing".  In the article, she reflects on the fact that with the rise of AI, the human art of writing is at a series of interesting points.  

The first point is simply that AI cannot always determine what is human generated and what is AI generated and thus may label human generated comment as AI.  The second point is that - from an article entitled "The Rise Of AI Writing, and The Decline Of the Human Voice" - that language is becoming both increasingly the same in writing (as AI standardizes a voice) and at the same time, less impactful:  "polished, formulaic speech", as the article states.  

The final point is that as AI continues to be brought into the common societal stream, it simply will become more common, if for convenience and cost if nothing else.  At the same time, Lewis laments the fact that as her (and my) generation passes, the coming generations will simply not have the ability to differentiate AI generated writing from human generated writing.

At the end of the article she notes "I don't know how long I will be able to cling to a career as a writer, but I will enjoy it while I can."

----

It is a fair statement to say that writing is at a crossroads.

If you are someone that writes or keeps an online presence, likely you have noticed a decrease in the overall "real" traffic to the site - I say real because while I, for example, have tens of thousands of "views" a day (per Google), my individual posts are much, much less than that.  It is not just my imagine: content creators of all varieties have noted that with a change in search engines (Google the primary one), traffic is simply much less because is both much more selective and uses AI to create summaries:  no need to click through if the summary at the top tells you everything.

For folks that make a living from a site, that can be a hard thing:  the rise of SubStack, for example, is one method for creating written content that will somehow fund itself.  Even that is a bit of chancy business I suppose, dependent on the ability of the writer and the audience - although many content creators are directly marketing through social media rather than the traditional "Search Engine" route.

But there are tens of people including myself that keep a blog or site simply because we enjoy writing and indirectly enjoy interacting with people who read our writing.  They are written in the old, painful sense, keystroke by keystroke (if not starting in pen and then transferring to the keyboard).  

AI changes all that of course:  within seconds or minutes it can generate text or a story which may or may not be good - but as Lewis notes above, people may not care about the quality of it as a work of communication or human lived experience.  They care if it has the information or content or entertainment they want.

If blogs or sites create communities strung out like towns a day's travel apart in the Old West, the change in the InterWeb and AI are the equivalent of the railroad coming to town. Some are picked, by chance or choice, and continue on. Others are not chosen and, more often than not, may fade away.

---

Where does this all lead?

Some weeks ago, I read an article (I cannot remember where it was) from a blog author who decided he was given up.  He may have been one who wrote and made something of a living at it (as I recall), but now the effort was simply not worth it to him.  He had considered a "pay as you go" experience like SubStack, but also decided that was not worth it.  He was punching out.

Generally speaking, that likely reflects a strong current of what will eventually happen.  It is hard to blame anyone really:  for myself, a blog post can take anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes to write and edit.  Over the course of a week, that can be up to seven hours (or more).  To pump those out regularly only to see your numbers continue to drift downward can be depressing.  Add to that I suspect the blog and website crowd is likely in the 40's or more, and the medium will likely decline more based on demographics as well.

On the one hand, that saddens me.  As I noted above, blogs (and sites) can become their own sort of community and the loss of every one means one more voice gone.

On the other hand, it is likely not as bad as I might think.

Even within our own modern world, there is a segment of the population that prefers things that are handcrafted or handmade above the commercially generated.  And in a sense, AI could eventually make itself irrelevant in the sense that if all AI sounds the same, it will become bland and boring.

That is where the artisanal blog comes in:  It is different.  It is personal.  It is unique in that every writer has their own unique voice.

Will there be money to be made?  Probably not, although a few hardy souls will figure out a way.  But it will be genuine and honest and real in a way that AI could never be.

Besides, the phrase "This post was hand crafted by a human artisanal writer" has a certain ring to it.

A Year Of Kindness (XIX): The Smallest Act Of Kindness

 

(Source)

We can have the greatest intensions in the world.  But the smallest act of kindness rendered is greater than all the intentions that are never kept.

On What Matters

 This past Wednesday night, I was confronted with two very different emotional states.

The first was one that was leftover from work, a continuation (effectively) of a battle that was going on before I left, the remnants of a conversation that stirred up a cloud of unresolved issues.  This has become more common for me of late, the ghosts of work that hang around my head as I climb the stairs and enter my refuge.

The thought would not let go as I continued to try to work through it, arguments and counterarguments (sometimes very unworthy of someone who calls himself a Christian) echoing through my brain.  I had ten counterarguments, was ready to directly charge the breastworks alone.

And then I read an e-mail.

It was an e-mail from a friend.  A significant medical procedure he had been waiting on for sometime was suddenly happening tomorrow.  Would, he asked, I be willing to pray for him?

---

It is funny how our minds works (or perhaps, it is confined only to mine).

On the one hand, I can let things that truly matter not at all (if I thought logically about them) consume my mind long after the event has ended.  They follow me, like the spirits of the departed, throughout the rest of my day or evening, living (as the saying goes) "rent free" in my head.  I form arguments and counter arguments, giving rise to withering repartee and smug satisfactions of a victory earned.

In those moments, I forget the things that truly do matter.

As I often counsel the Younglings at work (at my job, almost everyone is younger than I), most of what we do at work does not matter in the long run.  Most of it will never see the market, will never make it to patients, will die the quiet death of the failed project in darkness, with only banker's boxes of documents or hard drives as reminders, to be slowly destroyed or deleted over the years.

---

My friend texted me the day of his operation; all was well and the initial surgery had gone well.   The other part - the ghost battles built in my mind, the great arguments I was going to make - completely made irrelevant by discussions that happened during the day: the "Great Event" turned out to be nothing more than another ordinary meeting.

Thankfully I had something to remind me what mattered.  Would that I remembered this more.

On A Ballot

 This week I filled out my ballot.

When I arrived here in New Home 2.0, I did something I had never done in my life: I registered as "not declaring a party".  This was a conscious choice on my part; after a life time of belonging to one party or the other and being satisfied with neither, I thought I would take a break for partisan politics, at least for the primary elections.

Turns out that if you do not have a party affiliation, your ballot is pretty empty.

There were a slate of local judges with no opponents.  There were two or three local people (e.g., county commissioners or local bodies).  A single proposition.  

Even with reading the ballot, it took less than 30 minutes total.

The local positions were the most interesting to read.  Each had four to five folks running for each position, the current incumbent and the challengers.  The incumbents were easy to identify - not just because of the fact it listed their current position, but all of the organizations that were at the bottom of their statement in support of them.  It was nice to see a healthy challenger pool, even as I suspect that the incumbent will win again, because that is how it works.

(As a side note, the incumbent positions were a marvel of somehow listing everything that they had done along with the fact that there was still so much that was unsatisfactory, yet somehow they are not to blame.)

The proposition was, of course, a tax increase - a fuel tax in this case.  I have reached the point in my life where I vote these down every time.

Do I regret not "picking a side"?  Not really, to be honest.  It certainly simplified my primary season.  Arguably voting for my most local of officials is the most impactful thing I can do (my state and federal officials are likely far less determined by my vote).  

The anger, the rage, the "the other side is Satan incarnate" will come soon enough.  For now, finding my peace unruffled and my mailbox delightfully free of campaign ads is the sort of thing I would like to see more of.

A Year Of Haiku (XVIII): Racing Stripes

 

Falling rain petals

from Spring give the old snail

a decoration.

2026 Japan: Engakuji (IV)

 A final stop was a hike up the hill to see the Ogane (Great Bell) of Engakuji:

It is a pretty steep run up:

It includes supervision by local inhabitants:

The Bentendo, dedicted to Benzaiten, patroness of the arts, literature, and learning:

The Ogane.  Cast in A.D. 1301, it is 2.6 m/8.5 ft tall and is one of the largest temple bells in Japan.

The view from the top was incredible:

2026 Japan: Engakuji (III)

 Gate Carvings:

The Shariden, or Treasure House.  It dates from the Muromachi period (A.D. 1336-1573), although it has been restored. Enshrined here is a tooth of the Buddha.

The memorial of Hojo Tokimune, one of the Hojo regents:

Part of the Obai-in, containing a statue of the Kannon.

An Abundance Of E-mails

 During last week's small group meeting, my co-leader asked me if I had seen a particular video.  I remember it coming into my inbox, but confessed I had not reviewed it.  I went home later and looked and there it was, buried four days back - along with a week's worth of incoming e-mail.

Suddenly I was struck by a thought:  What if I opened none of my e-mail for a day?  How much what I get?  What is important?

---

Like a great many people, I have a multiplicity of e-mail addresses.

I of course have my work e-mail address, which has varied across every company since I first started in the biopharmaceutical-medical device industry (which started, of all places, in Lotus Notes).  The addresses have changed over the years - first name.last name, last name.first name, first name (for companies that are very small), last name.initial - but they are ultimately all short term, disappearing as soon as my time at the company has ended.

I have a second e-mail, the e-mail associated with this site. Other than appearing here, it is located almost nowhere else.  The incoming e-mails there are few and far between, appropriate for an address which is only for contacts.

Google insists that I have an e-mail associated with this blog as well that I never use.  I have another Google address as well, mostly because my family members want to share documents.  I never use this except for family related comments.

The last e-mail is my public address.

I have this one the longest, probably since the days when AOL started to not be a thing and I needed a back-up.  It is now one of the addresses that people look at and are surprised that it even works anymore - not quite "yahoo.com" in its antiquity, but almost as old.

---

For the experiment, I did not open or delete any e-mails for two 24 hour periods.  The tally was such:

Main E-mail Address:  Day 1:  32 e-mails, Day 2:  15 e-mails.  47 e-mails total.

Spam/Junk E-mails:  Day 1:  14 e-mails, Day 2:  9.  23 e-mails  total.

Most of the main inbox e-mails were "legitimate" - in the sense that they were things that I had signed up for once upon a time; there were only four that were truly "junk".  They were a mix: some SubStack notifications for SubStacks I occasionally read, a couple of notifications from the Community Garden,  a receipt for my taxes, and some e-mails from the good folks from Permies.com.

The rest?  Notifications that really are advertisements from sites that I have visited at one time or another and either purchased something from or signed up because I wanted the initial 10% discount, although I ended up not purchasing anything from them.  All reminding me that something was for sale now, and I needed only to click through to buy something else.

Of all of those e-mails, only a handful were really "needed".

---

I have started the process of unsubscribing.  Some sites make it easy; some sites make it much more difficult.  And some take time.  But I will continue to work through them as they continue to come in.   Given where I am in life, I scarcely need more e-mails reminding me that there are things out there that I "need" to buy.

Will I ever reach the plateau of no e-mails?  No, there will always be some I should have; my goal is less than 10 a day.  

Because of all things that take my time, checking my personal e-mails should not be one of them.

A Year Of Kindness (XVIII): Be The Reason Someone Smiles

 

(Source)

Sometimes we confuse the size of a kindness with its result. 

Certainly I am guilty of thinking I have to do some grand gesture.  Turns out that can be completely wrong:  sometimes people do not want the big grand gesture or are embarrassed if you do it because you are drawing attention to them in the wrong way.

A smile, a kind word, even a moment where we are able to express that in some way we know what they are going through and care, that no matter what the circumstances they are in they are still worthy simply because they are created in the image of God.

After all, no kindness - no matter how small - is ever wasted.

A Changing Work Environment

 I have been feeling rather low this week.

I wish I could point to a single event or thing - but I cannot.  There are some contributing factors of course:  a rather pronounced lack of restful sleep, an unexpected reorg that work that impacted me not at all (but one of my good coworker friends), a series of unexpected postal issues (note: Send nothing you need to get there in a specific period of time through the U.S. Postal service).

One item that may be impacting me more than I anticipate is the fact that my work site is effectively rolling into the next phase of operations, away from the sort of start-up feel to one of regular operations and "organizational efficiency and excellence". It happens everywhere that companies and sites are successful of course; what it has generally come to mean is a loss of the close sense of connectedness the site has and some level of fun and much more of a rather un-fun, unengaging work environment.

I value my senses of connectedness and fun highly, so this is not a welcome development.

---

For better or worse, I like a sense of "fun" at my work.

Work is, almost by its very nature, often not fun at all but rather a series of tasks to be completed.  And often the work and the tasks are serious - to be fair, the industry I work in (biopharmaceutical-medical devices) can literally be a life and death series of actions.  And there is a very distinctive time and point for seriousness.

That said, serious all the time can turn people into unhappy employees.

If I have a calling at my job - besides doing my job, of course - it is to make things as fun as I can.  That means lightening the mood wherever I can.  That means calling a joke on myself or playing the fool on myself (consciously) as I can. It means breaking out into song at random times (yes, I have done it).

About anything to bring a smile to someone's face, especially someone who needs it.

---

Will my equilibrium be restored?  Probably.  Yesterday was a better day than most of the week, and even though things will be different, there is still fun to be had.  It may require a little more creativity on my part (or a little more subtleness), but it will still be there.  After all, people may not remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

So give them something to laugh at.

On Trash

 One of the biggest changes that I have noted about our transfer from home living to apartment living is trash.

In New Home, we had a dedicated trash bin and dedicated recycle bin.  With four to five people living there at the same time, we regularly almost filled both bins.  Now that we have relocated, things are quite different - in two ways.

The first way is simply in the amount of "trash" we generate. If I am here on my own, I possible generate one "full" kitchen bag of trash a week, if I combine changing the rabbit three times a week, collecting litter box waste every day, and the detritus of modern living (I go more often of course because of the waste, but it could be contained in a single bag).  If The Ravishing Mrs. TB is here, perhaps we generate 1.5 or maybe 2 bags.  Our recycle is much less as well, as cans and bottles are saved for a premium, leaving only cardboard and plastic to be walked to the dumpster.

Mind you, we do not pay less because we generate less.  That is a percentage fixed fee.

The other difference is simply in how people use the recycle and garbage dumpsters.

The garbage dumpsters should not surprise me so much, but it still does. People throw all kinds of things away, things that - having seen Cambodia and Vietnam - would have been reused and recycled in some ways. Furniture.  Bags of clothing.  Sometimes they make it in the dumpster, sometimes apparently "close enough" will do the trick.

Interestingly, some of those same items make their way into the recycling dumpsters as well.  Not just the cardboard and plastic I am used to, but furniture, bags of clothes, metal - literally almost anything.  Recycle, in some cases, seems to be another word for "The other garbage dumpster".

If nothing else, this experience has made me very conscious of the things that I am buying - and throwing away. I do not know that we can ever reach the point of zero trash, but likely we can make it less than it currently is.

A Year Of Haiku (XVII): The Sound Of Sight

 

Seasonal trumpets

ring out with timbre and tone

of purplish-pink

2026 Japan: Engakuji (II)

 Of all the temples we visited during our time, Engakuji seemed the most like a "temple" of all the ones that we visited.  I am not sure what contributed to that:  the lateness of the day (it was our last stop, post 1500), the weather which was overcast, or the relative lack of people present after the crowds we had seen earlier.  But it truly had a sense of the otherworldly.

The Senbutsujo, or Zen Meditation dojo.  The building dates from A.D. 1699 and is currently still used for Zen Meditation sessions:

The interior of the Zenbutsujo.  The image is of Yakushi Nyorai, the deity in Buddhism associated with healing:

Still too early for cherry blossoms, but ume (plum) were out in force:

The Kojirin, another meditation hall.  It burned in A.D. 1926, but was since rebuilt:

The Hojo.  Originally the abbot's quarters it is now a general use hall.  It was rebuilt in A.D. 1929 after an earthquake:

The Sacred Place of 100 Kannon.  Gathered here are 100 (likely more) of carved images of Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.  It was originally started in the 13th Century A.D., and became a place of pilgrimage.  Leaving coins (interestingly 1 Yen and 5 Yen coins are the best) are left as offerings; some of the carvings were surrounded by them. 

2026 Japan: Engakuji (I)

 Engakuji (Or Engaku temple, 円覚寺) is located in the northern part of Kamakura not far from the Kita-Kamakura Station ("Kita" being "North").  It was originally founded in the year A.D. 1282 by a Chinese monk at the request of the regent Hojo Tokimune as a commemoration of the defeat of the Mongol Invasion of Japan under Kublai Khan (A.D. 1274-1281).  The temple is considered one of the most important Zen temples in Japan and as the second most important of the Five  Mountains of Kamakura.

Since that time, the temple has been in continuous operation and continues to this day to function as a public temple and a monastery.

The Sanmon (Main gate) was most recently rebuilt in A.D. 1785:

The Butsuden (Main Worship Hall) was rebuilt in A.D. 1969 following the Kanto earthquake, but follows plans from 1573:

The statue is the Hokan Shaka Nyorai (Buddha with a Jeweled Crown).  It dates from the late Kamakura period (A.D. 1185-1333).

The ceiling of the Butsuden:

Casting Long Shadows

 As part of the small group I am co-leading, one of the exercises we do is a specific fasting and prayer activity. We fast for a day, come together and listen to a Psalm and a song, then go off separately to pray for about 15 minutes or so.  This happens three times, after which there is a group prayer followed by a breaking of the fast - pizza, as it turned out.

The property we were on included an acre or so of grassy lawn, so I spent my last 15 minutes prayer session meandering through the grass.  It was later in the early evening and the sun was casting bright rays, but not enough to to offset the cold that seems to permeate even the Spring here.  I turned from looking towards the sun to looking away from it.

And found my shadow.

It was tall - I am terrible at estimating lengths, but easily twice my height - and it stood there amidst the waving grass and slightly wan light of the sun, stretching out far beyond what my reach would ever be.

A powerful image, coming as it did during prayer.

---

When I was growing up, I distinctly remember playing shadow tag on the playground. It is one of those games that I suspect may have been played for millennia.  If you played it, you likely remember rules even if it was a very many years ago: the person who is "It" chases the participants around, trying step on their shadow.

The thing this game teaches you - beyond your first introduction to the idea of "refereed calls" ("I touched you!" "You did not!"  "Did anyone see me touch him?") is the fact that our shadow is can be manipulated based on how we stand in the sun.  Turn one way, we can shrink it to little more than our height; turn another way, and it grows to a point that it cannot but be "tagged".

Running back and forth, swirling and dodging like sparrows, the shadows ebb and flow over the blacktop. We are perhaps too young then to realize that casting a shadow has more impact than just becoming a target in a tag game.

---

What struck me, as I stood there and watched my shadow - a tall, still presence that did not move while the grass under it did) was how casting a shadow was not just a physical image thing, but a thing that we do on all sorts of levels in the lives of others.

There can be other words for it - influence, training, even trauma - but there are people in our lives who have cast shadows - sometimes very long shadows - into our own lives.

The casting of a long shadow is not necessarily a bad thing; I think of my father TB The Elder, who cast a long shadow which worked both weal and woe in my own life. His shadow is well defined in the light, whereas my mother's is much less defined but none the less influential as well.

There are friends and family that have cast very long shadows into my own life, shadows that have outlived them or their presence in my current life.  And there are those whose shadows have scarcely exceeded their time in my life, to quickly disappear as life's turn makes their shadow shrink.

---

Casting a shadow is something that we cannot control at all.  At best, it is something that we can influence (if we think about it) by how we stand in the sun.  But the shadows we cast can be very long or very short.

Standing there, seeing my shadow tower over me, made ask the question what shadow I am casting into lives of others.  It can be far bigger than I intend or see; I hope that it is the sort of shadow that makes them glad for the shade and the shape rather than burdened by the blocking out of the sun and the resulting darkness.

A Year Of Kindness (XVII): The Kindness Of Dignity

Some years ago - less years than I would like, honestly - I was in a meeting with the senior executives of my then-employer.  About 10 minutes into the meeting, a colleague - a work friend, really - walked in and sat down.  Reacting immediately - I thought much less then than I do now - I made a quip about the starting time.  Executive management laughed.  My friend said nothing at the time - but after the meeting, clearly communicated her anger and embarrassment at my comment at her expense.  For weeks she did not talk to me and even when she started doing so in the last few weeks before her departure, it our relationship was never the same.

I learned a very important - and painful - lesson about the kindness of dignity that day.

---

Dignity (dig-nǝ-tē):  The quality of being worth of esteem or honor; worthiness; high repute or honor; the degree of worth, repute, or honor; proper pride and self respect. - Webster's New Word Dictionary, Second College Edition:  1948, Simon and Schuster, New York

---

Dignity is a trait that has fallen on hard times in the modern world, partially because it has been consciously abandoned as a behaviour pattern and partially because it is not held as a trait of value.  That is not surprising:  after all, if one abandons something it becomes very hard to value it.

Society as a whole has abandoned the idea of dignity:  individuals literally live their lives with no sense of restraint or things which simply are not put out into to public because (at one time) such things remained private matters.  But society has also abandoned the idea of allowing others their dignity:  too often, things are a combination of combat blood sport and personal/professional conquest on a scale that the Mongol Empire would have admired.  People cannot be allowed the grace of exiting quietly or choosing to end a discussion or argument or even just of silently withdrawing.  

The other side, of course, is the side that I exhibited:  the fact that one sacrifices the dignity of another to get ahead.  Be it the long overloud laugh at the expense of another in my case or be it willing misunderstanding of a position (or at least not being willing to take that time), we seem to have embraced the idea that there is nothing sacred in the path to get ahead or "one up" on someone else.

---

How is dignity a kindness?

When we allow someone their dignity, we allow them their personhood - really, we allow them the image of God that they were created in, just as we were created in the same image.  We respect that fact that people sometimes get it wrong, that people are sometimes off, that people do not necessarily care about the same things we do or that they may see things differently, that people are....just like us, with frailties and challenges that they have to address just like we do.

When we practice the kindness of dignity, we follow Christ - who always allowed the true seekers and those who needed His healing to ask questions and beg for His aid without making them feel anything less.

---

What have I learned in the intervening period about allowing others the kindness of dignity?:

- I have learned that I need not always solve an issue right there in public, but much can be solved in private conversations.

- I have learned to let people defer or even retreat without haranguing them for an answer or commitment.

- I have learned to monitor myself and my humour such that the butt of any joke, if there is one needed, is me.

- I have learned that by treating people with dignity, I in turned show I value dignity.

It may seem a small thing, to treat something with dignity.  But after all no kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

A Walk On The Beach

 The rest of the pictures from our visit to the beach last weekend.

We were there at the height of low tide, so we got to see more than I have in the past of the tide pools.

The barnacles and mussels were amazing to me.  Some of them were so big!

There were multiple sea star sightings.  Really big ones, too.