Chad Comello

Tag: technology

  • What AI is and isn’t

    Mandy Brown with a barnburning breakdown of what “AI” is and isn’t:

    “Artificial intelligence” is not a technology. A chef’s knife is a technology, as are the practices around its use in the kitchen. A tank is a technology, as are the ways a tank is deployed in war. Both can kill, but one cannot meaningfully talk about a technology that encompasses both Sherman and santoku; the affordances, practices, and intentions are far too different to be brought into useful conversation. Likewise, in the hysterical gold rush to hoover up whatever money they can, the technocrats have labeled any and all manner of engineering practices as “AI” and riddled their products with sparkle emojis, to the extent that what we mean when we say AI is, from a technology standpoint, no longer meaningful. AI seems to be, at every moment, everything from an algorithm of the kind that has been in use for half a century, to bullshit generators that clutter up our information systems, to the promised arrival of a new consciousness—a prophesied god who will either savage us or save us or, somehow, both at the same time. There exists no coherent notion of what AI is or could be, and no meaningful effort to coalesce around a set of practices, because to do so would be to reduce the opportunity for grift.

    So what is it? An ideology:

    … A system of ideas that has swept up not only the tech industry but huge parts of government on both sides of the aisle, a supermajority of everyone with assets in the millions and up, and a seemingly growing sector of the journalism class. The ideology itself is nothing new—it is the age-old system of supremacy, granting care and comfort to some while relegating others to servitude and penury—but the wrappings have been updated for the late capital, late digital age, a gaudy new cloak for today’s would-be emperors. Engaging with AI as a technology is to play the fool—it’s to observe the reflective surface of the thing without taking note of the way it sends roots deep down into the ground, breaking up bedrock, poisoning the soil, reaching far and wide to capture, uproot, strangle, and steal everything within its reach. It’s to stand aboveground and pontificate about the marvels of this bright new magic, to be dazzled by all its flickering, glittering glory, its smooth mirages and six-fingered messiahs, its apparent obsequiousness in response to all your commands, right up until the point when a sinkhole opens up and swallows you whole.

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  • A creative childhood? It’s about time

    Ross Barkin ponders what kids of today lack compared to their 20th century predecessors:

    When I consider the geniuses of that era—or any, really, before the last ten years or so—I think of time. Talented children, until the incursion of the smartphone and immersive videos games, had much of it.

    One big reason for this:

    Children could only be enchanted by gizmos and gadgets for so long. The television was stationary, rooted in the living room, and it might have only featured a few channels, depending on the decade. Movies, similarly, were confined to physical theaters. Even in my own childhood, in the 1990s and 2000s, video gaming was largely a social activity. I brought my friend over to play Nintendo Wii or we went to his house to battle in a Dragon Ball Z video game on the PlayStation 2. Unique among my peers, I didn’t own a video game console until I was a teenager, and this meant, to my benefit, I had a childhood free of such seductions.

    I too did not own a video game console growing up, except a Game Boy (on which I did spend many maddening hours trying and failing to conquer the Toy Story game). That lack was something I lamented at the time but am grateful for today, because it meant video games weren’t constantly commandeering my time and attention. Instead they were a special occasion, something to be enjoyed with others. I have fond memories having a Halo party with my youth group friends and playing Ready 2 Rumble Boxing with my uncles on a PlayStation rented from Blockbuster.

    Barkin spotlights Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys as an example of the kind of genius who had an abundance of time to be able to develop his talent. Then he asks what the Brian Wilsons of 2025 do with their weekends:

    Brian was a preternaturally gifted child who deconstructed vocal harmonies on the radio and spent hours over his piano. A child today with such genius might tinker around with music but devote far more of his days to Minecraft, Fortnite, and MrBeast. The child might drown in a sludge bath of AI. The same could be true of the budding novelists, poets, and painters. All of these technologies are arrayed against dreams and imagination. The content—the YouTube, the video games, the TikTok videos—does all the imagining for you. The brain devolves into a vessel for passive consumption.

    And that consumption happens (literally) right before their eyes:

    For all the obsessing modern parents do over the fates of their children, they’re happy to toss out an iPad or a smartphone or a Nintendo Switch and let their boys and girls melt, slowly, in the blue light. A person close to me once suggested that wardens should start giving prisoners iPhones because there’s nothing that will more rapidly pacify an unruly and restless population. If iPhones were teleported back in time to the twentieth century, would we have a twentieth century? 

    Pacify, yes, but only temporarily since once you turn it off it’s like trying to quash a prison riot.

    A while back we severely curtailed our now six year old’s screen time after finally getting sick of how it was negatively affecting his mood and behavior (and thus everyone else in the house)—not to mention time spent on creative endeavors. What used to happen almost every day after lunch plus some evenings is now maybe an hour on the weekend, and sometime none at all. No iPad, no more YouTube or garbage shows, the N64 every once in a while. Putting the TV away was a big help in removing the temptation, but just as important was holding firm on the boundary. It didn’t take long for him to accept the new normal and find other things to do like coloring/crafts, reading, and listening to Yotos.

    Barkin’s post is about kids, but it’s just as applicable to us grownups too. I would benefit immensely from the same screen time limits imposed on my children—not because I’m a nascent genius but because I don’t want to melt in the blue light or drown in a sludge bath of AI either. I too want time enough at last.

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  • The seven year etch, or why am I paper resistant?

    In what amounts to a positively glacial pace, I finally managed to fill up the small pocket Moleskine notebook I’ve been carrying around for seven years:

    It was given to me by my friend Jason, an artist who founded Geocommunetrics and gave it this unique cover design:

    It was tucked in my backpack for most of that time and proved useful here and there for personal and professional notes, checklists, and all the other miscellany these small yet mighty tools are good for.

    Why so long though? As much as I’d love to be a dedicated notebook person, I’m just more prone to using Apple Notes and other digital notetaking methods because my phone is always with me or nearby. Plus the ability to keyword search. Keeping a notebook and pencil within the same vicinity, accessibility, and consistency feels like a heavier lift—not to mention handwriting being a more time-consuming than quickly tapping things out.

    I say this as someone who deeply believes in analog tech and the preservation of tangibility, whether through typewriters or vinyl or indeed paper. I also understand all the psychological benefits of journaling and handwriting, and every time I look back at what I do manage to get down on paper I’m grateful for having that in my own historical record. But that hasn’t been quite enough for me to get over the cognitive hump of making it a daily practice.

    People who use paper consistently while also having a digital job: how do you do it? What methods have you found useful and why?

    Drop a digital comment with your thoughts!

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  • This was my washing machine

    Part of the This Is My series.

    This week we said goodbye to our washing machine, which according to its serial number was manufactured nearly 35 years ago in September 1990. For context: Goodfellas had just released in theaters, Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait, and I’d just turned three years old. Time flies.

    Its sudden demise has made for a challenging five days without being able to do laundry, but I can’t be mad given how it chugged along far past its expected lifespan. Like its matching dryer (which knock on wood continues to chug along), the washer was the oldest of our home’s old-guard appliances that we’ve been replacing since moving in nearly six years ago. No doubt the new appliances are more energy efficient and all that, but they’re not built to last like these beastly machines of old.

    Farewell, you wonderful old Building & Loan Maytag.

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  • Tools of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Not Xwitter. I already stopped using the platform but only recently did the full delete. Grateful to the new ownership for making it easy to kick the habit after 15 years.

    Not Goodreads. Did the full delete of my Goodreads account as well. This might seem counterintuitive for a librarian and bookish person, but over the last few years I noticed myself using it less and less and didn’t feel the need to keep up with its archaic UI as Amazon lets it slowly die.

    Letterboxd. On the other hand, it’s a pleasure to use and keep up with what’s happening on Letterboxd among my fellow movie freaks. I’d say it’s the only good social network these days.

    Not a random Google Sheets app script. Related to all this book- and movie-logging stuff, I’d been using a random Google App Script for my logbook in Google Sheets that I found online so I could include multiple tags for each book or movie. But I discovered recently that Google (finally!) added native support for multi-select dropdowns and thus was happy to ditch the script.

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  • Tools of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Not YouTube watch history. When you turn off the watch history for your YouTube account (manage it here), your homepage becomes gloriously blank rather than cluttered with garbage served up by their algorithm.

    Not WorkFlowy. One day I decided I was tired of splitting my personal and professional note-taking, task management, and documents between multiple apps and services, so I took everything out of WorkFlowy and moved it to either Google Docs or Apple Notes (for personal stuff and archived material) or OneDrive or Monday.com (for work). I’ve used WorkFlowy for over a decade and have really enjoyed its simplicity and structure, but I wanna try life without it for a bit.

    Apple Reminders. I’ve used this off and on over the years, mostly for shared shopping lists between my wife and me. The recent update that suggests grocery store categories for items on your list and then automatically sorts them is a game changer.

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  • The AI-powered typewriter

    First published as an Instagram Reel just for funsies.

    Have you heard about the latest hot gadget? It’s called a “typewriter” and it has all the fancy, cutting-edge features you need:

    High-res screen — the writing surface looks just like real paper because that’s what it is

    Strong security — your writing is encrypted and unable to be viewed by third parties because it’s just on a piece of paper in your house

    Wi-Fi enabled — you’ll be Wireless Finally

    Crazy long battery life — you literally batter it to make it work

    Insightful analytics — you’ll be able to track reader views and clicks because the number will always be zero

    Powered by AI — only an Analog Individual can operate it

    Find one in your local app thrift store today!

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  • Podcasts of the moment

    It’s been over two years since my last podcast lineup check-in, and as usual some things have changed while some things remain.

    Changes: Many of the shows in my last update have either stopped publishing or lost my interest, and I’ve stepped away from the political ones. I’m also thrilled I was finally able to ditch Spotify once Armchair Expert went back to being non-exclusive, so I’m back in Apple Podcasts full time (along with Google Podcasts when listening on desktop).

    The Same: I still listen at 1.5x speed. And I still greatly enjoy the parasocial pleasures and intellectual stimulation of podcast listening, even if it does severely reduce my audiobook reading.

    My Current Lineup

    Regular Listens

    • Armchair Expert
    • The Big Picture
    • Filmspotting
    • Judge John Hodgman
    • Office Ladies
    • Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
    • The Town with Matthew Belloni

    Depends on the Subject/Guest

    • The Rewatchables
    • Pivot
    • Unspooled
    • Pod Meets World
    • The Letterboxd Show
    • SmartLess
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  • Tools of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Not Spotify. The only reason I used Spotify was to listen to the Armchair Expert podcast, which was part of the unfortunate trend of podcasts going Spotify-exclusive a few years ago. But now it’s back out in the open internet, which means I can finally stop using Spotify!

    Not Disney+. Last year we paid up front for a full year before the prices went up. Now that has expired and, despite having a four year old, we’re not renewing. Prices are going up yet again and we have a good collection of shows and movies on DVD (including, vitally, Bluey), so we just don’t see the need for it.

    White noise phone shortcut. I learned about this from a random Instagram Reel: iPhones now have built-in Background Sounds (i.e. white noise) in Settings, which you can add a shortcut to in the Control Center. Quick, easy, essential tool with a three month old in the house.

    Visual Look Up. Yet another hidden iOS gem. Take a picture of any identifiable landmark, sign, art, insect, whatever and it’ll detect what it is and show similar web and image results. I use it mostly for identifying bugs and other critters around our yard.

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  • Tools of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Threads. I hopped onto the new app with the Cinema Sugar account on Wednesday evening when it was first going public. It’s been fun goofing off about movies and interacting with people in a new venue. Not so fun is the feed full of random accounts you don’t even follow. Hoping/assuming that will change soon.

    Monday.com. My new job uses this project management software and it’s my first experience with it. Still getting acquainted but appreciate the clean interface and robust features.

    Wireless vertical ergonomic mouse. I saw a coworker using one of these and got inspired to give this one a try. Once you get past the initial disorientation it’s a really nice experience and way more comfortable than a regular mouse. Also glad to eliminate another cord from my limited desk space at home.

    A library Roku. My library circulates free Rokus preloaded with all the major streaming services. This has been helpful for when we want to watch some stuff on services we don’t subscribe to without having to pay. See if your library offers them!

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  • Tools of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Pretty much everything from my last update.

    Kindle Paperwhite. After years of holding out, we got one last Black Friday and I finally started using it. I wasn’t against e-readers before; I just usually prefer print or audiobooks. But the e-ink screen and appealing handling of the Paperwhite is quite nice.

    Safari browser. I’ve been a longtime Firefox devotee since ditching Chrome, but recently it started throwing me error after unresolvable error that made using it on my MacBook Pro a nightmare. So I resorted to Safari and have found it much more enjoyable than I remember.

    Not Twitter. Twitter’s ownership change was an excellent impetus for me to step away. It’s always been a time-suck, and I’ve mostly been a lurker anyway. Not fully deleting it since I want to at least hold onto my username, but happily finding other ways to use my time online.

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  • Live Text, Reader View, No-Signup Tools

    Three techie things I’m loving.

    1. Live Text

    Live Text, available in iOS 15 and beyond, feels not far off from magical. The ability to copy text from photos or through the camera app has completely transformed my book notetaking process as a print-book partisan but digital notetaker. I can just point the camera at a desired passage, hit the Live Text button, copy the text, and plop it in Workflowy (where I keep my book notes). And to think I used to have to take pictures of quotes to later type out manually like an idiot…

    2. Reader View

    Using the Reader view in Safari on iPhones makes reading things on the internet insanely more pleasant. If you come upon an article clogged with ads, unnecessary photos, and/or unreadable text, Reader strips it down to a clean, simplified, text-only version. You can find this feature elsewhere too; I use it often in Firefox on desktop.

    3. No-Signup Tools

    So that this isn’t an exclusively Apple affair, I wanted to shoutout nosignup.tools because at this point in my life I appreciate any digital tool that doesn’t require an account or credit card to use. Just free tools that work quickly and easily.

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  • The Legend of Ball Under Table

    The above is a screenshot from a video on my phone that’s come to be known in my family as “Ball Under Table.”

    Recorded shortly before the first COVID lockdown, the video documents a little game our (at the time) freshly minted one-year-old created. He would roll the little squishy soccer ball under our table, wait for me to get down and reach to get it, then waddle off into another room.

    It was his way of trying to sneak off, which, having just learned to walk at that point, he was doing a lot. The video ends with me having “caught” him in the living room and asked, “Are you sneaky?” After a pause, he smiles mischievously and sets off again.

    Run it back

    Now three years old, he loves to watch this video over and over again, along with the many other videos of him from birth to present. It has become so indelible that he’ll recreate it in the exact same spot. (Though his wobbly toddling has turned into straight-up sprinting.) And if his mother or I dare to veer from an exact reenactment of the video, he’s none too happy about it.

    It’s interesting how this moment has morphed over time. When it happened, he was too young for it to make a long-term impression. But once he was old enough to watch and rewatch the recording, that’s what became his default understanding and memory of that moment.

    Which is a phenomenon I understand well, having watched and rewatched a lot of my own home videos from when I was a kid. How many of those moments would I actually remember if they’d never been recorded? Not a lot, given my woefully weak capacity for long-term memories that aren’t useless bits of trivia.

    He’ll have just as much (if not more) footage of his childhood as I did, thanks to our smartphones and camcorder. And he’ll have to deal with far more screens and reality-distorting technology in general. How will that affect his mind and those of his generation?

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  • Three principles for a pleasant inbox

    I open 100% of the (non-spam) emails I get, and enjoy doing so. Here’s how, and why.

    1. One inbox to rule them all

    Pretty much as soon as Gmail debuted the Promotions and Social tabs I turned them off, leaving me with a single inbox that almost always has close to zero emails.

    I understand the purpose of tabs, and more power to you if they benefit you. As I see it, all they do is snag emails that should go to the main inbox, multiply the work of managing email, and promote complacency and/or overwhelm. Especially for people—my wife being one of them—with 8,437 unread emails or some such unholy number.

    2. Unsubscribe, unfriend, unfollow

    I don’t get that much email to start with because I subscribe to only what I actually read and what provides consistent value. Everything else: unsubscribe. Without mercy or cessation.

    And I say that as someone who does email marketing for a living!

    Of course I want lots of subscribers and high open rates, both for my professional newsletters and personal one. But as an email recipient I’m very discerning about whom I let into my digital home, just like my physical home. (It helps that I’m not famous or otherwise destined to be unwillingly bombarded with emails.) Email senders need to earn their visits.

    This principle also applies to social media. On the Big Three (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), I relentlessly unfriend and unfollow enough (and turn off email notifications) to render my feeds pleasantly quiet and focused on what I actually want to see.

    3. Actual people > algorithms

    I use an RSS reader (Feedly for over a decade now) to follow most of the newsletters I’d otherwise be getting as emails. Combined with other blogs and sites of interest, it’s become my favorite digital destination—my own little curated corner of the internet. I call it my “fun feed” because it’s always a pleasure to peruse, probably because it consists of actual people, not algorithms.

    Whatever RSS service you choose, find sources that offer value and perspective from outside the frenzied news cycles of social media.

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  • My home screen

    The funny thing is this looks similar to the last time I shared my home screen, despite having gone through a few different iterations since then.

    But I landed back at the black wallpaper and (even more) minimalist layout for a few reasons:

    • My recent job change allowed me to delete several apps I didn’t need or want anymore, which inspired me to ditch the alphabetically grouped folders for one folder of my most frequently used apps.
    • The ability to remove apps from the home screen without having to fully delete them lets me hide the lesser used ones in the App Library.
    • Keeping most apps out of immediate sight introduces some friction into my device experience, forcing me to use search more often to find things.
    • I want to make my phone as uninteresting and unstimulating as possible in an attempt (perhaps in vain) to use it less.
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  • Please (don’t) clap

    Robin Sloan:

    Twitter’s only conclusion can be abandonment: an overdue MySpace-ification. I am totally confident about this prediction, but that’s an easy confidence, because in the long run, we’re all MySpace-ified. The only question, then, is how many more possibilities will go unexplored? How much more time will be wasted?

    Wishful descriptions of Twitter as “the de facto public town square” or “the closest thing we have to a global consciousness” sound, to me, like Peter Pan begging the audience to clap and raise a swooning Tinkerbell.

    You don’t have to clap.

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  • The Rockefeller theory of time travel

    Morgan Housel:

    Charlie Munger was born in 1924. The richest man in the world that year was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth equaled about 3% of GDP, which would be something like $700 billion in today’s world. Seven hundred billion dollars.

    OK. But make a short list of things that did not exist in Rockefeller’s day: Sunscreen. Advil. Tylenol. Antibiotics. Chemotherapy. Flu, tetanus, measles, smallpox, and countless other vaccines. Insulin for diabetes. Blood pressure medication. Fresh produce in the winter. TVs. Microwaves. Overseas phone calls. Jets.

    To say nothing of computers, iPhones, or Google Maps. If you’re honest with yourself I don’t think you would trade Rockefeller’s $700 billion in the early 1900s for an average life in 2022.

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  • Tools of the moment

    It’s been a minute since the last time I took stock of my notetaking/productivity apps, so here’s where I stand currently:

    • I still use paper. The reporter’s notebook I got last Christmas is good for my occasional work-based bullet journaling.
    • Feedly has been my RSS reader of choice for years now. To further declutter my email inbox, I also use Feedly to follow many email newsletters (shout-out to Substack and Buttondown for their RSS-friendly design; boooooo Mailchimp).
    • I went deeper into WorkFlowy, which has remained delightfully clean and minimalist even while adding a bunch of new features. I transferred my Book Notes & Quotes there, along with old conference session notes and other reference things that fit as bulleted lists.
    • Once I realized my files were awkwardly split between Google Drive and Dropbox, I decided to commit more fully to the former and put the latter on ice. Once essential, Dropbox now seems superfluous.
    • I stopped using Simplenote because other tools filled its role, and Apple Reminders because its syncing sucks.
    • I started paying for 50GB of iCloud last year before I upgraded to a new iPhone, mostly for photo backup.
    • I use the Office 365 suite for work. It’s fine.
    • My calendar situation remains annoyingly bifurcated between Google for personal and Outlook for work. The only place all my events appear together seamlessly is in the iOS Calendar app, which isn’t ideal.

    See my other “of the moment” series.

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