Chris J Wilson

I genuinely don’t know what happens to the European/British relationship with the US after the Greenland affair. For one, it doesn’t seem to be over, but this is another item in a long list including siding with Russia over Ukraine and Tariffs (and that’s not even mentioning the domestic issues).

After the first Trump term, it felt like Europe’s response was “Okay, you get a mulligan and we see we need to increase our NATO spending.” But the fact that he was re-elected and there’s now JD Vance and Lil' Marco waiting in the wings as the MAGA successors means that Europe just can’t rely on the US anymore.

To be fair, I’m not sure Europe is speaking from a place of great power here (Polish politics has some incredible contradictions at the moment in politicians who are “anti-Russian” but at the same time seem to say Russia is the real victim). In fact, it’s perfectly possible that a future UK (or French, or German) government could look not that dissimilar from the current US one — I can’t imagine Farage defending Greenlands sovereignty.

But, a week is a long time in Politics.

Perhaps Trump will go, a more stable leader will take his place (I mean, that’s basically anyone except Stephen Miller) and we’ll go back to the same uneasy cooperation as after the tariff negotiations. Perhaps the democrats will win the next elections and somehow MAGA will go the way of the neo-cons leading to a more stable political climate.

But as a European leader, I wouldn’t decided my policy based on hope and dreams that America has, thus far, bore little resemblance to.

They say trust takes a lifetime to build but a second to break.

Sorry, America. We can’t trust you.

Earlier today I came across a survey that went against my expectations and prior experience. As I caught myself thinking about it more now, I started to think “I wonder how reliable/reproducible this data is? Maybe the survey wasn’t conducted properly and that explains the results.” In that moment, I realize I wouldn’t have doubted the data if it had confirmed my priors and so, while I was excerising proper skepticism over this data, it revealed how easily I fall into confirmation bias.

As a defense, actually checking the science and validity of every survey or study is really hard and time consuming…but that just goes to show why it’s so important to do so with data that confirms our priors rather than just accept them without thinking. Especially, as I don’t really know of data that would support my position or beliefs other than my own experiences.

I’m grateful for this moment of awareness but I’m all too aware that it will likely soon fade and the next time data comes around that confirms my existing beliefs, I’ll swallow it whole, while quickly passing over what goes against them.

Last Sunday evening, my sister’s two year battle with cancer ended and she entered rest. She had just passed 41 and is survived by her husband and beloved dog, Magnes.

I held back sharing about her illness during it as I knew she would not like me to. She wanted to carry on living as she had prior to her diagnosis and she did so in impressive fashion.

She carried on working closing out a regular 9-5-5 the week before her passing; not because she felt she had to, but because she loved her work and the benefit it made to the world around her. She continued to travel, revisiting many of her favourite spots including staying in a Finnish ice hotel and a tour of Nashville, Memphis and New Orleans.

But her illness did lead her to some changes. She brought together her menagerie of friends she had gathered from different areas of life. Where she would have previously met up with each individually, they became a support group for each other as my sister continued to live her life with no regrets.

“I won’t let this make me sad.” She told my mother, weeks before she passed “I’ve lived a great life, with a wonderful husband and I love my work. What more could I ask for?”

I wish she had asked for a couple more days, so I’d had the chance to hear her voice one last time when I came to say goodbye.“It’s not fair.” I kept thinking last weekend, and the universe isn’t. Cancer took my sister before her time, but she still lived with no regrets.

I will do my best to do the same now.

Rest in peace; rise in glory.

One common reaction to AI I see is thinking/encouraging it will take over other people’s jobs, but not theirs.

Here’s a really simple example from work.

• Graphic designers resisting AI images, but using it for boilerplate copy
• Copywriters resisting AI copy, but using it for graphic mock ups.

These are more tame, the more extreme is the head of a VC firm saying AI will replace all jobs except his (which seems to be the job of having lots of money to invest and even bragging about knowing most will fail and only a few will pay for all those failures).

I can think of a few explanations which probably apply in difference cases

• Noticing the faults in AI in your field
• Using AI to achieve “good enough” mock ups/examples outside your expertise
• Being self-interested and not wanting your field to go away
• Not wanting to develop the skills in a new field

But I find these reactions to be more interesting than complete acceptance or rejection.

Have you ever read a post about someone else and their issues and you immediately feel defensive? “It’s probably not that bad, I’m sure there was a reason for it, well I like it actually?”

I’ve just felt that just now (actually it was a couple of days ago when I wrote this but I didn’t post it then) and it’s amazing how it’s really about me and not the person posting.

This is something I’ve also struggled with at home. My wife might be struggling with something and rather than acknowledge her struggle, I can go into defence mood and try to make sure she’s not blaming me. By minimising the issue or proving it’s not my fault, she doesn’t get what she was really looking for.

It can be real hard not to kick into that self-focused reaction but in my experience, it makes a massive difference.

Well, I went through Derek Sivers set up to create an independent web server that can host a website, manage my emails, function like dropbox and sync my calendar and contacts.

It took me a month, caused my Micro.blog services to stop publishing, and involved a couple of failed attempts to finally get it set up but I’m actually glad I had all that hassle. Because things didn’t work out, I had to troubleshoot (with the help of chatgpt) and I learned a whole load about ssh, linux, and vim. It’s now the point where I feel confident I could make massive changes to this set up.

It’s also been a great way to apply some of the simple HTML/CSS lessons I’ve learned from FreeCodeCamp classes and it will hopefully motivate me to do some more simple development.

Back to being 13

This all reminds me of being 13 in the website club at school.

I used the basic text editor on the custom windows PC I had built with my Dad to create a simple Star Wars fan site. Later I used one of those early WYSIWYG website builders (I wish I could remember the name) but I wish I hadn’t. At various points I’ve wished I had more coder chops to be able to get my hands dirtier rather than stick with boilerplate solutions.

Maybe this will be the start of a change? And if not, then I still enjoyed the process.

What’s next?

Right now, I want to make my simple site look a bit better and have some more basic data on it.

After that, I’m wondering about spinning up some simple web apps to replace other proprietary tools.

Ultimately, I’m hoping this will provide a way to motivate me to actually try some basic development again – let’s see.

I’ve been thinking about using LLMs along with personal note taking apps like Obsidian.

There are so many functions which seem to defeat the point of the process (e.g. Summarising is a great tool to help remember information, getting an LLM to do it saves time but reduces efficacy — though there are other benefits of summarising using an LLM such as identifying and eliminating content for further study on a topic).

However, I think I now have a good idea for using an LLM.

Critiquing an atomic note with an LLM

Let’s save you’ve read an article and came across something interesting — perhaps teleological ethics (why yes, I am studying Christian ethics right now). So you make a note on it — what it is, it’s strengths and weaknesses, key figures, etc. Now you get to the point where you’re quite happy with it but you want to make sure you’ve understood the topic right and not missed any key points.

Hello LLM.

By sharing your content with an LLM and asking it for feedback (did I miss anything? is anything incorrect? Is any part unclear or poorly written?) you get a reviewer of your note. You might realise you missed a key point OR the source you were studying from had missed something too!

Or at it’s most basic, you may get some good writing feedback.

Beware! Here be hallucinations

Of course, the danger of hallucinations is real and might be a big issue espeically if you are trying to cite a source or find a reference book that posits an opposing view or part that you primary source missed.

But that’s where you come in human.

You shouldn’t accept the LLMs answer as gospel truth, but it can help you check and know what to investigate further.

What do you think?

I’m not certain about this: I don’t really want to feed my private notes into an LLM so it’s gobbled into its training data and I can see some real risks of hallucinations.

But I’d love to know your thoughts.

I’d real love to know if you have found another good use of LLMs with a private note taking app.