On communication, professional and otherwise.
by David Murray // Leave a Comment
Apropos of my feeling that writers (like me) are uniquely unqualified to contend effectively (or even ineffectively) with the current American political moment:
“The pen is mightier than the sword,” the writer declared. “Are you sure about that?” replied the swordsman.
by David Murray // Leave a Comment
Imagine being told that the only way to have any kind of a future is to go out of your way to embrace and even try to love someone who ham-handedly gums up your relationships with others, finishes all your sentences, and “corrects” any but your most banal remarks. I’m starting to feel like I know what an arranged marriage feels like. To an obtuse jagoff.
Only in the last few days, this fucking AI has:
Taken the barbaric e-liberty of “summarizing” a long, loving, mutually respectful and precise email negotiation, telescoping them into their unpleasantly unadorned bottom line in our email phone-feeds: “He has suggested _____. And she has rejected _____.” What kind of social assassin would do a thing like that? The one I’m told I should “embrace.”
Completed phrases I’m writing, gratuitously and idiotically, trying to convert them into smarmy clichés. I write, “I welcome your thoughts,” and before I can put a period on the goddamn thing AI adds in ghostly suggestion, “and prayers.” No, motherfucker!
And tried to turn every original or even semi-unorthodox thing I write into something it figures any dumb twat would write. I write “itals” and my email program changes it to “Italy.” As a writer, this is the opposite of what I am trying to do in life.
I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say I need to “adjust my preferences.” It will be said on all my tombstone, “He was born, he tried to adjust his preferences but couldn’t figure out how, and he died.” And then AI will add, “Thoughts and prayers.”
I’m supposed to be the cretinous horse’s ass for not embracing AI. And now the goddamn thing is embracing me from behind—and mounting.
by David Murray // Leave a Comment
I use a TextEdit file on my computer to jot down ideas for Boots posts. If an idea is going to become a post, it’s probably going to happen within a week of the jotting. But I hate to throw away anything that ever occurred to me as a good idea, so the old ones pool in the hold, and start to stink. Here are some ideas I pumped out over my company’s “spring recess” last week. —DM
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“Marriage is war.”
I read a piece in The New York Times about cringey wedding toasts and thought I’d tell about the time I realized, with a cancerous and metastasizing tequila hangover, that a speech that Writer Boy had been asked to give at my sister-in-law’s wedding would not do. Inspired by some hard times I was having my own marriage, my prepared remarks began, “[Bride] and [groom], a lot of people will tell you that marriage is a lot of work. No, marriage is not work. Marriage is war.” The groom, rushing around in his own poison haze, asked me what I was doing. I said, “Just touching up my speech.” With Xs across all three pages and desperate fresh scrawl on the backs.
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“Changing motivations for workers, 1992-2025.” Good grief, aren’t you glad I didn’t write that one?
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“TERKEL PIECE FROM TALKING TO MYSELF: ‘A DISCRETE FART'” Another winner.
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A quoted passage from a CNBC article, in February:
“Imagine that this agent will eventually be capable of doing most things a software engineer at a top company with a few years of experience could do,” wrote [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman. “It will not have the biggest new ideas, it will require lots of human supervision and direction, and it will be great at some things but surprisingly bad at others.”
My comment: Like any shitty young writer.
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“PAUL WRAY THING.”
All-caps enthusiasm then, no clue now. Who the fuck is Paul Wray?
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“Jerky hand jesture [sic].” Business consultants use this to make mega-mergers, wholesale reorganizations or software implementations seem like a piece of cake. I call it …
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Golf announcers, instead of saying a putt “just missed,” think they sound more clinical by saying, it missed “by just a fraction.” A fraction of what, Golfo, your IQ?
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“CRUMB BUM FRANK RIZZO.” Oh, this is always a good idea.
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