Eric Dodds Notebook

AI will unleash human creativity in unprecedented ways, but I'm starting to believe that it will make people worse at writing, not better. The promise is quality output with less work, but that makes the learning curve for actual writing skill steeper, and the discipline to improve was already rare.

At a minimum, writing will deviate to a homogenous mean—something people are already starting to notice.

Discuss on social: X, LinkedIn

My wife appreciated the bottle of Louis Jadot, aged Gruyère, apricots and local honey.

But the Blue Heat Takis didn't seem to land as hard.

Discuss on social: X, LinkedIn

I'm the type of person who likes to have a perfect yard.

I'm also the type of person who has young kids.

Which means my grass is the type of grass that lies to my neighbors about who I really am.

Discuss on social: X, LinkedIn

One of [Mark] Twain's most consequential literary friendships started in August of 1889 when a twenty-three-year-old reporter named Rudyard Kipling made a 14,000-mile pilgrimage from India to track down his hero in Elmira [New York]."

This account from Ron Chernow's biography on Twain stopped me in my tracks. What stranger-heroes do I have that I would travel 14,000 miles to meet?

Discuss on social: X, LinkedIn

Me: "AI is so great but writing is still really hard."

Successful professional writer: "Writing is hell and also my favorite thing. But also hell."

Discuss on social: X, LinkedIn

It's been 599 days since I posted on X. I've only posted once since it was renamed from Twitter.

I figured I'd break the dry spell before I hit 600 and before April Fools Day.

So, howdy, everyone.

Discuss on social: X

Publishing a note in prod to troubleshoot the API POST to Typefully.

One of my goals this year is to post on social media more often.

I wanted to figure out a way to maintain ownership of the content (platforms don't last forever) and make publishing on mobile easy, so I built a simple system to do just that.

The pipeline is:

• GitHub issues as the backend (CMS)
• Next.js ISR on my site to render the issues as noted
• API push to Typefully as a draft that I can edit and post on social.

The mobile app is GitHub, and the interface for issue creation is clean and stable.

It's a nifty setup so far, but this is the first post so we'll see how it goes on the highway.