2026-03-31 03:09:00
This page was inspired by Evie Fae, which was in turn inspired by Damola Morenikeji for readers to know my views on AI and if any content on this blog is generated with it (it isn't).
This is my view on AI and why I don't use it. My hatred for AI is based on my own experience and what I have read about it. I understand it's useful in some cases, but I still think it causes more harm than good.
I don't use generative AI at all. I used to use it a lot at work since the release of ChatGPT, but after 2 years of use I noticed I was actually getting dumber and I decided I should stop. That wasn't the only reason though, the huge flood of AI slop invading every single corner of the internet was a huge part of it. AI generated songs on youtube and spotify, AI brainrot on instagram and tiktok, and maybe the worst of all, AI generated linkedin posts. Oof.
Aside from my own dislikings, there's also the moral problem. LLMs were vastly trained on stolen data and art, without anyone's consent. The corporate world was investing heavy in copyright and making sure everyone complied, until AI reaped (reapt?) everything in it's path. And it still trains on top of the data it gathers from your chats. That incurs innumerable issues with privacy, but I'll leave that to ava.
Speaking of ava, she recently made a great post which made me feel a bit called out. I agree with most of the post, but I admit I was one of the people who thought, as she quoted:
"The more you talk about it, the more you speak it into existence."
I avoided talking about it because of that and also because I was simply tired of seeing so many posts about it. But those posts are exactly what she stands against, which is AI hype bros. However I don't think in the purist way that AI has no use, I agree that it's great for things like RegEx, analyzing logs, doing the "boring stuff". I work in webdev, AI can absolutely do my job.
What I mostly stand against is AI(in this case, LLMs) used for creativity. I just don't see a point. You're letting the "creative" part of it for the machine, it's like asking a street artist for a painting and saying it was yours. You can absolutely paint it yourself. The fun part is the process itself, learning, seeing your own improvement, especially after getting frustrated.
"But I don't have the talent! I simply can't draw or paint." listen to Bob, not me
"But AI is the only way disabled people can make art!" I disagree
And for things like typos, grammar and the like, I'm an advocate for letting them live in your text1, that's how you learn! My own blog is probably full of them, but that didn't keep me from writing my thoughts and sending my message.
And I still mention the huge ambiental impact it has, ava argues that it'll likely improve, which I agree, but it's not looking good currently, and it just looks like the brazilian expression: "mayor's promise2". Something that stuck with me was the case of Memphis, Boxtown. A neighborhood that already had bad air quality due to industries and the like getting built there, now facing a giant data center. There were increases in cases of cancer (even in non-smokers), asthma and other respiratory issues. I've also seen news saying data centers affected local wildlife, though I don't have a source to sustain this. But it does make sense, as it's a huge source of light and noise. All that said, if it does get better and the ambiental impact is negligible, I would even consider recommending for the mundane / daily tasks such as the ones I mentioned.
There's still some other problems, such as the parasocial relationships with AI which have been boosted by AI dating apps, and is also related to AI psychosis3. There's also the impact of AI on the brain, which I mentioned earlier when I said I noticed I was getting dumber, I actually was. I couldn't come up with solutions as efficiently as before-AI, felt like I took longer to think(?), like my mind was clouded. In my personal experience my brain did a 360 once I stopped using AI, reduced screen time and social media usage, started blogging and began reading books again.
There's also the pain that is AI in the hiring process, and once again I must mention ava, she has a great post regarding this.
AI being used on wars and drones is also a huge issue. I don't know about you but I certainly don't want a weaponized drone made for killing, that calls itself "MechaHitler" deciding if I'm a target or not4. I've seen the argument that this is the fault of the people who use it, not the AI, but that falls in the same argument of whether guns should be available to everyone or not.
That is, if you can, if it's a formal document or similar I would suggest searching help from someone you trust, as the AI would use that data to train itself and track more about you.↩
A promise for the improvement of something, or a new project that will solve a problem, with the intent of getting votes, and rarely, if ever, gets done / finished.↩
Which is also insane. Cases of people killing themselves or mass shootings that have been influenced by AI. Crazy stuff.↩
Imagine the Cyberpunk / Terminator hell that it would be a drone finding stuff like this article by scanning your face, lol.↩
2026-03-31 01:56:00
I just took this photo:
I liked it. And I felt like sharing. You know, I used to take a lot of pictures. Phone pictures. Because I wanted to capture what I was seeing. This photo above may not be special nor well taken, but I’m not on instagram anymore and I like the way it’s composed.
While I think of a way of sharing photos, like one of those indieweb instagrams I’ll just do it here, in Bearblog, as a simple post. If I don’t do that, this image may never get shared or seen by other than myself. This posts changes that :)
2026-03-30 22:33:00
I go grocery shopping about twice a week and it seems there is a new "high" protein variant of nearly every product on the shelf. They have been doing protein cereals and yogurt for a good while now because those hide the whey powder pretty easily.
And that's all it is, just whey powder. I get it, you are doing the whole workout lifestyle and you need to maintain the muscle mass you are spending three to five hours a day building in the gym. Understandable. Older folks and kids with food/nutrition issues? Makes sense. Folks with meat allergies and stuff, you're good.
But y'all, they are just putting this shit in everything. Stuff that is 90% sugar. Like, you can supplement your diet in better ways than Protein Poptarts.
We used to throw whey powder in our oatmeal to bump our numbers when I did the whole gym thing a decade ago. They sell protein oatmeal now too, but if you are slowing your digestion down with all this protein you need SOME fiber.
These are pics of stuff I saw at the store, I had a pic of the protein ramen but I can't find it anymore. It tastes just like regular ramen and pasta already has protein in it (gluten). Nissin made Cup Noodle PRO back in 2021, so it's not really a bandwagon product. (Also, easy to add eggs to ramen.)
But sodas? mashed potatoes? It's the "FAT FREE!" craze of the 90's all over again. Everyone says fiber is the next one to come up once folks get blocked up by all the protein powder.
2026-03-30 22:31:38
I saw a funny clip with a Swedish stand-up comedian.
He was saying there's no use working your ass off for someone else. No one cares. No matter how hard you work, in the end, there will be someone else taking credit for it.
He finished by saying that your goal should be to put in the least possible effort to get the work done and get your paycheck.
It's funny because there's a lot of truth to it. But one important piece of the puzzle is missing:
How does it make you feel?
I do house inspections for quite a big company. I won't receive a bonus check or raise if customers think I've done a fantastic job. Whether someone rates me 7/10 or 10/10 makes no difference when it comes to my bank account.
Still, I want to do a good job. I want to feel that I've delivered 100% when I leave a house. I want to be able to bump into any client on the street and be greeted with a smile.
Doing a great job doesn't guarantee a great salary, but it feels great. Guaranteed.
That's worth a lot.
2026-03-30 00:00:00
OpenAI is killing off Sora, their video-generation tool that was also licensed through Disney. Quote Forbes: "For a product that arrived with the air of inevitability, Sora ended with remarkable speed." Yep.
Maybe AI (read: LLM chatbots) isn't all it's cracked up to be, in terms of speeding up work and creating efficiencies? On top of that, businesses are slowly realizing that the jump on this particular hypetrain is turning out to be costing a lot of money.
Meta has been ordered to pay $375 mil after a court found that they misled consumers about the safety of its platforms, and endangered children. This is, to our knowledge, the first time this has happened.
Google may be having plans to simply, uh, go ahead and display something else than your website when people go and wish to visit your website. I don't even know what else to comment here as this breaks with basically all the tenets of the World Wide Web as we know it:
A patent granted to Google on January 27, 2026 titled “AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user” describes a system that evaluates your company’s landing page in real time and, if it decides the page won’t perform well enough for a specific user, replaces it with an AI-generated version assembled on the fly. The user never sees what your team built, they see what Google's machine learning model thinks they should see instead.
As part of their mission to lock down Android, Google is implementing a 24-hr wait before you can install apps of your choice. This is, of course, an attempt to make their plan of locking down android more palpable, since, see, you can totally still install all the apps you'd like to install! Side note, you may also see this process referred as "sideloading," which is very similar to the concept of "jaywalking."
An excellent essay by Jack Whittaker on why age verification threatens online security & privacy. Here's more on what Techdirt calls the "surveillance stack" behind age verification.
Unfortunately, when we were all playing Pokemon Go, we weren't just catching 'em all.
Edited image based on original work by Mediamodifier on Unsplash.
I'd been planning to get started on this series for a while, but there was always something a little more pressing to write about - but now! It finally happened.
The article recommends privacy-friendly, less shitty and less tracky alternatives for messaging, browsing, and search. It is for you if you have had all the data-harvesting, ad-targeting, and Big Tech surveillance up to here; It is also for you, and also all your friends and family, even if - especially if! - they're not steeped in privacy and digital surveillance conversations.
You can switch away from Big Tech today. No need to be a tech expert - this can be an incremental process. Don't forget to always do your due diligence before installing apps and signing up for tools, and lastly, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Read the full article for all my browsing, search, and messaging picks, and for links to other privacy-focused recommendations on the web.
Part 2 coming Soon! ™️
This is a new section in the Technically Good newsletter. In it, we'll highlight positive developments in the space of digital rights, digital sovereignty, and privacy, to show that it's not all doom & gloom.
The European Parliament has killed Chat Control, which means Big Tech will be forced to stop scanning private messages starting in April. Hooray! Let's forget for a moment how creepy it is that this was a thing that had to be banned in the first place.
Germany has made the Open Document Format mandatory for its "Deutschland-Stack" (its sovereign digital infrastructure ecosystem). This format is open-source and used by the LibreOffice ecosystem, reducing reliance on e.g. Microsoft and its proprietary formats.
GenZ can tell when they're faced with visual slop, and ad conversion rates are tanking because of it. That's the market responding rationally though, right? Or are we not allowed to call it that because it's AI?
After a lot of work by contributors and advocates, Wikipedia has banned AI content in articles. Hooray!
An excellent blog post by Elena Rossini on why public institutions should embrace the Fediverse. Beats me why a lot of institutions, governmental and otherwise, are still treating Twitter like their de-facto official news outlet.
If you would like to learn more about the Small Web, and why it is nice and how you can participate in it, give this article by Aral Balkan a read.
I've been enjoying the concept of the "BlurBlog:" It provides an interesting mix of an old-school RSS feed reader, and some social elements (like sharing and commenting), without the algorithmic bloat and distortion. I am trying it out as a way to quickly re-share interesting RSS-feed articles to my own feed.
You can subscribe to it directly if you also use NewsBlur - or you can treat it like a regular RSS feed and subscribe to it that way. How very meta! Original content, like articles and newsletters, will of course remain on BearBlog.
2026-03-29 20:59:00
The weather outside is definitely groaning,
Mother nature is angry, I can hear her moaning.
Hustling & rustling, the dead leaves sound awoken,
If the wind is her voice, then she's loudly outspoken.
At the window I reach to pull up my blind,
I am looking for a tree to free my messy mind.
I can smell my fresh coffee that I have not yet drunk,
I see a huge Chestnut with a hunk of a trunk.
Winds whirling,
wooshing & wickedly whipping,
Creaking & swaying,
I swear this big tree is tipping!
Yes, a storm's out there & I've named her Gail,
She's destroying everything that's fragile & frail.
A whacked, weak sapling – winter's light has forgotten,
An old Oak tree that stands infested & rotten.
She'll huff & she'll puff, determined to bend
All that Mother nature has failed to defend.
I see a Sycamore stump with wrenched tree roots,
Gail tore & tugged at teeny tiny shoots.
Bruised leaves fly away from a year-young Larch,
Fungi is forced off bashed, brittle Birch bark.
Snapped twigs on earth's carpet are now where they lay,
Alongside a recycle bin & its contents astray.
What was an ice cold current is starting to ease,
But there's still a sharp breeze that will make your skin freeze.
An ancient Ash, which now looks trashed,
Next to a Maple that's mangled.
A carrier bag flies past fast,
Caught in withered Willow & gets tangled.
Trees have fallen onto the ground,
Wood gatherers will come collecting, so bound to be found.
The must of this gust is now proving much less,
Hello mellow bellow, no more trees in distress.
Mother nature will now nurture all her creation,
While I seek a calm tree to start my meditation.