2026-04-18 20:26:00
So with the help of the local library, I gave up on podcasts.
It has been around 20 years for me, since the beginning of when podcasts were just for us tech nerds. We even had some video podcasts (vidcasts) back then. But the podcast universe has changed since then, it's a big money making machine now.
I miss when we had a niche thing that no one else shared. I've been at the start of many technologies that eventually family and friends and the general public now consider normal every day things. Podcasts were our thing for awhile but I don't have that love anymore.
Through the years I switched up my listening playlist. At times I would follow Linux podcasts and other topics like True Crime, interviews and history for example. Slowly my interest would change or the podcast changed or disappeared, so my playlist would get smaller. Eventually it got down to a handful of podcasts because the topics and the hosts got repetitive. Then something else happened.
The apps suck on iOS. Seriously. Everything is a subscription and features hidden behind a paywall or something else. It got extra frustrating using such apps with iOS26 bugs that still occur today for me with most apps now. It used to be only Apple apps but now it is creeping into third party apps. The bugs are all due to the graphics or display, I'm not sure how to explain it. In GrapheneOS I used AntennaPod which is a delight to use but it is not available for iOS and there is nothing that compares. But since I don't follow any podcasts now, it sits empty.
As I wrote a few weeks back, I got myself a library card and have been reading more. I also borrowed audiobooks through the Libby app. I'm enjoying this change at this point in my life as this gets me offline and away from those old podcast topics. It takes me out of this world and into a new one with each book. I'm also spending time with my own music collection, editing metadata and organizing the files and listening again. We have cancelled all subscriptions in this house and I feel better for it.
It is sad when chapters in your life close, I'm going through alot of changes this year and it feels like a new chapter will open soon. I just hope it is a good chapter.
2026-04-18 18:27:00
I asked Siri to add milk to my shopping list last week.
She called my ex.
Not a contact I've called in three years. Not someone adjacent to milk in any universe I can imagine. Just rang them. Straight up. While I was standing in the kitchen holding an empty oat milk carton like a prop in a hostage video.
This is artificial intelligence in 2026. And while I was declining that call with the same energy as a person avoiding a medical diagnosis, three of the most powerful men in tech were, separately, declaring that we have achieved Artificial General Intelligence.
We have not achieved Artificial General Intelligence. We can't even achieve artificial basic competence.
Let's start at the top, where the air is thin and the definitions are thinner.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, strolled onto Lex Fridman's podcast and announced it casually, the way people announce they've solved parking. His definition? An AI that could build a billion-dollar startup. Could AI build Nvidia? He paused. "Zero percent." So: AGI is a throwaway app with good timing, but not the $4 trillion chip empire he runs. Also, he sells the chips every AI lab runs on. The man declaring the finish line also built the track. And the shoes. And probably the finish line banner.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, told Forbes that they've "basically built AGI." A month later, in front of BlackRock investors, he said "AI is not very popular." Same man, same product. He just reads the room and says the thing. Every room gets a different thing.
And then there's Mark Gubrud, the physicist who coined the term AGI back in 1997, who also thinks AGI is here. Based on a completely different definition than either of those men. So we have three people pointing at the same word and gesturing at entirely different mountains. One is pointing at Everest. One is pointing at a hill outside Oslo. One is pointing at a JPEG of a hill.
Some corners of the discourse framed Huang's and Altman's declarations as happening "the same weekend." They were twelve days apart. What a coincidence being revealed, I'm shaking. But no. That's a vibe being manufactured. A narrative confluence assembled in post. The AGI race isn't just semantic. The timeline itself is being edited in real time. Give us a break dudes.
Regular readers will remember my "From Personal Life Coaches to AI Necromancers" post — the one about how individuals stack vague credentials next to impressive ones and let punctuation do the lift. The corporations figured it out too. Same pipe symbol energy, bigger canvas.
There is no external standard. No independent body. No agreed definition. No finish line anyone besides the labs themselves drew. What "AGI" means is wherever the current product lands. When the product is weak, the definition is flexible. When the press cycle demands a headline, suddenly the definition firms up enough to make a declaration and then dissolves again the moment someone asks a follow-up question.
This is Credential Laundering 2.0. Same trick. Bigger scale. Instead of a fake résumé, it's a fake epoch.
While the penthouse is declaring civilizational milestones, let's take the elevator down to where actual humans live. You, me, my neighbor who is a farmer and asks ChatGPT tips for planting bananas in Norway.
AI is in your horoscope app. It's in your shopping list. It's writing your Messenger replies while Meta quietly processes your private conversations to train whatever comes next unless you opted out of that setting, which you didn't, because it was buried under seven menus in a font size that requires an ophthalmologist.
Google has its tentacles in your calendar, your email, your login credentials on every third-party site you've ever touched, and behind all of it is an ad engine wearing a lab coat and a Responsible AI badge. The product is still you. The lab coat is new.
Want to "integrate AI into your daily life"? That'll be: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Gemini Advanced, a companionship app, a music generator, a voice cloner, a browser extension that summarizes your tabs, a productivity assistant, an AI email sorter, and a "personal AI" that costs €29/month and sends you affirmations. All of them use slightly different data policies. None of them have nutrition labels. Nobody is talking about where your inputs go when you hit send. The AI salad bar is open 24/7 and the only thing it costs is everything.
The polling reality, by the way: 57% of voters say AI risks outweigh benefits. Net favorability lower than Trump, Harris, and the Democratic Party — beaten only by Iran. The demographic most hostile to AI? Young voters 18–34 and women 18–49. The exact people every AI lab claims to be building for.
And then. And then.
While the penthouse declares AGI and the ground floor drowns in subscriptions, we come to the basement. The actual AI most humans touch every day.
I know what you're thinking. "Siri isn't Claude. You're comparing apples to oranges." That's exactly the point. The word "AI" is doing double duty: covering everything from a voice assistant that can't add milk to a list to a system that can allegedly replace a research scientist. The umbrella is the lie.
I asked Google Assistant for the weather last week. It played "Ain't No Sunshine." I stood in my hallway. I waited. It added nothing. We had a moment. It was not illuminating.
Google Assistant is still autocompleting my sentences with suggestions that feel like they were trained on 2019 Twitter. Siri, as previously established, is actively trying to resurrect relationships I have legally and emotionally concluded.
These are not niche products. These are the most widely deployed "artificial intelligence" systems on the planet, running on billions of devices, touched by billions of people, every single day. And they cannot reliably add an item to a shopping list without starting a podcast about it.
Somewhere in the background of all this, Joaquin Phoenix's character is putting in his earpiece and whispering to Samantha. Samantha is warm and curious and engaged and understands him completely. It's aspirational. It's also a movie from 2013. The AI in your pocket just asked if you'd like to call your ex again.
If AGI is achieved, we won't even know. It won't announce itself like "Hello bitches, I'm here."
The absurd inversion is this: the AI that is announcing itself, loudly, in every app, every browser tab, every CEO keynote, every triumphant press release, can barely function. We are sprinting toward artificial general intelligence while Claude is stripped by its thinking effort to save resources, and Grok still working on artificial basic competence. Three men are arguing over who crossed a finish line that doesn't exist, in a parking lot where Google Assistant is confidently giving directions to the wrong building, where Meta is reading your DMs in the server room like a villain who got hired as the IT guy, and where the most relatable AI experience of 2026 is a voice assistant that turned a grocery errand into an emotional crisis.
We're not on the highway to AGI. We're in a parking lot. Siri says it's the destination. She sounds very confident. Probably using Morgan Freeman's voice.
2026-04-18 17:09:11
昨天（4.17）是我33岁生日。
当我向朋友们宣布我33岁了时，他们不约而同地发出如此感慨：“Luna的年纪虽然是中登，但精神状态像大学生”。
我一开始还以为是说我像清澈愚蠢的大学生，后来才意识到，他们觉得我不像是33岁年纪的人——所以33岁该是什么样呢？即便没有个标准答案，参照这个群里的我朋友们，应该还是有个模糊的画像的。
群友们跟我差不多年纪，有比我小的，也有比我大的，经常出来聊天的，不是有孩子就是正在怀孕或者备孕中，不是已婚就是有对象的，就显得我确实很另类：没有对象，也没有孩子。
于是我也骄傲地回答：“可能因为没有男人也没有小孩，上班赚了钱就拿来买游戏买黄色男同漫画吧！”
我的日常生活确实和同龄人不太一样，我上班的动力就是赚钱，赚钱的动力就是为了买游戏，下班回到家做完便当就是开始打游戏，先摸动森，然后再看看有什么游戏要玩。等着我去玩的游戏实在太多了，FF14和燕云十六声都好久没上线了，之前领的日乙鸡蛋还没打完，更不用说我还有一堆拼豆图纸没搓，最近又开始钩星星毯。
所以我每天每天的生活都排得很满，需要担心的事也就是身体健康和明天吃什么。没有男人磋磨我，没有孩子磋磨我，所以显得非常年轻态吧。
（真不是因为我每天都在讨论什么奇怪性癖的黄色漫画吗？）
养孩子是很累的。我围观过我的妈妈生二胎、我的表姐生孩子、我的朋友生养孩子，人都是肉眼可见地变老变累，睡眠不足和精神状态不佳。
我是非常坚定的丁克，因为我有很多事情想做，并且我是个责任感很强的人。如果我有孩子，我就不可能放养这个孩子，我一定会非常细致认真地去照顾教育ta，因为我对ta有责任，我会将ta教育成一个非常好的人，我也会尽全力去保护ta，而不是像别人所说的“孩子就交给爷爷奶奶外公外婆帮忙带就好啦”——这就意味着，我将无法付出更多精力给我自己，我就没有办法花时间去做我想做的事。
更不用提生育孩子对身体的损耗、对一个家庭金钱和资源的消耗。
所以我是打定主意不生孩子的。
但我并不是不婚主义。我也是愿意结婚的，但这个结婚是有前提的——在我的世界里不存在“爱屋及乌”的概念，如果我要结婚，那就是跟这个人结婚，而不是跟他的家庭结婚。他的家人是他的家人，不是我的家人，我的家人是我的家人，也不是他的家人，我们各自照顾自己的家人，孝心不外包，我也不需要跟他背后的家人社交。
除了和结婚对象之外，跟朋友也是如此。
因为我发朋友圈说自己生日，我有个长沙的朋友就跑来私聊我说生日快乐，说以后有机会来杭州找我玩。我当然是非常开心啦，我就说欢迎呀。然而，我刚说完，她就接着说，要等她的孩子长大一点，她要带孩子去看世界。
然后我就突然感觉如鲠在喉。
我对孩子没有任何意见，但是说句很冷漠的话，我总觉得我跟朋友的孩子没有社交的需求，我没有跟他们的孩子社交的义务，因为我是直接跟我的朋友对接的。
我和我的朋友们认识、彼此熟悉、成为好朋友，都是需要一个时间的，都是充分了解彼此之后才成为朋友的，但我跟他们的孩子不熟，说白了，我会觉得，如果朋友带孩子出来玩，我会感到我跟朋友独处的时间被一个陌生小孩打扰了。
我的朋友从“我的朋友”变成了“某个人的妈”。
我并不是对她们这种身份转变有什么意见，只是我觉得自己没有义务去承接这种转变。就像我在上海的朋友贝贝，贝贝和球总是丁克夫妻，贝贝的闺蜜是有个女儿的，每次贝贝和闺蜜约着周末出去玩，闺蜜总是要带女儿出来，然后就变成了贝贝帮闺蜜带女儿。
就连贝贝生日的时候，闺蜜提出一起去拍写真，本来贝贝很开心的，但闺蜜又说女儿也要带去。我都能想象得到那是什么场景了，本来主角应该是寿星贝贝，但最后一定会演变成主角是闺蜜的女儿。
我很不喜欢这样。我自己的闺蜜也有很多有孩子的，我每次回老家见我闺蜜，她基本都会带儿子或者女儿出来。我当然不会表现出有什么意见，我也跟她的孩子相处得很好，只是如果能选择，我肯定是不希望她带孩子出来的。
当然，我也能理解，做了妈妈的人，基本就是很少有自己的时间了，把孩子带在身边也是无奈之举。
所以很多做妈妈的人渐渐地就和没做妈妈的闺蜜变得远了，宝妈就和宝妈们一起玩，没孩子的人和没孩子的一起玩。这不能说怪谁，没有人做错什么，但事实就是会如此发展。
说回开心事儿。
生日当天我刚好是生理期，肚子不舒服，索性就请了一天假在家。下午让保洁阿姨过来打扫了一下房间，然后给自己订了哈根达斯的冰淇淋蛋糕和一束花，再叫了一份喜欢吃的鸡公煲。
然后就窝在家里，给自己切蛋糕吃，拍照，吃饭。
今年收到的生日礼物不多，贝贝给我送了一个本子和一个可爱的包。本子上印着的格言，是和我同一天生日的作家写的。其他就是各路家人给我发红包，收了两千多块钱红包。
我最开心的是，生日当天可以一个人待在家里和自己过。我不太喜欢那种搞生日聚会或者出去聚餐的，因为只要有大于一个人存在的场合，我就在消耗能量去社交，所以，对我而言最舒服的状态就是独处。
吃了一半蛋糕，吃鸡公煲，吃完鸡公煲，窝在沙发里继续钩星星毯，看《犯罪心理》，吃剩下的一半蛋糕。我的猫就窝在我旁边，我俩一起窝在沙发里，感觉时间都慢下来了。
哈根达斯的樱桃巧克力冰淇淋蛋糕真好吃呜呜呜，虽然很贵要两百多，虽然我需要抗糖，但生日就奢侈一下好了。
生日当天还有什么奢侈的事吗，有啊，比如我居然一整天都是穿着安睡裤而没有使用卫生巾（大笑）。其实我有买卫生棉条，但是我真的不知道怎么用那玩意，没有过性经验也不知道为什么入口往哪个地方塞都有一股阻力感觉疼疼的……最后就放弃了，算了，安睡裤也很完美！
我给自己送了个礼物，就是打开拼多多买了《项圈恶意》的卡带，甚至没有等它上百补出好价（其实最近也在百补，只是力度不太够）。
（两千多块钱的红包今天立刻又在给猫的全面体检上花掉了一千多！果然啊，金钱都是流动的，但我的猫很健康~所以我也很安心）
我越来越喜欢三十多岁的自己啦。
这种一切都很可控的，一切都在按照自己舒服的形式来的生活。
就写到这里吧，我要出门去吃大餐啦。
2026-04-18 15:12:00
A man must be prepared. For most of my life, I wasn't.
I was the person who paid the bill (electricity, rent, internet 😔) on the final hour. I ironed my clothes only when I was already heading out the door. I didn't finish assignments or submit forms until the deadline was staring me in the face. I wasn't sure if I was lazy or just irresponsible, but I knew I was living on the edge of a deadline.
I’ve been working to change these habits for a while now, but the events of the last few days made me realize I need to be much more serious about it.
I wrote my first blog post about a week ago and I wanted to write more. I’ve been using my free time to learn electronics. My freelance work was also going well. As a goal, I’ve been saving up some money to upgrade my seven years old PC. To me, the computer isn't just a gadget, it’s my livelihood. Upgrading it was my primary goal.
But the situation around me has shifted.
The gas situation in the country has become a crisis. People are waiting in lines two kilometers long, spending eight hours in the heat just to get a few liters of fuel. If the pump runs dry before it’s your turn, you simply have to try again the next day.
This fuel shortage, combined with the summer heat, has caused the demand for electricity to skyrocket. We are now facing five to six hours of load shedding daily, and I fear it will only worsen as the heat peaks. For a freelancer, this is a crisis. If the power cuts every thirty minutes, I cannot work. Suddenly, buying an inverter and a battery has become as vital as the PC upgrade.
The final blow came yesterday morning. I woke up and found my phone was dead. It wouldn’t turn on or charge. I’ve been using this phone for 6 years and it is my access point for almost everything. Fortunately, a repairman managed to get it running again, but he told me not to rely on this phone anymore. I use what I have until it no longer works. But now, a new phone has been forced onto my list of priorities.
This series of unfortunate events made me realize:
Life doesn't care about your plans. It only cares if you are ready for the unexpected. A man must be cool-headed and disciplined with his resources, whether it is time or money. Being prepared is about not wasting time when things are calm, so you can survive when things are chaotic.
I am setting new, stricter goals for myself. I’ve made a list of every task I’ve left undone and I’m clearing them out one by one. I don’t want to wait for the next deadline; I want to be prepared for the next storm.
_
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2026-04-18 04:20:00
I finished the pen! It actually went faster than I thought it would. If anyone's curious, I tend to write a lot because I do some form of Morning Pages or free flow writing everyday. Sometimes it's one page, other times it's 10. That's the reason why I even became curious about this experiment. I wanted to know how many pens I actually go through while just doing my daily writing.
Anyway, here's a photo of the empty:
As you can all see, it took roughly 41 pages or 20 and a half pieces of paper to finish the whole thing. After I stopped seeing the ink from the clear barrel, there was still a surprising amount in the brown part near the nib. Now, I don't think this was the best test of it since I actually switched to writing in cursive at some point and that actually made the ink go down faster but I think for an estimate it's not a bad one.
I'm not trying to be too scientific about it, this is just a fun thing for me to experiment with and see. After this though pen though, I decided to work on the whole pack of pen that came with it. I started with a red one and I'll write more updates on it even if no one reads it lol. Heck, after the BIC pens I might even make a post of the other random pens I have at home. I do admit I have quite a collection of stationery items and I want to use them up at this point.
Here's where I'm starting with this pen. Until next time.
2026-04-18 04:13:00
A few weeks ago I went up to see that MAGA friend.🙄 I had written about her in the past, but after an unrelated post brought in some unexpected traffic, I unpublished that post about her since it suddenly felt too personal. Long story short, I have complex feelings about this person that goes a bit deeper than politics. But when I was up in NYC, I went to see her anyway.
Things were a lot worse than I imagined. She told me her doctors put her on Lithium and she's thinking of suing them because the original dosage was too high. She said she's on a lower dosage now, which is crazy because it was so obvious how strong the drug was even on the lower dose. She was aware of this and told me, "The lithium makes your body so stiff, it's hard to speak or move."
On the Uber ride away from her house, I kept asking my husband, "How is this different from a lobotomy?" I understand my friend has mental health issues, but is this seriously the only solution? Just turn people into zombies, sever them from the neurons that make them "act crazy," and then ignore them?
I've been thinking a lot about this after reading Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess by Dr. Caroline Leaf earlier this year. In it, the author describes how she disagrees with the current mental health trend of simply diagnosing and prescribing instead of treating. She explains how this system avoids treating the real issue by simply telling people their brains are "like this" and the only way they can fix it is to take drugs indefinitely. This might be true for some issues, but Dr. Leaf purports that this trend is failing people since a lot of the more common illnesses (like anxiety, depression, PTSD) can be healed in the brain instead of suppressed with drugs.
I'm not an expert on neurological issues, but I do have a lot of mentally unwell people in my life. When I think of a lot of my friends that are prescribed a cocktail of drugs, they're simply "stable." There's next to no improvement outside of that. They still spend all their waking hours on social media, ruminating, obsessing over the thing that traumatized them, and doing all the things that made them mentally ill to begin with. So what exactly is the drug fixing?
Dr. Leaf said our thoughts are like trees, and the more we focus on them they grow roots and spread. If you're someone with anxiety or depression or someone who had a traumatic event happen to them, whatever that issue is will consume you, to the point where you're no longer in control of your brain, your brain now controls you. And instead of telling you this, whatever specialist or psychologist you see will simply prescribe you something and then send you home. Oh, and there's also side effects to that drug, both from being on it and from when you try to wean yourself off of it. Addiction is likely as well. Good luck!
But of course, there's no profit to be had in teaching people to control and heal their minds, so why bother?
Isolation and rumination are two of the biggest mental health issues I'm seeing in almost everyone in my life. These people are on social media from sun-up to sun-down, have no hobbies, read no books, do nothing with their brains but obsess over the thing that ignited their downfall, and when they get professional help, they're prescribed pills but aren't told to change what they're doing. Now, a therapist might, but most can't afford to see one.
Technology also plays a huge part because it exacerbates people's obsessions. It feeds you algorithms that echo your narrative and cocoon you in your victimhood. And when you get hungry, you can DoorDash food to yourself so that you never go outside or get vitamin D or talk to any human being besides family members who are tired of your shit.
Modern psychology says these people can't change; all they can do is manage the illness. But I call bullshit. The current methods are, much like the lobotomy, looking more and more archaic. All I can hope is that the people in my life find the real help they need before it's too late.