Canion dot Blog

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:06:40 +0800

I was mighty impressed with Your Friends & Neighbours committing fully to the set dressing. She wasn’t writing her book in Pages, as we so often see. She was writing it in Scrivener, and she even had a full sidebar. I had to stop and take a photo. 📺

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:20:48 +0800

Have a Fucking Website - Other Strangeness — merritt k:

if you are a business or an individual artist or creator, have a fucking website. “But-” fuck you, have a fucking website.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Link discovered via Flamed Fury.

The AI Hype Bubble

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:00:23 +0800

When the AI hype bubble bursts, a lot of people (myself included via my superannuation fund) are going to get burnt.

I find using an LLM useful at the margins; I’m glad I’m not working in a company or industry that has a belief it is the great messiah - only to find out the costs are blowing out…

I do love how Ed Zitron writes about this stuff in his latest piece, AI Doesn’t Have ROI. I’ve cherrypicked a few good quotes from a great and long article that I encourage you to read.

You spent a trillion dollars to make it somewhat easier to code some things sometimes but not in such a way that it actually results in anything, research reports that nobody will read, shitty powerpoint decks and excel spreadsheets, and art that looks like stock images because that’s exactly what it was trained on.

…

The reason nobody can show you the ROI from AI is that AI does not have a return on investment. Large Language Models can speed up some things in a way that becomes increasingly less-valuable and accurate with the complexity of the task, and more investment in AI data centers does not appear to do anything other than expand the number of tasks that an LLM can attempt.

…

…every single “AI setup” I’ve seen anyone ever use involves a rube goldberg machine of bullshit deterministic scripts to try and bring the hallucination-guaranteed nature of LLMs to heel, usually to the point that you’re doing more work making the LLM work than you did before they existed, and you’re only proud of it because you feel like you’re special.

…

AI is more expensive today than it was three years ago, and it is not getting cheaper.

…

Four years and a trillion dollars in, AI is more expensive, its companies more cash-intensive, its products just as unreliable, and its boosters more desperate than ever to make you ignore reality as a means of empowering one of a few ultra-rich oafs.

…

If you can’t measure how good something is, how much it might cost, or what your return on investment might be, it’s fair to ask why you’re even paying for it in the first place.

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:34:05 +0800

The Hemispheric Views June-boree Challenge is up and away! It’s not too late to join in and have some fun with us. Prizes and global fame awaits!

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:37:06 +0800

Watched: The Mandalorian and Grogu 🍿I took my teenager to see this. It was good if considered an extended TV episode. I think Jeremy Allen White was a miscast; his voice didn’t work for me in the role of Rotta.

Thu, 28 May 2026 14:09:27 +0800

I held a silver medal from Tokyo 2020 Olympics. It was heavy.

Mon, 25 May 2026 22:36:28 +0800

Currently reading: Gravity Let Me Go - A Novel by Trent Dalton 📚

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:06:12 +0800

Currently reading: Raising Good Humans A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields 📚

Sat, 16 May 2026 14:45:42 +0800

My son’s First Holy Communion.

Tue, 05 May 2026 15:23:14 +0800

Australian interest rates up another 0.25%. Thanks in large part to the Orange one. The portion of Australians who own a mortgage doing the heavy lifting once again.

Sun, 03 May 2026 21:49:01 +0800

Watched: The Outfit 🍿 Would have been better as a stage play.

Fri, 01 May 2026 22:12:45 +0800

Watched: The Holdovers 🍿 A lovely story that perhaps could have shaved off 30 minutes of runtime.

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:10:25 +0800

Watched: Project Hail Mary 🍿I’ve seen it twice at the cinema and loved it both times.

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:08:30 +0800

Currently reading: The Truth about Managing People by Stephen P. Robbins 📚Found this deep in my backlog. Let’s see what it’s all about.

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:07:33 +0800

Finished reading: Transforming the Difficult Child by Howard Glasser 📚 I bought this several years ago but have only now read it. I wasn’t ready for it at the time, but I wish I had been. Set aside the dated terminology, I believe the lessons to be solid.

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:44:22 +0800

I watched Project Hail Mary at the cinema for a second time today, this time I was being a Dad to my boys. It was just as much fun a second time around.

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:26:18 +0800

Finished reading: Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware 📚The fact is took me about 2 years to get through probably indicates I didn’t really vibe with this one.

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:44:02 +0800

I can’t decide if the creation of an ‘am dash’ is a clever rethinking or a sad reflection of what has happened to writing. I also think most people won’t notice the difference and will just assume it’s a font-specific em dash, thus rendering the whole effort worthless.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 13:55:44 +0800

Finished reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear 📚Finally read this about 8 years after my intention. Most stuff was familiar and it was a straightforward read.

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 06:30:24 +0800

Yesterday evening I quipped about the romanticism of being awake in the middle of the night, doing great thinking. This morning, after unintentionally getting only 3 hours sleep, the concept seems decidedly less romantic.

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 17:35:18 +0800

Bag 15 complete. Lego set complete!

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:03:23 +0800

It’s totally normal that I have a long-running Google Gemini conversation about personal finance, with it using analogies to lean manufacturing theory, and tieing actions back to the GTD methodology, right? Everyone does this, yeah? 🤓

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:17:23 +0800

Episode 159 of Hemispheric Views podcast! The Australians are falling apart. @Burk is moving a million pounds. We try on a thought experiment. █████ is back! @martinfeld brings up a train, and by doing so, some trauma for me!

Cynicism, Gullibility and the Internet Era

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:07:14 +0800

The Cynical, Gullible American Man - The Atlantic:

We have a data economy that thrives on selling products we don’t need for problems we don’t have, and a public that falls for these ploys—even as we think ourselves much too clever to be fooled.

This article, linked to by Kottke creates a new word, that might take off much as ‘enshittification’ did. This one is gullicism, noting that people seem now to be gullible about snake-oil salesman, and cynical about experts.

Yesterday I watched Louis Theroux’s Manosphere documentary and today I read this article at The Atlantic. I’m losing hope for the world.

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:06:35 +0800

Bag 14 complete.