Tried Siri’s new slightly more conversational mode in iOS 17. Said ‘Siri, pause’ while a podcast was playing out loud, and it did. Said ‘Thank you,’ and it said, ‘You’re welcome,’ which is nice.

Still no Scottish voice, though.

This is a good piece about the different ways we communicate:

Are you a writer or a talker?

That is, when you need to think about something, do you generally reach for something to write with, or look for someone to talk to?

I’m definitely a writer, and I know how it feels to explain something in careful detail, in a document, an email, or just an instant message, and have someone reply with, ‘Maybe a quick call to talk about it?’

This helps me to realise that I shouldn’t get infuriated at them. They just have a different communication style.

H/T to Colin Devroe.

Speaking of ChatGPT, I like Cory Doctorow’s explanation of it and its cousins from his latest piece:

AI chatbots are mirrors of experts, only instead of giving you informed opinions, they plagiarize sentence-fragments into statistically plausible paragraphs.

Dave Winer (I think he’s still @dave on Micro.blog) talks about using ChatGPT to

make calls about a user’s WordPress account. I want to know what sites the user is following in their reader app.

ChatGPT notwithstanding, I’m mildly horrified that a) WordPress makes that info publicly available, and b) Dave wants to use it.

Well, it’s obvious that no one reads this, or they’d have drawn my attention to the ridiculous typo in the title of the last but one post. And of the book it was naming. My apologies to Becky Chambers.

I’m not sure who the New York Times folks are trolling with today’s Connections, but it’s a good one.

I think I’ve seen more rain this summer than in all the years I’ve lived in London.

Oh no, we’ve lost touch with Voyager 2. I feel weirdly sad about this. It’s the furthest-away thing humans have ever made.

This Scottish MP who’s been ousted by the people for breaking Covid rules: I think this is the first time we’ve had a recall in the UK.

Now, what we need is to have the policy extended to the whole of parliament. Could we get 10% of the electorate to vote to recall the current parliament? Yes. Yes, we could.

Started reading The City & the City by China Miéville 📚

This is one of only very few of China’s books that I haven’t read, and I’ve joined a kind of online book club at work, so I have to finish it by the 10th of August. Which should be doable.