Hello and welcome to the first issue of this newsletter. I figured it’s probably best to start by baselining everyone’s expectations, talk about what this newsletter will be, and then let everyone be on their way.
My intent is to publish this on a biweekly basis. Which is to say every other week, not twice a week. I might put out the occasional urgent issue I guess, but I can’t exactly say when or why I would do that.
Most editions will be broken into three sections:
Writerly Thoughts
This is where I’ll make sure to let everyone know what’s currently out there, what news I have, and the progress that I’m making towards getting the next thing (or things) into the wild. I’ll probably provide an update on wordcounts, for no other reason than to keep myself honest, and editing status when it comes to that.
For those not aware of, well, my life in general, things are only now settling down after a run of life dramas and emergencies that started just before (American) Thanksgiving. The last step of this was moving into a new house, which is done save for the unpacking. As part of that, I now have a dedicated office space, something I’ve never had in any past house. It’s a work in progress, but if you’d like to check it out, I’ve thrown up some pictures on Instagram.
The upshot is that this week is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and write in months. The fruit of my labors? Just shy of 2500 new words on the first draft of my work in progress Love Bugs Magicicada.
Yay!
Techerly Thoughts
In my dayjob I’m a cybersecurity engineer. No, I’m not Swift on Security. And no, none of you thought I was either, because if you’re an early adopter of this newsletter, you know I’m not capable of keeping such a secret. But I’m going to include some thoughts in each newsletter on the state of tech, especially as it might overlap with writing.
Which, of course, means a lot of thoughts about LLM, or Large Language Models. This is how I’ll be referring to what ends up being colloquially called AI. LLM is a more precise term, and one that I prefer because it’s more accurate to what programs like ChatGPT actually are. It’s trendy right now to consider these as being able to think and to create, which comes down to two primary factors:
Calling them AI. We’ve been raised for years on science fiction that includes artificial intelligences capable of complex thoughts, original thinking, and even emotions. Part of why I try to divorce LLM from AI is to get past the shared cultural touchstones that are set off by the use of the phrase.
Human pattern recognition. We’re programmed as a species to find patterns and to assign deep meaning to patterns. It’s what kept us alive as we evolved from little tree-based primates, but it’s also what has us look up at the moon and see a face. Or a rabbit. I see a rabbit. LLM takes advantage of this by providing reasonable sounding answers to questions, which fits the patterns that humans look for in speech and conversation. The problem comes when the LLM doesn’t actually understand what it’s saying. It’s only going through a massive list of characters and picking the ones that most likely come next based on ingesting real writing.
I’m not going to get too deep into my thoughts on LLMs in this first issue. Mostly because I doubt I could keep it under 10,000 words and I don’t want to scare everyone off. But it’s coming. Don’t worry.
Thoughterly Thoughts
Just a few last notes. Then that’ll be it. So far I’m having fun on Threads. The new Discworld audiobooks are pretty great, check out Andy Serkis reading Small Gods.
That’s it. Nothing profound.
As always, you can check me out on all the socials. I’m thurstonromance everywhere that I have an account. I’ll catch you all in two weeks!
First!