9/3 Oh the subtleties of how the world, and in this case AI, sees you. I needed a link to “The Invention of Flying” so I could give it to an AI in order to consider it when finding flights for us to Sweden. So I googled it, and that AI told me that it’s “a poignant essay written by author and technologist André Spiegel”. It offered to summarize its main points for me. I thought, why not give that a go, at which point the headline changed to “an essay written by software developer and writer André Spiegel”.

9/2 Over the last few days, workers came and sprayed all sorts of markings onto the street in front of our house, and in front of our left-side and right-side neighbors too. Lines, arrows, circles and some cryptic letters. Most of it in yellow, some in blue and in green. In some places, where a marking is off the asphalt, they stuck little yellow flags on poles made of copper wire into the ground. Today, they even extended the markings into our front yard, onto our lawn, also with flags. The neighbors have markings and flags on their lawn, too.

It is not the first time this has happened, although the last time, there were far fewer markings and they were a whole lot less obtrusive. And then nothing came of it, the markings faded away and soon the flags were gone, probably picked up by children.

Totally unclear what will happen this time. Some big metal plates which are used to keep trenches from caving in have been dropped on the lawn across the street already. The weirdest part is that nobody tells you anything at all about what’s supposed to happen.

Yes, our road has some of the most worn-out pavement in the area – and other roads close by were re-paved with slick black asphalt a few months ago. Also, we’ve noticed some unpleasant smells from the sewer system recently.

I parked the Jeeps in front of the house as I normally do, in the same spot, this time on the markings, and I knocked over one of the yellow flags in the process. I’m charging the Jeeps as usual – slightly concerned about the 240V/50A cable that I ran from the house, a few inches under the lawn, to the charging port on its wooden pole next to the front steps.

I wonder when, or if ever, somebody will talk to us.

9/1 Video call with my son. I blundered through the usual, boring questions – how was school, who is your favorite teacher. The conversation was dragging until we got to the Roman telescope, at which point it turned into an excited, bubbling exchange of facts after facts.

It’s gonna take months until it gets to the Lagrange point!

It has a low-powered engine that gradually raises its orbit!

How many spacecraft are currently parked at the Lagrange point? (Turns out four.)

What does that even look like? How far apart are they from each other? Meters? Must be kilometers at least! (Turns out they are hundreds of thousands of kilometers from each other. They are circling the Lagrange point in what is called Halo or Lissajous orbits.)

The lives of the engineers tending to these spacecraft seem to be an entirely different world.

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I had to build a small but very complex piece of software for a customer, in a programming language I don’t actually know. I asked the AI whether what I wanted to do was possible, but I was careful to point out, in the very first sentence, that I didn’t want it to actually build it just yet. All I wanted at this point was to discuss possible approaches to the project. Reluctantly, it seemed, the AI agreed to just talk, for now. I then answered some of its questions about details of the functionality, and this time I failed to mention that I didn’t want it to go ahead and just build it. And so it did. Five minutes later I had the finished result.

8/31 Night shift to move over to the new site. At some point, the ball just gets rolling. I am a little shaky about cross-posting this on all the platforms, and maybe I’ll turn that off again, because this is a blog of very private things, which I choose to publish – I am not unaware of the contradiction in that. It seems to be my driving force: private out of shame, public in a weird overreaction. My only excuse is: this is what I want to see myself. This, when I find it out there, is what electrifies me.

8/30 I sometimes worry whether the seizure meds are slowing me down and chipping away at my intelligence. The science says no. What has by far the greatest impact on my thinking, my reasoning, my writing is the constant lack of sleep. On those few days when I’ve had a good night I am an entirely different person. Curious, enthusiastic, sharp. I need to find ways to get back to sleep.

As I was about to turn onto South Street, two police cars came up the road with flashing lights, no siren, at maximum speed, engines revving high. They were most likely headed into those few blocks on the East Side that push Newburgh’s homicide rate above that of Mexico City in some years. It’s no more than a handful of murders, but in a town of 28k they count for a lot.

I was so proud I could play the root in the left hand and 3-5-7 in the right with proper voice leading at 50 bpm. But over the last few days I had to admit that there is actually not much voice leading going on. Most of the time I am just hunting for a single memorized chord shape, no matter how far away it is for my fingers. So … back to untimed practice, and keep the fingers within a single octave no matter how long it takes. And that is about 35 bpm at best. – I am writing this down because it seems laughably, even embarrassingly simple to me when I sit at the piano. Only when I write it down do I realize the complexity of it.

8/29 I’m as excited about AI as if we were making contact with an alien lifeform, and it’s about as chaotic – and as pathetic – as it is in the movie.

8/28 I’m worried I may be demolishing the neighborhood, purely by my decision to leave it. First the scaffolding, now Barzini is closing. Not because of the cockroaches among the groceries, which the Department of Health found fault with last year, but because, after 40 years, he can no longer pay the rent. Or so he says. I’m sure he has never been able to pay the rent, and somehow made it work. But now he’s going out as a hero. Everything’s 50% off, minimum purchase $15. There’s a sign with a QR code attached to the everything-must-go sign, a neighborhood initiative trying to get the mayor to intervene.

8/27 I don’t ask myself if it’s already summer, but I do ask myself if it’s already fall. On the drive to Manhattan I saw, on one single tree, one single branch with yellow leaves, and I considered it treason.

The scaffolding around the building is gone. I had literally never seen the building without. The green poles of this scaffolding, next to the entrance, is where the kids locked their bikes when they came here. It’s what I set my feet on and stretched after running. It was the roof under which you’d sit when you were at Dagon. It’s what I leaned against when J walked up to me on our first date. 91st and Broadway SE is now a wide open street corner, a plaza almost.

8/26 The “efficiency” that I gain through AI needs to be qualified. Some things simply get a little faster, or maybe a lot faster, but the exciting cases are where I could do something myself, but wouldn’t. I could have educated myself about the critical reception of Death Of A Salesman, about the various ways in which Willy Loman has been interpreted over the years, including the question of whether he is a tragic figure or not. I could have figured all of that out, but reading that much secondary literature is simply beyond me. I wouldn’t do it. In this way, yes, AI expands my horizon in ways that would have been beyond reach for me before.

8/25 When I brought up prenatal diagnostics, and how embryos could be selected depending on whether they have the mutation or not, my neurologist took off her reading glasses and looked straight into the camera. “Then your father would not have existed, and neither would you. It’s better that you’re here.”