Thoughts on MLB baseball

  • Best broadcast: Easily Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+. Minimalist. Not too much onscreen visual clutter. The sound is excellent. It sounds like your really at the stadium. I also really like the local audio feeds. That’s what I listen to most often. The local announcers have great insights into their respective teams.
  • Pitch clock: Like it. Each inning moves quick and smoothly. It concentrates the action on the field.
  • New shift rule: Don’t like it. I think the shift is part of defensive strategy and fun to watch. Allow defense to put players anywhere on the field.
  • Big bases: Don’t like it. The bases look like pizza boxes.

Other rule changes I’d like to see:

  • Limit timeout/trips to the mound per team to three per game.
  • Limit replay challenges to two per game.
  • Eliminate baserunner coaching on first and third.
  • Computerize all calls for balls and strikes. Umpires can manage other parts of the game.

My Thoughts on ChatGPT - Cal Newport

Cal Newport summarizes his own New Yorker article.

Cal Newport on ChatGPT

What Kind of Mind Does ChatGPT Have? - The New Yorker

Full graduate theses can and will be written on any one of these topics. None of this jargon is needed, however, to grasp the basics of what’s happening inside systems like ChatGPT. A user types a prompt into a chat interface; this prompt is transformed into a big collection of numbers, which are then multiplied against the billions of numerical values that define the program’s constituent neural networks, creating a cascade of frenetic math directed toward the humble goal of predicting useful words to output next. The result of these efforts might very well be jaw-dropping in its nuance and accuracy, but behind the scenes its generation lacks majesty. The system’s brilliance turns out to be the result less of a ghost in the machine than of the relentless churning of endless multiplications.

Think different

Here’s to the crazy ones.

  1. The misfits
  2. The rebels
  3. The troublemakers

The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Think different