# Update It's been a few weeks. Some highs, some lows, and a lot in between. I finished a short story for a writing group that was well received. Their prompts usually follow themes related to the seasons, holidays, or even inside jokes. I try to make each one fit a different genre or tone to stretch my skill and comfort level a bit, so I'm content with the current progress. I briefly tried watching the War of the Worlds remake (had no idea they were making one), and I couldn't last more than 10 minutes. I'm not sure if the creators only have a surface-level understanding of the world or if they think the audience does. I'm a pessimistic person about the general population's ability to understand things, but even that was too much--and at least the ratings agree. Their portrayal of hacking was comical, and it got me thinking about how in some forms of media this has only gotten worse over time. Not just hacking but for many portrayals of action. I'm sure this isn't limited to Hollywood with the seemingly infinite forms of entertainment now competing for our attention, but it feels like there's a bit of a race to make things more flashy and more over-the-top to reel us in, which is widening the gap between entertainment and reality. I can't remember a recent movie with a remotely realistic action scene. I imagine for general audiences the real thing would feel pretty boring in comparison to what we have now. The frightening part is that these scenes do influence what some people believe is physically possible. Hank Green just made an [excellent video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZMFp-mEWoM) showing how even those of us who primarily invest using broad-based index funds are still highly focused on AI instead of the market as a whole. It's definitely sparked some thoughts on where, and if, I should diversify my investments more. The Obsidian Starter Kit hit some troubleshooting roadblocks, but I think most of that is behind me now as the automations are performing nicely. There's still a bit more to do before I can confidently call it a version 1, including a whole novel of documentation, but we're getting there. I've got a race coming up in September, and as luck would have it, I twisted my ankle this week. It's not as bad as past ankle injuries, but I'll probably have to give it a week of rest at least. # Interesting Articles/Write-ups I Came Across - https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/07/elon-musk-says-x-plans-to-introduce-ads-in-groks-responses/ - https://every.to/vibe-check/vibe-check-genie-3-claude-4-1-gpt-oss-and-gpt-5 - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SuvWoLaGiNjPDcA7d/metr-s-evaluation-of-gpt-5 - https://www.derekthompson.org/p/how-ai-conquered-the-us-economy-a - https://nextbigteng.substack.com/p/the-state-of-ai-2025 - https://overreacted.io/beyond-booleans/ - https://www.seangoedecke.com/good-system-design/ - https://sabrinas.space/ - https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/ - https://jfrog.com/blog/2025-6514-critical-mcp-remote-rce-vulnerability/ ## Non-Tech Related - https://historyfacts.com/science-industry/fact/the-first-known-vending-machine-dispensed-holy-water/ - https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of-social-class/ # Topics Reviewed - Philosophy hub (16 notes) - Misc (36 notes)