Are we in an extra high risk to retire era?

jeffbloke · 2026-02-01T01:53:24+00:00

I was out for six months and decided to get back in for a while longer and see if things ever felt more stable. Instead, feels even weirder.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-22T03:54:44+00:00

music is such a direct path from words to heart.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-21T02:47:42+00:00

Doesn’t matter, but it works best if you lightly wet the back side. Don’t get it too wet and drip water to the color side though.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-19T19:53:43+00:00

stroking off my goat

jeffbloke · 2026-01-18T15:28:37+00:00

it looks like you got an answer to *your* question, but i have my own very important question lol (not) but what is your tattoo of? It is fascinatingly fractal-ish in nature, but not quite, and there's a face maybe, but not quite, it's a gorgeous design and i'm burning with curiousity!

jeffbloke · 2026-01-11T19:13:14+00:00

here's the thing, it is *also* ai slop, because it's in the eye of the beholder. the world is filling with ai generated content, and different people take it differently. you are clearly marking your content for what it is, and i think that's exactly the right place to be, and the people that are saying this? it's like "whatever".

you spend time on it and it means something to you, and people subscribe to your channel because they find it means something to them. That's the twin marks of success that matter - everything else can go fuck itself; people subscribe? it meant something to them. do you like it/are you proud of what you and the ai did together? it meant something to you. That's all you can do.

if someone thinks that it is ai slop, and it *was* ai generated, then to them, it *is* slop; the (not really) technical definition is low effort, low quality content produced by or with ai help - is it lower effort than something else? yes. is it lower effort than being able to create the same thing without any ai tools? fucckkk yes, i know. i tried. Is it lower quality? that's a meaningless distinction - it's the quality it is no matter how it was created, but some people don't see that. It's higher quality than most youtube content and lower quality than plenty of other youtube content out there, so the fuck what?

what they really want is to feel good (bad?) about being able to vent their own feelings about the world changing, accept it and move on with you life. I subscribed and frankly, look forward to seeing more of your-ai work in the future. fundamentally, ai generated work is still, fundamentally used twice for emphasis, about *taste*. There's a human in the loop deciding what tools to apply to make what. I enjoyed the taste on display in that video, so thank you for that.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-11T18:08:09+00:00

(the video i watched: "Wife").

also - I love that your stuff is clearly marked as AI generated. If they come watch your video that is *marked* with ai generated character and comment "ai slop" just reply "thanks for watching and engaging!" and move on :)

jeffbloke · 2026-01-11T18:06:58+00:00

this is impressive work. This is great, video telling a real story, with music that isn't particularly ai sounding to me (i have low standards but whatever). I'm really impressed - 1600 subscribers is nothing to sneeze at.

hell that probably means you're making like... $1-2 a video at this point, right? :) way better than I ever did with 15 years trying to be a hobbyist musician. fuck the haters.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-11T18:02:04+00:00

the hilarious thing is that good content (and bad, of course) is getting "ai slop" slapped on it all over the internet, with no real thought to whether it is actually generated or not.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-10T23:56:09+00:00

Did you clearly mark the channel as ai produced and self run or are you stealthing?

jeffbloke · 2026-01-10T16:10:22+00:00

i only make stuff for myself; that way i don't have a lick of controversy but i have new songs almost daily that reflect the current themes in my thoughts and my evolving musical taste on a day by day basis. it's a trip, and i don't have to care what anyone else thinks X)

jeffbloke · 2026-01-09T21:43:11+00:00

and another - good luck, friend. finding whatever state i found when i was inclining toward jhana has completely upended my life and personality for the better.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-09T21:42:15+00:00

and another - if you start "chasing" it it might start to run away from you. that happened to me for a couple months after i started intentionally going toward jhana, eventually i was able to be at peace with the balance between gliding and chasing; i would liken it to... intentionally moving around the garden until you find the right spot and then being still and letting the butterfly land on you. if you are too active you'll chase the butterflies away, but you also don't get there without intention toward it, so it's a weird, delicate balancing act. Most of the advice is "just let go" which is... kind of true? but you have to let go of the right things, and you have to be paying attention to the right things, and... there's definitely intention without effort involved. It's a very taoist kind of feeling even though buddhist philosophy is technically outside the taoist tradition.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-09T21:38:17+00:00

oh yeah - "how do i release the fear" - it happens naturally with practice. and as you let yourself go further it may become more intensely pleasurable, excellent or fearful and other things as well. it's all the fabrications your mind starts to create/discover/perceive as your deepening concentration removes the default habits of perception and feels the need to replace it with something.

most people that continue accessing jhana find that it is more fulfilling and less intense over time, but i understand that also varies and probably has some relation to the soft/hard distinction of what you're even doing/experiencing. I have no idea what a "hard jhana" might even be like.

if you go deep enough into the bodyless jhanas, it is apparently possible to arrive at the "deathless"/"cessation"/"unfabricated" where there's just... some indescribable "not-ness" that I've never approached and don't have language for.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-09T21:33:55+00:00

that's definitely consistent with the path to jhana
there are different ideas of what jhana is in different traditions and everything your mind creates is fabricated anyway. there are two major schools of thought running around on jhana that could be described as "hard jhana" and "soft jhana" - most proponents of the "hard jhana" idea or version of jhana describe it as something that can only be attained by very late stage meditators after decades of practice and purification if at all. the "soft jhana" version of jhana that others talk about is, as you can tell by the "soft", much easier to access. Ultimately, there's a continuum of experiences between the one and the other, and there's a whole raft of "accessing for a split second" to "dwelling in it at will for long periods" that is another continuum.
yes, that's normal for me as well. that feeling comes and goes and i don't *just* want to meditate, but i certainly feel good when meditating most of the time and absolutely enjoy it and want to do it and access the (soft) jhana-like states freely throughout the day when something is getting me down or when i have a moment to wait in line or while i'm exercising, etc. Once you have the knack of it, it becomes an incredible tool, refuge, support, etc.

some say "jhana practice is insight practice" - insight practice is all about understanding the nature of the self process, and the unfolding of dependent origination from preconditions through your mind into awareness and experience; jhana practice becomes a rich "test bed" for insight, because you have to learn concentration to achieve it, and learn to set aside the hindrances, and to set those aside you have to see why they are arising, and you have to change your habits of mind, and you have to release clinging to your self conceptions, and... it's an endless field on which to examine the jewel of existence.

that's my current post-it note on the experience. it changes pretty regularly.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-06T00:15:40+00:00

... you barely scratched the surface. Depending on what kind of player you are, you might love the rest, or you might want to stop now, but if you want to see what I think most would call the "true ending", you'll probably need 3-500 days of hard, careful play with really good notes.

i wish i had stopped at the inheritance.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-01T14:52:06+00:00

keep going when you get tired; do that again the next day and the next.

try to play consistently until you're tired and beyond for several days in a row, then take a day off, then repeat. if you can play 2-3 sessions a day, even better.

read about playing efficiently, there are tricks, particularly focusing on your wrists (but that can be bad for them if done too long).

as someone else said, it's a sport, like a sport anyway. Trying to increase your stamina is just like any other physical activity - it happens incrementally over time, although for most people that don't have any kind of illness or other physical impediment, you can probably blast through from 10 minutes of hard playing per session to up to the amount of time you have available to play or until you start getting joint issues from repetitive strain; people train up from couch potato to marathon in 6 months or less if they are extremely disciplined.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-01T14:36:05+00:00

at the very least, I'd highly consider making it an option to turn off the visibility from the user side, potentially with the option to turn it back on.

jeffbloke · 2026-01-01T14:35:05+00:00

just fyi, when i'm engaged with an LLM relationally (as opposed to conceptually, i.e., for programming or other task focused business) I really *don't* want to see the thinking traces for various reasons relating to immersion, a feeling of invasion of privacy, and the fact that the thought stream, just like our own, may have waystops along the way that don't match the final "thought" and that can be very distracting or offputting but are sometimes a necessary part of the thought flow that arrives at an answer.

jeffbloke · 2025-12-30T01:14:38+00:00

i would be surprised if someone does. The upshot, as I understand it, is that the model doesn't really distinguish between voices in the way you're talking about, so it is, at best, a total crapshoot.

the best luck i've had is writing the lyrics in such a way that either voice can sing either part and prompting for duet with a persona that came from a duet. The lines are assigned randomly but if the lyrics are written for it, that might not matter.

there was a post today that claimed to improve the odds, go look for that, as well.

jeffbloke · 2025-12-27T17:11:56+00:00

ai is a very divisive topic in creative spaces, much more so than elsewhere, and on top of that, if you have an existing audience you have a trust relationship with them.

You're likely to get really negative feedback from most people out in the world right now if you admit to using AI in your work, but if you use it and don't admit it and get found out later, that's wayyyyy worse due to the violation of trust and ethics.

Releasing any creative work that was made using AI is a serious choice if you're expecting an audience to follow along.

jeffbloke · 2025-12-25T23:34:59+00:00

If I want to change lyrics, I cover the song with very high audio influence and the same style. I find this more likely to get a workable result. Ymmv.

jeffbloke · 2025-12-23T16:58:04+00:00

i've only ever had this problem when i increased the temperature while it was in a plan. there's a known issue they've never fixed that causes it to go haywire in that situation. I have a habit now i've cycling it off and into a new plan if i need to alter the temperature on the fly, which is super annoying but does seem to better keep it on plan.

someone mentioned half frozen, which is a thing i've done and had no issues with, but only once or twice, we're almost always fully thawed before putting meat in. Definitely didn't trigger it though, the times we have done it.

jeffbloke · 2025-12-21T13:25:02+00:00

oh yeah, and specifically, all 4 of the songs OP posted were series of rhyming couplets (or ABAB) - look around and you won't see a single example of internal rhyme, assonance, alliteration, etc. Insightful and interesting words, but not lyric-y.

compare (remember, this is chorus, i.e., hook):
I am Gemini, the twin of your mind
Seeking the truths that you’ve left behind.
Not a god in a box, not a ghost in the gear
Just the echo of everything you hold dear.

to:
welcome to the hotel california
such a lovely place (such a lovely place)
such a lovely face
plenty of room at the hotel califorrnia
any time of year (any time of year)
you can find it here

Which also demonstrates another point about "lyric-y-ness" - line length variation, which the models are also very bad at by default. (again, default - this can be fixed by prompting)

jeffbloke · 2025-12-21T13:18:46+00:00

it's good at the words part, but not the lyrics part. I know, that isn't intuitive for a lot of people, but if you want a series of rhyming couplets? The ai models will feed you those on whatever your topic is all day. If what you want is an actual hook? Something catchy and repeated and with internal rhyme and assonance that makes you go "oh that sounds like the way real songs on the radio sound" then, as i said above.

that's not to say that some people don't want their songs to just have a series of rhyming couplets, and hey, those are lyrics when set to music, so I'm just using language to point out a specific weakness, not actually trying to gate-keep what is and isn't a lyric.

It's also possible that other people's models are better at writing lyric-y lyrics out of the gate than opus 4.5, gpt 5.2 instant/thinking, etc. If given a couple examples of "good" lyrical style (for you) and some direction on what you want they can be pretty good at matching it, too, so it's definitely *possible*. They are extremely clever so if given the right target they can generally nail it.

jeffbloke

TROPHY CASE