AI's Bland Writing
Starting around high school, people began asking me to help proofread their writings. Occasionally it'd be a college essay or a publication, but I also helped with simple things like emails or blog...
Writing
Review: On Writing Well
I was thinking of The Elements of Style. I asked ChatGPT for suggestions to get deeper into the craft of writing. To its credit, none of its recommendations were hallucinated—I double-checked—but instead of...
How to Value Journaling
I started journaling before it was cool. Okay, it was never cool and will probably never be cool. But, I did start the practice and developed a habit around recording my everyday activities, plus additional...
Authentic Voice
Never underestimate our ability to normalize the extraordinary. Less than two years ago, I witnessed the rapid adoption of ChatGPT in trivially outputting prose: translating messages, prettifying emails, and, of course, generating high school and...
The Evolving Motivation to Blog
A few weeks back, I attended ELC Annual 2024, a conference hosted in San Francisco focused on software engineering managers. It's a small circle of engineering people managers in the Bay Area, and...
Exaggeration for Grievance
One rhetorical device I'll sometimes use is "exaggeration for effect." It's just another way of employing hyperbole, which is less about the precision of the description, but to create...