Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
In my writing, I lean on metaphors and analogies quite a lot, and I’m afraid I need to employ the same crutch here for the tiny handful of ingenious young men that are getting paid a fortune by Meta. I’ll just call this group The Incredibles.
Totally by accident, I stumbled upon a letter I wrote to a dear friend of mine a few years ago. I thought I did a pretty decent job with my sentiments, so I figured I might as well share it here since it doesn't reveal anything confidential and it was well-crafted enough to be worth sharing. It's also amusing to me, since some of the misgivings I expressed about myself flowed directly into Solid State.
To: Rob
From: Tim
Date: April 6, 2021
Re: Remembrances of Things Past
Greetings, my dear friend-from-the-before-time……….
(more…)(more…)“As the images of his own history twisted and ripped their way through the flames in front of him, Wesley Williams somehow knew that he had taken the right path after all. Maybe the trail had been laid out for him all along from the day he was born, and it was simply up to him whether to keep marching forward in the right direction. Wesley was here now. In spite of all his shortcomings, all his bad choices, and all the times he had missed the mark and felt ashamed, he knew in his heart he was still where he was meant to be. Gazing across the distance at his wife’s eyes – those tender, loving eyes that he had fallen in love with when he was just a boy – he knew he had never left the trail on which he belonged, even though it was impossible from day to day to know for sure where the markers would be. Somehow, he had managed to stay on the path where he knew he needed to be, even if his own foolhardiness had put his fate at risk. For reasons he could not comprehend, he had been spared his own oblivion by the pathway’s power.” – Solid State, chapter 73
As I’m sure you’re aware, the talent wars and funding wars going on in the world of artificial intelligence has reached a fever pitch. Nine-figure pay packages and ten-figure funding rounds for “startups” have become the norm.
Much of this is covered in a specialty publication called The Information, and a story yesterday caught my eye:
I’m a writer. I have written professionally since I was fifteen years old. Given my peculiar interest in comedians, I find it interesting that the men in that field often start off very young as well, such as Gilbert Gottfried and the surprisingly talented Bobcat Goldthwait.
I started writing for national magazines when I was a kid, and I wrote my first published book at sixteen, to be followed by a couple dozen more.
