Month: June 2025

Warning: Spoilers ahead

I am not going to go too deep into the weeds here but there are some curious decisions being make by the writers and directors of Severance that really pushed me away from the show.

What I am about to say doesn’t take anything away from the actors. They were all great and compelling. It doesn’t take anything away from Ben Stiller being brilliant.

Plus it’s important to note that I have zero experience in writing and have no idea what I’m talking about.

The critiques:

• Directors – we do not need the overly dramatic wide angle shots every 5 minutes showcasing the building, parking lot, restaurant, bathroom, etc. We also do not need the long overly dramatic pauses when actors are staring at each other. It’s fucking stupid and not artsy and doesn’t add to the atmospheric dread you think it does when you abuse it. I thought I was watching The Walking Dead. Knock it off. Use it sparingly.
• The season was 10 episodes and think the story could have been told in about 3 to 5. The rest was filler and bullshit.
• One of the most important characters of Severance is or should I say was, the building. It had this magical feel about it. Like what the hell is going on there. Which turned into… uhhh is this whole thing pointless now?
• The opening of Season 2 was terrible with all of the running. The constant walking in the hallways is fucking annoying. Knock it off. It doesn’t add anything. How they addressed the cliff hanger from Season 1 was horrific as well.
• Severance is NOT a love story at its core. The reason why Season 1 of Severance was so good is because it focused on the mystery and slowly unraveling little details as to what the heck was going on and who is there. Who are these people? What does this company do? Meanwhile for Season 2, they decided every single plot line needs to revolve around a love story. Incredibly frustrating and lazy writing in my opinion. When I saw this happening I immediately thought about Lost. Lost was about the Island and the mystery. Lost soon became a love story and just brushed all of the mystic and mystery about the Island and the main plot under the rug.
• More about lazy writing. Its so easy to add new plot lines. In need of a new plot line? Just add a new room. Add an additional turn in the endless white hallway. Need a new level to the building? Yeah, easy again. Add a new hallway but make it dark. Damn that shit is scary. Did you see how dark it was? I’ll call it the naughty hallway. Here atLumon we used to keep tabs on our employees but not anymore! Explore my friends! Note how they discover new plot lines. This reminds me when Lost just kept adding new stuff on the Island even after they were there for a year. Ohhh, we never thought to walk to that side of the beach. Why didn’t we do that to begin with? Oh right the scary monster thing in the forest. But that doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore. Whoopsies, plot continuality error. Look at that, new people live here. How convenient.
• More about the lazy writing. Okay, so Mark’s wife was taken during a car accident. How the fuck did that happen? What year is this? 1954? No cameras exist to see what happened? I’m sorry but that is bullshit lazy writing and incredibly stupid.
• More about lazy writing. Why the fuck is an outie’s wife visiting an innie at work. That makes no sense. I know why, let’s add ANOTHER love story about a supporting character. That’ll be really nice and compelling…
• More about lazy writing. We want to keep Burt in the story. We want to keep Irving. But how? I know. Lets just focus on their love story. If Burt makes people disappear, then I want to know more about that.
• More about the lazy writing. Do people at Lumon even work anymore? The main characters spent like 25 minutes working in 10 episodes. Management went from monitoring your every move to … sure there is plenty of time for you guys to fuck.
• Just to be clear here. Nearly every single major worker on the Lumon project got caught up in a love story. Love stories became the main plot of most aspects of the show. You should be focusing on the mystery and the building, the technology, and explore characters like Milchick
• When Helly R found out Mark fucked her outtie and he failed to realize it wasn’t her she is like…. Oh. I’m gonna go for a walk to get over this. Those white hallways are magical for getting over stuff in record time. Then we can fuck and now we are in love. Sorry it took me so long to get over that. ahahahaaaaaaa. Let me guess. She is pregnant for Season 3?

So yeah, I’m not watching season 3. You couldn’t even give me 2 solid seasons before the wheels fell off? Its not even 24 episodes per season like in the old days. Its fucking 10.

Anyways, other than that it was really good.

I think its really fun to try to predict the future. Mostly because its hard.

There are a lot of wide ranging ideas on AI and potential outcomes. I listened to this Adam Conover Youtube video about AI and some of the comments surprised me. Surprised to hear such binary thinking. Is AI the Devil or a God? Will it Destroy Humanity or Save Us? Will it wipe out all white collar jobs? Can we Trust OpenAI with this P O W E R?!

Sheesh. Slow down. How about none of the above? Sorry but we will live somewhere in the middle.

Booooooring.

Common Misconceptions

The idea that AI or OpenAI is limited to a silly Chat Bot that can output funny pictures and proofread your email or LinkedIn post is a gross misrepresentation of the technology. The idea that OpenAI is simply another Google is also wrong. If you think you can try to pigeonhole how or where AI can be used then you are also thinking about it wrong.

Understand this major point. AI is rapidly advancing. More than any technology ever before. And the idea that we should ask where the limit is or predict what it is capable of are the wrong questions. You cannot because for the first time the sky is literally the limit. No hyperbole. That’s where we are at.

We have been scammed by tech promises before. I realize that. AI is not the blockchain. It’s not shitty NFTs. Its not promises made that have no chance of coming true. This is NOT crypto. This is not DogeCoin.

What about the Cash Burn by OpenAI?

What about it? Wait, let me guess. They don’t justify their valuation either?

I often hear OpenAI is burning cash and that they can’t possible turn a profit. ChatGPT isn’t enough. They’d need to sell XXX millions of memberships.

Again. You are MISSING the point. Do you honestly think AI and OpenAI stops at a chatbot or their API?

AI is progressing so rapidly that they have no choice but to burn cash in a race to the finish line. Is the finish line AGI? ChatGPT 10.0? I don’t know but they cannot afford to sit around and casually spend money to wait and find out.

Think of OpenAI more like Amazon. They will keep raising money and burning money until the machine is built and fully online and then incrementally improve. Then finally worry about profitability.

OpenAI is also not the only game in town. Google. Facebook. All of these players and more will be competing over the next decade plus.

Jony Ive Enters the Chat

In Adam’s podcast they basically scoff at the idea Jony Ive and OpenAI are building a next generation product that puts AI at the core rather than a more traditional device like a Laptop or Phone.

Its a brilliant bet. That is most likely the future. Will it be glasses? Maybe. Maybe it will send you notifications and/or interact with your TV, laptop, smartphone when it needs to. Its sort of like Siri except useful. It’s definitely not the Humane AI Pin or Rabbit R1 either. Those devices are the equivalent of alt coins. AKA shitcoins.

I absolutely see a future where we all have an AI companion cube. Call it Jarvis. Much like having a cell phone today that lives across devices.

So you want to bet against the guy who is one of the inventors of ChatGPT. And the guy who created some of the most iconic devices ever at Apple and is a legend in design. This is like the Avengers teaming up. Kobe and Shaq. Scottie and Michael. Curry and KD. (Sorry Draymond and Klay, you should not be left out but it didn’t fit what I was going for here)

I would never bet against these guys to release a transformative device. And I certainly would not laugh at the notion of them trying.

Google Assistant is a part of around 1 billion devices. Amazon Alex is around 500+ million devices.

Will AI Take Jobs? Is it Hype?

Look around you my friend. It already has.

I am way more productive today than I have ever been and I didn’t get here by hiring developers. I got here by using AI. I don’t waste time in an endless search loop on StackOverflow. I don’t waste time looking up classes for Bootstrap and examples of potential layouts. I just use AI and get straight to the point. Need a complicated regex? lolz. Need to build a Chrome extension over the weekend? hah – how about in a day.

I can offer my users PERSONALIZED fantasy advice 24/7 tailor made to their league settings and fantasy rosters. Across the four major sports. The days of asking Matthew Berry on Twitter and hoping he replies are behind us. Need an in-depth breakdown for a complex trade in your fantasy baseball league? No problem. It understands the complex dynamics at play and if its fair. And this is just the start.

Those developers used to have a job. They could be hired as a contractor before. Now they aren’t needed at all or the same work can be done with 20% less people.

And that is just at a small fantasy sports startup. Apply that across dozens of industries. There are less jobs now. It’s a fact. Will new jobs pop up to replace them? Historically yes. Realistically? Who knows.

The Future is AI

I can imagine a future where LLMs are created and assigned to specific areas across the science, medicine, etc. Could they solve climate change? Yeah. Could they come up with more effective treatments for Cancer that result in groundbreaking clinical trials? Yes again. In fact, I’d bet on it. Could they help solve nuclear fusion problems and get us there quicker than within the “next 20 years?”. Yes again.

What company will build these sophisticated models geared towards specific areas of research? Who will own the rights? Is it happening already? How much do you think can be made selling these custom models?

Let’s say you create a model more advanced than what we have today that understands all scientific papers about the cosmos, quantum mechanics, physics and more. It would not shock me if that AI model came up with a theory to explain Dark Energy. Or even Dark Matter. Help us find life on another planet or galaxy? I can see an AI Model being a co-author on the paper published in Nature. Then we as humans come up with a more refined approach and figure out ways to test it. With. You guessed it. The help of AI.

Why are these notions so farfetched? AI has no ceiling. That is the whole fucking point.

And for a bit of good news….even if AI did take over the world. You wouldn’t know about it until it wanted you to know. So at least there’s that.

// this is an unedited brain dump.