The plant disease identification/management handbook by Balaji Aglave is excellent for popular plants. A lot of modern handbooks are fluffy with information (maybe that’s popular) but this one gets straight to the point — I was very lucky to come across this book a while back.

One aspect of blogging that I don’t like is the unpredictability of an audience’s impressionability. Many people out there read/watch jokes/spam/falsities/uncertainties with utmost confidence — seen it countless times.

Presenting info in a way that prioritizes “critical thinking/reasoning” over an “oracle of truth” is actually hard. I’m almost out of my 20’s and seeing irl reactions to stuff online makes it seem like I’m still in high school — moreso now than ever before. The money gets made somehow :-)

This AI stuff is kinda exciting.. in a “watching danger from afar” kind of way. What kind of feedback loop does it have? Does it finish off the Internet content–wise? The data has to be huge and ultra fuzzy — so someone has to add semantics/structure right or is it automatic? The Internet is already gamified to an extent… but can it completely auto–generate videos? What kind of exploits will be used against the input? So many questions. It’s like the ultimate frankenstein pandora’s box thought experiment of the most bizarre outcomes :-)

I’ve got a few repositories on Codeberg and following their blog is pretty fun. The recent post on scaling tickles my risk–averse sensibilities. It’s relatively easy to make/stand–up anything but scaling is mostly uncharted territory. The scale at which the biggest companies operate essentially guarantees HUGE and unique interconnected systems that are mind–bogglingly convoluted and complex.