The Firehose Feed
This is a chronological feed of everything I’ve published.
AI asia Being a Writer Being Chinese Birds blog blogging books cat CDrama ChatGPT China Chinese culture Chinese Drama COVID COVID19 culture Fediverse Fiction Fiction writing with AI geopolitics indieweb Internet Language Learning life Malaysia Mandarin mental health movie review Obsidian Penang PKM Politics productivity reading science fiction seedling socialmedia StayAtHome Substack tech Technology television Travel writing
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A quick introduction to Mastodon’s culture and politics , how to be a part of the community and have a good experience on the decentralised social media network.
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Originally posted on K E Garland: Recently, I used Lensa to generate some artificial intelligence (AI) photos. I’d seen a couple of celebrities do it and thought why not? So, I uploaded 15 photos, and two hours later these appeared. They’re beautiful, right? I was amazed. It was mystifying to see how the app captured…
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Rings of Power received a toxic reception on a level I’ve not seen before. Does it deserve the flack? I decided to check it out.
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Some interesting quotes from the article: “The current way we do AI puts a lot of burden on the designers to understand what the consequences of the incentives they give their systems are,” said Hadfield-Menell. “And one of the things we’re learning is that a lot of engineers have made mistakes.” A major aspect of…
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Among some fantasy readers, I had done something sacrilegious. Most were horrified when they discovered that although I had read almost every fantasy book on the planet, I had not bothered to touch the fantasy tale of all fantasy tales – The Lord of the Rings (LOTR). They would probably be in despair if they…
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I adore tiny homes. There’s something very soothing about the ability to live in small spaces. This one is especially wonderful because she has a beautiful garden too. Honestly, this place doesn’t feel small at all! Her TINY HOUSE is the size of a garage, & it’s really cute! – YouTube
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Initially, I thought to start recording my meals on Instagram because it seemed more convenient. But if I’m to follow the principles of the IndieWeb movement, ideally I should store my food photo journal at my home site, so I decided to do a one-week experiment. I updated this post periodically throughout the week via…
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So thrilled to finish this 590-page book, something I struggled with after the pandemic hit. (I couldn’t seem to focus long enough to finish a novella, let alone a chonker of a novel.) Admittedly, I used a combination of physical book + audiobook which really sped things along. Why a physical book? Well, I found…
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Chinese New Year is a thing for my family. Since we are descended from Chinese Peranakans, our food preparation is like a military operation which can take days – without the order or strategy. And for some reason, Chinese New Year eve lunch feels like a bigger deal for my family. It usually takes Mum…
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Thanks to the dominance of SEO optimised posts about WordPress from all manner of companies, any blog posts about wordpress.com is very, very difficult to find. Especially those about moving from self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com. Here are some I discovered and kept for posterity: “…was surprised that they offer WordPress.org hosting. I always thought that…
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Nothing is more typically Malaysian than the “economy rice” store. These places sell “chap fun” (a Cantonese word for “mixed rice”), vegetable & meat dishes which you eat with your rice. Chap fun stalls are usually found in restaurant corner, often run by an uncle or aunty who calculates the price of your meal in…
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How Twitter misleads us about how many people have left — and what to do about it Social feeds are engines for distorting social understanding. Here’s how to push back against the algorithm. https://natematias.medium.com/how-twitter-misleads-us-about-how-many-people-have-left-and-what-to-do-about-it-bba484b6fed6
Elizabeth Tai 