Elizabeth Tai

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  • Artificial Intelligence Will Do What We Ask. That’s a Problem.

    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…

  • The Lord of the Rings – a review and a confession

    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…

  • A beautiful tiny home

    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

  • Jan 2023 Week 3 Food & Exercise Journal

    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…

  • Elantris and Hope of Elantris

    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…

  • Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification

    Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. Cory Doctorow in https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

  • Chinese New Year eve

    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…

  • The enshittification of social media

    Cory Doctorow, in his article, Social Quitting, highlights how social media have life cycles. One day, they were sparsely populated fringe services, the next day, every­one you knew was using them and you had to sign up to stay in touch. Then, just as quickly, they imploded, turning into ghost towns, then punchlines, then forgotten…

  • From self-hosted WordPress to WordPress.com

    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…

  • For the love of economy rice

    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…