[Self-promotion warning] My blog that nobody read turned into a published book. An editor for a small publishing firm happened to come across my blog and thought that it might be good as a book. He contacted me and after about a year of work (more than I expected) I finished the book and got it published. It's not that popular, but I'm very happy with it. My point is that you don't need a massive audience. If you can…
I am now intrigued in your blog, if it's still online?
10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
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Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#72Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#73Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#74Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#75The scraper bots probably read it and now it is ever so slightly altering the weights in some massive AI model. That's not nothing.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#76Writing a blog is like talking in the town square. Except because it’s digital, we seem to forget how communication works. If you just start talking in the town square, you’re standing alone talking. Sure a person who passes by might pause, but the odds you’re saying something really relevant to them are low, so they’ll move on. The whole question of how you get in front of the right people and tweak your message bas…
Related, I think people have stopped.... reacting on the internet? I've been part of the X/Twitter to Bluesky migration and people often mention how 'quiet' Bluesky is. I think that's not due to algorithmic intervention of product design etc., I think people are just tired. The novelty of shouting at strangers on the internet has worn off - how many internet fights have we gotten into that did nothing in the end exce…
It's just hard to justify engaging. Worst case, I get a fight on my hands with someone who's as dogmatic as they are wrong, which is both frequent and also a complete waste of my time. (A tech readership is always going to veer hard into the well, akshually...) Most likely case, I get fictitious internet points. Which - I won't lie - tickle my lizard brain, just as they do everyone else's. But they don't actually achieve anything meaningful.
Best case is that I learn something. Realistically, this happens vanishingly infrequently, and the signal-noise ratio is much, much worse than if I just pulled a book off my shelf.
I suppose this is all an artifact of time and experience. Maybe I've just picked all the low-hanging fruit, and so I no longer have the patience to watch people endlessly repost the same xkcd strips from fifteen years ago, navel-gaze about tabs or spaces, share thrilling new facts that I have in fact known for many decades, etc. And while I'm very excited for them to discover all these things anew (and anew... and anew...), it's just not a good use of my time and patience to participate.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#77[Self-promotion warning] My blog that nobody read turned into a published book. An editor for a small publishing firm happened to come across my blog and thought that it might be good as a book. He contacted me and after about a year of work (more than I expected) I finished the book and got it published. It's not that popular, but I'm very happy with it. My point is that you don't need a massive audience. If you can…
I am now intrigued in your blog, if it's still online?
And the book it led to is 101 Amazing Sights of the Night Sky: https://www.amazon.com/101-Amazing-Sights-Night-Sky/dp/15919...
Neither is very popular, but it was a lot of fun.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am now intrigued in your blog, if it's still online?
It was my old astrophotography blog: https://neurohack.com/Astrophotography/index.html And the book it led to is 101 Amazing Sights of the Night Sky: https://www.amazon.com/101-Amazing-Sights-Night-Sky/dp/15919... Neither is very popular, but it was a lot of fun.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#79The scraper bots probably read it and now it is ever so slightly altering the weights in some massive AI model. That's not nothing.
After all we said and done, we will be only a memory in some future AI model. And maybe it will answer the meaning of the number 42.
Re: 10 years of writing a blog nobody reads
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realise there are AI checkers online. https://www.zerogpt.com/ assesses this content as: 27.49% ChatGPT While this writer obviously had a lot of input into the model, they even state (or more accurately according to zerogpt, ChatGPT wrote this whole paragraph) "The writing process should be highly iterative", so they have added their own flavour into the writing, but it is still , (probably not for much longer…
You do realize (god I hate that phrase) it’s impossible to definitively classify something as AI- or human-produced?
If you really want to fly below the radar you can even include instructions to adopt a certain writing style, e.g.: you can tell it to use a Gen-Z style with minimal formatting.