ティージェーグレェ on Nostr: I wasn't too sure what to expect at this years Chillits. tbh, I was surprised they ...

I wasn't too sure what to expect at this years Chillits.

tbh, I was surprised they contacted me at all. I poured tea at a tipi there about a decade ago. Yet my friend Hunter who invited (and poured tea with me) hasn't replied to my email attempts to communicate in a couple of years. ;( I suspect: Hunter got busy as a new parents and no harm no foul.

Regardless, after some confusing back and forth several months ago wherein I declared: I am not really in a position in my life at the moment to offer much of anything, it was agreed that it was OK for me to "just" attend!

I did see one old cohort from high school (who co-founded the Cloud Factory collective and prior to that I lent my dad's Technics SL-1200MK2 to a party [wherein he also had a Technics SL-1200MK2 and *together* we had TWO thus sufficient for deejayin, whoa!]) and it was nice to catch up with some friendly chit chat. His son recently graduated from college and is working in Shibuya for some cafe (though I guess they're international with 200 some employees?). With talk of turntables and such: he's now got 4 (a few of which were on loan to Chillits) and he expressed similar challenges of vinyl collecting (he is focused more on ambient stuff; which I can only imagine is about as obscure as the sorts of things I tend to procure). He didn't even remember helping me land some job interviews a decade ago (though one of which, for Silicon Graphics did turn into a job offer, which was rescinded, so I guess there wasn't exactly any sort of referral hiring bonus given the circumstances).

I also saw an old coworker from CNEMedia! Which: was very unexpected, though I guess she was at the first Chillits (in 2000?) and hadn't attended for some years. She seemed to think I poured tea with Hunter in 2015? I dunno, I think the emails were from 2016? I am hardly confident I am remembering such things particularly well, and some fluidity with spacetime is honestly: appreciated relative to the more often experienced rigidity. Her friend too: I recognized and remembered, though it had also been many years since we had last crossed paths (maybe 2008ish? 2009? A while ago).

Other than those 3: I knew more or less no one. The fresh air and forests were wonderful and tbh, I think I may have appreciated them even more without any music or people at all? Admittedly, whomever tended to the fire pit created that primal force which I also enjoy seemingly so infrequently now. I arrived about 5 hours after I had hoped (though thankfully still about an hour before my volunteer shift started) in no small part due to running errands beforehand, which included sourcing ingredients for vegan smores (and as an added bonus: gluten free). I do not remember how many years it had been since I last had smores, and improving their ingredients, while certainly adding to the cost? Did seem to improve the flavor and delicious nature of the experience?

There were others, Rochelle and Ryan, who were providing tea service in one of the tipis. Rochelle recalled Hunter, which was a relief for at least some semblance of recognition. Rochelle also rattled off the names of a bunch of other folks when I mentioned my Cloud Factory high school friend, many of whom I don't think I knew? Or at least, never knew particularly well. Ryan: I guess is a DBA? A freelancer DBA! Who had worked on Sybase (yikes! I too have such traumatic memories) and later MS-SQL (even worse?) yet apparently these days "orchestrates" a number of things using Cursor and asked if I used it (and I confirmed, he meant the LLM intermediary tool which I most resoundingly: do not use, conscientiously). I asked him if he was familiar with Symbolics? Alas, he was not (mentioning them as the *first* dot com did not help) and I am guessing me spouting more technobabble about the last so-called "A'I' Winter" was mostly lost on him. ;( His hair: was gray, yet as with many I see using LLMs these days: their knowledge of history of their own field, is distressingly shallow. ;(

A lot of that: I think is intentional?

Why sell people on the dead end of gambling, when everyone knows gambling is bad, so you can just call it a "prediction market" instead!

Why sell people on the dead end of artificial intelligence, when everyone knows AI is bad, so you can just call it a "large language model" instead?

Why sell people on the dead end of bribery, when everyone knows bribery is bad, so you can just call it "lobbying" instead?

etc.

I do not understand how some fail to see the synonyms which seem so painfully obvious to me?

Anyway, as you can guess: it did not feel particularly chill, to have discourse over AI, while at Chillits. ;(

There was a lovely lady, who was wearing "Live Long and Prosper" earrings. We chatted a little about Star Trek and its recent 60th anniversary. That may have been the highlight, for me at least.