Forgive me for semantic nitpicking here, but i want to talk about this somewhat popular AI quote by Ethan Mollick (see previously):

Today’s AI is the worst AI you will ever use.

This implies that AI gets worse every day!

On my patented scale of “Daily AI worstness”, 2 is greater than 1, meaning the trend of AI worsens each day!

One of the things that is pretty cool about being a human is that we get to express ourselves through a wide variety of creative outlets: writing, music, drawing, painting, sculpting and all sorts of arts forms.

Like everything else though, AI is coming for our creative pursuits. And apparently I’m just going along for the ride. Especially since I’ve been at the forefront of contributing to this through ArtBot, which has so far generated about 34.4 million images over the 3 years it has existed.

Anyway, Suno, a music generation tool that I’ve previously mentioned, recently updated their music model to v5.

They allow you to upload your own source music as inspiration and then use the v5 model to create a cover song.

So, here is an absolutely poor recording of my cousin and I playing some rock and roll to a backing drum machine way back in like 2002. No singing, just pure instrumental (we were in the process of trying to write a song I think).

Well… what happens if you take this song and upload it into Suno? First, it creates a style description (similar to how multi-modal LLMs can now accurately describe an image):

A high-energy instrumental track featuring a driving rock drum beat with prominent snare and kick, a distorted electric guitar playing a fast, melodic riff, and a bass guitar providing a solid rhythmic and harmonic foundation, The tempo is fast, creating an urgent and exciting mood, The production is clean with a strong emphasis on the guitar and drums, suggesting a live band feel, The song structure is repetitive, focusing on the main guitar riff throughout, There are no vocals.

Hey, sure! I’ll take it. That description sounds a lot better than our music.

Alright, let’s feed it to Suno:

Honestly, that sounds pretty awesome! In my original recording, I play a pretty simple guitar solo at about 1:40. Suno used that for inspiration in a number of spots.

I’m pretty impressed! It nailed my rhythm guitar and lead guitar tracks perfectly, while also cleaning it up and adding some additional flourish. And it kept the same tone / mood throughout the whole thing!

Maybe I’ll have to dig up more of our old recordings. The Velvet Sundown better watch out!

They went viral, amassing more than 1m streams on Spotify in a matter of weeks, but it later emerged that hot new band the Velvet Sundown were AI-generated – right down to their music, promotional images and backstory.

The episode has triggered a debate about authenticity, with music industry insiders saying streaming sites should be legally obliged to tag music created by AI-generated acts so consumers can make informed decisions about what they are listening to.

One thing I do notice about AI generated music: in the past, we used to joke the AI artists could not draw hands. Well, AI guitarists can not (currently) do pick scrapes. So, we still have that going for us!

Returning back home from a work trip to Seattle and I took this uninteresting photo as we line up for departure on runway 16L at KSEA.

You may not believe me, but there’s a huge volcano in this picture!

Proof.

We spotted a curious sea lion, or seal, (there’s a difference!) close to shore and checking things out near Albany Bulb, which doubles as a popular local dog park.

A few dogs at the beach noticed the creature and tried to give chase before owners stepped in to stop things. A number of people who frequent the beach mentioned they had never seen a sea lion at Albany Bulb before, leading many to wonder if something was wrong with it.

It reminded me of our old friend, Buzz (an elephant seal pup we met up on the North Coast).

EDIT: I think it’s a sea lion! Zooming in on another photo I took, you can see an external ear flap.

The fact that Claude frequently says “you’re absolutely right” has become a bit of a meme around the ‘ol Internet. A search on Reddit shows people have been complaining about this for months!

I think people have been especially sensitive since OpenAI was dealing with their own glazing issue a few months ago… where ChatGPT appeared to be too sycophantic. So much so, that they acknowledged it and had to do something about it at the end of April! (see also: discussion on HN)

We have rolled back last week’s GPT‑4o update in ChatGPT so people are now using an earlier version with more balanced behavior. The update we removed was overly flattering or agreeable—often described as sycophantic.

All that said, in my day to day use of Claude Code, I feel like I’ve seen it happen a few times here and there and mostly brushed it off. Until yesterday.

I don’t know what happened, but I am getting it ALL THE TIME. I had Claude (heh!) help me write a simple bash script to work through the logs in ~/.claude and find all instances where it says "You're absolutely right".

WHAT.

=== Claude Code Chat Analysis ===

Files containing phrase:       50
Total occurrences:      106

Date Breakdown:
Date        | Count
------------|------
2025-08-05  | 2
2025-08-07  | 9
2025-08-10  | 5
2025-08-11  | 3
2025-08-14  | 5
2025-08-15  | 1
2025-08-19  | 1
2025-08-20  | 6
2025-08-22  | 1
2025-08-23  | 2
2025-08-24  | 6
2025-08-25  | 22
2025-08-26  | 32
2025-08-27  | 11

The bash script it generated is here. You can check your own stats:

#!/bin/bash
echo "=== Claude Code Chat Analysis ==="
echo ""
echo "Files containing phrase: $(grep -rl "You're absolutely right" ~/.claude | wc -l)"
echo "Total occurrences: $(grep -r "You're absolutely right" ~/.claude | wc -l)"
echo ""
echo "Date Breakdown:"
echo "Date        | Count"
echo "------------|------"

# Find lines containing the phrase AND extract timestamp from those same lines
grep -r "You're absolutely right" ~/.claude | \
while IFS=: read -r file line; do
    # Extract timestamp from the specific line that contains our phrase
    echo "$line" | grep -o '"timestamp":"[^"]*"' | cut -d'"' -f4 | cut -d'T' -f1
done | \
sort | uniq -c | \
awk '{printf "%-12s| %s\n", $2, $1}' | \
sort

One day, we’re going to take this for granted (maybe we already do?)

I remember a time in the late 80s or 90s, visiting one of my grandparents’ homes and playing… some board game. All I really remember is that it had:

– a bazaar
– some electronic component (with a sinister voice, maybe?)

That was it! I don’t really remember much else.

I search Google and get:

Clicking through, none of that looked or sounded familiar.

Let’s try ChatGPT.

Wouldn’t you know… it basically one-shot the search result!

That initial image looked like the ones Google returned, so no dice (hah) there. But! Dark Tower? What is this?

Uhhh, THIS WAS IT!

Apparently, it’s fondly remembered. And there is a modern sequel that uses your smartphone.

EDIT:

I realize that this might not be a totally fair comparison since I gave ChatGPT so much more context. It might be the nature of how we interact with these services (e.g., natural language chat vs “guttural” input in a search engine).

But… just to do some proper due diligence:

One way I know I’m getting old? It’s not the mysterious knee pain (self-inflicted, if we’re being honest). It’s when I download a bird identification app with multiple gigabytes of data and get excited about it.

I’m not joking! Recently, I excitedly told my wife, “ohhh, there’s a house finch in the backyard.” She gave me a savage eye roll that’s usually reserved for the best of my dad jokes.

But hear me out: Merlin Bird ID is actually ridiculously cool!

The app, made by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, has a sound ID feature that’s basically Shazam for birds. You hit record, point your phone vaguely skyward, and it tells you exactly what’s making noise around you in real time! It’s pretty neat to watch the spectrogram light up as different birds chime in, each one getting identified and added to your list.

I had no idea that we had more than a dozen species of birds just chit chatting out back: we’re talking Black Phoebes, Dark-eyed Juncos, House Finches, White-throated Sparrows, Golden-crowned Sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers, California Scrub-jays. Oh, and fucking crows.

The app is completely free and works offline once you download your region’s bird pack (like I mentioned earlier — this takes up gigabytes of data), and now I’m that person who stops mid-conversation because “oh wait, do you hear that? That’s a Chestnut-backed Chickadee!”

My kids think I’ve lost it. My wife is questioning everything about me. Benson is confused why our walks now involve me holding my phone in the air like I’m trying to find cell service.

But whatever, I can now identify the difference between an American Crow and a Common Raven! And let me tell you, there is a distinct difference.

It was intense and crazy. But for me, it was a life changing experience, 100% worth it and I still enjoy my job today.

A screen grab from a presentation I did at Hack Reactor in October 2015, on “building intelligent robots using Node.js that can conquer Twitter.“

A few weeks ago, I picked up Edward Hallowell’s Driven to Distraction after hearing someone say that it was “life changing” for them in dealing with an adult ADHD diagnosis. Combine that with the fact that one of our kiddos was recently diagnosed with ADHD and that I’ve long suspected I also have it, I figured it was time to do a bit of reading. I went in a bit skeptical. The book was published in 1994, after all.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how much I’d recognize myself in the pages. I encountered a number of passages that really resonated with me and provided some validation into how I’ve always felt, acted, approached things, and thought about problems. Some of the examples were so on the mark, I could have written them myself.

Take this passage that basically describes a frequent, near daily, experience:

“I can be working on a project at my desk, when, without really knowing it, I begin to think about some other idea my work suggests. Then I follow that thought, or I may even leave my desk to go get something, and by the time I’ve gone to get the thing, I’ve forgotten what it was I was going to get.”

That’s me, walking away from my workstation to pour a fresh cup of coffee, only to come back, forget what I was doing and then opening Jira to organize some tickets, because for some reason they need to be done right now.

Another section is about how ADHD brains handle creative thinking:

“When someone with ADD receives a stimulus of some sort—an image, a sentence, an idea, a person’s face, a question—he does not immediately put it in its ‘proper’ place. He doesn’t even know where that place is. So, for example, the water bill gets filed with concerns over a fishing trip, and the next thing you know an idea is being generated that has to do with entrepreneurial fishing expeditions.”

Again, this is another example that perfectly describes some past behaviors.

The book isn’t flawless, though. There are definitely some outdated and weird terms (using ADD instead of ADHD, also the number of times it describes someone with ADHD as a “spaceshot”), and some of the family dynamics and gender role assumptions feel very 1990s. A few examples made me cringe a bit with their stereotypical takes on household responsibilities and parenting roles.

All that said, it still managed to deliver really interesting insights. The sections on family dynamics were particularly eye-opening, especially around structure and negotiation. Hallowell talks about how people with ADHD sometimes pick fights just for the stimulation and it’s definitely a pattern we’ve patterns we’ve observed with our kiddo (related book review).

Hallowell’s insights about frustration tolerance helped give insight to some of the behaviors we’ve seen with our own little one:

“The process of negotiation is inherently difficult for someone with ADD because it entails bearing frustration. This is difficult for all people. But it is particularly difficult for the person with ADD who would rather deal with frustration by blowing it off, or by reaching closure too quickly—even if that means sabotaging his own interests—than by the excruciatingly painful ordeal of bearing with it.”

This explains so much about the meltdowns we see when our kiddo gets overwhelmed by too many options or when decisions need to be made collaboratively.

Another section of the book offered advice on how to deal with people who have ADHD. My favorite piece of advice was this:

“Make copious use of praise and positive feedback. More than most people, people with ADD blossom under the warmth of praise.”

Sidenote: A few months ago, we had a work retreat. One of the sessions involved exploring what motivates us. We all wrote down a bunch of things and then tried to examine why they might motivate us. From my notes:

So, yeah! That little passage hit me hard. I’ve always thrived on positive feedback and acknowledgment of good work. And it’s always made a huge difference in my motivation and confidence.

Driven to Distraction gets 4 out of 5 stars from me. It’s definitely showing its age in places, but the core insights remain incredibly valuable. If you’ve ever wondered why your brain seems to work differently from everyone else’s, or if you’re trying to understand someone in your life who might have ADHD, this book is worth the read.