a necessary pause
...to mark the day of infamy
I was halfway to 13 years old when then-president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law on this day, in 1972. I remember school being canceled for the day as people gathered around their radio sets to find out what was going on. It would be the start of a cruel and corrupt dictatorial regime that would last some 13 years, some of the darkest in Philippine history.
...to finish what has been in suspended animation
Over the past 13 days or so, many of the posts on this blog have been marked as "[in progress...]" when in fact they've been stalled. For one reason or another but mostly because life rudely intervenes in unexpected ways, and then developments in the world of large language models seems to have taken on a frenzied pace. As such, one's attention on the daily writing gets derailed, but not for long.
...to gather the strands of loosening threads
And by this I don't particularly mean of conversations with synthetic minds; one's ordinary garb of living sometimes sees loose threads pulled {by circumstance, choice, or accident} and as such reveal the tattered moments that need to be gathered or sewn back into an equipoise. It's a good thing one is used to wearing their clothes until they fray beyond repair, with no need for anything new.
...to comprehend the rate of ML development
But indeed: in the realm of the emergence of alien minds in our very midst, the penitent must gather their wits, in the seemingly futile endeavor to understand and integrate what the heck is going on anyway, each new day proclaiming some breathless capability, some unheard-of new benchmark yet again swamped. It is all enough to wonder where one's marbles have really gone.
...to wakefully finish what was begun in dream
For look, you... the heralds are all over the goddamn place, in bus stops and billboards, in murals and marquees, in the very garb the public buses wear, wraparound skins messaging both the elect and the benumbed, the arcanists and the merely confused: "REGION: EARTH." As for me, the moments will accrue whether or not anyone else is watching, even as I know One is, as ever.
[ Getting them to speak with each other, this morning... ]
