Author Archives: David Truss

AI takes down EDU-giant

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From the Wall Street Journal:

“How ChatGPT Brought Down an Online Education Giant
Chegg’s stock is down 99%, and students looking for homework help are defecting to ChatGPT”

This is an excellent example of job loss due to AI. From the article:

“Since ChatGPT’s launch, Chegg has lost more than half a million subscribers who pay up to $19.95 a month for prewritten answers to textbook questions and on-demand help from experts. Its stock is down 99% from early 2021, erasing some $14.5 billion of market value.”

Chegg is a clear loser, but so is just about every website that offered to write essays for students. Imagine watching your profits disappear and seeing your entire business model collapse before your eyes.

This is just one example. There are many fields and jobs that either have disappeared or are going to disappear. Just think about the shift that’s already happening. People who thought they were in stable jobs, stable careers, are now realizing that they might be obsolete.

There will be new jobs, but more often than not there will be a condensing of jobs… one person where there used to be five, maybe ten people. For example, if a company had 5 writers producing daily articles for websites, they could lay off all but their best writer, who now acts as an editor for articles written by AI. Keep the person that understands the audience best, and that person ensures the AI writing is on point.

Code writing, data analysis, legal services, finance, and as mentioned above, media and marketing, these are but a handful of areas where AI is going to undermine the job market. And jobs are going to disappear, if they haven’t already. This has been something mentioned a lot, but the demise of a company like Chegg, with no vision for how they can pivot, is a perfect example of how this isn’t just a problem of the future, it’s happening right now.

Where will this lead in the next 5 years? What does the future job market look like?

Will there be new jobs? Of course! Will the job loss outpace the creation of new jobs? Very likely. And so where does that lead us?

Maybe it’s time to take a hard look at Universal Basic Income. Maybe it’s time to embrace AI and really think about how to use it in a way that helps us prosper, rather than to help us write emails and word things better. Maybe it’s time to accept that the AI infused world we live in now is going to undermine the current job market, and forever change whole industries. This isn’t some dystopian future, this is happening right now.

From bird to sky – a social media switch

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For about a year and a half now I’ve been ‘transmitting’ my blog to not just Twitter, but also to Threads and Blue Sky. I use the term ‘transmit’ because I haven’t engaged much on these platforms, I just post my blog post and leave. However, I have more engagement, and conversations on LinkedIn and my blog’s Facebook page.

But I’m starting to see a move to Blue Sky. For me, it means moving from over 12,000 connections on Twitter to under 100 on Blue Sky, but I’m ok with that. I think the community will grow, and for me Twitter was amazing even at 450 connections. The bigger question is weather I’ll actually go back to spending time there or if I’ll just continue to transmit?

For now, LinkedIn seems to be the place I converse more, engage more, and even learn from more. And my Facebook page following is small, but a wonderful community. As I watch people leave Twitter and move to Blue Sky, I wonder if I’ll get a taste of what old Twitter was like pulling me in to this new(ish) site, or if it’s just one more place I post and ignore? Do I need another place to engage, or is LinkedIn and Facebook more than enough already? I’ll figure it out soon enough, but if you are on Blue Sky, let’s connect.

Tradition is peer pressure from dead people

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I wrote the title of this post and stuck it in my drafts months ago. I just had to google it to find the source:

“Traditions are just peer pressure from dead people.” ~Eliot Schrefer

While I don’t fully agree, and think certain traditions can build camaraderie and community, I also see the point of this perspective.

Is a tradition something that adds value to an experience or is it just a way to hang on to old ideas and ways?

Is a tradition a chance to feel connected to a special experience, like graduation, or is it simply a formality with little to no meaning?

Is a tradition simply a pompous way to keep change at bay, or is it something that provides a new group with an experience they want to pass on with pride?

I think too often the word tradition is used as a mechanism to pass down ideas and ideals that are no longer needed. And while we can think of ceremonial traditions as ways to create a shared experience, other traditions, around doing things the old ways because somehow things were better ‘back then’… are really just like peer pressure from dead people.

Power naps

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I love power naps. Give me 20-40 minutes of quiet or soft non-lyrical music and a flat surface and I can nap just about anywhere. But quiet is a luxury, I could even nap on a pool bench with multiple Fox-40 whistles being blown as a water polo game is in progress.

Just give me a power nap and I’ll be back fresher than ever. But extend my rest time past 40 minutes and the power part of the power nap is inversely affected. Then I feel groggy for the rest of the day. Then I stay up too late and have another low power day on the horizon.

So while a quiet space might be a minor concern for me and my naps, either a timer or alarm is an essential. I’ve got to keep that time in check, then I’m returning from my nap fully charged.

Don’t believe the hype

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“Disappointment is the gap that exists between expectation and reality.” ~ John C. Maxwell

Last night was the big boxing match between 58 year old Mike Tyson and 27 year old Jake Paul. I’m not a boxing fan but I watched the fight. It was underwhelming. An old man (and by that I mean a guy just a year older than me) could not keep up with a younger, fitter man. But even then the young man was overly cautious for 4 of 8 rounds, then a bit cocky as he took control of the more and more gassed and exhausted older man.

In the end, neither got really hurt and I’m sure they both took home a significant amount of money. And they were not the only fighters fighting, with 2 other big fights on the card as well as some preliminary fights. So I guess fight fans got a good event.

But if you were only interested in this one fight like me, it wasn’t worth the hype. Part of it is that I remember how great Tyson was and I wanted to think he still had it in him. But another part of it is that there was so much hype that it had to be an amazing fight or it just wouldn’t have met expectations… and it really wasn’t a good fight.

If nothing else, it was a good lesson about high expectations leading to disappointment. Only hype things up if you are already extremely confident about the outcome. Because being pleasantly surprised is better than feeling let down.

Audio attention

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A few years ago I exclusively switched from reading books to listening to them. I was never a fast reader and always struggled with my attention when reading. I’d get lost in thought and read whole pages without absorbing any of the content. In fact, sometimes while reading I could turn back one page and not remember reading any part of it.

So for me, audio books were a blessing. I could just listen and absorb. However, I’m going through a phase now where I’m losing my attention while listening. My wondering mind becomes a wandering mind and I tune out the sound. When this happens, only one thing seems to get me out of it and that’s a good fiction book. By moving from learning content to enjoying an adventure, I start to tune back in.

So, I’ll put my current read on hold, I’ll skip my next planned read, and I’ll find myself a good fiction book to get lost in. Normally I save fiction for holiday time, but there’s no use listening to something informative now, if every few minutes I’m hitting the rewind button.

I need a good fiction audio book to remind me what it means to listen intently and pay attention.

Small mountains

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We’ve all heard the term, ‘Making mountains out of molehills’, and understand what it means. What we don’t realize is how often we do it. It’s easy to see when someone else does it, but not us. No, our escalated concerns are little mountains. They aren’t mole hills. Other people do that, not us. Our concerns are real… or rather really big.

Except they are not.

~~~

Being a school principal involves a lot of deciding how big to make an issue. Dismissing a problem is only allowing it to get bigger. Overreacting to a small problem can bring too much attention to it and make it bigger.

Being overly supportive of one side of an issue can make the other side escalate the size of the issue. Being neutral can equally exasperate the issue and create a mountain out of a molehill.

An insincere apology can be worse than no apology. Too harsh or illogical of a consequence can be as harmful as being too easy. Because to kids, to young adults learning to navigate the world, their mole hills are little mountains. To them the issues are not small.

But if we’re honest, we think our mole hills are mountains too… and that’s an important point to keep in mind when we get a little frustrated wondering why these little issues seem so big to everyone else.

The difference between a mountain and a mole hill might not be the size of the problem, but simply a matter of perspective. And that’s a perspective worth keeping in mind.

Lost Community

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I loved Twitter so much that I wrote a short ebook on how to get started on it. It started as a blog post and then it took me about a year and a half to slowly make it into an e-book, Twitter EDU. So, it’s an understatement to say that I really loved this social media tool.

But I don’t make money off of the book or Twitter, and I’m not selling anything. So I decided not to pay $8 a month to get a little blue check next to my name. And now that’s all I see when I go to Twitter or rather X now… little blue check marks being pushed my way. Not my community that I built over 17 years, not tweets from people I know. Just threads of popular tweets and tweets from blue check marks with big followings.

Now I mostly just transmit my blog posts there and spend very little time on the site. I used to also go to Twitter for news. I would go to the search page to see popular hashtags and then follow along with some news items. But even that seems to be watered down or rather flooded with highly promoted tweets, rather than being more organic.

I’m not sure I’m going to stick around much longer. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to delete my account. But I question if I need to share my daily posts there? Do I need to try and engage in a tool that just buries my engagement? Do I need to spend time in an app where the engagement I get is spoon fed to me rather than based on an algorithm that caters to my interests?

It was a fun ride. I had a blast on Twitter, I’m just not sure I need to engage in a tool out of nostalgia… a tool that doesn’t seem to care what I’m interested in, when other tools do that so much better.

Not the same mistakes

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Before I share this, no, it’s not a reflection on my parenting. I’m not wallowing in worry about how I’m messing my kids up. This is just one of the most powerful comics I’ve ever seen, and I think about it a lot as a school principal. Also, profanity warning for the comic below.

Now that I’ve got the disclaimer out of the way, let me share that I think this is one of the most challenging times to grow up in the last few decades. More young adults are living longer with their parents, or committing long hours to be able to afford rent. Many have not hit 25 yet and they don’t see themselves ever owning a house, or having a back yard like the one they had as a kid. Many more are disillusioned by what they see in the news and on social media.

Meanwhile, parents are doing their best not to make the mistakes of their parents, and yet struggling to navigate what that looks like. Some parents are doing all they can to help a disengaged kid stay in school. Others are lost trying to figure out inappropriate behavior. Still others are doing everything to protect their child, but preventing them from learning from failure. And still others are doing everything ‘right’, which works for one kid and doesn’t work for another.

And those are the resourceful parents that are trying their absolute best. They aren’t the divorced parents who fight in front of the kids every time the kids are passed off. They aren’t the ones struggling with their own demons of abuse, drugs, or mental illness. Still doing the best they can with the skills they have, but just not skilled in ways that support their kids.

We don’t want to make the same mistakes our parents did. We don’t want to follow the same patterns. That can be, but probably isn’t, a disparaging complaint about our own parents. Rather it’s a recognition that we want to do better, be better.

But try as we might, family dynamics is challenging, the world we live in is challenging, and this comic sums up the parenting challenge perfectly.

Editing time

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I spent most of the day editing a video conversation I created with my uncle. We spent a good 3+ hours today chatting and recording a couple videos, then I started editing one of them. Despite using Descript, a great tool for generating captions and editing out common filler words, I still found myself spending a considerable amount of time doing fine edits.

That’s the nature of my personality. I’ll be a bit too much of a perfectionist, and spend too much time paying attention to small details… and time just slips by. I was recently recorded for a podcast and the host used the same tool. But I could tell that he edited the video much faster than me. That said, there was nothing wrong with the editing.

There were a couple edits that I would have done more carefully, but in all honesty it was good enough… and with the interview running almost an hour it would have taken him way too long to edit to the level that I’m trying to do right now.

The lesson from this should be for me to recognize that I don’t need to spend so long editing. I should shoot for ‘good enough’ and just get this thing done. But I won’t. I’ll slog away, paying attention to too many details. Then I’ll cringe at all the parts I should have done better.

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Bed time. The rest of the edits will have to wait. I’m glad tomorrow is a holiday, I want this done before I head back to work!