I contend that it is impossible for so-called "AI", by which I mean the crop of convolutional neural network-based pattern-filling tools that is currently in the throes of a hype cycle that puts crypto and NFTs to shame, to meaningfully do programming. As more and more of the mind bogglingly rich tech oligarchs lead their followers into the delusion that these tools are useful in any way remotely comparable to their cost, I think it's worth taking the time to articulate exactly why this is, even if it's already intuitively clear to the more thoughtful practitioners of the craft.

We must begin, as always, with a clarity of the term under discussion. "Programming", in its broadest sense, is the act of making a computer do something—but "do something" is itself vague, so we'll need to dig a little deeper into that. To understand it, please bear with me as I establish some useful terminology.

A Brief Meander into the Philosophy of Language

Let's talk about syntax and semantics. If you're a programmer, you may be familiar with these terms as they're used to discuss programming languages. If you're not, that's fine too. I'll do my best to explain them in brief.

Syntax and semantics are two related ways of talking about an abstract structure. Although the concepts were originally developed to describe human languages, they can be used by analogy for all sorts of things, which is what I'm building up to here. They're very useful particularly for understanding how humans^[1] relate to those structures and relate those structures to the world as they understand it.

"Syntax" is simply the structure itself, in all the technical detail of how it fits together. The syntax of a human language is the way its words and sentences fit together, what's "allowed" and "not allowed" by the subtle and mercurial rules we all internalized as children (or adults, for second languages and beyond). In English, "ran boy" is not a valid sentence due to the language's semantics, although most native speakers would probably guess that it means "the boy ran". Noam Chomsky wrote "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" as an example of a sentence that is syntactically valid despite being nonsense.

The fact that that sentence is nonsense is the domain of "semantics". Semantics are the human interpretation of a structure, the meaning we ascribe to it and to the best of our ability share with those around us. For example, although the syntax of the sentences "みなさんはピッコロさんが大好きだよ！" and "Everyone loves Piccolo!"^[2] are completely different, their meaning—their semantic content—is exactly the same. And that meaning is something that humans bring to them, not something that is in any way intrinsically associated with those particular wiggly lines in that particular order.

Although syntax is a very useful concept in its own right, in this post I really want to focus on semantics. So remember: semantics is meaning, and specifically it's meaning applied to a structure from outside by humans.

A Better Definition…

im gonna put the "bee" in "be right back" *buzzes away*

if I were willing to get tattoos based on media properties that I didn't help create, "bearer seek seek lest" would be high on my list

I've noticed myself becoming more interested in the course of the Roman empire recently. But surely there's no deeper reason for that.

whenever we get around to doing spelling reform for English, we should go whole hog and ditch the crusty old Latin alphabet for the latest and greatest in orthographic technology. that's right I'm talking about Hangul. it's terse! it's featural! it's visually attractive! vote Hangul 2025

I learned from Zandra the other night that French basically does not have a graceful way of expressing the equivalent of "fuck <something>". It has plenty of curse words but none of them function as a transitive word roundly condemning something the way "fuck" does in English. It's just one of the strengths of the language—although by contrast, French is evidently better at stringing together a long series of curses.

Natalie posted 16 March 2025

Queer Movie Matinee 25 May: Jeffrey

This month's film is another lighthearted one that I suspect people may not have heard of. I ran across Jeffrey (1995) last year and I found it to be a charming and offbeat examination of the psychological fallout of AIDS. It's full of gleefully expressionistic directorial choices, and it's got Patrick Stewart playing an old gay interior decorator. It's a lot of fun!

• What: Jeffrey
• When: 11AM on Sunday the 25th of May
• Where: The Beacon in Columbia City, 4405 Rainier Ave S. It's about a 15 minute walk from the Columbia City station, and the 7, 9, and 50 stop right outside the door.
• RSVP: At this link! The theater seats 48, so we shouldn't run out of space, but please RSVP nevertheless!
• Price: If you can send $10 to @nweiz on Venmo to help keep these going, I'd appreciate it, but if you can't afford it please come anyway.

COVID precautions: Please wear a mask (N95 or better) and run an over-the-counter test day-of or the night before. If you can't afford one, Mask Bloc Seattle can probably hook you up. Outsider Comics in Fremont usually sells them at-cost as well. The theater will be selling concessions, but we ask that you eat them outdoors rather than during the film. The theater itself is not a masks-required space at other times, although we will be the first event of the day and I'll ask the person running the show to mask and test as well and I will be bringing a large portable air filter.

Hope to see you there!

• #event
• #seattle
• #jeffrey

So it turns out I fucked up the booking on this, and it's actually going to be at 8PM. Sorry for the confusion and the short notice!

I had a dream last night where I was once again a day camp counselor, promising the kids that I'd remember them years down the road. When I woke up, I had that kind of temporal vertigo that people gesture at with the phrase "wanna feel old?" It's been around two decades since I was a counselor, and the little kids I was responsible for^[1] are all now adults well older than I was at the time. The astonishing difference between the reality of that gulf of time and the immediate present-ness of that era in my memories—amplified by the team—sent me reeling.

I think that disconnect is really what hits us when we "feel old". We lived all those years in between our memories of younger days and the present, and we know them to be full of exactly that many years' worth of events and experiences. But vanishingly little of that time was spent in the context of those memories. I spent only a few sunscreen-scented summers as a counselor, and I wasn't there to see how the camp or the kids kept going without me, nor did I think of them all the time in the years afterwards. So when my sleeping mind guides me back to that time, it feels like now because what really counts isn't how many years passed for me or for the camp, it's how many years I spent there specifically, and that of course never changes.

Contrast with my early memories of dating my wife. We met years after I last answered to my camp name^[2], but I find it much easier to intuitively reckon with the distance of those early days with her because I have memories of us together through all the intervening years. To walk back into our first years together would be to cut through the dense thicket of all the times we've spent since then, whereas there's nothing but empty space between now and the day I said goodbye to camp for the last time, and who can judge distance in empty space?