# 008: Priorities

Hi and welcome back to Tiny Sparks!

If you are a regular visitor of my website, you might have noticed that my posting frequency has gone down quite a bit these past few weeks. The reason is pretty simply a lack of time. As I’ve already talked about in my last newsletter, I am now also a part-time student at university and juggling all my responsibilities has become quite a bit harder lately.

Now, the good news is, that I am slowly but surely adjusting to it. Another thing that this change brought with it, is, that I started evaluating my priorities in day to day life. Unfortunately, writing (at least publicly) is not in one of the higher spots anymore.

This doesn’t mean that I’ll shut down this newsletter or stop writing on the blog. I still want to write, as I very much enjoy it! But I wish to write whenever I feel like it and find some time. And not have to force myself to it.

What I intend to say with this, is, that this newsletter, Tiny Sparks, might not be published quite as regularly in the upcoming months (at least until the first semester is over). I’ll still put it out whenever I can, but that might only be once a month. Just so you know.

But I hope you stick around anyway!

Enough admin stuff, here is today’s issue:

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🗓️ Personal Updates

Here’s a quick rundown of the things that happened in the past two weeks:

Honestly, not much apart from me getting used to uni and getting more immersed into higher mathematics. But one thing that finally was published is a new website I built at work: WYDE, a clean and simple one-pager with some GSAP-powered animations for a real-estate project. I am quite proud of it and happy that it’s live now!

As for blog posts, I just published my submission for the SeptemBest blogging challenge by Robert. You can read here, which post made the cut: dominikhofer.me/septembest-2024

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🔮 Tool Recommendation

Although it looks and sounds pretty dystopian, I wanted to share SocialAI with you. It is a “social” app, that looks and feels similar to Twitter/X or Threads, but with one caveat: You are the only human on there, the rest are all AI bots.

At first, I thought: “WTF, that is so weird!”

But then, I listened to a Vergecast episode, where the app’s creator mentioned that this app is essentially a new approach to UIs for LLMs. So, instead of chatting with just one “person” (like in ChatGPT), on SocialAI, you put something out and get a response from various personas (supporters, skeptics, realists – you get the idea). You can then interact with the most interesting responses, which triggers a new set of responses, and so on.

Probably not an app for everyone, but if you’d like to explore human-AI interactions from a new perspective, definitely give SocialAI a go!

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📚 Content Piece

James Jani is one of my all-time favorite YouTubers and one of those creators, that publishes only about one or two videos a year. But when he does, the videos are absolute bangers.

James’ videos live somewhere at the intersection of internet culture, scams, investigative journalism and social commentary. His newest video (which actually is a two-part series, but I found the first video more intriguing) talks about the whole GameStop saga, that happened a few years back. And what happened since then.

And let me tell you, a lot has happened since then. See it for yourself, the video is a masterpiece:

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Well, that’s it already, thanks for sticking around. If you have some feedback, a recommendation of your own or just want to say hi, don’t hesitate to reach out! All the contact options are listed over on my /hello page.

And if you enjoyed this particular issue, consider forwarding it to your friends. That would mean a lot.

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See you in two weeks (or maybe later)!

Cheers ✌️

Dominik