Reading the Internet - Using ChatGPT as a reading log, Readwise Reader Review
Plus: "a pseudo ephemeral nostalgia to round robin databases of community knowledge"
A short Readwise Reader Review
I’ve been using Readwise and its Reader app for about a month. I think it’s great - I pay for it.
Reader is a straight-up Instapaper replacement with a text-to-speech function and AI capabilities for summarizing articles and answering questions. The AI stuff isn’t that great - I haven’t used to to integrate the articles, though. I just used the text-to-speech thing this morning and really liked it.
You can also add PDFs, but you can’t download the newly-read PDFs, which isn’t ideal for me since I keep my PDFs in my own directories. However, rendering the text version is good for reading PDFs on a phone screen.
The RSS feed section in Reader is flat with no folder structure, so it’s not useful to me as a Feedly + Newsify replacement. I need at least one level of folders for that.
You can stash and watch videos with a scrolling transcript, allowing you to click on specific parts of the video. This feature is useful for watching research videos.
That’s all in Reader, Readwise is primarily a highlighting system. It’ll import all sorts of things, especially years of Kindle highlighting. I haven’t really explored it too much, but I do like the daily email of things I’ve highlighted over, like, the last 20 years.
ChatGPT as a reading log
I have ChatGPT summarize articles for me a lot. You just prompt it with “Summarize: [paste URL].” It usually works so long as you know that a lot gets lost in the process. I haven’t spent enough time getting it to simplify things - that might be better.
This morning I played with having a dedicated, ongoing chat to summarize articles, so I opened it with:
From now on, in this chat when I paste a url I want you to simplify the article in 500 words or less with bullet points and quotes of the main ideas.
This way, you can just paste the URL. I said 500 words to try to get it to lose as little information as possible.
And, then, later I asked for a digest of what I’d read
Write a numbered list of the articles I’ve asked you to summarize with a one line description of each and the major take away of each article.
This outputs
Supporting Your Child’s Mental Health: 6 Strategies for Parents
This article provides six strategies for parents to support their child’s mental health, such as recognizing signs of struggle, creating a safe and supportive environment, and encouraging positive mental health activities.The Case for a Flexible Dress Code
This article discusses how the shift towards remote work during the pandemic has disrupted the traditional office dress code and suggests that companies adopt a flexible dress code to strike a balance between casual and professional attire.The Live Album
This article discusses the concept of the “live album” in music and how it serves as a way for musicians to prove their authenticity and capture the energy of a live performance.Wall Street’s Top Investors Warn a Stock Market Crash Is Coming - Here’s What to Do About It
This article discusses concerns among some of Wall Street’s top investors that a stock market crash may be imminent and suggests that investors should be aware of the risks and take steps to manage their investments accordingly.Investments That Protect Against Inflation
This article provides a list of investments that can be good options during times of high inflation, such as stocks, real estate, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), commodities, and cryptocurrencies. The major takeaway is that no investment is completely immune to the effects of inflation, and it’s important to have a diversified portfolio that aligns with your financial goals and risk tolerance.
Finally, you can ask it to “output it as code in markdown” which will do just that. And, in fact, that’s how I pasted the above list!
Commentary
It’s summary of the live album article is totally wrong. The piece might mention that, but that’s not what it’s about.
These aren’t summaries, they’re just short blurbs of the articles. This is totally what I wanted, so it’s fine.
It got past the FT’s paywall.
I like the idea of having all of this context built up, giving me the chance to say things like “what are common themes in the articles I’ve read over the past two weeks?” That said:
How long can I go with articles before it craps out and I have to start a new one?
Wastebook
There is A LOT going on in this new Puss In Boots movie.
The word “appreciate” is so weird and awkward (listen to your mouth as you say it: that strain as you move from “ah” to “pre” and follow that with that march of letters that sounds and feel like dragging glass in your palm across a chalkboard) that it’s little wonder we don’t say it enough.
The Link Gourmand
I like links, you like links. How do other people find links? I asked them! This a new series where people tell me how they find stuff they read, their links, and thoughts on the life of the Link Gourmand.
From Jay Cuthrell:
My recipe for finding content changes each year — such as dropping Twitter consumption for Mastodon consumption or aggregating newsletters on mobile apps or web tools.
Presently, I read Mastodon, Techmeme, Substack, Hacker News, Medium, several Slack communities, and maintain Obsidian vaults to connect trends.
I do hope that Linen.dev gains popularity to increase discovery of deep web communities sequestered in Slack — but also realize there is a pseudo ephemeral nostalgia to round robin databases of community knowledge.
My last updates on the how I find and organize topics are captured in end of year summaries: Zettelkasten End of Year for 2022 and Zettelkasten End of Year Favorites.
Relevant to your interests
Tips on decks - for startup pitches, but good for business idea pitching in general.
ChatGPT and Markdown formats — Generating all Sorts of Editable Diagrams and Formats - This is great!
From my WhatsApp - Wow - if had conversations like this going on in WhatsApp I’d use WhatsApp more. Gen-X senior moment: this kind of conversation is something I miss from blogging and 2000’s Twitter. We used to actually have long, interesting, level-headed and kind conversations like this all the time back then.
Gartner AI TAM Forecast - “Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2025, the market for AI software will reach almost $134.8 billion, and market growth is expected to accelerate from 14.4% in 2021 to 31.1% in 2025 — far outpacing overall growth in the software market.”
Logoff
See y’all next time!