 This is a special "flash" episode of The Kindle Chronicles with my coverage of today's Amazon products and services event. The big news was that Astro, a home robot, is being offered for invite-only purchase later this year for a price of $1,000. It looks like an amazing invention, and I want one! I'm finishing this episode in time to head north to Casper, Wyoming, in the new Tesla I picked up in Boulder yesterday. Onward!    

2TKC3 Meet Astro!

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In this special episode of The Kindle Chronicles, my guest is ChatGPT. I had no idea I could use OpenAI's revolutionary AI assistant as a Thought Partner. That's how Peter Deng, OpenAI's head of ChatGPT uses the tool he leads.  So, on a tight deadline this morning at the Hampton Inn Capitol/University, I put together an "interview" with ChatGPT and recorded it. I left the gaps where my Thought Partner (TP) was thinking, illustrated on my iPhone as a cloud pulsing, so you will hear how long TP took to come up with pretty amazing answers. SXSW is going to make Peter's talk available on demand, but it's not up yet. I highly recommend that you watch it if you get the chance. He discusses safety issues, OpenAI's chaotic leadership crisis last year, and many other topics. John Constine of SignalFire, a venture capital firm, did an outstanding job peppering Deng with questions and then summarizing the entire one-hour conversation at the end.  I took notes in a Substack draft post using Vision Pro during the keynote. I plan to tidy them up and send them out, perhaps during my layover at DFW.  This was my best South By ever, after nearly 15 years of covering the event. I hope you enjoy the show!  

TKC 718 Thought Partner at SXSW

  At left, Founder of New Things Lab I spoke by Zoom today with Nyckle Sijtsma in Delft, Netherlands, about his inspiring design company. I discovered New Things via an Instagram ad for the Memo White Board, a product I truly love. You will hear all about it in this conversation, along with Nyckle's personal mission to "help people think clearly."  Links: The Memo White Board, $69 My YouTube video demonstrating the Memo - February 27, 2024 YouTube video of this interview  Right-click here to open and save the audio file for this episode.    

TKC 717 Nyckle Sijtsma

                                            Author of Daybreak: A Novel I spoke with Matt Gallagher by Zoom on February 8, 2024, in advance of the release of his new novel, which was released by Simon & Schuster on February 20. It's a powerful story set in Ukraine at the start of a war that continues into its third year.  Highly recommended!  

TKC 716 Matt Gallagher

 Author of Upstairs Delicatessen:  On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading  Photo by Richard Bowditch YouTube video of the interview Links “Inside the NYT Book Review: Pamela Paul & Dwight Garner” (YouTube) Garner’s Quotations: A Modern Miscellany by Dwight Garner (2020) Dwight Garner’s book reviews in The New York Times To the Finland Station: A Study in the Acting and Writing of History (FSG) Classics by Edmund Wilson  “A Book Critic as Wild for Food as He Is for Literature” by Jennifer Reese at The New York Times Book Review - October 24, 2023 Film reviews in The New Yorker by Anthony Lane Politics columns by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times Books by Cree LeFavour at Amazon.com  “Jayne Anne Phillips Finds Anguish and Asylum in Civil War America” by Dwight Garner at The New York Times - September 23, 2023 Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips (Buy This Book!) Joni Mitchell - Blue (Full Album) at YouTube Joni Mitchell Court and Spark album Part 1 and Part 2 (YouTube) Books at Amazon.com by Sheila Heti, Otessa Moshfegh and Catherine Lacey  “Review: ‘Martial Bliss,’ a Loving Memoir About a Bookstore for Military Buffs” by Dwight Garner at The New York Times - July 30, 2015 Martial Bliss: The Story of The Military Bookman by Margaretta Barton Colt (not available on Kindle) Columns by William F. Buckley Jr. published in National Review Kindle Scribe Books at Amazon.com by the poets Kay Ryan, August Kleinzahler, Louise Glück, and James Fenton  “Hunger games: A New York critic’s gluttony for books and food” by Adam Begley at the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) - November 3, 2023 If you’d like brief updates on technology, books, marriage, and puppies, you can follow along with my Morning Journal flash briefing. From your Echo device, just say, “Alexa, enable Morning Journal.” Then each morning say, “Alexa, flash briefing?” I post a five-minute audio journal each weekday except usually by 10 a.m. Eastern Time.   Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.  

TKC 715 Dwight Garner

 Author of To Infinity and Beyond: A Journey of Cosmic Discovery Links Neil deGrasse Tyson’s website Neil deGrasse Tyson on The Late Show with Steven Colbert (2023) Carl Sagan on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson - March 2, 1978 (YouTube) StarTalk Media Network Hayden Planetarium “Shot in the Arm,” a documentary scheduled for release in November, with Neil deGrasse Tyson as Executive Director If you’d like brief updates on technology, books, marriage, and puppies, you can follow along with my Morning Journal flash briefing. From your Echo device, just say, “Alexa, enable Morning Journal.” Then each morning say, “Alexa, flash briefing?” I post a five-minute audio journal each weekday except usually by 10 a.m. Eastern Time.   Right-click here and then click "Save Link As..." to download the audio to your computer, phone, or MP3 player.  

2TKC3 Meet Astro!

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