Is this blog just more AI slop?

I tried reading Hypnocracy, which was written with an LLM. The book hallucinates about the “Berlin experiment” at the beginning, but never explains what it is. I looked it up, and this experiment doesn't appear to exist. I gave up after the first chapter because the book reads like a prompt response.

Seeing how bad it can get, can I use AI to write this blog? It's tempting to use an LLM to instantly produce polished content. And while I'm using AI tools in my writing process, I don't want my blog to resemble a collection of AI-generated posts.

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Mitchell Hashimoto's Journey with AI Tools

Mitchell Hashimoto, the creator of Ghostty and a longtime developer tool builder, shares his experience coding with AI in My AI Adoption Journey. He offers a refreshing perspective, being neither a proponent nor a detractor of AI. His approach mirrors my own experience:

• I use AI tools to maintain momentum when I'm tired or have low mental energy.

• I use them for research grunt work which can feel tedious, like comparing frameworks trade-offs, summarizing papers or digging through documentation.

• I use them to overcome writer's block, when getting started on blog posts including this one.

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Sensible defaults

After using the same tools for over ten years (Gnome terminal running tmux with Vim), I decided to try more modern ones. However, the cost of change can be high. This is why I appreciate tools with sensible, deliberate defaults. I can start using them right away, and tweak the settings later.

Ghostty

I switched from Gnome Terminal to Ghostty and I immediately adopted it. It's very responsive and it has useful features. Here are some that come out of the box:

• System clipboard integration that just works

• JetBrains Mono with built-in Nerd Fonts support, including ligatures and many icons

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