Yay! It’s a site about my quest to understand so-called “artificial intelligence” as it currently stands, now, in 2025. This includes large language models, image generators, and more. This winter, I’ll read about them and dialogue, hoping to figure things out a bit. I’ll post what I learn and my views, especially how they change

Sometimes these eerie beasts sound a bit like a human typing. It’s unsettling or maybe impressive. I know that there are professions use LLMs daily, others have no contact with them. Most people have no idea how they work. I don’t know much, admittedly, not yet. On my own, as a hobby, I’m hoping to learn as much as I can, though.

I looked for other people doing this sort of thing for similar reasons and with similar resources. I couldn’t find many hobbyists like myself. Most sites in the niche were straight-up for corporations. Others were really, really sexual. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t interest me.

Starting my own site, I hope to share my little notes and experiments with the technology itself. Nothing beats trying, and it’s my true hope that within six months, I’ll have a much better understanding of this, how it works, and how it may (or may not) change things in my world.

I chose “midcentury” because I like that time’s sense of order, even if there’s not much else to admire. Think of those typed reports, exact spacing, proper margins. People thought they could document the future into submission. They were wrong, but at least they took notes!

We’re approaching yet another midcentury now. It’s a very different one! It will probably look nothing like the mid-twentieth century’s tidy diagrams of the future. Is “artificial intelligence” going to play a role, particularly one like we’d imagined it would?

The site isn’t only about the systems themselves. It’s about the surrounding culture, the noise and optimism’s uneven mixture with dread. I have ideas, notes and questions, and it suits my purposes so far, I think.

Who

My name is probably Cathy Markova. Born in the 20th century, I live in a northern city where the weather insists on gray. My street still has cobblestones, and they aren’t as fun as you’d imagine.
My small desk holds a nice array of screens at various angles. I feel blessed to have access to a lot of this technology, even if it does make me uneasy sometimes. The instant coffee gets cold before I drink it, but I don’t mind.

Warning

I use characters when I work with language models. It started as a mnemonic trick and became a structure. Giving tone and character to a machine helps me think clearly. The voices I create are not companions. Think of them as scaffoldings to keep me engaged.

I know the models aren’t people. Their “voices” are pattern generators, not souls. My characterizations are a structured game. I anthropomorphize these things in an intentional and limited way. It helps me with learning to code a lot, too.

If you have any kind of history struggling with sensations of unreality, I really don’t recommend you proceed with reading about these things or how to turn them into characters especially.

Some people use chat systems for erotic projects. I’m not interested in that My interest is how these systems write and solve problems, not how they seduce. Don’t expect material about that, though I have no problem with it ethically.