Bernie Goldbach

Planning a week with a NTS

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 09:25:39 +0100

My best weeks start when I record (and then listen to) a note to self.

In case you’re wondering, this whole blog post was made with a Samsung S25U and my basic HTML skills. Nice work Manton!

And when I read the post by using Chrome on my handset, the browser auto-generates a transcript of my audio clip. Amazeballs!

Transcript

Serendipity with auto-generated albums

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 09:28:38 +0100

I’m trying to make a habit of cross-posting the top 100 most viewed images in my collection of more than 100,000 items in my cloud storage. Today it’s a photo of my eldest daughter in the Kindergarten of her primary school in Germany.

Some of my items are short form videos stored on Vimeo. Because they are harder to share, I think I will start placing them inside the CDN used by Micro.blog. In a perfect world, when I have a lot of time, I want to make short videos that complement the short audio blogs that I make as notes to self.

Endearing power of RSS

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 23:54:03 +0100

I am very dependent on getting summaries of sites because I have to trim back where I read. Like many people I know, I’m easily distracted by places where I can snack on news, simply by scrolling through content. I want to be able to understand more than one side of a story so I’m looking at ways to pull information together by aggregating content. Thankfully, a lot of content that I want to review from online sources is set up with structure that an RSS reader can parse. And those RSS readers don’t burn through AI tokens as they strip back information for easy reading.

Thanking Dave Winer for doing that tough work decades ago as IETF codified an important part of our connected world.

Stratification of intelligence

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 23:37:03 +0100

I read a lot of stuff from A16Z where the analysts have started qualifying what Marc Andreessen flogs as “the stratification of intelligence”. It’s a perspective about Artificial General Intelligence in the realm where AI is no longer a single button or a set of questions and answers. AGI comes with tiers of use and price points that represent both utility and the compute required to run the capabilities we need.

Here is what I already see in the people who I meet using AI.

Knowledge Workers paying €22 monthly

I have trained more than 1000 people since early 2023 who are in the Consumer Tier using paid versions of ChatGPT Plus, Claude, Copilot Pro and Gemini.

The Analogy: For these people, AI is like having a very smart, slightly distracted intern.

Purpose: They need to summarise documents, write research proposals, and cut basic code. They need AI to boost personal productivity. They feel like they’re paying for a Netflix subscription because the cost of running the model for a single user is relatively low. Many of the university students in this tier share log-ins.

The Digitally Transformed Employee paying $200/month earning €100,000 annually

Some of my friends sit in the Professional Replacement Tier.

The Analogy: They pay this cost because it’s a business expense. They’re often in mid-level white collar jobs running teams in medtech, fintech, or supply chain companies.

Purpose: At that monthly price point, they’re not just buying a chatbot. They have learned to configure and run more than one agent to operate autonomously on 9-9-6 schedules, managing complex workflows, filing expenses, or maintaining a codebase. I have heard some companies are considering paying “salary-equivalent” prices for AI with tokens that can perform at a human level 24x7x365.

Expert/Elite €1,000/day (€350k/year)

This is the Specialist Tier.

The Analogy: This is what people in Ireland pay for top barristers, a senior software architect, or a specialized consultant.

Purpose: This tier of AI service buys you high-reasoning compute. It’s AI that doesn’t just follow instructions but solves hard problems. Its daily logs produce scientific breakthroughs, complex legal strategies, or high-level architecture. It requires massive amounts of processing power (and significant subscription services) to yield extremely high-value outputs. There is at least one Irish company at this level. You might meet them in June at the Amplify 2026 Conference in Kilkenny.

Sovereign Tier $10 Billion

This is the Infrastructure Tier.

The Analogy:> Go into the 3D ring of the Pentagon or visit China to see this tier working.

Purpose: But this isn’t a subscription. The ten billion dollar is the cost of training and owning a frontier model. This tier is reserved for nation-states or the world’s largest corporations. It represents the foundational intelligence upon which all the other tiers are built. If you spend $10 billion, you aren’t just using AI; you are controlling the brain that defines the market.

The Big Picture

Listening to AI executives and investors in Silicon Valley talk, I believe we have commodified intelligence. Just as we have different prices for electricity (residential vs. industrial) or transportation (Free Travel, train ticket, corporate jets), we now have different prices for thinking. As both OpenAI and Anthropic move towards IPOs, we are approaching a friction point. We should not expect AGI will be a single, free entity. Those freshly minted public companies need profits. It is likely that before the end of this decade, AGI will be a tiered utility where the more reasoning you need, the more you will pay.

But there will always be cheap seats and cheerful spaces for the unwashed masses to work with chatbots and generate simple images, videos, and online content to amuse us through the day.

Diving into neuroplasticity

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 08:18:50 +0100

Seeking trustworthy basic advice on neuroplasticity, self talk, limiting beliefs, sleep hygiene, supportive habits, and productive use of small screens. Trying to avoid questionable self-help scams.

Here’s a YouTube playlist meeting some of my goals.

Finding easy help with Gemini. It could rot my brain, some say.

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:27:36 +0100

With Google Gemini showing up in nearly every screen I see, I wonder if there’s a compelling reason to upgrade to €140 monthly Google AI Ultra.

Irish inflation increasing

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:37:34 +0100

Like many people in Ireland, we’re being squeezed by costs of energy and fuel. The screenshot of our current electricity burn shows some of that happening. It’s not just increase in our electricity usage, our unit costs are increasing as well.

Across Irish media there are calls for income tax cuts to be prioritised in the Irish budget because experts believe fuel prices will remain elevated through this decade. The energy crisis arising from Trump’s war on Iran is worse than the 70s and more damaging than during COVID.

It’s intriguing to hear the shift within the Irish government on the possibility of putting in place a work-from-home mandate. Much depends on the length and severity of the crisis affecting the availability of fuel and other products transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The war started by Trump and Israel has put some of the same fear that was felt during the inflationary times of the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine war back into conversations I hear in pubs.

During COVID, when we were building a cabin out back, the price of certain products would increase as much as 20 per cent a month. I had to expect to pay more for bags of cement and for slabs of insulation every time I went to the builder suppliers. Now this same thing is happening to builders who are trying to construct 50,000 homes this year in Ireland.

32 Claude Shortcut Prompts

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:39:48 +0100

It’s important to have a regular routine and one that you can quickly cruise through. I do that with Claude by using keystrokes. As James Clear says, it can lead to a compounding effect.

I converted these prompts to flash cards to help memorise Claude shortcuts I saw Ruben Hassid using.

/ELI5 is used to explain as if to a 5-year-old.

/TLDL summarizes a very long text in a few lines.

/STEP-BY-STEP lays out reasoning step by step.

/CHECKLIST turns a response into a checklist.

/EXEC SUMMARY gives a quick executive-style summary.

/ACT AS makes ChatGPT speak in a specific role.

/BRIEFLY forces a very short answer.

/JARGON asks to use technical vocabulary.

/AUDIENCE adapts the response to a chosen audience.

/TONE changes the tone (formal, funny, dramatic, etc.).

/DEV MODE simulates a raw, technical developer style.

/PM MODE gives a project-management perspective.

/SWOT produces a strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats analysis.

/FORMAT AS enforces a specific format (table, JSON, etc.).

/COMPARE puts two or more things side by side.

/MULTI-PERSPECTIVE shows several points of view.

/CONTEXT STACK keeps multiple layers of context in memory.

/BEGIN WITH / END WITH forces starting or ending with something.

/ROLE: TASK: FORMAT: explicitly defines the role, the task, and the expected format.

/SCHEMA generates a structured outline or a data model.

/REWRITE AS: rephrases in a requested style.

/REFLECTIVE MODE prompts the AI to reflect on its own answer.

/SYSTEMATIC BIAS CHECK asks to identify biases.

/DELIBERATE THINKING forces slower, more thoughtful reasoning.

/NO AUTOPILOT forbids superficial, autopilot responses.

/EVAL-SELF asks for a critical self-evaluation of the response.

/PARALLEL LENSES examines from several angles in parallel.

/FIRST PRINCIPLES rebuilds from fundamental basics.

/CHAIN OF THOUGHT shows intermediate reasoning.

/PITFALLS identifies possible traps and errors.

/METRICS MODE expresses answers with measures and indicators.

/GUARDRAIL sets strict boundaries not to cross.

Memory of burning MC-130 in the desert

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:04:12 +0100

On the 25th of April 1980, a former Air Force Academy classmate of mine was severely injured when his C-130 burned in the desert of Iran following an unsuccessful extraction of hostages from the US Embassy. I was thinking of Jeffrey B. Harrison on the 4th of April 2026 when newer MC-130s were deliberately destroyed and left behind in the Iranian desert.

Researching place for best sleep

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 08:56:33 +0100

I continue searching for a place in the house that provides zero sleep stress and discovered it is in the coldest room of the house. I’ll take that because it is darkest and apparently the quietest most mornings.

I’m using a Whoop MG, the fifth version of Whoop’s fitness tracker, and it’s giving me important feedback about how to improve sleep both at home and in hotels. I’ve discovered that when my sleep stress is zero, I awaken feeling very refreshed.

I’m going to start a database of these sleep results by asking Claude to extract the key data points and then logging them in to a sleep database for review. That database will have several elements entered that aren’t recorded by Whoop 5.0 so I can learn more about perfect rest.

Props to @garethoconnor and Studio 1 #AuthenticStories

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:31:39 +0100

Thanking @garethoconnor @Newschambers@mastodon.ie and the Thursday @virginmedianews crew for offering 14yo newshound son Dylan a behind-the-scenes look at how authentic stories are created.

During his visit, my secondary school student Dylan met professionals who shared with him the critical nature of achieving authenticity through their presentations as broadcast journalists. Through the conversations, we realised the importance of helping viewers enhance their media literacy. The rise of ‘Deep Fakes’ is a challenge facing GenZ and anyone who uses screens to inform their judgment.

#AuthenticStories

Visiting the home of authentic stories

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:59:13 +0100

I will always remember visiting my local newspaper where I heard, felt, and smelled news being printed.

Today I took 14yo Dylan to Studio 1 of Virgin Media where he had an equally memorable experience.

Hiring but must play well with bots

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 13:57:46 +0100

I saw this post by Angir Carel and it resonates well.

Angie writes:

My last human assistant managed my calendar,answered emails, kept the books tidy, and handled light client requests.

My next assistant? Will manage and work with my Al agents.

I’m designing a role I’ve never seen - part executive assistant, part Al coordinator, part human gut check for a business that runs on automation, agents, and a whole lot of intentional chaos. And ambition.

Here’s what this person will do:

→ Manage and collaborate with the Al Agents I’ve already built → Test new tools constantly (Al fluency is critical) → Handle the issues Al escalates when confidence is low → Protect my time and energy, keep me focused → And, ask three questions constantly: “What can we offload to AI?” “What’s broken in our workflow?” “What can we build to scale smarter?”

This is a front-row seat inside an Al-forward business that’s figuring this out in real time. As I write this out, I’m feeling three things:

Mind-blown at where I’m actually at right now
A little (okay, a lot) worried this unicorn might be impossible to find
Completely stoked to redefine what thi role even looks like

– h/t Angie Carel

Experimenting with TechSmith Fuse from mobiles.

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:24:05 +0100

I’ve been using Camtasia for a decade but today is the first day to attempt using TechSmith Fuse to create, upload, and share video content. The video clip is being hosted by Microblog’s CDN. I wonder if that’s any better than hosting on Vimeo and then using the embed code from Vimeo to display on my microblog.

TechSmith Fuse Workflow

Open TechSmith Fuse app on handset
Record clip
Tap bottom right image
Tap 'SHARE' at top right of app
Tap app you want to share with (suggest Snagit)
Tap bottom of screen for the connection you want
Save file in Snagit
Upload file to Microblog
Copy HTML of file
Insert HTML into Microblog post
After it uploads, review the Microblog post

New adventure with microblogging

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:21:33 +0100

Tomorrow, I’m going to go to Dublin with my son Dylan, to Virgin Media, and we’re going to have a great adventure, and I’m going to blog about it, and at the same time, I’m going to have Dylan experiment with a domain we bought at littlebitoftipp.com.

So it’s an adventure in micro blogging. It’s like going back to the year 1999 when there were fewer than 100 blogs in Ireland. And we’ll be doing it with our phones, because I’m doing this now just by talking. So you can hear what I’m doing on a podcast, and you can see what I’m doing at insideview.ie.. I’m togold on good social networks.

BTW, this blog post was generated by otter.ai

Here is a look at our Journaling Stack

Using Joe Dale’s Tips for Teachers

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0100

I appreciate Joe Dale’s Open Education Resources and his enthusiastic expertise. We use most of these tools when training Transition Year students in Ireland.

DirectPoll

We use a free live polling tool, Direct Poll, to gauge AI confidence levels in the room. Most attendees rated themselves as “2” on a 1–4 scale, meaning they had some basic knowledge and had tried AI tools.

Download the results as an Excel file and use ChatGPT to turn the data into a table.

Encourage Level 4 users to lead internal CPD, and pairing Level 1s with AI buddies.

Lesson Plan Generation

Use ChatGPT and Diffit.

Use a Google Doc scaffold with dropdown menus to build detailed prompts for ChatGPT to generate full lesson plans, listening transcripts, and comprehension activities.
I scraped these excellent Open Education Notes from Joe Dale and deeply appreciate his enthusiasm and expertise.

Brisk Teaching

It is a Chrome extension that turns Docs or web pages into interactive Google Quizzes and podcasts. Brisk can even generate short audio dialogues in different languages, great for listening work and pronunciation.

Turbo Scribe

Turbo Scribe transcribes audio and video into editable text, even from YouTube videos without subtitles. Use it to create listening tasks. Bring transcripts into ChatGPT to build questions or summaries.

Suno

Suno.ai turns custom text into songs. Create a simple song in A2 French on opinions about food using lyrics from ChatGPT.

Mizou

Mizou is a GDPR-safe chatbot platform where students can chat with virtual characters like a French waiter. Teachers get full transcripts and feedback.

Padlet AI Image Feature

Padlet turns text into pictures—perfect for visual storytelling or spontaneous speaking.

How it works

Visit https://ta.padlet.com/image-generator
Enter a descriptive text prompt for the image you want to create.
Optionally select from six different style options: Photo Realistic, Oil Painting, Children’s Book, Watercolor, Sketch, or 3D Animation).
Choose the aspect ratio for your photo.
Click the arrow to generate several images.

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 15:30:12 +0100

I feel productive when I use Sundays to look ahead in my journals and look behind by closing tabs in my phone’s browser.

Collaborating through Artifacts

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 10:43:00 +0100

I have started using my microblog as a transit point for Claude artifacts sometimes with PW-controlled links. When Microblog lagged as I started publishing these types of items, I reverted to an earlier Microblog design.

I’m also collaborating with part of one of my Obsidian Vaults. I’ve given an entire directory to the best instructional designer in Ireland so I can easily get a sanity check.

Collaborating through Artifacts

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 08:43:10 +0000

Addicting, brains, and children

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:13:01 +0100

I think the user experience that has been refined by aocial media is an on ramp for social disorders. Some courts agree.

Trial lawyers are trying to copy the Big Tobacco playbook by arguing that socual media company executives concealed knowledge that their sites are addictive and deleterious to kids.

“This case is as easy as ABC,” lead trial attorney Mark Lanier told the jury. “Addicting, brains, children,” adding companies “didn’t just build apps, they built traps.”

The WSJ editorial board does not agree:

www.wsj.com/opinion/s…

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 09:04:48 +0000

One of the best ways to authenticate your presence is by snapping a photo when you enter a geofenced area. I use my phone to do that when connected to Swarm, an app that I use to track my journeys (as seen photo). Today I am in Tipperary Town, watching elderly people use AI just with their phones.

Heathy focus on HRV

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:22:29 +0000

I am trying to watch for indicators that could point to a downhill slope with my health. One of the indicators is Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as measured by the medical grade Whoop fitness band that I wear. In the world of wearable tech, a 15% drop below my personal baseline is a significant deviation and that is the sort of decline I get once a fortnight. When Whoop alerts me about my HRV percentage, I read between the lines.

It is essential that I recognise when my automatic nervous system gets stuck in a “fight or flight” state. That can happen with me when I walk faster and longer with more than a 15kg load on my back. I also trigger my HRV when I have more than four coffees a day, when I sleep less than five hours for two or more consecutive nights or when I binge on chocolate.

From past experience, I know that if I let a 15% drop in my HRV last more than a week, I feel burned out.

Also from past experience, I can restore my HRV by simply relaxing drinking a lot of water. I’m thinking about going back to Seville to enjoy excellent HRV values.

Thanking my personal knowledge assistants

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:26:14 +0000

Late in 2025, I evolved from structured Personal Knowledge Management to verbally handling Personal Knowledge Assistants. Claude and Gemini have helped me reach this new height.

So today I asked Claude to verify what I know is a monumental evolutionary step for all knowledge workers. Claude thought about this and spun up this proof:

claude.ai/share/39d…

Learning About People and Pages in Books

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 08:22:48 +0100

I occasionally use Google Ngram Viewer to show the frequency of occurrence, over time, of term(s) (words or phrases) enclosed within commas. I can use Ngrams to search the entire Google Books corpus of books captured via Google’s OCR. This isn’t a complete reach of all printed books because several books written in Dutch that I have aren’t captured by the Ngram Viewer.

Researchers should treat Ngram data as indicative of trends in a large but biased sample of print culture, not as a comprehensive record of all published material.

I like poking around with the Ngrams User Interface because when I use the buttons along the top of the screen (see below) I can find the links to the actual texts where the desired words appeared during the chosen time period. Clicking on a point in the Ngram graph surfaces links to the underlying texts where a given term appears during the selected time period, enabling researchers to move efficiently from quantitative pattern to primary source.

I Ngrammed Peter Thiel to confirm how effective he has been to keep his name out of written material while he simultaneously exerts his over-arching influence on our lives. The Ngram viewer of Peter Thiel reveals a striking scarcity of mentions relative to his documented influence on technology, politics, and media. This curious pattern may itself be a subject worth examining for researchers studying power, public visibility, and the construction of elite reputations.

Talking to Whoop #fitness

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 19:03:46 +0000

One of the most useful features of apps on phones and programs on laptops is the ability to use on-board microphones to ask qusstions. I have started asking my Whoop fitness app about how to keep me using healthy routines. Today Whoop delivered a playbook for me to use after I complete long duration fast walks. Now I am converting it into an audio clip to be used during cool-?down periods.