I found epazote at the farmers market yesterday, the Bosnian running the stand said they supply Cosme in the city, hence herbs like that and hoja santa available to us laypeople, which I threw in the Staub with tomatoes, onion, garlic, oregano, green olives, capers, the three tilapia filets my freezer needed to rid itself of, and the last of my ayocote morado beans.
It was my first attempt at gulf cooking but Veracruz is on the mind after seeing someone I knew from my first job shot the photography for Reyna and Maritza Vazquez’s Veracruz All Natural. (The most useful alert from LinkedIn all year, ty Mack!)
A. developed a new drink for the bar, reposado and cilantro and jalapeño and pineapple and agave. I freaked. Green juice para la noche.
Then he said something about the Spurs - I know we live in the land of the Knicks but still - watch whatchu say about tx - we’ve known each other maybe a year now and I’m surprised he didn’t know I was from Texas.
Then again I identify as Texan mostly when I speak Spanish; it’s useful context to the guy selling tamales in my neighborhood who tells me I can come back to practice anytime. eso chingao!
This is what I need anyone working with LLMs to remember:
The right context at the right time = eso chingao!
Too much context at the wrong time = crime.
Talk is cheap.
Restraint is an art.
Withholding is respect.
Editing is thinking.
Less is more.
Speed comes at a cost.
How many more ways can I say this?
Now everything is words, everything is recaps and research and context and supporting transcripts to show for it, bulleted lists tossed around Slack channels like hot potatoes, but where are the receipts to show why any of this matters?
Like the stuff that gets hidden in conversation trails with Claude, the insights that you coax out only if you were fully engaged, inhabiting the raw material to begin with:
“Can you clarify XXX? Every section needs to earn its place, deliver an insight. On the reality gap, that section doesn’t feel very rigorous. Can you either rethink it or absorb it into the YYY section? De-emphasize the ZZZ part — the better insight is how AAA. Make the BBB header more narrative. I also want to surface the tension between CCC and the DDD — the EEE they’re trying to attract, are they the type who would seek out FFF? I don’t expect this to resolve the tension but I want it to be more clear.”
Of course even after 21 rounds of edits with an LLM it will never be enough. (The above message was maybe round 3?)
Robert Macfarlane on the limitations of words:
“I’ve always felt very at ease with language’s failure. The question is not if language can meet its subject. Language will always be late for its subject, especially when that subject is water or light or world. The question is how it fails. Does it fail interestingly? Does it form a shatterbelt?”
It doesn’t benefit anyone to use LLMs like a river making smooth a rock.
Corporate work needs the jagged parts, the rough edges, what is unarticulateable to remain. There is no magic (read: no millions making) without the inherent failure of machines, the human spending costly time to bridge the gap.
It makes me think of a recent client meeting. We were presenting overly detailed strategy directions that we’d spent the weekend preparing. Really what would have sufficed was something tighter because the most valuable time for us was in getting the execs reacting to each other. But because of the nature of AI to just expand, expand, expand - that became the foundational layer in ways that didn’t always serve the goal.
--
My core skillset is editing. Editing is really just pruning down into the core message. The more you shorten it, the stronger the message usually gets.
It’s like poetry; poetry is about compressing the greatest amount of emotion into the fewest words (well, some styles of it). You should feel like you’re about to implode, or explode.
LLMs are a flat balloon, nothing to pop. I say this as a writer who uses Claude Code & Obsidian, who greatly values how LLMs index my overflowing files of context to help me think through writing. (Of course, files will never tell you when they’re overflowing; they don’t bulge like manila folders. But it makes me think of what water supply manager in Medina County is losing sleep because of million word Obsidians flooding the internet highways.)
Of course this is why I get hired.
To make Large Language Models Small Again. :)
Secret Granola Members - you should receive your summer zine in the mail this week!
you are one of my favorite writers <3