Month: August 2025

Categories
AI

Research Prompts

I recently came across a prompt in a post on X which has proven to be quite useful in brainstorming.

Here’s the prompt, tailored in this example to research the area of AI super intelligence:

You are a professional ghostwriter. Generate 15 high-signal content ideas on how AI labs will reach artificial super intelligence.

For each idea:
- Give me a hook line (<= 15 words, curiosity-driven)
- Outline the structure in 3 parts (hook, point, action)
- Include an example or analogy that will resonate with an audience of college graduates. 

Make them practical, non-generic, and designed to spark discussion.

To see how it works, just copy it and put it into your favorite large language model. I think you’ll be surprised and pleased with what results you obtain.

After the first pass, you can try this next:

Pick the best one and draft it.

You’ll get back a draft article about the model’s choice for the best among the 15 it first produced.

You can then steer the model using a prompt like this:

Tune the draft for the vc/tech founder voice. Also speculate that Google is most likely the winner.

It’s fun to see how the article evolves further with that voice and more speculation about the possible winner.

You can then ask the model to redraft it further:

Sketch two spicy counterarguments to the main thesis.

And so on. It’s fun to do a deep dive on a topic using this approach. The wide range of the first fifteen results narrows and deepens as you ask the model to refine the draft it has produced.

I’ve lost track of time exploring a topic of interest to me as I got back and forth with the model evolving my understanding. Some models will even assist you in that process by suggesting next steps along the way.

Let me know of your experiences using this kind of approach!

Categories
YouTube

Those Microphones

I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I’ve become overly sensitive to watching a podcast host who has a big microphone blocking much of her face. Almost always the microphone is from Shure.

I wanted to understand more about this. Why wouldn’t a host want a microphone that is completely out of the picture? Obviously many don’t. So I asked ChatGPT:

I see lots of podcasters who all use shure microphones. These microphones are big, get in the way on video, and just seem clunky. Why do they choose shure? Are there any good competitors? If not why not?

Here’s what I got back:

Great question — and you’ve put your finger on one of those funny “herd instincts” in media tech. Let’s unpack it.

Why so many podcasters use Shure mics (especially the SM7B):

  1. Broadcast pedigree — The Shure SM7B has been around since the late 1970s. It’s been used on radio for decades and famously on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. That gives it “street cred” — it looks and feels like a serious mic.
  2. Voice flattering — It’s tuned to smooth out harshness in the human voice and reduce plosives (“p” and “b” sounds). That makes beginners sound more professional without too much post-production.
  3. Dynamic mic advantage — Unlike condensers (which are more sensitive), dynamic mics like the SM7B pick up less room noise. Most podcasters are recording in bedrooms, not sound-treated studios, so a forgiving mic is a lifesaver.
  4. Brand signaling — It’s become the “uniform” of podcasting. Having one on-camera signals: “I’m legit.” It’s the Tesla Cybertruck of mics: polarizing but impossible to ignore.

The downsides (you’ve noticed them):

  • Huge and in-your-face — On video it blocks faces and looks like you’re talking into a loaf of black bread.
  • Gain-hungry — You need a strong preamp or booster (like a Cloudlifter). Plugging it straight into a cheap interface makes it sound dull.
  • Expensive — At ~$400 plus the extras, it’s a commitment.

Good competitors:

  • Electro-Voice RE20 / RE27 — Classic broadcast mics, slimmer profile, very warm tone. NPR and radio stations love these.
  • Heil PR40 — Also designed for voice, with a bit more brightness. Not quite as “trendy,” but respected.
  • Rode PodMic / Procaster — Cheaper, compact, and solid performers. Rode has been eating into Shure’s market with podcaster-focused gear.
  • Shure MV7 — The “little brother” of the SM7B with USB and XLR. Way more convenient for non-audio-nerds.
  • Neumann BCM 705 — A premium option, smaller footprint, very clean sound.

Why hasn’t anything displaced Shure yet?

  • Psychology + aesthetics: once something becomes the look, it reinforces itself. Guests expect to see it, hosts feel validated by it, and audiences associate it with professionalism.
  • Durability: Shures are tanks. They can take years of daily use.
  • Sound profile: Competitors may be better in certain ways, but the SM7B’s “radio-ready voice” is a safe bet for all kinds of voices.

If video is your main focus and you don’t want a mic blocking your face, the Electro-Voice RE20 on a side boom, or even a lavalier or shotgun mic just out of frame, can give you pro sound without the giant mic visual.

Categories
Writing

Too Late

“Doesn’t it always happen that as soon as you’ve sent it, suddenly you notice something you want to change? You read your own work differently once you’ve shared it because you are—in that moment after you’ve hit the send button, or stuffed that envelope into the mail slot—rereading your work as the person to whom you’ve just sent it. The circle around your work suddenly grows wider. But now that you have a little more room in which to read it clearly, you’ve sent it out. It’s too late.” (Dani Shapiro, Still Writing)

Indeed.

Categories
Writing

Writing vs Speaking

“People often assume they know how to write because they know how to speak. There are deep and important connections between spoken and written language, but they’re not the same thing.” (Richard Rhodes, How to Write)

It’s always a clarifying experience for me to write. Fascinating how that works.

Speaking and writing operate in fundamentally different contexts, serve different purposes, and engage different cognitive processes. When we speak, we have immediate feedback from our audience. We can see confusion in someone’s eyes and clarify what we’re saying on the spot. We can use tone of voice, facial expressions, and gestures to add layers of meaning. We can pause, backtrack, and reformulate our thoughts in real-time.

Writing, by contrast, is a solitary act of communication across time and space. The writer must anticipate the reader’s needs, questions, and potential misunderstandings without any immediate feedback. Every word must carry its full weight because there’s no opportunity for clarification through tone or gesture.

Consider how we organize information differently in speech versus writing. In conversation, we might circle back to a point several times, approaching it from different angles as we gauge our listener’s understanding. In writing, this same approach would likely confuse readers who expect a more linear, structured presentation of ideas.

Speaking is largely automatic—we think and talk simultaneously, often discovering what we want to say in the process of saying it. Writing, however, requires us to think, plan, draft, revise, and refine. It’s a recursive process that demands we hold multiple considerations in mind: our overall purpose, our specific audience, the clarity of our current sentence, the flow from the previous paragraph, and the setup for what’s coming next.

There is one mode of writing that is very similar to speaking: free writing. In this mode, we discard the more formal steps of formal writing and just get words out of our brain on to the paper or into the computer.

A modification of free writing is brainstorming by speaking into an audio recording, perhaps while we’re on our morning walk. Another might be to use mind mapping tools to help us quickly capture and layout related ideas.

We can extend what we captured in a free writing exercise by sharing it with an LLM and asking for reactions, additional ideas, etc. Made possible by the introduction of chatbots a couple of years ago, these tools can be very helpful – just like interacting with a good friend or work colleague can help us refine our thoughts. Then we can be in a more developed position to more formally write.