Always Be Ready to Leave (Even If You Never Do)
9 comments
·November 8, 2025sfpotter
onraglanroad
No, that's just the way some people write. Where do you think AI learnt to write like that?
@dang these complaints about AI are more tedious than any other complaints about the website. Might be time to add something to the "guidelines".
ptsneves
I agree. The complaints about AI are about the form and not the substance, ergo the substance is fine.
OutOfHere
Please cease and desist from labeling things as AI. If you want to criticize the material, assume good faith and criticize it as if it is written by a human.
sph
No em dashes, but there’s enough “it’s not X, it’s Y” give aways of LLM usage.
pstuart
I've used double dashes for years and now they get automatically turned into em dashes, and I'm not an LLM (that I can tell so far).
setopt
I manually type en- and em-dashes, which on Mac is easily typed using the Option key and on Linux is easily typed with a Compose key, and even on iOS you just long-press the hyphen key.
I had to learn the difference between hyphen, en-dash, and em-dash when typesetting scientific papers and theses in LaTeX, and after that it just doesn’t feel right to not use them "properly".
readthenotes1
I asked Perplexity to provide a witty reply--but none of the ones provided were amusing enough.
BinaryIgor
Very wise; have been following this approach since years and I highly recommend it. This one (from the article) is a gem:
"I’ll work like I might stay forever, and like I might leave tomorrow"
Besides practical benefits of this approach mentioned in the article, it's the attitude that brings you closer to stoicism that just makes your whole life, not only professional one, better.
Has a paragraph of the form "Talking to people who can actually change things? That’s professional problem-solving."? That's written by AI.