Looking at the whole week, I can already see that my routine was really put out of whack due to #NightShift. I don’t know if I am just making excuses up, but it really does feel that way. I was not able to get my sleep pattern right, mostly breaking my 6 to 8 hour sleep period into two cycles. One perhaps within an hour of getting home from work, trying to sleep for 3 to 4 hours, and then waking up for a couple of hours and getting another 2 to 3 hours at the end of the day prior to heading off to work.

During my period of time awake, I really did not feel like doing my daily 30 minutes of skipping, reading, or meditating. I really should have pushed more.

It’s easy to say now, at the end of the week and looking back at the daily journal entries - it was a daily mental push to give myself excuses to do other things with my time.

What I do for work

Not sure I would call it work, as I actually do love my job. I’m not sure the English language has any appropriate words for it? If you can help me out here, let me know in the comments.

The only reason I am delving more into this area of my life is because I happened to have discussions with someone in comments of my #thoughts posts on the #fediverse and answering a few questions throughout.

I’m a police officer where I live, and I really enjoy helping people out when they need it most. I know a lot of us get jaded, joining a dream job only to find the reality of it is not what you think - but it really does take a certain mentality to look at the profession from different angles and to shift your focus from crime centric to victim centric and focusing on helping out the victim, communicating with the victim throughout the whole process.

We are trained when going to a job to focus on Victim -> Scene -> Offender. A lot of us get stuck in tunnel vision and want the fun stuff, chasing the offender and missing all the initial actions necessary for an investigation to be successful at court. And even more so, a lot of us forget in all of that, about the victim. Focusing only on the desired outcome with the offender.

In the end, that leads to burnout. As this job has tonnes of paperwork involved (at least in Victoria). Focusing on the outcome of the offender only to get a result at court that is essentially a slap on the wrist brings you down - and then, because you never focused on the victim - the victim is wondering what’s happened since police arrived - did police do nothing? You as a member now have no rapport with the victim.

If you keep yourself focused on Victim -> Scene -> Offender, not just at the initial job, but throughout the whole process, you are more likely to enjoy the full process, as is the victim going to understand the process by being spoken to like a human being, remembered and guided throughout. While the outcome at court may be the same result - your mind has been on helping a member of the community understand the process and know the likely outcome. This leads to a member of the community who understands the process we go through, understands the law system a little more, and is more likely to speak up to MP’s or within the community about our law system to make desired changes.

Anyway, this is one method I have come to enjoy my line of work in the mountain of paperwork and lack of time to do it.

Another method I have come to keep enjoying it, is #compartmentalising and using my daily journal keeping, and my blogging on my own domain name. Gone are the days of sitting on social media, scrolling an endless feed of algorithmically curated content to drain my stream of consciousness and just consume.

Black Mirror

Another method I kept myself sane during what time I had awake after night shift was to delve into the #BlackMIrror series. Season 7 was released, and I couldn’t resist digging in, as I really enjoy this series as someone that doesn’t actually watch TV anymore or go down the #YouTube rabbit holes and such.

Season 7 was really well done. I enjoyed every episode in it. I initially thought it would be like Season 6 and out of touch with the rest of the seasons, but this season did not disappoint in any way.

Looking at the world from different aspects of what could be with today’s technology, or soon to have technology with a bit of a satanical twist to them really makes for an interesting watch.

The first episode actually had me on a downer! And above I was saying keep myself sane by watching this season? Episode 1 was a drainer and I thought I’d need a psych to reground myself into reality!

I don’t want to go into any more detail about it, but you really should take the time out to watch them if you haven’t.

AI / LLM’s

Speaking of Black Mirror and technology - this week I felt that the LLM’s I had been using for discussions and troubleshooting felt off. #GPT and #DeepSeek were hallucinating information a lot more and spitting out false information to me, leading me down tracks of nonsense.

I was trying to troubleshoot and looking into content management systems that had built in #AcivityPub backends for my website.

Currently, I use micro.blog to host my website, and rely on its backend that enables me to follow people on the fediverse and comment/reply to their content and have discussions. It also enables my posts on my blog to appear on the fediverse and for any replies to end up on my website as well.

Micro.blog allows for the exporting of all posts and what not, which is great! But if I wanted to self-host, as well as keep my fediverse identity (@samuel@samuellison.com) I would also need a system that has an ActivityPub backend that is not just a platform with no ability to customise into a full website like what you are reading from now. I can use Mastodon, Pixelfed, GoToSocial, WriteFreely etc, but none of those offer what I need.

The LLM’s were spitting out so much false information that I was down a rabbit hole for 2 hours before I realised this was all nonsense. The LLM’s finally admitted that they were wrong when pressed, and that their information was based on “theoretical features” that didn’t yet exist!

Could it be that the #AISlop that is appearing more and more on the internet is causing #AI to become more useless when it comes to providing us with information?

I mean, a lot of content these days, including articles, stories, news, videos - are all AI generated by people that are prompting AI to write it. This makes AI gather the information it needs from the internet, assess, and then spit out the work for you.

Then, the next person does the same. AI repeats, gathers its information from itself (from AI generated content already on the web now - repeat) and spits out even more useless information.

Then, you have companies like #CloudFlare, a content delivery network, that attempts to protect its clientele by creating sophisticated mazes where AI is lead down these rabbit holes of information it thinks it is obtaining from legitimate sources, which is actually in itself being created on the fly by other AI technology and feeding the requesting AI/LLM with misinformation.

Have you noticed this starting to happen?

I personally think it’s a good thing. I mean, LLM’s have been stealing the work of artists and writers now for some time. Why are we going in the direction of AI replacing all our jobs, instead of making AI useful? Where are these AI that can come do my washing, my dishes, my gardening and other duties around the household to enable me to have more free time to do what I enjoy to do during my spare time?

I don’t need my job replaced by AI, I’m sure none of you do. All this talk of universal basic income and the likes. What will we do with our time, if what we enjoy to do is taken by AI? I hope not Episode 2, Season 1 of Black Mirror - Fifteen Million Merits!

Family Visiting

I had family visiting from Brisbane during my time doing night shifts. Means I missed out on a lot of opportune family time with members of the family I don’t generally get to see on a regular basis, which is a shame. But we did still get a few things done as family where I got to be involved. Including celebrating my father in laws 70th birthday with some wonderful food at #BoardWalkPizzeria in #CarolineSprings.

Also got to celebrate an Easter dinner with the family and cousins and all the kids. We guys played a few board games, including #munchkins and #Catan! My cousin made some beautiful #pizza which we all enjoyed very much!

John Carpenter’s: They Live

Saying that I generally don’t watch movies is somewhat of a lie. After seeing a post by @n1ghtw1re@defcon.social suggesting to go watch They Live by John Carpenter I went and did just that. I can be swayed into watching movies by those I choose to follow and consume information from - I suppose!

Actually quite a good movie indeed! Made in 1988 and having a Black Mirror kind of vibe where humanity has actually been taken over by an alien race, and we are stuck in this illusionary hypnotised state of consuming information and complying.

Actually there’s a line in this movie which is featured in the Duke Nukem games, “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all outta gum”, vs the original movie quote, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I’m all outta bubblegum”.

Actually, the game was somewhat inspired by this movie. Not only in the line, but the hog police (aliens), the whole look of Duke Nukem and more!

Check out the article written by @n1ghtw1re@defcon.social here.

Conclusion

If you read my blurb of consciousness recapping on my week, good on you, and thank you. I hope that you enjoyed it and I look forward to making another recap next week to reflect on and look back to in the future!