Chad Comello

  • Training AI with poetry

    Hollis Robbins on training LLMs on poetry and the concept of judging “greatness”:

    Poetry is a kind of test case, a training ground for understanding what “expert knowledge” brings to the table. Mercor’s bet is that the same process that trains a model to write better poetry can train it to do better legal drafts, better medical diagnoses, better financial analyses. The core assumption is that professional judgment (a lawyer deciding how to frame an argument) and aesthetic judgment (a poet deciding how to break a line) are computationally similar problems. Both require the model to navigate an “unbounded” decision space where there is no single “correct” answer, only “better” or “worse” ones based on expert consensus.

    Suddenly the “they should have sent a poet” line from Contact takes on a whole new meaning.

    This is a victory for the humanities I guess? Perhaps a Pyrrhic one though.

  • 2025 in review

    See previous year in review posts.

    My view from the end of all things 2025:

    Joined my buddy Nicole Kidman at AMC for a 9:15am showing of Marty Supreme. Don’t think I’ve ever done such an early showtime before, but it’s a great way to start the day.

    Here’s a snapshot of what this year looked like for me:

  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Size of Life is another banger from Neal.fun, one of the best places on the internet.

    Shoutout to ROMAN and other obscure Excel functions.

    Unfortunately, I have to side with Marco Rubio in the Times New Roman/Calibri font war.

    In praise of the prescient and “punishing digitopia” of Spielberg’s Minority Report.

    The real reasons you’re not reading.

  • Christmastime was here

    Some thoughts after another Christmas season:

    • In many ways our two boys were the ideal ages for it. The six year old has done it enough times to know what’s coming and anticipate the different elements, and the two year old is like a joyful, bright-eyed little elf who’s down for anything.
    • Introducing them to the season’s traditions and iconography was a trip. The lore is so deep that it’s like catching up a new viewer of a plot-heavy TV series at season six—at some point you’re like “just go with it” and luckily they have no problem with that.
    • One evening we went to a local park with a big walkable light display, which had a Santa and Nativity Scene and trains and a spinning penguin and a bunch of other seasonal regulars. That combination of completely different characters and mythologies is fascinating and honestly awesome. It’s a melting-pot holiday season and I’m here for it.
    • We saw a community production of A Christmas Carol that used the original Dickens language, which meant it was trickier for the boys to follow (though having seen The Muppet Christmas Carol already definitely helped) but also a richer experience—especially thanks to the haunting audiovisual effects during the Ghost Marley sequence.
    • As a teenager I was all “Christmastime is so phony and corporate” and now I’m like “haul out the holly, baby!” Yet once the 26th arrives, I can’t wait to get the tree and decorations back in storage to reclaim space in our small house. (Christmas music is still allowed until New Year’s Eve, capped off with “Auld Lang Syne” of course.)
    • I didn’t have much time to watch many Christmas movies that I’d normally get to, including It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, but one I did rewatch that’ll continue to be part of the rotation for years to come is The Holdovers.

  • Blogging as whittling

    In his year-in-review post, Tom MacWright lauds the benefits of blogging:

    Blogging has been, for me, an unalloyed success. It has connected me to people, given me a place to develop my thoughts, made some of my work on the internet – a place always decaying and forgetting – a little more permanent. I absolutely recommend everyone do it.

    I know why most people don’t do it: not enough time and too much fear of publishing ‘bad writing.’ Maybe ‘nothing to write about,’ too, though this never seems that real to me, given how the average person I meet has interesting thoughts and ideas to share.

    I second this sentiment. Next year will be my 20th blogging anniversary (!!), and at least for the way I approach it—as a personal, generalist, and low-stakes log of what occupies my interest and attention at the moment—it’s something you should be able to slide in between everything else in your life. That’s to me what makes it a fun and sustainable hobby.

    It feels like people think writing a blog post equates to building an ornate wooden desk: something that requires intense dedication and specialized skills and a huge time commitment. But really it’s more like whittling a stick: dash off a few (key)strokes, make your point, and you’re done. Then whittle another one. That’s it.

    He also mentions removing analytics, which is key. If you’re in it for the likes or views or revenue, then it’s a hustle, not a hobby, and you’re bound to abandon it or get burned out.

  • Media of the moment

    An ongoing series

    Christmas music. ‘Tis the season! Some newer albums I’ve been enjoying: Happy Golden Days by The Arcadian Wild, Sleigher by Ben Folds, and Family Christmas Album Vol. II by The Oh Hellos.

    Homestar Runner. I didn’t realize this web series was still around, but browsing the website was a blast from my high-school past when this became an early-2000s pre-social media viral phenomenon. Episode #4 of Teen Girl Squad contains two quotes that remain with me to this day: “Y’all are so wack.” “Wiggidy-wack?” “Nope, just regular type”. And: “Grood. I mean good. And great. Great and good.”

    Little Old You by The Okee Dokee Brothers. A new Okee Dokee Brothers album is like a national holiday in our household, so we’re very much enjoying this new one. Favorite track so far: “Apple of My Eye”

    Death By Lightning. This Netflix miniseries adaptation of Candace Millard’s Death of the Republic (one of the best books of the 2010s) is textbook Chad, and also kind of a silly melodrama. If I didn’t know its context and backstory I would have so many questions about this stranger-than-fiction saga.

    Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee. I can’t remember which blogger recommended it, but this book is a fascinating history of Apple’s place in the global economy over the last 30 years. I’d forgetten how much the one-two punch of the iPod and iTunes for Windows skyrocketed Apple into the stratosphere. RIP to my beloved 3rd generation iPod Classic 🥲

    Forward by The Swell Season. I’m enjoying this new album from Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, which feels like a spiritual sequel to Once.

  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner.

    How Marlon Brando changed acting.

    Red sprites FTW.

    How to fix a typewriter and your life.

  • Steps involved in fall leaves clean-up

    For me:

    1. Clear out gutters
    2. Methodically blow leaves from around the yard perimeter into the middle area, dealing with wind along the way
    3. Initial mow to mulch the leaves
    4. Blow and rake again into a smaller area
    5. Start bagging
    6. Continually rake into a smaller area in between bagging until done
    7. Drag heavy bags to the side of the house to await garbage day
    8. Put away equipment

    For my boys:

    1. Run and jump through leaf piles
    2. See #1

  • Dadgeball!

    The hit game this autumn among my six year old’s playground friend group was one-way dodgeball, where another dad and I tried to nail them with a regular-sized dodgeball and one of those small rubber balls that come with the Little Tikes basketball sets.

    We’ll call this game… Dadgeball.

    Let me tell you: there are few greater thrills for a dad than when your kid is finally old enough for full-force throws. I mean we were really whipping it at them and they looooved it. They couldn’t get enough of trying to dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge their way around the jungle gym.

    “Oh, you’re really not holding back,” said one mom.

    Effin’ A, Cotton. Effin’ A!

  • Vega + aurora borealis = a movie sequel waiting to happen

    Thanks to a few large coronal mass ejections from the sun, Chicagoland was treated to a brilliant display of aurora borealis tonight, which I attempted to capture through the trees outside our front door:

    Don’t think I’ve ever seen it in person before, so that was neat.

    Also neat? (Stay with me here…) If you zoom in on the top photo you’ll see the star Vega at dead center, which was way brighter in person. In the 1997 movie Contact, Vega was where the mysterious alien radio signal was coming from. And in the 2000 movie Frequency, the Northern Lights were the catalyst for the mysterious time-traveling radio signal.

    Ipso facto, whether it’s aliens or geomagnetism or something else wonderfully mysterious, whatever is going on tonight should serve as the basis of a crossover sequel to both of these great movies.

  • A list of all my nicknames

    In the spirit of my band names list, here’s an alphabetical list of every nickname I can think of that friends, family, colleagues, or acquaintances have given me over the years. Some make more sense than others, but I will not be explaining any of them.

    • Beardy
    • C-Co
    • C-Squared
    • Chacho
    • Chadder
    • Chaddy
    • Chaddy Bad
    • Chaddington Bear
    • Chadicles
    • Chadilocks
    • Chadly
    • Chadster
    • Chadston
    • Chadwick Barnes
    • Chadwick Wellington
    • Cochise
    • Comello Yellow
    • Commish
    • Fuzz / Fuzz Buzz
    • Red Scare
    • Simba
    • Snifkin
    • Yukon

  • A list of potential band names

    For years I’ve kept a running list of random phrases I’ve seen or heard in the wild—or inadvertently made myself—that sounded like they’d make a great name for a band, album, movie, or other work of art. I can’t remember where most of them came from, but that’s what makes them kinda fun.

    Rather than let them languish in my Notes app, I figured I’d fling them out into the internet for anyone to claim and use. (I’ll probably keep adding to this as I encounter more.) Enjoy!

    • Double Edged Brownies
    • Bigass Cherries
    • Janky Knobs
    • Chocolate Situations
    • Elegant Neck
    • Mucky Thud
    • Sleepish Fits
    • The Yonder Colors
    • Tiny & The Carpenter’s Wife (somehow I remember this is a very obscure direct quote from the novel My Ántonia by Willa Cather)
    • Owl Dogs
    • Buckthorn & the Invasive Species
    • Inspiring Sandwiches
    • Punkass Mist
    • Bagel Czar
    • Letters of an Unknown Alphabet
    • Patron with the Bird
    • Serious Cheeks (something I said about our firstborn as a baby, who had some seriously chunky cheeks)
    • Static Wizards
    • Mama Hooks
    • Minimal Pillows

  • Links of the moment

    An ongoing series

    As a Class of 2010 graduate, I can confirm: the best time to be in college was 2006-2010.

    Approaching our work as art can change our worlds.

    Cards Against Humanity Explains the Joke is an “incredible informational product that is 100% EXEMPT FROM DONALD TRUMP’S STUPID TARIFFS!”

    A dad turned his favorite albums into playable trading cards for his kids. (Related from The Onion: Cool Dad Raising Daughter On Media That Will Put Her Entirely Out Of Touch With Her Generation)

  • My sons’ media of the moment

    A spinoff of an ongoing series

    A Minecraft Movie. We watched this a few weeks ago as a special treat and the Minecraft-obsessed six year old was completely locked in. (To be clear, he’s never played the actual game but has absorbed a lot about it from books and his friends.)

    Books. The two year old’s current favorites: Stir Crack Whisk Bake: A Little Book About Little Cakes, Spooky Celebrations Around the World by Matt Ralphs & Veronica Kotyk, Daniel Tiger’s Potty Time, and more. The 6 year old’s current favorites: pretty much just Hilo graphic novel series.

    Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Just like his brother at this age, the two year old has become a regular in the ‘Hood—both through the show itself and the Tonies and Yotos.

  • Do Not Pass, Pass With Care

    We were driving through southern Michigan awhile back and I noticed how the signs on country roads would change between DO NOT PASS when approaching a hill or turn and then PASS WITH CARE once the road straightened out.

    But it was rather comical how quickly they went back and forth, because it’s not like a straight-shot through the desert—the roads are constantly winding through the rolling woodlands and farmlands of the Midwest. So it had the effect of “Do Not Pass, Pass With Care, Do Not Pass, Pass With Care…” And on and on and on.

    Perhaps there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but regardless it fits nicely alongside “take your time, hurry up” and “hurry up and wait” as a catchy contradiction.

  • Recent Views

    More photography here.

    Caught this ornate fountain sculpture in Middleton, WI, in the perfect morning light:

    Specters of autumn at our local park:

    Will never get enough of the two year old’s chubby hands:

    And the two year old will never get enough of playing fetch with his fur cousin:

    Spotted this heart-shaped root on my sister-in-law’s land:

    The six year old loves being in the wilds of nature but also loves making orderly piles:

    A rare trampoline adventure for the boys:

  • Against future-proofing

    Joan Westenberg on the absurdity of trying to future-proof your life:

    We’ve all seen the LinkedIn exhortations: learn the right skills before the machines take your job, invest in the right companies before automation hollows out the market, anticipate the right policies before artificial intelligence rearranges the political order. Etc.

    But the more we live in that posture of anxious fortification, the more absurd it feels. Every week there’s a new prediction, every week there’s some new vision. A Greek chorus of confident forecasters seem to dominate every social platform, declaring that AI will erase half of all jobs by 2030, or 2040, or it will create more jobs than it destroys, or it’ll go bust and we’ll all move on, or AGI will arrive…

    We keep repeating the same hubris. We keep praying to the oracle of prediction, hoping we’ll be spared the storm. But the storm always comes. And it never looks like the forecast.

    Read the whole piece.

  • Three layers of focus

    In his book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari quotes former Google strategist James Williams about what he classifies as three types of focus.

    1. Spotlight:

    This is when you focus on “immediate actions,” like, “I’m going to walk into the kitchen and make a coffee.” You want to find your glasses. You want to see what’s in the fridge. You want to finish reading this chapter of my book. It’s called the spotlight because as I explained earlier—it involves narrowing down your focus. If your spotlight gets distracted or disrupted, you are prevented from carrying out near-term actions like these.

    2. Starlight:

    This is the focus you can apply to your “longer-term goals—projects over time.” You want to write a book. You want to set up a business. You want to be a good parent. It’s called the starlight because when you feel lost, you look up to the stars, and you remember the direction you are traveling in. If you become distracted from your starlight, he said, you “lose sight of the longer-term goals.” You start to forget where you are headed.

    3. Daylight:

    This is the form of focus that makes it possible for you to know what your longer-term goals are in the first place. How do you know you want to write a book? How do you know you want to set up a business? How do you know what it means to be a good parent? Without being able to reflect and think clearly, you won’t be able to figure these things out.

    He gave it this name because it’s only when a scene is flooded with daylight that you can see the things around you most clearly. If you get so distracted that you lose your sense of the daylight, James says, “In many ways you may not even be able to figure out who you are, what you wanted to do, [or] where you want to go.” …

    You can only find your starlight and your daylight if you have sustained periods of reflection, mind-wandering, and deep thought. James has come to believe that our attention crisis is depriving us of all three of these forms of focus. We are losing our light.