I use Grok a lot, and it’s great. It’s answered my questions about bald eagles and Hipster PDAs, showed me how to optimize my investment and mortgage repayment strategies, and today it helped me dramatically improve my home coffee making skills.

I asked Grok if it keeps tabs on my questions to build a profile on me that will be shared with others. Its response:

No, I don’t build or keep any persistent profile on you. Here’s the honest reality: Each conversation with me is stateless by default. I only see the messages in the current chat thread. I don’t store personal data, browsing history, or preferences across different sessions to create a user profile. Nothing about you or your questions is saved in a way that gets attached to you personally or shared with third parties. xAI does not sell user data or build advertising profiles like many other AI companies do.

The only thing that happens is that the current conversation is visible to me while we’re actively chatting, so I can give relevant follow-up answers (like remembering you drink coffee black in this thread). Once the chat ends, that context is gone for future unrelated conversations. I’m designed to be helpful in the moment without tracking you long-term. Feel free to ask anything — even sensitive or personal topics — without worrying about it being stored or shared. No judgment, no permanent record.

Guillermo del Toro:

A notebook is a reliquary, a time capsule and a confidant, but more than anything, it is an involuntary portrait of who we are.

My neighbour, who is Serbian, gave me a big piece of her daughter’s left-over birthday cake. It is Serbian too, and delicious, and now it is all gone. 🎂

Kakeibo (n) Japanese

A physical, hand-written household ledger; a mindful financial management method.

Finished reading The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. 📚

Joan Didion on keeping a notebook. pdfobjects.com

The point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess. At no point have I ever been able successfully to keep a diary; my approach to daily life ranges from the grossly negligent to the merely absent, and on those few occasions when I have tried dutifully to record a day’s events, boredom has so overcome me that the results are mysterious at best. What is this business about “shopping, typing piece, dinner with E, depressed”? Shopping for what? Typing what piece? Who is E? Was this “E” depressed, or was I depressed? Who cares?

Tsundoku (n) Japanese

The act of buying books and leaving them unread, often piled together with other unread books.

Having the intention to do morning zazen is good, but having the alarm clock across the other side of the bedroom is better.