Ey ! 

I look out from my hotel room balcony, and felt the port beginning to stir. 

Birds were chirping across the rooftops as shops were starting to open. 

The sun started crawling across the buildings and would soon bathe this small island in light. 

A motorcycle passed below, its engine fading into the distance. 

As a storyteller, I’m only here on assignment—video documentation work for the construction of a new wind farm. 

Later today, massive wind turbines will roll into this sleepy island town. They’ll stand taller than anything here, spinning long after I’ve gone.

For now, though, it was just morning. 

Just quiet. And I was staring at the blinking cursor, hoping to write something that felt real.

I took a break and scrolled through the news. That’s when I saw it.

GPT-4.5 has passed the Turing test. Mistaken for a human more often than actual people.

I blinked. Reread it. And felt something… shift.

For years, people said it was easy to tell. That AI couldn't really fool us. In fact I said the same thing. 

That the human voice—its hesitations, its humor, its soul—was unmistakable.

But here we are.

I didn’t feel dread. I’ve seen this coming. 

But I did feel something else: a quiet grief. 

Not just about AI, but about the speed of everything. About how quickly this world is changing. Breakthrough after breakthrough.

Wind Farms rising in fishing towns. Machines writing their own stories.

And somewhere in the rush, the slow life—the one I grew up in—feels like it's drifting away.

I think about my son. 

About how the world he’ll inherit may feel more alien than anything I could’ve imagined when I was his age. Back in my 90’s, things changed slowly enough for you to notice. 

Now, by the time you understand something, it’s already obsolete.

Out here, surrounded by sea and silence, it’s easier to feel the weight of it. The hum of the future, already at the door.

I went back to my writing. 

Still just a guy, staring at a screen, trying to hold onto something human.

Annnd… this is how you write something without really writing something, lol.

Shoden "port man too" San

PS. today's email was different, yes because I've been out on a film project that involves the construction of an actual wind farm. Was just musing about this article i saw https://futurism.com/ai-model-turing-test where OpenAI's GPT-4.5 model was deemed to be the human 73 percent of the time.

what do you feel about the last "barrier" that used to separate us from AI being handily beaten? I read all your replies.

🎉

Pst. Don't Keep Me A Secret. refer this newsletter to your freelancer friends. This REALLY REALLY helps me a lot, thanks!