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Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Entries from December 2025

The Death of AI $$$

December 29th, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips All this $$$ is killing AI. I used to work in AI. That means that I researched things that might allow us to do things that we couldn’t do. I attempted to instruct a computer or, as we used to say, I attempted to write a computer program to do something that […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Communication · Language · Money · Technology · Word

Merry Christmas

December 25th, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Today is Christmas Day. Some thoughts. By most arbitrary calendars, today is Christmas Day. Many folks celebrate this as the day that a boy was born to a carpenter and his young wife in a stable in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago. Many folks celebrate this as a day to exchange gifts. […]

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Tags: Calendar · Family · Health · Life · People · Thank you

With Great Certainty

December 22nd, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I often hear people speak with great certainty. Further consideration, however, reveals almost no certainty. People like to speak with great certainty. I write those words because I often hear people speak with great certainty. If people don’t like to do that, why do they do it almost all the time? Great […]

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Tags: Clarity · Communication · Honesty · Leadership · Problems · Talk

The Writer’s Cottage

December 18th, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips “Just as soon as I build my writer’s cottage, I will write and write and write,” said no one who was actually writing and writing and writing. I am going to write and write and write. But first, I need to: I put the last bullet in the list just for fun. […]

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Tags: Commitment · Decide · Design · Work · Writing

Cleverly Deceptive

December 15th, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips AI has eaten the world. It is the latest and greatest thing…or is it? I hang around America’s Federal government. There are many new programs in our Federal government to push and pull and take advantage of AI. AI will do wonders. Isn’t it wonderfully wonderful? Sigh. Perhaps I am just too […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Engineering · Language · Mathematics · Systems

Fundamentals and Fads

December 11th, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips It must be difficult running a college and deciding what departments to create and what degrees to offer. It seems only yesterday that colleges started offering degrees in Data Science. Data Science was the sexiest job of the century or so said an article in Harvard Business Review. I guess they missed […]

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Data Science · Learning · Systems · Teaching

Surveillance (or is it testing?)

December 8th, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I don’t like surveillance. Why is someone surveilling me? It is sort of like testing a system I built. But are the testers out to get me or help me? I don’t like surveillance. I don’t like the police state. Why is someone surveilling me? I haven’t done anything. What about the […]

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Tags: Alternatives · America · Culture · Drones · Government · Language · Respect · Technology

Eating Asparagus

December 4th, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Influencing behavior via modeling instead of coating with chocolate syrup. I recently read an article written by a mother describing how she had her children eat vegetables. The answer applies to all behaviors that are distasteful to some persons. There is an old joke about a farmer who fed his dogs spinach. […]

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Tags: Communication · Consulting · Expectations · Leadership · Learning · Management

What Do You Want?

December 1st, 2025 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips A simple question can start a meaningful conversation that prevents bad things from happening. As I write this post, our elected representatives ended a partial shutdown of our Federal government a couple of days ago. Such shutdown set some type of record and brought lots of grief to thousands of people. I […]

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Tags: Conversation · Leadership · Learning · Management · Questions · Work