While ChatGPT seldom produces anything like my favorite (or humorous) blogs, I'm learning that working together we can distill years of work.
For example, it can be difficult for me to recall or find online the citation for why, in 1995, advocate Jim Puckett failed to draw what he called a "red line", and Basel Convention instead allowed a "green list" that included scrap recycling (like lead acid batteries) and repair and reuse of used electronics.
ChatGPT finds it quickly and creates a timeline for the 1995 decision and subsequent years Puckett spent trying to "Amend" the Basel Convention - while... disengenuously?.. claiming that his proposed amendment banning exports intended for reuse ("the reuse excuse") was actually in fact international law. I first exchanged emails with Jim Puckett in 2002 when he released his "Exporting Harm" report to a long DSL email chain. I hit "copy all" and met EPA's Bob Tonetti who agreed with my note that the Green List (Annex IX B) did in fact say what I said...
So that paragraph is an example of wordiness that contains important timeline context which, in year 20 of the blog, I intend to synthesize. ChatGPT finds itself contaminated by all the press releases and false claims Jim Puckett has made over 3 decades, but I'm able to bird dog for it things like repair factories that kept a low profile those years, but which were the advocates who won out in 1995's Green List. As well they should.
I spent over an hour exchanging points with ChatGPT yesterday, and will need some time to edit and make them both readable and hopefully more pithy and entertaining. Below is the summary of the effort I asked it to produce from the hour's dialogue. By the way, I realized that what I previously thought was flattery from the AI is actually by design, because it needs to reward people like me to in fact bird dog and correct its impressions.
Session Notes. More to come. By the anniversary of the first 2006 Good Point Blogspot, I may have the book I've been trying to write, sometimes unconsciously. Draft opening will be a summary of Hillbilly Hare, the Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny episode to introduce the concept of "poverty porn".
Basel Convention and Used Products — Session Notes
Based on our discussion from Wednesday, December 17, 2025
(America/New_York)
