Role versus Roll

Roll versus Role

As in Roll Playing Games versus Role Playing Games, at least in the style sense. Both are fun, and in my experience it's just where groups of folks settle into.

Where I've seen it, probably the key element is battle mats, grids, and figures. Theater of the mind type games tend to stay away from that level of detail, as it has a tendency to break the flow of play.

It's not an exclusive "they never do that", as the mats come out and the layouts are drawn up, but more of a tendency. Rule of cool hangs out here somewhere, as well.

I've also experienced here the roll-playing tendency to tinker with the rule sets. Blue and red box morphing into Advanced is the canonical pathway, also think of Rolemaster, Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Shadowrun, etc.

Which then eventually resulted in systems like World of Darkness, sort of the roll player's tinkering focused on getting a system that allowed and encouraged role players to come in and enjoy the pool.

I wonder how this plays out in story?

Let's see if this makes sense. Alien, the first movie, feels like it would be a Role player's movie. Ambience, setting, intense character focus.

At the same time, it's a locked-room mystery with very clear rules of engagement that are respected. Form follows function throughout.

Aliens, the second movie, feels like it should be the Roll player's movie. Jam pack the action, get moving, put cool guns and gizmos in the hands of the players and watch them go. Gonzo in the best way possible, and you can definitely see it when rule of cool is invoked, can't you?

But the role players steal the show. Bishop and Ripley especially, "back off and nuke 'em from orbit" too, it's like those moments in a good tight game where someone pulls off a one-liner that breaks the room.

What was built in the first movie, character wise, has carried over. Changed, of course, evolved and adapted, but inescapably linked.

Carpenter's The Thing and Big Trouble In Little China have a bit of this quality as well, and almost the same setup. Locked room versus gonzo, same actor and director for both, on the face of it a character focus versus a "never mind all that, let's get to the good stuff" extravaganza.

But the characters, and really it's the actors, we know that right? Everyone, James, Victor, Dennis, they're all in on this one, no seat belts, and those broad strokes become impressionistic fancy to get lost in.

These are films that, for me, work as synthesis of the duality. Are there other examples that break down on retrospect. Meaning, can I look to others and feel that, on the level we're talking about, they don't work anymore?

Road House and the first two Terminator movies come to mind, and for the same reason. The dreaded railroad syndrome.

Road House, the first one, feels in my memory like it was a set up, the GM wrote down all the set pieces and by god was going to hit every one. Because that's what was supposed to happen.

Which really just means, in this case, that a 1989 movie had to hit all the elements that made a 1980's movie "work" for the studios and producers of the time. The formula had to be set. That it worked at the time, for me comes down to Patrick, of course, but now I see it mostly as everyone having a good time, but with the seams showing.

The Terminator movies, well, that's Cameron all the way; it's when I look at all of his movies together that the rails become visible at every step. Sigourney, Kate, Linda, and yes Arnold save him from himself in the best examples; and I truly do love Jamie Lee and Arnold together. But they can only dance the rails, they can't make them go away entirely.

What about the other side of the coin then?

As much as I loved it then and now in my memory, Blade Runner. And the corollary, Total Recall and other Phillip Dick stories.

These all feel like an extend campaign where the GM could only get a couple folks together for any given night for weeks or months at a time. Everybody had a great time on any given night, but they were so separate from each other that, when you staple the pieces together, the corners overlap.

Nightmare on Elm Stree, Halloween, Friday the 13th, since they're built as series we have to take them as series: the player taking the bad guy role, and in a couple cases the other player who took on the surviving nemesis, were having so much fun that they dominated everything else.

To the point where the rest of the group stopped showing up after the first couple runs because there was no room for them in the game.

There's another type of interesting failure here as well: the one where the GM came up with what they think of as their best setup ever...

and all the players show up, don't have a clue what's going on, but they dig and give it their best shot anyway.

And as much as I love John Carpenter, this is where Prince of Darkness and In the Mouth of Madness live.

Aside: this the role side of the roll failure that is or can be a Lucas movie. With Lucas, it's more like all the players are there, they know exactly what they need to do, they're having a fantastic time, but the GM keeps handing them slips of paper with lines they're supposed to read.

So all the players read the lines and get back to doing what they're doing. Eveyrone has fun and delivers, with a running gag over what the GM's story is supposed to be doing.

John on the other hand, for Darkness and Madness, just confused the hell out of his players from day one through the end.

Another aside: End of Days and Constantine were two that I absolutely adored when I saw them, I remember that. Here and now they almost feel like responses to Carpenter's films, like one of the players from John's games moved and told the story of those games to their new GM.

Who got excited and tried their hand at it. In some ways, both Days and Constantine work better, but they still stumble a bit in similar fashion.

The Golden Child too, though it's not a response film in the same way. As much fun as Eddie and Charles were having...

I have to wonder if it's the general subject. On some level, they're all a bit of "Rosemary's Baby, but what if the cultists were gun-toting martial artists rather than New York neighbors?"

Or see why HP Lovecraft's conspiracy theorist's approach to how the world ends doesn't hold up as well as you'd think it would on film. Not that that's a blanket statement, either, considering that Alien and The Thing (Carpenter's version) are, to me at least, the best film versions of a Lovecraftian story yet presented.

There is, to me, an ultimate version of all of these. The Disney Star Wars sequels.

Here, it's like a con game room, tournament style, where we've got multiple nights, a set of common campaign notes, but each table has complete free reign to do what they want.

Every table has a completely different game going on, wildly divergent from each other in tone and style and where they want to go with this, and there's some poor sap running around journaling each table to try and build something coherent out of the confusion.

The top of each movie feels like "Day 1 here's your notes, Day 2 here's what we came up with from how you all ran it, Day 3 oh my god you folks are fantastic here's where we think it's going next!" while someone who thought they were in charge is doing the "I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue" bit in the back room.

I probably should stop here.

No really. But I can't. Because, however much I started this mess with a game analogy, scanning back through and I find myself compelled to address the elephant in the room.

I've picked on Phillip and HP and Carpenter and James and George. Well, and I've praised them too, because whatever I may say about that some of these films don't feel the same, that's in the rearview mirror.

Every one I've named, and many more, have a warm place in my heart. These and more are all movies that I enjoyed.

So to where I'm going, so please don't anyone let go of that. It's just that, if we're really going to talk films made in our little corner of the world called "genre movies", we have to talk Stephen King.

Because let's face it, when you add up on your fingers and toes the number of movies made from one writer's vision, King's the king. And I won't distinguish film from TV or what have you because at this point it's just silly.

Really: other than Stoker and Shelley, in our little world it's all about Stephen. The stories my friend, it's the stories.

Carrie the film came out in 1976. As we speak, here in 2025 and running on 50 years later, the web bots tell me there are 15 of Stephen's titles currently in development.

Carrie. Salem's Lot. The Shining. Christine. Hell, if I'm reading the list correctly, every one of those 50 years and counting has had either a Stephen King movie/what have you released, or somebody was getting ready to send one out.

There's no way in hell I'm picking apart every one of those. We'd be here for months, and my interest and yours would flag long before we ran out of stuff to talk about.

That said, can we make any sense of this stew, as a body of work? I mean, given what we're talking about?

If we're talking about these films in game terms, what we're dealing with here is the GM who's ideas are so big and fun that they can always fill the table. And it goes on year after year, there's always something more to work with.

And it doesn't matter what style any of the players work in, there's something there they can enjoy. The Body? Shawshank? The Shining? And sure those are the tentpoles, but the character focus and the story work hand in hand.

It, Salem's Lot (I prefer the first one, the TV mini series), Needful Things: sandbox style, really.

The Stand wants to be a sandbox, but at some point the GM had to add rails because they'd have just wandered around for years otherwise (and Stephen admitted it because he saw it happening while he was writing it!).

Misery and Dolores Claiborne are Kathy's movies. The Gunslinger movies so far have been the GM's big ideas that no one can quite make sense of. Maximum Overdrive? Ok I'll leave that one alone, but Creepshow was lots of silly fun.

And, to continue another small theme, we've got a world here where the "best" Stephen King movie is the first two seasons of Stranger Things, at least where we set aside Stand By Me and Shawshank and The Shining.

Ok, aside: Stephen has his reasons, oft quoted, for not liking how Kubrick approached his work. That's fine, but I prefer the Kubrick movie by far to the TV series later released. I'll note that the director of Doctor Sleep appears to have felt similarly.

Kubrick, Nicholson, and Duvall got the story on a fundamental level, and their work together delivered something special. From this far distant outsider's view, I read Stephen's view as being distinctly uncomfortable with finding that some of, perhaps many of the elements the writer viewed as important could be jettisoned so readily.

No one likes to be told that what they thought critical was set dressing after all.

But I also find it unfair to Kubrick, Jack, and Shelley. The history that forms so much of the book is there on screen as subtext and innuendo. It's in Shelley's eyes and posture throughout the leadup to the typewriter scene. Just as it's there in Jack's defensiveness.

And there was never going to be a chance to translate Danny's inner strength to the screen. The ages don't match up. Any more than Jake Lloyd could deliver what the fans, and originally George Lucas, were looking for from a young Anakin. Kubrick had to find another way of working.

Though... it's only a little unfair. However well Shelley worked with what she had, she was never quite given as much to work with as she could have been. There's more here, and we could I think discuss it relative to Rebecca's role in the TV series and how Wendy's character was viewed there.

But I think even in the novel, it's difficult to get past this: this is Jack and Danny's story, for the most part. Wendy isn't sidelined, exactly, but she's playing referee while the two main players tangle. This is a dynamic we tend to gloss over, that of the family itself. The idea of hero and villain, protagonist and antagonist, falls down when we're talking the three-cornered match at the dinner table.

I think for me, what's going on inside the story we see is the compressed series of time moments where Wendy's dynamic, the part of the story where she's active in her own path, are less in focus. Danny and Jack are on stage here and now; they respond to Wendy's actions before, and leave her actions yet to come that Doctor Sleep then concludes from, but we see it only just out of view, in retrospect.

In the book. In Kubrick's movie, of course, Wendy's story is at best hidden and barely glimpsed. For the TV series, whatever Stephen's personal mission was with respect to Wendy's character, the effect was blunted for me compared to the needs of the story itself.

And, as well, casting Rebecca de Mornay. Who I adore, and fits how Wendy is described in the original novel. But... inevitably, we're into appearance and what is considered beauty. At the time, no matter what the intentions were in regards to how Wendy's character was going to be viewed in the TV series, what the purpose was, unfortunately...

Unfortunately, casting Rebecca felt more like a rebuke of Shelley's role in the Kubrick move. For me at least; I can give a reason for it, if you'll forgive my digression?

Ok, when the book came out, I was almost 5. When Kubrick's movie came out, I was closing on 8 I think, when the movie came to the rental counter or cable, because that's when my father and I watched it.

And while my mother didn't necessarily have an issue with that, my stepmother did, but dad and I watched it anyway. And I remember distinctly Dad's comment that Shelley didn't look anything like the character in the book.

Which I had read, because again, neither at my father's house nor my mother's were any books within reach off limits.

Point being, I didn't then and don't now pay much attention to character description in a story. Water off a duck's back, thanks, I'll have my own view of the characters where needed.

Dad and I enjoyed the movie; I think for him, Shelley was just fine, it's just that Wendy's description in the book was strong enough that he had to adjust, that's all. And that momentary bump was sufficient so that, when the trailers and leadup to the TV series came along, and Dad and I were talking about watching it (no longer together, but even today we always discuss what we're listening to or watching), dad brought up Rebecca as matching the book's description of Wendy more directly.

Again, not as anything other than, "Shelley was very good but didn't look like I was imagining, Rebecca looks like we were told Wendy should". Similar to a friend telling you to go visit the museum, they've got a Rembrandt, and when you get there you find out it was really a Van Gogh. Both perfectly wonderful, but completely different, and jarring for only brief moments while you reset your expectations.

So, in my mind, I had this little bit of extra baggage on seeing Rebecca in that role, a little voice that held back out of this concern: I hope they didn't cast her just because of looks.

But that was always going to be an odd, asymmetric situation. Because Stephen's character was visually described in such a way as to be distinct from Kubrick's casting choice, and because Stephen was always going to tackle a reboot of The Shining in such a way that it was effectively rebuking Kubrick's movie, the whole dynamic was guaranteed to generate some amount of unease surrounding Wendy's role and casting choice.

For me, anyway. Loyalty to Shelley and Rebecca both, and a certain amount of discomfort with the inevitable way Hollywood could have pitted the two portrayals against each other.

All that said, Scatman's end is another story altogether. Scatman had, I think, just the right touch, especially in working with Danny (Lloyd, the actor, playing Danny Torrance, the character).

And then Kubrick did him wrong. While, though, holding to the rules of the game as they were understood at the time.

Consider: take away the status of The Shining as a novel, and its writer. Now consider Kubrick's film in isolation in the rules of the road in the 1970s.

Yeah: by the rules of the horror movie under those conditions, Dick Halloran doesn't get to the end of the film.

Futher, let's point out and acknowledge the complications associated with a black character. This is freighted territory.

But even then: Stephen had already stepped outside the usual boundaries by having Dick survive. And the book had been more than successful.

So I come back to that Kubrick did overstep and treat both Scatman and Dick Halloran badly.

At minimum that's a lesson in choosing your weapons appropriately. An axe of necessity doesn't really allow for "injured but still mobile enough to help" as in Stephen's story and the roque mallet.

Really though, I don't think Kubrick could let go of that the only murders in the story happened in the past, and while Wendy, Danny, and Dick paid a bloody toll, only Jack paid the ferryman's fee in the present day.

We get trapped in our expectations, I guess. I do think it more than a bit wild that it was Kubrick who chose the conventional, cliched path over King's more original path less traveled.

All that said, here we are back at the rules of the road bit I mentioned for Alien. Both Stephen and Kubrick present, basically, another locked room story. Both set out their rules, both recognize and give life and breathing room for incredible characters, and then both follow their rule sets to the end.

Both stories work in the functional sense, and in that creepy, brain stem level frisson that follows us ever after. Yeah, I think Kubrick completely chickened out, first in (for a famously detailed director!) ditching the roque mallet (come on, a croquet mallet would have done just fine) then in killing off Dick Halloran. But that doesn't mean I don't recognize and appreciate how the film version stands as its own thing.

I guess I just wish that Kubrick had more recognized Wendy and Dick's roles in the larger story.

So, before we move onto the homework assignments for next week....

just kidding. Have we said anything? To the degree any analysis of fiction says anything, I mean? I think so.

I mean, other than just what my personal film opinions lean to.

In that case, if there's anything here, maybe it's as simple as that how a writer or director (or audience, them too!) view a character and the world they inhabit matters. We're not looking at a diamond, or a setting.

We're looking at a ring. When setting and stone and all that work together, we move from form to function, and then hopefully on to memories for a lifetime.

And Jimmy Has Left Us

And Jimmy has left us

That this occurs as the most recent election and its consequences become clear is a prosaic accident.

That his person and personna highlight that the electorate just can't seem to hang with genuine people is... essentially American, I suppose. Consider that Truman hung on by the skin of his teeth. And that Bush Sr was kicked to the curb *by his own supporters* for the essential sin of attempting to balance the budget.

And now Joe suffers the wages of political sin. Of having cleaned up a mess which is now set to return fourfold.

We are not vouchsafed good grace on exit any more. Teddy Roosevelt demonstrated this, the once and future king simply perfected it for our fallen age. Jimmy suffered the essential inability to pass by without comment.

Which of course hastened his exit from office to begin with. That he shared initials with an animated conscience is... again, essentially American. And rewarded similarly.

The charity work should have been more than that Habitats for Humanity is recognized. But there are more should have beens. We now enter the age where more are employed in the renewable energy sector than in the oil and gas field. Such is Cassandra's fate.

I wonder now if we will have again someone in that office who can create, read, and build from an engineering drawing?

We've long since proven that those who have swung a hammer (or any other variety of idiot stick) for long enough to generate callouses need not apply.

How Your Correspondent Spent the Year So Far

How Your Correspondent Spent the Year So Far

Alternatively: Why so quiet?

The year began with a hangover. Normally, the holiday period at the day gig is quiet; everyone gears up for the new year by spending what vacation they've squirreled away. This year was different.

I had a couple of potential projects come up in that usually relaxing period. Then, the first few months of the year added to the pile. Every time I looked at my phone, it seems, another new project had landed on it.

Now, on the one hand, this is great. Job security is a thing, right? On the other hand, you start to look at the calendar, count up the hours and the days and wonder, hey, does anyone understand how much work these will take?

Let's back up. I spend my time at the intersection of science and engineering. I came from multi-discipline and to multi-discipline I go. I'm learning what it means to be a generalist. In many senses; development at several levels has entered the picture.

The research part is supposed to be a given. That's my baseline. It's also, I realize, the time that I need to protect, while still being available for the service aspect of the job.

The first five months of the year, I did my thing on more or less the usual schedule. One week on the road, one or two weeks at home. Since June though, it's been more of one month on the road, one month at home.

I say a month on the road, it's more complex than that. It's much more like being a touring musician, Monday through on the road, weekends at home. Then pile as much downtime at home as I can get for a month, rinse and repeat.

Some years ago, one of my mentors talked about daily practice. He meant it quite in the same sense as we both understood it as sometime musicians: there is a daily rhythm that needs to be there, of the practice of the work.

Out of rhythm, out of time, and shortly out of sorts on all kinds of axes. Personally, I'd love to be able to say "Hey, I learned that already" and not revisit it given all the other things I could be digging into.

I do myself and others a disservice when I think that way. So, in between and alongside, I've begun digging back into daily practice. I'm behind myself, but I can see a road ahead, or a trail, asking for footprints.

I also need to remind myself not to get a whole list of goals and dreams and things to add to my work. Otherwise I'll just bury myself in all of those pieces which I haven't been able to get to. There's enough of that already, no need to do it to myself.

One of the elements of generalization I'm working on is learning to be a novice again. The point, I remind myself, is not to be the expert. The point is to learn to talk to the experts, understand and collate and merge.

As ever, a work in progress.

They Might Be Giants

waiting for the show to begin, and marveling at how so many in line for this show look and sound so much like we all did, lo' those many years ago when we first caught TMBG.

it's a good crowd all 'round, sold out and ready to roll.

a few board issues later, a good night was had by all...

A Confusion So Common

A Confusion So Common

Brad Delong expresses a type of confusion that is so common that it has its own literature. Specifically, he's worried that he doesn't understand what practitioners mean when they write out things using some of the tools of quantum mechanics. In particular, some of the quick and dirty algebraic manipulations that practicing physical scientists throw around when using that most mysterious of objects, the wave function.

It's always a good idea to go back and look at what's going on under the hood. First, remember the first rule: to the best of our understanding, the fundamental particles are all both wave and particle. Photon, electron, all the others, to any degree that we can measure, all are both tiny little particles. And they are waves.

So, anything we do to describe these particles must carry the same fundamental duality. A wave function that describes such an object must carry both particle and wave information, simultaneously, if it is to do its mathematical job. Otherwise, it's not up to the task.

So what then is the mathematical object we write as |A)? |A), our potential wave function, is a complex function. That is, it is a function of complex numbers. As such, the object (A| is the complex conjugate to |A). If these were real numbers, (A| would be the inverse of |A).

Which leads to the next object. (A|A) is a single, real number. Often, depending on normalization convention, as implied by the inverse or complex conjugate, (A|A) = 1.

If |A) were a relatively simple function, that by itself would be enough. But because of the first rule, it's a little more dramatic than that. (A|A) means then something more complicated than simply multiplying |A) by its complex conjugate. What it means more fully is, multiply |A) by its complex conjugate, then integrate the result. If A is a function of space and time, we integrate over space and time to get 1.

If A is a function of momentum and frequency, then we integrate over momentum and frequency. But the operations involved are the same. Multiply, and then integrate.

Of course, the first rule means that this isn't the end. |A) is also a matrix. And (A| is then the conjugate transpose of |A). In which case, (A|A) means multiply the matrix A by its conjugate transpose, which gives a matrix, and then take the trace of that resulting matrix. The trace is then a single number, usually 1 due to normalization.

This goes even further. |A) is also a field, and an operator. But that comes later.

First, let's talk about H. H, the Hamiltonian, is, for the particles we know of at least, a special function (operator, matrix, field) of its own. In particular, H|A), which means to take the operator H and act upon the function A, gives the energy of the system as E|A).

More specifically, if (A|H|A) means operate H on A, multiply the resulting matrix by the complex conjugate of A, and then integrate, then the result is E, the average energy of our particle. Or, in matrix language, multiply the matrix H by the matrix A, multiply the result by the conjugate transpose of A, and then take the trace. The result is E, the energy of the particle. (A|H|A) = E.

H, the Hamiltonian, is the operator which measures the energy of system. Or, alternatively, if we perform an experiment on a particle and measure its energy in a given experimental setup, then H is the theoretic function that we seek which, when operating on a test function, gives the same E as our experiment did. In which case, we speak of H as defining the system. There are other details about H.

One of them is that H also generates the dynamic information of a system, not just its average energy. That object looks like exp(iHt), where exp is the exponential, i is the imaginary number (i.e. square root of -1), and t is time. Then exp(iHt)|A) is the dynamic represenation of |A); alternatively, exp(iHt) acting on |A) generates |A(t)), the propagation of A into the future (or the past).

Either way, the algebra involved always looks like some version of (A|H|A), the multiplication of two matrices, followed by multiplication by the complex conjugate and taking the trace.

Now, let's go back to H|A) = E|A). H is an operator. E is a diagonal matrix of scalar, real numbers.

Or, to put it another, equivalent way, |A) is the matrix which diagonalizes the Hamiltonian. Thus, the wave function is an operator in and of itself. This is where a detailed linear algebra book, one that goes all the way through orthogonality, similarity and unitary transformations, and so on, begins. This is also where practitioners can get funny looks when people ask "what is the wave function?" In practical terms, the wave function here is "all of space", or more particularly any of a broad class of functions which measure (or span) space in a particular way. This is a particular generalization of the way in which position means "any real number" in the equations of classical physics. To ask after the "nature" of a wave function is to ask after the "nature" of numbers. They're the same thing, just written and collected in slightly different ways as needed for the use.

This property of A has some interesting side effects: A can have a simple, easy to write down structure for small scale systems. But that structure can be drastically different at larger scale. So much so that "two-level model" is either a curse or a blessing depending on area of work. Or the time of day, phase of the moon, color of the wine...

All of this is really back to the first rule. Which is that we have to keep track of both particle and wave nature simultaneously. Specifically, we have to deal with functions like A(r,k). r here is position, k is wave number (momentum with certain conditions). All of the notation is a reminder that we must always be careful about when, and in what order, we do something like B(r,k)A(r,k), a multiplication that could be over r, or k, or both, followed by an integration. Or a sum. If you write it out in detail, with full notation, it's tedious, painful, and you're guaranteed to lose track the farther into the work that you go.

Eventually, if you try and do everything in full detail at every stage of derivation, you are guaranteed to screw it up. So first Heisenberg, then Dirac, came up with different shorthand methods. Which just confuses things, because any of the notations can be written as any of the others. And, more unfortunately, Schrodinger's detailed methods involve so many elements that the shorthand has become the common method of representation even when their use confuses everyone involved, expert and non-expert alike.

This is the point where, if you've heard of it, the "shut up and calculate" school of thought stops, more or less. And, for all intents and purposes, that's sufficient. Assuming I haven't just made your confusion worse, the thumbnail description above gives the nuts and bolts elements. For many problems, there's not really any need to go any further.

But there are problems for which this explanation isn't enough. Feynman, Dyson, Bohm, all of them useful and, for some very significant problems, essential to go any farther. Who knows yet whether or how Many-Worlds will lead further, but it's one of the current cases where folks have tackled the basics again. There's always something there to think about anew.

And get confused over. Duality all the way up and down.

Penrose vs. einstein

A few thoughts on the new toy theoreticians just received...

This one is probably lost already: it's Penrose because named after a person. It's einstein because ein stein, not Einstein. Even odds that the original namers didn't even notice the pun until 2 or three others read the paper. Some of us aren't allowed to name our discoveries without adult supervision...

The Penrose tilings require multiple shapes. The ein stein requires only 1. This is where the magic lives. It's also going to be the "huh? But what about..." moment for a lot of the innocent.

Local repeats here are not periodicities; rather, they are similar to tossing multiple heads in a row with a fair coin. This is an area where visual intuition clashes with an algebra.

So how is this useful? Oh my word. Give us all time, every theorist has a bag full of toy models and questions to sort through at the moment, checking fit. In my old world, glasses liquids gasses and plasmas should all be getting checked over like a teenager with a hand me down car and a bucket full of paint.

Thus Machine Learning

Thus Machine Learning

Whence then the new way forward? I'm thinking what we're looking at is similar to when windowing operating systems came in, then the web, search engines, then yes finally Facebook and Twitter. What do all of these little twists and turns have in common?

Whatever else, each of these little steps gave people a way to interact with and through computers than they otherwise had. To use a computer prior to windowing OS's meant a blinking cursor that gave no information whatsoever. You had to ask someone to show you the way. Windows at least had a funny little pointer and some clicky responses. Same thing with the web versus the internet over telnet and BBS's. Yahoo and Google in turn made it possible to find more of these funny little visual objects.

Then Facebook and Twitter made it possible to talk to other people. Forums and blog comments, sure, but just like DOS and VAX and Unix all existed and were perfectly cromulent before Windows and MacOS...

Point being, machine learning systems give folks another route to interact with and via computer. It's already here: Siri, Google Home, they're useful as hell if you play with them. And of course I've hit the limits of what they'll let me get away with; if I find a way to trick the little beast into giving me voice access to its operating system, oh boy are we on our way. But I'll settle for what it has steadily grown more capable of.

The weird part being that, just as with all these other analogous steps, we'll see folks treating them as both bigger and smaller changes than they are. Bigger as in no, Francis, we're not any closer to Skynet today than yesterday; smaller as in discounting the flood of crap that's already being felt at short story markets. I've no doubt at all that there are plenty of quick-built autobooks on Amazon as we speak.

Some of these are better steps than you might think. If nothing else, form letters now might have a little personality. And yes this is a big help to folks who approach anything longer than a text message with anxiety (and that's far more people than care to admit it). Auto-complete a word-fragment or two at a time is distracting to me.

But I recognize well that there are many people for whom writing is a chore, at best. We're already living through a round of the "death of email", an accident of that text messages and tweets require a more terse approach. Yes it's somewhat of an irony that this will result in more email that doesn't get read or is misunderstood through clicking away halfway through the first paragraph, but what are you gonna do?

Visual artists may yet end up with something similar to Spotify and similar, some sort of clearing house approach with guaranteed pennies per month for access to train the latest and greatest art program. But there'll be pain to get there and no guarantees anyone would take the practical. Not to mention that there's apparently not even a hint of extending Discord or Getty Images to such a possibility. Just sue and pray.

Of writers I've my doubts that something similar could reach either proposal or acceptance. There's too large a gap between the haves and the have nots, and a waiting on my lottery ticket to pay off attitude among most of the have nots. Point being... nah, there's no point.

Will it stop you from writing? Or making art of any kind? That's the only answer that matters. Twenty years from now the kids will use it to create new forms of art. The current short story editors rejecting machine-written work out of hand are right to do so. Now.

Their successors will need to have different attitudes. Because the future writers certainly will. Can you imagine a radio station refusing to play music that has samples in it? That's where we're headed; I just wonder who's gonna blow up a stack of computers in Commiskey Park?

Actually, let me go ahead and say that point again: Sampling and re-mixing have been part of music for going on 60 years now (and yes it really did start with the Beatles, if only accidentally. The Who and then Pink Floyd circa Syd Barrett did it on purpose). If your playlist includes rap, contemporary music of pretty much all varieties, or electronic music of any era, you'd best be looking in the mirror before you dismiss machine-generated writing or visual art. Because it takes a lotta damn gall to hike up your skirt and start screaming now that they're coming for your art after musicians have been forced to accept the same phenomenon without recourse or acknowledgement from the rest of the art community. But I guess a little bit of hypocrisy goes a long way? Solidarity baby, at least for the write sort?

Of course I'm going to take that pot shot. The class snobbery at the heart of publishing (English language) is as viciously small-minded as it's ever been. Some few niches have been carved out for those who've taken advantage of the e-book opportunity; will they even now draw up the bridge behind them? Historically that's the way to bet. It's time to practice our sneers folks, it's always best to make sure the younger folks have ways to easily memorialize their elders. It's a sign of respect what what?

What about me? My biggest issue right now is that I'm struggling through a year of burnout and now recovery. The rise of machine learning is interesting for a variety of reasons; it means as little as to why I put my fingers to the keyboard as does programmed music for what I do with the guitars and other instruments sitting around the house, i.e. not a whole hell of a lot. Excepting inspiration of course, but that's a story of a different horse.

Croz

Ok, Machine Learning

Ok, Machine Learning

You are a scholar and a teacher. You're worried about these AI chat systems; you don't necessarily care that your students are using the thing. What you really care about is that if they do ask one of these systems a question, they get the right answer.

And, for your own research, you wonder if you can get a good answer to your own questions. How do you tell if they're any good?

First you go and feed one of these systems your own homework question, right?

Do not try this, at least not first thing out of the gate. You can be fooled by your own head if you try and "grade" the results without knowing what the system is doing.

Instead, try this. Ask it a question that looks and sounds like something Wikipedia can answer, then see if it does 2 things: do the answers corresponde to the Wikipedia page relevant to the question? And, just as importantly, does it use only the answers found in the Wikipedia page in question?

The first test is of course for accuracy. Note, I don't mean that the answer is quote for quote from Wikipedia, in fact it's better here if it doesn't quote pull directly. I just mean, do the facts and assertions match up to those of the Wikipedia page?

The second test is for completeness. Extra information here is not by default extra credit, and should be discounted unless you are dealing with a field you know well enough to find that information in a trustworthy, publically available digital source. This is a test for completeness: only trustworthy, creditable information that's publically available and verifiable independent of the chat system should be included.

And yes, you should also try this with "known shitty" internet questions. If you start seeing lunatic fringe answers in the results you know the system in question has not been evaluated completely for Garbage In, Garbage Out. Not all data sets are valid for the purpose presented.

You should also try this with other questions that, though you aren't necessarily expert in, you can readily track down both the Wikipedia page, and the top 10 or 20 field standard references to. This is a test for breadth of knowledge: has the system been built to fool you in particular?

And then, if you're ready for finding out if the system really knows its stuff, find out if it can do the same thing with a well-known review article in your field or one you're interested in learning...

You are an artist. Really, you're intrigued by whether these systems can work for you. And, deep down maybe you're worried that it's using your own art somehow. How do you know if the system is useful, first? How do you know that it's actually doing something artistically worthwhile, and not just copying in a hidden way?

First thing you do is feed it a prompt for one of your own artworks, right?

Don't do this first. Wait a bit on fishing for your stuff and try something else. Your eyes will play tricks on you.

Instead, try this: ask the system to reproduce your favorite Van Gogh. Or Rembrandt. Or whomever, just make it a public-domain piece that you know well. One that you've studied yourself.

How did it do? Now, find out if it can do Jackson Pollock, or Andy Warhol? And yes I'm serious, if it has Jackson's or Andy's work in its dataset, it should be able to reliably get to a named artwork. If not?

It's restricted in some way from reproducing that newer work. This can be good or bad depending on your view on copyright, but know that this means that, artistically, there's a hole in its view of the world somewhere. Whether or not its useful for your purpose I'll leave to your artistic mind.

Depending on how well it did with a newer, name artist, now is also the time to ask it if it's capable of producing one of your works. Then, if you're interested in how well it works under the hood, go on to find out how it combines two well known works to produce something you haven't seen before? Here's where you get to judge whether or not it can do something useful for you. What would have happened had Annie Lebowitz been able to work with Ansel Adams? How would Picasso have done the Sistine Chapel? What would Van Gogh's Forty Views Of Fuji look like?

You're a pro musician: you're booked. Can you use one of these systems to compose, produce? How do you know they're doing something useful and not just sampling?

First, ask it to reproduce a piece you know, and not one of your own. Bach, the Beatles, listen widely and deeply.

Did it work for all of your tests? Get wild: pick one and ask it to change the key. After that, ask it for a different rhythm.

Note: depending on what the algorithm is doing, these two questions in particular can be either very easy, or very nearly impossible. If it does work, then they're doing it properly (ie. signal analysis is involved at the important levels). If not, it's sampling in an obscured way, in which case you can ask it for your own works with a completely different purpose in mind.

The point being: an expert system that is only sampling (Type 1) has its uses. However, an expert system that can actually morph something properly (Type 2), like a key change or a samba to four on the floor rhythm change, now that's a different tool entirely. And, fundamentally, there's a very real difference in what's going on under the hood between the two: a sampling machine that reproduces one of your own works is straight up copying.

A music-signal analysis expert system can get to your work through a different route entirely. It sounds weird, but this kind of system may indeed know you well enough to reproduce something you wrote without directly copying.

In fact, this applies to the artist, the musician, and the scholar as well: if you find a system that can quote you, or that can reproduce one of your works, whether its a Copier (Type 1) or an Analyzer (Type 2) matters. Type 2 systems are the most useful, the most properly constructed, and the most likely to be capable of reproducing your work without directly copying it.

At least in the immediate gold rush mentality that always accompanies new tech, I would suspect that we'll see quite a few Type 1, Copier, systems, because it's one of the easiest ways to take computational and data analysis shortcuts that allow those in a hurry to produce something that can fool people into thinking they're dealing with a Type 2, Analyzer, system. But as with sampling as it already exists, Type 1 systems that can reliably re-word known information very much have uses, if in a quite different manner than do Type 2 systems.

Farewell Jeff

Alas, Machine Learning

Alas, Machine Learning

Thoughts and ramblings for my own purposes.

Under the hood, it's both computational and communications bound as ever. In practical terms, this means there's a point coming where mass computational bounds will kick in. What's economically viable to build for computers limits us all, but then that's in effect what ML was built to address, in some ways. Still kicks in, just at a new level.

I wonder what the effective "word" length here is, or will be? Think of letters, then words, then sentences as 1 point, 2-point, ... n-point basis functions. Are paragraphs then the n+1 limit? Essay length? Not in the sense of not being able to construct longer systems, more in the sense of repetitiveness, enforced periodicity by basis set limit rather than formal limit. "Perception of the machine" falls here.

Some years back, generic sports articles based simply on the line scores began to be generated this way, similarly with AP style news reports. "So and so won, so and so lost, here's the breakdown" kind of thing. Certain kinds of traffic and weather reports could as well be generated this way. Web pages, summaries.

Where's the error creep in, and how do you work with or around it? Garbage in, Garbage out always applies. In a purely numerical context, new algorithms can always be measured. How do you insure accuracy here? Replicability, too?

In a couple of the major fields involved, when asked long ago I made the comparison to the periodic table: meaning that what was missing was an empirical map. How does X relate to Y? Everything is foggy and dim; is it even possible to lay out a map in such flickering shadow and light? Here then is ML coming in with at least a possible construction.

Which is of course where the formal part began, or one way into it. Here's this arbitrary data set we know nought of. How does it relate to itself? What can we do with this arbitrarily large volume of presumptive knowledge that we don't yet understand?

Suppose you had a library accumulated by a sage since passed on. The sage was mysterious, crusty and cranky, and disinclined to tell anyone of their methods. Now your hands pour over old manuscripts in forgotten tongues, all organized, clearly, but in some fashion our old friend forgot to teach us. What do we do? We don't speak any of these languages, we don't know how our friend did it, what they meant by putting this scroll next to this codex next to this little sheet of paper much scratched and stained.

Let us consult the crystal; can it tell us where and how and why each text fits with another? Can it summarize for us what is contained there, and, better, which questions we can ask of which text? What if we could, then, summon forth both a librarian to organize, to systematize, and a scholar to help us understand what we have? And, perhaps, if we're dreaming, a new sage to add to the collection of knowledge?

This last is, formally, where we break down. "Artificial Intelligence" was/is market speak. Machine learning is what the experts preferred, though whether the distinction continues to be respected with mass adoption, I dunno. That aside, the difference is that the first two questions relate to transformations contained within a data set.

The third relates both to generalization between data sets, and to generalization beyond data sets. Crudely, interpolation versus extrapolation, though just like diagonalization versus singular value decomposition the equivalence is there. Still and all... asking for something new becomes the frontier.

Just like Wikipedia, scholarly communities will be obligated to query refine and strengthen a given instance, out of self defense. You'll need to make sure that if such a thing is out there it's giving correct answers. This took a long time to even begin happening with Wikipedia, and it's only done now in narrow instances. Professional obligations will expand; disciplines unused to programming should now understand that they'll need to require it.

Just like every other stage of computational development: does the computer do what I need done? Calculator, spreadsheet, web, can I get the answer I need? Can I trust the answer? It's a tool, how do I use it?

Listen: transformative work is transformative. That this allows automated transformation is irrelevant. The copyright office recognizes this, it also recognizes that the person using the computer to transform my work into something else, no matter what work they've put into the computer, isn't creating something in the same way as they would have if they had written it themselves. Thus, at present, ML-generated works are not copyrightable.

This has many implications.

First, cheap copies where someone takes one of my works, changes just enough of it to fly under the radar at Amazon or wherever, and tries to cash in, becomes untenable in the long run. Why would you need to do that if you can just ask an instance to generate a new work? Even if it's incorporating my work into the melange, so what, that's what would happen anyway, just in bits on a computer rather than the memories of the next generation of artists.

Second, it means there's going to an almighty fight when the media conglomerates realize what uncopyrightable means in this context. Right now, the media conglomerates appear to recognize that their catalogue has significant value in the brand new future.

And it does. WarnerBros or Disney or whoever appear to sit on the gold mine for training the next generation of ML machines to spit out branded media.

Sounds great. Each house will be able to perpetuate their secret sauce, down to the actors and voices and music and images... too bad for them its not creation in the artistic sense, and thus, for now, uncopyrightable. Neither is it something they can prevent others from doing. At least not if they actually want someone to view their product in the first place. If you can use today's actors in perpetuity, so can anyone else, sayeth the copyright office.

Which of course means that the media conglomerates are going to raise high holy hell when they figure it out. Gods preserve us. You thought they bowed when Mickey was threatened, look out.

For movies and music, assuming that no one manages to completely screw up all of copyright law by doing something "novel", I suspect the fine line that makes this work economically for the conglomerates is finding someone who can use the ML systems to generate as a part of something larger. In other words, ML systems as an element of a broader, complete artistic creation process. Like sampling only with broader extent than audio.

At the same time, there will then also be now video and written story equivalents of Muzak, only generated for airplane seatbacks or waiting rooms or whatever.

So, video and audio; Dylan and Simon and all the rest selling their catalogues, Cameron and Avatar 2, the last great cash grabs available before the previous financial landscape changes irrevocably.

What then of text? I'll use Stephen King as an example here, not because I know anything of what he or his heirs are planning, but because he's one of the primary household names in the written word.

Suppose that someone involved recognizes that King's life's work represents not just a present value, but a future value: in an ML world, all of King's works become the basis for future works, long after the author has left us.

If the copyright office says, great, fine, but it's still not copyrightable, is this life's work valuable in the instance of generating ML work in the future?

It is if you've heirs then capable of their own transformations and creative contributions to the eventual new work. Or, failing that, well able to hire it done. If we accept that conglomerates will find producers and directors who can successfully generate "based on" work to be monetized, then so too can estates find a combination of writers to generate "based on" novels and stories.

Only, now, without even the need to go digging for half-finished trunk books, or outlines, or notes on, or all the other ways they've done it in the past. The computer can generate that outline to order. And the estate can commission, or ask a son or daughter or...

So, then, thus: if there's now multiple generations of writers who "grew up" as Star Wars or Star Trek or "insert media here" writers for hire, the future will hold then estate-trademarked (because remember this: you can't stop someone else from using already published works to do their own transformations. But that is what trademarks help with if used properly...) Stephen King media writers, and Dean Koontz media writers. Think what Brandon Sanderson did with the Wheel of Time, but now perpetually and at much larger scale. No longer half a dozen at best, but like Tom Clancy's estate, over and over again as needed. At least for the 70 years after the original author passes.

And, this applies not just to someone of the stature of King or Clancy or Koontz. Imagine what will happen with the Song of Ice and Fire. Or the Name of the Wind. Or even your own works, you little writer you. Maybe there's room here, not just for your heirs to continue a little bit of money coming their way, but to even extend it a little. We can all make a little business for our kids to work in, even if how they do it doesn't quite resemble the way we did it.

So: there are creative ways that ML will be used to jump the uncopyrightable hurdle. Book it, it's already happening. And thus, the financial landscape will change, not burn down.

This provides opportunity. Protection, in that the silly cheap copy bullshit will likely fall away as unnecessary. And yeah, they'll be using your work, but transformative is transformative, you're never protected from that. It's actually better to have your work then be part of a much broader library that's built from. Then it's part of a stew, not a sushi bar. And some idea that the sort of Tom Clancy/Frank Herbert perpetual zombiehood now becomes a tool that any reasonably savvy artist can use for their heirs and assigns.

It's kind of a big deal, ain't it? And in a good way if you're ready for it.

The doom and gloomers here are missing the forest for the trees, especially on one big thing: there's always someone better than you at what you do. So what? That great orators exist doesn't stop me from speaking to those I must needs talk to. That Andres Segovia played and was recorded stops me not at all from picking up my guitar. If I need to sketch, I don't let all the much better artists and draftsfolks out there prevent me from doing my little cartoons up.

Art is communication. If you are not simply to be a consumer of art, you will have your place to go to when you need it. You have a way to let your voice ring out. No one can prevent it.

And, perhaps, just maybe, and with care, the computer will show you some more new options for how to pass your voice on to others. Find that inner 15 year old that doesn't give a shit what their parents say, doesn't look for a moment to whether it's worth anything, doesn't know or care who's done it before, damnit they're gonna make their own art come hell or high water.

That voice? That hand? That story, that song? It's always yours. It's always you. Embrace it no matter what. Let the worry warts go bother someone else.

Just Gotta Love The Great Computer Randomizations

Just Gotta Love The Great Computer Randomizations

Ah, that wonderful feeling: some update blobbed a configuration file somewhere. One that I haven't touched in (scanning file dates) six years now. One that I set a customization flag in by hand the last time it drove me crazy that I couldn't get a gui widget to give me the environment I prefer, damnit, not the as-shipped.

It's really amazing how fast you get out of the habit of looking under the hood when you don't have a daily. I say how fast; 6 years isn't. Well, it used to not be, but that's one of those things you can understand intellectually, not the gut level. Not until you look up and see the dust on the proverbial bookshelf, anyway.

One of this bit twirler's bad habits is to have ingrained a handful of key-bindings into the subconscious long ago. And then have never revisited the muscle memory because it was faster at any given moment to just go with the habits engrained. It's something like having learned scales with a given rhythmic pattern, and then having never gone back and re-learned them with another. I get locked into something that isn't necessarily the best use of keystrokes, but isn't sufficiently troublesome so as to make me take the time to code a different way.

I like to think I should have done something like that for book formatting, for instance. I could and should sit down and write out the various steps, script them, and automate the process, at least so far as the steps to which automation is the better choice. I just haven't. Yet, I'll get to it... eventually. There's always something else though, you see.

And look at me. I did actually want to talk about Machine Learning today. I blame Noah Smith, he put up a Substack post that set out some things I like, and a couple I don't, in relation to where Machine Learning is just at this moment. And then here I am getting caught first of the year arguing with my computer.

Maybe that's it. Maybe the computer's trying to keep me away from discussing the topic. Hmm, I'll have to meditate on that.

If so, I'd like to think that it's my computer telling me that, if I am going to be spending time at the keyboard, wouldn't I rather be fictioning?

Yes, yes I would. We are our bits then, aren't we? inside and outside the brain case. Kind of cool, ain't it? And here we thought we'd all need to directly use our brain stem for signal transport. Understanding really does only come in small chunks.

How To Say It

How To Say It

I've been listening to some of the Rick Rubin episodes of the Broken Record podcast. Rick has a comfortable approach for me; I can understand a little of how he's created the space for the artists he's worked with to do their work.

I understand as well that there are some folks who wouldn't be able to work with Rick. Nor, probably, listen to an hour+ of his interview of another artist. Not all methods apply. Such is life.

The episodes I've been most fascinated with so far are the, now 4 part series of, John Frusciante interviews. I've only just finished part 2 of that series. I'm having to take my time with them.

I caught myself on Rick's 2nd interview with John over an extended discussion of synesthesia. John experienced this effect fully during an early part of his musical life, though he believes that the feeling is still there to a very subtle, but important, degree.

The part that fascinates me about this isn't the synesthesia itself. It's how Rick first tries to pin John down on it.

And, eventually, how John gets Rick to understand that, even if Rick doesn't have the "visual" synesthesia, Rick does have the same feeling that accompanies it.

The one of realization. Or, recognition. When you see the whole of what you're doing in one go.

That a mechanic sees the inside of an engine before they take it apart shouldn't, doesn't really, surprise most folks. Nor a potter feeling the shape of their vase before their hands touch the clay. What John eventually manages to say in the interview is just this point, really.

That people are fascinated with synesthesia comes, I think, from the realization that some experts don't think of their craft in the way that we would anticipate. It's like discovering that Michelangelo "tasted" his art rather than seeing the painting or feeling the sculpture. It doesn't compute.

Because it doesn't fit the conception we use to understand how others do something. We carry around a general idea from our own experience, but then we stumble across an exception. And it feels like something that should be a bigger deal than it is.

Except with music, the fascination should probably be less than it is. Think about it this way: would you be in any way surprised if Yo-Yo Ma said that he saw an entire score, or significant parts of it, rolling through his mind as he played a piece? Beethoven had to see the notes to write them down, right? Somewhere between the ear and the hand passes a translation from audio to visual. Or tactile if playing.

We have a whole industry devoted to teaching musicians to visualize their music in a very particular way. Little black dots on a page.

In fact, a very important part of later music education is re-teaching students to hear and sing, feel, those notes, rather than just see them. High school level musicians very much know how to see music. Often, seeing instead of hearing is so overdeveloped that it's a stumbling block to their continued development.

They have to learn how to hear it: sight-singing, ear training. In many ways, these disciplines are meant to help the to-this-point much-lauded 1st chair reconnect to their inner 5 year old. Let them pick up the instrument and just hear the music again, without the visual getting in the way.

Then you go on to integrate it. And, hopefully, engage all of your senses as a performer. John just shows that those with synesthesia, those who've learned to integrate that unusual sense into their playing and composing, walk the same path from a different starting point.

I've actually been thinking more lately about AI, machine learning. I set out this morning under the mistaken impression that I'd write something about it. But then Rick and John's conversation intervened in my head. AI just became uninteresting to me for a moment.

... and nope, next day and I still don't have anything to say about AI generators. We've seen this movie before; now there are folks getting theirs gored, that's all. Root hog or die has come for someone else. If I have to, the only thing I'll say is that 15 year olds don't give a shit at all what the old folks say about how they make their art. Nor should they. They'll use the ML algorithms however they want to, and more power to them.

On a completely different note, Kurstin x Grohl continue to have a Hanukkah blast this year. Turning it into a live concert, even. Fantastic.

Stuff I've Been Reading Lately Nov 2022

Stuff I've Been Reading Lately Nov 2022

Aside from the Twitter madness, you mean? Not that I'm on Twitter; I use a web browser to keep up with certain writers who've turned Twitter into a microblog rather than use other sites. As with their many predecessors, Twitter seems to be following a lifecycle that's endemic to internet forums. Rise, coast, dive. Forums are a community exercise, and when they cycle into the Asshole Dominated period they rarely recover. That said, I'm not sure that I know of any examples of forums, public ones anyway, that broke out of this cycle successfully. Facebook, perhaps, but I think that they may be inan unreplicable position due to age group specifics. Who knows at this point?

Brad Delong's Slouching Toward Utopia was a good read, I learned details and emphasis that I wouldn't have otherwise known. I have quibbles, especially I think that Delong does himself a disservice in how he treats 1970-2010 due (likely) to scholar's propriety. I wonder also if, coincidentally, Delong got to 1970 or so and started second guessing the continued utility of his framing device. Still and all well worth it for a good tour of the economic history most immediately foundational to our current era.

Mati Ocha's Terra Incognita and The Transcendent Green. Apocalypse LitRPG books, I liked Mati's voice, character, pacing, and very specific, localized settings. I also like that the inherent power progression problem is also well contained here.

James Haddock's books, Stonecutter's Shadow, Hand Made Mage, and several others. There's a real variety of settings here, some overlap but really this is a writer who's happy to work in similar/same worlds but not beholden to "series" writing if he doesn't want to be. That said, Cast Down World is explicitly labeled as Book One, and that's a setting that I look forward to returning to.

Dave Turner's How To Be Dead series was good... though now I think about it I might have already said that. If I did, it's still a good series!

As I look through the rest of my as-read calendar I don't see any others sticking out. Eh, the To-Be-Read has a T. Kingfisher book I haven't dug into yet, a Joe Hill book with unbent corners... I think that's about enough for now, I've got some stories calling me. Later.

A Mountain Rises Beneath My Feet - M.K. Dreysen 11//20/2022

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts of a moment

***

A mob of egrets grazing the neighborhood yards is a joy. The decorations they leave on my little car, much less so.

This is one of those occasions that I hear the universe giggle.

***

I've seen so little discussion of the current political noise in reference to that which has gone before. We have few guides, granted, and each generation must learn these things, but we appear to be in a moment where those who know that certain noisemakers and their camp followers have predecessors in both movement and violence are not able to make signal. For every Tucker Carlson there's a G. Gordon Liddy, for every New Right there's a John Birch Society.

I understand why someone Biden's age isn't impressed. But those who should be able to support and teach aren't otherwise around to back him up. At least not vocally or with any kind of reach. Of economists and preachers we have plenty, but thoughtful political scientists can't seem to catch a break.

***

I have reason to think of the album this song opens, Straight on Til Morning by Blues Traveler. 25 years since its release; that year was a big one for me personally. The year I met the lady who's blessed my life since.

What's interesting looking back is that, at the time, if you'd given me a time capsule of later music by Blues Traveler, it's actually this one that my younger self would have told you was more appropriate.

I've been wrong before, I'll be wrong again. Really, the universe giggles at us, and often.

It's Business As Usual Again

when the week starts off reading an article in Science where someone actually dug into how the Hierarchy dominates faculty hiring... forget it. I read it, started to work through how you're better off playing roulette and this big long thing about odds in casino games.

Nah, never mind. Got better things to do with my time, right.

Then I came to the end of my week and watched this wonderfully done video by the Professor of Rock on YouTube:

Look, I know the story of how Paul Simon screwed Los Lobos. What David Bowie did to Stevie Ray Vaughan. And many other similar tales, movies books plays you name it and there's so many many ways that not just the money screws people, but other artists do as well. Like they've decided that because it happened to them it makes it ok to pass it on.

And look, Mick and Keith signing the rights back to Richard was the right thing to do. Stipulated.

After 22 fucking years of cashing those goddamned checks?

Though there is one hilarious moment in the middle of this week, driving back to the hotel room for a day gig trip and the streaming service spit out Nickelback's Rockstar, which I haven't heard in a good long while. And I still can't help smiling at the one lyric in that song that I've always wondered is what really got them put into such a bad odor with the cognoscenti: I'll get washed-up singers writing all my songs, lip sync 'em every night so I don't get 'em wrong.

No it's not a koan, but it was a giggle in the middle of a long week. Just glad I got back on the plane before Ian started making its way up the coast. My heart and help will be going out to a lot of folks who are hurting, and will be. Stay safe and sane where you can, people.

Bravo

Black Lucy and the Bard is a fun way to spend some time in front of the TV. The Nashville Ballet dancers enjoyed themselves immensely, Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi played a terrific accompaniment, and writer Caroline Randall Williams adds to the fun by narrating the whole thing (base on her book Lucy Negro, Redux) from the stage.

definitely worth the attention and time spent from this seat. Thank you all, and PBS for the broadcast.

I Think So Brain, But You Should Wear The Catsuit This Time, It Goes So Well With Your Eyes

Describe What You See