Good morning good morning. Hello. Hi. How are you? Doing okay? Has your cold gone away yet? Managing to stay productive at work? How is dry January going? Been tempted yet? Cracked? Boy howdy have I been tempted this year. But hanging in there. Halfway through.

Had a quality dream last night. Took place in an abandoned mall slash Russian rocket factory that had been turned into a post-college flophouse. It was on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. Laura Glu had a sweet new iPhone prototype. It was foldable, but not in any logical shape. Unfolded, it was the shape of a CVS receipt. I tried to steal it. Holly lost her awesome antique Russian 35MM camera. Kellianne and Katy were in sequins and trying to get everyone to go out to a club. My room had no lock on the door. My sister was platinum blonde again. It was a great dream, spanned my whole life, mostly through the prism of women. Hrm actually not my whole life. My whole pre-NC life. The past. Nostalgia.

This is all very fitting because my desktop, a random assortment of 10,000+ photos, is showing me a photo of my old friend Rosey from the week we spent in Santa Monica where she nursed me back to health after a breakup. One of the best weeks of my life. Boy howdy you can make friends fast in Santa Monica. Rosey let me into her millieu and by the end of the week I had so many friends they threw me a going away party. Great town would go back. Oh wait I did go back once. Micah took me to the little house that Snapchat started in, and to their second office right there on the strip. Early Snapchat. Forgot about that.

Used to be really into nostalgia, which is perhaps not surprising from an early investor and eventual CEO of a renowned nostalgia company. But I am not so into it anymore. Reminds me too much of a world before bungled pandemics and rising global fascism. Real bummer to think about this ealier times. I don’t think it’s personal, nothing to do with aging or marriage or parenthood or anything like that. I was still very into Timehop and nostalgia even as a parent. And I bet it would be pretty satisfying to open my Timehop up right now and look at old photos of Jane. But the ones from 10, 20 years ago? Too much. Can’t do it. The innocence. The naiveté. The feels.

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We are listening to the last Caroline Rose album today, came out almost a year ago, but I held off on listening to it until I could obtain a vinyl copy which was only for sale from her website. So anyhow, today’s the first listen. I am on track two. Track one sounds like a dude singing. Track two is okay though, into it so far. Solo acoustic thus far, no band. Interesting artist, Caroline Rose. Seems to be intent on breaking out of any single schtick, a thing I always admire but which is, often, career suicide, or at least more difficult. Shit no one even wanted to hear Bowie doing electronica by the end. Little Wonder. My hat is off to her.

Was wondering what the weather was gonna be like this week, mildly wished I could ask my car about it, got to thinking about AI, like you do. Thought about Megan Thee Stallion, who was in the Renée Rapp “It’s Not My Fault” video from 2+ years ago, and how Megan was singing about AI in her rap in that vastly underrated song. Ms. Thee Stallion was really ahead of he time. Then I was thinking about the Apple-Google Siri-Gemini deal and how maybe one day you could ask Siri what the weather was like and it would answer correctly, but then I remembered I’m on Android and I could try that right now, but, nah.

AI. Man. I can feel myself forgetting the global theft at the base of all AI. I can feel the world forgetting about it. I can feel anti-AI advocates forgetting about it. It’s just gonna be a thing like Churchill starving a hundred million Indians that happened and everyone forgets about. And, like, I kinda get it, you know? Information wants to be free, if the whole world can be better off by these machines gobbling up the entirety of human creation, well, then, isn’t that just a donation by the intelligensia of the world to the betterment of humankind? And sure, shit yeah, if the UN or even a non-evil USA were to make a public and non-profit AI, then fuck yeah, force everyone to donate all the books. But they all got gobbled up and stolen for the profit potential of large companies and it is fucking bullshit. And I mean I am not the world’s largest intellectual property defender, and I make maybe $12,000 a year off of my writing so it is hardly material to my personal betterment. But, like, we do have laws? Shouldn’t we follow them? Doesn’t anyone remember how books have been saying in the front of them for generations that no part of this book should be consumed by a machine? Does copyright mean nothing? Should it? I mean obviously there is room for reform but, like, we want writers and journalists to make a living, don’t we? Don’t we?

And another thing I was thinking about this is facts vs writing. It is a fact that I learned that China makes all the world’s ibuprofen. I learned that fact, and it influenced me to buy 36,0000 Ibuprofen tablets and store them in my closet because I am a lunatic.

But I learned that fact, from a book. I go and tell other people that fact, and if he here to learn about it, Dan Wang, the author of the book from whence I learned this factoid, would probably not be super bent out of shape. I read his book (well IU am not done yet but whatever), learned a fact, told other people. That is all fine. Dan Wang has a claim on the words in his book, not the facts. We all know this, this has been settled for eternity.

But the AI! The AI actually did the exact opposite! They stole Dan Wang’s words and did not learn a single fact from his book! They have it backwards! They are incapable of learning facts! And if they DO spew a fact at you, a) it might be wrong, but also b) they are spewing back his words, more or less. Insanity! We are insane! We are broken.

But then I think how nice it would be if the AI could just tell me the weather.

I was talking to my CTO about “local private” AIs, thinking maybe if I could run one with all of my own stuff, on a nice power-efficient Mac cluster powered by the sun, maybe I could be okay with this. But no, it’s not actually possible. My AI only evolves into my AI. Because at first, even before I put a single edition of GMHHAY into it, it can still talk to me. And it can still talk to me because it was illegally trained on the entire world’s output. It is turtles all the day down. Theft all the way down.

And we’re all forgetting about it.

I did tell someone yesterday for the first time that it was against my religion to use an AI. Felt great. I was inspired because my friend Nick (not that one, and not that one, a third Nick!) said it was against his religion to place bets on a prediction market. Wise words. I’ll make that against my religion too, fuck prediction markets, but a topic for another day. I liked the way he used it, reminded me of my fledgling AI religion and fuck it. I’m just gonna say it from now on.

So if you will excuse me I gotta go finish this deck on our company AI strategy.

It’s a pretty funny deck, actually. It tells the whole company how much I hate AI, how I don’t want to use it, how it’s a giant theft machine making us dumber. And then proceeds to explain what we as a company will be doing with AI, which is not nothing. I make a point to say that the AI strategy of the company is not my beliefs. They are two different things. BUT we will endeavor to be as moral as possible in these pursuits, and I promise not to ever use it to try and take anyone’s jobs from them. It could be better. It still feels a little hypocritical, but, like every sad-ass CEO out there, I don’t really have much of a choice. Capital is a dictator in the best of times.

One last thing about AI before I get over it for another couple days: If, when I am old and have dimentia, you are considering showing me AI-generated shit in order to get an emotional reaction from me, do not do it. Do not show my alzheimer’s-addled-ass a single AI-generated image or my ghost will haunt you forever, I swear to god.

Emma’s got a ton of work so Daddy and Jane are doing full bedtimes this week. We did Daddy School last night and I taught her about the history of Youtube, about Chad and Steve and not forgetting Jawed. About how a billion dollars seemed inconceivable when Google bought them. About how much bigger they are now. About video compression. I showed her some of the Youtube videos I posted nearly 20 years ago of Freezepop and such. Some of those old videos have 50, 60 thousand views kinda crazy. Didn’t remember that. We talked a little bit about the creator economy and, sadly, Mr. Beast. Jane is not much of a fan of him but of course she’s seen him.

We had a new class member, Miss Kate the Cat, a new addition to our class. We took the time to welcome her to class. I think Caticorn and Aurora the Alaskan Cat were happy to have another cat in the class. Quack Quack is probably feeling a bit lonely.

Maybe we need another duck.

Goth playlist for you, mostly new. Except for Depeche Mode, from our road trip DM review. Oh and Cranes. I mean, it’s new(ish) Cranes compared to their heyday, but they have a lot of albums after that, and they are all pretty good! Just issued on vinyl for the first time, those albums. This Milkweed is not the vastly underrated Milkweed from New England in the 90’s, man, I loved that band. Nor is it the 70’s Canadian progressive rock and fusion ensemble from the Province of Québec. A quality new Milkweed. Bill is to thank for Hillary Woods and Lathe of Heaven. This crazy-ass Civilistjävel! & Mayassa Jallad album came from a random Bluetweet end-of-year list and they were not kidding. Great record.

Righty-o let us now turn our attention to capitalism and employment and management and finance and whatnot. These billions of auctions won’t run themselves. Well. Actually, they do. Mostly. But still. Gotta star at numbers. Business business numbers numbers is this working yay.