Good morning good morning greetings from rainy Chatham County, NC. I am sitting here with six assorted cans of natural soda and water — five of which I found laying around the house, because my wife leaves them everywhere and, not unreasonably, likes them just as much flat as carbonated, since they are, of course, basically water. So then she finds them and its like finding a little treasure and she drinks it later. This is a good system, I have to admit, but it is wholly incompatible with my neurotic system of cleaning all the time. So I am drinking them all today. Such are the little matrimonial battles of everyday life.

An old industry friend of mine subscribed to GMHHAY for exactly two weeks then unsubscribed yesterday. Couldn’t handle this level of truth. Who can blame him, who can blame him.

One down five to go. Am I basically drinking lover’s spit (BSS reference)? Who can say, who can say. But I mean. How do you think babies were born. This spit is part of me.

Got an eye appointment this morning, in 90 minutes. I had a big epiphany this year about eye appointments. Well, two actually. First: don’t go in the summer, the machine gets all fogged up from your body heat. And secondly: don’t bother trying to press your eyes and face all the way into the machine. Because if you do, you get a prescription that works great for contacts, which I don’t wear anymore because contats for astygmatisms suck. It’s also a prescription that works great if you shove your glasses all the way up against your nose. But I don’t wear my glasses that way, neither do you I’ll wager. They are about a half-inch down my nose. And my eyes are really bad and that half inch makes a huge difference. So I am always pushing my glasses up my nose. It’s a nightmare.

I wonder if it will be possible to get a prescription for both up against my nose and a half inch away, ha. Because I DO wear a glasses strap, pulling my glasses tight, when doing studio attic work.

LOL I already get four different prescriptions from this woman. Should I get a fifth? Oh shit am I high maintenance?

Also why did I hyphenate “half-inch” one of those two times and not the other. Which is correct? Are they both correct?

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We are listening to a 2018 pressing, which is the first official vinyl release, of Bowie’s Live at Glastonbury 2010. It had been floating around on bootleg CDs since the year of the performance. There was a very nice bootleg vinyl version that came out in 2016 that is better in a lot of ways. And I wouldn’t say the mastering that the BBC applied to this is great, but it does improve things. But really, it’s about the performance. Bowie gives a career-spanning performance here, something I never got to see him do. I’ve long had this on CD but wanted it on vinyl for ever, UK only pressing, I don’t buy stuff from overseas. So I had to await a reasonably priced copy in America. Which took years. And this copy is commensurately dinged in the corners and has spine damage but overall I’d give it a VG and the vinyl is fantastic and I saved money so I am happy.

Also I learned today that Brian Eno cowrote “I’m Afraid of Americans” I had no idea. And that’s the only tour I ever saw Bowie on. Man I regret that. Dammit.

Also the performance of “Little Wonder” on here makes me actually like the song. Keeps all that 90’s breakbeat nonsense on the DL.

Misspelled “polyurethane” in yesterday’s rant about AI being like Plastics, sorry about that. Was a good rant, though, wasn’t it? I keep thinking about it. I was also thinking about the Large Hadron Collider yesterday. Just an absolute monstrosity of complexity, tech, real estate and money money money. Sound familiar? But unlike AI, I am so into it. Large Hadron Collider rules. Imagine if people were making AI now solely in order to pursue science and not, like, turning photos of your kids into porn and convincing your kids to kill themselves. Imagine how much more goodwill it would be engendering.

I can just picture my liberal copyleft self being all haughty and saying “well if we have to touch the sum total of creative works of mankind in order to understand the secrets of cancer, so be it.” And that would be a strong argument! Robin Sloan has made a similar argument (worth reading!) and that guy is very smart so it must be true.

And no one ever talks about the Large Hadron Collider being a monumental waste of money. Well, I’m sure someone does but they suck. Eh, actually maybe they have a point. BUT NOT TODAY.

Another epiphany about AI this week (GOD I AM SORRY). You guys watch Dune Prophecy? It is better than it has any right to be and, of course, Emily (not Emma) Watson is a treasure and makes everything better even that sub-par Kingsmen sequel. Ooo she is two episodes of some animated sci fi comedy on MAX? Tempting. But I digress. Great thing about long writing, you are allowed to digress. It’s the best. Anyway Dune Prophecy. This is a bit spoilery if you care. BUT, Emily Watson’s character, head of the Bene Gesserit, in a galaxy where AI is banned, is so tempted by AI that she secretly uses an AI machine hidden away in the depths of the Bene Gesserit homeworld for millennia. Even though they are a rabidly Anti-AI sect. Her desire to know her enemy lead her to a temptation that she could not refuse. I feel a lot like Emily Watson. I keep finding myself tempted to feed my entire life into an AI and talk to it.

How did people-in-the-know handle the plastic onslaught when it was first taking over the planet like a cancer? They obviously knew it was bad, right? How long could they hold out? Is there a single person on the planet that is successfully, completely avoiding plastic in their lives? No, right? It’s impossible.

(I guess, actually, the timing is a little unclear. Wikipedia says that “The first industrially practical polyethylene synthesis is discovered by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson” in 1933, patent on Nylon in 1935. Polyester in 1950, polypropylene in 1951, polycarbonate in 1953. 1957, “large-scakle commercial production of isotactic polypropylene.” “1960’s” (vague) for HDPE, which would be really when things kicked off.

Eh, yeah, that tracks. Carson’s Silent Spring — a lynchpin of the environmental movement — was 1962 so people were thinking about this stuff in the late 50’s, and Emma says that new book I’m gonna read says the plastic people knew it was bad by the 60s. So, yeah. An ethical, aware person would have been confronted with a moral dilemma about plastic’s “inevitability” by, say, the late 60’s, and they would have known it was bad. Oh god I feel for them. They are probably MAGA now.)

Craig pointed out that I probably had plastic in my underwear and socks in the elastic. Whoops. I stand corrected. He is right.

How long can anyone hold out against AI?

AND! Am I really holding out? I called Ford yesterday I was onbviously talking to an AI before I finally got a real human. Was it an immoral LLM-based AI? I think so, but who knows maybe it was just a really good implementation of one of those shitty circa 2020 AIs that doesn’t hoover up the collected works of mankind and burn down forests. No way to tell, really. I’m probably using it several times a day already, against my will. Even ignoring all the meetings that are being AI-monitored that I feel too rude to stop people from doing.

A friend of mine recently said he was vegetarian, had been forever, but he doesn’t really talk about it with other people and doesn’t try and convince people to be a vegetarian. Which is cool. Is being in a meeting where someone else is using an AI like a vegetarian sitting in a restaurant with a carnivore and just minding your own business? Or is it different, because you are being absorbed into that AI as well. Like if you had to, I don’t know… where does this metaphor go? Watch the pig get killed? Kill it yourself?

What I’m saying is my jury is still out on that one so I am I guess just consenting to let people use AI in meetings I am in. It’s weird, too. They all ask! Because people know people have moral misgivings. And I have as many moral misgivings as a Pope in King’s Landing.

But even I still say yes.

One time at the doctor I said yes to AI note-taking, but in a passive aggressive way that was some sort of ill-conceived, on-the-fly attempt at maintaining my morality while also not being a party pooper and boy did that not work a single iota.

The way an honest person goes through their teens and 20’s utterly rudderless about how to answer the simple question “how are you?”

Took me like fifteen years to navigate that one.

I’m not neurodivergent what are you talking about.

We are down to three cans now. I have maybe consumed 10 ounces.

Jane was ROUGH this morning. Stalled to play with the kitty — cute, fine — then pointless stalling around doing her teeth which was just. WHY. What is the point. Just do it. Then it was raining so there was a big stall about whether she wanted to put on her rain coat or just make a run for it to the car. I mean, what do you think she chose. And then a long problem with putting her seatbelt on because she asked to be put into a new booster seat. Then we got stuck behind a Honda Odyssey going 20 in a 25 the whole way there and it drove me to the brink. Then we finally get to the school, in line, and we are way back in line, because of the rain. And she loses it because we are not in a place she can leave the car exactly at 7:30 and she doesn’t want to get wet and…

Well you can imagine how I felt but reader, I pulled it together and somehow managed to get her to draw a connection between all her decisions that morning and where we are and about unexpected events that can happen when you are trying to be prompt, like the seatbelt and the slothly Odyssey (oh man that is good) and she got it. And neither one of us got mean to the other one.

AND the cars all moved forward about 20 feet at the last minute and she could get out right at 7:30.

And it all sucked, but reader: I pulled it off. I’m not a terrible parent!

Let’s ruin it with another kid!

(I kid)

Morning drivetime playlist for you today. Almost didn’t do it because it’s short, and I am so done with Black Flag. Modern Black Flag is an abomination, and Gregg Ginn does not treat artists well and you know what? They were never that good anyway. You know what else came out in 1983? Pornography. Yes Sir I Will. Everything Falls Apart. Land Butthole Surfers. There. I said it. Boy that felt to get off my chest.

Lotta these artists I don’t know but was pleasant to re-discover which is the best thing about this whole complicated system is that ahve. That M!R!M band was great, so was Paolo Nutini.

And I cried during the Bright Eyes song because it took me back to that solo show at the Coolidge Corner where I first saw him play this and if you think of this song as a plaintive cris de coeur written by a 17-year-old kid and not “A Bright Eyes song” it is amazing.

Because I swear that I am dying. Slowly, but it’s happening.

Oh shit I am quoting lyrics time to go.

Okay off to the eye doctor I go. Byeee.