Good morning good morning good morning. greetings from rainy Somerville, MA. Thank you, Somerville weather gods, for delivering us a perfect weekend and saving all the rain for the work week. Even though, you know, starting a work week in dreary weather might be a bit triggering for those of us with, ah, happiness issues. But I am doing okay today. Lots of sleep, lots of things to do, getting the morning started with lots of work and things to do things to do.

You will be happy to know I spent a significant portion of the weekend doing chores chores chores chores are the best. Even though I am not in my beloved attic studio, I can always find some stuff to do. I stained and hung some shelves in this fun little three-season room that is my office in Somerville. I added oh-shit bars to the treacherous stairway to the basement. I fixed Jussi’s closet. I began an absurd tool organization project that will not be done for a few more days as the assorted materials arrive.

I swapped out a light fixture in Jane’s bedroom and as I took the old one down a full gallon of some sort of shredded material fell out of the hole and cascaded all over my head. Was I wearing any PPE? No, of course not. Light fixtures do not spew things at you in my modern home in North Carolina, and I forgot this place was a hundred years old with, like, six epochs of home-improvement layered on top. What was this stuff? Some en vogue 70’s insulation scheme? Sawdust? Asbestos? Rat’s next? All of it. I do not even know man. I have sent a bit off to the asbestos lab. I still have some of it in my eyes. I got an eye wash kit will be using that today. I tried to seal it up but stupidly used a dark grey sealant and then that smeared all over the light fixture and I had to get my detail-oriented wife to clean that up. It was not my finest home improvement hour, but it looks okay now that it’s done.

Tons of socializing this weekend too, my wife planning all these play dates with old friends, people I’ve known 20, 30 years. It is so weird and satisfying. I love it.Good to catch up with so many good people and pleasantly surprised so many of our friends here have kids Jane’s age (or younger!) since most of our parent friends in NC with kids Jane’s age are like 10-20 years younger than me.

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We’re listening to the “to investigate” playlist which currently has nothing unlistened to on it this morning. Though that reminds me I have music recommendations from Bill, Nicky and Suzy from this weekend I need to add to the playlist. But right now we are listening to that last Lana Del Rey track in anticipation of her new album being announced any moment now. I am sort of worried about her, she may have peaked with NFR. But that White Feathered whatever song grew on me a lot. Will this record be a new pinnacle of achievement or some creepy plot loss. We will see, we will see.

Can I get through this week without buying a record? We will try, we will try.

I am now on Book 6 of this Dungeon Crawler Carl situation. I liked number 5. It was solid. I am enjoying book 6 even more. I am gonna catch up to modern times soon and will be out of books to read before Matt Dinniman can finish the series, but this guy seems to be able to crank shit out so I am fairly confident we won’t be in a Game of Thrones situation here. Fingers crossed.

Watched Disclosure Day and while I admit to being a little tanked, especially by the end, I loved it and consider it one of Spielberg’s best. I have about five gripes, however. I’ll keep it spoiler free but everyone’s critique about the ending and secrets and conspiracy theory are true, ish. He did sort of address it all, but I only caught the explanations because of the subtitles, and for something so important to the film’s whole purpose, that should have been dealt with a bit more up front. There were two or three shockingly bad VFX shots that one does not expect in a Spielberg film and they kinda bummed me out. And I have zero idea what was going on with the thing in the trailer at the end but like I said I was pretty tipsy by then. But all in all, the themes with which it wrestles, politics, religion, the consent of the governed, trauma (but not in the increasingly tropey manner) was very good.

Educational Youtuber, Charity Wunderkind and overly-manic dude who does not take enough care of his mental health Hank Green got into an online kerfuffle about AI this weekend. He kinda half-assed one of his educational videos because — and this is what he says — he has been relying too much on Chat GPT not for writing the scripts but for research purposes. It seems, to me, that you have been able to sense the LLMs creeping into the scripts as well over the last few months. AI has been one area about which I have disagreed with him for a while. I enjoyed his decent analysis of the financial situation. It was missing some key details but it was pretty solid. But as a longtime fan, it has been evident to me that he is nerding out on the utility of the invention more than analyzing its externalities.

Anyway, he apologized for this, said he was gonna pull back from making videos and re-evaluate his AI usage. He mentioned that his wife and brother have been talking to him about it, which strongly suggests to me this is more than an overly enthusiastic research habit. Hank, to me, seems like the archetype embodied of someone who is obsessed with being as productive as possible. These people are, I believe, more susceptible to the lure of AI than someone likes me who does like to stay busy, but mostly adheres to the Kurt Vonnegut letter-mailing theory of productivity.

His apology was elegant and honest, his planned actions are sensible and sound. This should be the end of it but of course it’s the internet and people are still pissed. I think part of this is normal internet shittery…

But I also think this is evidence of something. I think it is evidence that a ton of fucking people do not want AI involved in anything and deeply disappointed to find out any amount of AI went into making anything they consume. And that is their right! And, I think you all know, I am one of them. To them, AI is like Nutrasweet or Red Dye Number 5 or Glyphostate or something. They want nothing to do with it, and are immensely frustrated when they discover it’s involved in something they love.

I do believe AI disclosures would help with this. Ideally in some standardized way, and ideally stating both when there is and isn’t AI in something so you don’t have to infer from silence. I don’t think Hank had a full handle on just how large and increasingly strident that community is. And I suspect a lot of companies are going to experience this more and more often.

Which is why of course we should have an anti-ai pro-humanity religion that kids something like the K kosher symbol into widespread use.

Jane was 50-50 this weekend, but I will say that in the mornings, she has been real good about teeth. But the evenings? Man, you just do not know what you’re gonna get. One evening used up all of my and Emma’s patience and we were tag teaming in and out with increasingly short intervals, like two haggered, beat-down wrestlers who know they are losing. It was rough.

And she hasn’t even drawn me another picture.

We got an industrial playlist for you today. You know you love it. There is new Ministry which, I mean. I assume this means Al and Paul? Ministry is Al and Paul. But actually, I haven’t double-checked yet. Do I want to? Do I want to know? Could I handle the crushing disappointment? Maybe I’ll keep the mystery for another day or two.