Good morning. It’s election day. Oh god oh god. Go vote. Go vote. Please. Oh god. It’s all so terrifying. It’s gonna be great. We’re gonna win. Oh god oh god it is so stressful.

I am wearing my Sonic Youth Youth Against Fascism shirt. Just a coincidence honest.

Speaking of shirts, I would like to give a shout-out to this Shellac shirt I bought at a Shellac show in a loft on Kneeland street in Boston like… 32 years ago or so. It has been worn once a month or so since then, been washed every time. It is probably one of the rarest things I own but I treat it like a normal shirt and the thing just keeps going. It has never faded, it has never shrunk, no seams have come loose.

Imagine if everything in America was made as well as this 1994 Shellac tour shirt. My god.

Enshittification, man.

Look yes we all would have preferred if Ian Curtis had made a different friend in the last years of his life other than Genesis P-Orridge. And we all would have preferred that Genesis P-Orridge was not such a terrible person to his lady partners. But I regret to say that Psychic TV’s ode to Ian Curtis, IC Water, will remain an all time banger. Such a beautiful song. And now on top of all the sadness I feel when I listen to it, I feel guilt too. If I ever find myself emotionally numb, I will listen to IC Water. Came on in the shower the other day and I almost lost it.

Today is Jane’s parent-teacher conference. I guess it makes sense they do this on election day — a lot of the schools in our county are also polling places. But I am not super psyched about it. But I could not say why. I am also mildly annoyed I have to work today. Like my subconscious just wants to sit here and doom-scroll about exit polling and line lengths all day? That would not be healthy.

I think her sickness might be getting worse. Midway though the day yesterday I was convinced I over-reacted and she could have gone to school. Making this decision in the morning without Emma is so hard! But she was coughing in her sleep last night a lot and I am also convinced I can feel a little pain in my lymph nodes and therefore we all have strep. Because it is the time of the year where the whole family gets strep. Man I had strep one time in my life before I had a kid attend public school and now I get it every year. One year I got it twice!

WINTER IS COMING.

Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!

Listening this morning to the classic album Futureworld by Trans Am. I have a very vivid memory of purchasing this album at Newbury Comics and having a quick debate with myself about whether I should buy it on CD or LP. I chose CD. I have, from time-to-time, regretting my choice ever since. It came out in 1999 and I was making okay money then and the obviously correct answer is I should have purchased it on both formats. I have, 27 years later, found a decent copy for a decent price — VG+/NM, $40. I just used one of those online inflation calculators and $40 in 2026 is worth roughly $20 in 1999, so this record has not, technically, appreciated at all and is a “reasonable deal.” Mmmm hmmm.

Great record though. And I saw this tour — I think, maybe it was the next one for Red Line — at that cool venue on N10 or so in Williamsburg. Studio B. With my friend Vicki.

Wait no my gig list tells me that is a lie. Saw the Futureworld tour in Boston. Didn’t see them at Avenue B until…. 2007??? That seems wrong.

Mysterious.

Hrm just Googled it and there is a video for the title track. Super lo res, though. Thrill Jockey should put a new version it up. Looks pretty fun:

So we have a case going on — the New York Times is suing Open AI about whether or not AI training is “fair use.” It’s not the first case on this topic, but it’s the first big case on this topic, and its ruling will matter for quite a while. Until some other court takes it up, issues a conflicting ruling, and the thing goes to the Supreme Court.

In theory, this ought to be decided by the legislature, and mayhaps if things go great today, and things go great in 2028, we can get there. But in the immediate future of the United States, this monumentally important case is going to be decided by the courts, in a manner no one is exactly sure of. It is a stupid-ass way to legislate in this country and we should fix it.

It’s also, in my opinion, patently obvious that AI training is not fair use. At least, commercial AI training. A bajillion people have sent in amicus briefs on this case, outlining their points of view. I have read several of them. I have read a few that people call “very level-headed.” And it drives me crazy! They’re not level-headed at all!

To whit. From Techdirt:

There’s a lot wrong with AI. But bad things happen when we try to use copyright law to fix it. Which is what we just told the Southern District of New York, where OpenAI and Microsoft are defending themselves in several cases alleging that their training violated the copyrights of the works the AI models were trained on. We made a few points.

One overarching point is that what the plaintiffs are trying to do is not what copyright law is for. Copyright gives the holder the ability to control how the embodiment of the work is used (ex: you can’t copy a book without permission, or, as the example we used in the brief, perform a play) but not the ability to control the public from benefiting from its contents. Copyright can control such activities as copying, distributing, or performing a work but NOT reading, watching, listening to, or learning from a work. What OpenAI does with its training is the latter set of activities, not the former. But if OpenAI is somehow not able to engage in these activities because of copyright, then no one can. Which would lead to a direct harm to the public, a loss of an important benefit copyright law is actually supposed to give it.

Dude! You just gave the game away! AI TRAINING STARTS WITH A COPY. There is no method by which you can train an AI on a book without first making a copy. What the fuck do these people think computers do? It’s right there in your own brief! “You can’t copy a book without permission.”

You can argue semantics about “what is reading” all you want. Maybe AI training is reading — I personally think that is an absolute bullshit argument, given that the point of AI training is to find linkages between words across multiple sources and that is most definitely not the point of “reading” as known by every human ever. When I am reading Game of Thrones I may, occasionally, think “oh I see he uses the word ‘weirwood’ here, like Dan Simmons did.” Yes, that does occasionally happen to humans. But we are reading whether or not that happens.

But also! EVEN IF you think AIs are reading (and they’re not!) it doesn’t matter! The very first thing they do to read is make a copy and they are doing that for commercial purposes.

Tell me how you would train an AI ever, in any manner, without making a copy first.

And people called that argument a good one!

Maddening!

A thing every AI-is-fair-use defender conveniently leaves out is the commercial purpose. The New York Times is not suing Harvard here. They are suing OpenAI and Sam Fucking Altman.

Every time I get into an argument with these people about this and I point out this is commercial use they just go silent.

And look, I am sympathetic. I have very different ideas about publicly owned AI training on all of the world’s art. I find something noble about my words contributing to the increased knowledge and intelligence of humanity. That would be great.

But that is not what’s happening with OpenAI. My words are contributing to a fucking asshole making money!

There is an absolute distinction between “the public benefitting from its contents” and “the public benefitting from its contents with a for-profit intermediary.”

Drives me crazy.

(As an aside, congratulations to an old friend of mine who has just taken up an executive position at OpenAI I guess).

We’re gonna leave Jane home today by herself while we go to her parent-teacher conference. We did this once, in an emergency situation, while she was asleep, but this will be the first time while she’s awake. Wish us luck.

Oh shit I gotta go.

I know I have a bunch of playlists ready for you but sorry. Short on time. And I watched this awesome video last night and it was so good: Agriculture live at Roadburn. I wish the thing had chapter markers because I could potentially convince one or two of you non-black-metal lovers out there to consider converting if I could point you to the part of the set where they go from “Dan’s Love Song” into “Bodidharma,” but, alas. Plop your cursor somewhere around the 60% mark maybe.

I kinda wanna go to Roadburn one year looks insane. So much metal.

Okay well. Into the breach. Here’s hoping things kick ass tonight and tomorrow is a new world where Stephen Miller enacts his evil plan B to try and rule us all without controlling congress. WE CAN DO IT.