Good morning good morning good morning happy Monday how are you are you freakin PSYCHED to be here Morning? WOOO Monday.

Been thinking about all the chemicals in our body and who put them there. It’s fun to blame the boomers for this stuff but it seems it was mostly the generations before them. The dude who put lead in our gasoline was born in 1888. Lead was in our paint since the 19th century, they knew it was bad for us by the 20s, latest. Bayer first made DDT in 1874. Plastic first came round in the early 1830s and was pretty much everywhere by the time the boomers were even kids. The first PFAS were synthesized in the 1930s so hardly coulda been the Boomers’ fault. Lot of it seems to be on the “Greatest Generation.”

So great they poisoned every person on the planet, forever, in perpetuity.

It really is crazy how little we talk about this. Was thinking this morning about my neck, about my constant physical pain, about that chart recently about how my childhood years were the years of the most lead pollution on the planet. Of all the things that are in me, forever, against my will, that should not be: microplastics, whatever the fuck all that childhood DDT did to me, PFAs, lead, so much lead.

Was there ever a chance I was going to feel okay?

We can never know.

They took that away from us when we were first born.

You take even the most leftist communist freak in America and it still seems like no one is particularly concerned about it. There is zero conversation about the morality and ethical considerations of letting people cover the planet in new chemicals that they have no idea about. It’s absolutely crazy to think that companies should not be allowed to immediately deploy everything they invent, without knowing if it will kill us.

And yet they stick shit out there that kills us over and over and over.

I wonder what they’re putting in shit right now that we don’t even know will kill us.

Because you know it’s happening again. Right now.

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All right lets get some music on. I was just listening to Misty Lane’s catchy-AF 1983 high-NRG disco dance jam “Energy,” as I just picked up the OG Canadian 12” recently. But it is, alas, over.

So we will pick up where we left off on Thursday on the “To Investigate” playlist. Where were we? Ah yes, a band called Sheep, Dog & Wolf. Album is called Ceiling Waves. I like it it lot. Moody, melodic, kinda goth, soulful dude singer that sounds sorta like Anohni. This is a good album. Came from that list from some dude on Threads, a stranger. Well that stranger has good musical taste. Beautiful record.

We went to see the Afghan Whigs on Saturday night. A friend in the GMHHAY Slack said that the Whigs are sorta starting to encroach on legacy-act territory and I think this is correct. I saw them about eight months ago in Boston and I was bored enough I left. We left this time too but I was still kinda into it, just tired. It does not help that they don’t play enough songs from my favorite album. I am sympathetic about this, they have ten albums, they’ve been around for 40 years. Bands should let me write their setlists.

It also doesn’t help Greg Dulli’s cause that he is sorta stuck in this Whigs/Twilight Singers purgatory where has to tour as one band or the other because of Curley and Rick. I assume, I don’t actually know. So the poor guy can’t play, like, half of his oeuvre, which in his case makes the shows especially samey.

He did do that tour not too long ago where he played songs from his entire career and I am so, so bummed that I missed that: had to travel. It was a funeral if I recall. What are you gonna do.

Opener was great, though: Night Moves. This also doesn’t help Dulli’s cause, his awesome openers. Last time it was Mercury Rev.

Been working my way through the Musk documentary. Several contradictory feelings. First, I can’t stand the directorial style. I can’t stand his use of AI, I can’t stand the inexplicable editorial decision to take every single filmed interview and put a fake background on them like what the fuck is that for and what does it accomplish? I can’t stand that he uses fake space imagery and pretends it’s real? Why do you do that? I know it’s hard to film in space but come the fuck on.

Also I cannot stand how the director inserts himself into the documentary from minute one. Like ok cool it is sorta relevant that Musk said your doc was gonna be a hit piece from minute one, but just so much “I” in this doc. “I wanted to understand,” etc. It’s not a personal journey of discovery, man. Sherman’s March it ain’t.

And then of course I already know, like, eh, 90% of the horrific shit in the documentary, so a lot of it is kind of boring and I am therefore focused on the shitty AI since I already know the facts.

Also it’s four fucking hours long.

BUT beyond all that, it really does do a good job of displaying the horror, the heel turn, the… well, evil.

Maybe it’ll change a mind or two, I guess. Worth a try, I suppose. Though I don’t really think Musk is in a phase where even even needs legions of supporters anymore. He has transcended into pure ruling by power and evil and force. The cultists are just a minor added benefit at this point.

It would be tempting to look at all this AI failing bullshit going on right now — all the multiple, simultaneous, glorious AI dumpster fires happening right at this moment and think “oh man, are we near the end?” Can AI collapse as quickly as the Republican majority?

But I regret to inform you that we are not at the end. AI is going to survive these turbulent times of honeypotted CEOs, increasing stock market skepticism and debt market vengeance. The Republican majority did not collapse quickly, it took more than a decade and the efforts of millions of people. And most of those millions of people are already blinkered by AI. My god. AI blinkeredness everywhere you cannot escape it.

I think we need AI confession booths. This would be such a great piece of performance art at, like, a rave or something. You go into the booth and you confess your AI sins:

Father, I googled what was wrong with my camera and before I could do anything the AI gave me an answer and it was the correct answer so I didn’t have to click through to a webpage I am sorry.

Father I updated an app and now it has AI in it and I didn’t realize and now I can’t use the app without AI but I have to use the app for work.

Father I needed a refund from an online retailer but the only way to get one was to talk to an AI.

How do the fucking Amish do it, man. This shit is so unavoidable.

Emma and I were talking about DuoLingo, and how you could arguably make an almost-ethical AI for Duolingo, if you, you know, built it on an LLM of verbal communication that they went out and obtained. Like not written texts, but non-copyrighted audio recordings they made of just people talking. Because this would eliminate the theft at the heart of all LLMs: conversation is not copyrighted, there’s not an expectation that people are compensated for their conversation (except, I suppose, prostitutes and the consultant class).

But.. nah. If Duolingo made an AI to talk to, they would build it using the off-the-shelf tools that exist: it would be a text-based LLM, with a text-to-speech layer on top of it. Of course it would: that would be 100x cheaper and faster to build, why would they not do it that way?

SO, then, in the end, that Duolingo AI would be as tainted by theft as every other AI.

As they layer more and more functionality onto their AIs, we forget that, at their heart, every single commercial LLM is built on theft.

They want us to forget.

CHORES.

Well, good news and bad.

The good news is that the gardening chores went great. I got all the fruit trees moved into the greenhouse. I re-deciphered the 60’s industrial, LLM-free, non-LCD, non-APP thermostat in the greenhouse and got it set up to automatically turn on the heaters if it gets too cold. I got a new temperature sensor in there that’s on the Unifi system and POE and will actually work unlike all the relentlessly enshittified HomeKit stuff. I harvested all my Thai green chilis and the remainder of the tomatoes. I cut back my pepper plants and covered them in mulch, completely covered them. In theory, if they don’t get too cold, a pepper plant can survive the winter. You’re supposed to bring your pots into the garage, but I can’t do this because they’re in giant raised beds. So every year I experiment with new methods to try and get them through the winter and every year I fail. But I persevere.

Yeah that all went great.

NETWORKING CHORES. Then I turned my attention back to some lingering Chore Week chores, as well as continuing working on the east side of Chore House to get the AP, Camera and speakers out there. Some progress on both, but also weird, inexplicable setbacks. I am horrible about choosing wide-enough conduit when I run multiple cables through conduits I’m always trying to minimize the size and it makes my life miserable when I pull cable. I am machining these custom face plates for each junction box, putting holes in them for bolts and cables and I keep fucking them. They’re only, like, $1.50 each, but I have to drill the holes, file the edges, paint them with primer, and paint them every time.

But the weirdest thing is this:

I have a 150-foot Cat6 interior run using interior-rated ethernet cable.

I have a different 150-foot Cat6 exterior run using an exterior-rated ethernet cable.

I have been using these same to spools of cable for a lot of stuff for a while now, and there have been no problems.

I have tested the ends on both cables with my handy Klein ethernet tester.

I have double-checked the POE ratings on the switches, and it is fine.

The max POE-ethernet cable run is about 100 meters, so I am at about half that for each.

And yet:

I cannot get the cameras I want to work on each cable to work.

The cameras work, mind you: I plug ‘em into the switch directly, no problem.

AND: here is the weirdest part: Each camera will work on the other cable run.

I want to put a G5 bullet on the indoor cable and an G3 Flex on the outdoor cable, and neither will work.

But if I put a G3 Flex on the indoor cable and the G5 Bullet on the outdoor cable, it works just fine.

What the hell.

It is really fucking with my whole “Unifi just works” mentality.

I do not need this in my life.

I need a single company to not be enshittified.

It’s gotta be user error, right?

Right?

Jane was pretty awful last night and this morning I am pretty exhausted. Also she wouldn’t let me brush her hair in the car so she looks like a fucking lunatic this morning. And she won’t wear a coat even though it was like 40 degrees this morning. I swear someone’s gonna call the 5-0 on us but we are trying man.

She’s working on her science fair project. Emma is helping out. But there are very strict rules! Apparently the parent can’t even type from dictation. Kid has to do their own typing. Which is fine, Jane can type fine. You gotta wonder, though, how much other parents help out. We’re all sitting here trying to teach her this lesson in honesty and integrity and, probably, half of the participants are just cheating and nothing will happen. Kinda like America. It’s always a bummer when I get down about the lack of fairness and integrity in society.

But what are you gonna do? Stop?

Can’t let those bastards win.

(Footnote: Jane has been a terrible pill this whole week but you can’t ever say she doesn’t have integrity. That girl would never cheat.)

Justa mix again today. No real rhyme or reason to it. Way too much power pop to be considered a random sampling. I guess you could consider it a “musical journal” of last week. Wildcat was written in a kind of obsolete vernacular.

Wildcat.

Wild… cat.

Pew. Chick. Pew.

I’m gonna go.