The Rise of A.I., or the Dawn of a New Humanity, Plus Absurdities

My friend, the painter and sculptor Kenneth Kendall, left us on this day in 2006. 

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Did you hear about the bank robber who said he had every right to rob the bank? 

Of course not, that would be insane, but Trump now claims that he had "every right to interfere in the election."

So he's simultaneously saying the federal election interference lawsuit against him is frivolous, while admitting he's guilty.

September 3, 2024

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In 1752, England dropped the Julian calendar and adopted the Gregorian calendar, but there was an 11-day difference so they had to catch up. The day after September 2, became September 14th, and guess what, there was widespread rioting! People were pissed off that 11 days were stolen from them, haha.

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English general and politician, Oliver Cromwell, left us on this day in 1658. 

"Consider that ye might be wrong."

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Thank goodness, at long last, something political we can all agree on 100%! That jackass Biden actually encouraged his supporters to vote in person AND vote by mail, just to "test the system." 

And he said it out loud, on live TV! What an idiot! It wasn't a lie or a gaffe, wasn't an exaggeration... it's a felony, and he's encouraging others to commit felonies. He obviously has no respect for the law- he's an anarchist! So we can all join hands and demand that he drop out of the race. Why would an anarchist even want to be in the government to begin with???

All right, so it was Trump, not Biden. I wonder if that changes the dynamic at all. Are there Trump supporters who would condemn Biden for this, but look the other way with Trump? Haha, no need to answer.

If indeed it was Biden, I stand behind everything I said, because I believed it in principle. Hold me to it if it comes to be. Can Trump supporters hold their candidate to the same standard, on this specific issue? Everybody knows there are gray areas to many of these issues, but this is black and white, and couldn't be more so.

We all know how this goes... he says something dumb, his toadies say he was joking or didn't mean it that way, Trump later clarifies that he meant it exactly that way he said it, it becomes accepted truth, interest wanes, and we're on to the next scandal- the next nail in the bed of nails.

But really, how can it be so hard to get some Trump supporters to say that they condemn any candidate who encourages their supporters to vote two times? How is this something that they can't commit to in principle?

If they genuinely believe that might equals right, and any ends justify the means, then that makes this all the more difficult of a struggle, and all the more important that we* win it. We can't accept some bozo poisoning the election- that would be the definition of un-Americanism. Let's do this!

*"we," as in, those who believe in the integrity of our elections.

September 3, 2020

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John Waters, on The Wizard of Oz, from Crackpot- "When they throw water on the witch, she says, 'Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness.' That line inspired my life. I sometimes say it to myself before I go to bed, like a prayer."

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Went out to buy a blender and came back with 3 bottles of wine, 4 steak knives, lime soda and peanuts instead.

September 3, 2011

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On this day in 1812, twenty-four settlers were killed in the Pigeon Roost Massacre in Indiana. From Wikipedia:

"Pigeon Roost State Historic Site is located between Scottsburg and Henryville, Indiana, United States. A one-lane road off U.S. Route 31 takes the visitor to the site of a village where Native Americans massacred 24 settlers shortly after the War of 1812 began."

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John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson written on this day in 1816:

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect that is due to it, knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill or might fill the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history."

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"On this day in 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery! He wrote a book on it, My Escape From Slavery. This is from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass:

"You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and M a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedoms swift winged angels, that fly around the world; I am confined in the bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that if I were on one of your gallant decks, under your protecting wing! Alas! Betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on. O, that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance. I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery. O God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God! Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand. Get caught, or clear, I'll try it. I had as well die with ague as the fever. I have only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it; 100 miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God is helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water. This is very bay shall yet bear me into freedom. The steamboats steered in the Northeast course from Northpoint. I will do the same; and when I get to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe adrift, and walked straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I get there, I shall not be required to have a pass; I can travel without being disturbed. Let but the first opportunity offer, and, come what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I will try to bear up under the yoke. I am not the only slave in the world. Why should I be free? I can bear as much as any of them. Besides I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to some one. It may be that my misery and slavery will only increase the happiness when I get free there is a better day coming."

Imagine! Impossible.

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In Nebraska on this day in 1855, 700 soldiers under United States General William S. Harney avenged the Grattan massacre by attacking a Sioux village and killing 100 men, women and children.

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On this day in 2016, Gretel became very good friends with a june bug.

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Alan Ladd, was born on this day in 1913. One of the greatest roles, somehow, in the history of cinema- Shane

Shane : I gotta be going on.

Joey : Why, Shane?

Shane : A man has to be what he is, Joey. Can't break the mould. I tried it and it didn't work for me.

Joey : We want you, Shane.

Shane : Joey, there's no living with... with a killing. There's no going back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand. A brand sticks. There's no going back. Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her... tell her everything's all right. And there aren't any more guns in the valley.

Joey : Shane...

[Joey notices that Shane is wounded] 

Joey : It's bloody! You're hurt!

Shane : [Shane starts to stroke Joey's hair] I'm all right, Joey. You go home to your mother and father and grow up to be strong and straight. And, Joey... take care of them, both of them.

Joey : Yes, Shane.

[Shane rides off] 

How is Shane so good??? 

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Memphis Slim was born on this day in 1915. Somehow I shared the world with this man for 14 years. 

EVERY DAY I HAVE THE BLUES.

Whoa

Nobody

Loves me,

Nobody

Seems to care

Whoa

Nobody

Loves me,

Nobody

Seems to care

Well worries

And trouble,

Darling,

Babe, you know

I'll have

My share

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Baseball player, Eddie Stanky, was born on this day in 1916. Don't sit next to him in the dugout.

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Indian yogi and mystic, Sadhguru, was born on this day in 1957. 

"There is no such thing as work-life balance – it is all life. The balance has to be within you."

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Malcolm Gladwell was born on this day in 1963.

"In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours."

I think about this all the time. I think about in reference to The Beatles, to my own job, and then countless other ways.

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Cromwell again- "Do not trust to the cheering, for those very persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged."

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Russian author and playwright, Ivan Turgenev, left us on this day in 1883.

"If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin."

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E. E. Cummings left us on this day in 1962.

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."

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Roger Ebert's mentor, Pauline Kael, left us on this day in 2001.

"The problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions fulfilled again."

And that, in a nutshell, is why I decided that film criticism would be one of the worst jobs ever.

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Other notable birthdays- Hank Thompson (1925), Whitey Bulger (1929), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (1953), Steve Jones (1955), Noah Baumbach (1969), John Fugelsang (1969)

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Another notable deathday- Vince Lombardi (1970)

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Coffee Jerks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VssO5bKFJU0

September 3, 2011

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The Farmer and the Clown, wonderful book.

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/11/the-farmer-and-the-clown-marla-frazee/

September 3, 2015

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The Economist- Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries

Suspicious about Covid death totals? Then this is the article for you.

Instead of looking at how deaths have been categorized, look at hard facts- total deaths this year vs an average year. Through July there were just over 150+ Covid deaths, but 214k deaths on top of what could be expected based on previous data.

It came out recently that only 6% of Covid deaths were strictly due to Covid, and some thought that meant this whole thing was for 10k people. It's not, 214k died this year over what we'd expect, so we appear to be under-counting.

And enough of the "but they had a pre-existing condition" nonsense. Six in ten of us have pre-existing conditions... it's not a death sentence. People can have a pre-existing condition from when they're born until they're a hundred.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries

September 3, 2020

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The Atlantic- Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

After the way Trump treated McCain, and hundreds of other displays of his callousness, these quotes are exactly in line with what's on the record. Unfathomable to think this wouldn't become his second Access Hollywood moment, but I can hear choruses of rationalizations emanating from the ether of cognitive dissonance- "Oh that's just Trump being Trump." Disrespecting war dead? OK...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

September 3, 2020

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New York Times, September 3, 2022- An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy.

I feel like we passed an important threshold here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/technology/ai-artificial-intelligence-artists.html

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Best conversation ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY

September 3, 2011

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Turgenev again, from Father's and Sons- "We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars."

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On this day in 2006, Ryan Howard became the first Phillie to hit 50 home runs in a season.

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Brando on Marilyn Monroe- "I thought she was remarkably sweet. Very savvy. She was better at marketing things--herself--than anyone on Madison Avenue or in Hollywood. She knew how to sell herself--the idea of herself. But she was very insecure; very raw. She asked me once if I had been told which metaphors and simians I represented. Simians! I didn't have the heart to correct her. We're all dumb. We all reach too far."

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Democritus came up with the idea of atomism, that the universe was made up of indivisible particles. History corresponds more closely to modern science than any other theory of the time. He was known as The Laughing Philosopher because of his propensity to always be laughing at the absurdity of human folly. His attitude seems to correspond pretty closely to mine!

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Genius!

McSweeney's- WHY I AM NOT A WRITER

by JOHN MANCINI

Joyce spent twenty-nine thousand hours writing Ulysses. Vonnegut spent twenty-three years writing Slaughterhouse Five. Hemingway rewrote The Sun Also Rises fifty times. “Really great fun,” Wodehouse said of his time in a German internment camp.

When he was twelve years old, Dickens worked in a shoeshine factory. “There was no childhood in my childhood,” said Chekhov. Huckleberry Finn was handwritten on unlined paper. “I wasn’t even bothering whether I understood what I was saying,” Eliot said of writing The Waste Land. Virginia Woolf first attempted suicide in 1913. “The melancholia of things completed,” Nietzsche spoke of.

Verlaine shot Rimbaud. Byron walked with a limp. Dryden was beaten up by the prime minister’s thugs. Dostoyevsky was sent to Siberia. Defoe didn’t publish a novel until he was sixty. Hammett stopped writing at thirty-nine. Faulkner received a D in English at the University of Mississippi. Fitzgerald dropped out of Princeton. Dorothy Parker was fired from Vanity Fair. Graham Greene was sued for libel by a six-year-old.

Chandler lived with his mother. Kerouac lived with his mother. Roland Barthes was hit by a truck. Frank O’Hara by a Jeep. Nathaniel West died in a car wreck. Thomas Hardy’s first three novels did not sell. Milton made five pounds from Paradise Lost. Beckett’s Murphy was rejected forty-two times. Lord of the Flies was rejected twenty-one times. Near death, Gogol burned his own manuscript. Sappho’s poetry was burned by the Church. Dante was banished from Florence. Ovid was banished from Rome. Walter Benjamin died by suicide. Hart Crane died by suicide. Joseph Conrad shot himself. Kafka sold insurance.

After the publication of Moby-Dick, Melville took a job as a cargo inspector. Reading the Scarlet Letter to his wife, Hawthorne cried. Jack London overdosed at forty. Zeno hanged himself at ninety. At fifty-nine, Virginia Woolf jumped into the river with a pocketful of stones. Faulkner fell from a horse. Joyce lost all of his teeth. Milton was constipated.

Try to imagine Sisyphus happy. At best it’s “the happiness of being sad,” as Victor Hugo defined melancholy. “What are poets for?” asked Hölderlin. Li Po drowned. So did Shelley. When F. Scott Fitzgerald died, no one attended his funeral. “The poor son of a bitch,” said Dorothy Parker.

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From Roger Ebert's Blog- 100 Greatest Moments from the Movies

The children watching the train pass by in Ray's "Pather Panchali."

Robert Mitchum in "Night of the Hunter," with "LOVE" tattooed on the knuckles of one hand, and "HATE" on the other.

A knight plays chess with Death, in Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."

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John Mulaney- "13-year-olds are the meanest people in the world."

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Buddy Hackett- "Don't carry a grudge. While you're carrying a grudge, the other guy is out dancing."

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My genitalia and skin pigmentation has no bearing on the strength of my argument.

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Bertrand Russell, in a 1959 interview CBC TV titled On the Existence of God & the Afterlife: 

Question: As you approach the end of life, do you have any fear of some kind of afterlife, or do you feel that is just …

Bertrand Russell Answer: Oh, no, I think that’s nonsense.

Question: There is no afterlife?

Bertrand Russell's Answer: NONE WHATEVER.

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Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War and Other Essays- "Today everybody is talking about the fact that we live in one world; because of globalization, we are all part of the same planet. They talk that way, but do they mean it? We should remind them that the words of the Declaration [of Independence] apply not only to people in this country, but also to people all over the world. People everywhere have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When the government becomes destructive of that, then it is patriotic to dissent and to criticize - to do what we always praise and call heroic when we look upon the dissenters and critics in totalitarian countries who dare to speak out."

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Stephen Fry- "It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue."

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Truman Capote, In Cold Blood- "It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty."

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William Saroyan- "Remember that every man is a variation of yourself."

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Mary Shelley- "The beginning is always today."

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William James- "The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook."

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe- "I love those who yearn for the impossible."

This is my guiding philosophy when playing any sport. In racquetball, there's a time that a shot seems impossible to get, but I try, and at some point it flips the possible, and then it flips from possible, to success. I have this experience in baseball, tennis, rugby, etc. Moments that I've accomplished seemingly impossible seats have been some of the greatest moments of my life.

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There was a young man from New Haven

Who had an affair with a raven.

He said with a grin 

As he wiped of his chin,

"Nevermore!"