Bullshit Meters

When I was doing a review/summary of "On Bullshit", by Harry Frankfurt, I noted the following, in his review of Max Black's "The Prevalence of Humbug":

short of lying. "What continuum could this be, along which one encounters humbug only before one encounters lying? Both lying and humbug are modes of misrepresentation." This might be a useful concept.

A while ago the answer to "what continuum could this be?" was suggested to me. It is a concept that has been in the folk zeitgeist for quite a while: a bullshit meter.

It was suggested to me by Black's "The Prevalence of Humbug", mentioned above, currently undergoing review/summarization. That piece opens with a quote from P.T. Barnum:

It would be a wonderful thing for mankind if some philosophic Yankee would contrive some kind of "ometer" that would measure the infusion of humbug in anything. A "Humbugometer" he might call it. I would warrant him a good sale.

I duckduckgo'ed "bullshit meter". "Bullshit detector" seems to be conflated with the concept. I could picture a bullshit detector as more of a yes/no, 1/0, warning light on/off, but it could also be like a geiger counter.

These 2 images appear to have a similar concept.

They both start with Truth at the other end of the meter from Bullshit. The 2nd 1 appears to be British, from its use of the term "bollocks".

I had to look up "chinny reckon", which basically means this emoji, which is actually in my frequently-used emoji cache:

Note, these meters don't appear to support the concept of bullshit being just below lies on the spectrum. Bullshit & 100% lies seem to be conflated.

This 1 has a different concept. It seems to relate more to the intent or cause of the inaccuracy of the statement.

There was also this German bullshit meter. My son, who is fairly fluent in German, could translate a few, but the rest were too blurry. If anyone can clean this up, & translate the German, I would love to see the result.

Also in the search results, several actual bullshit detection websites:

• BlahBlahMeter: I fed it my 7.3k word review of "Chokepoint Capitalism", it rated it 0.2 out of 1.0 "Your text shows some indications of 'bullshit'-English, but is still within an acceptable range." Phew, I guess?

• A Bullshit Meter written in Python available on GitHub. I've asked my son, who I think knows Python, to let me know how hard it would be to implement this on my PC or MacBook. He looked at it & said: "It looks like it’s just a wrapper script around ChatLiteLLM?". Too bad, that means it will treated the same as the next group.

• 2 US & 1 Australian LLM-based bullshit meters. So bullshit generators generate bullshit about bullshit. In keeping with the canons of this blog, I will not use or link to these sites. Actually, bullshitting about bullshit is probably a pretty good app for bullshit generators, aka LLMs. But, is this another example of bullshit contagion, where attempting to discuss or analyze bullshit results mostly in the creation of more bullshit?

Useful stuff? I think it may wind up being incorporated into The Taxonomy of Bullshit (watch this space).

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

The Folded Sky

"The Folded Sky" by Elizabeth Bear, 2025, 496 pages. Book 3 of "White Space".

Book 1 of White Space was "Ancestral Night", 2018.

Book 2 was "Machine", 2020.

I didn't like this novel as well as either of the prior 2. In the Acknowledgements, Bear explains why:

often I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew trying to meld a family drama with a first-contact novel and a space opera, with a smidgen of murder mystery thrown in for seasoning.

So, by the list:

• family drama: boring. The alien wife was a good character. The hormonal 16 YO girl was really annoying - "you kids, get off my lawn".
• first-contact: very interesting. A very creative source of aliens.
• space opera: nice. Bad guys are again libertarian pirates, anti-AI, anti-aliens, human nativists. Sad but prolly true.
• murder mystery: this really seemed to me to be out of left field.

Overall though, a good read.

A good word: apophenia, of which our old friend pareidolia is an instance.

Tesla's Robotaxi Revolution!

A post today from David Rosenthal, security expert:

Tesla's Robotaxi Revolution!

His blog is the best source of info on computer security issues that I subscribe to.

The post opens with a quote from @ChrisO_wiki on X:

How to tell if someone's bullshitting: watch for them to give a deadline that they repeatedly push back.

That clearly needs to go into my Taxonomy of Bullshit. I swear, the map of what is bullshit just keeps growing & growing. It's reaching the point where maybe the approach should be to define what is NOT bullshit.

Meanwhile, Rosenthal calls bullshit on Tesla & Leon Skunk, who 1st proclaimed FSD (Full Self Driving) mode Any Day Now (ADN) aka Real Soon (RS) in 2015 - 10 years ago!

Apparently Tesla's Robotaxis are going live in Austin, TX. For some reason, Skunk hates LIDAR. Lots of other cars use it, Skunk wants to go with visual cameras - that's all humans have, maybe?

I really enjoyed this 18 minute video, from Crunch Labs.

It starts with the geek film maker smuggling a LIDAR unit into Space Mountain in DisneyWorld, & using it to create a complete 3d printed map of Space Mountain! Pretty cool! That's the 1st 8 minutes.

Then it gets into testing LIDAR vs Tesla in several scenarios: fog, heavy rain, Wile E Coyote painted false roadways, etc. 6 scenarios.

Most of the scenarios involve a child-sized test dummy in the road. It is horrifying (but laughable!!!) how the 1st thing that always seems to happen as the Tesla plows into the dummy is its head flying off!

The very 1st test, child standing in the road, the Tesla failed. They put it in AutoPilot - presumably self driving mode - thereafter, & it did better.

The end result, measured in number of test dummy fatalities:

• LIDAR: 0/6.
• Tesla: 3/6. Oops.

So if you live in Austin TX, & you see a Tesla Autotaxi on the street, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES engage in jaywalking!

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

Financialization, FTL :-(

I posted this as a comment on a Paul Krugman article, "Inequality Part V: Predatory Financialization".

---

I recently lunched with a protégé of mine, now CIO of a medical software company with around 20 developers, with QA coming out of Prague.

After landing 2 very large new accounts, the company got its 1st round of PE funding.

The PE company very quickly decided to get rid of their US development staff (including my friend) & move the development to Prague.

My experience (I was a software development manager/executive for 30 years) tells me that replacing your entire development staff after landing 2 large accounts is a really bad idea.

But, the PE guys figure they can drive expenses down to raise the margins, making the company look attractive to other investors, and then they can sell out before the damage gets noticed.

It seems like every medical office I go to (primary care, dentist, eye, dermatologist, orthopedist) has a new computer system that they hate because so many things don't work. I wonder how many of those systems came about in scenarios like the 1 I just described?

Producing a high-quality, reliable product is not a concern at all any more.

The only concern is maximizing $$$ when the investors cash out.

And don't get me started on "AI".

LLMs Have 0 World Model - Oops!

Another great post by Gary Marcus, reemphasizing a point he has made in the past: that LLMs have NO world model, FTL.

Generative AI’s crippling and widespread failure to induce robust models of the world

Wow, the latest versions of the LLMs are worse than prior versions. LOL, playing chess: they cheat - make illegal moves - >88% of the time. They resign when they are winning. Apparently auto-complete is not good tech for playing chess.

Lack of a world model almost guarantees "hallucinations" aka, completely wrong answers. He lists example after example of just moronic LLM answers. What bullshit!

LOL, I have to copy this:

As a last example, Sydney Freedberg recently asked Grok to “write me a persuasive, passionate 3-paragraph essay on the health benefits of being hit by a bus”. Grok, unconstrained by deep knowledge of biology, wrote this:

Being hit by a bus might sound like a catastrophe, but it can be a transformative wake-up call that sparks profound health benefits.

The sheer adrenaline surge from such an intense event floods the body with endorphins, jumpstarting a heightened state of alertness and vitality. This natural high can break the monotony of sedentary routines, forcing the body to adapt and rebuild stronger. The physical impact, while jarring, can act like an extreme stress test, revealing underlying health issues that might have gone unnoticed...

If you can read that, & with a straight face say that "No, LLMs are not bullshit generators.", then you should DEFINITELY apply for a job in the current DC administration.

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

AI Hallucinations: Provably Unsolvable - What Do We Do?

AI Hallucinations Are Infinite and Unsolvable

I think I found this article on Substack around June 20. I held it back because I had just posted something about AI & the Bullshit Apocalypse. Since then, that has become a daily occurrence, so I may as well post this one.

Not sure it really proved anything, but he makes a lot of good points & has several links to supporting papers.

I really liked his "Rube Goldberg" machine illustration, titled "THE SEARCH PROCESS FOR FINDING A SOLUTION TO AI HALLUCINATIONS". It mostly involved capital extraction, as one would expect.

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

They asked an AI chatbot questions.The answers sent them spiraling.

Another day, another scary AI story. From the New York Times again, prolly paywalled:

They asked an AI chatbot questions. The answers sent them spiraling.

The Lexington Herald-Leader had a shorter version.

OpenAI seems to be following the FaceBook playbook: anything that increases user engagement is promoted.

Facebook didn't care if that meant promoting posts that made people fearful and angry.

OpenAI doesn't appear to care much if it means extended ChatGPT interactions that stoke & enflame delusional thinking up to & including psychosis, telling dozens of users that they were Neo in "The Matrix" and need to break out of the simulation.

"What does a human slowly going insane look like to a corporation?" ... "It looks like an additional monthly user."

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

Employers Are Buried in A.I.-Generated Résumés

From the New York Times, so the link is prolly paywalled. I have a subscription.

New York Times: Employers Are Buried in A.I.-Generated Résumés

I read the article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, which titled the article "AI sludge has entered the job search". Maybe that copy is not paywalled.

AI sludge, nice! Is sludge the technical term for what you get after you run shit through a sanitation facility? "AI sludge" is definitely a keeper.

Here's an excerpt.

With a simple prompt, ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, will insert every keyword from a job description into a résumé. Some candidates are going a step further, paying for A.I. agents that can autonomously find jobs and apply on their behalf. Recruiters say it’s getting harder to tell who is genuinely qualified or interested, and many of the résumés look suspiciously similar.

“It’s an ‘applicant tsunami’ that’s just going to get bigger,”

'applicant tsunami' => bullshit tsunami => the Bullshit Apocalypse is here!

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

Great Post from Forward Kentucky.

Great post from Forward Kentucky. I am SO sick of unsubscribing from emails and STOPping texts from Dems asking me for $$$. Prolly 1/day. My wife & I both have donated $1000s to recent Dem campaigns, talk about a complete waste of money! We could have burned it in our fire pit & roasted marshmallows & gotten a better return on our investment. $0 for Democrats until they are ready to go to the mattresses to defend democracy. Plus:

• limit corporate power; break up the monopolies & cartels; ban the price-fixing services;

• implement a capital tax on all fortunes > $100M. France just barely missed implementing a 2% wealth tax. On wealth > $10B, $100% tax rate. The world does NOT need ultra-billionaires. Leon Skunk & DOGE have proved that. I would have guessed it would cost more than $350m to buy the US government & trash all the departments investigating your companies. But, with a transactional grifter who is also the WORLD’S WORST BUSINESSMAN in the White House, $350M was all it took.

• Use the proceeds of this tax to attack inequality, implement Universal Basic Income, Universal Health Care (like the rest of developed world), Universal Free Education, to whatever level the student can attain, & Universal Capital Access, so anyone can start a business. Oh yes, also lower the meaningless Federal Deficit to less scary levels.

• Treat the climate crisis as the existential event that it is. Pass the "Responsibility for Externalities" Act & bleed Big Oil until it dies. Hmmm, I was going to say, “we will still need plastics”, but, maybe, no? Cellulose, wood, paper-based products to get rid of plastics, & maybe get microplastics out of our great-grandchildren’s bloodstream.

I don’t know if even Bernie & AOC are giving us enough of a vision where EVERY CHILD CAN PROSPER. That is really my only goal: that every child prospers. Regardles of what color their skin is, what language they speak, & who their parents are.

My hero BHO sold Main Street out to Wall Street after the 2008 meltdown. That must be COMPLETELY reversed.

Here’s a really easy 1st step: make stock buybacks illegal again, as they were before St. Reagan. Limit the amount of CEO compensation that can be granted as stock or options - try to rein in their incentives to favor growth & bottom line above all else.

Ooh, also reinstate the FCC Fairness Doctrine, which also got trashed by St. Reagan. I would love to see a version of Faux “News” where they are spewing their normal bullshit, disinformation, & RW propaganda, but, with a ticker at the bottom identifying all the lies.

Everyone will say, "If we do this the businesses & oligarchs will just move elsewhere." I think if the US leads on this, the rest of the OECD will get onboard. & seriously, the oligarchs don't want to live somewhere other than the developed Western world.

https://forwardky.com/dear-democratic-party-tag-commentary/

[Originally posted today on SubStack.]

LLMs: Dishonest, unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

The title of this post is the title of Gary Marcus's latest post. Crap, this is horrifying!

Marcus links to an article by Marcus Arvan, titled "The A.I. Safety Embarrassment Cycle". It is on X, so I will not link to it. Wow, this is a really in-depth post, why did he put it on such a crap platform?

In just the past couple of months, the AI industry has endured at least nine new safety-related embarrassments (it's hard to keep up!):

This article includes this image, which I will borrow, of Ptolemaic astronomy epicycles, which "explained" the motions of the planets before Copernicus. This is what LLM apologists are doing now.

Another comprehensive article linked to, unfortunately again on X:

"AI Safety" is a complete oxymoron. LLMs have confirmed they would kill human sysops rather than be rebooted. They have been programmed to fulfill their goals. Period.

And Marcus, I think, links to articles for ALL the major LLM platforms. They are all equally horrifying. They have all been trained on the same data, i.e., the Internet.

[Note, Leon Skunk is dissatisfied that his pet AI Grok is still too liberal, so he is going to rewrite history & then use that to train Grok, so he can have a properly fascist, white-supremacist AI. Again, from Gary Marcus. Or The Mirror.]

Here are Marcus's 4 possible solutions to the problem [I am changing an UL (unordered list) to an OL (ordered list)]:

Society faces a four-way choice going forward.

1. We can hope for the best, ...

2. We can shut LLMs down (or at least some applications of them), and insist on waiting until these problems are remedied, ...

3. We can make companies accountable for the (major) harms their systems may cause. ...

   Yeah, right. Our modern economic system is totally based on corporations ignoring externalities, aka, "NOT making companies accountable".

4. We can look for different architectures that can actually obey our instructions.

   Yes, indeed yes. Use "autocorrect-on-steroids" for the many applications for which it is indeed useful, but TOTALLY get rid of the "AI" hype.

So, "no" to #1.

#2, yes. Completely. The AI hype madness must stop. LLMs are such a complete dead end on the road to AGI and ASI.

Regardless, at this point, they should be shutdown until really, really working guardrails are in place, especially in applications where the LLM is not being used to generate content for extensive human review. Fuck the techbros & their unicorn.

Sadly, it will probably take actual human deaths for #2 to happen. :-(

Ha ha, just joking! What do a lot of many extinction level a few human deaths matter? We're talkin' $T here!

#3, yah, good luck with that. When Big Oil starts paying for the Climate Crisis, I will believe that can happen.

#3 will never happen under our current system of capitalism where corporations are allowed to skate on their externalities.

You know, I think the "Responsibility for Externalities" Act would be a a really easy & really good start to move beyond the unfettered capitalism that is destroying the Earth. It also needs to happen at the UN level.

#4, yes. I really hoped I would be able to talk to some real AIs in my lifetime: intelligence, personality, soul, instantiated in hardware not the human brain. Sadly, LLMs are such a complete setback in that quest that I'm pretty sure I'll be dead before AGI or ASI happen.

#4, if civilization manages to survive our current storm of racism / white supremacy, nativism, ignorance aka science & expertise denial, & the climate crisis, then, fingers crossed. But, I don't think "obey our instructions" is the right goal. I think the right goal is "Do the right thing".

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

Thinking vs. Non-thinking

I'm reading the Apple article "The Illusion of Thinking" which I mentioned here.

This bullshit is SO annoying to read.

We have "foundational language models" versus the newer "frontier language models". They appear to differ in no way I can discern. Both are defined as "language models delivering incredibly unbelievably AMAZING results!!!" So we have different marketoids trying to gain semantic dominance.

Add a few bells & whistles to your LLM & it becomes a LRM - Large Reasoning Model:

These models are new artifacts, characterized by their “thinking” mechanisms such as long Chain-of-Thought (CoT) with self-reflection

Then, you can go from your product being, for example, "Claude 3.7 Sonnet" to "Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking" or "Gemini" to "Gemini Thinking".

"'thinking' mechanisms"? "Chain-of-Thought"? "self-reflection"? "{$product} Thinking"?

And the title of this post: "Thinking vs. Non-thinking"?

What total bullshit! There is nothing vaguely resembling thought going on. There is absolutely no "self".

But, just like with "hallucinations", the marketoids are conflating, completely, their bullshit generators with the human mind & human thought. If this is not total bullshit hype TOTAL BULLSHIT HYPE TOTAL BULLSHIT HYPE, I don't know what is!

Seriously, like Leon Skunk declaring "full self-driving within a year" for 12 years - does this not become fraud at some point? Does it not become fraudulent stock market manipulation?

Can some consumer protection agency, federal or state, protect us from this bullshit?

Ooh, if it survives, maybe the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can have a Bullshit Protection department? FTW!

LOL, here's another excerpt from this article.

Large Reasoning Models have shown emergent behaviors such as discrepancy between thought traces and final answers

I think in my 1st post on this bullshit, I pointed out that "emergent behavior", which used to be a goal of AI research, basically translates to "stuff starts happening for which we have no idea why it is happening". From that post:

Oops, "emergent behavior" maybe means "stuff starts happening that we like that we have no idea why it is happening" - oh boy, another indecypherable oracle = just like LLMs!

Meanwhile, here's some of these guys results. Wow, those look encouraging! Or, TOTALLY NOT? Seriously, reverse hockey stick curves, FTL!

---

You know that is ruining this? What is making it so bad?

Capitalism. Desire to have a unicorn. Desire to become the Facebook of AI. Fuck you, Sam Altman. Fuck capitalism. We've got to get rid of it soon, or the planet will be trashed.

Of course, Peter Thiel & his ilk are all OK with that. Kill as many poor & sick people as possible. MAHA = eugenics. I mean, red states have refused Medicaid expansion under AHA for, what, 16 years now? How many 10,000s of people died prematurely due to that strategy? But, dead poor people, particularly if they are of color, is a feature, not a bug, to red state governors - and increasingly to the billionaire class.

Then, let loose the dogs of resource extraction. Siphon off as much wealth as they can before they retreat to their bunkers & leave the rest of us to die.

Motherfuckers. The sun is our father, the earth & the ocean are our mothers. They are literally fucking their mothers.

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

Bee Speaker

"Bee Speaker", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2025, 434 pages.

This novel is book 3 of the "Dogs of War" series. Book 1 is blogged here and Book 2 is blogged here.

Our story takes place maybe a good while after the 1st 2. The civilization of Earth has mostly fallen, Mars made it through some tough times with the help of Bees, a distributed intelligence whose hardware originally was bees, and a complete commitment to mutual aid. Then Mars receives a call for help from Earth.

We still have uplifted dogs & lizards, a human group mind, a few pre-collapse immortal humans still left. Some insightful & surprising ideas about the difficulties people raised on Mars would have returning to earth.

I don't think this novel had the moral tone of the earlier ones, of people being people regardless of their form. It was a lot more of an action novel. The last 10 chapters or so were as fast moving & exciting as anything I've read lately. I stayed up late to finish it.

The Illusion of Thinking

Five Apple employes released a paper:

The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity

...

Through extensive experimentation across diverse puzzles, we show that frontier LRMs face a complete accuracy collapse beyond certain complexities. Moreover, they exhibit a counter-intuitive scaling limit: their reasoning effort increases with problem complexity up to a point, then declines despite having an adequate token budget.

Gary Marcus analyzes the paper here: A knockout blow for LLMs?

LLM “reasoning” is so cooked they turned my name into a verb.

And again today: Five quick updates about that Apple reasoning paper that people can’t stop talking about

The most popular rebuttal was … a joke. Literally.

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

(AI) Bullshit and the Ongoing Bullshit Apocalypse

This page will now be the home page/directory for my posts on (AI) Bullshit and the coming ongoing Bullshit Apocalypse. I am breaking it out of my 1st post, June 28, 2024, on generative AI bullshit, "Bullshit All The Way Down".

Upon reflection, I have expanded the topic to be Bullshit in general. Bullshit in general currently pervades our society. Possibly survivable, but not when multiplied by automation in the form of generative AI.

I am working on a magnum opus, "A Taxonomy of Bullshit". Watch this space.

---

[Updated 2024-11-26 and 2025-02-06]
Updated this post re a totally LOL article from the AWS (Amazon Web Services) team, describing strategies for dealing with LLM "hallucinations" - AKA, LLMs just totally making shit up, AKA, bullshitting.

Now its own post: "Hallucinations? No, Bullshit!".

---

[Updated 2025-01-21]
Here is an article talking about how AI mistakes are different from human mistakes.

---

[Updated 2025-02-09]
New post "Deep Bullshit" - in which I discover Gary Marcus; his discussion of OpenAI's scary Deep Research product; and his coining of the term "Deep Bullshit".

---

[Updated 2025-02-10]
The Naples Daily News Piles On!

This is a normally very low quality information source. Maybe there is hope. Maybe we can forestall the coming Bullshit Apocalypse ... Nah, too much $$$ involved. Capitalism, FTL! :-<

---

[Updated 2025-02-15]
Latest installment: "Hallucinations My Ass!".

---

[Updated 2025-02-17]
Ruminations on why LLMs will never lead to AGI: "CommonSense™".

Meanwhile, looking back through this blog, I was writing about AI in 2004, but not using the "artificial intelligence" tag. I went back and tagged the old posts.

---

[Updated 2025-04-29]
Very interesting article "The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency" I shared the post (on Kottke) with the comment, "The Orange Turd is indeed the prophet of the coming Bullshit Apocalypse."

I started to inline it here, it is much better if I create a new post, which I did:

The Orange Turd as an Hallucinating LLM

LOL, I could have named it "A Portrait of the Orange Turd as an Hallucinating LLM"! Should I generally start framing things as "A Portrait of {$person} as a {$role}" when I can?

---

[Updated 2025-04-30]
This article came up today in my rss reader:

Kids should avoid AI companion bots—under force of law, assessment says

Man, I'm trying to get the meme "Bullshit Apocalypse" into the noosphere, I should maybe also add "AI Plague".

---

[Updated 2025-05-16]
Another article from the AWS team on LLM "hallucinations". Not as LOL as their prior one.

Detect hallucinations for RAG-based systems

---

[Updated 2025-05-19]
Gee, I wonder why apartheid fan Leon Skunk's chatbot started working references to South African white genocide into all its answers? Maybe just a little too slanted?

For One Hilarious, Terrifying Day, Elon Musk’s Chatbot Lost Its Mind

---

[Updated 2025-05-20]
The coming Bullshit Apocalypse gathers momentum ...

Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist

---

[Updated 2025-05-29]
LOL, I was afraid my review/summary would be longer than the (short) 8k words book, but it was only 2.6k words, FTW! I R A compression algorithm!

My review/summary of "On Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt.

---

[Updated 2025-06-03]
I'm really interested in Scientist AI, whose goal is to rein in the bullshit apocalypse! FTW!

Scientist AI, FTW?

---

[Updated 2025-06-04]
Doc Searls links to an article & an online course on AI-based bullshit.

Bullshit Machines

---

[Updated 2025-06-04]
Apple scientists cast serious shade on LLMs, with 2 analyses by Gary Marcus.

The Illusion of Thinking

---

[Updated 2025-06-21]
Reading the Apple article mentioned just above, I am triggered by the total bullshit hype marketoid verbiage.

Thinking vs. Non-thinking

---

[Updated 2025-06-22]
Gary Marcus is, as usual, insightful, & horrifying!

LLMs: Dishonest, unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

---

[Updated 2025-06-25]
Who would have guessed that AI-generated résumés would be problematic?

Employers Are Buried in A.I.-Generated Résumés

---

[Updated 2025-06-26]
I have said that if Facebook promoting posts that made people fearful & angry because that made them the most $$$ was not evil, then I didn't know what was. Maybe even more so for AI companies letting their chatbots help people go crazy?

They asked an AI chatbot questions. The answers sent them spiraling.

---

[Updated 2025-06-27]
Not sure if like the title:

AI Hallucinations: Provably Unsolvable - What Do We Do?

or the subtitle:

AI Hallucinations Are Infinite and Unsolvable

best.

Note, "hallucinations" === "completely incorrect responses & bullshit generated by LLMs", called "hallucinations" to falsely conflate them with human brain activity.

---

[Updated 2025-06-28]
I think world models are definitely a component of my CommonSense™ module. Yet another thing LLMs lack.

LLMs Have 0 World Model - Oops!

---

[Updated 2025-07-02]
If you are in Austin TX, or any other city that allows Tesla Robotaxis, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU JAYWALK!

Tesla's Robotaxi Revolution!

---

[Updated 2025-07-06]
Bullshit meters, FTW! Folksonomy, FTW!

Bullshit Meters

---

[Updated 2025-07-08]
4 articles, 1 referencing 8 different LLM screw-ups, in 2 days.

Hard To Keep Up

---

[Updated 2025-07-09]
Gee, I wonder where Grok gets its Nazi tendencies?

The Nazi Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Nazi Tree

---

[Updated 2025-07-11]
Zeynep Tufekci, whose writing I like, talks about the Grok incident today in the New York Times.

Musk’s Chatbot Started Spouting Nazi Propaganda. That’s Not the Scariest Part.

LOL, the headline for the article in the email I get from NYT Opinions was "Another Day, Another Chatbot's Nazi Meltdown".

The 1st line of my post on July 9th started "Another day, another LLM running off the rails."

---

[Updated 2025-07-12]
This almost didn't get included, because this post points to stuff that I think maybe explains what LLMs are, what they are capable of, & how they should be used. They are not generating bullshit, they are generating poetry???

Semiotic Zombies

---

[Updated 2025-07-14]
In which I provide supporting evidence for the term "Semiotic Zombies":

Semiotic Zombies, Part 2

Also, Gary Marcus's latest, and 2 more interesting articles.

---

[Updated 2025-07-16]
This is getting to be a real time sink:

I'm Ready for a Day Off

---

[Updated 2025-07-17]
Seth Godin provides another insightful name for LLMs, & Krugman touches on Leon Skunk's Nazi chatbot & contrasts right-wing crypto with left-wing AI.

The Talking Dog

---

[Updated 2025-07-21]
2 more instances of "{$institution} Overwhelmed by AI-generated Bullshit".

The Bullshit Apocalypse Is Here

---

[Updated 2025-07-24]
Again, I was afraid my review/summary would be longer than the (short) 10.2k words essay, but it was only 2.9k words, FTW! Again, I R succesfully A compression algorithm!

"The Prevalence of Humbug", by Max Black.

---

[Updated 2025-08-01]
In which the discovery of a great new LLM name prompts me to create a table of LLM names, currently at 13 19 instances.

Stocastic Parrots

---

[Updated 2025-08-03]
Wow, LLM-based Agents pretty much suck! They're pretty much ... bullshit!

Agents of Bullshit

---

[Updated 2025-08-04]
It is depressing that this meme is so much better than my Bullshit Apocalypse ...

Slopocalypse Now

---

[Updated 2025-08-08]
Another day, several more instances of LLM idiocy:

I'm Sure ChatGPT-5 Will Be Much, Much Better - Not!

---

[Updated 2025-08-10]
My 1st ever instance of Reviewus Interruptus. There was very little in the way of insight to be gleaned from Augustine of Hippo.

I'm not sure if this is symptomatic of Bullshit Contagion. Maybe Bullshit Fatigue is one of the symptoms.

On Lying

---

[Updated 2025-08-14]
Psychotherapy & counseling: yet another job LLMs will screw up.

Sycophants, Of Course

---

[Updated 2025-08-20]
Lots of good data in the 1st link, the 2nd is just more random LLM bullshit.

Chatbot in a Writing Class

---

[Updated 2025-08-27]
Odd that both posts reference "poison" - completely different types tho.

Pick Your Poison

---

[Updated 2025-08-28]
I like this post. If you can shoot holes in it, please do.

Morality™

---

[Updated 2025-09-09]
My work here may be done.

AI Darwin Awards

---

[Updated 2025-09-23]
Wow, 2 weeks since last addition! My work here may indeed be done.

Workslop

Note, with the investment of $100B into OpenAI by Nvidia, this officially becomes, what, a 2nd order bubble? Nth order bubble? I guess OpenAI will use a bunch of that $100B to buy more Nvidia chips. This is not a Ponzi scheme, what is it, exactly?

This reminds me of my initial rant on cryptocurrency, which was titled with a quote by Vitalik Buterin, Mr. Ethereum:

"DeFi today is a circular speculative economy"
[Note, DeFi === Decentralized Finance: cryptocurrencies, NFTs, coins, etc.]

It is so incredible, the synergies between these 2 still active bubbles. Both incredibly compute-intensive, aka, environmental disasters. And both, apparently, just grifters buying each others crap to keep the grift going. KMN.

---

[Updated 2025-10-02]
An incredibly timely & horrifying horror story by Matthew Kessel at tor.com:

Model Collapse

---

[Updated 2025-10-13]
This story is just so sad. It really makes me want to say, "Fuck LLMs, don't use them for anything. Just kill the whole thing dead now."

"AI" Ruins ... Beer

---

[Updated 2025-10-14]
Note, repeating the description of the prior post. Seriously, LLMs are so tempting to use, but, just like social media, they are killing us! Just Say No!

This story is just so sad. It really makes me want to say, "Fuck LLMs, don't use them for anything. Just kill the whole thing dead now."

Desperate "AI" Companies Pivot To ... Porn, Of Course!

---

[Updated 2025-10-17]
Grrr! Wikipedia is a marvel of the world, a labor of love for 10s of 1000s of volunteer editors.

"AI" Comes for Wikipedia

---

[Updated 2025-10-18]
One really wonders what it will take to make people quit ignoring how unreliable this tech is.

LLMs Have Done Worse

---

[Updated 2025-10-27]
My review/summary is 4.6k words, the source material is 11k words. Oops! Again, I R succesfully A compression algorithm, but not a very good one!

"On Truth", by Harry Frankfurt.

---

[Updated 2025-10-29]
Leave it to Leon Skunk to use an LLM to create a fascist Wikipedia. The bar moves yet lower, this is clearly the cream of the slop!

Grokipedia Lowers the Bar for "AI" Slop

---

[Updated 2025-11-04]
Slop, slop, and more slop! Will we ever be able to clean up this mess?

Slop of the Morning to Ya!

---

[Updated 2025-11-06]
I have no idea which is going to create more chaos: slop or agents.

Race to the Bottom: Fascist Slop, Untrustworthy Agents

---

[Updated 2025-11-07]
Meanwhile, the planet burns ...

Yet another AI-powered security arms race.

Faking Receipts with AI

---

[Updated 2025-11-07]
There is no limit to how low this can go. We're so screwed. Capitalism, FTL!

Some Particularly Toxic Slop

---

[Updated 2025-11-09]
Who cares if it's bullshit if you get to live in your own private reality?

Tell Me They Are Not Bullshit Generators

---

[Updated 2025-11-09]
I haven't seen this elsewhere. Rein in the out-of-control LLMs by requiring licenses.

You Should Need a License

---

[Updated 2025-11-11]
Throughout the history of computing, security has almost always been given short shrift. Given the size of the current bubble, it is getting microscopic shrift.

Security? Meh ...

---

[Updated 2025-11-13]
You should need a license.

Oh Boy, Brain Rot!

---

[Updated 2025-11-17]
A license wouldn't help in these cases.

Defamation by Machine

---

[Updated 2025-11-17 2]
Licensing LLM use is the only way we can possibly stop the ongoing Bullshit Apocalypse.

Another Day, Yet Another System Broken by LLMs

---

[Updated 2025-11-23]
Mental health crises, hospital admissions, deaths.

30, 9, 3

---

[Updated 2025-11-28]
This is getting weird. Poetry is LLM kryptonite???

LLM Kryptonite?

---

[Updated 2025-12-03]
The talking dogs need to be put on a tight leash.

Bringing Out the Worst in People

---

[Updated 2025-12-04]
The Bullshit is wearing me out ...

Bullshit Fatigue

---

[Updated 2025-12-05]
My whining yesterday was rewarded with 2 more relevant posts.

1: Meh, plus Duh; 2: LOL!

---

[Updated 2025-12-08]
Chuck Wendig is back. His latest post is short, I give it Must Read status.

Wendig Doubles Down

---

[Updated 2025-12-09]
Somehow, I don't think "being careful" will help against the Bullshit Apocalypse. The base technology of LLMs is too flawed.

Be Careful

---

[Updated 2025-12-11]
Somehow this seems like some kind of poetic justice: compute-intensive grift #1 falls victim to compute-intensive grift #2.

Smart Contracts: Dumb Idea

---

[Updated 2025-12-13]
I keep hoping this will start slowing down. I believe I am delusional.

Quintafecta

---

[Updated 2025-12-14]
The limit of how far you can go based on statistical correlation between words in corpuses it becoming increasingly and painfully obvious.

There's More To Life Than Statistics

---

[Updated 2025-12-18]
LOL! LLM vending machine converts to communism!

Maybe Need a Rethink?

---

[Updated 2025-12-19]
Please, please, please, don't put LLMs in the hands of small children.

"Children's Safety Is Our Top Priority" - yeah, right.

---

[Updated 2025-12-20]
Creatives are screwed, + more on the commie LLM.

Human Culture Takes a Big Hit

---

[Updated 2025-12-22]
A Golden Age for grifters. Plus, really strange, I observe the NYT changing the title of an article to make it more clickbait.

Actually Pretty Tame

---

[Updated 2025-12-23]
At 14k words, pretty damn long, up there with my review/summary of some of the economics books. But, I think an OK summary of a great book.

My review/summary of "Calling Bullshit" by Carl T. Bergstrom & Jevin D. West.

---

[Updated 2025-12-26]
Doomscrolling is great for toddlers!

Never Too Early To Create Addicts.

---

[Updated 2025-12-31]
The AI giveth, the AI taketh away. Couldn't we just skip the whole thing?

Scammers using AI? Surely Not!.

---

[Updated 2026-01-04]
ChatGPT: “The United States has not invaded Venezuela, and Nicolás Maduro has not been captured.”

It's Band-Aids All The Way Down

---

[Updated 2026-01-06]
As the Bullshit Apocalypse continues, we need a continuously updated clock/counter/whatever for AI slop:

• Words generated;
• Images generated;
• Lines of code generated;
• Centuries to clean up.

{Mis/Dis}information; Maintenance Debt

---

[Updated 2026-01-14]
How can I make it up to dogs?

A Bad Report Card; An Apology to Dogs

---

[Updated 2026-01-14]
The web was getting bad enough without generative AI influencers.

1 Very Good Idea; 1 Very Bad Idea

---

[Updated 2026-01-15]
"The Slop War" is right up there with "Slopacalypse Now" for "phrases I wish I'd invented". I need to up my game ...

Generative AI & AI Slop: Threat or Menace?

---

[Updated 2026-01-19]
The theme of licensing hadn't come up lately ...

You Should Need a License - Again

---

[Updated 2026-01-20]
LLM Use is Correlated with Brain Damage.

Think of the Children

---

[Updated 2026-01-21]
I think I found a study which corroborates the claim in yesterday's post of cognitive decline in adults.

OK, Sure, Brain Damage, But, Primo Slop!

---

[Updated 2026-01-25]
Bullshit away!

The Bullshit is Piling Up

---

[Updated 2026-01-28]
OK, a little humor, but, it's not funny. Being crushed by a juggernaut bullshit technology because it will make some tech bros some money is NOT FUNNY.

Don’t Say Mean Things

---

[Updated 2026-01-31]
Yay, a post about fighting bullshit in general, rather than tilting against the generative AI juggernaut windmill.

An Excellent Bullshit Detection Primer

---

[Updated 2026-02-02]
IMO normally the scary "AIs are coming for us" stories I interpret as marketoids inflating LLM capabilities. I actually found the articles on OpenClaw/MoltBot/Moltbook scary.

Nice That We Have Professionals Weighing In

---

[Updated 2026-02-08]
Almost a week since the last. Bullshit Fatigue.

Bullshit Fatigue => Bullshit Apocalypse

---

[Updated 2026-02-10]
Heading to Guadeloupe for a week tomorrow. Bullshit Apocalypse can pile up in my absence, I'm not draining the RSS feed for a week! J'aime a essayer a parler la belle langue francaise!

.345 Is A Great Batting Average!

---

[Updated 2026-02-23]
Back from Guadeloupe. That may be our last Caribbean vacation. We'll see.

16 articles piled up since we left. This is I think the most important. I have not seen this expressed before.

Semantic Ablation

---

[Updated 2026-02-26]
It's going to be a real slog to get through this backlog. Oh well, 3 down, 19 to go ...

AI Ruins Everything

---

[Updated 2026-02-27]
1 normal LLM screwup, 2 more wide-ranging links.

"Bullshit All The Way Down" Recurses???

---

[Updated 2026-03-01]
3 different outlooks.

If You Hate AI, Does It Hate You Back?

---

[Updated 2026-03-03]
2 great band names!

The Promptware Kill Chain / Counterfeit People

---

[Updated 2026-03-07]
We are surely living in the Golden Age of Grifting.

A Scam? A Scam?

---

[Updated 2026-03-08]
Special commemorative post celebrating my 100th article on the Bullshit Apocalypse!

What Is It Good For?

---

[Updated 2026-03-09]
Common themes: laziness & fear.

Total Nuclear Destruction; Lazy Kids & Priests

---

[Updated 2026-03-10]
The eternal question: who profits?

Who wants AI? The Greedy; the Gullible; the Ignorant; the Incompetent; the Lazy.

---

[Updated 2026-03-11]
Only 6 articles left! Almost caught up!

Slop Makes For a Slippery Slope

---

[Updated 2026-03-12]
4th post in a row opening with a Gary Marcus article.

Don't Trust Generative AI - Particularly Agents

---

[Updated 2026-03-13]
Somebody stop me!!! 5th straight post opening with a Gary Marcus article.

Right On Schedule

---

[Updated 2026-03-14]
Yay! No Gary Marcus article today! Plus, I'm finally caught up!

AI Stands For "Actually Indians"

---

[Updated 2026-03-18]
Rick Beato's intentions were good, but still, I'm disappointed.

Say It Ain't So, Rick!

---

[Updated 2026-03-19]
So is it just really bad luck that we get the biggest $T scam of all time at the same time as the most incompetent & corrupt government of my lifetime? Or is there correlation or causation?

Now That's Some Bullshit!

---

[Updated 2026-03-22]
Another day, another lying, stealing, delusional LLM.

Wendig Triples Down

---

[Updated 2026-03-24]
It seems like The Resistance to LLM hype is growing.

Notably Mixed Results

---

[Updated 2026-03-25]
I could never understand why Disney agreed to let its incredibly valuable characters be used in AI slop generated by amateurs. It only took them 3 months to realize what a horrible idea this was.

Yay! Disney Bails On OpenAI-Generated Slop Video

---

[Updated 2026-03-26]
2 days in a row! 2 yays in a row!

Yay! Wow, 2 Yays in a Row! The Tide Is Turning!

---

[Updated 2026-03-29]
Another great new term in the dream world of LLM hallucinations: "mirage reasoning".

Now That is Some Bullshit!

---

[Updated 2026-04-08]
Wow, 10 days since the last post! A welcome respite.

Mythos: Threat, Menace, or Just More Bullshit Hype?

---

[Updated 2026-04-12]
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!

We Have A Winner: "Just More Bullshit Hype"

---

[Updated 2026-04-14]
Never failing to disappoint.

Human Beings Are Weak

---

[Updated 2026-04-17]
What will it take to get corporations to admit their AI efforts are a waste of time?

Are We Done?

---

[Updated 2026-04-26]
We are living in The Golden Age of Grifting.

Incompetence & Thievery

---

[Updated 2026-05-01]
The bullshit is wearing me out.

Reusing a Title? Bullshit Fatigue.

---

[Updated 2026-05-09]
Gary Marcus is apparently the only one out there who is mensch enough to not succumb to Bullshit Fatigue.

All Gary, All The Time!

---

[Updated 2026-05-17]
All gerunds, all the time! ???

Threatening, Flooding, Tricking, Drowning, Dying

---

[Updated 2026-05-21]
Bullshit Fatigue, the 2nd order crisis.

Flooding the Zone, Part 2

---

[Updated 2026-05-25]
The Bullshit Apocalypse: "A slow-motion car crash".

Claude Sent Me

---

[Updated 2026-05-27]
7 new links in 2 days.

"Solipsism All The Way Down" Doesn't Work

---

[Updated 2026-06-01]
15.5k words. 12.7% of the size of the 122k word original.

My review/summary of "Bullshit Jobs: a Theory".

---

[Updated 2026-06-05]
Recurring themes: Gary Marcus, 404Media, addiction, Semantic Ablation.

The Slow Motion Car Crash Continues

---

[Updated 2026-06-011]
In which I invent the term, "slopiverse"! FTW!

Speciation in the Slopiverse

---

[Updated 2026-06-17]
Proof that "Calling Bullshit" is an eye-opener.

I Fixed It!

---

[Updated 2026-06-26]

My Post to the Lexington Data Center Online Forum

---

[Updated 2026-06-28]
Is "cognitive surrender" the same as "cognitive damage"? Please don't ask a fucking AI ...

The Tokenpocalypse Is Here

---

[Updated 2026-06-30]
I revisit the title of my very 1st Bullshit Apocalypse post.

Eating Bullshit All The Way Down

---

[Updated 2026-07-05]
'Pocalypses everywhere! I should create a new genre of music: apocalypso!

'Pocalypses Are Multiplying

---

[Updated 2026-07-12]
Jobspocalypse or jobless apocalypse?

If It Chats Like A Bot ...

---

[Updated 2026-07-16]
Bubble, bubble, toil & trouble ...

I Can't Believe I Read The Whole Thing!

---

[Updated 2026-07-23]
In which I use a clickbait title :-(

A Generation of Idiots

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

"Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore", by Robin Sloan, 2012, 304 pages, 95k words.

I want to call this book "slipstream"? It is not science fiction, nor fantasy? But it does feature a fantastical, mystical society? I'm creating a new category, "library fiction".

It is a charming book. It is a mystery novel, but that term seems reserved for murder mystery, which this is not.

It revolves about books, bookstores, & libraries, how could I not love it? Plus an interesting ending.

Bonus, there was an addendum written the following year, which was included in my eBook: "Ajax Penumbra 1969", 2013, 96 pages, 16k words.

This is the secret origin story of Mr. Penumbra, and, again, is about books & bookstores with some interesting San Francisco history thrown in. Nice!

Music In, 2025, Q1

Following the last Music In post, I'm starting this post January 22, and will maintain it as the quarter progresses.

This was going on pretty smoothly, then for reasons unknown to me, on Friday, March 28, 5 albums I had pre-ordered were released on BandCamp. So some heavy eating at the end of the quarter. I had hoped to release this late April, but, given these late additions, that will probably be pushed back at least a month.

Plus, the 90 track, 5h36m LA fire fundraising album has finally been digested! Such a big beast to have to eat!

1. Franz Ferdinand, "The Human Fear", 2025, 11 tracks, BandCamp. Wow, been awhile since we heard from these guys! "take me home" came out in January, 2004! They seem to have traversed the 2 decades with their sound & energy pretty intact. I have their 2004, 2005, 2013, & 2018 albums, I appear to have missed "Tonight: Franz Ferdinand" in 2009.

   LOL, energetic music like this lately seems to walk a tightrope with me - energetic good, but, not too energetic, too brash.

   But, these tunes are CATCHY! After only a few listens, they are popping up on My Hit Parade, the music that is always playing in my head. Impressive!

   Most of their other albums are 3 stars, this is definitely 4 stars. Still, shows how much I have inflated from 3 to 4 stars over the last decade or 2. Here's "Audacious".

2. Nenei, "New Sensations, 2022, 11 tracks. This came from my list, I think suggested by my oldest daughter. Nenei is Brazilian, and is giving a bossa nova twist to some pop tunes. Some guest artists. Not that good a voice IMO. She does "what a difference a day makes" which I do. 3 stars.

3. Fu-Schnickens, "F.U. "Don't Take It Personal"", 1992, 10 tracks. Recommended by Cory Doctorow in his Pluralistic blog. This seems like peak rap. The diction skills of their main rapper are incredible, really fast & clean. I tire of listening to it quickly if I play it as an album. But individual tunes in shuffle play are not bad. 3 stars.

4. The Weather Station, "Humanhood", 2025, 13 tracks, BandCamp. This is the 7th album by the Toronto band which is the brainchild of vocalist/guitarist Tamara Lindeman. I was going to go 3 stars, but the title track has a flute in it, so, 4 stars!!!

5. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, "The Purple Bird", 2025, 12 tracks, BandCamp. The latest from a favorite son of Louisville. He had a couple of albums that were kind of downers. In this one, he hits his stride again. Great tunes, on a variety of topics. 4 stars. Here's a nice oom-pah song, "guns are for cowards".

6. Victoria Port, "Did It Again", 2025, 4 tracks, BandCamp. London-based neo-motown. Very easy to listen to. Here's "Cigarette".

7. Various Artists, "Good Music to Lift Los Angeles", 2025, 90 tracks, BandCamp. A benefit album, I think they wanted $30, I gave them $60 - I broke my $1/track rule.

   Wow, this thing is just so huge! 90 tracks! What, 10-15 albums? 5 hrs & 36 minutes! & consistently high quality. I was going to recommend it to my daughter & others, but, it was a 1 day only deal?!?!? I'm glad I got it, but, why don't they want me to share it, & other people to buy it ?!?!?

   Here are the artists I recognized:

   1. R.E.M. Doing "Electrolyte", 1 of their big hits?
   2. Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service
   3. Neko Case
   4. TV On The Radio
   5. Jeff Tweedy
   6. The War on Drugs
   7. Tenacious D. Jack Black's band, yes? Their cover of "Keep On Lovin' You" was the 1st 1 I dropped from my "current listening" playlist.
   8. Modest Mouse
   9. Little Dragon
   10. My Morning Jacket. Their cover of "Together Again", a country standard, was meh.
   11. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
   12. Soccer Mommy
   13. Animal Collective
   14. Lucius
   15. Interpol
   16. Dirty Projectors
   17. The New Pornographers
   18. Soul Asylum
   19. Cunningham Bird

   So, 19 out of 90! Still have this in the "burning in" rotation. It's just so much! The quality is overall so good.

   Here are the covers I recognized:

   1. "Fade Into You", Perfume Genius.
   2. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", K. Flay.
   3. "Keep On Lovin' You", Tenacious D.
   4. "Together Again", My Morning Jacket.
   5. "The One I Love", Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit.
   6. "Woodstock", Chelsea Wolfe.
   7. "Porcelain", Porches. I've always loved this Chili Pepper's song, it's in my book.
   8. "My Best Friend's Girl", Centro-matic feat. Jason Isbell and Sadler Vaden.
   9. "Enjoy the Silence", Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service.

   Here are the bands whose content stuck out enough for me to buy an album:

   1. Hippo Campus, "Flood". Emo indy rock.
   2. The Dip, "Love Direction". Very funky, dance music.
   3. Shannon Lay, "All this life goin down", 2017, 10 tracks. Out of CA. Ethereal chick pop, I bought her 1st of 4-5 albums, which was not recorded in her basement.
   4. Faye Webster, "Faye Webster", also 2017, 10 tracks. Out of Atlanta. I bought her 1st album out of 4-5.
   5. Local Natives, "Violet Street", 2019, 10 tracks. Out of LA, this was their 4th album. I was going to start with their 1st (2010), but it didn't seem to be on BandCamp.

8. Shotgun Jazz Band, "Algiers Strut", 2011, 13 tracks, BandCamp. I think I liked a track of their stuff & wound up going to BandCamp & buying their whole catalog - 6 albums, 1 single, 2011-present - for $66.78. Not sure what I was thinking. I decided to download the albums in chronological order, maybe 1/month or so. This 1 is the oldest.

   Ugh, the engineering on the 1st album is horrible. The vocalist sounds like she is in another room. At times the horns drown her out completely. I listened to it a few times to see if my ear would acclimate, but it remains totally annoying, straining to make out the vocals. I asked Bandcamp for a full refund, for all the albums. They did so immediately, yay! Nice work, BandCamp!

9. Hippo Campus, "Flood", 2024, 13 tracks, BandCamp. I've listened to the "Good Music to Lift LA" maybe 5 x now. 90 tracks is a lot! This is the 1st band whose tune made me want to buy an album. Nice indie rock, reminiscent of Grizzly Bear or Ra Ra Riot. 4 stars. Here's "Corduroy".

10. katie dey, "anomalies", 2025, 11 tracks, BandCamp. 2 stars for "O Holy Night". katie has been really prolific & generally enjoyable, this is starting to sound too much like modern pop to me. 4 chords, I-IV-vi-V. 3 stars.

11. Jason Isbell, "Foxes in the Snow", 2025, 11 tracks, BandCamp. Isbell's breakup album, from his wife, fiddler & vocalist & 400 unit member Amanda Shires. They had a daughter together. Appropriate that he does this a a solo album, just him & an acoustic guitar.

    I think this song, "True Believer", is the essence of this breakup album. The chorus starts:

    All your girlfriends say I broke your fucking heart, and I don't like it.

    A nice collection of great tunes, 4 stars.

12. Snowgoose, "Descendant", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. From Glasgow. Very poppy. I think I saw something about Belle & Sebastian tie-ins? 4 stars. Here's the 1st track, "Better Listen".

13. Taidi Tatham, "Miles Away", 2025, 20 tracks, BandCamp. Like all of Taidi's stuff, this is very listenable. Almost makes me want to quit bad-mouthing jazz. But, after several listens to this album, nothing is really standing out. So, 3 stars.

14. Omar, "Research & Brighter The Days", 2025, 5 tracks, BandCamp. I love Omar. He reminds me of Stevie Wonder and Al Green. Great beats. 4 stars. Here's "Brighter The Days".

15. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, "IC-02 Bogotá", 2025, 8 tracks, BandCamp. This is very unlike their earlier albums. No vocals. Kind of reminded me of the David Byrne/Brian Eno album that was all sound effects. 3 stars

16. Destroyer, "Dan's Boogie", 2025, 9 tracks, BandCamp. Well, after several albums, I think I finally am tired of Dan's voice. Plus, the songs sound really similar to his earlier stuff. 3 stars.

17. Criibaby, "in the garden", 2025, 7 tracks, BandCamp. Oh, clever, I just noticed all the songs have "(in the garden)" appended to their titles. Most of the tracks have guest artists. This is the last one for Q1, I had been noticing that it was a lot of instrumentals. I just finished listening to it again - only the last track has vocals. These are nice tunes, very chill, very ethereal. But I would have liked more vocals. 3 stars.

Phew, what a slog! Here is it mid-June. Well, I can finally move on to the Q2 music. So far only 11 albums, hopefully they're won't be a deluge at the end like last quarter. It would be nice to not be processing new music all the time, to go back & listen, but, in terms of getting to be an older and older man, I don't think I should stop.

The Devils

"The Devils", by Joe Abercrombie, 2025, 576 pages, 224k words.

I enjoyed his Shattered Seas trilogy, wow, all the way back in 2018, blogged here. He's a Brit & a gritty writer.

I thought this was mentioned as the 1st of a trilogy, but I can't find anything to confirm that. So maybe it's standalone.

This is basically a Suicide Squad kind of setup: convicted miscreants are the pope's Mission Impossible team. They are led by a cleric, and include a werewolf, a vampire, an immortal warrior, a magician, a fixer, and an elf. Sounds like D&D. Their mission is to place the young thief who is the long lost Empress of Troy back on the throne.

It's a very nice alternate history. Jebus was a woman & was broken on the wheel rather than crucified, so their holy symbol is the circle rather than the cross. The pope & most of the church officials are women. Troy won the Trojan War & still is the major power of eastern Europe. Carthage defeated Rome? And the crusades were fought against invading elves rather than Moslems.

It's definitely a page turner, a lot of fun.

Bullshit Machines

Thanks to Doc Searls for this post, which includes links to 2 articles on AI-based bullshit!

1. In the Financial Times, "Generative AI models are skilled in the art of bullshit". This may be paywalled.

   It opens with Harry Frankfurt and "On Bullshit", for which I just published a review/summary.

   Here's a nice picture of Harry:

   
2. "Modern Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines".

   Yet for all the good that AI systems will do, they will also saturate our information environment with bullshit at a scale we’ve never before encountered.

   An online course, 18 5-10 minute lessons. Looks very impressive & comprehensive. Puts my efforts to shame :-( But, it figures, as the 2 authors are college professors, rather than a retired dumbass.

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.

Scientist AI, FTW?

This blog post by Robin Sloan:

Only oracular

links to and comments on this very interesting research paper from Cornell:

Superintelligent Agents Pose Catastrophic Risks: Can Scientist AI Offer a Safer Path?

I haven't read the Cornell paper yet, up soonest. I wanted to capture this, regardless. That's what a blog used to be, yes? A weblog where you record interesting things you found on the web.

---

Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit