"DeFi today is a circular speculative economy"

[Note, DeFi === Decentralized Finance: cryptocurrencies, NFTs, coins, etc.]

I think I did a pretty good rant analysis of "AI" BS, the newest unnecessary waste of energy, in my post "Bullshit All The Way Down".

I need to vent & do the same for crypto.

!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

F#cking losers. Making $$$, so what, destroying the planet. Seriously, making $$$, providing 0 real value, wasting petajoules, either make it illegal or tax it out of existence.

What are my feelings about the immediately previous & ongoing bubble/grift, cryptocurrency?

Blockchain is an interesting technology. Bitcoin as a v0.5 POC (Proof Of Concept) for blockchain, maybe. But, we're 15 years in, this whole marketplace has not really found any useful applications. Bitcoin-based transactions are slow & expensive, & always will be. Ransoms, blackmail, criminal activities are currently their main use?

And NEVER FORGET, "proof of work"-based crypto systems are an environmental disaster. Sadly, McSweeney's had a parody PSA from the Department of Energy, thanking people for turning things off & down & savimg energy - to be squandered by AI & crypto.

I threatened promised this late July in a comment when I shared a Doctorow post on "The largest campaign finance violation in US history". This is Must-Read. Seriously, read the Doctorow article, give it a week to sink in, then come back & read my meager effort.

Welcome to the wild & woolie world of cryptocurrency! Spoiler alert! Largest campaign finance violator was Coinbase, a crypto exchange.

Vitalik Buterin, Mr. Ethereum, might be the only person in the crypto world that I kinda respect. The title of this post is a quote from Buterin. I think I read early summer where he said something similar. I am interpreting this to mean,

This whole BS DeFi is just us buying each others speculative virtual tokens & trying to figure out how to suck the general public into our scam.

He looks like a Dostoyevsky character, how can I not trust him?!?!? LOL!

[Note. I think my name may be on a patent, via Exstream Software, from ~2007, for Intelligent Documents, which I think is pretty much what the Smart Contracts (?) of Ethereum are. That patent would have passed from HP to OpenText.
I've thought about that since then, always concluded, smart => code => how confident are you in your testing of that code? You are sending it out into the cold, harsh world to represent your interests. I think the concept is fraught with peril.
LOL, I used that phrase, "fraught with peril", on some presentation on VAX/VMS system services I gave somewhere/early 80s, the attendees greatly liked the term ;->]

1 of my main sources of info is via my RSS Reader, NewsBlur - very reasonably priced. I am currently subscribed to 230 RSS feeds/blogs.

2-3 years agp, I subscribed to the feed of Coindesk. It is 1 of the biggest info hubs for crypto. It posts prolificly: I'd estimate 1-3 dozen stories/day. I seldom read stories, but, I scan headlines, every day, w/o fail. I will leave a random sample below in an appendix.

You kind of learn the cast of criminals. 1 or 2 women only. You recognize several recurring themes:

• Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency may or may not be correlated to outside economic factors.
• Whale investors must be carefully analyzed. Whaleomancy is a discipline fraught with peril!
• Fraudsters steal billions from gullible crypto investors.
• Cryptocurrency thought leaders love The Orange Turd, because he endorses them, because, grifters gonna grift.
• It is all pretty much completely speculative investing. Pump & dump, all that good stuff.
• Cryptocurrencies are going up & going down, hitting & missing targets, absolute & relative to each other. Bull & bear markets - so they have completely achieved a viable market - as long as they can keep pulling new suckers in.
  This type of finance is always to some extent a Ponzi scheme. I had a period when I was younger & ignorant when I invested in a lot of dividend stocks - which tended to be VCs. Every year or so, you would get hit up for an additional investment, to "keep the liquidity optimal".
• Sector leaders & founders are charged with fraud; go to jail; & get out of jail. I joked on twitter:

  The crypto industry is showing signs of maturity. The founders are starting to get out of prison.

One theme you don't see very often: somebody actually using this stuff to accomplish something useful! But, in the Appendix below, the CoinDesk headlines of Friday, Oct 11, there is actually such a post: "DePIN Promises Small Business Innovation in Emerging Markets"!

I think the whole thing is similar to derivative investiments. Ah, I found it - this post of mine references a study that states that the value of derivative investments is 5-10x all other forms of money put together. Man, all this stuff needs to be taxed at a 90% rate. No, 99%. It should be taxed out of existence. But, start at 50%, over 5-10 years raise to 99%. Let the grifters get some of their profits out, because ... ... ???

The tax rate should be determined by, how much did this transaction benefit the common wealth, versus being rent-seeking or some such other economic parasite. If I'm buying groceries, tax rate low or 0%. If I'm paying a "convenience fee" on my phone or whatever, tax rate 90% on the rentier.

As with all bubbles, it will pop. The question then is, as Doctorow examined in depth, what survives after the bubble pops? In the various web bubbles, lots of great web infrastructure & platforms were left behind. And bitcoin mining has created huge server farms, hopefully some of which were designed to minimize environmental impact. Already, as bitcoin mining becomes more expensive, miners are shifting their server farms to "AI" support. So "compute-intensive-grift-1" readily transforms into "compute-intensive-grift-2". Really sad. But, people are making money & growing the economy, so, it's all OK! Capitalism, FTL!

In David Graeber's "Debt: the 1st 5000 Years", Graeber posits that this eternal boom/bust cycle makes capitalism overall apocalyptic - the bubble will burst; Rome will fall. & with that, comes cynicism? nihilism?

No, it creates Moneyism: the only thing that matters is making money. Financialization. The late stage capitalism insanity currently causing so many problems in the world, like the 'vacuum up, cash out, load w debt, sell off' VC-backed operations that are decimating so many small, medium, & large service industries. Doctorow has been all over this. This blog previously discussed financialization here, "Postcapitalism", by Paul Mason, a Brit.

Today, 2024-10-12, Doctorow teed off on crypto again. I should hurry up & get done here.

Meanwhile, f#cking crypto-bros are going all in for the Orange Turd for president, because, grifters hang together, &, grifters gonna grift. Great, yeah, there should be a federal cryptocurrency reserve. Holy f#ck, that is a Orange Turd level grift, you've conned the US of A into keeping a Scrooge McDuck treasure trove of your worthless Beanie Babies cryptocurrencies!

So, what happens next? Orange Turd reelection would greatly hearten the crypto-bros, including the sons, Beavis Fredo & Butt-Head Fredo, who now have their own crypto bank! Oooh, I smell a grift! How many months until it's bankrupt?

LOL, my wife just sent me this excellent article on Drumpft Crime Family crypto plans. Their visionary will be the youngest Drumpft brother, who, I am sadly really afraid, may be the grifter anti-christ. His dad is the greatest grifter in history - he grifted the POTUS job, FFS! & his mother is an incredible grifter, look at all the crap she has for sale!

Oof, I'm as bad as the xtians! I'm getting the youngest Drumpft bro as Mordred, & his mom Melanoma as Morgana, in "Excalibur". ?!?!?

Crap, he speaks fluent Slovenian w his mom & her parents. Orange Turd is only capable of grunting in Slovenian. Baby bro also speaks french. Je parle le francais aussi. :(

Phew! Gawd! Thinking about the Drumpfts wears me out! Enuf for now!

Meahwhile, (BLUE WAVE!!!), on the other hand, if rule-of-law prevails (BLUE WAVE!!!), I think the right thing to do would be to outlaw anything that exceeds an energy/transaction limit. Prolly won't happen, next up, tax the hell out of it. Start at 50%, work up to 99%.

I think the tax rate should be based on, how useful to everyone is this energy use? We all have to live with the externalities - pollution & climate change - we should all have a say in how the planets sustainable energy budget is allocated.

Is this a new concept? Voting weighted by how much each person is affected by an externality? In voting based on externalities, poor folk should get at least 10x the votes of rich folk. Rich folk can insulate themselves from the easy climate problems. Ecological "sacrifice zones" are almost always in "black & tan" neighborhoods. I certainly will vote 0% for crypto, & maybe 5% for "AI" (LLMs).

Appendix

Here are the headlines from the Coindesk RSS feed for yesterday, Friday, 2024-10-11. I highlighted 2 headlines.

1. 12:43am Trump-Themed PoliFi Tokens Buck Bitcoin Downtrend as China Stimulus Hopes Return
2. 05:24am Former FTX Customer Sues Hedge Fund, Says It Reneged on Bankruptcy Payout Deal
3. 05:54am Binance Executive Tigran Gambaryan Denied Bail in Nigeria
4. 06:41am Bitnomial Exchange Sues U.S. SEC, Alleging Regulatory Overreach
5. 07:13am Bitcoin on Track for Record Sideways Action, With Eyes on November Elections as Bullish Catalyst
6. 08:01am First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Trims Thursday's Inflation-Led Losses
7. 09:28am CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: RENDER jumps 6.5%, With All Index Constituents Rising
8. 10:27am DePIN Promises Small Business Innovation in Emerging Markets
9. 10:58am FTX's Salame Hoped Dog Bite Would Delay Prison, But Tucker Carlson Derailed Effort [LOL!}
10. 11:04am Mt. Gox Postpones Repayment Deadline to 2025, Allaying Concerns of Bitcoin Selling Pressure
11. 11:26am [Opinion] Has Ethereum Lost Its Way?
12. 12:13pm Scroll Airdrop Allocation Met With Dismay From Farmers
13. 01:12pm Arkham's Token Soars 16% on Report Sam Altman-Backed Crypto Firm Plans Derivatives Exchange
14. 02:48pm Trump-Supported World Liberty Financial Will Start Public Token Sale Next Week
15. 05:27pm Bitcoin Bounces 7% Above $63K as Crypto Traders Eye China Stimulus Statement

The 2 highlights:

1. #8, bolded - a claim to an sctual real world use!!! There are SO few of these.
2. #13, italicized - "Derivatives Exchange". They've got themselves a market ecosystem here, hell yeah, derivatives!!! Is the derivative of "worthless" "worthless"?

p.s. Beanie Babies! Beanie Babies! Beanie Babies! None of the crypto-bros look old enough to remember Beanie Babies! Better jump in, don't be left behind, fortunes are being made!

Well, at least you got cute little stuffed doggies, vs a # in a wallet on your phone, which hopefully won't get hacked & taken. Or maybe you got a fabulous NFT of a bored chimp! Kudos! [Sarcasm]

I'm definitely getting too old for such aggregious BS!

Fats Waller

"Fats Waller", by Maurice Waller and Anthony Calabrese, Foreword by Michael Lipskin, 1977, 235 pages. Trade paperback.

• Foreword by Michael Lipskin (9 pages);
• 12 chapters;
• 22 page listing of Recording Dates and Personnel;
• 4 page listing of Fats Waller's Published Songs;
• 4 page listing of Fats Waller's Unpublished Songs;
• 1 page listing of Fats Waller's Piano Rolls (22 tracks);
• 12 pages of Song Arrangements: sheet music for 3 songs:
  1. ain't misbehavin'
  2. anita - Fats' 2nd wife, mother of 2 of his 3 kids. Beautiful tune, in my list.
  3. got religion in my soul - apparently unpublished? Antitheist hackles raised?!?!? Never before with Fats ?!?!? But. Fats dad was a deacon, Fats was religious in principle, but statisically, not so much so. Still, Don't gimme dat ol time religion, it ain't NOWAY good enough for me.
• 4 pages of 2 column Index.

I have been a Fats Waller fan for over 50 years. I was turned on to Fats in 1970 by Del Hilgartner, founder, leader, keyboard player, lead vocalist, blues harpist for Blue-Eyed Boy, Mr. Death, 5 piece rock band. I was lead guitarist, 1st harmony vocalist.

I 1st posted about My Fats Waller Project 2021-03-09. I have used that post as a status page that is updated every time I add a Fats song. Started with 14, up to 42 now, woo-hoo!

Here is my Fats Waller playlist on YouTube, the 42 Fats songs I have recorded (as of 2024-10-08).

I started a post "A Tale of Two Guitarists" (Al Casey & James Smith) over on my Jaz Dumoz Music Blog. Conventional wisdom is that Al Casey was the guitarist for Fats Waller & His Rhythm for its whole lifetime, 1934-1942. But, in my project, I went through the track listing for the 3 RCA Victor Vintage Fats albums I bought in 1970, and in ~1/3, 1935-08-02 thru 1936-02-01 the guitarist is James Smith. Horribly unsearchable name, no web page, no pix for James Smith?

Anyway, while trying to figure out the chronology of these 2 guitarists, I thought, "I should read a bio of Fats." So, I did, yay!

This book is an easy read, & very informative. This review/precis will be a list of the things I enjoyed the most, in no particular, I think, vaguely chronological order.

• Fats was born 1905-05-21, in NYC, and grew up in Harlem.

• Fats got his start professionally playing organ or piano in theaters for silent movies. He would learn how to play songs by playing them on a player piano slow and moving his fingers to match the depressed keys. Between 1923 & 1927 Fats recorded 22 piano rolls. I've had an album with 13 of these for years.

  Fats had formal piano lessons as a child, and as an adult had lessons from a classical pianist. [Couldn't find the name scanning the index - I miss my eBook!]

  Rent parties were also an early source of income. These typically had several pianists who would put on a "cutting contest", trying to outplay each other. George Gershwin (1898-1937) liked to go to rent parties. He and Fats became lifelong friends.

• Fats 1st met & played with Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) in 1923. Fats 19 YO, Louis 22. They became fast friends, and were always looking for chances to play together. It seemed like a lot of these happened in Chicago where Louis was based at the time.

• In Chicago, in 1926, Fats was kidnapped by minions of Al Capone & taken to play at Capone's birthday party.

  Frightened, Dad began to pound the keyboard with somewhat less than his usual gusto, but when he saw the enthusiastic response from Scarface and his buddies, he really began to swing it. In fact he swung it so hard, Capone kept him there several days, shoving hundred dollar bills into his pocket whenever he played a request, and filling his glass with vintage champagne whenever Dad (frequently) emptied it. After the birthday party was over, three days later, the thugs returned him to Chicago several thousand dollars richer.

• Also in Chicago, in 1930, outside the theater where Fats was playing, his wife Anita was almost kidnapped by thugs mistaking her for a showgirl. A doorman told them who she was & ran them off, but, gawdam, that was total PTSD shit for poor Anita. :(
  Fats wrote this song for her, the mother of 2 of his children: Anita.

• Fats also had a son by his 1st wife Edith, who divorced him after 2 years over his musician's lifestyle. Per Maurice, Fats frequently got "amnesia" with regard to his alimony payments when he was on the road. Fats was jailed a couple of times for getting behind on alimony payments, once being fetched back to New York from Chicago.

• Over the last decade or so, I had created a "genealogy" of jazz pianists:

  Jelly Roll Morton (1890–1941) ⇒
  Fats Waller (1904-1943) ⇒
  Art Tatum (1909-1956) ⇒
  Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)

  OK, 1st, Jelly Roll ⇒ Fats:

  Fats was mostly NYC, Morton was mostly New Orleans. Per the book they never met. They were supposed to play on a bill together in 1930, to display contrasting styles, but Morton was a no-show. So, no.

  Fats' predecessor, his mentor, was James P. Johnson, (1894-1955), generally considered the father of Harlem stride piano, which was perfected by his greatest student, Fats Waller.

  
  Johnson also acted as a father figure to Fats, whose father, a trucker & a church deacon, was initially dismissive of Fats' music. & Johnson's wife Lil was a mother figure to Fats, whose mother died when he was 15 YO.
  [I bought 11 tracks, 1921-1926, of Johnson's music on Amazon, for $10.39! Nice!]

  Other early influences:

  • Willie "The Lion" Smith, 1893-1973. Another early stride giant - Del also pointed me at him, but I just recently bought some tracks, &, I far prefer Fats. After being originally unimpressed with Fats, The Lion helped him find some of his first gigs and was a lifelong friend;

  • Clarence Williams (1893/1898-1965) - "an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher." He encouraged Fats to start recording & publishing his music, and in the summer of 1923, his band recorded several songs written by Fats, so Fats' 1st composing credits. 19 YO.

    Wow, from the Wikipedia article:

    Two of his 1924 recording bands, "The Red Onion Jazz Babies" and "Clarence Williams' Blue Five" featured cornetist Armstrong and soprano saxophonist Bechet, two of the most important early jazz soloists, in their only recordings together before the 1940s.

    What a lineup! Armstrong & Bechet! !!! ??? !!!

  • Andy Razaf (1895-1973). Fats' most well-known & prolific collaborator. He composed the lyrics to some of Fats' biggest hits. From Wikipedia:

    Razaf was born in Washington, D.C., United States. His birth name was Andriamanantena Paul Razafinkarefo. He was the son of Henri Razafinkarefo, nephew of Queen Ranavalona III of the Imerina kingdom in Madagascar, and Jennie Razafinkarefo (née Waller), the daughter of John L. Waller, the first African American consul to Imerina. The French invasion of Madagascar (1894-95) left his father dead, and forced his pregnant 15-year-old mother to escape to the United States, where he was born in 1895.

    Man, was european colonialism some of the worst shit in all of history, or what? I am a francophile, but WTF could make them think they had the right to invade Madagascar?!?!?

    Gawd, I love that name! 7 syllables, 1, 6 syllables! It just rolls off of the tongue! Seriously, speak it out loud.

    Andy was a poet, his name is a poem, & I believe that poetry works much better when spoken aloud.

    Andy saw Fats win a piano contest in 1923. He approached Fats, they hit it off, and a great songwriting duo was created!

  • Spencer Williams (1889-1965) "was an American jazz and popular music composer, pianist, and singer." It's interesting to me that with the popularity of "cutting contests", multiple pianists would frequently work together.

  • J.C. Johnson (1896-1981) was a pianist & songwriter who collaborated with Andy Razaf as well as Fats.

  Back to my genealogy, Jelly Roll ⇒ Fats: No way.

  But the next, Fats ⇒ Art Tatum, largely correct!

  Art arrived in NYC in 1932 from Toledo OH, as the accompanist of singer Adelaide Hall (1901-1993). [Note, just ordered on Amazon "Centenary Celebration" by Adelaide Hall, 52 tracks, $12.12, FTW!] People told Fats he had to check out the new kid. Fats did & was greatly impressed. So he recruited James P. Johnson & Willie "The Lion" Smith to join him in a cutting party with the new kid. In 1932, Art is 23 YO, Fats is 28, James P. 38, Willie 39. [The book says Art is 18???]

  James P. and Dad were eager to do battle with Tatum at the piano, so they searched for a club with a suitable instrument, eventually chosing Morgan's, a small Harlem bar. ...

  Pop urged Art to take the stool and show off his stuff. Art played the main theme of Vincent Youmans' big hit, 'Tea for Two', and introduced his inventive harmonies, slightly altering the melodic line. Good, but not very impressive. Then it happened. Tatum's left hand worked a strong, regular beat while his right hand played dazzling arpeggios in chords loaded with flatted fifths and ninths. Both his hands then raced toward each other in skips and runs that seemed impossible to master. They crossed each other. Tatum played the main theme again and soared to an exciting climax.

  [Art Tatum is the king of the arpeggio! Make sure and follow the links to the 2 songs he did. Unbelievable virtuosity.]

  Reuben Harris looked around at the open-mouthed faces of Harlem's Waller, Willie "The Lion", and James P. Jimmy took the stool and played "Carolina Shout" as if his hands were possessed by a demon. But it wasn't good enough. Next Dad toook over and played his own specialty, "Handful of Keys." The crowd cheered when their hometown boy finished, but it appeared as Tatum still had a slight lead. Tatum followed Dad and had the place jumping with "Tiger Rag". James P. had one last trick up his sleeve, his brilliant version of Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude". Dad told me he never heard Jimmy play so remarkably, but the performance fell short. Tatum was the undisputed king. In comradeship the four threw their arms affectionately around each other and Tatum was duly toasted.

  James P. remembered the occasion and commented, "When Tatum played 'Tea for Two' that night I guess that was the first time I ever heard it really played."

  [Note, I added the links to the videos of the songs mentioned. Kind of fun, to reproduce the songs as they were played that night. Sadly, I could find no recording of James P. Johnaon playing Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude", so I included some rando's version. Imagining this song being played by the father of Harlem stride piano is left as exercise to the reader!]

  Art was quoted saying that the biggest influence on his style was Fats. He learned as Fats did, from piano rolls of James P. Johnson - and Fats.

  There are several stories of the times Fats paid respects to The King, Art Tatum.

  Back to my genealogy, Art => Oscar : Peterson was a Canadian, born in Montreal, which is a jazz city. [Here I am sitting with Oscar Peterson at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, ON, Canada, 2021-08-19.]

  
  Plus he was a later generation, born 16 years after Art. Reading through his Wikipedia article, I was thinking this would be a dead end, but, starting the section titled "Musical styles & influnces":

  Peterson was influenced by Teddy Wilson [(1912-1986)], Nat King Cole [(1919-1965)], James P. Johnson, and Art Tatum, to whom many compared Peterson in later years. After his father played a record of Tatum's "Tiger Rag", he was intimidated and disillusioned, quitting the piano for several weeks. "Tatum scared me to death," said Peterson, adding that he was "never cocky again" about his ability at the piano. Tatum was a model for Peterson's musicianship during the 1940s and 1950s. Tatum and Peterson became good friends, although Peterson was always shy about being compared to Tatum and rarely played the piano in Tatum's presence.

  Wow! So in addition to blowing away Fats, The Lion, and James P., Art Tatum also blew away the next generation, Oscar Peterson.

• Fats really didn't like boogie woogie. I am defining that as playing dominant 7th or 9th chords & adding 6s over the 5s, & maybe also adding 3's over the 1, or maybe playing scales - a staple of rock-n-roll & blues shuffles. Here's a random sample from YouTube! Not bad!

  Here's Fats' words from a New York Times interview shortly before his death:

  "That's music," he said after he had finished [playing "Tea for Two"]. "Subdued and not blantant. None of this boogie woogie stuff that's just monotonous. Boogie woogie is all right if you want to beat your brains out for 5 minutes. But for more than that you got to have melody. Jimmy Johnson taught me that. You got to hang onto the melody and never let it get boresome."

  Interesting, "Up Jumped You With Love", the last song Fats sang on a recording with His Rhythm, 1942-07-13, has an instrumental break & last verse that are very boogie woogie. I worked up the song a few months ago & noted how odd that was. I cannot immediately recall any other song where Fats plays boogie woogie licks like in this song.

  So the choice is between playing boogie woogie I IV Vdom7 or playing 'Rhythm' (I got rhythm) - I vi ii Vdom7. Also, boogie woogie is the flat tire beat, which is triplets. You go to a blues festival, 1/3 of the songs will be flat tire beat shuffles.

• Una Mae Carlisle (1915-1956) was quite a character. I 1st came across her name on the UCSB DAHR - Discography of American Historical Recordings - page for Fats Waller and His Rhythm. She is listed on the recording of "i can't give you anything but love", 1939-11-03:

  Una Mae Carlisle; Fats Waller and his Rhythm
  Jazz/dance band, with female-male vocal duet (take 1); with male vocal solo (take 2)

  Fats' manager decided that for Fats to get national airplay, he should move to Cincinnati OH & play on WLW, 1 of the strongest radio stations in the USA. After a demo or 2, Fats was given a 2 year contract. The Waller family moved to Cincinnati, OH late in 1932. The regular show gave Fats a chance to grow confident in his singing, and to start his smart-alec patter when he found the lyrics just a bit too trite. The show lasted through 1933.

  Meanwhile, Una Mae Carlisle was growing up (17 YO in 1932) in Xenia, OH - near Dayton, not far from Cincy. She was a piano prodigy, performing publicly since she was 3 YO. She won a vocal contest & impressed Fats into inviting her to come to Cincy to play in his 1932 Xmas programs. She was still in high school, her parents were against it, but sent a sister along to chaperone. It didn't go well.

  In short order Una Mae became Dad's shadow. Everywhere he was, she was close behind. Pop taught her to drink and to stay up late and party. Their relationship soon went far beyond the protégé-master level. Una Mae moved into a boarding house just across the street from where we were living, and when Christmas vacation ended, she refused to return to Xenia or school. Her mother came to town to fetch her but, after Una Mae carried on, vehemently, Mrs. Carlisle returned home without her. The only consession Una Mae would agree to was to move across town to live with friends. If Mrs. Carlisle was unhappy, my mother [Anita] was no more pleased with the turn of events. And when Una Mae became a regular on the show, Mom started talking about how she'd prefer to go back to New York and place me in a Harlem school. [And shortly thereafter did so.]

  Fats' show was a monster hit, so they decided to take it on the road for the summer. Meanwhile, I think Una Mae was just a bit too intense for Fats - damn, Una Mae was close to a force of nature, what a talented woman! - & he was trying to figure out how to dump her. They bought a car together to drive to a gig in Louisville (80 miles SW of Cincy), Fats leaves without her, she takes the train & finds him, & that was a scene - Una Mae stepping in front of the car.

  She eventually went her own way &, per her Wikipedia page, had a great career.

  • Her 1941 song "Walkin' By The River" made her "the first black woman to have a composition appear on a Billboard chart".
  • She had her own radio show, The Una Mae Carlisle Radio Show on WJZ-ABC, making her the "first black American to host a national radio show".

  I've only been able to find 5 tracks of her music on Amazon, "Una Mae Carlisle And Her Jam Band", 1944. Oh, another 8 on Apple. She also has 2 numbers in this incredibly good/bad movie, "Boarding House Blues" (1948). This movie will get its own post.

  Here's an incredibly detailed & good article about her. I lifted this photo & caption from there.

  

  She appears in the book 1 more time, in London in 1938. Fats was there with a big (24 pc) band, & had bought the whole band tickets to a benefit concert, & was supposed to deliver them to the band at the stage door. On his way there he runs into Una Mae, who was living & performing in London at the time.

  She told him that she had been feeling very poorly and they began to talk.

  Fats spent the rest of the day with her. His bandmates did talk their way into the benefit concert.

  She died in November, 1956, only 40y 10m old. She outlasted Fats, tho, who only lived to 39y 7m. But they both beat George Gershwin, who died at 38y 10m. The good die young. :(

• After Cincinnati, Fats moved back to Harlem to be reunited with his family. He was hired by WCBS in NYC.

  Columbia had Dad working regularly, appearing on many programs, particularly "Harlem Serenade". He was a name now, recognized all over the country, and Victor was ready to deal. Pop was offered a Victor recording contract wihch guaranteed him three percent on all records, plus a one hundred dollar advance for each selection, whether it was issued or not.

  Fats put together his band carefully. The guitar player, Al Casey (1915-2005), was an 18 YO high schooler, a cousin of The Southern Suns, with whom Fats had worked. More on him below.

  On 1934-05-16, Fats Waller and his Rhythm recorded their 1st 4 tracks. From then to their final recording date 1942-07-13, per the DAHR database, they recorded 307 tracks. A handful of tracks with other vocalists:

  1. With Herman Autrey 1935-08-20, "Loafin' time";
  2. With Dorothea Driver 1937-10-07. "Call me 'Darling'". Googling this woman's name returns only this record in the DAHR database. No record of this recording. I worked the song up anyway, as part of my 1937-10-97 project - I have recorded the other 6 songs from this recording session, once I record CMD I will create a blog post about these 7 songs. I luv the DAHR database. There are a couple of other Fats Waller and His Rhythm sessions where I'm doing most of the songs, so it seems appropriate to fill those out & post about them. Nice 1/2 set lists. On my TODO.
  3. With Una Mae Carlisle, 1939-11-03, "I Can't Give You Anything But Love". See above. I just found this video of hers from 1946, "T'ain't Yours". She is 31 YO, saucy, sassy, confident, joyful, goddam, how alluring! Playful, like Fats! & I luv her bad teeth! & her piano solo makes you remember, she was a protégé of Fats Waller! But, gawdam, dat rook rike trouble to me!!!

     She is referenced as "the 'Walkin by the river' girl", so here's that tune. Nice, going in the list!

  4. With the Deep River Boys, a gospel/barbershop quartet, 1942-07-13, Fats Waller & His Rhythm recorded their final 4 tracks:
     1. By the light of the silvery moon, w the Deep River Boys.
     2. Swing out to victory
     3. Up jumped you with love. The last song Fats sung with His Rhythm. Already mentioned, + & - now.
     4. Romance a la mode, w the Deep River Boys. In the list, will get to it soon. Oh boy, a "romance as food" song, I can pair it with "you're my dish" and "you go to my head".

  For most of this period, Fats was RCA Victor's top recording artist. Fats sold well with white people as well as blacks. Here's a pic from YouTube, I can't get over the faces of the people. Adulation? Worship? Love?

  

• Al Casey (1915-2005) was the guitarist at the creation of Fats Waller and his Rhythm, 1934-05-16. He was from Louisville, KY (like me, yay!!!) & met Fats when he was still in high school at DeWitt Clinton in NYC. Fats told him to finish school - he could play on the recording sessions in NYC & tour with them in the summer.

  Oddly, for several of my early favorites, he was not the guitarist. The guitarist was James Smith, who is completely lost in internet anonymity. Per the appendix of this book, he played for Fats in recordings from 6 sessions, 1935-06-24 to 1936-02-01 - 41 tracks. Al is back 1936-04-08.

• Fats made 4 "soundies" (primordial music videos) in 1941. They are all so excellent, although I've never been a fan of "your feet's too big". Al Casey gets some screen time. I posted at 1 point I thought he might be James Smith - when I thought the video had been recorded in 1935-36 as some of the songs 1st were. The book sez, the 4 soundies were recorded in 1941.

  These are all so fun, I'm going to inline them all here.

  ain't misbehavin'

  I've been trying to identify the 5 dancers that appear in these. So far, 2 names, Paulene Myers & Vivian Brown. I don't think that the woman who sings in this one is Myra Johnson. I think Myra Johnson is the larger woman who appears in "the joint is jumpin".

  honeysuckle rose

  Al Casey gets some good screen time for his tasty solo. I have worked that solo up pretty much note for note.

  the joint is jumpin'

  This is such a fun song, when I recorded it I could not play it fast as Fats and his Rhythm.

  I'm pretty sure the woman who comes in with 2 attendants & sings at 1:22 is Myra Johnson. I grabbed a screen shot:

  
  In the summer of 1935, she & Fats were both playing Atlantic City. He liked her act & tried to get her to join his band. She didn't particularly want to work with another lead singer, but Fats talked her into it, and they developed some great duets, including 1 of my favs "two sleepy people". She toured with Fats on and off.

  The woman wrongly identified as Myra Johnson in "ain't misbehavin'" doesn't enter until 2:29 after the line "what is that that just walked in? Just look at the way it's twitchin'!" Some fine twitchin' indeed!

  I cannot get a name for this woman, who sings a lead on "ain't misbehavin'", which should give her a cred, yes? She is the star of this & "honeysuckle rose".

  LOL, I love the drummer, Slick Jones, in this one!

  your feet's too big
• As of 1936, Walter Winchell became a Fats fan and gave him lots of press.

  Winchell took a shine to my father and ofter referred to him as his favorite songwriter.

• Fats & Andy Razaf wrote the smash hit all-black musical "Hot Chocolates" in 1929.

• Fats was big in Europe, particularly England & Scotland. He recorded his London Suite in 1938. He also backed Adelaide Hall on organ on a couple of tracks, which I have, yay!

• 1942-01-14, Fats played Carnegie Hall, a lifelong dream. The 1st 1/2 of the program went well, but in the intermission, so many of his buds showed up backstage to toast his success, that Fats surprisingly drank too much & pretty much pooched the 2nd 1/2 of the concert. The reviews were scathing.

• In 1943, Broadway producer Richard Kollmar hired Waller to play a comic performer in the 1943 musical Early to Bed. When his classsical composer quit over artistic differences, Kollmar realized he had the perfect composer for the piece in Fats. But composing, performing, & gin proved to be to much for Fats, so his role became composer only. This was the 1st Broadway musical written for white folks by a black composer.

  [Boomer trivia, Richard Kollmar's wife was Dorothy Kilgallen, of "What's My Line" for decades. Small world ...]

• Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller died in Kansas City, on a train headed back to NYC, 1943-12-15, 39 years old, of pneumonia, probably assisted by Fats heavy drinking.

OK, done. 1 thing I will say about the book in general - it needed more dates. I spent too much time trying to figure out when a particular anecdote was taking place. I also really, really missed the features of an eBook.

I guess I'm kind of going whole hog here: I have 3 more Fats books on order:

1. "Ain't Misbehavin': The Story Of Fats Waller", by Ed Kirkeby (1891-1978), 1975, 276 pages. Kirkeby was Fats' manager, but he also was a musician and lyricist. He is credited as a collaborator for several songs, including "Up Jumped You With Love", the last song Fats sang on a recording with His Rhythm, 1942-07-13.
2. "Ain't Misbehavin'", by Thomas Fats Waller (Composer), 1983, 104 pages. It looks like this was published as a companion to the 1978 Broadway musical "Ain't Misbehavin'". 24 songs, not sure if it is just lyrics or charts too. I currently have only 1 Fats song that I think does not have the right lyrics: "Thief in the Night", the bridge.
3. "Fats Waller", subtitled "THE CHEERFUL LITTLE EARFUL", by Alyn Shipton, 2005, 194 pages. [Just arrived today, 2024-10-03.] "Alyn Shipton presents jazz radio programs for the BBC and is a critic for The Times in London. He is the author of several books on music, as well as a music publisher and editor."

Since Art Tatum & Una Mae Carlisle both tried to take over this post, I think we'll be seeing more of them in the future. I've stumbled across so many interesting (mostly female) singers from this period, I may do that as a post.

Music In, 2024, Batch 2

Jumping right in ...

• Joni Mitchell, "Night Ride Home", 1991, 10 tracks. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this album, which somehow I didn't have. So pleasant to hear Joni's voice singing songs I'd never heard before. Very nice listening.

  1 bone to pick though. She uses a song pattern where the background singers sing the song title at the end of pretty much every line. "Yvette in English" jumps out as maybe an early use of that?

  This album has a couple of songs that definitely use this pattern: "Ray's Dad Cadillac":

  So I got out my counter app & started listening. It was not as bad as I thought. 2x / chorus. Apparently 8 choruses => 16 repetitions of "Ray's Dad Cadillac". Song is 4:34.

  OK, now I have to try the next song, "The Only Joy In Town". Our repeated phrase is "Botticelli black boy" ... OK, same pattern, phrase sung 2x in chorus & weird interlude section playing Imaj7 - VII-7sus2. 16 uses in 5:11 song.

  So great to hear Joni's voice singing things new to me! 4 stars.

• Kaidi Tatham, "Fusion Moves", 2024, 10 tracks, Bandcamp. I think this is Kaidi remixing other artists on his label? Pretty good stuff, afro-jazz-fusion-dance. I gave 1 theistic track - a woman who has found a new lover is so thankful to gawd for hooking her up, LOL - 1 star. The rest, 4 stars, nice listenable, danceable stuff.

  Since this a different artist for each track, it doesn't seem fair to pick just 1. So despite 4 stars, no video.

• Vampire Weekend, "Father of the Bride", 2019, 18 tracks, Bandcamp. Apparently several years since their previous, hence all the songs. 59 minutes. What a bunch of great, catchy tunes! A really fun album! I don't remember them having a female singer? The male-female duets & harmonies are excellent. Really good pedal steel in there also. When I started playing again in 2006 & arthritis in my hands was worrisome, my fallback position was to sell all my guitars and get a top-of-the-line 2-neck pedal steel in Nashville.

  Anyway, really fun album! I bought it after their latest came out & I saw I didn't have this one. F#ck you very much, Amazon & Apple, with whom I have spent $1000s purchasing music, for not informing me of a new release by an artist whose music I had bought from you, because you want me to purchase your "all-you-can-eat" subscription plan, WHICH I WILL NEVER, EVER DO! Grrr!

  As this album is now processed, I can download & enjoy their latest, yay!

  4 stars. Here's "This Life":

• Pernice Brothers, "Who Will You Believe", 2024, 12 tracks, Bandcamp. Wow, what tasty tunes! Crunchy lyrics. Makes me think of ... the Jayhawks, & my fav, Gene Clark? 4 stars. Here's "December in her Eyes".

• Murder By Death, "In Boca al Lupo", 2006, 12 tracks. I'm pretty sure this was recommended by my son, as a local band that was really popular when he was in college. The band is from Bloomington, IN, my son got a 5-year master's from IU Bloomington, maybe 1999?

  Interesting album, reminded me of a couple of bands who never gave their names. Hmmm, they have a female cello player, so, maybe, Ra-Ra Riot?

  You know, I'd like to hear more of it, so 4 stars rather than 3. Here's "Brother":

• Tyler Daley, "Son of Zeus", 2024, 12 tracks, Bandcamp. I think I got this confused with Children of Zeus. No, I go to his Bandcamp page, the header says "Children of Zeus". So is he a member & this is a solo album I think. It says Tyler Daley is from Manchester, UK, a lot of good music coming out of there now.

  Regardless, nice tunes, very mellow, rapping is also laid back.

• Duke Ellington & His Orchestra Feat. Ivie Anderson, "The Ivie Anderson Collection 1932-46", 50 tracks. "it don't mean a thing (if ain't got that swing)" was next up on the list, I start working it up, Ivie Anderson was the 1st person to sing it. She was singer for the Duke Ellington orchestra from 1932-1942. I found this collection, 50 tracks, I think reasonably priced? Enjoyable. A few songs I do. Quite a variety. 4 stars. Here she is performing "All God's Chillun Got Rhythm" in the 1937 Marx Brothers Movie, "A Day at the Races". Nice! The song is in my list now.

  "Plantation songs": I 1st encountered this term working up the lullaby that my mom sang to me & my daughter sings to her boys, "Sleep, Kentucky Babe". [Wow, what harmonies!] Published 1896, music Adam Geibel (1855-1933), lyrics Richard Henry Buck (1870-1956). Both white, out of Philadelphia, Geibel was a German immigrant & was blind. Somewhere (that I can't find now), I read that around the turn of the 20th century, "plantation music", songs glorifying slavery & plantation life, was popular. I had a flyer for 4 songs including "Kentucky Babe" that I can't find.

  40 years later, plantation songs seem to still exist. This many songs, there were sure to be a few.

  1. Delta Bound - not too bad, just want to go home to Louisiana.
  2. Cotton - SHE REALLY MISSES COTTON!

     Bridge:
     "I guess the lord was partial to the southland.
     Cause he looked down and said one morn
     'somebody's gotta pick that cotton'
     and that's the reason I was born.

     Lord I was wrong, take me back where I was born, I'll never leave the south anymore."

     ????
  3. The Old Plantation - starts with "Dixie" on the trumpet. Sweetheart waiting in an old log cabin.
  4. Alabamy Bound

  I wonder how black artists felt performing these songs? Musicians are always happy for a gig, but, these songs, maybe, ashes in your mouth?

• Andrew Bird, "Sunday Morning Put-On", 2024, 10 tracks, Bandcamp. Yay, Andrew plays Jaz Dumoz music! Yet another one. We overlapped on 3 songs:
  1. "i've grown accustomed to her face";
  2. "i cover the waterfront";
  3. "you'd be so nice to come home to".
  4 stars. What a talented guy he is. Here's "I Fall in Love Too Easily", which is now in my list.

• Rachael Price & The Tennessee Terraplanes. "Refreshingly Cool", 2008, 12 tracks. Rachel Price is of course the lead singer of Lake Street Dive, which has been around since 2004. Wow, good for them, 20 years! All prolly in their 40s now!

  I stumbled across this band & album when I was working up "whose honey are you?". Who knew that Rachel had had this side effort? Not her wikipedia page. I edited the page and placed a reference to this album in the Discography section. But a section in the main article needs to be added for this band, & I do not have the info to do that.

  Rachel Price plays Jaz Dumoz music - &, 13 years before Jaz Dumoz existed, how did she know??? As with Andrew, we overlapped on 3 songs.

  1. "comes love";
  2. "i'm crazy 'bout my baby";
  3. "whose honey are you?".
  4 stars. Here's "minnie the moocher's wedding day":

• the Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice, "Moon Colony Bloodbath", 2009, 7 tracks, Bandcamp. This has 4 tracks by Mountain Goats, 3 by John Vanderslice. As I've been doing some backfilling of the Mountain Goats, I think I've been coming to realize, I like his newer stuff better. "when a powerful animal comes" is an incredible song. On this one, the Goats tracks were "meh", the other guys tunes were interesting. So 3 stars for the Mountain Goats song, 4 stars for the other guys tunes.

OK, not a bad effort! But, oof, _unrated currently at 202 songs, 14 albums. 52 tracks by Adelaide Hall, who discovered Art Tatum in Toledo OH & took him with her as accompanist as she completed her tour in New York City, & Art met Fats Waller, Willy "The Lion" Smith, & James P. Johnson (11 tracks) & bested them in a cutting contest. [More on this in a soon-to-be-published review of a Fats Waller bio I recently read.] 24 tracks by Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears (1934 - 1944) - a female bandleader, with, in this case, an all-female band. 22 tracks of "Jelly's Last Jam", 1992 broadway musical based on the life of Jelly Roll Morton. Starring Gregory Hines. I think featuring a lot of Jelly Roll tunes, so should be pretty good!

Lots of fun listening, until next time.

This Is Going To Take A While

As threatened promised last time, I have started alternating novels with Clarke's "Year's Best Science Fiction" collections. The Year's Best collections tend to be a pretty hefty amount of reading - 1x/year was enough when I was reading Dozois's Year's Best.

Several years ago, I got a BookBub deal (prolly $1.99) on the 1st edition of Clarke's Year's Best, 2015 (published in 2016), & the 3rd edition, 2017. I think I paid $7.99 for the 2nd edition. So 2 of those are in this post (1 & 2), plus 3 novels. If I do 2 of these a month, it will take me 4ish months to get current with these. At that point, maybe I will read something non-SFF.

Next up to read, Clarke's Year's Best, 3rd edition, 2017 (published in 2018). 2018 was the year the 35th & last "Year's Best Science Fiction", by Gardner Dozois was published. So that will complete the handoff. Clarke's 4th edition in 2019 will have Clarke carrying the torch.

Note, there are 2/3 other Year's Best SF(F) collections currently being published. I am going to stick with Clarke.

The Dozois Year's Best I greatly enjoyed for 3.5 decades. Here's a post talking the 2015 Year's Best. I purchased all of these in hardback when possible else the trade paperback. I am currently missing editions 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 19. In the 2015 post I was missing 4 more, but i picked up editions 6, 7, 11, & 18 at Powell's Bookstore in Portland, OR - incredible bookstore. Here's what the collection looks like now:

The bottom shelf is all Dozois, plus the 2nd shelf from the left to the pale green volume, which is "Very Best of the Best" or some such, which may have been published posthumously. I count 29 volumes, which = 35 total - 6 missing, so it all adds up.

Meanwhile, 5 books:

1. "The Downloaded", Robert J. Sawyer, 2024, 169 pages, 52k words. Almost novella length? Apparently this was originally a multi-episode audio book before the print version came out.

   I read some of Sawyer's stuff a couple of decades ago and liked it pretty well. The main premise of the book seems way unlikely - a quantum computer is used for the uploads of a group of astronauts going to another star - and a group of convicts sentenced to life. Seriously? So there's plot, yak, yak, yak, an OK conclusion, not a bad read.

2. "The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 1", Neil Clarke, 2016, 512 pages, 249k words, 31 stories. Seems odd to be taking the time machine back to 2016. I think coming through these in order will hopefully let me identify trending authors. Several of these stories I had already read in other collections, enough time had passed that the rereads were enjoyable.

   A very good collection, not a bad story. Odd, though. The story from the collection that really stuck with me was by Seth Dickerson, of "The Traitor Baru Cormorant", & "The Monster Baru ...", & "The Tyrant Baru ...". I had kind of decided I really didn't like his stuff - too depressing. I have his latest novel, and had tentatively concluded that it would never make it to the top of the "to read" stack.

   The story that stuck is titled "Three Bodies at Mitanni". Here's a sample of the subject matter:

   The most efficient, survivable form of human civilization is a civilization of philosophical zombies.

   A story heavily dealing with morality, I think. Reminiscent of Lucius Shepard in the early Dozois', and Bruce Sterling.

3. "Service Model", Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2024, 367 pages, 113k words. My current fav new SF author. Very prolific. This is a WALL-E type whimsical servant android trying to find meaning in its life after all the humans are gone. Very silly at times, cartoonish, but, an easy and enjoyable read.

4. "Best Science Fiction Of The Year", by Neil Clark, 2017, 608 pages, 256k words, 27 stories. I dislike how Kobo has done the metadata of this book. The book cover has the title as "The Best Science Fiction of the Year" "edited by Neil Clarke", with "Volume 2", with the 2 in a red circle, in the upper right corner. The ebook listing, you have to open and dig around to figure out that this is indeed Volume 2. Plz do better, Kobo.

   I flagged several passages I liked as I was reading the book. Reviewing them for this post, this 1 seems to be a keeper:

   It’s funny how people adjust. The world was going through changes that, before they happened, would have been thought of as mind-boggling, world-shattering, unfathomable. And yet life just went on, the way it does. In years past, people had adjusted to the notion that humanity might be wiped out by a couple of psychotic button-presses. People had adjusted to living in the midst of bubonic plague, to having their cities bombed every night, to being ruled by lunatic, murderous despots. If people could adjust to those things, they could adjust to a life of no war, no disease, and unearned abundance.

   From "They Have All One Breath", by Karl Bunker, who I will definitely keep an eye on. The story is about what kind of *topia comes about after benevolent AIs assume control of planet Earth, down to micromanaging and eliminating all aggressive behavior, even into the animals.

   Here's another. From "Number Nine Moon", by Alex Irvine, a nice piece of Martian astronomy:

   Phobos was rising, big and bright. Sometimes sunlight hit Phobos a certain way and the big impact crater on its planet-facing side caught the shadows just right, and for an hour or so there was a giant number 9 in the Martian sky. Steuby wasn’t superstitious, but when he saw that, he understood how people got that way.

5. "Invasive", by Chuck Wendig, 2016, 328 pages, 92k words. I haven't been dreaming much lately. Last night I dreamt of ... ants swarming in my kitchen!

   We just got down to Naples, FL Saturday. Monday am, someone from our pest control company is at the front door. She sed they had treated for ants recently & were following up to make sure everything was OK. We occasionally get ghost ants - little tiny, like a spec of dust. The pest people put out bait, it gets carried back to the nest, ants gone. But, I'd seen no ants, so no problem.

   But, at the same time, I was reading "Invasive". The plot: evil mad geniuses bioengineer Frankenstein (components from many different species) ants who use their fatal stings to kill humans & harvest their skin for the fungus Candida Albicans - like leafcutter ants. Ant swarms occurred pretty frequently in "Invasive". So I think it deserves some credit for my ant nightmare dream.

   Wendig's stuff continues to impress me. Well plotted, interesting & engaging characters, whimsical, bittersweet.

The Unread shelf in the Kobo app on my iPad is at 144 books. LOL, I just DON'T seem to be catching up!

Music In, 2024, Batch 1

After 16 albums to finish 2023, Q1 of 2024 is really slim: 3 albums. And, almost, no 4 stars!

• John Primer, "Hard Times", 2022, 13 tracks. Recommended by my Canadian blues harpist friend, who had seen him. Meh. B-list blues, good players all, but, nothing catchy. 2 stars.

• Bonnie "Prince" Billy, "I See A Darkness", 1998, 11 tracks, Bandcamp. Continuing to backfill this Louisville musician. Given the title, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, that this is a dark album. In addition to the title tune, we get "Another Day Full Of Dread", "Death To Everyone", "Today I Was An Evil One", and "Black". LOL, well, not uplifting. 3 stars.

  In the music I post online & perform live, I continue to be amazed by how much more popular fast songs are than slow songs. It doesn't do it to me, but lots of people perceive slow as sad, as being a downer.

• Norah Jones, "Visions", 2024, 12 tracks. This almost got 3 stars - no songs really hitting the sweet spot for me - but, finally, I realized that "I Just Wanna Dance" was worthy of having a video posted! So, yay, 4 stars!

Batch 2 / Q2 will be 10 albums. Not doing that much new music listening, music out & Jaz Dumoz are taking up most of my music bandwidth.

Bullshit All The Way Down

The bubble currently inflating the tech world is "Artificial Intelligence" or "AI". What the software actually is: statistical Large Language Models, aka, "autocomplete on steroids". It's creating strings of words, statistically based on the trillions of words it has stolen used to train itself on how to pick the next word.

In my 40 year career in computing, 1972-2012, I went through at least 3 waves of "AI". Wave 2 maybe, Neural Nets, which underly LLMs, came out in, what the 90s? CYC, which was going to be the "common sense" module, kind of disappeared (into the DoD?) a while ago??? No, here it is: automating claims denials by managing hospitals?!?!?

LOL, I just found, on my Lexington home office bookshelves, BrainMaker Software, Copyright 1988, 1989, 1990, Neural Network Simulation Software. Complete with a floppy disk to install!

I am offended by the current use of the term "AI". I understand, this is The Thing now, so, no one cares.

To me, AI is something much bigger than LLMs. I have always felt that the overall strategy was, find new tools, keep building a toolbox, let the tools all talk to each other, and keep your fingers crossed for emergent behavior. So saying LLMs are "AI" is totally bogus. LLMs should be viewed as just another tool in the AI toolbox. Maybe the coolest tool ever, but, still, not "AI".

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!

Hmmm, this is getting serious. How many "waves" of "AI" have we had? Early chatbot, what, 50s? LISP in the 60s & 70s? Early 80s, Rule Based Expert Systems. Then inference engines? Neural nets starting, as per "BrainMaker", late 80s.

Then an AI desert? It seems like there were several of those. CYC is in there somewhere, coming out of the inference engine / LISP machine world?

How would I describe/define an LLM? I would describe it as a Bullshit Generator. It's job it to construct an answer that statistically matches the many corpuses it trained on. Does that answer make sense? Is it a correct answer? Statistically, yes. Logically, no one has any idea - LLMs are completely clueless. [But they are incredibly good BullShit generators.]

This is where they should be integrated with inference engines & rule-based expert systems. But that's not what is happening.

Here is a recent (June 12) Washington Post article, describing many of the shortfalls of LLMs:

Is that chatbot smarter than a 4-year-old? Experts put it to the test.

These LLMs have been training themselves for years. For several years I have followed Janelle Shane's blog:

AI Weirdness

She's been playing with all the big LLM systems for 2-4 years? Occasionally they get some OK stuff, after much tweaking. But the vast majority of what is generated is complete crap. It's laughable! (Note, Janelle subtitles her name with "A. I. HUMORIST".) But, every corporation in the world is scrambling to incorporate these BS generators into their infrastructure ASAP!

I was going to go to one of her posts and pull an example, but then I realized, if I did that, I could not post the following:

NO LLM OR OTHER ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAS BEEN USED IN THE CREATION OF THIS BLOG AND ITS POSTS.

I read somewhere - Doctorow maybe? - that once you start training LLMs on the output of LLMs, the bullshit factor is all there is. It death spirals immediately.

So that finally brings us to the title of this post. Tim O'Reilly is promoting, via ORA, "AI success stories". That is appropriate for him, he has in the past heralded the start of eras in computing. And, yes, there are many, many success stories for LLM use - to play devil's advocate, to generate more possibilities. It can clearly be an incredible tool to help creatives be creative. [Doctorow, who is fairly negative on "AI", is appearing soon somewhere speaking with O'Reilly - that should be interesting. Oops, already happened, now available as an online course of videos?]

But such uses are of course not the concern. What is the concern is: content generation mills getting rid of all their human editors and experts & replacing them with these bullshit generators.

That is clearly the road to hell.

They all say they're not going to do it, then, oops, there they are, busted. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

The other issue here, per Doctorow: is this centaurs, humans guiding machines; or reverse centaurs, machines guiding humans (very bad, what horrible jobs to have)?

Back to the title: I do believe we are in danger of moving into a world where it is, indeed, bullshit all the way down. This borrows from the concept, attributed to hindu cosmology, of the world being supported by 4 elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle, who is standing on the back of a gianter turtle, after which, "it's turtles all the way down.". Here's the wikipedia article.

An odd rumination: I wonder to what degree the orange turd former bullshitter-in-chief's term as president greased the skids for the coming bullshit apocalypse?

I think to live in this world, we need the following:

1. Every piece of media created should be stamped "AI used in the generation of this content." or "No AI was used in the generation of this content." They did it for GMOs, and, IMO, AI generated bullshit is much more dangerous than GMOs (which aren't dangerous, per the USDA, etc.)

   YouTube just started recently allowing you to specify whether or not your video is fake.

   
2. We need places where AI content is banned - like Wikipedia, this blog, most blogs. [Already I get query responses and find myself trying to determine if I am looking at LLM word salad or not.] These places would be like wildlife sanctuaries, where we protect human thinking from AI bullshit.

   Of course, humans are capable of generating their own bullshit - but not in an automated manner that will be impossible to keep up with. It is indeed a labor of Hercules shoveling the BS of the orange turd former bullshitter-in-chief, but, it is doable. Against "AI"s, no way.

For 2-3 years ending January 1, 2023, this blog was getting ~500 hits/day from PCs and Macs in France - so somebody's training system was using me as a corpus. After Jan 1, 2023, views went down to a handful/week - about right. That ended around the start of 2024. This blog now gets ~50 hits/day from Hong Kong? And from Singapore before that. So apparently it is still being used as a corpus.

Meanwhile ...

My daughter-in-law has gotten a Master's in Data Science (yay!!!) & is leading a team doing LLM work for 1 of the biggies. It really does seem like the biggest craze I can remember since ... forever? A corporate employee who is not catching this ship is clearly severely limiting their career prospects.

LOL, maybe the bottom line here is, I will remain as a 100% human source of information - how quaint - a pre-AI reference human! Of course, this gives me an excuse to not learn how to use the LLMs. I'm too old for long learning curves on anything new at this point.

Plus, I think I understand the shape of this technology, & I don't think it would be that interesting to me. The only thing I think would be interesting is, figuring out how to communicate with "CommonSense™".

Here's a late addition: AI Snake Oil. Their blog posts have been interesting.

Short Stories, FTW!

This post, we have 2 novels & 2 short story collections. The short stories were much more enjoyable than the novels, which weren't bad, but maybe were "meh".

For decades, I read the Gardner Dozois short story collections, "Year's Best Science Fiction". That of course ended with his death a few several years ago. It looks like the 35th edition in 2018 was the last. I can't verify, I always bought these in trade paperback & they are all in FL while I am currently in KY.

I had identified "The Best Science Fiction of the Year" edited by Neil Clarke as the replacement. I have had Volumes 1 & 3 on my iPad for years - it looks like Volume 1 came out in 2016, so a little overlap with Dozois.

I think, after I finish the novel I am currently reading, I will read the 1st Clarke volume, and thereafter alternate this series with novels until I get caught up. I discovered so many of the best SF authors of the last 3-4 decades via the Dozois collections: Bruce Sterling, Lucius Sheppard, Charles Stross, Greg Egan, several others. I need to reestablish an annual review as a source of good new SF. So much of how I buy books has become enshittified, with everyone wanting to sell me "all you can eat" subscriptions rather than helping me find stuff I would like.

Meanwhile, 4 to review.

1. "Translation State", by Ann Leckie, 2023, 333 pages, 103k words. This story is set in the Imperial Radsch universe of her "Ancillary" novels. Mild spoiler alert, I'm going to briefly describe this universe.

   The Radsch empire is based on personalities being able to occupy multiple bodies. The Radsch's main justification for their existence is to maintain the coexistence treaty with the alien, somewhat god-like (maybe existing in a different # of dimensions?), Presger race. Left to their own devices, the Presger like to take things apart and maybe eat them. So the treaty doesn't allow that, when it comes to human or other sentient races. Meanwhile, the Presger have mixed some of themselves with lots of human DNA to create a human-like species (which also likes to take things apart and maybe eat them) to function as ambassadors between the races: the Translators.

   The Presger Translators do a thing where 2 individuals merge and become mostly 1 individual in 2 bodies. This allows their important people virtual immortality.

   **** SPOILER ALERT ****

   Our protagonists in this novel are a failed juvenile Translator and the descendant of an escaped Translator. Sadly, the book winds up being a standard chick-flick rom-com: will the 2 star-crossed lovers wind up together, or will they each merge with bio-mechanical automata-type things? This is the essence of a chick-flick: will the right people wind up together? Meh.

2. "Lake of Souls", by Ann Leckie, 2024, 397 pages, 123k words, 18 stories. some from the Imperial Radch universe (like the prior novel), some from the world of "The Raven Tower", the rest free-standing. All in all, an outstanding collection. Several standard SF tropes being revisited and given interesting twists. The Raven Tower stories are fun, with their concept of gods of all shapes & sizes, trying to hustle up worshippers to keep themselves alive. A very enjoyable collection, and quite a relief after the prior novel.

3. "The Steerswoman", by Rosmary Kirstein, 2018, 354pages, 96k words. I think The Bard of The Revolution, My Hero, Cory Doctorow, recommended this book in his Pluralistic blog. Some interesting concepts: the steerswoman is basically a member of a cult/order (with what seemed to me to have an unmaintainably low number of members) dedicated to making better maps of their world. The interesting part is, they must answer any question you ask them, and you are bound to answer any question they ask you. The steerswoman's friend companion sidekick is a barbarian female warrior. I think lots more female than male characters, fine by me. Overall, the pacing is somewhat slow. But the worse thing was, this really was feeling like 1 of those post-apocalyptic stories where the "magic" is actually 18th-21st century technology that gets rediscovered or whatever. I've gotten kind of tired of those so, meh. It looks like there are at least 4 novels in the series, I will not continue it.

4. "Lost Places", by Sarah Pinkster, 2023, 273 pages, 84k words, 12 stories. Interesting, I reviewed her 1st short story collection in the same post as Leckie's "The Raven Tower" mentioned above. Synchronicity, perhaps?

   This is an outstanding collection. The stories are all over the place, many different approaches to storytelling. There is not a bad story in the bunch.

   1 thing that was a little odd, the stories were basically put in the eBook as all 1 chapter, although there was a TOC that seemed to function?!?!? Was this eBook badly designed, or was this intentional?

   I feel that I must thank the author for including a few male protagonists in the stories. I definitely recommend this collection

The Unread shelf in the Kobo app on my iPad is at 141 books. :-O I guess I should start remembering my speed reading techniques ...