Human Culture Takes a Big Hit

This New York Times Article today is heartbreaking. AI slop is close enough for most people. Goodbye to 80-90% of creatives, at least with regard to making a living.

The Starving Artist vs. A.I.: Guess Who Is Winning?

“It felt like a gut punch,” she said. “They were using my reputation, the work that I trained for decades, my whole life to do, and they were just using it to provide their clients with imagery that tries to mimic me.”

The article says, creatives will still be creative, they will just have trouble getting paid for it. To me this is a strong argument for UBI, Universal Basic Income.

I'm retired, living on a fixed income, I write (blog), arrange songs, play music, create recipes, do whatever I want because I don't have to worry about being paid. UBI makes that possible for everybody.

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The always-amusing AI Weirdness blog of Janelle Shane gives more detail on the LLM-turned-communist we learned about 2 days ago.

When a chatbot runs your store

Keep in mind that large language models are basically doing improv.

I need to get "improv" into my table of names for LLMs. But it needs something more. "Robot improv"?

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Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit. This is post #74.

Understanding Comics

For my birthday, my oldest daughter Erica the Brooklyn software designer/geek got me "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud, 1993, 215 pages. He has a great website.

It is of course a comic book. Very interesting stuff - the science of comic books. If you've ever been a fan of comics or graphic novels, I recommend it to you highly. I'm going to highlight a little of the science.

[I had ~1000 DC comics when I was 12 (1963). My favorites were Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Justice League, and Adam Strange in "Mystery in Space" comics. Periodically I try to figure out how to read these old comics online and so far have always failed.

I must have wanted some other toy in 1963 because I had a big sale and sold all my comics.

In high school I started reading Marvel, and continued through college. I had 6-7 straight years of Fantastic Four, Thor, etc. Doctor Strange was my fav. I sold those all off to a comic store for $40 when I was preparing to move from Cambridge MA back to Jeffersonville IN in 1974. None of these comics would have been worth much if I had kept them - they were all very well read, never stored in plastic envelopes.]

Definition of "comics":

Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.

A shorter version: "Sequential Art".

Comics have been around for most of human history. Who knew?

Chapter 2 introduces us to The Big Triangle. There is a sequence of 10 slides explaining it on his website - but, too bad, not 1 good image of The Big Triangle. Here's a screenshot of 1 of them; I'll try to explain the missing stuff.

The lower left corner contains photo-realistic images which become more "iconically abstract" as you move to the right. Finally you cross the dotted line and are in the land of text. As you move up you increase non-iconic abstraction - dadaism, cubism, etc. Very instructive.

In Chapter 3 we learn that playing "peek-a-boo" as kids teaches us closure: "the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole". This leads to defining the 6 types of transitions between panels in a comic strip:

1. Moment-to-moment
2. Action-to-action
3. Subject-to-subject
4. Scene-to-scene
5. Aspect-to-aspect
6. Non-sequitur

Various schools of comics use widely varying amounts of the transition types.

The discussion of "motion lines" is fun. Plus "smoke lines" and "smell lines".

Chapter 6 is "Show and Tell". Again McCloud uses a common childhood occurrence as a teaching tool. This chapter is about how words and images are combined in comics. Oh boy, another numbered list!

1. Word specific
2. Picture specific
3. Duo-specific
4. Additive
5. Parallel
6. Montage
7. Interdependent

I was surprised that he never mentioned the conventions regarding speech bubbles vs. thought bubbles vs. telepathic bubbles vs. ...

Chapter 7 explores the Six Steps in the creation of art in any medium:

1. Idea/Purpose
2. Form
3. Idiom
4. Structure
5. Craft
6. Surface

McCloud's exploration of the paths that different artists take through these steps is really interesting.

As you would surely expect, there are so many striking images in this book. Reading it is definitely 2-3 hours well spent.

A Bit More Variety

5 book reports this time.

1. "The Corn King and the Spring Queen", by Naomi Mitchison, 1931, 985 pages. I blogged Mitchison's "Travel Light" here. This one seems to be regarded as the best of her 90 or so books. Set in the Black Sea area, Sparta, and Alexandria around 150 BC. Fairly historical, except for a main character who is a practicing witch. Very good account of fertility magic; Stoic and Epicurean Greek philosophers; an attempt to reinstill traditional values in Sparta; intrigue in the court of Ptolemy, king of Egypt, in Alexandria.

   I was surprised, for 1931, at its matter-of-fact retelling of Greek homosexuality, particularly between older men and (pre)pubescent boys - Wikipedia does say that the book was somewhat scandalous for its time.

   The book has lots of interesting characters and ideas and plenty of plot. By the end I was definitely ready for it to be over. Then there was a very random Appendix set 100 years later which seemed to me to be almost completely pointless???

2. "Crucible of Time", by Jeffrey A. Carver, 2019, 481 pages. The 6th of this series, I thought it was supposed to be the last 1, but, no ... still 1 more in the pipe. This installment pretty much follows in the footsteps of #5. Our expanded team of intrepid galactic trouble-shooters gets mostly reunited. I'll be glad to put the last one behind me.

3. "seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees: expanded edition", by Lawrence Weschler, 2009, 336 pages. Subtitled "Over Thirty Years Of Conversations With Robert Irwin". This was a belated birthday gift from my oldest daughter Erica, the Brooklyn graphics designer.

   Robert Irwin is (still alive, age 91) an LA based artist, active since 1960. He is a fascinating genius of a man. He grew up in the LA area, into cars, girls, dance contests, and gambling in his teen years in the 1940s; he went to various art institutes; he supported himself in a lot of his adult life betting on the horses.

   He did some abstract impressionistic paintings to start, but quickly got a LOT more conceptual. A painting should have no images; it should be only what was in the artist's mind when he created it. With his Line paintings in 1962, he spent 2 years creating 10 12"^2 paintings in a solid color, usually orange, with 2 1/8" horizontal lines somewhere. He said things like "moving 1 line up a tiny fraction of an inch completely changed the result".

   Next up were his Dots paintings - 2 of which were vandalized by some very serious art critics in Sao Paulo. Then came his Discs, which were paintings without frames.

   Trying to abstract his way out of the figure/background dichotomy of paintings, he became an installation artist. He later designed gardens, buildings, all kind of stuff.

   I really liked 1 story he recounted. A NYC art critic was in LA for a show & got into a discussion with Irwin of Folk Art. To the NYC guy this meant pottery etc. Irwin found an ad for a hot-rod being sold. He took the critic to meet the late-teens guy who was working on a new hot-rod. All the aesthetic decisions the guy was making, expose bolts or not, how many coats of paint - to Irwin this was modern folk art. The NYC critic was having no part of it - as opposed to LA, NYC has 0 car culture. When he couldn't convince the critic, Irwin stopped his car somewhere in Southern California and told him to get out. Nice!

   Erica also got me, by the same author, "true to life: Twenty-five Years of Conversations with David Hockney". I have found that art must be done in small doses, particularly when Erica is involved. Good art is like getting punched real hard in the head - I need to definitely control the dosage. So this 2nd book will be put off for a good while - hopefully I will remember to come back to it.

4. "The Last Supper Before Ragnarok", by Cassandra Khaw, 2019, 222 pages. Apparently this is Gods and Monsters #5 - I've read only 2 others by Khaw, here's the latest. Hmmm, this shows as "Persona Non Grata" series - no mention of "Gods and Monsters" - apparently we have some quantum series indeterminacy, hopefully the competing wave functions will collapse out soon. Researching, the GaM novels 2 & 3 are by other authors, just bought #1 & #4 by Khaw. Persona Non Grata seems to indeed be a different series, with the demon-possessed cheap detective protagonist.

   I somehow thought this was novel length, but it is another novella. Very good use of competing mythologies, an interesting cast of somewhat supernatural characters. A fun read. Khaw is from Malaysia, and incorporates much Malaysian (and Chinese) mythology and cuisine.

5. "Ninth Step Station", by Malka Older & others, 2019, 414 pages. From Serial Box: 10 episodes, feeling very much like TV series episodes, an intro (pre-credits teaser), followed by 4-5 Acts. I have pretty much sworn off of TV police procedurals as of 2-3 years ago. But, these have some good new SF elements - eye implants with IR vision, other implants/bionics, drones everywhere - so I gladly un-foreswore procedurals for at least this series.

   Following serious earthquakes & a lame North Korean attack, followed by a Japanese response, the Chinese have invaded Japan & hold the western 1/2 of Tokyo. The other half is what's left of the Japanese government propped up by US peacekeeping forces.

   Our main character is a Tokyo police inspector (lesbian or bisexual of course), her partner is a Japanese-American peacekeeper forwarded in the spirit of cooperation. It does the good thing of having each episode have a case to be solved, while meanwhile a larger story arc re China vs Japan + US develops. It is well done, but I was a little burnt out by the end. But, the ending sets up Series #2 for lots of drama, as the China vs Japan + US narrative heats up.

Time to go back to the magazine stack. I just switched my last print magazine, Technology Review, over to electronic only, yay! But, I am embarrassed to admit, somehow with my magazines all being electronic I seem to be losing track of where I am on the stack much more easily. Hard to beat a stack of physical magazines being read and then moved to a different physical stack across the room for tracking.

Shamanistic Sigils

I was walking the Beaumont walking trail heading south. Just past the Beaumont Post Office, I came across the paintings shown above. If you drive the loop around the Post Office parking lot, they are on your right at the end of the parking lot.

I really like these. IMO, some 14-15 YO in our neighborhood is a real artist (more below). I tweeted this picture and referred to them as "shamanistic glyphs". A glyph is actually a single character in a set - a better description would have been "shamanistic sigils".

The left image is of a white tree with bleeding leaves, enclosed in, an egg penetrated by several sperm??? Or cherries in a pie??? Somehow I am getting "nature distressed".

The central image is where it gets shamanistic. The 4 spirals are self-hypnosis devices - welcome to a shamanistic trance. The central white test pattern is reminiscent of voodoo veves.

The right image I remembered as more mathematical than it is - a contrast to the left image, creating a nature vs technology narrative. On reexamination, it is a single spiral. The 4 ovals can give an impression of depth, to where the spiral is descending into the concrete. I have no clue what the green & white objects in the lower left are. This and the central image also are reminiscent of mandalas.

Ha ha. Of course you know that my interpretations of this art are complete BS.

I was privileged on several occasions to do multi-hour museum tours with my oldest daughter Erica, who is an artist. I remember in particular spending 4-5 hours at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, when she was a senior in high school and was going to spend the next night in an MIT dorm. I also remember several hours at the Met, which I blogged about.

In a small measure, she taught me to see through her artist's eyes. 1 thing I believe I learned is, art is like science fiction - it is all about edge, about making people think new thoughts, get a different take on reality. The, what, urban tribalism of these paintings screamed "art" to me.

But, getting back to BS. This multi-media piece that Erica did in high school has hung in every office I have worked in for close to 20 years. It may or may not be titled "Creation".

I was like, "Erica, I get it! The left is mathematics, the upper right is physics, the lower right is biology! Right?" The response: "No, dad. It's art."

So my analysis is BS, but it was still very pleasant to encounter what I would consider real art in the wild.

Politically Incorrect

A new tag!

The tagging exercise definitely made me aware of the meta-levels of the blog, its themes, what it distills out to. I realized today just a while ago that political incorrectness is definitely a theme that deserves to be tagged. That last sentence reminds me of the most recent post in Charles Stross' blog, re, how long would take you to build up the context of something even more abstract and 21th century than that last sentence to explain it to, say, someone from the 17th century like Isaac Newton.

Anyway, my friend David sent me this link to Pamela Anderson and PETA's campaign against KFC: http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/.

I replied to him with recollections from my childhood:

Like most people of my generation (mid-50's) in the midwest/south, I grew up with ties to a farm. When I was, say 8-13 years old, I would spend a week or two on my maternal grandparents 150 acres just west of Lagrange, KY (now $.5M homes). I would do farm chores: tend chickens and cattle, and help Pop maintain fences and barns. Also fish in the ponds, wade in the creek, build obstacle courses in the hayloft, and otherwise goof-off. My impressions from those years:

1. Chickens are dumb as bricks; have no personalities; and deserve to be eaten (I have no clue where PETA gets their allegation that chickens are as smart as cats or dogs ?!?!?).
2. Likewise for cows.

One of those things, when theory departs from experience and practice in the real world, bullshit quotient has a way of going up, up, up -- not surprising in the least.

Other recent e-mails:

• My baby sister sends a typically dumbass christian site, LOL in her opinion.
• My friend Patricks sends the address for signing up for the Bob Parks newsletter from the University of Maryland, apparently a skeptic/rational scientist.
• Patrick also sends a way-cool post-modern game of some sort.

Currently listening to The Time Jumpers 2 disc live CD "Jumpin' Time". 11 piece Texas Swing band composed of Nashville studio musicians, unbelievable pedal steel guitar player John Hughey. This will be mostly 4 stars.

A Trip to the Windy City

Drove (the prius) up to Chicago the Friday before Labor Day, came back Monday. Went with 2 other couples. Stayed at the Hilton on Michigan Ave, great downtown location, lots of walking. Ate the 1st night at a french place Marche, most excellent. Night 2, Smith & Wollensky steak house, OK. Night 3, Chicago pizza at Lou Malnati's -- it didn't agree with either my wife or I.

1st day, took an architecture cruise on the Chicago River -- very nice, very interesting. Day 2, went to King Tut at the Field museum -- what a marketing job. Somewhat interesting, but nothing special, and the place was packed. "Reconstruction of what the face of the boy king looked like ..." -- who cares? Day 3, the aquarium. Featured exhibit, a komodo dragon. Well, it moved some. But, the signs said, max weight 150 pounds -- alligators can get over a ton (wikipedia), they would clearly kick this thing's ass.

The high point of the trip was definitely The Great Water-Spouting Gods of Millennium Park. Lots of LOL at the kids squealing in anticipation, waiting for the purifying and mystical water. I'd been talking to one of the other guys earlier, about what art was, and this was definitely art. I think art will be becoming increasingly participatory in the years to come.

No notable new music acquisitions. Reading-wise, still on the magazine stack, trying to get caught up. Jam wise, trying Buffalo & Dad's rather than Lynagh's -- Lynagh's is getting too successful, playing time is going down. I did bike the last 2 weekends after around a 6 week layoff -- 25 and 30 miles.

What fun, the pope decides to mix it up with the moslems. Moslems react to his reference to islam being a violent religion with violence -- as my friend David says, irony seems to be lost in modern times. I just hope that Pope Benny isn't working with the fundamentalist millenialists to encourage a nice mid-eastern meltdown so that we can get on with the rapture, 2nd coming, etc.

A Trip to the Met

I drove my oldest daughter back to New York City last Saturday. She has moved from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to the East Village in Manhattan and has more room than before and wanted to take some stuff back. We had a high-speed blowout just west of Allentown, PA, with her driving. She did great, got us off the road, then I got to change the tire with semis whizzing by 10 inches away.

Sunday, we had a nice outdoor brunch and then went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had not been there (nor ridden the NYC subways) for 30 years. I had forgotten what a fantastic museum that is.

It is really great going to museums with Erica, who is an artist. She had wanted to see an exhibit of photography by Charles Sheeler. Lots of urban and industrial shots, but focusing on small parts rather than the whole. I learned from this, that doing that, focusing on a small part rather than what we would normally perceive as the whole image, is a flavor of found art. There was also a series of nudes of his 50ish, somewhat overweight wife -- but 6" by 10" sections or very odd angles. Some of them looked like dunes on Mars -- they could have been anything.

We next looked at the statuary court, with the Rodin Burghers bronze. Unbelievable, bronze with eyes that seem to be looking back at you.

Next stop, Oceania and Asmat (New Guinea) ancestor poles. These things were really scary. They are beautifully complex, with human figures one atop the other. From the top person, this thing projects -- the soul, phallus, you couldn't tell what -- a web with a person at the apex. The cards said, the Asmat did not believe in natural death, except in the very young or old. All other death was caused by rival tribes headhunting or sorcerers. When you got down a few tribe members, you would have a big ceremony and carve one of these. If you were down three tribe members, then you left three alcoves or spaces in the carving for the shrunken heads of the enemy tribes you would take to even the score. These things really were haunting -- these people were not running the same software that I am.

We then hit the Impressionists -- unbelievable, a room of Cezanne's, 2 rooms of Renoirs, etc. Then we headed for the modern section. We weren't there long before I knew it was time to go. My brain was starting to hurt. Two hours is about all I can do -- good art really is capable of delivering a psychic shock.

I was somewhat relieved that the next day my mind seemed to be working fine. When I first saw the movie "Brazil", my mind didn't work right for the next couple of days. After I got back from 5 days in France in late March, the French language thread I was running also made my mind feel distinctly different. It really seems like there should be techniques to tweak our software, far more effectively than drugs, meditation, or the other techniques we have. What would those be?

Three Main Interests

There have been three main interests in my mental life: astrophysics/cosmology, computer/cognitive science, and music. These are what this blog will focus on, primarily the last two -- the astrophysics was more a thing of my youth. Other interests:

• Movies. My interests seem to be narrowing, it's harder to watch the formulaic stuff (re a Joe Bob Briggs review, "about time for a car chase").
• Art. My oldest daughter is an artist, she has greatly broadened my perspectives here. I used to most like Impressionism and didn't have much use for modern art. Now, I am Impressionism and forward, and am getting kind of tired of Impressionism. Very little interest in the old-foo any more.
• Soccer. I coached all my kids' U8 teams, and my son one year U12, 17 seasons total. I refereed for 12 years, including 8 as a high school ref. Refereeing a good soccer game is very challenging, and very different from writing software. There were times when I had real Zen moments in games, when it is all flowing as it should. But, for every one of those, there were 10 times where some asshole who hadn't the vaguest clue would get in my face and exercise their divine right to abuse referees. And, being a professional, you don't get to tell them where to put their opinion. I retired from refereeing two years ago. I now bike, walk and do aerobics for fitness -- a lot easier on the knees.

Real-time flash -- I got the latest Dar Williams "the beauty of the rain" yesterday (Dar was recommended by my youngest daughter). Kind of standard chick pop at 1st listen, I suspect I will like it more after I listen to it a few times. Best track: a cover of "Whispering Pines", from The Band. Hard to beat Robbie Robertson and the boys.