"AI" Comes for Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a world treasure. Something else for LLMs to screw up.

Yet another reason not to use thieving LLMs. From 404 Media.

Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors

It continually becomes harder to avoid. Everybody wants to justify the $$$ they are spending on "AI" by cramming their "AI" summaries down our throats.

And, of course, a lot of those summaries were harvested, without compensation or attribution, from Wikipedia.

Similarly, on YouTube, do not listen to generic playlists. YouTube is funding musicians to create derivative works, paying them pennies on the dollar. The next step, of course, will be LLM-generated slop. Just say no.

---

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

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

Makes total sense to me. Your business model is losing $B, of course, pivot to porn!

From 404 Media. These guys are really, really good.

ChatGPT’s Hail Mary: Chatbots You Can Fuck

---

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

Infinite Archive

"Infinite Archive", by Mur Lafferty, 2025, 346 pages. Book 3 of The Midsolar Murders.

I enjoyed the 1st 2 books of this series. There are good alien races, including intelligent ships with literal hive-minds.

Given that these are murder mysteries, it's sad, but not surprising, when things start feeling like "Murder, She Wrote", or some other cheesy CBS detective show. A murder mystery convention on an interstellar cruise ship, which is actually an ancient, incredibly powerful ship which has loaded the entire internet onto itself, including, oh boy, lots of fan fiction. Plus the ship is like the holodeck on steriods, visit the virtual worlds of your favorite series! I guess I'm not a fan of fan fiction. There are just way too many inside, nerdy jokes.

I was going to call it quits on this series, but I think I'll give it 1 more chance. I mean, crap, Charlie Stross's last book featured a gaming convention. Unfortunate that this meme has spread.

"AI" Ruins ... Beer

This article is really painful to read. What could be a more human thing than a beer-tasting competition? Then, judges are forced to feed all their comments into training an LLM.

LLMs are about language. They can't taste shit. Who in their right mind would want to get them involved in the judging of beers? Pathetic. Fuck the techbros. Seriously. I used to be 1, no more.

Call Me Luddite. Luddism was never anti-tech, it was always about "who does the tech serve?" Fuck these techbros, over-hyping an impressive but totally NOT transformational technology. Together with crypto, a 1-2 punch to efforts to avoid the climate crisis. So they can become the next multi-billionaire oligarch.

And, let's notice that the current crop of techbro oligarchs are all kissing the ring of the orange turd and doing NOTHING to help the US from slipping into fascism, turning its back on renewables, rewriting history, etc. Fuck these assholes.

Time for a wealth/capital/Piketty tax of 100% on all fortunes > $1B. Seriously, what would that hurt? Billionaires should NOT be the ones to decide if we want to try & colonize Mars, or whatever. We, The People, need to make such decisions.

So, let's take all but 1 of their $B - hopefully they can budget or whatever to live on such a pittance - & then We The People can decide what to do with their ill-gotten gains.

Via 404 Media:

What Happened When AI Came for Craft Beer

---

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

Music In, 2025, Q2

Following the last Music In post, I'm starting this post April 23, and will maintain it as the quarter progresses. I will be processing Q1 for a while longer, due to the influx of 5 albums at the very end of Q1.

This quarter wound up having an unexpected theme: pedal steel guitar, FTW! Several albums featuring pedal steel, which I love. My 6 string, 6 pedal MultiChord pedal steel is still in the music room in the basement.

1. Bon Iver, "SABLE, fABLE", 2025, 12 tracks, BandCamp. The 1st 3 of these tracks were on the EP SABLE, blogged here, so I deleted them from the hard drive before importing this album to iTunes.

   This album was going to get 3 stars, then: a pedal steel song! So 4 stars! Here's "Everything is Peaceful Love"

2. Bela Fleck, "Rhapsody in Blue", 2025, 5 tracks. The world's greatest banjo player (who lived in Lexington, KY for a while) riffs on Gershwin's masterwork. The other pieces are also excellent. 3 versions, with an orchestra, with his bluegrass band, & played as a blues. 4 stars. Here's the orchestral version.

3. The Dip, "Love Direction", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. The 2nd album I purchased from the "Good Music for Los Angeles" compilation. Very poppy, very Motown. It reminds me of The Electric Flag, which is high praise. 4 stars. Here's "Fill My Cup" featuring ... a pedal steel?!?!? Pretty odd for a horn band, but it works.

4. Takuya Kuroda, "EVERYDAY", 2025, 9 tracks, BandCamp. For not being much of a jazz fan, I really enjoy this music. I think that there's enough tasty licks & riffs to satify me. 4 stars. Here's "Must Have Known".

5. Lucius, "Lucius", 2025, 11 tracks, BandCamp. The ladies harmonies are as compelling as always. 4 stars. Here's "Mad Love". It almost sounds like a pedal steel at the end, but I don't think it is.

6. Shannon Lay, "All this life goin down", 2017, 10 tracks, BandCamp. The 3rd album I purchased from the "Good Music for Los Angeles" compilation. This is mostly solo guitar and vocals, a little bit of harmony vocals, not real well engineered. This was heading for 2 stars, but then there were a couple of OK tracks, so 3 stars.

7. Faye Webster, "Faye Webster", 2017, 11 tracks, BandCamp. The 4th album I purchased from the "Good Music for Los Angeles" compilation. Lots of pedal steel, nice! 4 stars (barely). Here's "Is It Too Much To Ask".

8. Guy Clark, "Dublin Blues", 1995, 11 tracks, BandCamp. Guy is a truly great americana musician. Unpretentious lyrics. Really nice female vocal harmonies. 4 stars. Here's "Baby Took A Limo To Memphis".

   '

9. Wolf Alice, "Blue Lullaby", 2022, 5 tracks, BandCamp. I forget where I got pointed at this band. Paul Krugman, maybe? The 5 song titles all have "(Lullaby Version)" appended to them. They didn't particularly seem like lullabies? None of the songs did much for me, 3 stars.

10. McGuinn, Clark & Hillman, eponymous, 1979, 10 tracks. The Byrds minus David Crosby. Wow, a couple of really peppy, upbeat pop songs that sound like they were written by Gene Clark. 4 stars. I'm including the 2 songs I really like - OK, the vocals may be a little chipmunky. Hmmm, Gene Clark wrote 4 songs for the album, but neither of these. The 2nd one peaked in the pop charts at #33.
    • "Long Long Time"

    • "Don't You Write Her Off", "Live"

11. Omar, "Brighter The Days", 2025, 18 tracks, BandCamp. I love Omar. His stuff is just top shelf R&B. 4 stars. Here's "Can We Go Out?"

12. Local Natives, "Violet Street", 2019, 10 tracks, BandCamp. An LA band. The 5th album I purchased from the "Good Music for Los Angeles" compilation. Very easy to listen to, emo indie rock. 4 stars. Here's "Megaton Mile".

13. Redeyes, "Birds", 2025, 13 tracks, BandCamp. This album reminds me of The Mighty Bop, which was maybe the 1st electronica/dance album I listened to, maybe 1999. Out of Toulouse, France. I enjoy this album, 4 stars. Hmmm, no videos on YouTube :-(

14. Nubiyan Twist, "NT Soundsystem", 2025, 9 tracks, BandCamp. Lots of collaborations, still peppy Afro-Pop. 4 stars. Here's "So Mi Stay".

15. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, "CURSE", 2025, 6 tracks, BandCamp. Much better than their last one, 4 stars. Vocals, FTW! It appears to be maybe a theme album. Here's "BOYS WITH THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOLVES" - there is a longer video of this, R-rated, lots of blood, horror movie vibe.

16. Lucius, "Joyride", 2025. 4 tracks, BandCamp. Not sure what was up with this??? 1 new track, 3 tracks from their eponymous album released 6 weeks earlier??? 3 stars for the new track, 2 for the dups.

Phew! Fini! When I'm in Lexington I don't have nearly as much opportunity to listen to music.

I feel like I'm getting spread too thin: exercise, music, crema di, birding, A Taxonomy of Bullshit, staying current, blogging, reading, cooking. I seem to be backing away from birding; my eyes are getting old, & for some reason, I'm still not that good at recognizing birdsong.

I think this is not a bad problem to have at my age. Just have to improve my juggling skills, I guess.

The Hungry Gods

"The Hungry Gods", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2024, 142 pages, so it's a novella? It's in the series "Terrible Worlds: Innovations".

4 Techbro Masters of the Universe, with serious life extension, have left a dying earth to create utopia in orbital platforms throughout the solar system. Centuries later, they return to see if they can help out their homeworld.

Hmmm, Tchaikovsky's recent 434 page novel "Bee Speaker", which I read in June, used a similar trope, with martians returning to earth to try and help out.

Well anyway, in both cases, the techbros get their just deserts. This is an easy & fun read, & politically on the right side of history, I think.

Model Collapse

"Model Collapse" is a short story by Matthew Kressel, a well-known science fiction author whose work I enjoy, published yesterday at tor.com.

This is a "post-LLM-generated-bullshit-apocalyptic" horror story! I never imagined I would be saying those words. This is an incredibly timely story.

In the ongoing Bullshit Apocalypse, the world is becoming increasing filled with AI slop. I think this is now unavoidable. Too many tech-bros looking for the big $$$. Everybody drinking the kool-aid.

Meanwhile, progress is being made on direct brain-computer interfaces.

So you're already living in a world filling up with AI slop, what happens when the AI slop starts leaking into your brain?

Model collapse is that happens when an LLM starts training itself on LLM output. The downward spiral into complete & utter bullshit happens very quickly.

---

I used to say, as soon as I could implant my net access chip behind my ear, I would go for it.

Now, no way, no how! The computer industry has so failed to make security issues a top priority, to me it is madness to allow net access to any part of your life of which you are not in direct, manual control.

So, no thanks to internet-enabled appliances that can be hacked & held for ransom, or bricked by the manufacturer when he decides to squeeze a few more $$$ out of you. Or to doorbells with net-enabled cameras that can be appropriated by the ICE-wipes or whatever government agency feels like it.

On top of that, now add AI slop to the picture. I absolutely DO NOT want that bullshit in my head!

I am on a mission from god to avoid LLMs. It is not too bad so far, but I know it will get harder & harder. &, will they have fixed the slop problem? Of course not. No $$$ in that. :-(

---

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

The Shattering Peace

"The Shattering Peace", by John Scalzi, 2025, 278 pages, Book #7 of "Old Man's War".

The 1st book in this very enjoyable series in 10 years. It seemed longer than 278 pages.

Our main character is a snarky female who fights really well. (Scalzi is the King of Snark.) She has an alien assistant/bodyguard who is conscious only due to a hardware upgrade provided by humans.

The main drama of the story comes from interaction with the godlike but completely asshole Consu race. The plot twists are excellently unpredictable. The pacing seemed uneven at times, but that may just be me. An excellent read, glad to return to this universe.

Workslop

So many new terms, incorporating the word "slop". I'm still jealous of "slopacolypse now".

I'm so glad some asshole tech bros are going to become asshole billionaires based on this shit. From 404 Media:

AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable

Human workers see their colleagues who use AI as less competent, according to another study published in Harvard Business Review last month.

...

“Workslop uniquely uses machines to offload cognitive work to another human being. When coworkers receive workslop, they are often required to take on the burden of decoding the content, inferring missed or false context. A cascade of effortful and complex decision-making processes may follow, including rework and uncomfortable exchanges with colleagues,”

Image: Nick Fewings via Unsplash

---

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

My Exercise Routine

After I retired September 1, 2012, I started exercising 6 mornings a week. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, I walk 4-10 miles, usually at around 3 mph. Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, I would bicycle, 30-50 miles. Monday is my day off.

I dropped 20-30 pounds prolly within the 1st year. Prolly 1/2 - 2/3 of that is back on currently.

In December, 2019 I popped a tendon on my ring finger in a bicycle wreck. That's a guitar finger, mercifully, after being splinted for 6 weeks, it reattached & I regained I think full mobility.

October 21, 2021, I ran into a metal post going about 15 mph. 2 weeks of the (completely purple) right leg elevated, 6 weeks total before I could start exercising again.

That was the last time I rode a bicycle. At my age, you can't afford that kind of down time.

I had been occasionally doing some floor exercises, very irregular. In the late 80's, early 90's, I recorded 24 1/2 hour episodes of "Bodies in Motion with Gilad", and used those for years. A lot of these floor exercises came from there. Also from my son, who stayed in shape for judo, & from my oldest daughter, who is a certified yoga instructor.

In the absence of biking, I started doing those on Wed-Fri-Sun, & added some light weight work. I do those 1st thing in the morning; later in the morning I do 16 laps of pool walking, rotating 90 degrees after each lap.

Here is my current floor work routine.

Floor Work; b:breath; s:snort		8# Hand Weights 16 reps
Big inhale up, exhale down	4	Curls
Neck & elbow stretch	16 L+R	Upright rowing
Neck stretch (nod)	16	Military press
Pushups	80 (88 Sun)	French curl (parallel)
Chest stretch	4	Side lifts
Chest stretch (hug)	L,R	Front lifts
Lat stretch	L,R	Bent over lifts
Rotator stretch	L,R	Wrist curls
Crunches	64	Toe touch, back bend
Crunches w twist	16 L/R	Tiptoes
Knee 2 elbow	16 L+R
Knees 2 elbows	16	Repeat with 10# Hand Weights
Lower back, neck stretch	16b L,R
Pelvic tilts	64
Leg lift & holds	3x16s 1x32s
Leg lifts	16
Groin stretch	16b
Side leg lifts	64 L,R
Sponge	16b L,R
Plank	4x 16b
Cobra	16b
Cat	16
Rear leg lift	16 L,R
Toe heel toe lift	16 L,R
Side leg (dog pee) lift	16 L,R
Rear toe point lift	16 L,R
Big inhale up, exhale down	1
Walking Warmups
Heel toe	16 L,R
Mini one-leg squats	16 L,R
Rear heel lift	16 L,R
Leg swing	16 L,R

The whole thing takes around 35 minutes.

I captured this because I have a 1 hour session with a trainer to make observations, corrections, & additions.

[Updated 2025-09-21]
The trainer said, good full body workout. A few tweaks are italicized.

A Woman of the Iron People

"A Woman of the Iron People", by Eleanor Arnason, 1991, 424 pages, 176k words.

This story is a 1st contact novel. Its wipipedia article describes it as "anthropological science fiction". It won the inaugural Otherwise Award ("An award encouraging the exploration & expansion of gender. Formerly the Tiptree Award.") in 1991.

This was a really fun read. Comparisons to Ursula K. LeGuin I don't think are unwarranted. The alien race is really interesting. Human-sized or larger Ewoks, with neolithic level skills? Fabulous metalworking & other arts & crafts. The supporting ecosystem is developed in great detail.

The females of this society never succeeded in domesticating the males. So after puberty, the males leave the villages & live in the wild. In the annual spring breeding, the females leave the villages & go to the males. The bigger males stake out the best (closest) territory around the villages.

Different tribes of the indigenes have different skills & cultures. These are interesting & amusing - like 1 tribe that has clans that view mocking the other clans as the highest pleasure.

The men cannot work together. The villages are populated by women & children & some very old, post-breeding men.

The 1st 1/2 of the book follows 2 human anthropologists interacting with the indigenes, learning their language, having adventures.

The 2nd 1/2 of the book brings more of the humans down. They left Earth maybe in the 22nd century, & maybe Earth is recovering from the Age of Extractive Industry Rape? It's interesting tho, 1991, there are some Americans, also Chinese (pretty much communist party types), & some Russians (also revolutionaries). The theme of the 2nd 1/2 is, can the humans be trusted to not somehow introduce capitalism to this planet, with the disastrous results which happened on Earth? Very political, a lot of good discussions.

I finished the book, I was definitely "OK, I'm ready for the next one ..." Oops! No next one. Wow, Arnason built such a believable, complex, & interesting world, incredible she didn't continue with it. Oh well, still a great read.

---

I wound up reading this book because I came across a positive reference to Arnason's politics, plus, it was towards the bottom of the Unread collection in the Kobo app on my iPad. That collection is currently at 163 books.

I am reminded of my friend David. For years, somehow, the movie "Chinatown" would come up, &, he had never seen it.

He also has never seen "Gone with the Wind", or "The Wizard of Oz".

He "has that going for him".

In his theory, say the Grim Reaper comes knock, knock, knockin' at his door. He can tell the reaper, "Hey, you can't take me yet, I haven't seen 'The Wizard of Oz' or 'Gone with the Wind', or 'Chinatown'. So, he's got that going for him.

Under this theory, I clearly have 163 eBooks going for me. "You can't take me yet, I have 163 unread eBooks."

It is amazing to me how despite being completely retired, I feel spread so thin: music, cooking, reading, writing, exercising. I try to lunch with a friend weekly. I don't see my extended family very much at all. My grandkids are starting to get beyond the age where I am drafted to babysit.

I'm starting to wonder if I need to drop something. I'm not sure what it would be.

The Just City

"The Just City", by Jo Walton, 2015, 369 pages, 110k words. Book 1 of the series "Thessaly".

So, the goddess Athena totally screws up & reads Plato, & decides to become Athene Polias ("of cities") & build Plato's Just City from "The Republic"? She puts it a few thousand years before recorded history on Santorini Island so that eventually the evidence of her experiment would be destroyed. I think I read 1 of Plato's works in a college philosophy course, but I have no recollection whatsoever. Athene replaces Plato's slaves with robots.

Lots of weird utopian foo in the Just City. Eugenics out the wazoo, breeding by lottery - wow, turns out that wasn't very popular!

Athene's brother Apollo chooses to revoke his godhood for 1 generation & live as a human until he dies, at which point he goes back to being a god. He is 1 of the major characters. Another is Sokrates, brought into the experiment at the 5 year mark to teach rhetoric to the city's children, now 15 years old - of course!

A very wordy book, very philosophical. In the Acknowledgements, Walton praises Ada Palmer, with whom she has been palling around for a few years - good stuff, I luv Palmer's work & the level of philosophizing in this work is reminiscent of Palmer. It also reminds me of Dan Simmons' books of Ulysses on Mars, "Ilium" and "Olympus". He had lots of discussions of "arete", which Walton defines as "excellence".

One warning, this book has a rape scene in it. I don't like to read about rape, although my prolly fav sci-fi story of all time, "The Stars My Destination", by Alfred Bester, features a rape - but not a rape scene.

Still, very good writing, I have purchased the 2nd book of the trilogy. Check it out.

AI Darwin Awards

Stumbled across via the 404 Media blog. These guys are chronicling every AI stupidity, mishap, etc. looking to find the very best, la creme de la creme. Their site is subtitled "Honouring Those Who Asked "Can We?" Without Ever Asking "Should We?"

LOL, they have a counter for "Days Since Last Verified AI Catastrophe". Currently at 13, wow, that really is not bad! Maybe this AI stuff has become trustworthy? NOT!

AI Darwin Awards

My work here may be done ...

---

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

Shroud

"Shroud", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2025, 453 pages.

'

Tchsikovsky's prior book featured humans trying to survive in a killing zone: equatorial Earth, where the climate crisis has resulted in wet bulb temperatures never going below 95 degrees.

"Shroud" is set someplace even more inhospitable: a moon in a different solar system, with gravity 2x earth and a dense, non-oxygen atmosphere. No light reaches the surface of the planet.

The universe of this story is horrifying. After making it through the bottleneck caused by the destruction of Earth as a viable planet via offworld development, humanity is never going to get bottlenecked again. They will accomplish this by expanding into the universe as rapidly as possible, stripping all the resources as they go.

There seems to be a privileged (corporate) management class. Most people live in the worst of all possible gig economies: when The Concern doesn't have work for them, they are shelved, kept in hibernation for however long they are not needed. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

The planet Shroud, though, is inhabited by life that uses radio to communicate. The majority of the book follows a 2 woman team, an engineer & an administrative assistant, who wind up in a lander on the planet's surface, as they have to cover half of the globe to reach a point where they can possibly communicate to their ship. The natives get involved.

There's quite a lot of action, and the natives show Tshaikovsky's incredible imagination for forms of life and intelligence - I think that is his biggest gift.

Despite starting out reminiscent of his prior opus, this 1st contact story takes completely different & novel directions. It's a great read.

Morality™

Golden Rule:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Silver Rule:

Don't do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you.

Platinum Rule:

Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.

Bronze Rule:

Don't be an asshole.

I would never dream of using an agentic "AI" that does not understand & implement these rules.

We had rule-based expert systems back in the early-mid 1980s. Time for a revival?

So in addition to the CommonSense™ module, we also need the Morality™ module - & many, many others. LLMs are NOT the answer.

Am I setting too high a bar?

If I am granting a piece of code agency, you're goddam right I am setting the bar VERY high.

In 2007, with a few other folks, I got a patent on SmartDocs - documents with intelligence built in that would represent your interests. Prolly either HP or OpenText owns that patent now.

But, I remember thinking then, I have this smart document, with intelligence built in - aka, code - how do I debug it? I don't care who develops the code, human or "AI", it has to be debugged. & even if you do some pretty good debugging, do you still feel confident releasing it into the wild world? Where there are hackers waiting around every corner to subvert your efforts?

I think I decided: "no".

What percentage of Ethereum smart contracts wind up being hacked?

---

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

Pick Your Poison

So which is worse?

1. That LLMs are a complete security nightmare? This is from Bruce Schneier, a leading security expert:

   We Are Still Unable to Secure LLMs from Malicious Inputs

   Schneier quotes from this Wired article, which explains how easily a poisoned document can contain invisible-to-humans text that an LLM will read, & follow its instructions to send security keys to the bad guys.

   A Single Poisoned Document Could Leak ‘Secret’ Data Via ChatGPT

   Schneier concludes:

   It’s an existential problem that, near as I can tell, most people developing these technologies are just pretending isn’t there.

2. That LLMs will literally help troubled people pick the best poison to kill themselves with. From 404 Media:

   ChatGPT Answered 'High Risk' Questions About Suicide, New Study Finds

   The parents of a child who suicided with help from ChatGPT are suing OpenAI. Best of luck to them.

I'm going to go with #2. Killing children is IMO the worst crime there is.

---

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

The Rapture Effect

"The Rapture Effect", by Jeffrey Carver, 1987, 386 pages, 119k words.

I probably got this for $0.99 or $1.99 via BookBub. Note, Kobo has this book listed as 2015, his website says it is 1987. I will confirm, this definitely reads like the 1980s. I might not have bought it if I had known it was 1987. I have liked most of Carver's stuff, but not enough to go that far back in history.

This is a 1st contact story, & an AI story. The pacing early on is weird, it's kind of like the book starts on page 50? The back story on the aliens is different, and somewhat arbitrary. The fact that their species trauma seems like it can be cured by disco music seems ... pretty 1980s. The last 1/2 of the book moves along well, & mercifully we have a happy ending.

Overall, an odd book, if you're looking to read an odd book, give it a try. Else, not.

Chatbot in a Writing Class

Via Kottke. Real data from the field. Interesting.

What Happened When I Tried to Replace Myself with ChatGPT in My English Classroom

If this were shorter, it would go in my table of names for LLMs.

One ... compares AI chatbots to “a very smart assistant who has a dozen Ph.D.s but is also high on ketamine like 30 percent of the time.”

This is almost ho-hum at this point, from 404 Media:

AI at the World’s Biggest Games Event Booked Random Meetings for Attendees

---

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

Sycophants, Of Course

Here's an article from today on LLMs via Project Syndicate:

AI Is a Terrible Therapist

Investors are betting that AI chatbots can treat people who are struggling with mental-health issues and unable to access professional care. But the way large language models are currently trained makes them sycophantic, and thus fundamentally incapable of providing effective treatment.

So yet another job LLMs will royally screw up.

Why was the design decision made to make LLMs sycophantic? I'm guessing, because most people enjoy having some smoke blown up their ass. So they will come back for more. And pay more $$$ to the AI company.

Yet again, capitalism ruins everything.

---

Currently in my ongoing Bullshit project, I am reading & annotating "On Truth", Harry Frankfurt's follow-up to "On Bullshit". Mercifully short, but still a slog.

I realized while walking the other day that one of the root causes of bullshit fatigue is that all of this philosophical reading is just words, words, and more words. Very few pictures. No graphs or charts. No tables. Very few diagrams. I even wouldn't mind a code sample.

And I think that bullshit fatigue leads to bullshit contagion. Bullshit wears you out, you lapse into writing bullshit.

And I think that the fact that LLMs are mostly creatures of nothing but words is why they are a complete dead end on the road to AGI. I don't think you can ever get CommonSense™ from words alone.

---

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

Don't Be Lonely, Lone Ranger

"Don't Be Lonely, Lone Ranger", by Joe Taylor, 2025, 115 pages.

My younger brother Mark, the author, sent me a trade paper copy of this book. The author of this book, Joe Taylor, "has been the director of Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama ... forever." Livingston Press published 1 of Mark's novels.

Mark said Joe sends him copies of all his stuff. Mark thought I would enjoy this novel so he passed it on to me.

Thanks Mark! I did enjoy this novel!

I would call the genre Magical Realism. The story is set in Lexington KY, where I have lived since 1981. It takes place Februarary 8-14, 2021, between the 1st & 2nd covid vaccinations. Our protagonist is laid off from his marketing job at Toyota in Georgetown KY - just north of Lexington, it is the source of all Camrys.

After days of doom scrolling bad news on his phone, he decides that he will revive the persona of The Lone Ranger, & travel the land trying to right wrongs & help people.

His spirit quest is immediately disrupted by the appearance of Coyote, the trickster god. He meets twin sisters, 1 of whom agrees to be Tonto, who join him on his quest.

The story moves along well, There are lots of wry comments about the state of things. It has a happy ending, yay!

1 thing I identified with, Taylor makes creative use of typography, particularly strikethrough. I love using strikethrough! It's like saying "here's what I really mean" followed by "here's what I am forced to say".

Plus there was a lot of riffing on exclamation points and ellipses.

I have only one complaint, and it's not the book's fault: it did have references to recent political event, i.e., the Orange Turd. I have been having nightmares about the Orange Turd and his Fascist Flunkies [worst band name ever] every 3rd night or so. I had a doozy the night after I finished this book. But, again, not the book's fault, it's hard not to get triggered, given the current Fascist state of affairs.

I'm dropping the copy Mark sent me at the Lexington Public Library to add to their collection - seems appropriate.

I'm having a copy shipped to my daughter Erica because she knew 1 of the side characters in the book! Lexington is not a big city.

Thanks again, Mark, and Joe! An enjoyable & quick read!