A Natural History of Empty Lots

"A Natural History of Empty Lots", by Christopher Brown, 2024, 318 pages, 86k words. Subtitled "Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places". I think recommended by Cory Doctorow. Brown is a lawyer & sci-fi author - I have his 1st novel, but haven't tried it yet.

The book has 3 parts of 4 chapters each.

This is a great tale of the wild attempting to survive civilization. I really felt resonance with the overall message of the book - that wildlife finds a way to exist in the margins, where cities meet non-cities.

Brown bought a lot in an environmental sacrifice zone (it contained an old oil pipeline, abandoned cars, etc.) near the river in Austin TX, and then figured out how to put his family home there.

His accounts of wildlife encounters are of course fun to read. I loved when he talked about finding trails - trails are always there, & since I was a kid, I have always loved finding them. The word "numinous" kept springing to mind reading his descriptions of his explorations & run-ins with local wildlife. The definition of "numinous":

• Of or relating to a numen; supernatural.
• Filled with or characterized by a sense of a supernatural presence. "a numinous place."
• Spiritually elevated; sublime.

OK, yeah, that, but the secular version ;->

The 2nd chapter "A Wilderness of Edges", in a section titled "Demeter and Dionysys", contained an interesting discussion of the trade-off between hunting-gathering and agriculture. It concluded referencing the 2017 work of Yale political scientist James C. Scott: "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States".

To be a so-called barbarian, Scott argues with anarcho-libertarian flourish, was the only way to be truly free, living a life with no "labor" other than the natural activities of hunting, foraging, and making tools from the world arounc you. As a theory for freshly understanding the rest of human history, it's intuitively compelling. Especially when you couple this reconsideration of the bargain with Demeter with the deeper understanding Scott provides of the power we acquired through the gift from Prometheus. How our mastery of fire coupled with our relentless pursuit of surplus - in its elemental cereal form and all the actual and metaphoric forms we have been able to discover or imagine, from hordes of gold to storage lockers full of stuff and infinite digital vaults of virtual currency - has led us to the brink of an overheated climate that may bring our civilization to the point of collapse before this century is out.

In chapter 3, "Where the Wild Things Are", in a section titled "Portals and Psychopomps", we run into semiotics, and, of course - shudder - French philosophers.

Looking for new ways to understand the semiotic traps of the city, I sampled bits of theory like Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, a manifesto about the way consumer marketing in the age of mass media insinuates itself into our heads so effectively, replacing our authentic experience of real life and social relations with transactional exchanges. That led to the discovery of Debord's earlier investigations of the way we experience the city.

"Psychogeography"

[Kobo had "Society of the Spectacle" for $3.99, so I bought a copy. It's only 38k words.]

Also mentioned, a French philosophy from the 1950s and 1960s, Situationism.

The 2nd part of the book gets into the construction of his house. Chapter 7 is titled "How To Live In A Feral House". The section titled "Brujas and Devil Riders" touches on some of the philosophy which would up embodied in his 2-part house:

I've gone without air-conditioning in the worst summer heat and humidity, and survived without heat in severe winter conditions of cold and ice. Those experiences provide surprising windows into how else life could be, and how much our climate-control systems are the barrier between us and real life. The means whereby we maintain the illusory boundary between "inside" and "outside" that defines our lives.

I found particularly interesting the techniques Brown used to establish, as much as possible, native foliage over the top of his crazy berm house - pictured on the cover shown above, it has 2x 700 sq ft sections such that you have to go outside to travel between them.

At the end though, it looks like a wave of gentrification may sweep through and destroy the wild lands and wet lands he has helped (via lawyering) get established around his unconventional home. Not sure how to follow the progress.

Chapter 9 is titled "Blood in the Land". In a section titled "Maoists and Muralists", Brown tracks the evolution of graffiti around him. The graffiti is aware that gentrification is just more of the same old colonialist playbook:

Contemporary gentrification may be less violent than the first couple of centuries of colonization in the United States, operating as it does under due process of law; but when you dig deeper into what's really going on, the differences are not so easy to parse out.

Basically it's privileged, rich white people deciding they want what black-and-tan people have and taking it. Again.

As this is happening, in the last part of the book, you can feel him attempting to come to grips with the rapaciousness & the inevitability of the onslaught of capitalism. Quoting The Firesign Theater, "Civilization, ho!".

Here's the last paragraph of the book:

In a world governed by human reason, we experience an abundance of surplus and a poverty of meaning. We believe ourselves to have banished magic and superstition from the world. But the magic is still there, all around us. The trick is learning to see it, for what it is: the seemingly supernatural wonders produced by everyday interactions among different elements of the natural world. Things that can all be explained by science, but also understood by poets. Even in the most urbanized human terrains, those wonders can still be found - most often at the edges where the pavement ends and the wild is allowed to express.

A Conventional Boy

"A Conventional Boy" by Charles Stross, 2024, 253 pages, 78k words, Book #13 of the Laundry Files. Wait a minute, here's a post that says it is Book #13. OK, checking his wikipedia page I figured it out. This is book #13 of The Laundry Files, there are an additional 3 books in the affiliated Tales of the New Management series.

Over the years decades of this series, Charlie has explored many different tropes within the universe of fantasy & fiction. When the last 1 was a regency romance bodice-ripper, I think I suggested, & not for the 1st time, that Charlie should put the Laundry Files behind him. Charlie is such a great writer. But, I know, $$$.

So this installment, we get a love letter from Charlie to D&D. It's pretty standard, there is some bleedover with other novels in the series becoming D&D sessions - again, a sign that it's time to put a fork in this turkey.

The 1st long story ends somethat abruptly. Then, we get 2 short pieces featuring ... BOB HOWARD, the original protagonist of the series. I guess there had been requests for that. The 1st short story features - Santa Clause, as the Filler of Stockings - again, I'm sorry, but, trite. The 2nd short story, I'm not sure to what it was an homage - but I figure it must have been to something, that's the way this series is going.

The last Laundry Files was just over a year ago. My post on that installment was like, Charlie, time to give it up, time to move on. I mentioned that I emailed Cory Doctorow, suggested an intervention.

Charlie in his blog said maybe that he's done? He was asking for suggestions for where to go next. I suggested he should talk to Doctorow. They collaborated on "Rapture of the Nerds" in 2012. Doctorow seems to always have a lot of irons in the fire ...

The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 5

"The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 5" edited by Neil Clarke, 2020, 812 pages, 251k words, 28 stories: 13 short stories (< 7500 words), 13 novelettes (< 17500 words), 2 novellas (< 40000 words).

This was a good collection. It started strong, maybe tapered off a bit.

The N.K. Jemisin story "Emergency Skin" was worth the price of admission. It was one of those short stories that smacks you upside the head. 1 thing I like about SFF: it does not have to be subtle if it doesn't feel like it! Plus what a great idea! Yes, please, billionaires, please go the stars! Leave the earth for us to repair! JUST GO! Of course, Mme. Guillotine would waste a lot less resources.

The 1st story "The Painter of Trees", by Suzanne Palmer, has a trope that we've seen recently: a society that values effiency above all else, homo economicus on steroids. Not a good look for humanity.

Who knew that knitting would make such a good plot element in an SF story? Thanks, Marie Vibbert, for "Knit Three, Save Four".

The Cixin Liu story, "Moonlight", I had read before. The story is a total tour-de-force time travel story, I enjoyed the reread.

The Tobias S. Bucknell story "By The Warmth of Their Calculus" is a gritty, lo-tech space story. As always, I love his rasta-flavored characters.

The Elizabeth Bear story "Deriving Life", about a sentient, symbiotic cancer, I had read before. Again, I enjoyed the reread.

The Gwyneth Jones story, "The Little Shepherdess", is a good story with an increasingly popular trope - the insatiable hunger of the human race to eat the world. That was just covered in a soon-to-be-blogged non-fiction book I just finished.

"One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit", by Dominica Phetteplace, was a fun read. Very much felt like a story from a new generation of writers, yay!

The Alistair Reynolds story, "Permafrost", was yet another clever time-travel implementation. It's amazing how fruitful that trope is.

And now for something completely different! A dog story, by a dog trainer, "The Work of Wolves", by Tegan Moore. Nice!

The Anne Leckie story "The Justified" I had read before. Still not a big fan after the reread.

The Alec Nevala-Lee story "At The Fall" is interesting in that the world seems to end while a semi-sentient underwater data-gathering robot is just trying to get home with its data. Always amazing to me how easily we anthropomorphize things.

The Ray Nayler story "The Ocean Between The Leaves" seemed to be heading for an ultra-cynical ending, but it did wind up with a little romance in the end.

"The Empty Gun", by Yoon Ha Lee, was so much fun to read that I immediately ordered his 1st novel "Ninefox Gambit".

The Rich Larson story, "Painless", wasn't as kickass has his last few stories have been. A somewhat odd mix of tropes that does work in the end. I ordered his 1st novel, "Annex".

I had meant to start this post & kind of fill it in as I went through these stories, but wound up coming through afterwards, as usual. But, I did do 1 book/1 post, so that is progress.

Music In, 2024, Batch 4

I'm doing something different here, in the name of efficiency. I am starting this post December 23, still in this quarter, rather than towards the middle/end of the next quarter, which is when I usually create and post these album lists. I'll enter all the albums I've acquired so far; if I acquire any more before the end of the quarter (year), I'll add them as acquired. Then as I listen to these albums (they are playing now), if I spot the album's "catchy tune", I can capture it, rather than try to remember months later. Lots more Una Mae Carlisle, other good stuff, this quarter.

• Una Mae Carlisle, "Beautiful", 1941, 8 tracks. Looking for Una Mae online, after finding the 5 live songs from last quarter on Amazon, I found this album of 8 tracks on Apple music. Surely there's more? More on that later.

  I am working up 4/5 on the other album, from this one I will add 4 more: "i met you then, i know you now". "if i had you", "love walked in", and "you made me love you". "hangover blues" was on the 5 track album. "blitzkrieg baby" is a cute song, but I don't think I'll do it. 4 stars.

• Vampire Weekend, "Only God Was Above Us", 10 tracks, 2023, BandCamp. The 1st track starts out maybe a little dolorous, I was concerned, but the album very quickly got back to peppy, upbeat songs & beats. These guys are really producing a consistent body of work. 4 stars. Here's "prep-school gangsters".

• Delta Sleep, "Blue Garden", 12 tracks, 2024, BandCamp. British, currently based in Brighton. The 2nd of their albums I've purchased. Like the other, these are great songs, but just a little to high-energy & punky for me at my advanced age. 3 stars.

• Nubian Twist, "Find Your Flame (Deluxe Edition)", 2024, 17 tracks, BandCamp. Many guest artists, which may help this band be as productive as it is. Power horn R&B band from Manchester, UK. Great tracks. 4 stars. Here's "lights out", with Niles Rodgers.

• Andrew Bird, "Cunningham Bird", 2024, 10 tracks, BandCamp. Bird & Cunningham recreate the landmark "Buckingham Nicks" album of 1973. That album was a flop, and has never been reissued, so it is hard to lay your hands on. Bird & Cunningham have fun with these tunes. 4 stars. I thought my fav would be "crystal", which is in my book, but I wound up liking "crying in the night" best.

• Bon Iver, "Sable", 2024, 4 tracks, BandCamp. Apparently their 1st in a while? OK tunes, 4 stars. Here's "things behind things behind things", with some nice pedal steel.

• Una Mae Carlisle, "In Chronology - 1938-1941", 21 tracks; "In Chronology - 1941-1944", 24 tracks; "In Chronology - 1944-1950", 25 tracks. Well, here's the rest of Una Mae's recordings. 70 tracks total, in chronological order no less, 4 stars for all! The 1st disk contains all the songs on the other 2 albums I already had. These CDs were like $19.95 each, so less than $1/track, but more than you would expect to pay for a compilation like this. Somebody was smart $$$-wise withholding the rights to these songs. This series looks like it could be a good resource.
  
  
  I think the best material of the 12 years covered here is the earliest. As time passes the arrangements get more big band sounding, which I like less. Here's another early song which she wrote and which I think was her biggest hit. Per Wikipedia, this song made her "the first black woman to have a composition appear on a Billboard chart". Recorded 1940-11-13, "walkin' by the river". Ella and others have covered this song.

  I will work this one up, and I suspect several more: "you're gonna change your mind", "it ain't like that", "i like it 'cause i love it", "throw it out your mind", "forgive me for getting forgetful" - I have a total of 16 Una Mae songs in my list, including 1 recorded & 1 in process.

• William Tyler, "Future Myths", 2024, 10 tracks, BandCamp. Guitar rock that is in the sweet spot: lots of reverb, harmonics, hammers, pulls, very ethereal - somehow I'm thinking John Fahey, who I'm not sure I remember??? Hmmm, I gave his 7 track album 3 stars, this is similar quality, so I guess 3 stars again.

• soccer mommy, "Evergreen", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. These are very nice tunes, very chill, very easy to listen to, but I could not find the catchy 1 to provide a video, so 3 stars.

• Redeyes, "Redeyes Soul Edits Volume 3", 2024, 4 tracks, BandCamp. French (Toulouse) techno, apparently around since 2006. Only 4 tracks, nothing really jumped out, unlike their last effort. So, 3 stars.

• Wes Montgomery, "Boss Guitar", 1963, 10 tracks. My good friend Canadian harpist (and former virtuoso guitarist) Owen Evans recommended this album to me after I mentioned I had never found much Wes Montgomery I particularly liked. Sadly, that still seems the to be the case, sorry Owen. Very abstract stuff, with some catchy melodies, but just way too jazzy - I seem to be finding out that I am really not that big a fan of jazz. Listening to it, I'm kind of like "OK, I could play that." with an occasional "Wow, that was a fast lick.". Just not song-like enough for me. I'm about songs. 3 stars.

• Darwin Deez, "of course i still love you", 2024, 20 tracks, BandCamp. I don't know if I've seen this before: the album has 10 songs, recorded 1st with vocals, and then as instrumentals. I like the instrumentals more than I expected to. Nice pop tunes, his distinctive guitar sound is still there, 4 stars. Here's "sophie softly":

I think getting this done early will give me more time to listen to new 2025 stuff. But, lately, I'm still more interested in Music Out, i.e., Jaz Dumoz, than I am in Music In. Still, 3 new albums so far this year. The process is still ongoing.

Again, 4

I said I was going to start posting after each individual book - apparently I lied. Once again, I have 4 books to post. I really do think onesy would be better, I should try harder.

1. "The Terraformers" by Annalee Newitz, 2023, 381 pages, 118k words. Our story starts in the year 59,006. Humanity has many interstellar colonies. People are manufactured to order. The Great Bargain, which was forged out of the Farm Rebellions, lets lots of things be defined as people: uplifted animals, originally from farms, but now including mole rats, earthworms, any animal that has been bioengineered to support consciousness, various androids - including intelligent trains, a la Thomas the Tank Engine.

   Of course, corporations are still in there being rapacious, and as ever trying to find ways to turn people into slaves. Who will win the inevitable struggle, between people and corporations?

   I remembered from Newitz's last novel various kinds of creative sex. With bodies being designed to order, there are some interesting varieties of sexual organs. I started to say "weird sex", but then I remembered Doc Holiday's line to Wyatt Earp at the end of Tombstone: "There's no normal life, Wyatt. There's just life."

   A good exploration, I think, on the meaning of personhood. The more the merrier in the Great Bargain - just as in our world now. Diversity is a source of strength & resilience.

2. "The Boat of a Million Years" by Poul Anderson, 1989, 470 pages, 190k words. Well, somehow I was feeling nostalgic. This book came up for cheap in BookBub, I went for it - I always liked Anderson's stuff. I didn't notice: 1) how late in his career it was; 2) how long it was.

   So, a Phoenician merchant in 300 BC discovers he seems to be immortal, unless agressively killed, dismembered, burned, etc. There a few other immortals scattered over the world. The book has lots of episodes scattered across time & geometry. Various attempts for them to find each other & create common cause have varied success. Most of the historical vignettes are pretty good. It gets cringey when it's in Anderson's time - the 80s - & his white, libertarian ideals come shining through, as his characters have to navigate through the hellholes that are American cities. Finally, humans go post-singularity, can go virtual, etc. The immortals never fit in, so the rest of humanity agrees to build them a starship to get rid of them. They go exporing for terraformable planets, find other life, have difficult decisions. The end.

   Well, if I'd noticed the 1989 date, I would have tried something else. Yet another case where, annoying as the modern gender-fluid emphasis can be at times, it beats the hell out of old white man libertarianism.

3. "The Book of Elsewhere" by Keanu Reeves, Chine Miéville, 2024, 352 pages, 109k words. Speaking of immortals, how about a 80,000 year warrior who, even when killed, forms an egg, maybe away from where he died, and regrows a new body. Nice work if you can get it, I guess. He doesn't want to die, but wants to be able to die - a distinction I think too subtle for me.

   This is based on the BRZRKR comic that Keanu Reeves co-authored - I think I kickstartered it. The comics were OK. This novel I think has better developed characters than the comic (ya think?) - Miéville can usually be relied on for interesting characters. Kind of drug a little, it seemed longer than 352 pages. Overall, not a bad read. I wonder what will be next, movie or video game?

4. "Days of Shattered Faith" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2024, 544 pages, 171k words. Book 3 of The Tyrant Philosophers series. Book 1 was blogged here, Book 2 was blogged here. I've liked the covers of this series, here's the latest:
   

   Once again our oh so unlikeable rationalist empire is seeking to expand. Do they succeed or not? A different kingdom in their sites, different gods, different races who have entered through the dimensional gates scattered over the planet. Some very surprising reversals lead to a surprising ending. This 1 kind of drug in the middle, I thought it must be longer than the other 2, but, it is actually > 50 pages shorter! It was still a good read.

Once more into the breach ...

IslandWalk Bird Counts

[Updated 2025-11-10]

This was my 1st attempt to aggregate some of the bird count data that I had collected on the X & X2 routes, to see if I could get any feel for the quality of the data. My initial impression - not so good ;-(

I had the content below at the top of the main "Birdwatching In IslandWalk" page. It was a distraction there, so I have given it its own page here.

Here's the link to the IslandWalk hotspot at eBird.org.

---

[Originally created 2023-08-29]
This is really not enough data yet to do much analysis on, but I figured I would start this table, which is the most aggregated form of the data. Even so, the Avg Birds # can be thrown off by a vulture or crow get-together, which can be 50-200 birds, but not too badly I think. Not sure what the increases mean, but I guess that's better than decreases.

OK, I've thought about it a bit, I think what's going on is that 2020 goes thru March, 2021 goes thru April, 2022 goes thru May. Mating season starts in late February, early March. All the passerines, in particular the mockingbirds & grackles, start singing 5-10x as much, so their numbers soar. I hate to cut the counts off in March tho. This year I am planning to be in IW October-April. I could use that as a consistent sample moving forward. This would all be so much easier if I were in IW year-round, but my wife wants no part of that :-(. If anyone else can step up and help, that would be great.

Season	Counts	Avg Species	Avg Birds
Dec-2020 : Mar-2021	9	22.0	170.4
Dec-2021 : Apr-2022	22	24.8	209.9
Dec-2022 : May-2023	26	25.4	222.3

---

[Updated 2024-11-15]
Added 2023-2024 season row.

Season	Counts	Avg Species	Avg Birds
Dec-2020 : Mar-2021	9	22.0	170.4
Dec-2021 : Apr-2022	22	24.8	209.9
Dec-2022 : May-2023	26	25.4	222.3
Oct-2023 : Apr-2024	32	24.6	256.3

I think I will go to the 2022-2023 data and get rid of May.

Note, as I filter this data more, I am NOT going back and updating the annual IslandWalk Birds posts. Those are our raw data, I will leave them alone.

---

[Updated 2024-12-21]
Got rid of May-2023. Hmmm, average birds got closer to the prior season, but we lost 7 bird lists.

Season	Counts	Avg Species	Avg Birds
Dec-2020 : Mar-2021	9	22.0	170.4
Dec-2021 : Apr-2022	22	24.8	209.9
Dec-2022 : Apr-2023	19	25.4	205.3
Oct-2023 : Apr-2024	32	24.6	256.3

Next up, get rid of crows, vultures, & starlings. No, check that, let's get rid of Oct & Nov 2023 on the most recent season & see what that does.

---

[Updated 2024-12-22]
Got rid of Oct & Nov 2023 on the most recent season. Down from 89 bird lists to 74. Avg Birds is still ~51 over the average of the prior 2 years, up 24.5%.

Season	Counts	Avg Species	Avg Birds
Dec-2020 : Mar-2021	9	22.0	170.4
Dec-2021 : Apr-2022	22	24.8	209.9
Dec-2022 : Apr-2023	19	25.4	205.3
Dec-2023 : Apr-2024	24	24.9	258.4

I think I know the cause, but 1st, let's remove the crows, vultures, & starlings, which I'm pretty sure are just a source of noise in the data. Note, these species will be removed from the Avg Birds, but not the Avg Species.

---

Removed the crows, vultures, & starlings. I also noticed that the 2020-2021 data is all from December & January except for 1 list in early March that was only 5.0 miles because my arches went out at the 4.5 mile mark.

Season	Counts	Avg Species	Avg Birds
Dec-2020 : Mar-2021	9	22.0	154.0
Dec-2021 : Apr-2022	22	24.8	187.9
Dec-2022 : Apr-2023	19	25.4	184.9
Dec-2023 : Apr-2024	24	24.9	238.9

So the 1st season is down by 16 Avg Birds, the other 3 down by ~ 20. But, Avg Birds is still 53 over the average of the prior 2 years, up 28.1%. Removing the noise made the increase greater!

I looked at the 2023-2024 spreadsheet for the highest counts. Oh, I get it!

The gist of it is, the 3 migratory diving birds we get show up in widely ranging numbers, if they show up at all.

After 0 lesser scaup the prior season (4 sightings, average 13.0 before that), in 2023-2024 they appeared in 10 lists, average 54.7, max 94. We also had a lot more hooded mergansers: from 6/3.7 to 3/2.7 to 10/14.7. Ring-necked ducks were 0 to 1/4.0 to 2/7.0. This month, over 3 days ring-necked on Lake #3 went from 3 to 10 to 20. I checked today, still 20.

So that explains some of difference. We also have the increased numbers of gallinule & coots.

I conclude that looking at aggregate numbers has limited use. The consistency betweek 2021-2022 and 2022-2033 is encouraging, but, the encouragement ends there. Not a bad sanity check though.

I'm not sure looking at groups (swimmers, divers, etc.) will help that much. I looked at the line & bar graphs built into eBird, they all seem oriented to plotting within a year, rather than year to year. I did find it was easy to download all my data into a CSV, ready for import into a spreadsheet or database - it was ~6000 records. They do include the list metadata, so I can filter by X. and X2. in the description.

---

[Updated 2025-11-10]
Here's the last table from the prior update, with crows, vultures, & starlings removed & 2024-2025 added.

Season	Counts	Avg Species	Avg Birds
Dec-2020 : Mar-2021	9	22.0	154.0
Dec-2021 : Apr-2022	22	24.8	187.9
Dec-2022 : Apr-2023	19	25.4	184.9
Dec-2023 : Apr-2024	24	24.9	238.9
Dec-2024 : Apr-2025	22	27.5	285.1a

Numbers up again, galinules passed mottled ducks, and we again had a huge flock of lesser scaup: 89.9 average, 186 maximum! Only 1 hooded merganser, and average 16.5, maximum 20 for ring-necked ducks, who were only here for 2 weeks in December.

I guess these numbers are a good sanity check, but increasingly I think you really need to look at individual species. I am working on some graphs ...

Music In, 2024, Batch 3

Featuring, some big collections from African-American female singers of the 1920s-1950s.

I was going to do a post of all the (African-American) female singers I have discovered. I wondered, where are the European-American female singers?

OK, 1 of the 1st artists I discovered from the 1920s-1940s was Annette Hanshaw (1901-1985). I heard a song of hers ("would you like to take a walk") on NPR on the car radio waiting for someone at an airport. I remember the song from a Merry Melodies cartoon where a bear is singing the song trying to persuade prey animals to go for a walk with it (not in the video). I bought a CD of hers. I do 3 songs off of it:

1. "let's fall in love" 1933
2. "would you like to take a walk?" 1931
3. "i've got a feeling i'm falling", 1929

I think I read that she retired from music in the mid-late 1930s &, with her husband, purchased & managed an hotel in upstate New York. That's not in her wikipedia article, not sure where I got that from - probably the album notes. I gave the CD to my mother-in-law after I ripped it.

Interesting, "would you like to take a walk" was composed by Harry Warren, who had no playlist on the Jaz Dumoz YouTube channel. Turns out he wrote 5 of the songs in the Jaz Dumoz book. I have updated the metadata & given him the proper props. I did the same for a frequent lyricist of his Al Dubin.

Another European-American female singer, Ruth Etting (1896-1978), has furnished 2 intros to songs I do. She was played by Doris Day in the fictionalized biographical movie "Love Me or Leave Me", 1955. Songs we overlap on:

1. "all of me", 1931.
2. "whose honey are you?", 1935

I've run across Jo Stafford (1917-2008) too, but we seem to overlap on only 1 song, "i remember you", 1941.

A couple years ago, based on a recommendation of my friend & fellow performer Tom Cool (Yolton), I bought a couple of albums by Blossom Dearie (1924-2009), both reviewed in this blog. She was a great singer & pianist, but her singing style, very soprano and warbly, sadly approached being self-parody.

I think I was soured on European-American female early pop singers by Julie London (1926-2000). I loved her 1st album, "Julie Is Her Name", 1955 - I worked up "easy street" and "cry me a river" from that album - both hard songs, Barney Kessel guitar parts. But, I bought her 2nd album and her producers had had her do this very overly breathy ("sexy to somebody apparently") singing style, which I found very cheezy & offputting - it was way too close to self-parody. I'd forgotten about it, I was thinking about buying "Julie Is Her Name, Volume II", 1958, I listen to a track or 2, it is the breathy delivery, ugh.

She was a calendar/pinup girl during WWII. Also nurse Dixie McCall on the TV series "Emergency!", with her husband & arranger/ producer/ pianist/ songwriter (& composer of the song "(get your kicks on) route 66") Bobbie Troup, who played a doctor. Her 1st husband was Jack Webb of Dragnet & several equally execrable cop shows (and "Emergency!").

I've recently encountered some tune overlap with Peggy Lee (1920-2002) "i cover the waterfront". I think I might harvest some good tunes from her.

So when I do my post on early female pop singers, I will include all "races". I am undecided, should I mention the artist's "race"? The opportunies available to them were definitely affected by "race".
[Note, 2026-07-25. I have made a pass through the blog & changed most references to "black" to African-American & "white" to European-American. "Race" is not a biological, genetic, scientific concept. It really does not exist. It is a political concept invented to justify the arbitary enslavement of dark-skinned Africans for shipment to the Americas. I did not change references that were quotes (from Wikipedia).]

---

That certainly was a long aside. On to Batch 3:

• Lake Street Dive, "Good Together", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. Nice tunes, a couple may be a bit trite, but, this band is now 20 YO, & most of the tracks work. The duets between lead singer Rachel Price & the keyboard player since 2017 Akie Bermiss definitely work. I liked "Seats at the Bar", this was my wife & my dining strategy for decades. We now follow the old folks' canon of going out to eat dinner at 5:00 pm.

  4 stars. This song is a bit of a stretch, but I could so hear Donna Summer singing it: "Dance With a Stranger".

• Asher White, "Home Constellation Study", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. Very high & trebly vocals, very unthreatening. Catchy tunes, great beats. 4 stars. Here's "Theme From Leaving Philadelphia":

• Una Mae Carlisle And Her Jam Band, "Irresistable Masterpieces (Live)", 1944, 5 tracks. I am so enamored of Una Mae - she died of cancer, age 40, in 1956, I was 5 YO.

  In late 1932, Fats Waller moved his family to Cincinnati, so he could perform on clear channel radio station WLW, which pretty much reached coast to cost. For his 1932 christmas show, he recruited 17 YO singer/pianist Una Mae Carlisle, from nearby Xenia OH, who had won a talent contest. She became a regular on the show through 1933. Una Mae was a force of nature. She tried to steal my review of the 1st Fats Waller biography I read.

  I recorded my 1st Una Mae song December 16, 2024: "t'ain't yours", a snarky, feminist manifesto, FTW! Meanwhile, of these 5 tracks, 4 stars, I will be working up 4 ("hangover blues" didn't make the cut): "i would do anything for you", "love walked in", "mean to me", and the 1st track "don't try your jive on me":

• Pond, "The Weather", 2017, 11 tracks. Recommended by my young friend Chris Cooper. Australian, the co-band of Tame Impala, a definite fav of mine. A lot of the same sound == production values. I realized that their musical DNA probably goes back to Electric Light Orchestra by way of The Flaming Lips. I was concerned when the 1st track had kind of whiny glam rock vocals, but the vocals got better. 4 stars. Here's the title track.

• Bonnie "Prince" Billy, "High and High and Mighty", 2024, 2 (long) tracks, BandCamp. As much as I am fan of this Louisville favorite son, I could not get traction with these 2 very long songs. 2 stars.

• Criibaby, "when i'm alone i feel weightless", 2024, 12 songs, BandCamp. I was having trouble finding videos because I missed the "ii" in the name. One of those internet things, lots of "crybaby" and "cribaby". Very chill, high vocals over laid back instrumentals. The website states, gender neutral. I have 2 earlier EPs, this is the 1st LP. 4 stars. Here's the title tune.

• Allysha Joy, "the Making Of Silk", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. Apparently her 2nd album, I blogged her 1st here. Neo-Motown from Melbourne, OZ, but more jazzy & world overtones. Very good stuff, 4 stars. Here's the 1st track, "your touch".

• "Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears", eponymous, 1944, 24 tracks. Ina Ray Hutton was a female singer, tap dancer, and band leader. She led bands with male members, but this album is mostly her and her Melodears - an all-female big band. Weird, she sure looks "white", but her Wikipedia article says she was listed as "mulatto" in the 1920 census & as "negro" in the 1930 census. Whatever. She knows how to swing. She was married 5 times. 4 stars. Here's "truckin'" - note, this was really a popular song, I also have recordings of it by Fats Waller, Adelaide Hall, Duke Ellington featuring Ivie Anderson, & Jaz Dumoz.

• "Jelly's Last Jam", from the Broadway musical, which was a vehicle for Gregory Hines? 1992, 22 tracks. Reading Fats Waller biographies turned up some references to Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), the New Orleans pianist who claims to have invented "jazz". This musical is somewhat of a biography, heavily themed around his denying he was "black" in favor of being "creole".

  Gawd, I so forgot how, for the last 4-5 decades, Broadway musicals have totally sucked. My wife & I were watching a movie about Bob Fosse which caused us to remember, we walked out of the theater 1/2-way through "Chicago" - we both got tired of waiting for a decent song. & we saw a production of "Hamilton" in Cincinnati, neither of us cared for it - so trite & formulaic. So, 2 stars for this album, & I will endeavor to remember, 0 love for Broadway musicals.

• Redeyes, "Slow", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. I previously had 1 EP & 1 LP of theirs. Techno from Toulouse, France. This LP has lots of guest vocalists, a nice mix of tunes, all slow - the title was not a joke. 4 stars. Here's the last track, "Butterfly feat. Saint Harmony".

• James P. Johnson, "1921 - 1926 (Remastered)", 1926, 11 tracks. As I discovered in the 1st Fats Waller biography I read, James P. Johnson was Fats' mentor. He is considered "the father of Harlem stride piano". These songs are so easy to listen to. 4 stars. Although this blog has already linked to it, once again, here is his signature tune, "Carolina Shout":

• Kate Bollinger, "Songs From a Thousand Frames Of Mind", 2024, 11 tracks, BandCamp. It looks like I have 2 EPs of hers, this looks like her 1st LP. Laid back, dreamy female vocals over nice, catchy alternative rock tunes. I am, as always, a sucker for this stuff. Here's the cute 1st track, with what looks like the only "official video".

• Adelaide Hall, "A Centenary Celebration", 1945, 52 songs. I 1st encountered Hall in the Fats Waller biography: she brought Art Tatum to NYC as part of her band, where he blew away Fats Waller & his mentors James P. Johnson & Willie "The Lion" Smith.

  Her singing style is, soprano with LOTS of vibrato - warbly, maybe? So I load up these 2 CDs, start listening, the 1st 3 tracks ("creole love call", "this blues i love to sing", & "chicago stomp down") are all her scat singing in a soprano, warbly growl (with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1927-1928)?!?!? Somewhat reminiscent of a kazoo, which is definitely an instrument of which one needs only very small doses. I'm like, OMG, did I just buy 52 tracks of this? :-O

  But she does thereafter start singing more normally - if very high & warbly. Some of the songs are less warbly, & maybe more enjoyable to me.

  She moved to London in 1938 & never returned to the US. Included on these CDs are 2 tracks recorded in London in 1938 with her accompanied by Fats Waller on organ & smartass patter. She was definitely part of the crowd with which Fats hung out during his 1938 London soujourne.

  The album is historically interesting. There are BBC tracks in which she is introduced. There are a few short tracks recorded as promos for a German radio station.

  1 thing that was odd, she does "sophisticated lady", & does a 2nd verse & bridge with completly different lyrics than the canonical Ella / Sarah Vaughn version?!?!?

  So, 4 stars. Here's 1 of the tracks with Fats, "that old feeling":

  Quite a bit of music, FTW! Meanwhile, 12 albums in Q4 so far, 12 days left to go.

Hallucinations? No, Bullshit!

[Updated 2025-02-06]
I have broken this post out of my "Bullshit All The Way Down" "AI" rant. It was an update to that post dated 2024-11-26. I am back-dating this post to 2024-11-26. I will use the BATWD post as a home page for the topic "Bullshit".

---

This post today from the AWS (Amazon Web Services) team gave me LOL after LOL. I'm going to do some bolding of the best of the best.

Hallucinations in large language models (LLMs) refer to the phenomenon where the LLM generates an output that is plausible but factually incorrect or made-up. This can occur when the model’s training data lacks the necessary information or when the model attempts to generate coherent responses by making logical inferences beyond its actual knowledge. Hallucinations arise because of the inherent limitations of the language modeling approach, which aims to produce fluent and contextually appropriate text without necessarily ensuring factual accuracy.

Remediating hallucinations is crucial for production applications that use LLMs, particularly in domains where incorrect information can have serious consequences, such as healthcare, finance, or legal applications. Unchecked hallucinations can undermine the reliability and trustworthiness of the system, leading to potential harm or legal liabilities. Strategies to mitigate hallucinations can include rigorous fact-checking mechanisms, integrating external knowledge sources using Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), applying confidence thresholds, and implementing human oversight or verification processes for critical outputs.

Oh boy, so on top of LLM Bullshit Generators, we can add RAG Bullshit Generators! &, even worse, "human oversight", reverse centaurs! I cannot imagine a worse job than trying to fact-check machine-generated bullshit.

Meanwhile, every corporation in the world is being pushed to implement this crap. Generate bullshit, or be left behind?!?!? I think I'll choose, be left behind. Sigh.

3.1

3.1 books read.

1st up, "Usurpation" by Sue Burke, 2024, 314 pages, 97k words. Book 3 of the Semiosis series. I enjoyed the other 2 OK, with some reservations. This 1 was a bit slow starting, then once it got moving, a 15 year jump to the future. The author says the pacing is odd due to the main narrator being a very long-lived, immobile, intelligent plant.

Next, our 0.1 book: "The Wood at Midwinter" by Susanna Clarke, 2024, 64 pages, 3k words, illustrated. A tiny, cute little story about a saintly girl whose best friends are dogs, a pig, and a woods. A very simple story, I completely forgot how it ended. So i took 10 minutes & read it again. At $10.99 for the eBook, not much of an entertainment value.

3rdly, "The Mercy of Gods" by James S. A. Corey, 2024, 385 pages, 119k words. Book 1 of The Captive's War series. Incredibly powerful aliens with various client races show up and overrun a human world, taking prisoners to see if a use can be found for humanity.

These guys write well, but I must take exception with some of the chapter endings early on.

Chapter 1:

Later, when he stood in the eye of a storm that burned a thousand worlds, he’d remember how it all started with Else Yannin’s hand on his arm and his need to give her a reason to keep it there.

Chapter 4:

Later, it would seem like a premonition.

I would characterize this as cheesy, heavy-handed foreshadowing. These guys are better writers than this. This is an editing failure. Both those sentences could be deleted & everyone would be better off for it.

Lastly, a novella set in the world of the previous story: "Livesuits" by James S. A. Corey, 2024, 70 pages, 21k words. A different take than the novel, with humans fighting back. It has a very "Starship Troopers" kind of feel. Kind of an "Oh no!" ending. I liked how these authors used these shorter works to flesh out their universe in The Expanse, I think this is a good technique.

Well as short as that last 1 was, the post title probably should have been "2.4" instead of "3.1".

IslandWalk Birds, 2023-2024 Season

The wood stork flew in, landed ~15' from the great egret, &
started walking toward it.
The great egret didn't want to hang & flew off.

My overall birdwatching strategy for IslandWalk is posted here. I have made that post kind of the home page for my Birdwatching in IslandWalk project, and will update it whenever I do a new post on IW Birding.

This is my 4th report, here are the 1st 3:

1. 2020-2021;
2. 2021-2022 - the 1st post chronologically, it contains discussions of things I found interesting about a lot of the species - 10 seasons worth;
3. 2022-2023.

For the 2023-2024 season, I was in IslandWalk October thru April, less 1 week in Martinique in February, & 2 weeks in KY in March.

I manually entered this season's data, 32 bird lists, in this spreadsheet. It doesn't take that long, and it gives me a good review of the data.

I will be reporting for all observed species the following 4 datapoints:

1. % of days seen;
2. total birds counted;
3. average;
4. max.

Here's the link to the IslandWalk hotspot at eBird.org.

Each bird name listed below is linked to its IslandWalk activity page in eBird.org. So click on the name, you will get a picture & all the data eBird has on that bird in IslandWalk.

Swimmers

I guess all are dabbling "ducks"? "Dabbling" === "stick your bill down in the water & swish it around & eat what you get from that" - as opposed to diving ducks.

• mottled duck: % days 100; tot 1334; avg 41.7; max 85.
• muscovy duck: % days 100; tot 169; avg 5.3; max 10.
• common gallinule: % days 100; tot 622; avg 19.4; max 31. After 1st being counted in IW by me 2020-04-02, their #s continue to grow. In the 32 bird lists, there were 5 where the gallinules outnumbered the mottled ducks. The gallinule seem to like the more numerous reeds we have now.
• american coot: % days 75; tot 146; avg 6.1; max 15. From a total count of 3 the prior season to 146 this season.

Divers

• pie-billed grebe: % days 88; tot 148; avg 5.3; max 14.
• hooded merganser: % days 31; tot 147; avg 14.7; max 36. They were here from late November to early February.
• lesser scaup: % days 31; tot 547; avg 54.7; max 94. We had quite a flock of these. They were on Lake #22 for quite a while, then spread to Lakes 24-29 for their last couple of weeks. They were here from the new year to early March.
• ring-necked duck: % days 6; tot 14; avg 7.0; max 10. 10 in early December, 4 in late January???
• double-crested cormorant: % days 91; tot 140; avg 4.8; max 12. No sign of a Cormorant Menace, yay!
• anhinga: % days 81; tot 93; avg 3.6; max 10.
• brown pelican: % days 41; tot 28; avg 2.2; max 4.
• belted kingfisher: % days 31; tot 10; avg 1.0; max 1. Their distinctive chitter is easy to recognize.

Waders

Wader numbers seem to be down in general. 1 theory I have is that the lakes have been so full. I think the waders prefer things more marshy.

• great egret: % days 97; tot 77; avg 2.5; max 4. No longer our most numerous wader.
• great blue heron: % days 41; tot 19; avg 1.5; max 2. Down from last season.
• snowy egret: % days 59; tot 54; avg 2.5; max 7. Down from last season. I last counted a snowy egret on 3/12.
• cattle egret: % days 0.
• tricolored heron: % days 91; tot 82; avg 2.8; max 7. Down from last season, but our most numerous wader this season.
• little blue heron: % days 88; tot 79; avg 2.8; max 11. Down slightly from last season.
• green heron: % days 16; tot 5; avg 1.0; max 1.
• wood stork: % days 6; tot 2; avg 1.0; max 1.
• white ibis: % days 97; tot 423; avg 13.6; max 41.
• glossy ibis: % days 72; tot 210; avg 9.1; max 44.
• limpkin: % days 22; tot 8; avg 1.1; max 2. Considerably fewer than last season.

Beach Birds

• killdeer: % days 0.
• black skimmer: % days 0.

Raptors

• osprey: % days 47; tot 16; avg 1.1; max 2.
• bald eagle: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• cooper's hawk: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• red-shouldered hawk: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• broad-winged hawk: % days 0.
• swallow-tailed kite: % days 0.
• loggerhead shrike: % days 88; tot 69; avg 2.5; max 7. 1 of my fav birds. Down a bit from last season.
• black vulture: % days 6; tot 2; avg 1.0; max 1.
• turkey vulture: % days 50; tot 31; avg 1.9; max 6.

Corvids

• fish crow: % days 81; tot 632; avg 24.3; max 76. I am increasingly thinking it is pointless to count crows. The proper caw goes out, 100 crows can gather in 30 seconds or so. Similarly, the vultures will show up in large numbers depending on the size of the fish kill. I created a formula column in the spreadsheet, = # birds - fish crows - black vultures - turkey vultures, I may play with that some.
• blue jay: % days 94; tot 376; avg 12.5; max 30.

Perching Birds (Passerines)

• mourning dove: % days 94; tot 198; avg 6.6; max 21.
• eurasian collared dove: % days 75; tot 75; avg 3.1; max 9.
• common ground dove: % days 0.
• rock pigeon: % days 0.
• common grackle: % days 96; tot 968; avg 38.7; max 70. Once again our most common passerine.
• boat-tailed grackle: % days 78; tot 86; avg 3.4; max 8.
• red-winged blackbird: % days 9; tot 7; avg 2.3; max 3.
• european starling: % days 9; tot 37; avg 12.3; max 32.
• northern mockingbird: % days 100; tot 744; avg 23.3; max 52.
• brown thrasher: % days 13; tot 5; avg 1.3; max 2. Quite a bit fewer than last season, but not a lot regardless.
• northern cardinal: % days 25; tot 10; avg 1.3; max 2.
• red-bellied woodpecker: % days 100, tot 303, avg 9.5, max 23. Up a little from last season.
• pileated woodpecker: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• downy woodpecker: % days 3; tot 1; avg 1.0; max 1.
• northern flicker: % days 0.
• palm warbler: % days 81; tot 289; avg 11.1; max 35.
• black-and-white warbler: % days 0.
• yellow-throated warbler: % days 0.
• prairie warbler: % days 0.
• blue-gray gnatcatcher: % days 3; tot 2; avg 2.0; max 2.
• gray catbird: % days 0.
• american redstart: % days 0. NEW! I saw 2 of these 1 morning walking to town center. The orange patches made the ID easy.

Or Not

I really was intending to starting blogging books on a onesy basis. But, I'm in a period of serious baby-sitting, and after I finished novel #1, it was inconvenient to blog it. Versus, it was very easy to start another book. So, 3 novels and a novella, all very good.

1. "Polostan", by Neal Stephenson, 2024, 320 pages, 111k words. This is Volume 1 of "Bomb Light". I think we're going to get Stephenson's version of "Oppenheimer". This is totally a setup book - the origin story is 1st, rather than get us sucked in & then tell it as a flashback. The heroine of the story mostly grew up in Big Sky Country, working on a ranch that bred polo ponies - that was her mom's side of the family. Her dad meanwhile is a dedicated commie. Nothing says "dedicated commie" like

   For Papa was busy translating the Twenty-One Theses of the Second Congress of the Third International into English, to inform the proceedings of the Red International of Labor Unions, which was preparing an ideological offensive to cleanse its ranks of naïve anarcho-syndicalism.

   The family moves to Russia when she is ~5YO, when grown she speaks fluent, accentless English & Russian. Heading into the race to the A-bomb, & the following cold war, which side will she be on? We'll find out, I guess.

   We get Neils Bohr early on in the story, & our heroine's 1st lover in 1933 is a young New York Jew named Dick - Feynman maybe?

2. "Alien Clay", by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 2024, 375 pages, 116k words. Tchaikovsky likes prison novels - this is his 2nd or 3rd. Interesting interstellar travel technique, some very, very novel biology on the target prison planet - totally different system of "evolution". As always, a great read.

3. "Spill", by Cory Doctorow, 2024, 103 pages, 31k words. The Bard of the Revolution delivers, as always. This is at least the 4th Doctorow story featuring Marcus Yallow, gifted hacker. These stories are all about civil resistance to the powers that be, & are somewhat reference manuals on how to fight back against police brutality crowd suppression methods.

   Our heroes of the revolution in this story are Water Protectors, trying to stop the latest zombie revival of the Keystone Pipeline. A lot of them are Native Americans. I did not know this:

   Native people serve in the armed forces at five times the rate of the general population.

   Lots of false flag operations, lots of subversion of local law enforcement by corporate $$$, Capitalism FTL!

   The emotional content of this story is outstanding, I gave it 5 stars.

4. "The Naming Song", by Jedediah Berry, 2024, 501 pages, 155k words. This is only Berry's 2nd novel. I enjoyed the 1st, which came out in 2014. He also did a deck of cards telling a story of generations of a weird family living in a weird house, with associated audio with 52 different people reading each card's excerpt - it's surprisingly enjoyable.
   

   This latest I really enjoyed. Post-apocalyptic, but the apocalypse has done some strange things. Very much a story about words. A most excellent read! Interesting characters, cards come into it, lots of action, great conclusion. I actually gave this story 5 stars, 2 in a row!

Still babysitting, ready to forge ahead ...

Ain't Misbehavin'

"Ain't Misbehavin'", subtitled "The Story of Fats Waller", by Ed Kirkeby in collaboration with Duncan P. Schiedt and Sinclair Traill, 1966, 248 pages. Trade paperback.

• 17 chapters. I think the 1st 13 chapters were mostly written by the collaborators in 3rd person. Then Ed Kirkeby takes over (when he becomes Fats' manager in 1938) and the last 4 chapters are written with him in 1st person;
• 16 pages of photos - nice! A large % of the people mentioned have a pic;
• 16 page listing of "The Music of Thomas "Fats" Waller; A Selective Discography by the "Storyville Team""; very comprehensive, & includes all personnel.

My review/precis of "Fats Waller" by his son Maurice listed the date of this book - the Kirkeby book - as 1975, gotten from ??? Meanwhile, the copyright in this soft cover trade paperback is 1966 - 11 years before Maurice Waller's 1977 book. Overall, I think Maurice's is the better piece of work. This 1 seems to get bogged down a couple of times~2x.

Ed Kirkeby (1891-1978) was Fats Waller's manager from 1938 until Fats' death in 1943. He 1st met Fats in 1935 as an A&R man for RCA Victor. Kirkeby was also a musician, band-leader, lyricist, and record producer. Fats' career had been greatly aided by Phil Ponce, his prior manager, but by 1937 or so Phil was getting old & was having health issues, so a new manager was needed, and Kirkeby got the gig.

Like the 1st Fats bio I posted about, I'm just gonna make a bulleted list of new things I found interesting.

• In London in 1938, Fats hung out & performed with Adelaide Hall, who had brought Art Tatum to New York. He also hung out with his old friend Spencer Williams, and ... Django Reinhart! No mention if Fats & Django played together.

• In Chapter 16, it's mentioned that Fats insisted on accompanying Maxine Sullivan at the Famous Door on 52nd St. in New York. I discovered Maxine's music working up "keepin' out of mischief now" - she had a nice intro for the song. I got 24 tracks of her music, & she does several other Fats' songs as well.

• Cab Calloway (1907-1994) was a buddy of Fats.

• Kirkeby's story of Fats' run-in with Una Mae Carlisle when he was supposed to be delivering tickets says that she was in the hospital. I wanted to review this, but I couldn't find it skimming [missing an eBook] :-(

• Kirkeby tells a completely different story of Fats' Jan 14, 1942 Carnegie Hall concert:

  This was the very first time a solo jazz artist had played Carnegie Hall, and Fats really came into his own. The reviews were terrific, and Fats got a tremendous ovation from the capacity crowd of 2,800 enthisiasts who jammed the hall.

  ??? Quite a different tale than the other bio. Saving face, maybe? I skimmed the 3rd bio I have looking for a tie-breaker, couldn't find mention of the Carnegie Hall concert. [Gawdammit, I miss my eBooks! I love books, but, it is much harder to create these reviews/precis from hardcopy books.]

• Kirkeby was white, & he numerous times expresses his outrage at Jim Crow and segregation problems Fats' band had on the road, not just in the South, but in the North & the mid-West as well.

• Finally, the most important new factiod! A FFTKAT!

  During prohibition, like most folks Fats drank bathtub gin. Post-Volstead, Fats drank Old Grand-Dad bourbon. Being from KY, my primary liquor is necessarily bourbon. I stock Maker's Mark, a top-shelf wheated bourbon. My dad was a (cheap) bourbon drinker, I remember Old Crow, which I tried recently. Maybe Old Grand-Dad too?

  Somewhere in Kirkeby's narrative, he mentions Fats drinking 100 proof Old Grand-Dad. I'm thinking, that's not right.

  Meanwhile, my bourbon-drinking mind wants to try the Old Granddad. &, if it's good, & cheaper than Maker's, maybe I'll stock it? To channel Fats? [LOL]

  So I look for it in Total Wine (which has incredible pricing on Maker's Mark, buy 2 1.75l bottles for $37.99/each. Incredible! Liquor Barn in Lexington is at $47.99). They have 1.75l of 86 proof Old Grand-Dad for maybe $30? I don't remember, because what caught my eye was a 1/5 of 100 proof for $32.99. Here's a pic on my liquor shelf.

  

  It's actually been moved to my freezer. Very good on the rocks.

  Note the spelling too. I had it as Granddad, the label is clearly GRAND-DAD !

  Channeling Fats ...

Well, 2 down 1 to go. The newer bio by an English author appears to be organized rather differently than these 1st 2. I think it will be a while before I get to it.

Oops! I Forgot

Back in April, I titled a book review post "Before I Forget" and said I was going to make that my new catchphrase.

Well, I waited too long, & I did forget 1 of the books I had read since the last book review post. Oops.

I think I will start doing 1 post/book, even if it is just science fiction, after I get caught up here.

1. "The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 3", edited by Neil Clarke, 2018, 816 pages, 252k words, 26 stories. I like that in his intro Clarke gives us the source of the stories (10 from online magazines, 6 from print magazines, and 10 from anthologies), and the size breakdown (2 novellas, 11 novelettes, 13 short stories). The stories are high quality. There was 1 standout story, by Rich Larson. It definitely smacks you upside the head, very violent, kind of John Wick-ish.

2. "Binti: The Complete Trilogy", by Nnedi Okorafor, 2019, 368 pages, 113k words. Actually a 2015 novella & 2017 & 2018 novels. I believe these won numerous awards. A young woman of a small tribe gets a chance to attend the best college in the galaxy offworld. The plotting is good, it went fast. The main character is engaging, and teaches us about the traditional Himba culture, including otjize: a butterfat & ochre clay mix that the Himba (increasingly mostly women) cover themselves with, including their hair. It protects against UV, IR, & insects, & acts as a cleansing agent, bringing dead skin with it as it dries & flakes off.

3. "The Best Science Fiction of the Year", Volume 4, edited by Neil Clarke, 2019, 818 pages, 253k words, 29 stories.
   Source breakdown: 11 from online magazines, 6 from print magazines, 11 from anthologies, 1 from collections;
   Size breakdown: 3 novellas, 8 novelettes, 18 short stories.

   I really went quite a way before any story jumped out at me. I think this may be short story fatigue setting in. There was a good Hannu Rajaniemi story I had read before. Then 3rd from last, an excellent story by Ken Liu. A cautionary tale re cryptocurrencies. Next, Rich Larson, a really nicely odd story whose protagonist is the only uplifted chimpanzee in existence, who of course works as a police detective. And finally, a Carolyn Ives Gilman story, very hard sci-fi, featuring life forms who only wake up & live when there are copious quanties of x- & gamma-rays present.

So I think no more short stories for a while. I started a 2nd Fats Waller biography, plus my friend David has already started reading the new Neal Stephenson novel, so I want to get to that.

"DeFi today is a circular speculative economy"

[Last updated 2026-06-15. See below.]

[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.

Note, crypto used to be called cryptocurrency. Sometime early in 2026 I think, astonishingly, everyone seemed to acknowledge that it totally sucks as a currency & started calling it just 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. Aka 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!

Meanwhile, (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 actual 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!

---

[Updated 2025-08-28]
My musings on smart contracts above get revisited in this post in my (AI) Bullshit series:

Morality™

I pose the question:

What percentage of Ethereum smart contracts wind up being hacked?

---

[Updated 2025-11-03]
Here's a very good website keeping a close eye on the crypto grift universe. They have an RSS feed.

Web3 Is Going Just Great

---

[Updated 2025-12-11]
Smart contracts again get revisited, and I answer my own question, in another post in my (AI) Bullshit series:

Smart Contracts: Dumb Idea

Bruce Schneier links to an article about LLMs hacking Smart Contracts.

What percentage of Ethereum smart contracts wind up being hacked?

Well, the answer to this question appears to be: most of them, if you have an LLM helping you do the hacking. Seems appropriate?

---

[Updated 2026-01-13]
The latest post from Web3 Is Going Just Great talks about an ethereum smart contract with a bug. No biggie, only $26.4M stolen.

Truebit exploited for over $26 million

A bug in a smart contract belonging to the Ethereum-based Truebit project allowed an attacker to steal 8,535 ETH (~$26.4 million).

---

[Updated 2026-06-15]
There have been many "Web3 Is Going Just Great" posts since that last 1, but, today, the 100th anniversary of the birth of my father, who was a gambler, compelled me to capture today's sorry mess: 8 articles on crypto thefts/exploits.

A Big Day in Crypto, on the 100th Anniversary of My Father's Birth