Writing is Hard

Playing the guitar isn't that hard. In fact, it's one of the easiest instruments to learn to play simply. Anyone with reasonable dexterity can learn to form the basic three or four chords and strum a song after one or two days of practice. If they sing along and it's fun, that's great.

Recuerdos de la Alhambra, or Bach's Bourrée in E minor, to be played properly, may take years of instruction and practice, and even then, to be played well will require extraordinary devotion and talent.

I guess it depends on a persons goals and ambitions whether writing is hard or not. But I will say that with fiction, novels or short stories, say, it's all about the story. That's the main thing. A good story and a competent grammar checker may be all you need. 

Back to my music analogy, Bob Dylan wasn't a super great accomplished guitar player, but we loved him for the stories.

Face it--The Pod Bay Doors are Not Going to Open

 I'll open with a digression. A "pre-digression," if you will. I wanted to use the expression whining and pewling in my opening sentence, but thought I better check the spelling of pewling. Is it puling? Turns out, it varies, sort of. The two Google hits at the top referenced Shakespeare, and then Peter Pan. So pewling is an archaic term, though I'm not so old that it would have rolled off my tongue with such alacrity--the whole thing could be traced back to the the time that great big book fell on my head at the library when I was a kid. If you believe in that sort of thing. 

This post is about AI. I mention that early in the post, in case you want to hit backspace now and go back to the Weather Underground site, to save you some time. What's at the top of my head at the moment is, how can I write to differentiate my "product" from that of an AI LLM? To throw in a few grammatical or punctuation errors is just too easy. 

Anyway; moving on. 

I'm used to the idea of AI now, and to me it's just one more irritant in today's technological world, like spam email, cell phone apps, or car dashboards that have a learning curve. 

I don't "fear" AI. When I write something, I absolutely know that somewhere there is a human who is writing better stuff than me. I might even resent them if I knew who they were and it seemed like they were so good that writing well was effortless for them. So now there's AI also. It may produce a good story worth reading (I'm still not so sure about that, though,) and so might I. Nothing has really changed.

I will also say that I put very little extra value in a piece of writing just because it is completely and totally free of grammatical and spelling errors.

In addition to all that--and I just thought of this--the existence of AI writing may trigger a good effect among human writers. We may strive now to make our writing more human, and this may result in some pretty interesting stuff. As far as the "hack" human writers, of which there are aplenty, it seems like their lifeless and unimaginative stuff that takes so long to churn out just won't be able to compete.

End of Blog entry, mistakes and all. I'm not even going to check. This is very liberating. Silver lining! 

Conservative Readers?

 I know this blog is fairly pathetic, statistically, in terms of readership, (despite my engaging run on sentences,) but I wonder if I have any conservative readers. If I do, I want to say I am trying hard to be inclusive, and I recognize that most political or ideological issues have at least two sides. Furthermore, I don't claim to be right all the time; only that at any given moment I think I'm right--that is until I see otherwise, whether from internal logic or external conversation. 

That said, I see the logic, that is, I understand, in some conservative takes on some issues. Not mostly, but I can see their point. What I have trouble with is the underlying philosophy that government should leave people alone so that the "social order" can shake itself down, with winners at the top and losers at the bottom. 

I actually wonder if all the Trump supporters or far-right conservatives I know think that they are the "winners," or at least if they think they can become so if only left alone by the government. I would imagine it would be difficult to support Trump and Musk right now if I thought it meant I was going to be a peon in the new feudalistic order that would arise under them given enough time. I would much rather be any ordinary citizen in the country of Jefferson. 

Sunday Musings in Central Standard Time on Less-than-optimal Sleep

 I want to write another blog post--I mean, it's about time--but there's so much going on and almost all of it outside my control. The one situation I seem to have stewardship over is the making of an appointment to repair a root canal, which may be easier than ousting the GOP or its offending parts but still not something you would characterize as "fun." Plus I got some weird virus over the night that's making my body ache and my brain feel like it's floating in an insular, room-temperature bath of incredulity and dread. Although the latter might have to be referred back to the GOP thing. 

I have just one or two observations regarding this. Now, I'm not an "Internet hater" but it occurred to me that without it, recent history might have had, by necessity, gone another way. Maybe a better way.  I love to say that when King George said something stupid or obnoxious, it took six weeks for the news to reach the per-Revolutionary War Colonists. I can't help but think if they had Internet back then it would have gone worse. 

Anyway, maybe I'm wrong but I'm pretty certain that without the Internet, without computers and databases, in a world where bookkeeping was done by clerics, it would be very hard indeed to wreak so much havoc on a country in such little time as we have witnessed lately. 

Or maybe in writing this blog post I'm just pandering to a fantasy where a government pseudo-agent is beating on the door of a government office and is suddenly and violently repelled by a well-placed musket ball. 

Forest. Trees.

 Of course if we observe someone in Washington to be breaking laws, we should take steps to stop them. This is just to suggest that we stop focusing as much on the shenanigans of the new Trump/Musk administration and return to the legitimate issue of Trump's lack of fitness for the office. The former requires months of litigation, the latter only that we open our eyes and see how absolutely fucking insane Trump has become. I'm not a doctor, but I don't need to be. Let's not forget or lose sight of the fact that Trump has lowered our expectations of Presidential behavior so much that we have become numb to it and are giving him much too much latitude. 

I add here that only a crazy person would believe that the insane, outrageous utterances via "truth" social can in any way be construed as reasonable or even remotely connected to reality as we know it. Yet Trump must think this. Or if he indeed thinks we're that stupid, his mental capacity and ability to reason must have degraded by now to a new low normal. Correct me if I'm wrong--could any other American politician in living memory do even just one of the things Trump has done and still be elected and allowed to stay in office?

This has been said over and over until it's kind of lost its meaning and impact, but STILL TRUE. 

The other thing: Musk has no more authority to do anything in our government than I do. I don't care if Trump has dubbed him Special Government Secret Agent with a "license to be an asshole." Literally speaking, the only authority he seems to have is what we have willingly given him. I realize it's more complex than that, but that's what it is. 

Sorry to veer off into politics. There is so much to debate, I don't want to get into that, but I have to blow off a little steam--just a little--before I go off the deep end. 

Our Mascot

This is our mascot, Roboguy. He hung out for a long while on the corner of 18th and Oak, just down the street from the Busy Bee Cafe, until he decided to come over and be my blog muse. Roboguy is not powered by AI, but instead has a genetically modified chipmunk brain installed in his stainless steel cranial cavity. The host chipmunk's name was Colin.  While Roboguy was originally designed to be an efficient, high-tech killing machine, part of Colin's psyche was apparently retained in the brain transfer, leading, ultimately, to Roboguy's problematic and ofttimes dysfunctional, people-pleasing behavior. 

The Cyclical Nature of Humans and Planetary movement

 Happy solstice, everyone!  This is the day that, despite your or anyone's religious, cultural or political affiliations, its raison d'etre remains the inevitable clockwork movements of the Cosmos. Congress cannot shut it down, or control it by moving it sooner or later, or render it irrelevant. Each and every human being on our planet can only experience it and note its passing. I find it humbling that this simple mechanism is so profound -- as life evolved, starting with the very first multi-cellular life forms, it has experienced this rhythmic day/night pulse and its variations that are punctuated by the solstices.  Enjoy the day and the season with any celebrations or traditions you deem most appropriate and satisfying, know that you are not alone, and brace yourself, those of you in the northern hemisphere, for the whiplash of winter weather yet to come. (There is hope. It will pass.) 

Now, as my neglected blog is at this point a vast, unfilled container for mundane trivia, I proceed:

I'm in Kansas City. Yesterday the Chiefs football organization posted a description and picture of Mahomes, our quarterback's clothing and accessories as he entered the stadium for the game. A white puffy jacket, black T, black pants, gold chain, whatever, with the caption, "Ice cold, QB 1."  OK, OK, I get it, but . . . just throw the ball, dude.

Don't I feel stupid. About three days ago I started thinking about an Internet friend from way back, someone with whom I've corresponded in the past, and thought I would try to re-connect with them. I did so in a casual email--a Christmas greeting and a general query about everyone's well-being. I got no response, but I'm not too upset. It's been that long ago.  But two days later in a conversation with someone about the Internet in general I said I get emails from people who never write to me with very generic messages in them like, "I thought you would recognize the people in this picture!" along with a long, weird looking link. It's phishing, I always think, and never respond. Then I thought, damn, that's what my email to my old Internet acquaintance must have looked like, because I didn't include anything specific in the body of the text. Duh. 

Then, unrelated, yesterday I got a strange text. It said, I know this is going to sound strange, but are you the XXX XXXXXX who lived in the old house on Liberty Street?  Well, I am, but that was 44 years ago. The text continued: if you are, please contact me! 

I was immediately suspicious, but curious.  I googled the phone number and saw it connected to someone with the last name the same as the buyer of the old house when I sold it back then. Further googling connected the first name the texter gave me. I pondered for awhile and figured, I gotta respond just to find out what this is about. I'll be careful!  

Turns out it was the buyer of my house, still living there after all these years, and she only wanted to ask me what I knew about the history of the house. We had a pleasant 15 minute phone call, gossiped about the neighbors (still there on either side) and the call ended with an invitation for me to come by and see the place any time. 

So, I was glad I overcame my natural paranoia, and my faith in people is somewhat restored, if only provisionally. 

And around we go.