Not the world's most physical guy

Something that recently penetrated my headspace, somehow, is the tiff between Moby and the Davies brothers, caused by the former Richard Melville Hall calling "Lola" (deep weary sigh here) "a gross and transphobic song."

Now it must be said that this characterization was part of a Guardian feature, and one of their prompts was "The song I can no longer listen to." If you give it some thought, it should be fairly obvious that at least some of their interview subjects were going to use that part as an opportunity to virtue signal. And here we are.

Dave Davies has jumped in to defend his big brother, and there have been other rebuttals. But justifications for "Lola" aren't what's needed. What is needed is for more people to tell the HR regime to take a hike. Ray Davies's songs reflect the thoughts and emotions of a human being, which is what music should do. Take it or leave it, but don't try to hector it over Zoom.

Q as in question

I just found this interview with Chuck Palahniuk where he reminisces about a youthful enthusiasm for Ellery Queen, both in the books (he slightly exaggerates their number) and the Jim Hutton-led TV series. It's interesting to see how they might have shaped his own identity as an author, particularly as both the Queen series and The Big Valley―with which I'm not really familiar―depicted single-parent families.

I just reread Double, Double. This is a good mystery but an oddity in the series of Ellery Queen books. A young woman hires him to investigate the death of her father, which seems a little off considering that he's a novelist and not really a PI. His father, Inspector Richard Queen, only makes a one-paragraph cameo despite his importance in the series overall. The new client also briefly works as Ellery's secretary, so Nikki Porter seems to have been forgotten for the time being. I sort of suspect that Danny and Lee roughed this out for another character and added Ellery later. The bare bones of his personality do appear, though.

Ten Days' Wonder, by contrast, could only be about Ellery Queen. It might be the most psychological book its authors ever wrote. The amateur sleuth's wit and background give him hints, but also cause him to have blind spots about the other characters, leading to tragedy. Claude Chabrol filmed this one, although for some reason he replaced Ellery Queen with an alternate fictional character.

A trip to 1960

 

I watched this out of curiosity last night. It's the first ever appearance of the character of Columbo. The episode's story would later be expanded as Levinson and Link adapted it into a stage play, and that play itself would be adapted into Prescription: Murder, the 1968 TV movie that introduced Peter Falk in the role.

It's interesting to note that "Enough Rope" is in color. NBC was in business with RCA, which made color TVs, and while the majority of their lineup was black-and-white until 1966, they always had a few exceptions. It's a dainty use of color, quite different from the garishness of a lot of later 1960s TV, or the deserty look of the 70s. 

The $64,000 is how Bert Freed does as the Lieutenant. Well, it's weird to see a guy who looks so much like a thumb in the role. But he does pretty well. He's kind of sneaky, which is good. Peter Falk didn't really catch fire in the role until the second pile, Ransom for a Dead Man.

Definitely more of a curiosity than anything else, though.

Human persons

Not going to really go into it right now but suffice it to say that Jacques Maritain had quite an interesting life. It probably helps that―for a time, at least―he was a pupil of one of my favorite philosophers, Henri Bergson. 

I've been reading a collection of Maritain's works, The Social and Political Philosophy of... and several bits of it wow me. Here's one.

The end of society is the good of the community, the good of the social body. But if this good of the body is not understood to be a common good of human persons, just as the social body itself is a whole of human persons, this conception would lead in turn to errors of a totalitarian type. The common good of the body politic is neither the mere collection of private goods, nor the good of the whole which, like the species with respect to its individuals or the hive with respect to its bees, draws the parts to itself alone and sacrifices them to itself. It is the good human life of the multitude, It is the good human life of the multitude, of a multitude of persons; it is their communion in good living. It is therefore common to the whole and to the parts; it flows back to the parts, and the parts must benefit from it.

Dense stuff, perhaps. But the central theme―that the good of the people can only be applied to that which respects their life as humans, with all that includes―is as relevant as ever.

Heavens!

Do we live in a clockwork universe? I would say that the fact that we're not clockwork says no.

But clockwork representations of the universe can still be very cool, Besides their considerable aesthetic charm, they show makers engaged with the big and little questions around them. And this craft goes back a long way. At least to Ancient Greece with the Antikythera mechanism. That's a wild story.

Orrery makers in our own century would have their hands full with updates. A few years back we had the first new planet adapted as part of the solar system since Pluto in the 1920s. Then they tried rounding out our new 10-planet solar system with asteroid Ceres and Vulcan, a near-Mercury planet no one had ever actually seen. Then it all collapsed and we wound up with an eight planet system.

那很好笑

I found this to be an interesting story. Jesse Appel studied in China. As he gained fluency in Mandarin, he started doing comedy there. In fact, he had a Chinese mentor. 

I can't judge whether he's funny in Mandarin Chinese. But there's a good chance he's a harbinger of upcoming trends. China is thriving in many respects. Even as they're a rival country, there could be a lot of Americans and Westerners in general living there in the near future. And they'll be doing all sorts of things. From the Chinese perspective, "American" may become an ethnicity, more or less.

Self-justifying

Lewis Mumford is a new name to me, but this overview does a very interesting job placing his work and ideas in the context of modern society. Specifically, society's relationship with technology.

The most striking evidence of the myth’s cultural pervasiveness is that many avid accelerationists do not deny that AI could mean the end of humanity. They merely differ from the doomers in believing that this risk is necessary—even desirable—to achieve the spectacular increases in efficiency and productivity promised by AGI. Mumford foresaw this extreme endpoint. “The myth of the machine,” he wrote, “the basic religion of our present culture, has so captured the modern mind that no human sacrifice seems too great provided it is offered up to the insolent Marduks and Molochs of science and technology.” 

Those branded as skeptics or doomers also still accept the premises of the myth of the machine. The stated aim of many organizations concerned with avoiding the worst AI outcomes is that we should “realize the benefits while mitigating the risks” of the technology. Mumford would argue the first half of this statement concedes too much, accepting the basic premise of the myth of the machine while presenting the task as removing the obstacles to realize its benefits. Many skeptics also share a basic misanthropic premise of machine superiority, focusing as they do on the biased, irrational, and flawed nature of human beings that needs machinic augmentation. 

This is it, of course. There's a new generation of business tycoon. Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Alex Karp are representative. While he has a nicer demeanor, Dario Amodei probably fits here too. While they are government contractors and, to a lesser degree, producers of goods for the consumer market, they're not satisfied with being seen as the widget makers they are. So they've taken it upon themselves to redefine the role of humanity. And of course that role is subservient to their machine god.

Sixty-odd years ago, on The Jetsons, mundane sitcom suburbanites were depicted as living in splendor above the skies. A homey kind of splendor, to be sure. They had a robot maid, but she sounded just like Hazel. Now, in order to get that level of futuristic ease, we're expected to submit to robots we're not allowed to question. Have they done a good enough job at changing and replacing the audience that people will take this deal. Some probably will. Time will tell how many.

Big sound

The gentleman playing the rather Seussian-looking musical instrument is also the man who invented it. His name is Gorkem Sen, and he's a Turkish musician and instrument maker. It's called the yaybahar, and it's only been around for a few years. It's the twenty-first century and we don't expect to see new instruments invented that aren't synthesizers or otherwise somehow electronic. Which is also in some ways a surprise because that big echoing effect sounds like something you might need to go to a studio to get. 

In the coming years―assuming the years continue to come―it's interesting to ponder if this thing might take off the way steelpans did in the 20th century.

Horseshoe vs. horseshoe

The other day I was in a bookstore looking in vain for a decent book of crosswords.* While in that part of the shop I saw a weighty tome called Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind by Jason Zengerle. Reading the jacket copy didn't convince me that it was much more than a hatchet job, and nor do the glowing reviews. The publisher being founded by former Obama staffers doesn't help.

Carlson was also lampooned on SNL as a paranoid Oscar commentator, although if you can take more than thirty seconds your tolerance is higher than mine. This comes at a time when talk is being floated of prosecuting Carlson for not being down with the war effort. It's all just a wacky coincidence, I'm sure.

In recent years, there's been a different kind of anti-establishment movement on the Right, Tucker included, which has more than once aligned with dissident voices on the left (Glenn Greenwald being one example) and free agents like Joe Rogan. The people who have power in both major parties and consider themselves responsible stewards of public thought aren't keen on this. Big Lib does its best to make these people seem icky. Big Con is less shy about being openly authoritarian, and so threatens them with jail. It's a process that can be used and reused against many different targets, which seems to have at least someone at Daily Kos rightly worried.

* Sad to say, crossword content outside of The New York Times tends to be wan. I wound up turning to Thriftbooks. 

Temperance and friends

It's interesting to find out that the Tarot began as a deck of playing cards and wasn't associated with divination until the eighteenth century. That doesn't mean that the use of cards―playing and otherwise―to divine the future doesn't go back further. But these particular cards had been around for a few centuries before they picked up that reputation. 

The Visconti-Sferza deck is quite pretty and distinctive. There's obviously a lot of craft involved in these things. An almost lost craft at that.

As you wish

The Princess Bride has to be in the running for the most Jewish American movie of all time. At least among popcorn movies. Written by William Goldman, adapting his own novel, which has autobiographical elements―or at least the framing device does. Directed by the late Rob Reiner, son of Carl. The cast isn't entirely Hebraic―the two leads are quite Aryan―but includes Mandy Patinkin, Peter Falk, Fred Savage, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, and Carol Kane. (I don't think you could get away with casting Irish people as Miracle Max and his wife.)

On the other hand, I only thought of this recently. Watching the movie never gave me the feeling that I was being immersed in someone else's culture. (I'm not Jewish.) In some ways it may have been someone else's culture, but didn't seem that way, which probably makes me something like the typical viewer. And it doesn't demand any a commitment to any particular kind of Jewish politics. One might add that Shawn's political stances haven't endeared him to the Zionist faction. 

But I digress, maybe. The point is that regardless of who it's by, it feels like it's for everyone. It's very American that way.

Future shocking

Up until last week I don't think I had ever really read John Brunner. Not a matter of conscious avoidance, I just hadn't gone beyond hearing the name and some titles.

Over the past few days I've read The Shockwave Rider. It's an interesting read, about a rebellious spirit named Nickie Halflinger who flees from place to place, using a few other names. It's known for foreseeing the development of the internet and being sort of a proto-cyberpunk novel. Brunner did guess well at how the 21st century would actually feel, although his Midwestern United States may feel more British than he intended. It's sort of a more optimistic 1984, in part because the O'Brien figure (Paul T. Freeman) is redeemable. 

Cue Porky

The Paramount-Warner Brothers merger which seems almost certain to go through is depressing but also weird. And for the record, Netflix buying Warner out was also a glum prospect, but in a way made more sense.

Larry Ellison, who's certainly involved, wants to add CNN to his pro-Israel network of networks, this much is obvious. This despite the fact that no one under 40 pays any attention to CNN, or CBS, or what have you. It's still an area where he wants to flex his muscles.

Netflix didn't want CNN, though, which probably means that the Ellisons could have bought it separately. So Larry Ellison seems to be supporting the ambitions of son David. And David actually does want to be a big studio head.

Looking into Skydance Media, though...They've backed some hits, but these were mostly part of established franchises. Other movies weren't hits. But in both cases, they've been silent partner financers. They haven't actually been in distribution, which is what a film studio primarily does. What I take away is that while the Paramount people have the money to do this takeover, there's not much reason to expect it to work in the long run.

Swapping out (Warning: some 90s ahead)

 

Seen above: a screenshot of a recent Google search. Specifically, the AI Overview that got spit up in the course of said Google search. According to Gemini, the lyric "Life is hard, and so am I. Better give me something so I don't die" has been appearing in forum posts since 2006 but isn't derived from anything identifiable. 

It is actually not hard to find the source, at all. And now that AI has been embedded in Google searches, these overviews usually do produce germane results for quoted song lyrics. But in this case the AI basically said that it's not really anything in particular. 

You've seen more flagrant AI fails than this one. So have I, although most of them aren't recorded. It's a technology that brings very quick results, but a lot of the time not high quality ones. Aside from factual errors, there's not really a mind there. 

Which is why when you hear about jobs being eliminated in favor of AI, it suggests a certain preference. The question is, "Can LLMs do the job better than humans, or even as well?" And the answer is very often, "No, but who cares?"

Greer has an interesting take on what's behind this. Namely, technology―overhyped as it is―is being used to clear out deadwood that couldn't be gotten rid of any other way. If so, the people making these decisions aren't really more valuable than those their getting rid of/automating, and in some cases much less so. But that's how it often goes.

Center ring

 

In discussions of Einar Jolin, the word "naive" seems to come up a lot. And there's something to that. His faces tend to be cartoony, for one thing.

But if he remained crude in some ways, he was a curious artist and truly applied himself. His pictures have a snap to them and make an impact.

"At the Circus", above, is a nifty composition. It uses its space well. And the horses are gorgeous in their simplicity. You can see why the audience members nearest us are so rapt in attention.

How it plays out

Conservative anti-interventionist Tom Woods has written that "No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain." Which is to say, office seekers love to talk about how they will prioritize American interests and end regime change wars, and then when they actually take office they develop a strange case of amnesia about all these promises. 

So it's happening once again. Sohrab Ahmari:

Second, there’s the role of anti-woke-ism as new skin for old wine. The hawks — not least Weiss, through her outlet The Free Press — championed popular grievances with the inanities of the “peak-woke” moment and successfully married this to the same old agenda. Many of the would-be populists were all too happy to go along, hailing a once-more culturally muscular and unembarrassed America as it pursued the very policies that they’d deplored just a few years earlier. As one online wit remarked somewhere: “Good thing [Secretary of War] Pete [Hegseth] purged the trannies from the military so beefy white guys can do a regime change in Iran.” Based and red-pilled!

Now, I'd be a knave and a fool if I'd ever believed that Bari Weiss's foreign policy priorities were the same as mine. But the anti-woke movement ―and in truth, the anti-lockdown movement as well―did have a lot of people who sounded indifferent to or skeptical about foreign adventurism. Until, that is, it came time to promote a new war.

One of Donald Trump's tragic flaws is that he's incapable of saying "no" to his big money contributors. Of course in the face of that kind of money and those kind of demands, his recent predecessors have only maintained a fig leaf of dignity, and he's just been more blatant. But it's also important to recall that that wasn't the promise.