Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3
Musings on life, the theatre, technology, culture and the occasional emu sighting
We’re heading back home in the morning after spending a few days helping my daughter out with her kids while our son-in-law is away on work. Damn, they grow up fast and furious.
Lots of big hugs and kisses after family movie night tonight watching How To Train Your Dragon.
We’ll be back at it again soon, but it never feels like it’s soon enough.
There’s zero harm when my grandson decides to turn on a dime from one story to the next. One emotion to another. He’s a kid. It’s cute. It’s funny. Often hysterical.
That said, at times his gyrations remind me of those of the idiot in the White House. Both know everyone is paying attention and crave it. My grandson will grow out of this. Most kids do. When adults stay stuck in that mode, it’s always trouble on scales large and small.
I can’t speak as to why the decaying sociopath destroying everything in his path, and those who enable him, seem to think this behavior is okay, beyond theorizing that there are more than I could have ever imagined like him to make me shudder. I’ve tried to understand it and can’t. I just know at some point what’s cute in kids is misery for the rest of us on this planet now that we’ve let this tyrant stay in his terrible two’s and fuck you fours.
It upsets me that I can’t enjoy these moments with my grandson without thinking about this.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Epidemics of reading, opinions, and the wild ways of artists
Spending a few days with the grandkids this weekend and into next week, yet still managed to find some time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. It’s a lesson in learning, watching as they begin to put it all together, compared to so many of the adults trying to own the world who seem stuck and unable to grow, or suffer some sort of reversion. With kids, it’s innocence. The rest of us have no excuses. Just stories. Makes you wonder what turns that on and off.
In the large discussion around screen time and attention spans, Carlo Iacono says What We Think Is A Decline In Literacy Is A Design Problem.The section looking back to “reading epidemics” in the 18th and 19th century are more illuminating than any screen.
The First Casualty of Trump’s War In Iran Was The Truth. So says David Remick. That’s always true in warm even before the first bullets fly. But it’s become the truth in all aspects of how we try to survive together. Funny how we revert back to our early childhood ways of dealing with the world before disgarding the truth was supposedly trained out of us.
Everybody has an opinion about this war that we can’t call a war. Here’s one that I found interesting from Frida Ghitis. Check out What Everyone Gets Wrong About Iran.
David Todd McCarty tells us How I Learned To Hate AI. The more you know…
Chris Castle takes a look at The Great White House AI Copyright Dodge: Managed Decline, Global Spillover, And The Rise Of The Chief Personhood Denier.Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.
With everyone focused on The Strait of Hormus, Richard Bookstabler takes a look at our financial straits in I Predicted The 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse. For the record, I didn’t predict the last one, but anyone with two nickels to rub together can predict the outcome of the one we’re heading into.
I did any number of odd (in all senses of the word) jobs in my early life supporting myself as an artist. Emily Watlington takes a look at The Wild Ways Artists Have Made Their Livings, From The Renaissance To Today.
Notes From A Burmese Prison is a comic by Danny Fenster and Amy Kurzweil. More than worth your time. Extrapolate the specific location and situation to any troublesome moment and remember whoever the guards are, you can’t trust them.
(Photo by the author)
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Life and the web finds a way
Remember ICEBlock? The app created for iPhone users to track and alert others of ICE activities nearby? You know the one that Apple and Google blocked. There were several others that got blocked as well.
In this moment of something new and horrible to distract attention from the latest happening almost every hour, ICE activities might have faded from the headlines, but those activities haven’t ceased.
joshuahacks has created a progressive web app called AntiFreeze. From his post on Daily Kos:
AntiFreeze lets anyone anonymously report an ICE sighting. When someone submits a report, every user within five miles gets a push notification on their phone in real time. If ICE is spotted four blocks from your house while you’re making dinner, your phone buzzes and tells you.
But it’s not just alerts… Open the app and you can see a map or list of every reported sighting within 25 miles from the last 72 hours. So even if you missed a notification, you can check what’s been happening in your area before you head to work, drop your kids off at school, or go to the grocery store.
No login. No account. No personal data collected. Completely anonymous.
You can read all about it and find out how to use it on that post. As the developer and author says, “It works. It’s free. And nobdy can take it away from you.”
Who’d a thunk that the web could be the answer?
(images are from screenshots of The AntiFreeze app and website
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Spending a few days with the grandkids this weekend into next week. All bets are off when it comes to fun and games. And as crazy stupid as the world is right now, for a few moments all of that is forgotten.
Too many ostriches among us
During these extended grand-parenting trips to help my daughter and her family move one of the favorite games Grandpa plays with the little ones is Hide and Seek. My granddaughter is very good at the hiding part. She plays for keeps. There were a couple of times we worried we’d lost her.
My grandson on the other hand likes to change the rules mid-game, always to his benefit whether he’s hiding or seeking.
It’s not easy to hide. Especially in plain sight. But that’s what so many have been doing in our country for far too long, pretending that they are as good at hiding as my granddaughter, but hiding the way my grandson does by shifting the rules and lowering the bar to avoid being caught.
Hiding from the reality of what’s happening bears no fruit. Hiding from what needs to happen to bring it to an end yields even less.
There are too many ostriches among us and that needs to change.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Musk’s Grok has erased them all
I recently linked to Eizabeth Lopatto’s excellent and scathing article pointing fingers at Apple and Google for continuing to allow Elon Musk’s Grok AI to undress without consent adults and children. Calling Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai cowards in the headline on this issue is, in my opinion, table stakes and will be until they take public action and actually apologize for violating their own rules and the privacy of the users that pump money into their bank accounts.
Following that up I’m linking to another excellent article on the topic from Charlie Warzel and Matteo Wong, published in the Atlantic. The headline is strong, saying Elon Musk Cannot Get Away With This. The article is stronger still. Yet, the sad reality is that he already has, and even if Cook and Pichai suddenly change direction, the damage has already been done. Like the political figures they have bent knees to, they won’t be able to find a mirror to look in that won’t reflect their cowardice back at them.
Hiding under their respective rocks, both Cook and Pichai have let Musk turn this from a ruinous troubling feature into a paid premium feature, which is not only ridiculous but makes a mockery of both Apple and Google. I’ve already said that any X users who still hang onto that platform are just as culpable.
But then that’s the world we live in. We ignore the horrible nature of what’s unfolding in front of our faces. So many demons have flown out of this era’s Pandora’s Box we find ourselves it is impossible to count them, much less have any hope of banishing them. But then, that’s what the demons are counting on. As the article says:
This crisis is an outgrowth of a breakneck information ecosystem in which few stories have staying power. No one person or group has to flood the zone with shit, because the zone is overflowing constantly. People with power have learned to exploit this—to weather scandals by hunkering down and letting them pass, or by refusing to apologize and turning any problem into a culture-war issue.
As Warzel and Wong also say, “the silence says everything.”
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Giving Up The Chase
In news you wouldn’t need AI to hallucinate, Apple and Google in a joint statement to CNBC announced that Apple will be using Google’s Gemini to power Apple’s long anticipated and delayed New Siri in a multi-year deal.
You can call it a surrender. It is. You can call it an admission of failure. It is. Even if Apple rarely admits mistakes.
Stating that the new models will continue to run on Apple’s private cloud compute in a joint statement, (published on Google’s news blog and to my knowledge not in any Apple press release), the statement said,
Apple and Google have entered into a multi-year collaboration under which the next generation of Apple Foundation Models will be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology. These models will help power future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri coming this year.
After careful evaluation, Apple determined that Google’s Al technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models and is excited about the innovative new experiences it will unlock for Apple users. Apple Intelligence will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.
Given the delay in releasing the promised and once heralded update to Siri, this isn’t really news and has been thought to be the path Apple would adopt for quite some time. Speculation is that users might see this as early as this spring, but I’m still thinking it won’t roll out until WWDC 2026 this summer.
For what it’s worth, the statement to business network CNBC tells everyone who the audience is for this news that isn’t news and I’m guessing the complete retrenchment from Apple’s initial endeavors to try and create a AI powered Siri is quite a blow and the fallout won’t blow over soon.
Saying “Apple determined…” is quite some shade from Google, even in a joint statement.
I doubt this is the end of this saga, but in the end, does this really matter? Who knows. But given the C-suite shakeups at Apple, whatever happened with Apple Intelligence and New Siri has changed how iPhone users, investors, and probably a bot or two view Apple going forward.
For future curiosity purposes it will be interesting to see how Apple’s New Siri/Gemini will respond if someone prompts it to generate a summary of this news.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
When you move into a new place one of the things you notice is how sound echoes around an empty house. Especially when there are little ones who love to run at what seems the speed of light, laughing at levels that set off Apple Watch loud enviornment warnings.
Today the movers arrive at my daughter and her famiiy’s new digs. As the place fills up with furniture and the stuff of living, the echoes will diminish, but the volume won’t as the new digs will still be overflowing with the sounds of laughter and life. We’re still mostly on babysitting duty, thus the grandkids first coloring session with Grandma waiting for the movers to do their thing.
Everyone’s excited.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
Go Bears!
Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week as we’re helping my daughter and her family with the second phase of moving into a new house by watching the grandchildren.
Oh, and watching the Chicago Bears pull off an improbably win in the wildcard. My granddaughter’s concern mirrored mine for most of the game, but the Bears pulled off another miracle comeback. Go Bears!
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 