Human Connection Will Always Win

I'm a fan of Charles Cornell, a music educator on YouTube.

He recently posted the video above, discussing the potential impacts of AI on music and music education.

I don't know the answers, obviously, but I hope my comment on his video, reproduced here, at least puts in a glimmer of hope:

I've come into your channel a bit unconventionally. It might have been your video on "Pure Imagination" that came across my feed. But I'm not a music educator. I'm not a musician. I can carry a tune, but I don't sight read, I don't play an instrument, nor do I really comprehend about half of the stuff you say in your videos (musicians use a looney moon-man language). However, I do enjoy music eclectically. I'll start a YouTube mix going at night as I'm drifting off to sleep. I watch your videos and see parallels between writing music and writing words (my niche, where we also use a lot of looney moon-man language).

I guess my point is this: Yeah, real creators on YouTube might lose people to audiences that do not care that what they're consuming is AI-generated. AI might get good enough to do the kinds of things you describe, and for maybe the majority of people, that'll be fine. I think this is already true for people who turn to the internet for quick answers or instant gratification, no matter what they're looking for, and it's likely you're already not reaching these people.

But I firmly believe there are and will continue to be plenty of people out there who want that "human" element that we only find in meat-space, or at least in meat-adjacent space like your videos. Your videos have helped me make connections to things I want to learn, things I already know, and things I want to create not because some algorithm created your content and fed it to me when I asked for it but because of the stuff I have in my head connecting with the stuff you have in your head making a connection through your channel.

I'll admit that when I look for content and I get a whiff of AI, I resent it. I'm in that minority he talks about. That's not to say everything AI is terrible. I am growing to appreciate the AI summaries that come up in my searches, but I definitely take it with a grain of salt, much as we used to do with Wikipedia. This is particularly true on social media. On YouTube, I've yet to run into much content that's AI-generated, and for that I'm grateful. But I guess only the ether knows what'll happen in the future.

HOUSE.

 

If things go to plan this next week, Keaton and Lexi will be the new owners of 2013 Westbrook Avenue in Idaho Falls.

They've been house-hunting for quite a while, and were a bit discouraged by the local supply of houses in their price range, where they saw a lot of scary stuff including one house I went to see with them that had only plastic on the ceiling in the laundry room and a really musty smell all over the place.

This one is a titch out of their price range, but close enough to make it workable. They'll have it inspected this week and hopefully be able to move in sometime in February.

It's an exciting time for them.

It's on the west side of town, not far from Skyline High School. Lexi works right now at the middle school across the street, and the house puts Keaton a lot close to work and the Broadway Park 'n' Ride, so his commute will be about 40 minutes shorter each day.

Mad Libs (and not the 'Libs' You Think)

I, for one, am really tired of waking up to headlines that sound like they've come from Mad Libs.

For example:

I'm also tired of the 12-year-olds we have in charge of the government (both on the left and on the right, but certainly those on the right) who either throw temper tantrums when they don't get their way or think the best way to respond to the tantrums is to write yet another stern letter to the tantrumee's parents.

Thelma

Never thought I'd watch - nay, enjoy - a heist movie whose protagonist is a 93-year-old lady, but here we are watching 2024's Thelma, which I got for Christmas.

It takes the tropes of a heist movie and turns them on their heads. No spoilers, because I want you to watch and enjoy this movie.

Okay, one little spoiler: Be prepared for a scene where, instead of acrobatics to avoid laser beams, you get geriatric acrobatics as Thelma retrieves a gun from a friend's bedroom.

Speaking of the gun:

Ben: (As they stop at a friend's house to get a gun.) Do you even know how to use a gun?

Thelma: How hard can it be? Idiots use them all the time.

Another awesome line:

[Thelma tries to get past Ben, whose scooter she's trying to steal so she can do her heist]

Ben: You can't get through me. I've got a titanium hip.

One warning: There's a little language, including one complete f-bomb, so be prepared for that.

Also be prepared for a thoughtful exploration on how some of "the elderly" are dehumanized in the way society treats them.

[Inserts Carnation into Shop Coat Lapel so I Don't Look too Industrial]

 

The washer's new door switch is in.

And while I'm grateful for the YouTube video I found showing me how to do this repair, I had to laugh at the pristine, not crowded at all room in which they demonstrated the repair. It's nothing like the cramped, dark laundry rooms of yore.

I had to enlist help in getting the washer base moved over the top of the washer so I could look for one of the brass retaining clips I clumsily dropped when I popped it out, and there was no way it was going to go back on properly without someone doing the lugging while I lay on the gritty floor making sure everything was aligned correctly.

Anyway, here's the video:

Participation

I remember getting Participation awards at the elementary school field day too.

Three Stages of Boogeyman or Boogeymen Awareness

A Facebook memory from 2015:

While discussing the possibility that our oldest will get to travel to Boise with the pep band if the high school basketball team continues to do well, the following exchange took place:

Mom: When we're there, you'll spend one night with Grandma and Grandpa.

Youngest: Why can't Dad take care of us?

Mom: Because he's incompetent and we don't trust him.

Me: Because we'd all end up sheltered behind a mattress while I brandish my shotgun, just like Homer.

I think it's fitting that Homer went through the Three Stages of Boogeyman or Boogeymen Awareness:

Stage One: Information becomes available:

Stage Two: The import of the information settles in:

Stage Three: React appropriately:

I Need Adult Garanimals that Glow in the Dark

I got dressed in the dark this morning.

I usually set my clothes out for the next day, or use my cell phone as a light, but my phone was charging and I neglected my bedtime ritual.

This naturally means of all the shirts I could have found in my closet in the dark, I managed to find the one I wore yesterday.

As I am a man, that is indeed the shirt I have on today. 

Carry on.

Cadfael: One Corpse Too Many

 

So I've just finished reading Ellis Peters' "One Corpse too Many," which is probably my favorite Brother Cadfael book.

It's a little heftier than her other books and broods over a dark subject: Murder at the time when so much death occurred at the hands of the partisans for Empress Maud and King Stephen as they battled for the heart and soul of England.

Peters excels at characterization and pacing, especially so in this book, which has two mysteries wrapped in one. As with Tolkien, there is more than one ending, but Peters paces them briskly and doesn't make the second feel overdrawn.

And as much as I love Derek Jacobi's portrayal of Cadfael in the British TV series, the books are so much better. So many thoughtful tidbits to read and to ponder as we figure out how to navigate a world that is as perilous from Cadfael's as it is distant.

This bit, from One Corpse Too Many's opening page, gives me something to ponder: "Cadfael was left to do everything alone, but he had in his time laboured under far hotter suns than this, and was doggedly determined not to let his domain run wild, whether the outside world fell into chaos or no."

That, of course, did not mean inaction in the sight of injustice, but certain, deliberate, intelligent action that kept peace and the desire for peace at its center. I try to remind myself of that a lot these days.

Minding My Own Business

Just sitting here.

Minding my own business.

Oh yeah: *Totally* not mentioning the war.