Author: The Cat Herder General

aka Dennis Moser — Citoyen du monde: Peregrinator, photographer, retired librarian/archivist/academic, musician, teacher of English to foreigners, and sometime writer... Due to bureaucratic nonsense, I have left Europe. I DID not return to the US, I took a left turn at the Calgary airport and am a refugee trying to learn to understand, and maybe speak, "Jouai" over here amongst the Quebecois.

“Talk, talk, talk. . .

Or: Where to even begin?

The following was a brief adventure checking out a new LLM called “talkie” — started by asking “What is a theremin” 1 and it went downhill quickly from there. To wit:

. . . so I queried, asking WHO was Leo Theremin 2 .

Uh, yeah. I don’t think so. . .let’s move on. How would it identify the true nature of the theremin, i.e., among the first electronic musical instruments 3.

Hmmm. . .that didn’t go very well. So how does one play the theremin 4?

Wow — I don’t even have to do any of that on my semi-modular synths! Okay, let’s try who is Leo one more time 5.

Oh, dear. Houston, we have more than “just a problem here. . .how about the brightest star in the “Theremin Pantheon” Ms. Clara Rockmore 6?

Okay, so no concurrency, according to them. Let’s try something else 7:

Oh, dear.

So close, so hopeful 8.

Mind you, this was the SECOND time I’d run this line of questioning — the first run was both close and just as bad. I would have screen-capped the session if I had foreseen how bad it was going to be. I didn’t but I ran this about 18 hours after the first run. I’m tempted to do another run, but [SHRUG]. . .these really are pretty simple topics to track down without resorting the use of any kind of AI agent 9.

  1. https://www.classical-music.com/features/instruments/what-is-a-theremin ↩︎
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Theremin
     ↩︎
  3. See #1 above ↩︎
  4. https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Theremin\
    https://youtu.be/DhAHIMHel7U?si=DsNI95AjOVuRC     ↩︎
  5. See #2 above ↩︎
  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Rockmore
     ↩︎
  7. See more details in #6 above ↩︎
  8. Well alrighty then! https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=M.%20Wheatstone&title=Special%3ASearch&ns0=1\
    WHO? ↩︎
  9. I am a musician working in electroacoustic/experiment music — https://audiozoloft.bandcamp.com/ as well as a retired archivist/librarian, so yeah, a LITTLE insider knowledge but it really only informed the search queries. ↩︎

Resilience and “Bouncing Back:

Or: How do we deal with these cha-cha-cha-changes?

Rather than blocking out the things that have happened, this suggests that we integrate them in to move forward. This is not only for the physical, but other forms of trauma, too.

https://theconversation.com/bouncing-back-is-a-myth-resilience-means-integrating-hard-experiences-into-your-life-story-not-ignoring-them-275069

“Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?”

Or: “No . . . it was Beauty killed the Beast.”

Hadn’t planned to be blogging this but once again, I’m battling with the ongoing META embargo of news stories from posters residing in Canada and posting without using a VPN. Thinking that I may need to start using one on another computer to post things directly to “that other platform.”

Anyway.

Came across a piece by Thomas Pynchon, published in the New York Times back in 1984 (perfect for the timing!) about the Luddites and the history of the movement.

So here’s a link to the piece (archived, so you should be able to see it past their firewall)

Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?

Personally, I’m now inclined to answer that with a resounding “Yes.”

“These are not misprints”

Or: “Mistakes were made…”

As a long-lapsed rare books conservator, the lede caught my roving eye — “not misprints but beauties of my style hitherto undreamt of” — and I had to dig deeper. Of course I had to follow that link, and down the rabbit hole we went!

The first link in the MetaFilter story went to artnet.com and provides the source — from the Yale University Library — of the images below. The “Ulysses” image is especially nostalgic: the multiple copies of “Ulysses” held at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center (I think there are twenty-two? I’ve forgotten the exact number) were the subject of some of the last treatments I performed when I worked there. I was responsible for cleaning the books and consolidating the paper dust jackets.

If you ever want to experience the very worst of the physical side of commercial paper-making, the 19th and 20 Centuries provide excellent examples. Given that the book was printed in between the two word wars, premium materials were not all that available and the paper dust jackets, seen here in the illustration, were made with some real crap. Yeah, a “technical” term to describe the highly brittle paper that was used. Fun times, indeed,

But the contents were also irresistible. The mother-in-law at the time and I discussed some of the eccentricities of Joyce’s linguistic games —“Agenbite of Inwit” has stayed with me the past forty years (Barb, you are missed by all).

So diving into these two articles was absolutely necessary!

The artnet story:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/yale-errata-exhibition-2751007

The exhibition announcement:
https://events.yale.edu/event/beauties-of-my-style-errata-and-the-printed-mistake

Enjoy —




A Culinary Public Service Advisory

Or: “You’re chopped!”

So I share with you a stumbled-upon bit of etiquette for eating, here on the use of the humble, but noble, chopstick. Simple, yet elegant, it holds a prominent place in the universe.


So next time you’re noshing on your sushi, remember these tips to avoid!

And what is the Internet for?

Or: “Prøn. Cats and prøn!”

Years ago — back in grad school, I think or shortly thereafter — there was some discussion about what were the “drivers” of the adoption of new technologies and people brought up the battles that video tape faced. Some went even further back and brought up book publishing/moveable type. It was a discussion I followed closely, in part due to my own interests in the history of bookbinding, as well as my interest in digital publishing.

A running joke at the time, yet still applicable today, was that “the Internet is for prøn, prøn and cats”, the deliberate use of the “ø” and misspelling to avoid immediate censorship by the more easily-offended. There is an amusing truth to the joke: adult entertainment drove the development of micro-payments that led to the monetization of anything put online. And erotica1 was among the earliest of Western European book publication. Quite simple, really, entertainment sells and adult entertainment sells very well.

And so, here we are:

We’ve already seen the AI cats, the nudification of celebrities and spiteful ex-partners, the slop that is spreading in all forms of digital entertainment.

  1. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18459/18459-h/18459-h.htm
    This links to the Project Gutenberg digital version of the classic. More explanation and background on this text, in the following link,
    as the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is the a example of these early “entertainments”. ↩︎

HAT TRICK!

Or: In the words of King Crimson, “Three of a Perfect Pair”

It’s nothing new, just that it’s finally getting attention as researchers and those people who are curious about how things work and get used, we’re starting to see behind the façade of AI. This morning’s email (so far!) has yielded three notes from Linked In (ugh) with supposed job postings.

I only went back to using LI when I arrived here in QBC, as I was trying to find a local English school for whom I might be able to teach. Obviously, I’m using search terms relating to my editing, translation/localization, and language-teaching skills as the main terms for searching. It has reached the point that when I see a post from particular “agencies” I delete the email immediately.

Why?

Because even though a post is alleged to be for teaching English, it is invariably about “training” someone’s AI. Worse still, the interviews have been with AI agents. And worse still, it appears that the whole thing has been generated by AI: the post and email, the job description, the interview… all of it.

Three screen caps to show the range of what I’m being sent:

Note that this last one — with the ads all from an organization called “English 1” is reruting almost entirely for teachers to go to China, so maybe it’s not fair to paint them with the AI brush.

The thing is, 404 Media just ran a story about how “AI” means “African Intelligence” due to the manner in which AI firms have been victimizing workers in Africa. What follows in the link below explains further —

https://www.404media.co/ai-is-african-intelligence-the-workers-who-train-ai-are-fighting-back/



… this aligns completely with my amusing myself last summer, tricking chatbots into revealing not just that they were AI chatbots, but even to the level of which versions they were running.

That Grateful Dead quote keeps coming back: “…it’s even worse than it appears.”

META Loves Me, this I know…

OR: Be-cause FaceBook Tells Me So…

Well, that’s amusing… wonder if someone has complained and the Great Gawds of META have acted accordingly… time will tell.

Taking a force break from interacting with them until further notice. It’s not like I haven’t anything else to play with, right [looks over at the synths on the desk and the guitar on the other side]?

“…it’s even worse than it appears.”

Or: WHAT?!?!

How in the hell did these NOT show up in the morning news feeds this past week?

… and here, so with two examples we KNOW this IS NOT SATIRE!

And why the headline above (if you know me, you know I’m not a huge Grateful Dead fan, but sometimes…), you ask? Well, machinations within machinations within in machinations. Sometimes there really ARE patterns to be seen.

And there you have it.


#HUELGA

#USRegimeChangeNOW

#TrumpEtAliaDelendusEst

#DemocracyDiesInOligarchy

“You must remember this…”

Or: I miss Marianne…

In case you were wondering why the US is now engaged in an utterly illegal action against Iran, with the explicit help of Israel —

“Could have come through anytime,

Cold lonely, puritan

What are you fighting for ?

It’s not my security.

It’s just an old war,

Not even a cold war,

Don’t say it in Russian,

Don’t say it in German.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

Lose your father, your husband,

Your mother, your children.

What are you dying for ?

It’s not my reality.

It’s just an old war,

Not even a cold war,

Don’t say it in Russian,

Don’t say it in German.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

Could have come through anytime,

Cold lonely, puritan.

What are you fighting for ?

It’s not my security.

It’s just an old war,

Not even a cold war,

Don’t say it in Russian,

Don’t say it in German.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

Say it in broken English,

Say it in broken English.

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting for ?

What are you fighting …”