RE: AI in music. and Australian chart regulation. I thought chart rankings were products of of someone ranking based on sales. Basically it is journalism. So I wonder how they will enforce that ban. I realize the First Amendment does not apply to Australia, but the press seems pretty free there.
The issue touches on sampling and use of algorithms to make new music. Rivers Cuomo of Weezer developed algorithms for writing songs, possibly as a reaction to criticism of some of his early personal song writing. It still worked and is generally respected. Sampling has been used to great effect, and counts as new art, IMO. Of course, appropriate permissions should be obtained from the works being sampled. For example, Handsome Boy Modeling School was a project of two hip-hop producers and their work heavily relied on sampling. Compare their track The Truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HW7nj-GUZY with Coffee Cold by Galt MacDermot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Oe06936C0c.
The point of music is to provide sounds that are pleasing to our ears. If that can be generated by an algorithm, then why not allow it?
What is the point of awards and ratings for bots? Aso the issue has moved far beyond sampling and joint development with a human. The bots independently spew output in volumes and use downloads as metrics, so they also do not care about rankings.
Human generated material may become a niche market, but there is every reason for the industry to support it.
The bots do not require any part of the current industry to provide access, income, or new material. If people are willing to pay for machine imitation music, they will have no problem obtaining it as the current industry cannot prevent it from being produced and distributed. The new bot industry can create its own 'recognition' events if they think it has any marketing value. They could rate which engine had greater than 1% repeat listeners of the thousands of songs spewed in a month.
Rankings are not just for the artists. They are for all who are interested. Knowing what we people generally like can function as a connection to the group of music listeners. I stopped paying attention to music rankings long ago, and I do not have the sense of connection to young people that I had when I was young.
Also, a ranking is not a critic's review of quality. The Billboard Hot 100 is based on data counting sales, air play and downloads. It is just numbers. If a completely AI generate song ranks on those metrics then it is just a fact. Declaring rankings by legislative fiat is silly. Like when Indiana took under a consideration a bill that would, by law, state that pi=4.
Ok, then I guess it is no different than doing it by genre. Pop, C&W, Rock, etc but with a new top category of human or artificial. Anyone that wants to compare between the lists can do it.
Anyone can make any list they want. Genre is an arbitrary made-up categorization. I do not expect there to be a non-human category. Genre identification is a function of the the sounds, not the composer or performer. But if someone want to make a list of top songs generated by algorithms, then no one is going to stop them, except for maybe the Australian recording industry association.
AI eliminates a job. Woman is fired. AI pays no taxes, including payroll taxes for her. The amount of money going to education, welfare, and other social goods is diminished, Fired woman needs (a) unemployment benefits and (b) re-education for another job. Multiply by millions of women and men and guess what? (Apart from Altman and others bwah-hahing all the way to the bank.)
The obvious answer is to make the AI companies pay in full for all the electricity and water they use and to pay the amount of taxes previously paid by the fired workers. What a beautiful dream!!!
I still struggle to understand how an economy without jobs for humans would work. You end up with some sort of strange universal basic income that is funded by taxes on the AI enabled companies. I don't share the romantic notion that all of those former work hours will be spent on art, philosophy, and personal fulfillment.
Basket-weaving? Learning Swedish? All utter nonsense. Much more likely to be severe mental health crises and a zillionfold increase in the market of and the need for drugs.
You could also require them to pay some sort of severance package for the fired worker--full salary and bennies 'til they get a new job, say, or something equally reasonable. And by "bennies" I mean "benefits." Also, paid counseling--because all these people staying home with their loved ones are going to cause a massive increase in PTSD in the cops who have to keep responding to the family fight calls at their houses.
I clicked on the list of movies that haven't aged well. Why do we need lists like this? First of all, it slandered "Animal House". As if that movie wasn't violating norms from the start. I still call it one of the best comedies of all time .
But then I read the rest of the comments on movies I have actually seen. In general, there's very little there. What was the point of highlighting the stereotypes captured in these films? "Temple of Doom" is just a bad movie- no need to add anything to that mess.
I guess saying that something hasn't aged well isn't the worst insult, but this just seemed like a leftover pile on from peak wokeness. What we need is a museum that places these things in the context of their times and that explains the disconnect. Sometimes a movie like "Birth of a Nation" is really a reflection of a majority view that we later find reprehensible, but having the movie as a relic sheds light on this past in a way that might be useful in keeping the bad views at bay.
I am in the middle of attempting to watch "Gentleman's Agreement" the 1947 Gregory Peck movie about anti-Semitism. So far it's been a hard slog, because the first 20 minutes or so are just overlong, poorly written, poorly edited & boring & it makes me wonder what they were thinking giving director Elia Kazan the Oscar for Best Director for it! It's picking up after Celeste Holm comes in, she also won for Best Supporting Actress, but that's as far as I've gotten so far.
Interesting that Rotten Tomatoes ranks 'Shadow of a Doubt' as the best Hitchcock film, with 'Rear Window' second. 'Notorious' comes in at number nine, while my favorite ('Rope') comes in at number thirteen. These rankings are based on their aggregated (tomato-meter) scores.
“Rope” is one of my favorites as well (just saw it again last night on TCM). My other two favorite Hitchcock flicks are “The 39 Steps” and “Frenzy”, two others that are seldom included on such lists.
I love all of those, but I have a different favorite. My mom was into old movies and exposed me to Hitchcock at an early age. The first use of the household's first VCR was to tape North by Northwest off the TV. It remains among my favorite movies of all time. It's Hitchcock's most entertaining Hollywood movie -- it's the peak Hitchcock film that most recalls the thoroughly amused spirit of his prior British films The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes -- but, for all its MacGuffins, switcheroos, and set-pieces, it's more than sheer adventure. It rewards a little thought, as the best suspense films do. The premise is that Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is an advertising executive mistaken by the baddies for American spy George Kaplan and chased across the country. In other words, it's a classic "wrong man" story.
In the typical wrong man story, the life of the hero before it's disrupted is idyllic and the story is about restoring order. In North by Northwest, by contrast, Thornhill's life is ripe for disruption. He's a charming Madison Avenue schmoozer (think Mad Men) who "sells people things they don't need," who believes that "in the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie, only the expedient exaggeration." He's twice divorced, he has an abiding attachment to his mother, and he exhibits a winking disdain for this week's girlfriend. When he's falsely accused of blowing off a date with mom to the theater to go to a party on Long Island, get shitfaced, and drive off in (and wreck) someone else's Mercedes, mom believes it. He nicely sums up his life when asked to take a real risk (lines delivered at Midway airport, BTW): "Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed." You can't help but conclude that he hasn't grown up, that he's empty, maybe even "rotten," at the core. There's a joke about it: When lighting Eva Marie Saint's Marlboro on the 20th Century Limited, he produces a matchbook with his "trademark, R.O.T." "Roger O. Thornhill; What's the O stand for?" "Nothing." The great irony of the story is that by basically becoming George Kaplan, he becomes something, a real boy -- just what the doctor ordered!
Life is too short to slog through a movie (or a book) you don't like. If directorial or editorial revisions start going through your head in the first 20 minutes, try something else.
Agreed - although with authors I know are slow out of the gate (looking at you, Stephen King) I give them a bit longer. But even then, if you can't pique my interest within five or six chapters, I'm likely to set it aside.
I hope you give the rest of it a try. It's surely old-fashioned and a bit corny, a bit earnest, but the drama of it can creep up on you. His journalistic experiment of pretending to be Jewish to document how he's (mis)treated begins as an inspired notion and becomes a source of visceral outrage for him and a source of impatience and irritation for everyone else, including his WASP-y but ostensibly liberal fiance. (It's her line that gives the film its title.) I think it still packs a punch.
Oh, I finished it. like I wrote, once the Celeste Holm character came in, it picked up & then adding in John Garfield, playing a Corps of Engineer's officer who also told Peck what it was like to be Jewish was, especially the scene in the fancy restricted hotel with the smug, asshole manager. I'm sure Garfield, who was Jewish, his name was Garfinkle, was speaking from experience, which added to the script.
What dragged it down was the very sappy love story, as she wasn't a bigot, just a rich boring drip!
Like some of you, I first saw Animsl House the summer after High School. It came out at a great time for me. It was my view of what college would be. We don’t have enough movies talking about how the Nazis bombed Pearl Harbor.
Animal House definitely has some awkward parts, but "I'm not going to stand here and let you bad mouth the United States of America." That reply to authority is as popular in our house as "what have the Romans ever done for us?"
They have a movie from 2023, so the aging is not the problem. if we are doing that that I will add The Odyssey to the list. On opening day it was not good.
I think this is true of most movies that have been made over the last 25 years or so. We don’t have to worry about them aging badly because most of them sucked to begin with.
A little over generalizing, eh?? - I went to Roger Ebert's (Overlooked) Film Festival every year for 26 years. And I saw an amazing number of great films. You can go to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebertfest page and find a list of films to think about watching. You will not be disappointed.
Any movies these days that are actually any good are almost certain to be independently made, relatively low budget releases. Big studio productions with nine figure budgets are almost always a mark of vapidity.
Don't forget that for many years indie producers didn't have much of a shot. The advertising budgets for big studio epics were larger than the entire budgets of many movies.
I found it very confusing and chaotic, especially with all the flashbacks. If I hadn't gone online and checked out the story of the Odyssey in advance, it wouldn't have made any sense to me and it still was confusing.
Agree about Temple of Doom. I was pleased to discover that I had seen extremely few of these bad movies, and the ones I did see, with a few exceptions, I didn't like at the time.
Birth of a Nation is the American equivalent of the vile films of the Nazi era in Germany by Leni Riefenstahl and others The fact that a majority of Americans were racists and the majority of the German people were antisemitic does not justify their existence. "We later find reprehensible" is a slander of the decent people in the US and Germany of the period who found them reprehensible (as they are) at the time
The racist and antisemitic views of Americans and Germans of the time may not justify their existence, but the places they occupy in the development of the cinematic arts do. It is possible to evaluate artistic achievements without conferring approbation (or condemnation) upon whatever doctrine or thesis they are promoting. However vile Birth of a Nation’s philosophy might have been, its technical achievements made it a watershed moment in the development of filmmaking. Riefenstahl’s films may not have been AS groundbreaking, but they are generally regarded as masterworks of the documentarian art form.
Actually, I’ve never seen any of them, but you don’t have to see them to know how they’re regarded by film scholars, most of whom, I’m guessing, are not Klan members or Nazis.
I find that I can enjoy great art, movies, or literature that reflects the racism or sexism of the time when it was created or written. I don’t like the racism or sexism, but I understand that it was endemic in the culture at the time the artist created it. If one decided to abjure all art, movies, and literature that reflects the racism or sexism of the period in which it was created or written , that would seriously limit what one can enjoy.
For movies that have aged poorly I would add Blazing Saddles. I loved it when it first came out, but when I tried to watch it 10 or so years ago, the repeated use of the N word was too jarring.
The use of the n-word in Pulp Fiction didn’t bother me at all. That’s the way people used to talk. Verisimilitude and authenticity are important in art.
I have also shaken my head at the silencing or overdub of 'Jap' and 'Nip' in WWII movies. The same stations had no problem with 'Gerrie", 'Kraut' and 'Hun', in WWI and WWII movies.
It's also dated because it lampooned Westerns, which was a dominant genre of the fifties and sixties. Now a lot of the film's satire isn't as relatable.
1. I too am in 100% agreement with Canada on this trade insanity from the demented & deranged child rapist!
2. As for the Target costume, I doubt anyone ever saw the kids face, it's entirely possible that whoever picked the costume only saw it without anyone in it & never saw the photo used online.
3. As for the proposed O'Hare Flyer, it's a joke! it will take it 15 minutes just to get through the Wood St rail yard, the Rockwell St connector & get past Cicero Ave. In fact, the tracks from Rockwell all the way west to the Soo Line are just three tracks, that must be shared with Metra & other UP freight trains, but there's even a grade crossing at Kilbourn Ave. Then the Soo Line tracks to O'Hare are just two tracks, always having at least one freight train on it & very full of curves. Then they must thread a new two track extension into O'Hare, which already has roads, the CTA & the O'Hare people mover there.
It would be a minimum 30-35 minute trip!
This is yet another insane pipe dream, AKA vaporware!
4. As for Dolly's Imagination Library, the one thing she really wanted to be remember for, numerous red states have cut off their appropriations to it, so it's just hanging on by a thread in those wretchedly run states. Why their governors, like the rotten Mike Braun of Indiana don't want kids to learn to read & love books is totally baffling. The only description I have of him & his ilk, is he's scum! But then he waited for over 10 days to ever say a word about the Northwest Indiana electric outage disaster they just had, because they vote for Democrats all the time!
5. Now even Bill Gates is against AI, as he realizes what a disaster it will be for us & the US economy!
On your point #3 about the express train. I am in favor of the concept as it would be great for Chicago. I would suggest the developers bring you on as a consultant (seriously) to point out to them the pitfalls that would need to be addressed.
Do you think Braun, by any chance, is trying to take political advantage of the power mess in northwest Indiana by announcing an investigation? Investigate what? That after repeated bad weather and failure by Gary city officials to properly maintain infrastructure, Nipsco couldn't simply wave a magic wand and make everything go away? Or was it a plot to disenfranchise black people from the power grid?
Gary's problems start with a massively reduced tax base from tens of thousands having moved out of there, far less steel being produced there, a devastated downtown that's looks like a ghost town, every time I have the misfortune to go through it, plus that Indiana is a very racist state & Southern Indiana hates the fact that Northwest Indiana is basically a black metropolis in that state. I'll be they would trade Lake County to Illinois for a slew of those wretched Southern Illinois counties that keep making waves about seceding from Illinois!
I don't know if NIPSCO could have done a better job of keeping their lines clear of trees, but I do know that politicians, activists, and the media are great at demanding more services and investment while also demanding no increase (or even lower) charges.
And my neighbors still whine when ComEd announces a six-hour shut down so that their crews can trim limbs. And many of the limbs are from trees that the neighbors planted under or too near the lines.
The proposed train is supposed to be battery powered. My questions are where they will park all of the trains for charging and how will they provision the massive amount of electrical current required for charging. They proposed running every 15 minutes for 18 hours a day. That's about 2800 miles. That is 10 charges for the current longest range battery passenger trains, in locations without winters.
But, even if they solve the right of way problem, they are doomed by the government permits, inevitable government/interest group add-ons, and construction costs/barriers at O'Hare.
In looking at the route on Google satellite view, it's obvious they are actually telling a few lies about the right of way.
For example, they claim there is 100 feet of ROW, except for two & a half miles through Austin & Oak Park & River Forest, the CTA has the no longer used freight tracks & they aren't going anywhere, which means they will have to use the Metra tracks there.
In addition, at the junction with the Soo Line in Berkeley they will have to build an entirely new mile long bridge with a sweeping curve to maintain the high speed they claim to get past the UP Global II yard there.
Reading about the Washington Post columnist who got her job back after Kirk comments reminds me that last week an active duty soldier got military arrest for protesting the president. Discuss.
For anyone who has never served in the military, there are restrictions on your rights, including engaging in political protest. The major in question should know what he was doing was prohibited and not only did it anyway, but wore his uniform to highlight his active duty status. It was correct for him to be arrested for his actions, even if I sympathize with his desire to speak up. He will no doubt face a court-martial and likely lose his commission over it.
What makes me angry is we have a pResident who uses troops as props at rallies (troops who do not have a choice whether to attend or not, even if many would choose to) to make it seem like he has the entire military on his side. Our military is supposed to be apolitical, but it feels like the current regime is pushing them to choose sides, which is extremely dangerous.
It's a tough call. The first lessons anyone learns when joining the military are the military hierarchical structure and saluting and respecting above one's rank. We would like to think that those defending our freedoms would have those same rights. Military poohbahs would argue that it would be impossible to maintain discipline. Obviously most us here would agree with the soldier's view. But then the vast majority of us did not take an oath to slavishly obey and respect those above us. I would wager that he really pissed off a lot of military people and not just Trumpers.
But the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires all US military to disobey any illegal orders. The Navy officers that sank the alleged drug boats in the Atlantic should've refused, as those were definitely illegal orders & they & their commanders need to be court-martialed for following those illegal orders & Kegsbreath & the demented & deranged one need to be civilian prosecuted for giving those orders!
I agree with you about the targeting of boats they presume to be smuggling drugs. And if we want those who ordered the strikes prosecuted, we're going to need control of Congress.
Regarding the relative weakness of the American League Central in baseball; one choice, instead of getting rid of leagues, lean into them, and have relegation. The worst teams go to one division. It could be a way to get a small market team into the playoffs.
EZ is making too much of it. Dominance has wavered back and forth since the beginning of baseball. In a few years, we'll wonder what all the fuss was about.
Congrats to Brandon Pope for his new gig being announced Monday. Also on Monday, you won’t be able to say I’m full of crap. (Actually, I’m getting a colonoscopy Monday, so literally I will be devoid of crap). Sorry for TMI.
Yeah, my last c’scopy was clean and they told me I don’t have to do them anymore. I think that means they don’t expect me to live long enough for colon cancer to develop.
Unless you have certain genetic mutations (as I do), colon cancer is slow growing. If there's not a big family history, stopping scopes after a certain age is common. My dad is 90, hasn't had one since his mid-70s. Doesn't get a PSA test or even a prostate exam either (one of his brothers died of prostate cancer). Dad figures if he develops any of these, he's not going to treat it anyway. He does keep up with his cardiologist though, meds and tests and all. Got a pacemaker in his 80s.
I've heard there are new blood tests for screening colon cancer, one is called the Shield Test. It's been approved by the FDA and covered by Medicare. I'm going to ask my health care provider if it's available.
As a high-risk individual, I'm not a standard candidate for those but I did Shield and Cologuard (FIT test) this year as part of a study! They had me do two separate FIT test (Cologuard) and the blood test in the weeks before my annual colonoscopy, then the researchers compare results. I think they will be having me do both again this winter before my next annual colonoscopy as part of a long-term study.
Gawd, talk about easy money! What's complicated about drinking a gallon of the nastiest liquid know to man than sitting on the toilet all night? On a different issue, EZ said just in case we need another issue to keep us up all night. This is it.
One year my top-and-tail scopes (colonoscopy and upper endoscopy with EUS) was completely covered by a research grant at UChicago. Would have been $18,000 before insurance otherwise. My insurance covers annual colonoscopies and every-other-year upper endoscopy but won't cover the EUS. I'm in a study of pancreatic cancer (whether there is a benefit to frequent EUS to diagnose before symptoms) in Lynch Syndrome patients with an MSH2 mutuation
Garry - I'm sorry you've had to suffer with Crohn's for so long. I wouldn't wish it (or UC) on my worst enemy. However, this topic string brings sharply into focus PS's demographics!
Best wishes on your colonoscopy! As a Lynch Syndrome previvor, I get one every. single. year. so I'm a pro. All those scopes have been worth it for me - every polyp removed doesn't get a chance to become cancer. I've had a gazillion pre-cancerous polyps removed and no cancer yet at almost 59. I've lived longer without developing colon or uterine cancer than anyone in my family with our gene mutation = that's due to frequent colonoscopies and a prophylactic hysterectomy.
Congratulations to Karen Attiah for winning her complaint against the the WAPO. Does anyone believe she will be welcomed back to her job? Her editors will pay her and put her in a nothing job until she quits from frustration.
Hopefully she will reach a settlement and never have to work for the WAPO.
Is the O'Hare flyer thing really going to happen? I feel like this has been brought up before but never actually gets any traction. Same with the Red Line expansion further south. And once upon a time the brown line was supposed to be expanded as far west as Arlington Heights IIRC.
I think it has some legs because it is completely privately organized and funded. But I think the federal, state, county, city, airport, etc agencies will be able to study it sufficiently to kill it.
Speaking of the Mincing Rascals, I was really looking forward to the addition of Steve Bertrand. Enjoyed listening to his news casts on WGN radio -- always professional and objective. Couldn't have been more wrong -- worse than Marj Halperin.
I may be the only one here that knows him personally. His brother was a former student and player that I coached and I know the entire family well. Nicest people in the world.
re baseball: what a difference a week makes. Cleveland is catching up to the Sox so they might be a Wild Card team battling with 4 other AL teams for that last slot.
Meanwhile in the NL the Cubs are trying their best to lose the top WC spot.
I've seen the Bears go to the Super Bowl twice. I've seen the Bulls win 6 championships. I've seen the Blackhawks win a few Stanley Cups, and I've seen the Sox and the Cubs win a World Series.
The only thing left is a Chicago Subway World Series. I'm certain the Sox can make the postseason, but I don't think they can make it to the WS this year. And I'm running out of time.
My favorite feature on Firefox is its ability to get past most paywalls to read articles for free. Just click on the icon that looks like a piece of paper at the right end of the url field and you're good to go.
Granted, that off-putting Target costume as pictured does look as if its wearer is meant to resemble a minstrel performer, which Target seems to deny. But has anyone figured out what its wearer is SUPPOSED to be recognized as, if not that? I haven't a clue. Surely "Essence of Creepy" is not a character category.
The hat and rictus grin are reminiscent of the Terrifier character from the film series of the same name. They could conceivably have been trying to cash in on that without having to pay Terrifier licensing fees. I wonder if anyone would have noticed this if they had just modeled the costume on a white kid instead.
We are replete with vulnerable single-point-of-failure infrastructure. Remember when a small fire at a suburban AT&T facility took O’Hare offline for several hours? Chicago’s entire water supply comes from two inlets out in the lake. What could a couple of speed boats and some dynamite do to that? How about terrorist vans simultaneously blowing up on the bridges and tunnels connecting Manhattan to the rest of New York? It would be easy to come up with 50 other examples, which I sincerely hope our adversaries are not doing.
This was a huge issue after 9/11. The fact that zero big, soft targets have been hit since means: the bad guys are not very capable; the anti-bad guy services are doing a passable job; and it is better to be lucky than good.
Iran is/was supposed to have a lot of scary cyberwarfare capability and a possible network of terrorist cells in the US. If the best, they could do was annoy some rural water utilities while at war with us, that means something.
My friend ChatGPT says in principle there are six cribs, but only two are in operation and the rest are in no shape to be put back online, especially in any hurry. But even if they were, a few more speedboats wouldn’t be much of an obstacle.
RE: AI in music. and Australian chart regulation. I thought chart rankings were products of of someone ranking based on sales. Basically it is journalism. So I wonder how they will enforce that ban. I realize the First Amendment does not apply to Australia, but the press seems pretty free there.
The issue touches on sampling and use of algorithms to make new music. Rivers Cuomo of Weezer developed algorithms for writing songs, possibly as a reaction to criticism of some of his early personal song writing. It still worked and is generally respected. Sampling has been used to great effect, and counts as new art, IMO. Of course, appropriate permissions should be obtained from the works being sampled. For example, Handsome Boy Modeling School was a project of two hip-hop producers and their work heavily relied on sampling. Compare their track The Truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HW7nj-GUZY with Coffee Cold by Galt MacDermot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Oe06936C0c.
The point of music is to provide sounds that are pleasing to our ears. If that can be generated by an algorithm, then why not allow it?
Why bother with creative humans to make music, that's why.
What is the point of awards and ratings for bots? Aso the issue has moved far beyond sampling and joint development with a human. The bots independently spew output in volumes and use downloads as metrics, so they also do not care about rankings.
Human generated material may become a niche market, but there is every reason for the industry to support it.
The bots do not require any part of the current industry to provide access, income, or new material. If people are willing to pay for machine imitation music, they will have no problem obtaining it as the current industry cannot prevent it from being produced and distributed. The new bot industry can create its own 'recognition' events if they think it has any marketing value. They could rate which engine had greater than 1% repeat listeners of the thousands of songs spewed in a month.
Rankings are not just for the artists. They are for all who are interested. Knowing what we people generally like can function as a connection to the group of music listeners. I stopped paying attention to music rankings long ago, and I do not have the sense of connection to young people that I had when I was young.
Also, a ranking is not a critic's review of quality. The Billboard Hot 100 is based on data counting sales, air play and downloads. It is just numbers. If a completely AI generate song ranks on those metrics then it is just a fact. Declaring rankings by legislative fiat is silly. Like when Indiana took under a consideration a bill that would, by law, state that pi=4.
Ok, then I guess it is no different than doing it by genre. Pop, C&W, Rock, etc but with a new top category of human or artificial. Anyone that wants to compare between the lists can do it.
Anyone can make any list they want. Genre is an arbitrary made-up categorization. I do not expect there to be a non-human category. Genre identification is a function of the the sounds, not the composer or performer. But if someone want to make a list of top songs generated by algorithms, then no one is going to stop them, except for maybe the Australian recording industry association.
AI eliminates a job. Woman is fired. AI pays no taxes, including payroll taxes for her. The amount of money going to education, welfare, and other social goods is diminished, Fired woman needs (a) unemployment benefits and (b) re-education for another job. Multiply by millions of women and men and guess what? (Apart from Altman and others bwah-hahing all the way to the bank.)
The obvious answer is to make the AI companies pay in full for all the electricity and water they use and to pay the amount of taxes previously paid by the fired workers. What a beautiful dream!!!
I still struggle to understand how an economy without jobs for humans would work. You end up with some sort of strange universal basic income that is funded by taxes on the AI enabled companies. I don't share the romantic notion that all of those former work hours will be spent on art, philosophy, and personal fulfillment.
Basket-weaving? Learning Swedish? All utter nonsense. Much more likely to be severe mental health crises and a zillionfold increase in the market of and the need for drugs.
And a faster decline in birthrate and population?
Why? Sex is all that will be left.
You could also require them to pay some sort of severance package for the fired worker--full salary and bennies 'til they get a new job, say, or something equally reasonable. And by "bennies" I mean "benefits." Also, paid counseling--because all these people staying home with their loved ones are going to cause a massive increase in PTSD in the cops who have to keep responding to the family fight calls at their houses.
I clicked on the list of movies that haven't aged well. Why do we need lists like this? First of all, it slandered "Animal House". As if that movie wasn't violating norms from the start. I still call it one of the best comedies of all time .
But then I read the rest of the comments on movies I have actually seen. In general, there's very little there. What was the point of highlighting the stereotypes captured in these films? "Temple of Doom" is just a bad movie- no need to add anything to that mess.
I guess saying that something hasn't aged well isn't the worst insult, but this just seemed like a leftover pile on from peak wokeness. What we need is a museum that places these things in the context of their times and that explains the disconnect. Sometimes a movie like "Birth of a Nation" is really a reflection of a majority view that we later find reprehensible, but having the movie as a relic sheds light on this past in a way that might be useful in keeping the bad views at bay.
I am in the middle of attempting to watch "Gentleman's Agreement" the 1947 Gregory Peck movie about anti-Semitism. So far it's been a hard slog, because the first 20 minutes or so are just overlong, poorly written, poorly edited & boring & it makes me wonder what they were thinking giving director Elia Kazan the Oscar for Best Director for it! It's picking up after Celeste Holm comes in, she also won for Best Supporting Actress, but that's as far as I've gotten so far.
As a palate cleanser, you can watch "Notorious." Best Hitchcock movie. Tied with Rear Window.
Interesting that Rotten Tomatoes ranks 'Shadow of a Doubt' as the best Hitchcock film, with 'Rear Window' second. 'Notorious' comes in at number nine, while my favorite ('Rope') comes in at number thirteen. These rankings are based on their aggregated (tomato-meter) scores.
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/alfred-hitchcock-movies-ranked/
“Rope” is one of my favorites as well (just saw it again last night on TCM). My other two favorite Hitchcock flicks are “The 39 Steps” and “Frenzy”, two others that are seldom included on such lists.
The 39 Steps is a movie I watch every time it shows up on TCM.
Rope is more a technical triumph, with almost all those very long takes & the clever camera work for the scene changes.
I love all of those, but I have a different favorite. My mom was into old movies and exposed me to Hitchcock at an early age. The first use of the household's first VCR was to tape North by Northwest off the TV. It remains among my favorite movies of all time. It's Hitchcock's most entertaining Hollywood movie -- it's the peak Hitchcock film that most recalls the thoroughly amused spirit of his prior British films The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes -- but, for all its MacGuffins, switcheroos, and set-pieces, it's more than sheer adventure. It rewards a little thought, as the best suspense films do. The premise is that Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is an advertising executive mistaken by the baddies for American spy George Kaplan and chased across the country. In other words, it's a classic "wrong man" story.
In the typical wrong man story, the life of the hero before it's disrupted is idyllic and the story is about restoring order. In North by Northwest, by contrast, Thornhill's life is ripe for disruption. He's a charming Madison Avenue schmoozer (think Mad Men) who "sells people things they don't need," who believes that "in the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie, only the expedient exaggeration." He's twice divorced, he has an abiding attachment to his mother, and he exhibits a winking disdain for this week's girlfriend. When he's falsely accused of blowing off a date with mom to the theater to go to a party on Long Island, get shitfaced, and drive off in (and wreck) someone else's Mercedes, mom believes it. He nicely sums up his life when asked to take a real risk (lines delivered at Midway airport, BTW): "Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed." You can't help but conclude that he hasn't grown up, that he's empty, maybe even "rotten," at the core. There's a joke about it: When lighting Eva Marie Saint's Marlboro on the 20th Century Limited, he produces a matchbook with his "trademark, R.O.T." "Roger O. Thornhill; What's the O stand for?" "Nothing." The great irony of the story is that by basically becoming George Kaplan, he becomes something, a real boy -- just what the doctor ordered!
Life is too short to slog through a movie (or a book) you don't like. If directorial or editorial revisions start going through your head in the first 20 minutes, try something else.
Agreed - although with authors I know are slow out of the gate (looking at you, Stephen King) I give them a bit longer. But even then, if you can't pique my interest within five or six chapters, I'm likely to set it aside.
I hope you give the rest of it a try. It's surely old-fashioned and a bit corny, a bit earnest, but the drama of it can creep up on you. His journalistic experiment of pretending to be Jewish to document how he's (mis)treated begins as an inspired notion and becomes a source of visceral outrage for him and a source of impatience and irritation for everyone else, including his WASP-y but ostensibly liberal fiance. (It's her line that gives the film its title.) I think it still packs a punch.
Oh, I finished it. like I wrote, once the Celeste Holm character came in, it picked up & then adding in John Garfield, playing a Corps of Engineer's officer who also told Peck what it was like to be Jewish was, especially the scene in the fancy restricted hotel with the smug, asshole manager. I'm sure Garfield, who was Jewish, his name was Garfinkle, was speaking from experience, which added to the script.
What dragged it down was the very sappy love story, as she wasn't a bigot, just a rich boring drip!
Like some of you, I first saw Animsl House the summer after High School. It came out at a great time for me. It was my view of what college would be. We don’t have enough movies talking about how the Nazis bombed Pearl Harbor.
Animal House definitely has some awkward parts, but "I'm not going to stand here and let you bad mouth the United States of America." That reply to authority is as popular in our house as "what have the Romans ever done for us?"
They have a movie from 2023, so the aging is not the problem. if we are doing that that I will add The Odyssey to the list. On opening day it was not good.
I think this is true of most movies that have been made over the last 25 years or so. We don’t have to worry about them aging badly because most of them sucked to begin with.
A little over generalizing, eh?? - I went to Roger Ebert's (Overlooked) Film Festival every year for 26 years. And I saw an amazing number of great films. You can go to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebertfest page and find a list of films to think about watching. You will not be disappointed.
The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago has lots of good movies that aren’t multi-million dollar productions.
Any movies these days that are actually any good are almost certain to be independently made, relatively low budget releases. Big studio productions with nine figure budgets are almost always a mark of vapidity.
Don't forget that for many years indie producers didn't have much of a shot. The advertising budgets for big studio epics were larger than the entire budgets of many movies.
I found it very confusing and chaotic, especially with all the flashbacks. If I hadn't gone online and checked out the story of the Odyssey in advance, it wouldn't have made any sense to me and it still was confusing.
Agree about Temple of Doom. I was pleased to discover that I had seen extremely few of these bad movies, and the ones I did see, with a few exceptions, I didn't like at the time.
Birth of a Nation is the American equivalent of the vile films of the Nazi era in Germany by Leni Riefenstahl and others The fact that a majority of Americans were racists and the majority of the German people were antisemitic does not justify their existence. "We later find reprehensible" is a slander of the decent people in the US and Germany of the period who found them reprehensible (as they are) at the time
The racist and antisemitic views of Americans and Germans of the time may not justify their existence, but the places they occupy in the development of the cinematic arts do. It is possible to evaluate artistic achievements without conferring approbation (or condemnation) upon whatever doctrine or thesis they are promoting. However vile Birth of a Nation’s philosophy might have been, its technical achievements made it a watershed moment in the development of filmmaking. Riefenstahl’s films may not have been AS groundbreaking, but they are generally regarded as masterworks of the documentarian art form.
Gosh, that hadn't occurred to me. Glad you enjoy watching them. They make me physically sick, but each to their own.
Actually, I’ve never seen any of them, but you don’t have to see them to know how they’re regarded by film scholars, most of whom, I’m guessing, are not Klan members or Nazis.
The real problem with all of Riefenstahl's films are her unending lies that she was never a Nazi. She flat out worshiped Hitler!
From what I understand, she also went out of her way to omit even the slightest hint of any antisemitism in her films.
Seriously?
She flat out made the Nazis & Hitler specifically look like gods in her films!
Her job was to promote the Nazis & Hitler, the Jews were never part of that!
I find that I can enjoy great art, movies, or literature that reflects the racism or sexism of the time when it was created or written. I don’t like the racism or sexism, but I understand that it was endemic in the culture at the time the artist created it. If one decided to abjure all art, movies, and literature that reflects the racism or sexism of the period in which it was created or written , that would seriously limit what one can enjoy.
For movies that have aged poorly I would add Blazing Saddles. I loved it when it first came out, but when I tried to watch it 10 or so years ago, the repeated use of the N word was too jarring.
Never forget, it was co-writer Richard Pryor who put in all the use of the N word!
In "Gentleman's Agreement" they use the word "kike" & variations repeatedly, but the N word was censored out by The Movies Channel, 32.2!
I actually like the SNL skit (with prior of course) with the N word. I think using it once made a point; using it repeatedly got to me.
Are you bothered by Tarantino’s sometimes prolific use of it? It’s used a ton in “Pulp Fiction”, but I thought it was hilarious.
The use of the n-word in Pulp Fiction didn’t bother me at all. That’s the way people used to talk. Verisimilitude and authenticity are important in art.
I have also shaken my head at the silencing or overdub of 'Jap' and 'Nip' in WWII movies. The same stations had no problem with 'Gerrie", 'Kraut' and 'Hun', in WWI and WWII movies.
It's also dated because it lampooned Westerns, which was a dominant genre of the fifties and sixties. Now a lot of the film's satire isn't as relatable.
I watched Blazing Saddles again recently and realized that it would NEVER get made in 2026. Not by anybody.
Sports talk radio spends too much time on pro football during its preseason when both our baseball teams are (fingers crossed) playoff bound.
The Score's drive-time shows will be 75% Bears talk even in June
1. I too am in 100% agreement with Canada on this trade insanity from the demented & deranged child rapist!
2. As for the Target costume, I doubt anyone ever saw the kids face, it's entirely possible that whoever picked the costume only saw it without anyone in it & never saw the photo used online.
3. As for the proposed O'Hare Flyer, it's a joke! it will take it 15 minutes just to get through the Wood St rail yard, the Rockwell St connector & get past Cicero Ave. In fact, the tracks from Rockwell all the way west to the Soo Line are just three tracks, that must be shared with Metra & other UP freight trains, but there's even a grade crossing at Kilbourn Ave. Then the Soo Line tracks to O'Hare are just two tracks, always having at least one freight train on it & very full of curves. Then they must thread a new two track extension into O'Hare, which already has roads, the CTA & the O'Hare people mover there.
It would be a minimum 30-35 minute trip!
This is yet another insane pipe dream, AKA vaporware!
4. As for Dolly's Imagination Library, the one thing she really wanted to be remember for, numerous red states have cut off their appropriations to it, so it's just hanging on by a thread in those wretchedly run states. Why their governors, like the rotten Mike Braun of Indiana don't want kids to learn to read & love books is totally baffling. The only description I have of him & his ilk, is he's scum! But then he waited for over 10 days to ever say a word about the Northwest Indiana electric outage disaster they just had, because they vote for Democrats all the time!
5. Now even Bill Gates is against AI, as he realizes what a disaster it will be for us & the US economy!
On your point #3 about the express train. I am in favor of the concept as it would be great for Chicago. I would suggest the developers bring you on as a consultant (seriously) to point out to them the pitfalls that would need to be addressed.
They have a boss who apparently thinks he knows everything about trains!
I absolutely know it can't get there in just 15 minutes, that's a fantasy out of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
I don't believe it will ever be built!
Do you think Braun, by any chance, is trying to take political advantage of the power mess in northwest Indiana by announcing an investigation? Investigate what? That after repeated bad weather and failure by Gary city officials to properly maintain infrastructure, Nipsco couldn't simply wave a magic wand and make everything go away? Or was it a plot to disenfranchise black people from the power grid?
Gary's problems start with a massively reduced tax base from tens of thousands having moved out of there, far less steel being produced there, a devastated downtown that's looks like a ghost town, every time I have the misfortune to go through it, plus that Indiana is a very racist state & Southern Indiana hates the fact that Northwest Indiana is basically a black metropolis in that state. I'll be they would trade Lake County to Illinois for a slew of those wretched Southern Illinois counties that keep making waves about seceding from Illinois!
I mostly agree with you. I think downstaters- and I have known a few- would trade Gary for a plate of fresh brownies.
Morton Marcus "Indiana is the middle finger of the South stuck up in the Midwest."
I don't know if NIPSCO could have done a better job of keeping their lines clear of trees, but I do know that politicians, activists, and the media are great at demanding more services and investment while also demanding no increase (or even lower) charges.
NIPSCO is utterly incompetent. Much of the tree work could've been done earlier, but they just ignored the problem.
Don't forget ComEd was almost as bad years ago until they too had an outage disaster over a large area & were forced to change by the state.
But will Indiana actually force NIPSCO to improve? I serious doubt it!
And my neighbors still whine when ComEd announces a six-hour shut down so that their crews can trim limbs. And many of the limbs are from trees that the neighbors planted under or too near the lines.
The proposed train is supposed to be battery powered. My questions are where they will park all of the trains for charging and how will they provision the massive amount of electrical current required for charging. They proposed running every 15 minutes for 18 hours a day. That's about 2800 miles. That is 10 charges for the current longest range battery passenger trains, in locations without winters.
But, even if they solve the right of way problem, they are doomed by the government permits, inevitable government/interest group add-ons, and construction costs/barriers at O'Hare.
In looking at the route on Google satellite view, it's obvious they are actually telling a few lies about the right of way.
For example, they claim there is 100 feet of ROW, except for two & a half miles through Austin & Oak Park & River Forest, the CTA has the no longer used freight tracks & they aren't going anywhere, which means they will have to use the Metra tracks there.
In addition, at the junction with the Soo Line in Berkeley they will have to build an entirely new mile long bridge with a sweeping curve to maintain the high speed they claim to get past the UP Global II yard there.
Reading about the Washington Post columnist who got her job back after Kirk comments reminds me that last week an active duty soldier got military arrest for protesting the president. Discuss.
For anyone who has never served in the military, there are restrictions on your rights, including engaging in political protest. The major in question should know what he was doing was prohibited and not only did it anyway, but wore his uniform to highlight his active duty status. It was correct for him to be arrested for his actions, even if I sympathize with his desire to speak up. He will no doubt face a court-martial and likely lose his commission over it.
What makes me angry is we have a pResident who uses troops as props at rallies (troops who do not have a choice whether to attend or not, even if many would choose to) to make it seem like he has the entire military on his side. Our military is supposed to be apolitical, but it feels like the current regime is pushing them to choose sides, which is extremely dangerous.
I should have read your post before making mine. Very good!
It's a tough call. The first lessons anyone learns when joining the military are the military hierarchical structure and saluting and respecting above one's rank. We would like to think that those defending our freedoms would have those same rights. Military poohbahs would argue that it would be impossible to maintain discipline. Obviously most us here would agree with the soldier's view. But then the vast majority of us did not take an oath to slavishly obey and respect those above us. I would wager that he really pissed off a lot of military people and not just Trumpers.
To your point, whether we like it or not, Trump is at the top of the chain of command.
But the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires all US military to disobey any illegal orders. The Navy officers that sank the alleged drug boats in the Atlantic should've refused, as those were definitely illegal orders & they & their commanders need to be court-martialed for following those illegal orders & Kegsbreath & the demented & deranged one need to be civilian prosecuted for giving those orders!
I agree with you about the targeting of boats they presume to be smuggling drugs. And if we want those who ordered the strikes prosecuted, we're going to need control of Congress.
Regarding the relative weakness of the American League Central in baseball; one choice, instead of getting rid of leagues, lean into them, and have relegation. The worst teams go to one division. It could be a way to get a small market team into the playoffs.
I’ve been saying that for years, ever since I learned it’s how European soccer leagues are structured.
EZ is making too much of it. Dominance has wavered back and forth since the beginning of baseball. In a few years, we'll wonder what all the fuss was about.
Congrats to Brandon Pope for his new gig being announced Monday. Also on Monday, you won’t be able to say I’m full of crap. (Actually, I’m getting a colonoscopy Monday, so literally I will be devoid of crap). Sorry for TMI.
have fun Sunday night with the clean out. I always tape the light switch on in the bathroom!
I've had over a dozen now & even got paid $600 for one to teach students how to do them!
Yeah, my last c’scopy was clean and they told me I don’t have to do them anymore. I think that means they don’t expect me to live long enough for colon cancer to develop.
Unless you have certain genetic mutations (as I do), colon cancer is slow growing. If there's not a big family history, stopping scopes after a certain age is common. My dad is 90, hasn't had one since his mid-70s. Doesn't get a PSA test or even a prostate exam either (one of his brothers died of prostate cancer). Dad figures if he develops any of these, he's not going to treat it anyway. He does keep up with his cardiologist though, meds and tests and all. Got a pacemaker in his 80s.
I've heard there are new blood tests for screening colon cancer, one is called the Shield Test. It's been approved by the FDA and covered by Medicare. I'm going to ask my health care provider if it's available.
After five years, just to be conservative, my doc recommended that I do a Cologuard. It's icky, but at least it reported No Problem.
As a high-risk individual, I'm not a standard candidate for those but I did Shield and Cologuard (FIT test) this year as part of a study! They had me do two separate FIT test (Cologuard) and the blood test in the weeks before my annual colonoscopy, then the researchers compare results. I think they will be having me do both again this winter before my next annual colonoscopy as part of a long-term study.
I've seen it on display in my doctor's office, and what I don't understand is why it only seems to be available to Medicare recipients.
Gawd, talk about easy money! What's complicated about drinking a gallon of the nastiest liquid know to man than sitting on the toilet all night? On a different issue, EZ said just in case we need another issue to keep us up all night. This is it.
One year my top-and-tail scopes (colonoscopy and upper endoscopy with EUS) was completely covered by a research grant at UChicago. Would have been $18,000 before insurance otherwise. My insurance covers annual colonoscopies and every-other-year upper endoscopy but won't cover the EUS. I'm in a study of pancreatic cancer (whether there is a benefit to frequent EUS to diagnose before symptoms) in Lynch Syndrome patients with an MSH2 mutuation
A dozen??
Almost 77 now, have had Crohn's since I was 15. Scopings since 1984.
Garry - I'm sorry you've had to suffer with Crohn's for so long. I wouldn't wish it (or UC) on my worst enemy. However, this topic string brings sharply into focus PS's demographics!
Feel for you. Have mine coming up. Or coming out if you prefer.
Best wishes on your colonoscopy! As a Lynch Syndrome previvor, I get one every. single. year. so I'm a pro. All those scopes have been worth it for me - every polyp removed doesn't get a chance to become cancer. I've had a gazillion pre-cancerous polyps removed and no cancer yet at almost 59. I've lived longer without developing colon or uterine cancer than anyone in my family with our gene mutation = that's due to frequent colonoscopies and a prophylactic hysterectomy.
Congratulations to Karen Attiah for winning her complaint against the the WAPO. Does anyone believe she will be welcomed back to her job? Her editors will pay her and put her in a nothing job until she quits from frustration.
Hopefully she will reach a settlement and never have to work for the WAPO.
Is the O'Hare flyer thing really going to happen? I feel like this has been brought up before but never actually gets any traction. Same with the Red Line expansion further south. And once upon a time the brown line was supposed to be expanded as far west as Arlington Heights IIRC.
Sure. Right after the Cross-Town Expressway.
I think it has some legs because it is completely privately organized and funded. But I think the federal, state, county, city, airport, etc agencies will be able to study it sufficiently to kill it.
Speaking of the Mincing Rascals, I was really looking forward to the addition of Steve Bertrand. Enjoyed listening to his news casts on WGN radio -- always professional and objective. Couldn't have been more wrong -- worse than Marj Halperin.
I may be the only one here that knows him personally. His brother was a former student and player that I coached and I know the entire family well. Nicest people in the world.
I dunno. He's nice. Sometimes thoughtful. But he has no radio presence at all. Amazing that he made his living on the air.
re baseball: what a difference a week makes. Cleveland is catching up to the Sox so they might be a Wild Card team battling with 4 other AL teams for that last slot.
Meanwhile in the NL the Cubs are trying their best to lose the top WC spot.
ESPN says there’s a 1-in-64 chance for a subway series this year. Keep the faith!
I've seen the Bears go to the Super Bowl twice. I've seen the Bulls win 6 championships. I've seen the Blackhawks win a few Stanley Cups, and I've seen the Sox and the Cubs win a World Series.
The only thing left is a Chicago Subway World Series. I'm certain the Sox can make the postseason, but I don't think they can make it to the WS this year. And I'm running out of time.
I am SO disappointed with my hometown Tigers this year.
Same!
> Jack Wallen at ZDNET: “I dumped Firefox, but these five features finally won me back.”
Firefox is king. Only browser with an ad blocker.
I've been using Firefox for at least twenty years - it has its flaws, but has been better in my opinion than other browsers I've tried.
Have you tried Brave?
I haven't really done much browser testing lately since we've clamped down on unknown software at work.
My favorite feature on Firefox is its ability to get past most paywalls to read articles for free. Just click on the icon that looks like a piece of paper at the right end of the url field and you're good to go.
Most sites have ways to block ads. Just get out your wallet.
Granted, that off-putting Target costume as pictured does look as if its wearer is meant to resemble a minstrel performer, which Target seems to deny. But has anyone figured out what its wearer is SUPPOSED to be recognized as, if not that? I haven't a clue. Surely "Essence of Creepy" is not a character category.
I believe it was marketed as a "clown costume"
I think a 'boo' pose would have conveyed the 'scary clown' idea without offense.
The hat and rictus grin are reminiscent of the Terrifier character from the film series of the same name. They could conceivably have been trying to cash in on that without having to pay Terrifier licensing fees. I wonder if anyone would have noticed this if they had just modeled the costume on a white kid instead.
Reminded me of the "David S. Pumpkins" skit on SNL.
We are replete with vulnerable single-point-of-failure infrastructure. Remember when a small fire at a suburban AT&T facility took O’Hare offline for several hours? Chicago’s entire water supply comes from two inlets out in the lake. What could a couple of speed boats and some dynamite do to that? How about terrorist vans simultaneously blowing up on the bridges and tunnels connecting Manhattan to the rest of New York? It would be easy to come up with 50 other examples, which I sincerely hope our adversaries are not doing.
This was a huge issue after 9/11. The fact that zero big, soft targets have been hit since means: the bad guys are not very capable; the anti-bad guy services are doing a passable job; and it is better to be lucky than good.
Iran is/was supposed to have a lot of scary cyberwarfare capability and a possible network of terrorist cells in the US. If the best, they could do was annoy some rural water utilities while at war with us, that means something.
Absolutely no reason any water plant should be connected to the internet!
There are multiple inlets in the lake. Several cribs a couple of miles out plus both filtration plants have shore intakes.
My friend ChatGPT says in principle there are six cribs, but only two are in operation and the rest are in no shape to be put back online, especially in any hurry. But even if they were, a few more speedboats wouldn’t be much of an obstacle.
There's still the shore intakes which can handle the entire need for water.
Sure hope you’re right but I am not feeling comforted.
When I wrote long ago about other vulnerabilities than airports and airplanes, some readers chided me for "giving terrorists ideas." As if.