Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1036
Depeche Mode in Boston, end People are People erasure, Biden's AI EO, Doctor's offices, capitalistic dopamine hits in times of political horror, in search of a Reggae primer
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I hope you are doing okay. I hope you are enduring in this world. Perhaps you’ve found some way to find peace, honest peace and happiness in this world with so much suffering. That would be amazing. What is your secret? Tell me your secret so I can silently judge you and be convinced you’re wrong and it’s not possible.
What am I doing. I need a therapist. A friend told me they have a therapist that actually gives advice, and I felt some hope for the first time in a while. Like… I don’t want to sleep with Otto Rank or anything1, but I wish we still had therapists of yesteryear, opinionated and bossy. But there is hope. There is at least one, some old lady in the midwest, from what I understand.
Depeche Mode played in Boston last night and I had wanted to go but I did not make it and it seems like a lot of my friends had a really good time and sure they only played two songs from Music from the Masses and Martin didn’t do “Somebody,” god, he must be so sick of singing that song, but it still seems like it was a great time. Is Depeche Mode in my top ten? No. Top twenty? Probably not. I have some problems with Dave Gahan I can’t really explain them. But I do love Martin Gore, I do love the place Depeche Mode holds in our world, and I have profound, powerful memories of them as a teenager. Of the universal angst of “Somebody,” of the power of “People are People,” even though the band denies the impact and brilliance of that song.2 End “People are People erasure.” Oh god an Erasure pun. Help!
Depeche Mode 101 was a massively important film for me, of course. Those fan shots. Role models. I wish I could have gone. But also I don’t seem to ever go to shows anymore. But also I went to Peter Gabriel so, you know, that’s a show. Confusing. I have confused feelings. Given the first paragraph of this GMHHAY, that is not a surprise.
So I read Biden’s new executive order on artificial intelligence last night. It was… fine. Milquetoast. Political. “Reasonable.” It did not satisfy me in any way with its broad denunciations of AI. It did not seek to define a new freedom, freedom from AI. It did not call for AI labeling — except within the context of the federal government. I wish it did a lot more, I wish it was a lot more hard core. But actually it’s a completely reasonable, meticulous, balanced document that brings to bear the awesome power of the United States government and its many branches, to try and keep AI… civil and American, I guess. It says a lot that needs to be said — that AI should not harm, or prejudice, or be solely in the hands of business titans. But it also seems to think that AI can be a thing that business people can use and have, and it keeps saying completely unproven things like “AI can do a lot of good.” Mmm hmmm. We will see. Also its definition of AI is kinda looney and not actually in keeping with the rest of the EO’s implications. Also the definition of AI specifically precludes rogue AIs or superintelligence and that is weird to me. But what do I know I suppose.
a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. Artificial intelligence systems use machine- and human-based inputs to perceive real and virtual environments; abstract such perceptions into models through analysis in an automated manner; and use model inference to formulate options for information or action.
Props for its proper hyphen usage, though. Dying art. Thank you, Lisa, for schooling me. You are a great editor.
Mostly the thing reads like a pro-competition document, rallying the US against China and other nation-level competitors. It does not seriously contemplate the evil of businesses in any way, really. It is pretty rah rah rah, though cautious, I guess. Balanced. Like a sane person would write.
Here’s hoping if Trump is elected he forgets the thing was written and lets the nether parts of the government just keep on keeping on with the nuts and bolts of this order. Certainly better than anything that lunatic would do.
Hey are you a reggae fan? Do you know tons about “cool” reggae? I would like to know more about “cool” reggae. The great sound clashes James Murphy mentions. The cool reggae that is parodied with that photo of Gwyneth on the album cover in Royal Tenenbaums. I need a cool reggae guide. Primer. Playlist with annotations. Something. Can you help a brother out? Gracias.
I need a new thing to spark joy. I got a new cardigan, it is lovely but it doesn’t spark joy, it just does the job. I need a new toilet seat foot pedal or thickness planer or…. something. Some little capitalist dopamine hit to take the edge off of this world of holocausts and violence and everyone just having to go about their day pretending everything is fine and people introducing themselves on Threads by casually mentioning their Twitter following count — my god the amount of pain a large chunk of Americans are feeling right now as they give up those follower counts. Maybe a new camera with an amazing new f1.1 lens and almost no grain and just the most amazing bokeh. Maybe a log splitter. Maybe I should buy a boat.3
Took Jane to the doctor yesterday, family visit, Emma and I took her together cuz Emma is sick. Jane is sick. Everyone’s sick. Jane got some antibiotics, got her covid booster (yay!) and her flu shot. Then the doctor took a look at Emma and gave her antibiotics too. Basically my whole household probably has walking pneumonia, but who knows, because only a chest X-ray will confirm, maybe, but the doctor does think she can hear the clicking sound in there, so lets take the antibiotics.
Also this morning I went to the doctor again, fourth visit for the fam in like a week. Just to get my blood taken, even though it will be a terrible test result because of the stopping of the cholesterol meds because of the leg cramps it is not working by the way woe is me.
Emma got her medicine in a pill like an adult but Jane got hers mixed into a liquid. And the liquid is delicious. It is, like, 10x more tasty and yummy than the vampiric Actifed of my childhood. Tastes like a milkshake. Muy deliciouso. Just amazing.
Except Jane won’t drink it because it is opaque and she does not drink opaque medicines. And she is adamant about this and we are going to have to give it to her twice a day for a week and she absolutely won’t take it and her stubbornness is stunning and I know all of this is just desserts for how stubborn I was ha ha ha joke’s on me except I took my freakin medicine! Except I probably didn’t, and my mom will be here in two weeks to remind me of it, I am sure. Will be just great.
So I don’t know, I guess we will just spend an hour, hour and a half twice a day for the next week trying to get her to take medicine something about pandas not f**king to save their species.
Didn’t have a playlist ready today so here is a really melodic, beautiful, harmonious playlist of what my brain feels like today.
Feel better talk soon.
Exactly one person who reads this will get this reference. Hi Annie. Hello first GMHHAY footnote are the floodgates open now?
how weird is that? I never understood that. Like a proto, more pure version of Radiohead denying “Creep”.
If you knew the amount of time I spent trying to decide whether to annotate that reference or not, you would consider 5150ing me.
bless you for the third annotation 🙏
Man Depeche Mode at MSG was so so so good. Uplifting. BTW I don't know much about reggae but you may find WFMU's Sunday morning reggae show of interest: https://www.wfmu.org/playlists/RS