Facebork has put me in Facebook-jail for the 4th time in 4 weeks. I figure they’re trying to make the experience worse so that people will be interested in paying money for actual customer service. Not sure that’s a viable strategy, but…
“No one in this world… has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
–H.L. Mencken
In summary: This late-60s collection includes what many consider to be the two best stories about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as well as the earliest complete story about the Mighty Twain. As such it’s essential reading for the sword-and-sorcery enthusiast. And for once it’s a Leiber book without a convoluted publication history, because—just kidding! It’s fairly complicated, at least as regards the last, longest, and earliest-written story in the book. But more of that below. Anyway, it’s not strictly relevant to the entertainment-value of the book, which is high.
Typo of the day is cruch (where I intended to type crush).
I figure cruching is like crushing, only with more crunch. And maybe you need a crutch afterwards.
Some great demonstrations here of how chatbots don’t think. I especially like the bot’s explanation of why a pound of feathers weighs the same as two pounds of bricks. An entity that could think would recognize the issue there. The chatbot just generates text based on probability—like any lazy writer trying to baffle you with bullshit because they can’t dazzle you with brilliance. The “college essays” that so awed the gullible last winter were cut from the same threadbare cloth.
I don’t think actual artificial intelligence is impossible, but this stuff is like putting human clothes on a chair and saying, “We’re pretty close to creating an actual person! All we need to do is figure out how clothes generate people!” Since they don’t, the wait is going to be longer than Musk et al. expect. If it ever happens, it’ll be through some completely different approach, e.g.: an artificial brain that rivals a human brain in its complexity and function.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23622120/elon-musk-solve-ai-chatgpt-wrong
I made a couple of sales in February: “The Venomous Sands of Amas Lamaar” to Tales from the Magician’s Skull (slated for issue 13) and “Evil Honey” to Old Moon Quarterly (slated for issue 3).
A great piece by Elizabeth Weil about Emily Bender, who is waging a war of ideas against stochastic parrots.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-emily-m-bender.html
Um. Geeze. I guess I won’t be pursuing my interest in collecting Shel Silverstein’s cartoons any time soon.
My partner in crime is interviewed in this piece on improv and therapy in the Toledo Blade. Some people say she’s great; some people say she’s amazing; others aren’t sure, but think ”Maybe both!”.
Maybe the suits at Marvel should have read Niven’s “All the Myriad Ways” before going all-in on the Multiverse. It’s not as if you can’t make a good movie with the concept (e.g. INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE), but it does have its depressing aspects.
In summary: This is the best biography of Sayers that I have read, or am likely to read.
