Wonderful Matters

Just a brief blog post to direct you to Edward Ring's piece this week, here's the link . He himself makes reference to another piece that has gone viral, one that has a theme that is something quite sobering, and never unanticipated by those who've been paying attention. With all the talk of all that the SPIT will dominate -- and I'm sorry, I can't call it "AI" because the thing Artificial Intelligence  does not exist. It is a phantasm in the minds of those who live by the precepts of the World Ops who shove it into the minds of those who obsequiously follow. The backronym SPIT, by the way, is for Superduperextrasuperultramegamagmasupersupersuperduperdeeduper- fast Processing Information Technology... With all the talk of what it will do it is clear that it will do one thing. It will murder us all. Physically? Maybe not so much, at least not right away. But emotionally? Spiritually? Meaningfully? Yes . Part of being human is taking pride in accomplishing s...

The latest greatest in "AI"-generated video content comes from something called "Seedance 2.0." Nothing special about it except that it is just cleaner, smoother, nicer, and realer. Not really anything because soon there will still be  Better. And then after that even better. And better. And again better and better and better. And of course, Realer. When will the cognitive disruption be so great that the inability to see the fake from the real will result in some kind of social, economic, even political "black swan" event. As it is we are having to confront those realities, as it were, with breakneck speed. The things that can result from being able to be something of an influencer through media technology, merely holding a computer device in your hands with only the limits of your imagination impeding anything you can do as the best 21st century Baroque composer...  Every day we are experiencing something new we've never really had to fully address. T...

Do you remember in your college humanities class learning about the Baroque period, that time around the 1600s when everything belonging to the rich and powerful became garishly ornate? All the art, design, architecture, and music just got so much more decoratively entrancing. If you remember the details about why that all happened at that time, it was really all just part of the Counter Reformation, a way for the Roman Catholic Church to augment its performance art duties in the most attractive way it could. For if you remember the Reformation  Reformation, Rome noticed a lot of people reading the Bible and seeing God's Kingdom was nothing like what Rome told them it was. So, to rein them back in, Rome had to do something to make things more appealing, more dazzling, more compelling to keep them in the club and paying good money to keep the religious racket thriving.  All the spectacle of all that Rome has promoted through the centuries is no different than what happens in th...