Friday Notes (Dec 22, 2023)

Tonight, to celebrate the long-awaited Solstice, I’ll crack open the first of the three bottles of champagne I plan to drink before the end of the year. The Eves of Christmas and New Year’s account for the other two.

Of the three, the Solstice is the more important to me, the most looked forward to. The end of the calendar year is an arbitrary marker, and Christmas is a whole other tin of Lumbricina. Solstice, however, is a baggage-free party. (An ancient one at that.)

Speaking of parties, here is the last Friday Notes of 2023.

The Solstice happened exactly eight hours before I set this post to publish (so start the party at any time). In fact, here in the Central Time Zone, it happened yesterday. Dec 22, 03:28 GMT (21:28 CST Dec 21)

Because the rate of change in the amount of daylight, which has been slowing, stops for an instant at the Solstice, and then reverses direction [see Solar Derivative], it’ll be a couple of weeks before longer days are apparent. But they’re on their way! Hurray!

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The recent post about Awful Adaptations didn’t mention the HBO TV series Westworld, an adaptation of 1973 and 1976 films, Westworld and Futureworld. The former was the first feature film written and directed by Michael Crichton.

I thought about including it in the post. Its artistic decline was indeed awful, especially in light of the promise the first season showed. I wrote a lot of posts about that first season (including analysis of each episode). The second season wasn’t awful, but the decline was apparent. I didn’t write nearly as much about season two.

Season three isn’t worth discussing, and season four much less so.

But season one was excellent, memorable, and, with a minor contribution from season two, keeps the series off the Awful Adaptations list.

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In the comment section of that recent post, I posted a link to a recent video from YouTube popular media observer The Critical Drinker about what’s wrong with popular media today (a constant drumbeat in pop-med circles). It also reminded me what an incredibly good job Peter Jackson did adapting Lord of the Rings.

It’s worth reposting here:

And doubly worth repeating a pair of lines from the video:

“Hollywood used to depict heroic actions. Now they can only see heroic identities.”

Indeed. It sums up a big problem with a lot of popular media today.

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Lately, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to blues-rock musicians that, while not new to the world, are new to me. In particular, three amazingly musical women are really impressing me: Ana Popovic, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Samantha Fish.

Needle pegged on Wow! ratings for all three.

Three more just as good that I haven’t yet gotten much into yet: Beth Hart, Grace Potter, Susan Tedeschi (not to mention the outstanding Tedeschi Trucks Band). Half a dozen examples of earthly angels giving us musical manna from heaven.

Of note here, something from a Joanne Shaw Taylor interview when asked about her music, which she’d pursued from a young age. She characterized it as:

“The only means you know how to be yourself and express yourself.”

I thought that was an excellent observation about artists. I’ve long said that art was simple to define — art is what artists do. The trick, then, is defining an artist. I think the above is a key aspect.

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An interesting aspect of art, especially fiction, is how it charts both the heights and depths of humanity. Art can be just decorative or entertaining, but it also (again, especially fiction) contains fables, cautions, predictions, morals, metaphors, allegories, goals, and observations. (What it shouldn’t contain is preaching or lecturing. Those are for pulpits and schools.)

Fiction: the fusion of facts and lies — falsehoods in search of fundamental truths.

Or sometimes just a rippin’ good yarn. Entertainment is important!

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This video of Stephen Fry reading a letter Nick Cave wrote about ChatGPT expresses very nicely my sense of what I’ve seen so far of generative AI:

I’ve seen still and video images created by generative AI as well as fiction, and I’ve been severely underwhelmed so far. I find most of it boring, but then I find a lot of art, even professional art, boring. I’m especially numb to the love of weird random shit that’s been popular for ages. Art is all about intent, and randomness is the opposite of that.

This also taps into the myth that everyone is an artist. I don’t think so. I think it’s closer to be an innate talent. Training improves natural talents. (Computer graphics tools made “doing graphics” easy, but they didn’t make people instantly capable of good art.) In the hands of an artist, generative AI can be a tool that aids artistic expression, but it cannot be a crutch for laziness.

Real art comes from the heart, and effort, and AI ain’t anywhere near close yet.

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I noticed a sudden drop in robocalls on my landline. From around a dozen a day to a few per week. I wondered if there was a problem with my line.

Turns out the FCC voted on December 13th for new regulations closing a loophole that — as my experience the last couple weeks seems to show — should reduce these calls a lot.

Cool. Hope it lasts, and what took so long? But yay FCC! Now let’s severely reduce email spam.

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Some say materialism and physicalism are the same thing, some distinguish between them. I’m in the latter group. Don’t recall what popped this into my head recently, but I think, for me, it amounts to this:

Materialism: Monism. Weak emergence. All emergent properties and laws can be deduced from the most basic ones. Reduction always works.

Physicalism: Strong emergence. New unguessable laws arise at higher levels of organization. These laws can only be determined from behaviors at a given layer of organization. As such, reduction can fail.

In particular, physicalism, for me, admits to various forms of physical dualism. The ancient philosophy of Yin-Yang sees this dualism in all aspects of nature, and I think it reflects a genuine aspect of reality.

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A very old note I found tucked away:

When those scientists get together and start talking about “resonances” and “mixing angles” and “hadron jets” they may seem to outsiders to come from a place with a language that sounds like English but isn’t.

The same feeling might happen listening in on a conversation between two expert auto mechanics, or two baseball stats experts, or even gourmet chefs. Or surgeons, or airline pilots, or fashion designers. Each profession has a lingo understood and used by its members.

Some feel that lingo is exclusionary (which, indeed, it is). Some go on to feel it’s deliberately exclusionary (which it absolutely is not). Precise and efficient communication in any field requires well-defined terms for objects in that field.

It’s only exclusionary in the sense that not knowing French excludes you from speaking to the French in their native language. The French didn’t sit down and design the language just to exclude others. (Okay, maybe that’s a bad example, but you get my point.)

I know guys who, not only know who played in the 1955 World Series (Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees), but who won and by how many games (Dodgers, 4-3). The really serious sports fans know their game, its history and players. (I looked that stuff up.)

The point is: It’s all a learned thing. Can you learn the rules of baseball? You can learn physics or math.

It boils down to what truly interests you. If you’re deeply into knitting or golf or making beer (or science or baseball), you can probably go on for days about the intricacies of it.

The real question may be why so few people seem to be deeply interested in science or math. Why have cable channels devoted to science essentially given up and descended into the morass of “reality” TV? (Because there’s more ass?)

[That reference to cable channels really dates this note. Streaming platforms are replacing cable hookups just as cell phones are replacing landlines.]

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Almost three years ago I wrote about my boredom with superhero stories. By the time I wrote the post, the boredom was already extreme. The last couple months, Prime Video had most of the recent DCEU movies. I haven’t seen those recent ones, so I figured I’d finally check them out.

Shazam! (2019) was kind of fun. Dumb AF but I actually enjoyed watching it. The trick with live-action superhero stories is to not take it too seriously. (The Deadpool movies are good examples.) The sequel, Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), wasn’t entirely unwatchable, but it was decidedly inferior. I felt bad for Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren. They deserve better.

Black Adam (2022) was pretty dumb but also not entirely unwatchable. Duane’s main problem here is joining the party after it’s all but over. Much worse was Aquaman (2018), which was nearly unwatchable (but I got through it with the help of several beers).

Worst of all was The Batman (2022). I couldn’t get through but twenty minutes of it before turning off.

I planned to watch the original Wonder Woman (2017), but I’ve tried that one twice before and couldn’t get through it. Too much dumbness. I’ve heard Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) is greatly inferior to the original, so figured to leave both for last. They’re no longer available on Prime, so never mind.

I probably should have watched Joker (2019), which I’ve heard is good, but I was never in the mood for a movie I’ve also heard is pretty grim and depressing. Per above, more the depths of human experience than our heights, and, honestly, I’m rarely in the mood for that.

Bottom line, I am so over superhero stories. I was never that into them to begin with because they’re fantasies, and I have limited engagement with things that aren’t real. Especially things that preposterously aren’t real. Superheroes are preposterous. That’s part of their fun, but you can’t take them too seriously.

This is exactly why live-action superhero stories are problematic but can work as animations. The preposterous and dreamlike are best served with media that isn’t too realistic. It’s the realism of modern cinema that highlights just how utterly silly it all is.

Speaking of animated series, Invincible, season two (first four episodes) came out. I liked the first season okay, but re-watching it and the new episodes, and the Atom Eve special, just confirmed my disengagement.

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A huge part of the problem for me is that, despite whatever awesome powers these jokers have, their battles invariably amount to Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em fisticuffs with as much collateral structural damage as possible. I realized it’s exactly the same as when little kids gleefully smash their toys together with no regard for narrative or cause. (The structural damage is more reminiscent of babies knocking over their blocks.)

If I’m not being clear, it’s fucking childish. Superheroes are childish enough, but fantasy is good, and we should all know our inner child (from an appropriate distance). This endless parade of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em is fucking childish, and I’ve grown to loath it.

And I can’t help but think about the collateral destruction — and often mass deaths — involved in these childish entertainments. What an odd reflection of our social values.

This has been gnawing at me ever since the “good guys” blew up the Death Star (the first time) and thousands of innocent workers died while the “good guys” all cheered. No notion of the enormous cost of war. The Lord of the Rings movies sort of touched on it a little, but there, too, I was struck by the thousands of virtual deaths implied.

It’s one thing in a book or animation where there’s some distance, but modern cinema makes it realistic without regard for actual realism.

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I’m retired. How am I so busy? How did I get so behind?

Stay daylit, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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