4/8 Open Thread: International Romani Day

~~ Image is the Flag of the Romani People

Solar Eclipse and an Ancient American City

We're on the road today, headed to Southern Illinois to see the solar eclipse on Monday (provided it doesn't rain and isn't cloudy). While we're there we're going to visit Cahokia, a large city from a thousand to 500 years ago. So the news round up today won't include the most recent of events.

Afternoon folks!

This week, we start off with two of the greatest blues harmonica players, a compilation of early recordings from Sonny Boy Williamson and and album from James Cotton. Following that there's a 70's album from Albert King. Entering the blues-rock segment, Lonnie Mack follows that with (I think) his first album from 1963, and there are albums from Johnny Winter and Dr. Feelgood. In the diversity department this week there's a compilation album from The Move which I will add a few more songs to later this weekend.

Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!

Good morning, good people!

Another week to reflect upon, noting most things are worse, few things (if any) are better, compared to last week.

As I write this, I have not read the mountain of info joe in Friday night's ebs about Blinken, whether WWIII has actually started, accidentally might start, or is planned in advance to start. Please give us your thoughts on that topic, as it has to be the top concern of us all. No election, no economic crash, no pandemic comes close to the incredible horrors and devastating impact on humanity of a global conflict.

Note: I wrote the gist of this piece, below the fold, yesterday morning and left it untitled. When I came in from doing yard work around dinner time I found that Antony Blinken had made this shocking statement, and that lead me to the introduction and my title.

The King's Jester has spoken: King of the Mountain

Blinken says that Ukraine will be joining NATO. Under Article 5, this means that an attack on Ukraine will be considered an attack on the United States. If you want World War 3, vote Biden in November.

Source: X

AI? I'm Not Impressed

Matt Taibbi has recently written a couple of articles about AI which made me pay attention. The first started with talking about how Google's AI tool, Gemini, made images which were wrong, but racially diverse! Like everyone, Taibbi thought something like, 'Yea this is bad, but it won't affect me...' Until it did. Right away. He stopped examining the issues with Gemini's images and asked Gemini a question about himself. And it gave him a list of a few things he supposedly did which he actually never did. It mixed up true statements and writings with things it had, apparently, made up. It credited him with articles he never wrote; articles which no-one ever wrote because they didn't exist. And that is both maddening and scary for everyone.

This make me laugh in a rueful way: from https://chappatte.com/en/images/ai-and-future-work

Taibbi's second article, about AI and the website Naked Capitalism hit me even harder. I realized that I had recently experienced some of the same AI mistakes, although I hadn't understood at the time that those mistakes were the result of AI.