moon traveller herald

  Highlights from the discussion A giant snow was coming up from Missouri. The same excitement today as long ago. A new subscription magazine appears thru the mail chute. The New York Review of Books in 2026 as welcomed as Car & Driver in 1966. In 1966 - that's when I first discovered NYRB. I was working in the Children's Library in Racine, and going up to the adult stacks and periodicals on break. In those days the nickname for the pub was 'The New York Review of Viet Nam" - and it offered a more worldly view than the Racine Journal Times concerning what goes on. Intellectual, for sure. This was going to give me fodder for class discussions. It was my ticket to the elbow patch sports jacket and collegiate-like erudition. An IQ boost.  Well of course, those were different times. But I'm still trying to hone a world view...as it happens, this is as the present world order is shaking, rattling and rolling. Gee, but the essayists today face a hard task. The world ...

Got to know Steve Freund in the Sunnyland Slim Blues Band days. Heck of a player and person!

UPDATED OCCASSIONALLY - Jack Vaughan  At Kafka's Home ---- Strange Edison Electrical Illumination At about the age of 10, Edison goes to the creek with young friend George Lockwood, who disappears in the eddies to drown. Edison observes the creek water for a long time, maybe rapt by the dying Lockwood’s breath bubbles. At last, after the long wait for Lockwood to surface, Edison finally goes home to dinner and to bed without telling anyone about the event. Meanwhile, a party searches for Lockwood – eventually they come to hear Edison’s story of his drowning. Self-taught polymath,  noted as a man of amazing concentration.  He could look intently at what was there and was able to uncover deep first principles  as he tinkered with pieces of  metal, carbon, vulcanite, lamp black  and assorted materials. More than that,  he had a gift for  imaginative re-application of principles  to conjure new products,  and improv...

This is a lookback at recent AI activity.  On my technology job site Progressive Gauge.  Based on three years of research but condensed around 2025 stuff.. Gemini concludes Story concludes:  The current state of AI is like a lavish Hollywood movie trailer : while the promotional footage promises a world-changing epic of "civilizational" proportions, the actual production is struggling behind the scenes with a ballooning budget and a script that still has significant holes. [Re pick above [Wet lab feedback loop] - I specially asked "No Teal!"] jv https://progressivegauge.com/2025/12/31/multiglobal-hyperbole-engines-in-2025-pt-1/