moon traveller herald

[July 2026] — A recent critique from Zeynep Tufekci suggests that a clearer view on the AI evolution would emerge, if the public can grasp the technology’s reliance on probability and plausibility. Based on its read of most everything available in the digital world, it can guess pretty well at a complete sentence, and even the chain of an argument. But, beginning in 2022, Generative AI’s aha moment also provided a perfect seedbed for misunderstanding — stirring up levels of fear, uncertainty and doubt surpassing past miracle technologies, many of which stirred equal dismay... this-month-in-neurals-or-the-march-of-plausibilit y - Jack Vaughan's Medium blog

When I was babe..father went to Racine to find apt for us. Walking down 6th st to the lake, he was startled when a stranger said 'Good Morning'..he then told my mother "you will find things different here than in Boston!"

"We may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it." — Claude Shannon Claude the AI greeted me with some American style patter. 'Ready to clock in for the evening shift!' it said at 4pm. Then I responded ...  I used to clock in! Simplex! Hey! I'm not quite sure what you mean by that — could you give me a bit more context? Are you talking about a job you used to have, a game, or something else entirely (like the "Simplex" method in math, a band, a product)? Simplex made time clocks Ah, got it — Simplex Time Recorder Company! They were (and still are, in some form) one of the big names in mechanical time clocks — those punch clocks where you'd insert a card and it would stamp the time. Sounds like you're reminiscing about clocking in on one of their machines. What kind of job was that for? I'm always curious about the mechanics of those old punch clocks too — the ka-chunk sound, the i...

July 20, 1969 - I listened via radio, as always. Surprise at night: The moon walk would be televised. Culmination of great effort. But already wondering where attention should focus. Gil Scott Heron had perspecrtive: Whitey's on the Moon. When that fall at Marquette in Public Speaking class assignment to use a visual aid: I white-frosted a Styrofoam cake container and put my brother's little Astronaut figures on top. The surface of the moon was icing on a cake, inside the cake were the flames of war in Asia and riots in cities and starvation in Bangladesh.  I say it was bag mixed with confusion because there was combined great awe and pride - but there was even greater clarity in the view that Earth was in a Tangle. Same is true today, Funnily enough. .. What would Vonnegut say? 'so it goes.' My 2010s remake of the cake is enhanced here thanks to MS Co-Pilot. https://moontravellerherald.blogspot.com/2019/07/50th-anniversary-of-landing-on-moon.html

  Jim Haas invited me to guest DJ on Jim Haas’s Al Compas Del Mundo 1-hr Internet Radio Show , and I did. How can I call this out? Let’s call it Baroque and Hungry! My hit list is included: List Al compás del mundo 241, 7-9-26 - guest DJ Jack Vaughan   01 Pete Seeger - Living in the Country (USA) 02 Afrocubism - Mali-Cuba (Mali, Cuba)   03 Jordi Savall - The Lancashire Pipes-Pigges of Rumsey-Kate of Bardie (España) 04 Chatham Baroque – Fandango (USA)   05 The Staple Singers - Uncloudy Day (USA) 06 Leroy Carr - (In the Evening) When the Sun Goes Down (USA)   07 The Supremes - Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart (USA) 08 Xavier Cugat - Night Must Fall (Mexico)  09 Miriam Makeba - Pata Pata (Sudafrica) 10 Keith Jarrett - No Moon at All (USA)   11 James Brown - Night Train (USA) 12 The Lilly Brothers - Little Annie (USA)   13 Charlie Parker - A Night ...

  Ran in 2008 Bo Diddley died. There are probably some competitive flamenco cats that I am not aware of - but I would rate him greatest rhythm guitar player of all time. The guitar as percussive motivator in his hands was total banshee force, but full of invention. He also had a lyrical approach that was in its turn incredibly rhythmic and original and also humorous. Mona, Who Do You Love, You Cant Judge a Book, Road Runner .. so many numbers that were part of my best days. He created a foundational style of rocknroll and he did so by reinventing the instrument called the guitar. Who would say he did not have his hand on the pulse of his time as much as the Nasa astronauts or the Beats? Say Man, Mumbles, Ride on Josephine, Cadillac, Cops and Robbers. His super session with Muddy Waters and Little Walter. An all instrumental Checker record of his I used to have. Certainly unique. Some good articles have traced his tremendous influence. Let me add a few: The Doors doing Who Do you Lo...

  CO-PILOT GENERATED IMG Calvino shared the Futurists' spirit of experimentation and their desire to break with traditional artistic conventions. While the Futurists celebrated speed, technology, and violence, Calvino was more interested in exploring the complexities of human experience in a rapidly changing world. He was wary of the potential dangers of unchecked progress and the loss of individual identity in the face of mass culture. - Gemini Generated Text  

  Dir Rbt Frank; narration Jack Kerouac; music: Dave Amram. Includes Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, Larry Rivers. 1959

  A link to Chicago Northwestern by Juicy Lucy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlcrduUahU4 Might have heard this song on WTOS-FM [Wauwatosa] . About 5 years short of US 200th Birthday. The song was immediately resonating: As this was a rail line I often took. Took to, really. British group Juicy Lucy may have taken to the Chicago Northwestern too. There is a dark tale to tell. They morphed it in their song back to the Western Days when Liberty brought destruction to the Native Americans. You have to listen close to hear it, and I point out specifically here that this is biting satire accomplished for illumination. Juicy Lucy does not condone the terrible toll of the Beautiful Train. Shown below: That's my train.

  Dave Purvis -played by Perry Mason nemesis William Talman - is a master criminal planner who robs the Wrigley Field revenues during a ball game. THis is the other Wrigley Field, the one in L.A. for the minor league Angels. THe movie is made in 1950. The hold up goes wrong and a cop is shot and killed. A lot of forensics, radio patrol cars and wire taps ensue in a movie that moves at a clipped pace. Purvis is involved with a burlesque dancer who is easy on the eye but a genuine tough cookie. The burlesque bits pretty much seal the fact that this was a B movie. All the criminals in this noir are desperate and untrustworthy, the kind who "never gave one dime to the United Way." Like many of these movies, the interplay of black and white in cinema composition is at times stunning. While the cops persevere the general impression is that it is a mean old world. Funny thing, The TMC moderator said Armored Car toured the country on a double bill with The Good Humor Man, a Jack Cars...

I got sad news last night that a dear Boston friend died at 79. That is Walter Powers, who I came to know through my library circles [I worked at BU Library for almost 10 years- and got to know a bunch of MIT Library people, especially Gordon Thomas, who played the organ at our wedding.] He and Walter did cataloging and had little bands during academic intermissions.   Walter Powers was a real good guy. Also, a musical historian, erudite, movie star good looking, and famous in the Boston music scene. Including the so-called BossTown Sound scene. He had been in - among others - The Lost with Willie Alexander, Listening with Peter Malickand the Grass Menagerie with Doug Yule, who went on to replace John Cale in the Velvet Underground. When Lou Reed left the Velvets, Walter replaced him, and he brought in Willie Alexander when Sterling Morrison went back to college, leaving Mo Tucker the last of the originals. Tough job to replace Lou there, Walter would admit, but honestly,...

  Sunnyland Slim with Capt Beefhart. Boston, 1978. Sunnyland liked Beefhart, and they got along well. But Beefhart could hardly sit still or have a (two-sided) conversation then. it seemed like he was up all the time. Slim bought some Johnny Walker and was looking forward to 'sitting down and talking' but Beefhart's wife had to insist he get some sleep at that point. [Paul's Mall, Boston] Slim's got a look here like he is getting ready to go on stage.

 

 

  Jellification  February 27, 2026 By Jack Vaughan  reposted from progressivegauge.com   It’s early to tell whether the recent generation of AI advances will go beyond recommendation engines and fraud detection—the two shining stars of the big data era. The distinction is simple: If I fudge a recommender, I lose a possible sale; if I fail a fraud detection, I lose money I already have. One might categorize the latter as mission critical —that high-stakes idiom from the Space Race days. Whether “nice-to-have” or “need-to-have,” the AI boom has placed immense pressure on the data centers running these LLMs and their supporting agentic systems. After all, current investment plans augur for superscale, 24/7 tokenization across the globe. This raises an increasingly urgent question: How will these data centers ensure continual operation when extreme weather—which we seem to see with increasing frequency—threatens the power supply, cooling systems, and roofing required to...

This world of the future is not far away, we are assured.+ and it will include portable video phones and self-driving cars. This brought recognition to me. That is because in my own little time-capsule movie, an 8th grade class field trip had allowed me to take part in a video phone call to a girl at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. Later, I told the folks at dinner back home that “TV phones are coming soon.” The family did not buy it. The advice was: “Eat your dinner.” They were right. It wasn’t until one year’s Pandemic-driven adventure in Zoom-A-Rama, that I personally became a regular user of such video communications capabilities. The GM exhibit at that same World’s Fair showed automated highways – a dream still deferred. --- +The Vast of Night  https://moontravellerherald.blogspot.com/2021/09/pandemic-ruminations.html

  Edmund Morris’s Edison Thomas Edison was born in the years before the American Civil War, and as a lad came under the thrall of popular writings on electricity. The phenomenon had only recently evolved from spooky mystery thing to moneymaking entity. In the form of the commercial telegraph was forming the basis for new industries and ways of life in the United States. As a boy in Port Huron, Michigan, he muddled through some schooling, became a news boy, and then a telegraph operator as the Civil War commenced. He used his time. Riding the rail running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he began to produce his own paper in a baggage car on the train. In Detroit between the morning and evening trains he’s go to the Young Men’s Society Reading Room (public library) and commence to read every book, starting at the beginning of book shelf (that’s something I heard, not something detailed as such in the book we’re going to look at here). Read Les Misérables, Robert Burden’s The Anatomy o...

 

The open web is setting like a big red sun — at least if you buy Richard Kramer’s point of view. The financial analyst with Arete Research recently noted that the open web is on its way out because Google AI is reducing content providers to mere sources of raw data. This perspective stems from a New York Times story, “In AI Era, Google Expands Search Box for Longer Queries.” [In another article, the NYT notes that it is suing Google, as well as OpenAI, in this regard.] Read the Rest on Medium >>>