Lazy Luddite Log

17.3.24

Hey Hi

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a big media topic over the past year or so. I cannot say I have a fantastic grasp of exactly what it is or what distinguishes AI from other kinds of computer activity. Even the question of exactly what intelligence could be is beyond me. I even think of a choose your own adventure book as a simulation of intelligence in paper form.

The key distinction to draw however is that the writer of such a book or program understands exactly how it works and what it can do. The latest generation of AI is different - even its own programmers cannot understand exactly how it works or what results it will produce. Another factor that has made it controversial is that it can engage in seemingly creative acts that till recently only humans can do. Now machines can do much more than manual work or the purely logical processing of information. The Internet is a big factor here and AI can draw on a massive body of human-generated creativity in its own complex act of regurgitation.

My concern over this is tempered by an older worry over how mobile Internet can alter human interactions. And my own work as an integration aide in adult eduation is intensely human-facing so will still be a job for some time to come. But I may as well get a passing familiarity with some of the latest AI tools. To that end I played with two particular applications.

* * * * *

I chatted with something now called Gemini - a generative AI chatbot that can hold a conversation and produce written content on command. I acted as if it were a person and complimented it on its polite manner. I also asked it what it would do if someone were rude to it. It told me it would ultimately end such a conversation. I was impressed. Evidentally its programmers at Google have put various parameteres on its behaviour. It results in some overly repetitive language as it apologetically stipulates what it can and cannot do. I can relate. I asked it for feedback on my own writing and it advised that I could be more succient and use more active language. This is true. Next I gave it some more substantive tasks.

I asked for a description of a medieval fantasy village. It did pretty well but some aspects of the setting felt more Midsomer Murders than The Forgotten Realms. I asked it to describe a mid-sized faster-than-light spaceship that uses centrifugal force to simulate gravity. Once more it did well but completely neglected the bit involving spinning circular forms. It can definitely produce flowing and grammatical word-count that a human can then tidy and personalize (assuming that they bother).

Next I asked it to make some judgements on matters non-fictional. What characteristics both unite and distinguish classical liberalism, demoratic socialism and traditional conservatism. It did well in drawing on academic definitions but there were some nuances I felt needed adjusting. Hardly surprising given my own qualifications. I asked it if my statement 'funk is to soul as metal is to rock' made sense and it gave grounds for saying that it did. However it cannot recommend a flowing selection of tracks to save its life.

One thing I neglected to do was ask it about patently dodgy topics - it would be interesting to see how it responded to a conspiracy theory or bogus conception of the world. But I'm wary of even entertaining such notions online. I prefer these tools to be for fun.

The Sub-Culture Kids Action Figure Selection

I recently resumed GMing some role-play games and hunted online for free artwork to illustrate characters or locales. I noticed something was suddenly different. There was a lot of content from a handful of new websites. It was superficially decent but the closer I looked the more problems I noticed. The overly idealized yet creepy faces. The deformed hands. The accidentally Escheresque architecture. I realized what I was seeing was a host of collaborations between AI and users describing what they were imagining. And then I decided, if you cannot beat them, join them, and started experimenting at a website called Night Café.

The resulting pictures were fine for my purposes of printing them as small grey images to flash at players as I described non-player characters. But then I moved onto something that I hoped would work with the flaws of this new method. Toys are caricatures of reality. They are mass-produced and simplistic. They depend on commonly understood concepts and imagery. Hence I created The Sub-Culture Kids Action Figure Selection.

These are depictions of retro action figures depicting youthful members of well-known sub-cultures from a variety of backgrounds. They were produced by wrangling text over several fiddly and frustrating iterations. Nonetheless this method of producing images with colour and perspective was far quicker than anything I could do manually. And some of them are better than others.

Raving Rina is the best - even the characteristic AI mistake of blending her headphones with her hairstyle somehow works. Skating Suzana comes complete with an accessory. Hugo Hearts HipHop and Grungy Gus are decent variations on each other but the latter needs more long and lank hair that I never managed to coax from the AI. Feral Faris looks like a hippy but is supposed to be of the more recent iteration of feral. Finally Gothic Greta seems like she comes from another toy line altogether - her proportions are too mature but older drafts of her looked far too childish.

It seems like I'm blaming my tools. I jumped right in rather than looking for elaborate instructions or getting advice from the Night Cafe 'community' of users. But the whole attraction of this stuff is in time-saving. If I wanted to I could use such imagery as drafts from which to hand-draw something that I can more exactly control. For now I have some sense of what the latest applications of AI can and cannot do.

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18.2.24

Star Trek Dolls

I have expounded on the demographics of various Star Trek crew but here I will do something frivolous and re-imagine an old toy line. A company called Mego made a range of Star Trek dolls in 1974-1976. If this is nostalgia then it is vicarious - at the time I was playing with plush toys and wooden blocks. I never even knew of Star Trek till I was obsessed with Star Wars action figures from 1978 on. But the messy history of toys can be fun. Mego made five original Enterprise crew and nine aliens for them to encounter. My concept is to change that to seven crew and seven aliens (even if the aliens may stand in for entire species rather than individual characters). But which ones?

The 80s Star Trek movies fixed in our imaginations the seven key characters as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. But in the 70s things were somewhat different. The Filmation cartoon, for instance, dropped Chekov in favour of Nurse Chapel. I choose this small step forward for gender equality even if it is a small step backwards for Détente. But what of the aliens?

Mego made some odd and arbitrary choices for the alien dolls. A few are recurring antagonists. Others are chosen seemingly at whim from stand-alone episodes. And others were wholly invented by the toy-makers. Sometimes I like to use more objective selection criteria and for these imaginings I suggest that an alien must have featured in more than one episode. It transpires that very few fit that restriction. The 60s were a time of stand-alone episodic story-telling. Yes the Klingons were in several episodes, but the Romulans, Andorians, Tellaraites and Orions are in only a few each. The Talosians get in on a technicality by featuring in the only two-part story. And the Salt Vampire creeps in only by having its costume re-used as a taxidermy display item. Nonetheless, I think this is a fun selection.

Here are the resulting toy lists...

The Crew: Kirk, Spock, McCoy,
Scott, Uhura, Sulu, Chapel

The Aliens: Klingon, Romulan, Orion,
Andorian, Tellarite, Talosian, Salt Vampire

The Tellarite could have been a modification of the Mugato they did make. The Orion dancer could have been adapted from the existing Mego Batgirl, since Yvonne Craig played both. And apparently stuntwoman Sandra Gimpel played both a Talosian and the Salt Vampire, so they could have shared a body sculpt.

The range could be completed with the Enterprise Bridge And Transporter they made along with a playset inspired by the Rigel Seven fortress (possibly by just adapting some medieval playset). I would never have gotten into the line however - the action figure scale pioneered by Kenner Star Wars toys was that much more convenient and fun.

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20.1.24

Joiners And Non-Joiners

Months have passed and finally I post about the recent referendum proposing a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous advisory body to the Commonwealth. I had written other things online (a few comments in The Guardian and a few with friends on Facebook) at the time. My focus here is on what the results say for more than Indigenous representation but for civil society as a whole.

It is tempting to compare the referendum with past electoral events. The 1999 Republican Referendum concerned a key aspect of Australian identity but had the same implications for all Australians. The 2017 Same Sex Marriage postal survey (intended as a plebiscite) concerned particular Australians but was imposed on them by the political game-playing of our last Federal Liberal-National Government. In contrast the recent referendum for an Indigenous Voice was developed and proposed by the Indigenous community itself.

Pursuing that proposal was an election promise of the recently elected federal Labor Government. Once that happened there pretty much had to be a referendum even if its chances looked shaky. And those of us committed to a kind of reform that is informed by those directly affected by it had to take a stand.

The problem then was a lack of bipartisanship. History showed that referenda only pass if both major parties support them. And the conservative Liberal-National Opposition at a federal level soon decided to oppose the proposal. The conventional wisdom then is that if only we could have had bipartisan agreement then the referendum would have passed. I wonder. We needed to get a "majority of votes in a majority of states" but fell short of even a majority in the electorate overall. I want to look more closely then at the political landscape.

Labor were united as a party behind the Voice but surveys showed many recent Labor voters decided to vote No. Would bipartisanship have swayed them? Possibly if (as I suspect) many more than we assume are swinging voters. Nonetheless it shows political sides are rarely monolithic. That is even more so with Liberal-Nationals. A National federal parliamentarian became an independent to campaign for the Voice. A Liberal federal shadow minister moved to the backbench to do likewise. And at a state level whole party divisions including state leaders prominently supported the Voice. Conversely the Voice supporting Greens lost a senator to independence over the radical notion that constructive reform is never satisfactory. Votes went in all directions from the perspective of party politics. And that is just one way of looking at society.

There is a complex array of interconnected voluntary associations that seek to involve and advocate for many distinct yet overlapping groups within wider society. An impressive number of such organizations endorsed the Voice. These crossed all sorts of historical divides - labour and capital, Christian and Muslim, nerdy academics and sporty jocks. I noted this and had hoped it would have an impact on the campaign. And I think it did. Such organizations draw on and communicate with those who tend to get involved in the connective structures of society. One intersting survey even suggested that Yes voters were more likely to be involved in various community groups.

There were plenty of volunteers for the Yes case and my hunch is we had a better face-to-face campaign than the No case. Estimates say there were something like eighty thousand Yes volunteers (almost one for every ten Indigenous Australians). It defintely felt to me like we had a better presence on the ground. And this made sense to focus on as a way of circumventing the political distortions of the World Wide Web. Yet is seems those distortions now seep into all other aspects of life. And how many of us are even aware of let alone pay heed to the organizations we have formed to advocate for us? We lost despite that on-the-ground campaign and all those endorsing groups. Suddenly it looked to me like the Yes and No votes were populated by joiners and non-joiners respectively.

To put it starkly this could even be described as a divide between civil society and mass society. Some individuals are still integrated into various forms of community (something Indigenous Australians have long understood) while a growing number are loosened from such links and must form others for themselves. Some of my thinking is informed by reading Disconnected by Australian academic and politican Andrew Leigh. And maybe I'm exaggerating. This was just one vote and what it suggests hardly aligns with a host of recent Australian elections. But I do worry about the seeming drift from pluralism to populism in our political relations.

Cultural forces could be part of why we lost. However I cannot overlook institutions. Our electoral rules are among the best in the world (never mind what some suspicious No voters felt in bringing pens they 'trusted' to the ballot box). But there is one key flaw in how we conduct referenda. In every committee or general meeting I have ever been to there is always the option of abstaining in a reductionist yes-no vote. But in referenda we only get two boxes to choose between. Voting informally is an option but is hardly one that electoral commissioners can advise. There should explicitly be a third box for those who cannot decide and do not wish their vote to be counted in calculating a majority. The slogan "if you don't know then vote no" would then become the truly uninvolved "if you don't know then don't vote".

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20.12.23

How Bazaar

One activity I enjoy is visiting bazaars - spaces in which many stall-holders gather and sell second hand items of any kind one can imagine. It started over a decade ago with me discovering the Chapel Street Bazaar. I would go looking for particular items to buy - select old Transformers mostly. Rarely would I find exactly what I wanted. But it hardly mattered because most of the fun came from simply seeing all this dodgy old stuff.

Somewhat more recently I was introduced to the larger Waverley Bazaar closer to home. This warehouse setting for browsing old tat then moved to even larger premises in Clayton past the newly constructed M-City (which incidentally is a right-sized shopping centre featuring just one supermarket, one department store, and a cinema). Here one can stroll for an hour slowly taking in all the consumer novelty of several decades past. Few things are truly antique but there is plenty of retro stuff to satisfy. I go for the toys but stay for other things. Here I will share a handful of the many photos I've taken to give a sense of the nostalgia.

Bazaar Crafts

There are plenty of old vinyl records but this one has been turned into - what - a bowl of some kind? Possibly an ash tray? Who can say for sure. Somebody adapted it into a minor work of craft and you could utilize it any way you wish.

Bazaar Statue

I saw this nude statue at Chapel Street and then later at Waverley. I have to allow for the possibility than even something this large and particular was mass produced. They could have been two separate copies. And yet I fancy that she was following me around. I suspect that some items pass hands from stall-holder to stall-holder and just move about. What a jolly good sport.

Bazaar Games

I suppose a plastic plaything had to be part of my survey. I never had nor played Mousetrap but always enjoyed the ads and indeed any such gizmos. It has been fun reliving both my own childhood and the childhoods of others in coming across games like this colourful contraption.

Bazaar Map

Here we have a sliver of the history of how history is depicted. Some may find it holds a dated message but it works well as a presentation of information. We see how the Spanish and Portuguese aspired to divide the world between them in the 1500s. And our spherical planet is rendered here on paper in such a way that the colonizing powers expand from the approximate centre of that process. Plenty of maps have been called 'Eurocentric' but this one literally is.

Bazaar Tech

I cannot even tell you what this is. Definitely a machine. Most likely a computer (I think it says so in writing). Something computerized then. But what does it do? I want to say it worked in a factory or garage but the truth is I merely like the way it looks. Others can tell me what its function was. I wonder if anyone will ever buy it.

Bazaar Texidermy

Sometimes it is difficult to tell what an item is. This massive strangling snake could just be a model but I suspect it is a cumbersome piece of taxidermy. One becomes accustomed to seeing markedly different things at a bazaar but sometimes I am still utterly surprised. And in this case a tad spooked. The way it just lolls about among household items and clothes racks is incongruous.

* * * * *

A bazaar often acts as a museum while it is always a store. The many stall-holders stock the shelves but everything is managed and transacted via one front desk. At the Waverley Bazaar they even have the space for a basic cafe and I usually make a purchase there - I think of it as a voluntary entry fee. After all, I want them to stay open. And now and then I'll buy a gift or bring a friend to share in the experience. Even if it has become a part of my everyday life it still feels just a bit bizarre.

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23.11.23

Sidebarring

Here is a bit of a 'housekeeping' update for this weblog. It occurred to me that my use of Internet tools has become somewhat more sophisticated since I added sidebar links here. I access frequently used websites in other ways. Besides, some of them I use far less frequently now. But what changes have I just made?

Weather and Transport go to public websites in my nation or state for such information. Trivia links to Wikipedia. I'm keeping those three even just as 'legacy features'. Choraldom linked to MonUCS but my musical involvement is far more ad-hoc now. News & Net took me to Yahoo but the truth is I pretty much never used it for news, and I know how to communicate online, so that's been replaced with The News provided by The Guardian Australia. I've also added Better News for the Future Crunch positive news aggregator. It also acts as a funding platform for targetted philanthropy and so contributes to the very progress it draws attention to. That in effect replaced a Human Rights link to Amnesty International (AI).

AI still does a lot of worthwhile advocacy for political prisoners and even criminals facing death row. However in recent times it has made some rash and risky statements which demonstrate a vulnerability to manipulation. The temptation to instantly gratify online audiences risks diminishing it focus and therefore its effectiveness. I saw this in both world and national news (ask me for particulars) and then experienced a small instance of it personally.

I received an invitation to an AI picnic for supporters of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. This came in the closing weeks of that national referendum campaign and on a day that I was committed to volunteering for the Yes case at a local polling place. I wondered why they would divert potential helpers away from the frontline work of changing minds and asked them so in an email. That was several weeks back and I'm yet to receive a response. I can only guess at the same performative root cause as in those recent media incidents. It all seems strangely inward-looking.

But this was supposed to be just a housekeeping entry.

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22.10.23

Media Diet

Diet refers simply to the totality of what one consumes. However it also has connotations of consciously curating that consumption. I aspire to moderation in all things for both food and media. It can be difficult.

By media I refer to a whole host of content and methods of delivery. Most of them are now electronic in nature even if they emulate older forms. Much of my discussion will refer to things delivered online. One thing I try to do is keep distinct kinds of content separate. Such an act may be artifical but deliberate schemas are among the greatest of human tools. Information, news, analysis, opinion, advertising and entertainment should all be distinct things. Such distinction is harder to come by these days but still can be found if one is selective.

For facts my key source is Wikipedia. Yes it can be edited by anyone but it also has a large body of informed contributors who help keep each other honest. Sometimes looking back on an issue following weeks is better than hoping to make sense of it in a minute-by-minute news feed. Besides which, trivia is a joy all its own, and this is a great launching pad to a whole world of facts.

For news and views I'm a Guardian Australia reader. This is hardly surprising for someone of my ideology but I find that it has the integrity to rise above its own editorial position. I also find that its comments sections (themselves moderated) attract a variety of opinion-holders who by-and-large still understand the value of respectful debate. Its critics of music and movies tend to pretentiousness but I can always skip that.

There is always room for some course correction. Any news source will tend to focus on crisis. To compensate for that I subscribe to Future Crunch for positive news from a progressive bent.

Sometimes I want more wide-ranging debate so dip into a few heterodox sites (but never so much that I fall into a 'rabbit hole'). At other times I want to listen to a kind of discussion that is defined by an abundance of respect and calm consideration. For that the Minefield podcast on ABC is an excellent example.

The ABC and SBS still provide free entertainment and I go there for things like murder mysteries (which are somehow relaxing viewing - a topic unto itself as to why that may be so). But since the last lockdown I have succumbed to the draw of subscriber streaming services (particularly for a regular dose of fantasy and science fiction). It started with accessing Netflix while house-sitting but I have since been jumping (one service at a time) from Disney to Paramount to Prime and back. And it is all too easy to watch episode after episode of whatever has been designed to draw you in and back for more. In the long run I will try to curb this tendency.

Luckily life has returned to normal and I'm once more out-and-about. While on public transport or killing time between shifts, I still carry a novel to read, rather than try to interact with the tiny interface of a smartphone. I had to get lint removed from the orifices of my device recently and, while awaiting service at the Apple Store, I very delibrately sat there reading a novel, which amused me at any rate.

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25.9.23

Moments

I'm sharing a few anecdotes from over my life that were special in some way. I'm wary of using words like 'wondrous' or 'numinous' but they spring to mind nonetheless. May as well just dive into the most recent and then work backwards.

Carmina And Friends

For me choral performance is something of a chore. The incentive of friendships was always necessary to keep me involved and so I drifted as others did likewise. But in all that musical work there were instances that made performance worthwhile in itself. The phenemenon is well documented. A musical phrase or change seems to resonate the whole self along with those of ones peers. For an exhilerating moment one feels like part of some gestalt entity. I have experienced this a few times but never recorded those moments in writing, even if I'm sure we shared smiles and comments afterwards. I reckon it happened in Carmina Burana but that is just to put a name to this experience.

Satisfying Sketching

A decade or more ago I did a bunch of life drawing with friends volunteering as models. It was at a time in which my life was changing somewhat and collaborations like that helped me settling into a new life phase. That context may be all one needs to understand what happened next. I was drawing a friend while chatting, and as my pencil carefully drew a contour, I suddenly noticed I was enitrely content. It was hardly just that experience but rather its location in the wider context of a life that was coming together at that time (or possibly of a person who was getting better at existing in whatever life presented to him). It was more to do with the relaxed atmosphere than the use of skill.

Sunshine In Winter

Some of these anecdotes are defined by sharing something with others. This one however is a solitary moment. I was interstate for a choral festival but was yet to meet anyone. I had just navigated public transport to a campus and had time to kill while others rehearsed in a hall close by. I found a spot to sit overlooking an ornamental lake. I had just left a wintry Melbourne and was enjoying the sunshine of a more northerly latitude as it glinted off the water. Lush grounds and sandstone walls were my setting as I felt a keen sense that it would be a good weekend. And indeed it was. I cannot say it was prescience but it was more of a felling than just the shrewd assessment of conditions.

Stars In The Waves

I was at a FOME camp at the turn of the century. We stayed in a holiday house in a small coastal town. On the first night we walked over the dunes to the ocean beach and waded into the surf waves. I deliberately aimed to only go into the knees but the waves amended this to my waist. Others went in further and I monitored them. I was likely one of the better swimmers there but also one of the more cautious. The attraction of that particular night was that the waves were lit from within by phosphorescent plankton, seemingly emulating the star-filled sky. Some of the glowing dots even got stuck to our bathers in the surpringly lukewarm waters. I recently chatted about this with others online and they too remembered this as a magical moment.

Everything Will Be Alright

Way back in the 90s I was walking among remnant bushland along the Yarraman Creek. I sometimes did this as a way of taking a rest from essay-writing. On this occassion I was also suffering the remorse of an ended romance. I was in a pitiful state. As I turned from one track into another and passed the local billabong I suddenly experienced something that was bereft of sense data or words and yet affected me as if I had just recieved a message. And that message? I translated it as "everything will be alright". I later told a friend who declared that "the universe gave you a hug". I have since called this my 'pantheist moment' (or possibly the word is 'panentheist' but at the level of my experience it hardly matters). I wonder sometimes how long that assurance was supposed to last. Life had naturally been up and down many times since then. But even thinking of it can centre me now.

* * * * *

The moments I have described were just a rarity or intensity of internal personal experience. All of them can be understood as the products of a complex thinking organ we are yet to fully understand. But to varying degrees they felt to me like something more than that and something more than just me. A momentary unity with something bigger? An awareness of something that I am always part of but rarely consider? And yet also these were moments that served to help me be someone who does things his own way. It is these instances that prevent me from succumbing to the insistent overtures of militant atheists to be just like them. Rationality combines with these few fleeting experiences to hold me balanced in a state of curious agnosticism.

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18.8.23

Grayskull Scene

I never collected Masters Of The Universe toys but I can still talk about them. Here I will explore my concept of the 'modest but well-rounded collection' with reference to the dominent sword and sorcery cum space opera toyline of the 80s (there were others that drew on both sub-genres to get the kids excited).

Of course a collection must have its hero and villain. These are He-Man and Skeletor and they seem to represent life and death respectively. Both can have a mount in Battle Cat and Panthor. But they also need off-siders and troops.

I continue with the scheme of each hero having a villainous counterpart. But that can take a bit of thinking for the oldest toys in the line. It is simplest to have Teela stand opposite Evil-Lyn as the token women but I think there is a more interesting way. Man-At-Arms is a master of technology while Evil-Lyn is a mistress of the magical arts. In contrast Teela and Beast Man are both aggressive warriors. And the next two are easily sorted by habitat - Stratos occupies the sky while Merman inhabits the sea.

Now we get to some of the more gimmicky figures of the first few years of Masters Of The Universe. Ram-Man can bounce into barriers while Trap Jaw has an array of attachments for his mechanical arm. Man-E-Faces has three visages rotating to face forward while Triklops has a three-eyed visor that does the same thing. I notice that both Trap Jaw and Man-E-Faces have green faces and want to ret-con them as of the same origin. This also gives the heroes a definite alien in the group and re-colouring the body of Man-E-Faces to hide his tan could support that.

Now I have two opposing sides comprising seven characters each (if you include those feline pets). But it is time to turn to neutrality and the centrepiece of any collection. Castle Grayskull is regarded as one of the best playsets of all time and what a compelling thing it is. In the cartoon I discovered that this fortress is the source of He-Man's power. But on the box art in a toy store I saw Skeletor emerging from its skull-like frontage to repel his rivals. From this dissonance I seek to find resonance. What if Grayskull is a prize that will grant its power to whomever can overcome its defences? Those defences (other than the fortress itself) could include the neutral Zodac and the falcon Zoar. The cosmic warrior seems to be served by this pet but in truth it is his boss - The Sorceress in disguise - whose motives are mysterious to both sides that seek to take her job.

All I need to do now is throw in a few of the vehicles the toyline sported. Both the Dragon Walker and Roton (tools of good and evil respectively) are fun beast-inspired machines. But maybe all side could also do with a Sky Sled to zip about on. I may as well produce some lists now.

Heroes: He Man, Battle Cat, Man-At-Arms, Teela,
Stratos, Ram Man, Man-E-Faces, Dragon Walker

Neutrals: Castle Grayskull, Zodac, Zoar, Skysleds

Villains: Skeletor, Panthor, Evil-Lyn, Beast Man,
Merman, Trap Jaw, Triklops, Roton


This could all fit on a shelf and be impressive but also be a scene one could take in at a glance. This is a fraction of the full toy line but I reckon it packs most of the evocative punch of a much larger collection. I will likely never have it (there are other and better things on which to spend) but enjoy imagining such an image. And hey maybe in retirement I shall operate a stall in a bazaar which includes displays like this.

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26.7.23

Queen Song Linkages

As a Queen superfan I'm familiar with all original studio recordings of my favourite band. One thing I noticed was all the cross-cutting connections between songs both within and between albums. Of course, you can find all kinds of similarity between any two things, but here I'll only touch on what seemes more noteworthy to me.

Some connections are well-known. We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions from 1977 go together on both album and later Greatest Hits. As a result they tend to be played together on both radio and at sporting events. Was this intended by song writers Freddie Mercury and Brian May or did it just take on a life of its own?

Another one many know of is Bicycle Race and Fat Bottomed Girls from 1978 each name-dropping the other - we are told that "fat bottomed girls will be riding today" and then they are exhorted to "get on your bikes and ride". Ah yes.

But there are other more obscure links I enjoy. In 1974 Queen released two albums. Seven Seas Of Rhye ends the first album with a bunch of friends singing I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside. Brighton Rock starts the next album with somebody whistling the same old tune to a background of carnival sounds.

So far these are all deliberate associations on the part of the band. Others are more incidental observations. The Prophet Song (1975) is known for a kind of round sung by Freddie Mercury with echos of himself but the same trick was performed on guitar by Brian May back in Brighton Rock.

Some of the oldest Queen discs were almost concept albums suffused with common themes and moods. A lot of progressive or glam acts were into science fiction but Queen seemed more into fantasy - look no further than the amazing White Queen and March Of The Black Queen (both 1974).

Most of this fey vibe was set by Mercury and May while Roger Taylor tended to interupt it with songs describing the everyday life of young to aging rock-and-rollers - check both Tenement Funster (1974) and Drowse (1976). Once John Deacon got into writing he diverted things further with the most cheerfully love-struck of songs - consider You're My Best Friend (1975) and You And I (1976).

Sometimes one song seems to be a test-run for another one. The magnificent Death On Two Legs (1975) seems to musically evoke silent era moustache-twirling villains but then so does Flick Of The Wrist (1974) and I dig both. At other times a song harks back to a more successful one - Man On The Prowl (1984) belongs on the same jukebox as Crazy Little Thing Called Love (1980).

A ran this topic by a friend with huge technical understanding of music and she talks of songs linked by common chord progressions and such things are beyond me. I can however discern and name musical genres. One easy way to find song links is to follow the interest in particular genres by different band members. Mercury flirts with jazz on tracks like Bring Back That Leroy Brown (1974) and Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy (1976). May does a similar thing for folk with '39 (1975) and Long Away (1976) and both also hint at his love of astronomy.

Band members had particular preferences - May and Taylor always loved rocking guitar and drums while Mercury and Deacon were drawn ever more to soulful vocals and base lines. However they also influenced one another. Metal was always in the blood of the band - examples can be found in both the 70s (Stone Cold Crazy) and 80s (Gimme The Prize). But they played with all manner of genres. Funk is one of my favourites and cool examples include the studio crafted Another One Bites The Dust and the more jam-worthy Dragon Attack (both from 1980).

Over time Queen moved away from concept albums and eccentric variety but never entirely abandoned these characteristics. There were albums associated with the movies Flash Gordon (1980) and Highlander (1986). Innuendo (1991) resonates with otherwordly atmosphere. And there are still connections here and there. The songs She Does Me (1989) and Delilah (1991) are both likely about the cats that were constant companions for Freddie in his dying days.

Even the posthumously constructed album Made In Heaven (1995) feels more coherent than it should be, given it drew on draft or solo tracks from over more than a decade. I suppose that is simply a testament to the talent and inspiration of all members of Queen working together.

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29.6.23

Lagman

Ever since I went to a Uyghur restaurant (now closed) I have been a fan of a dish called lamb lagman. More recenlty I attempted to approximate the meal at home. It took a while but I’m now making something I enjoy eating.

These are the ingredients for a vegetarian version using mushrooms.

* A few field mushrooms chopped into chunks sauteed in water with Vegemite dissolved into it. Seems odd but I think this makes the fungus just a bit more tasty.

* Diced onion, celery and capsicum. By coincidence this is the trinity of cajun cuisine. I started chopping them rather fine but more recently have allowed larger chunks. I also play with varying the colour combinations using particular varieties.

* Diced tomato - this was the missing ingredient for me. I somehow overlooked it from my restaurant experience till I looked at recipies online. A modest amount gives the dish the necessary degree of wetness and tang.

* Soft noodles like Udon that are cut into finger-length pieces. Nothing will ever have the texture I encounted of those pulled noodles at the restaurant so this is the best I have managed.

* Garlic, ginger, coriander, soy sauce, harissa spice mix and sesame oil are the rest of the ingredients.

I combine these in various ways at various stages in the cooking. I am far from sure that this matters all that much. I suspect that many things which are codified in cookery are just done for the heck of it and what works for you is all that needs to work.

Have I succeeded in combining the spiciness of Turkish food with the textures of Chinese food? That is a simplification but, even if accurate, I cannot be sure I have. However, my results are indeed tasty.

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24.5.23

Representative Cast

I often use the word 'representative' and usually I'm referring to the trustees or delegates elected to represent the citizenry of a polity. Here however I refer to it in the statistical sense of a small group whose demographic composition seems to reflect that of wider society. And my focus will be its use in fiction.

I longed for a variety of looks in fictional characters long before I understood such concepts. As a kid I watched old black-and-white repeats alongside newer full-colour programs. In a story you have to rapidly understand who the various characters are and that got easier with the newer shows. Gone were the identical unforms of masculine and femine grooming and dress. Gone was the need to focus solely on who was blond or brunette and who was fat or thin. Suddenly the distinct looks of sub-cultures and the recogition of diverse origins made it easier to keep track of who was who.

Incorporating this into storytelling tends to be haphazard. Who one wants characters to be and in what proportions is personal. This is how I have usually done it. But what if such decisions were informed by population statistics? I first did this as a footnote to my description of a spaceship. Its eight person crew were international and so I looked at population figures by continent. This gave me a framework of two east Asians, two south Asians, one other Asian, one African, one South American and one person that I called 'north Trans-Atlantic' in origin. Within that I developed a specific set of origins which also included religion and sex-specific names (as described in the first comment to Momentum).

A whole Earth spaceship is one thing but what of other more mundane settings? In a globalized world you can find anybody in any story with any ancestry. And yet locales still have distinct population profiles. The largest minority in the US is Latin while the largest in the UK is Desi. Do the core casts of television shows reflect that? I suspect they could do better and census data could be something that is worth writers glancing at.

How old is globalization? How long is a piece of string? We are the walkers and humanity has been travelling slowly but surely over the planet. Even in ancient times we occupied all but one continent. Trading centres have long been cosmopolitan and many large nations were defined by shared culture and language rather than by a common ancestry. And yet distance and natural barriers do play a role.

I got thinking about this while watching a historical fiction inspired by Scandinavian lore. Characters (as represented by those acting them) looked like they originated in particular parts of the world. Most were from north of the Alps as was apt for the setting. One or two characters however were from south of the Sahara. This in itself was fine but what jarred for me was what was missing. Why were Mediterraneans absent? It was this georagphic gap in demographics that stretched credulity. What was needed was more diversity rather than a kind of tokenism that feels lumpy rather than smooth.

And yet the size of a cast affects how much it can reflect diversity to a fine degree. Most shows will have an ensemble of just five to ten regular cast members - it gets difficult to remember more. Am I suggesting then that a demographic can only be represented if it commands a tenth to a fifth of a given poluation? Hardly. It is merely a method. In my spaceship I took whole continents and then narrowed in on national origins that are in some cases small (Iceland is a tiny part of the combined North American and European sphere). Groups of friends consist of unique combinations of individuals. Creators will draw on both personal anecdotes and imagination to design such groups. But if ever they are at a loss then a bit of empericism can come in handy.

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29.4.23

Aphoristic

I'm intent on writing something philosophical here but life and laziness keep on intervening. Once I do it there will be aphorisms. Something like this:

Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow...

Okay I'm back now. My wanting to do something 'philosophical' is spurred by the fact that this blog has a sorting label called that and I try to cover all such tags from time-to-time. This may seem artificial but then I think artificiality is natural to humans. The distinctions we draw over the complexity of life are useful as long as we acknowledge they are simply tools.

Aphorisms are also tools. They encapsulate in a short statement a concept that guides action. At other times I have criticized the simplification inherent in meme-worthy sloganeering but it depends on how one uses them. Are they all you are saying or do they serve to give flowing and evolving conversations some structure and direction? I'm fine with the later and here will comment on a few I have adopted or adapted.

Moderation in all things.

Well in most things anyway. If this were a political post I would note that I'm a progressive who values liberty and equality over stability and that this contrasts with a true moderate who seeks to optimise all three values. But this philosophical post focuses more on the personal. Besides which I interpret this aphorism as referring to an approximate rather than an absolute balance of forces in ones life. This 'happy medium' is a space in which to move rather than an exact coordinate in which to be stuck. Other statements support this notion.

Variety is the spice of life.

And...

The poison is in the dose.

If you are only having so much of anything it is likely you will also be having something of everything. And most things are fine in moderation - even a bit of excess is okay as long as it only happens sometimes.

I neglect to attribute any of these sayings to the thinkers that may have originated them. That is deliberate because there is a tendency to assess them on the basis of who uttered them. This can be taken to extremes.

Recently I saw some astounding comments online suggested that 'forgiveness' is a problem because of its role in religious thinking. The risk of abandoning such a value is that it will simply give way to vengeance as an alternative driver of action. This is arguably an even more traditional concept and I hardly think that trading in iron age for bronze age thinking will serve us well.

The chellenge is that, for much of history, slow and deliberate thinking was almost monopolized by magico-religious specialists, and they inevitably stumbled upon some profoundly worthwhile concepts. Religion can be oppressive but it would be a mistake to...

Throw the baby out with the bath water.

But you can always modify statements to better fit your own circumstances and objectives. Besides, you also find that the same basic concept was often conceived of in isolation at different times and places. Consider the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.


This was devised by Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 30s. But if you like you can also use it in other forms.

If there's a remedy when trouble strikes,
What reason is there for dejection?
And if there is no help for it,
What use is there in being glum?


And...

Make the best use of what is in your power,
and take the rest as it happens.


The first is from Buddhist scholar Shantideva in eighth century India. The last is from Stoic philosopher Epictetus in first century Greece. Wisdom is universal and will occur in different forms over and over. Yet some feel the prayer is too complacent and even make clever remixes of it.

I'm no longer accepting the things I cannot change.
I'm changing the things I cannot accept.


And yet the original never specifies what exactly can or cannot be changed - that is left for you to decide - contention has been exaggerated but it also demonstrates how versatile these adages can be.

There are plenty more aphorisms I could discuss but that risks an over-long and poorly focused post. I can always do sequals to this as the mood takes me. I will do so in moderation.

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