{"id":5466,"date":"2025-08-30T10:44:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T17:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5466"},"modified":"2025-08-30T10:45:48","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T17:45:48","slug":"odd-lots-359","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5466","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Here\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=e0Ms541usE8&amp;list=RDe0Ms541usE8&amp;start_radio=1\" target=\"_blank\">another hyperenergetic instrumental piece<\/a>\u2014with a short rest in the middle, granted\u2014from Joseph Curiale, he of \u201cSky Blue After Rain.\u201d It\u2019s called \u201cDouble Happiness,\u201d and it\u2019s nutso optimistic, kinda like\u2026me.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of music, I remain and have always been puzzled why the purely orchestral works of Leroy Anderson are not considered \u201cclassical\u201d and are not played on classical stations like our KBAQ. Some are quirky, like \u201cThe Typewriter,\u201d but my all-time favorite Anderson composition, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h-Lpspks9lo&amp;list=RDh-Lpspks9lo&amp;start_radio=1\" target=\"_blank\">Bugler\u2019s Holiday<\/a>,\u201d which is really a manic trumpet concerto, somehow doesn\u2019t qualify. Too fast? Hey, if \u201cSabre Dance\u201d is considered classical, why not \u201cBugler\u2019s Holiday\u201d?<\/li>\n<li>Video generative AI is evidently getting so good that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/technology\/artificial-intelligence\/making-cash-off-ai-slop-the-surreal-video-business-taking-over-the-web\/ar-AA1KJ8ek\" target=\"_blank\">people are making bank&#8211;big bank&#8211;on slop AI videos<\/a>, some that can&#8217;t easily be told from real videos. It&#8217;s more than a little scary. I don&#8217;t either make or consume video as a rule, but I would be interested in seeing a verifiably AI-written SF novel.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/pjmedia.com\/jeff-dornik\/2025\/08\/22\/when-everything-can-be-faked-with-ai-nothing-can-be-trusted-n4942948\" target=\"_blank\">Here\u2019s another piece that nails why I think generative AI is scary<\/a>. Watermarks? If an AI can make photorealistic videos, it can fake a watermark. Maybe something incorporating blockchain as is done with NFTs. I\u2019m no expert on blockchain, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blockchain.com\/learning-portal\/lessons\/nfts\" target=\"_blank\">this intro to blockchain and NFTs<\/a> sounds like it\u2019s impossible to replicate an NFT\u2014which suggests a way to prove that a video was not done with AI.<\/li>\n<li>In case you missed it: Lazarus 4.2 (Built with Free Pascal 3.2.2) was released on July 22. It\u2019s a bugfix release, but hey, bugs are annoying and Lazarus is amazing. Take every release that happens and install it.<\/li>\n<li>I grew up in Illinois and have always been at least a little interested in monsters, so why did it take 73 years for me to ever hear of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Enfield_Monster\" target=\"_blank\">the Enfield Monster<\/a>? Sure, Enfield is at the opposite end of Illinois from Chicago, a long way from anywhere, with all of 794 inhabitants\u2014and only 764 when the monster came calling in 1973. I guess without Internet, even for an eccentric and boundlessly curious 21-year-old, some things just come and go unnoticed. By me, at least. It makes me wonder what <em>other<\/em> monsters I\u2019ve never heard of.<\/li>\n<li>Ars Technica points out that <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/cars\/2025\/08\/junk-filled-garages-hurt-ev-sales-as-people-dont-have-room-for-chargers\/\" target=\"_blank\">it generally takes a garage with a high-current 240VAC outlet to charge an EV at home<\/a>. And\u2014wow, how could this be possible?\u2014a great many Americans have garages so full of stuff that they have to park their cars outside. Yes, it\u2019s possible; actually, the honest truth, as we see every time we drive around our neighborhood. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s another hyperenergetic instrumental piece\u2014with a short rest in the middle, granted\u2014from Joseph Curiale, he of \u201cSky Blue After Rain.\u201d It\u2019s called \u201cDouble Happiness,\u201d and it\u2019s nutso optimistic, kinda like\u2026me. Speaking of music, I remain and have always been puzzled why the purely orchestral works of Leroy Anderson are not considered \u201cclassical\u201d and are not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[118,105,253,132,234,49,90],"class_list":["post-5466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ai","tag-cars","tag-evs","tag-lazarus","tag-monsters","tag-music","tag-pascal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5467,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466\/revisions\/5467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}