Unattributed

Two boats docked behind a berm.

Introduction

Many years ago (over a decade) I wrote an article about RSS Feed reader alternatives after Google announced they were killing Reader in March 2013. That article attracted a fair amount of attention, including a request from RedHat to republish the article on their blog. On the ten-year anniversary of the death of Google Reader, the Verge published Who killed Google Reader?(pay-walled article), indicating (to me) that even a decade on there was still interest in the product. Today, with the rising profile of the FediVerse and the IndieWeb, it seems RSS readers and feed aggregation are seeing a bit of a renaissance with the likes of Bubbles. I've also noted several feed reader sites showing up as referrers on my sites.

And, just to make things more interest, as I was working on the first draft of this piece, Rishabh P. Sharma posted an article on his site called: FreshRSS vs My Own Feed Reader: A fierce competition. I took this as yet another indicator that there is still quite a bit of interest in RSS/Atom Feed Readers.

This started me wondering what is the status of RSS feed readers and other news aggregators these? Are they the technology of a bygone era as once predicted by Google? Or are they still around and thriving as I'm starting to believe from seeing several readers in my websites referrers? Are there any new ones that might be worth looking at? And, most importantly, have they changed?

This Isn't a Roundup Article

The original article I wrote back in 2013 was focused on a simple, and single question: what to do now that Google Reader is going away? Back then, everything was an opportunity for open source alternatives to shine. So, that's how I wrote the article (and why RedHat was interested in it). I provided a roundup of what were the best alternatives that I could find at the time.

Obviously we aren't in 2013 anymore, so it doesn't seem like a roundup article is what is needed. Instead, what I would like to do is examine a few questions:

• Are Feed Readers bygone tech?
• What is RSS, and why is it so heavily used?
• Why would you want to use a feed reader today?
• What are your options for setting up some type of feed reader?
• Are there any interesting, and lesser known options?
• Are there any significant changes since 2013?

These might be more of interest to you today if you don't use, or don't understand why RSS/Atom feed readers are useful.

Tech of a Bygone Era?

From looking around for a bit, I was able to answer Google's prediction: no, RSS/Atom readers and aggregators are definitely not the technology of a bygone era. First, not only do many websites still have RSS/Atom feeds available, but I was able to identify a number of different ways in which they are being used now:

• Websites like Memeorandom, Mediagazer, Techmeme and WeSmirch actually use RSS/Atom feeds in several ways: First, they use feeds from other media outlets to gather current stories. The stories are then aggregated to produce their single-page quick view website. Second, they make RSS feeds available for viewing in a feed reader. Third, they use RSS/Atom feeds to export their content to social media, like the Fediverse. (Aside: they almost make a list of all the feeds they scrape available on the leaderboards, which are part of each site. This is a great way to find a list of feeds if you need one.) Basically, that's a lot of RSS/Atom based tech to produce what is, essentially, a single page website.

• Of course, we have the recent site Bubbles. Bubbles is a website that presents a ranked list of posts from IndieSites that sign up for the service. The use RSS/Atom feeds to populate their lists of articles to Pretty cool stuff, reaching back to the old days of the internet.

• As hinted above, there is a lot of RSS feeds being bridged to the Fediverse. Possibly the biggest / most common are the weather and weather camera feeds. Of course, there is also the ever popular Elon Musk Jet tracker. Fedi Directory has an extensive list of bots on the Fediverse, including many RSS bridging bots.

• Platforms like Mastodon and GotoSocial make public user posts available via RSS. For example, my feed is: Unattributed's GTS Feed. Of course, this can be disabled by users if they don't want their posts published use RSS/Atom. But why use it? It's a good way to archive your posts, especially if you want to implement automatic post deletion application, but might want to keep some of those bangers around to reuse later.

• The most unusual use of RSS/Atom feeds goes to Calibre, which uses them to scan websites and build e-Books for reading offline.

• And, let's not forget podcasts. Lots of podcasting platforms serve RSS/Atom feeds for retrieving shows, and many podcast players use RSS/Atom feeds to retrieve the podcast(s).

Hopefully it's obvious that RSS feeds are not tech from a bygone era. I would say, in fact, that RSS/Atom is literally the protocol that is literally powering a substantial portion of the internet as we know it today.

What Is RSS?

The name RSS has multiple definitions, but for our purposes here, the best is Really Simple Syndication. Its purpose is to provide of stream of updated information from a website. This information can take many forms, and can include different types of media, such as photos, audio files, or video files.

The idea is that a website produces a stream (file) when another application or website sends a query to the site. The stream contains the information that has been updated since the last query. In some cases, the site (or client) may limit the number of items in an update. This is mostly true when the site has a lot of information that is changing very quickly.

The idea that only updated information is sent is what makes RSS flexible and light-weight. Since only a limited amount of information is sent during each query the overhead in processing each request is low.

Applications that receive these updates read them, and then take actions based on the updates. For example, if an update says there is a new article, the application can download that article. This processing includes items like images, video, and audio files.

Why Use an RSS Reader?

RSS readers are convenient. They allow you to keep track of the changes on as many sites as you desire. In most cases, the RSS reader will automatically check for updates on the sites you have specified, at an interval you specify. Most readers also allow you to set an expiry period for the information it gathers.

In addition to these features, many readers include additional features to allow you to tag items, mark items as favorites, or mark them for some other processing. Many times you can also export items to other formats or programs (say a note-taking application like Obsidian or Joplin).

And even more advanced readers will allow you to set up rules to tell the program how to treat items that match a one or more sets of criteria. For example, automatically download podcasts, or tag an item if the title contains a keyword.

This flexibility can allow the user to deal with massive amounts of information in a quick and efficient manner. You can think of a reader like a berm: it provides a barrier between you and the wide ocean of information that is out there on the internet. Inside the berm's perimeter you have your docks organized into bays where each of your boats (ie, website feeds) are docked.

RSS Feed Reader Options

So, time to look at some RSS reader options that you might be interested in. This is not going to be an exhaustive list by any means. I checked out the Wikipedia Comparison of Feed Aggregators list earlier. It's a large list, with a lot of applications that are both maintained and unmaintained, and some applications that probably really shouldn't be on the list.

Instead, I want to focus on different classes of reader applications you might want to consider. We'll talk about the reason(s) why you might want to use each, and These include extensions you can add to your web browser, desktop applications, cloud based applications, and hosting your own RSS aggregation server.

Browser Extensions

If you use a desktop computer or a laptop as your primary computing device, this is the most obvious place to start. Adding an extension to your browser can make your feeds available in a way that smoothly integrates with your current environment. The ones that I would look at are FeedBro, LiveMarks, SlickReader and The RSS Aggregator.

Of all of these readers, LiveMarks is available as both a Firefox and Chrome extension, and is rather unique when it comes to how it works. When you add a site to LiveMarks it creates a folder in your bookmarks with links to all the articles that are in the feed. You open the bookmarks to read the article, which actually literally opens the website web page. This can be nice if there are things about the actual web page that you want to or should see. However, this can also open you up to being tracked by the website, so I would only go this route if you have strong ad block and privacy measures in place.

The (unfortunately named) FeedBro for Firefox, and SlickReader for Chrome are the most traditional RSS feed readers, looking like an email application in your browser. As you add new sites, a folder is created in the application's database. You open an email like view and can scan through and read the entries.

The RSS Aggregator for Chrome differentiates itself a bit by allowing you to interact with your feeds through your choice of a drop-down menu, or an email-like interface. When installed a button is added to your shortcuts which will indicate how many updates there. Clicking the button will show you the feeds you've added, and selecting a feed will show you the updates. From there you can go directly to the article, or mark it off. The one downside to this reader is if you want the Filters, Rules, and Collections features you have to purchase their Plus or Professional version.

Self Hosted

Personally, I think this is where the best options are for aggregating content using RSS feeds. However, the downside is that you need to have some technical skill, and the desire to set up a self-hosting system. This is likely most appealing to people that are already into setting up home labs. However, if you run a Jellyfin server, or other media server, maybe this approach will appeal to you.

There are three options for self-hosting that I am aware of: TTRSS (Tiny Tiny RSS), FreshRSS, and Nextcloud News App. Personally, I ran TTRSS on a server many years ago and absolutely loved it. This was right after the Google announcement that they were discontinuing their reader application. I haven't used FreshRSS, but it looks to be comparable to TTRSS. The Nextcloud News App has the advantage of being available in the Nextcloud App store. If you already have a Nextcloud server set up then this is an obvious choice.

The reason I feel the self-hosted option is the best is that they offer the most flexibility. You can access them through their web based interfaces, or you can use them with standalone applications as clients. In this way no matter what device you are reading on, your clients will always know what you have / haven't read.

Cloud Readers

Right behind the self-hosted options are cloud based feed aggregator / readers. The biggest advantage that these applications have is they often have the work to build large databases of feeds to make available to you. You get to select the feeds that you want to read without having to find and add them to your reader. Often during the account creation process you will be presented with a list choose from.

Some of the most notable cloud based aggregator / readers are: Inoreader, Newsblur, Feedly, FeedMe, FeedLand, and The Old Reader. The (to me at least) downside to many of these sites is that they want a subscription for “advanced” features. The prices and features vary between applications. The plus side of cloud based applications is they often have companion web browser plugins, and standalone cellphone apps.

The most interesting of the cloud based options is FeedLand. This is a platform created by Dave Winer – one of the originators of RSS. His idea is to make a site that is “social” based around newsfeeds. You can share posts from your feed to your own social feed, which others on the site can follow. The site also provides exporting lists of your feeds, which you can use with other feed reader applications. And, best of all, there is no charge for the system.

Another one that is a completely free cloud based platform is FeedMe. I was unaware of it until it showed up in the referrers list in my analytics. It is self-described as a minimalist feed reader, and it is. You add your feeds manually, or using an OPML file if you have one. You can make categories for your feeds, and read them. There is no tagging feature, only a favorite option, and you have to manually mark each item as read (or mark the whole feed as read). There's no option to limit the number of items in a feed, or the age of the items. And there is no option for third party application integration.

Inoreader, Newsblur, and Feedly are all sites that seem to be fairly popular as they are ones that are showing up in my referrers, along with FeedMe.

Desktop Applications

There are a fair number of desktop applications, with a couple of them standing out as being available on many operating systems: RSS Guard is available on Windows, Linux, OS/2, and macOS. Fluent Reader is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Communique and NewsFlash are Linux native applications, while Fiery Feeds is available on iOS and macOS. The reason for singling out these applications is they all integrate with the Nextcloud News application.

Notably, RSS Guard also integrates with Tiny Tiny RSS and Feedly.

As I mentioned in the Tech of a Bygone Era section, Calibre can take your RSS feeds and produce e-Books from them, which turns them into a magazine-like reading experience. There are also a couple of desktop email applications that include support for reading RSS feeds: Thunderbird and Claws Mail. While Claws Mail is a Linux based application, Thunderbird is available on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

All of these applications should be able to import OPML files, if you decide to move from one reader to a desktop application.

iOS and Android Applications

While I am not very familiar with iOS applications since I've never used an iPhone, the aforementioned Fiery Feeds is an option that provides Nextcloud News integration. A couple more options with Nextcloud News integration are: CloudNews and Nextnews. Additionally, I believe (although I could be wrong) there is a news application that comes with the iPhone?

On the Android side there are plenty of options: Nextcloud News Reader, OCReader, Newsout, and Readrops are all notable for their Nextcloud News integration. A couple of other notable apps include Feedly, Flipboard. On the open source side there are quite a few more applications: RSS Reader, Feeder, Capy Reader, and FeedFlow to name a few (available in the F-Droid store).

And there are the applications designed to work with specific cloud platforms like Inoreader, Feedly, and NewsBlur.

(NOTE: while I did mention Flipboard, I am not mentioning apps like GroundNews, SmartNews, Google News, Yahoo! News as those apps are more specifically focused on gathering news from a predefined list of news outlets, and typically don't allow adding your own feeds.)

Conclusion

What I find interesting about this is an image of seeing all the information that is available on the internet as a stream. Much of that information is available for the taking, consuming, researching, etc. However, it's what we do with this information that matters. Feed Readers are like docks. You use a reader to set up the bays for all the information to flow into. How the docks and bays are organized is up to you.

So, what would I do given the whole sea of available options?

I've already mentioned several times that I use Calibre's RSS scanning feature. I like the idea of having e-Books that I can just put on my e-Reader and read at me leisure. But, there is another feature of Calibre I haven't mentioned: the Content Server. This feature starts a web server application that I can use on any of my devices within my house. So, if I wanted to read anything from my library, including all the news sites I download, on my tablet or phone, I can use the content server with my web browser.

But, if I weren't using this solution, I would self-host Tiny Tiny RSS, and use RSS Guard on my desktop, and the open source Tiny Tiny RSS android app on my phone and tablet. The other option I would explore would be setting up Nextcloud, using the Nextcloud News App and using the Android version of the Nextcloud News App.

However, I wouldn't take my advice in this area, as my needs and desires are likely far different from yours. Explore what's out there, see which options give you what you want. Personally, I am happy reading the IndieWeb on my desktop using my web browser, and don't see a need to do anything else with it.

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Categories: #Features Tags: #rss, #feeds, #readers, #windows, #macos, #linux, #android, #ios, #cloud License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Calm waters on Lake Superior.

I've been collecting a lot of images of water lately. This is the outgrowth of a post I made on Ennui Vagaries about repurposing weather camera photos. There are a lot of weather cameras that are on the shores of lakes, rivers, or at the docks and launches. Collecting these photos has been made exceptionally easy by the Fediverse having many feeds of these images.

While collecting a bunch of the sunset images tonight, I thought of the song Downstream by Supertramp. It's a gorgeous solo piece by Rick Davies with just a simple piano accompaniment. The lyrics are a tribute to his spouse at the time. Basically a simple love song, sung in a very simple manner.

This, in turn, started me thinking about another water themed love song. That would be To Be Over by Yes. Not a lot of people know the story of this song. It was a song that Steve Howe brought to the group. He had written it based on a boat ride he and his wife had taken on a Sunday. Of course, bringing in the start of the song, the rest of the band expanded it into a true Yes ballad. Possibly one of their most underrated works ever.

And then I was thinking, what else kind of matches this mood? Basically slow, gentle water themed songs. And there was one that popped into my mind immediately: Ruby Pool by Vola. The wonder of this song is the piano arpeggios by Martin Werner that lead off the song, followed by the pairing with Adam Janzi's drum pattern is just magical. I could almost listen to a whole song just built off this pairing, but fortunately the lyrics of the song are just a gorgeous as the arrangement, and as always Asger Mygind's vocals are stunning.

So, there you have it. Three, gentle, water-themed songs for a peaceful Sunday.

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Categories: #Music Tags: #songs, #yes, #supertramp, #vola, #pop, #rock, #progressive License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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The Harry Partch Ensemble, via Wikipedia, under a CC 0 License.

Listening to Harry Partch is like going on a surreal archaeological dig through history. Only this is history reinterpreted by someone who has been taking shrooms for two decades. Yet, with the emergence of microtonality in the music of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Angine de Poitrine his works are more relevant today than ever.

Harry Who?

Harry Partch was born on June 24th, 1901 to Virgil Franklin Partch, and his wife Jennie. They were missionaries to China who fled the Boxer Rebellion. His parents settled in Benson, Arizona. He was encouraged by his mother to learn music, and she taught him to read music. He was exposed to music from different cultures including Chinese (via his mother), the Yaqui people, and Spanish songs.

He began studying piano serious in 1913 after his family relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also began composing his earliest piano works (which he later destroyed). In 1919 He relocated with his mother to Los Angeles after the death of his father. In 1920 his mother was killed in a trolley accident. Partch studied music at the University of Southern California's School of Music in 1920, but left two years later being dissatisfied with the teachers.

Rejection of Equal Temperament

Sometime during the 18th Century, western music settled on the tuning system known as twelve-tone equal temperament. After reading Hermann von Helmholtz's [Sensations of Tone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SensationsofTone “Sensations of Tone”) in 1923, Partch began to feel that equal temperament had forced music to become more abstract. This abstraction was stifling the true possibilities for expression in music, so he rejected equal temperament in favor of just intonation.

This marked Partch's first step in finding a different direction for musical expression that remains the inspiration for many avant-garde and experimental musicians to this day.

Partch's Journey

Per Wikipedia's entry on Harry Partch, his career can be divided into several periods: Early Work (1919-1947), Academic Period (1947-1962), and his Late Period (1962-1974). These periods roughly correspond with the types of Partch's compositions, and his exploration of tonality.

During the first period, Partch came to reject the system of equal temperament, favoring just intonation instead. His first experiments involved creating paper coverings that indicated just intonation fingerings for violins. In 1930, he decided to break from the equal temperament tradition completely and burned all his previous 12TET (12 tone equal temperament) based compositions. He then devised a 29 tone scale, and had a viola constructed with which to perform works using this scale (the Adapted Viola).

In 1932, he gave several performances of his works in San Francisco, and won the support of a private group of individuals which allowed him to relocate to New York. The Carnegie Corporation of New York granted him the money he needed to continue his studies in England, where he met Kathleen Schlesinger. Schlesinger had been studying ancient Greek music theory, and had recreated a Kithara from an image on a Greek vase. Upon his return to the United States during the great depression, Partch would spend nine years as a transient / hobo. In 1938 constructed his own Kithara approximately twice the size of Schlesinger's and devised a new 43 tone scale. While in Chicago, Partch would design and build a 43 tone reed organ (aka the Chromelodeon).

The second period saw Partch settling into the University of Wisconsin from 1944-1947, during which he lectured, built more instruments, and finished his book Genesis of a Music. He left in 1947 due to not being able to join the permanent staff of the university, and there being a lack of space for his instruments. In 1949, he was offered the opportunity to convert a smithy into a studio by Gunnar Johansen to continue his work. During his work in the smithy, he recorded Eleven Intrusions and several other works. In 1951, he moved to Oakland, CA for health reasons, and put on a performance of his piece King Oedipus, but was unable to make a recording of it due to objections from the Yeats estate. Partch set up his studio / record label Gate 5 in 1953, and would release records via mail order. During this period Partch also started working with the University of Illinois, and was introduced to Danlee Mitchel, who would later become Partch's heir. Partch produced several performances of his works with the University's support. Partch also began what would a six film collaboration with Madeline Tourtelot. Partch left the University due hostility from the music department, despite having support from other departments and organizations.

Partch's final period saw him returning to California, and setting up studio in Petaluma. He composed And on the Seventh Day, Petals Fell in Petaluma. And, in 1969, Columbia Records released The World of Harry Partch, his first major label release. Partch's final theater was The Delusions of the Fury, produced in 1969. His final work was the soundtrack to the Betty Freeman film The Dreamer That Remains. In 1973 Partch retired. He died of a heart attack on September 3rd, 1974.

Partch's Influence

As is, hopefully apparent, Partch's work was both influential and controversial. During his life he was supported by numerous artists, such as Henry Cowell, Otto Leuning, Roy Harris, and Aaron Copeland. He also had the support of numerous foundations, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the League of Composers, the Fromm Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Towards the end of his life, The Harry Partch Foundation was established to handle his expenses, and administer his work. His instruments. Danlee Mitchel served as the Executive Director of The Harry Partch Foundation until his death. Dean Drummond's group Newband undertook the handling of Partch's instruments and performs with them. The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music holds the Harry Partch Archive 1918-1991.

Partch was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame in 1974. In 2004 U.S. Highball was selected by the Library of Congress's National Recording Preservation Board.

Closing

While the work of Harry Partch has not seen wide acknowledgment throughout Europe or Eastern Countries, there is growing interest in his work. Partch's work has established a culture where the exploration of alternate tunings for instruments has become something that is more common.

Groups like Angine de Poitrine, and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard haven't rejected the concept of equal temperament in their instrument selection. But, they are using the concept of adding more tones to the scale in ways that are substantive, just as Partch developed whole new scales and made large scale compositions with them.

This is the way forward for music. There is an entire world of sound out there waiting to be discovered, or in some cases, rediscovered. Twelve tone equal temperament has been the primary focus of music for centuries. With the advances in synthesizers and sampling over the past several decades, artists have started exploring all sorts of new grounds.

Hopefully, we will see more substantial work done in the field of using just intonation, and other tuning systems.

If you would like to explore the music of Harry Partch, I highly recommend the four volume set: The Harry Partch Collection Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, and Vol 4, along with other recordings of Partch's work on New World Records.

There is also an excellent film of Harry Partch's Studio from around 1950 available on YouTube. This lets you see all of his instruments and provides a deeper understanding of how they were designed. Partch also plays each of the instruments.

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Categories: #Music Tags: #experimetnal, #microtonal, #american, #influential License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Image of a checklist with circle with a slash over the top.

I feel fairly certain in saying the author of the post 5 Albums meant no harm. Even the prompt: Introduce yourself with five albums that have shaped you seemed quite innocuous. And I thought: “Cool. I can write a response to this with one hand tied behind my back, and three of my fingers broken”. Part way in, I decided to throw a curveball: I was going to list ten albums. Actually more than ten because my list had multi-volume sets in it. I reject your rules and substitute my own! Take that!

As I worked on my masterpiece, I inserted a couple of snarky little comments between the first and second half that were intended to be humorous about me breaking the rules. Those comments used words like “reductive” and “de minimis”. That's when I realized I was falling into a trap: the clickbait trap. Then I had a further realization: this wasn't just a list, it wasn't just clickbait, it was worse.

So now, after defending writing and blogging metas, I run the risk of being labeled a hypocrite in order to explain why these types of articles are not the silly puff pieces they appear to be. But rather, they are precisely the kind of thing that should be avoided. And, I even have a some potential fixes for what I see as the biggest (but not only) issue.

The Problems

Personally, I see three problems with these kinds of posts:

First: they don't say anything about the author. At least they don't say anything useful, other than being a list of objects. But there is no context to those objects. The author hasn't given the reader any insight into why those objects have meaning. You might think they are objects the author likes or loves, but is that necessarily the case? Aren't you just as “shaped” by the things that you don't like, the things that repulse you, or you are indifferent to?

Second: The author of such a post is opening themselves up to be judged, and conversely putting their audience in the position of being judgmental. What does this accomplish? Nothing useful as far as I can tell. A larger portion of the social issues we have today are based around people being judgmental without having any real knowledge of the people they are judging.

I've read or heard numerous accounts from people that have found their way out of cults or hate groups that are surprised when they realize that whatever they hated was just not worth it. They often don't realize or understand the people or things they hate because they judged them solely on the few things they thought they knew. Things that were regularly misrepresented, or twisted to cause them judge people hatefully.

I'm not saying that judging someone based on a silly list of five albums is on the same level as someone in a cult or hate group. But they do share a small similarity in that they invite judgment based on what is, at best, superficiality, or at worst a potential misunderstanding.

Third: These lists play to some of the trickiest and most difficult aspects of our personalities to navigate. They play to our ego, pride, superiority, or inferiority. This was what happened to me, I realized, when I was writing my snarky comments. I take pride in the fact that I have a wildly varied taste in music, and my ego wouldn't let me just produce a list of five pop/rock albums when there is so much more music out there. That's why I expanded my list (and, in reality, ten entries still weren't enough to encapsulate my listening, and all the recordings that have shaped me.)

The Fixes

So, having talked about the problems, what are the fixes?

First: don't make it a call to action. “Introduce yourself…” is a call for responses. This puts the reader automatically in the role of judging the list and the person that wrote it. If there isn't a call to action, it removes some pressure to judge. There is still some likelihood the reader will judge the list. But it's less likely they will have to navigate their ego or pride while reading it.

Second: The more obvious option: provide context. Tells us a bit more about yourself by telling your reader why these particular items are significant to you. Was it a recording you bought with your first paycheck? Was it playing when you proposed to your spouse? By doing this you invite your readers to relate to you on some level. Their responses can focus more on similarities or differences. This, in turn, may evolve into a sort of blogging based dialog between you and your readers.

Third: Don't write a list. Okay, this sounds like I'm being pedantic. But, really, I have a better idea: take your list and turn it into a series of essays. Write 300–600 words about each of the list entries. Recall stories about them. Explain where they fit into your life. Talk about the things that you like about the item, and even the things that you would change about it if you could.

This is the kind of exercise that can be beneficial in so many ways. You may find new ways of expressing yourself. It can allow you to explore your relationship with the subject. Your readers may see the item in a new light. As with the second entry, responses to your post might be about the similarities or differences between you and your audience. Or, your audience might write about things that hold a similar place in their lives.

Conclusion

When I started writing my response list for the 5 Albums post, I thought it was just a little silly toss off article. But then I quickly threw out the original rules, and having done that, discovered there were bigger issues with this kind of post. The issues are they don't provide any context, and therefore no real insight into the author. The second is that they are a call to judgment. The author is judged, while the audience is being judgmental. Finally, they play to some complicated aspects of our personality (such as ego and pride). Indulging in these complex aspects of our personalities isn't always healthy.

So, I set about suggesting some fixes. The first is to not have a call to action. That will somewhat minimize the judgment aspect. The second is to provide context. Let your audience in on your relationship with these items. Third suggestion would be to write a series of articles instead. Explore more of your writing skills, and let your audience focus more on what's important t to you, instead of the object.

So am I a hypocrite? Maybe partially. But, I am calling this out because I think we can do better. I think understanding when something is a bad idea, and why it is a bad idea can lead to us finding better ways to accomplish the same objective. I have little doubt that the original author of the post intended to make a positive contribution.

We see these kinds of articles all the time. I've even participated in one myself (see: The Shellsharks Music Quiz Challenge). But, I can say at the time I was just trying to get myself writing again. And, this was actually a quiz that was more extensive and open-ended than the “5 Albums” post. Looking back on it, if I were to take it again, a lot of my answers would change.

In the end, this is all just my opinion. Hopefully it has been food for thought, and it may do some good.

Now, if you'll please excuse me, I have a series of articles to start writing… ;)

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Categories: #Writing Tags: #blogging, #lists, #context, #judgment, #clickbait, #meta, #metas License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Photo of a circular pill sorter box against a pale blue background. Photo by Unattributed. License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Sure, I hear you saying: no one wants to get old. But it's a fact of life, we all eventually get old. And we all eventually have to face our mortality. One of my favorite sayings about this is: One Day We'll All Be Skeletons. A perfect thought that encapsulates the fears of mortality, and it was uttered by a six-year-old, in front of his dad, on video, available for the whole world to see. But the father got mileage from it as everyone that saw the video wanted it on a t-shirt. I've got four of them.

What I am actually referring to, quite literally, is the photograph at the top of this post. The dreaded weekly wheel pill sorter. But ironically, it's not because of the pills in the sorter (that is only a small part of it), but what it represents to me symbolically.

So, first, the pills. These are mostly an annoyance. A matter of compensating for a few small genetic defects that run through my family. I tried, really hard, to avoid taking medication for these defects. Alas, time caught up with me, and I had to start on medication for those defects a couple of years ago. But, given that I've known people that started taking these medications 10–20 years younger than me, I think I did okay to make it this far without them.

Instead, the pill sorter represents is the growing need to rely on medications. Not just the type that compensate for small issues, but the types of medication that keep you alive. The kinds of medications that one should question taking. The question we will all face one day: am I going to be able to live well just by taking this medication? Or, is this medication just prolonging the inevitable? Leaving me to cling to life in a degraded state?

These are complicated questions to answer. And they are doubly complicated to answer if you've had to take care of any loved ones who were dependent on medications. I have, and I honestly questioned if it was worth it.

I am of the opinion that the pharmaceutical industry is too invasive in our lives. They have pushed hard for deregulation, and often bring medications to market for their profitability responsibilities. Look at how many medications come to market only to be pulled within five years because of unknown side effects. My bet is if we hadn't seen this level of deregulation over the last 20–30 years many of those medications wouldn't have been marketed. The harmful side effects would have been found. I'm of the opinion that we need to be extremely cautious when judging the balance between good and harm, especially when it comes to pharmaceuticals.

On the flip side, I have to look at a recently passed family member who was even more anti-pharmaceutical than me. They tried as many suitable homeopathic remedies as they could before seeing a doctor. Don't get me wrong: they weren't stupid about this. They did research, they knew the potential side effects, and risks for any homeopathic course they chose. And yet, they passed about 20 years earlier than I would have guessed. But, it's not clear this was related to their choices in homeopathic treatments as opposed to more established medical treatments.

The pill sorter is serving as a constant reminder of these issues for me. It's reminding me that eventually I will face those same issues, the same choices others I have loved have had to make. For now, though, this pill sorter is just a convenience, allowing me to store my medications in one place, while having a supply of them sitting here at my desk where I take them every morning before starting my work.

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Categories: #Essays Tags: #aging, #medicine, #mortality, #lifequality, #homeopathic, #convenience License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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The view from Lake Michigan from Michigan City East Lighthouse, 2026-07-03.

Fri, July 3rd, 2026: All of these articles were in the Top 12 on Bubbles this morning: You Don't Have to Blog Like Me, Stop Writing for Bubbles, Re: Your Metablogging is Lame, Your Metablogging is Lame as Hell. If you went further there are a lot of similar articles, especially articles talking about blogging platforms. Yeah, so there is a writing obsession running through the Bubbles community. Well alright! Time for me to get on this train to fun and profit!!

Okay, okay, I'm joking. Mostly. Kinda. Definitely.

I agree with the sentiment that writing about writing, and writing about blogging platforms is (potentially) weak content. And that writing targeted simply to get clicks / become popular is lame. Do you know what is even weaker than those styles of content? Yup, you guessed it: complaining about those styles of content.

Metas in the world of writing have existed for just about forever. Longer than any of us have been around. And, guess what? There will continue to be metas in writing long after all of us have joined the ranks of a million monkeys banging on keyboards in another world.

Metas are something that come and go in communities, they are like the waves: sometimes larger and sometimes smaller but if the tides stopped completely we'd be in an even worse situation. Want to achieve low meta-tides? The best solution is to ignore them.

In my experience the thing that matters the most is having your own reason and purpose for writing, and not deviating from it. It's too easy to get distracted by the meta high tides. It can make you want to jump aboard that wave and ride it as far as you can. But in the end you are just left standing on the shore looking for the next big wave to ride.

I'm in the middle of migrating all of my old websites to this platform. Why? The platform I had been using has become a completely unusable mess over the last decade. It is, in my opinion, a top example of the enshittification of platforms. I mentioned it already on this blog as part of a conversation. But, I'm not turning it into content. Why? Covering the enshittification of that platform is a little too on-the-nose for me. Instead, I can stick to my guns and write about the things that I want to write about without the distraction (although, enshittification is well within the range of topics I'm interested in exploring).

The writing in communities like this is at its best when the authors have a sense of why they are writing. They find a core set of values and range of topics and ideas that they want to explore through those values. That makes for more diverse writing: everyone brings something different to the table even when covering the same topic. That makes for more natural and interesting interactions. Much more than everyone riding the next big meta wave.

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Categories: #Opinion Tags: #meta, #metas, #enshittification, #blogging, #communities, #community, #waves, #writing License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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On this day in 1976 America celebrated its Bicentennial birthday. And my family had moved to a house that was less than a year old. We had moved into the house in the late fall of 1975. Today I am living in that house after having left it for over twenty years.

You might notice that I refer to this place as “a house” or “that house”. I don't refer to it as a home. I am not certain that this building is, or ever really was, a home. There is a big differentiation between a house and a home. That likely isn't a revelation for most people. In fact, many understand that home isn't tied to a specific building. Instead, home is where you have a sense to being complete instead of just existing or enduring.

On this day, the 250th birthday of this country, I now know that the Bicentennial was the beginning of the end of my family. And, in an odd way, that end is similar to the state of this country.

My father had a vision for his family. A vision that he felt very strongly about. He wanted to right what he felt were the wrongs of his upbringing. He had a vision for his family. The problem was: the rest of us weren't on the same page. We didn't share his romanticized image of living in the country, of cutting ties with a larger portion of society for the simple life.

And that made everything complex.

My father had this vision of living the simple life. Of raising crops and becoming, at least in part, self-reliant. His vision included my mother, sister, and myself embracing his vision of this lifestyle. The reality is: we didn't, and we never would have embraced it had we known what was in his mind. But, he was from a time when the father was the leader of the house, and the family was subservient to the head of the household.

My mother wasn't the type of person to be isolated. She thrived on human interaction. It was a quality I often found downright irritating. She could meet someone in the grocery store, and instead of having a brief, polite and courteous interaction with them, she would have them telling her their life story. People just seemed to innately trust that she had the knowledge and wisdom to help them solver their lives problems.

My sister was the intellectual. She devoured books at a rate I never could have fathomed. A trip to the bookstore or library tended to result in her carry out stacks of books. A stack of a dozen books would last two weeks, at most. She was not the person that was going to be a “salt of the earth” type of person. She wasn't destined to become a housewife, or given to the back-breaking physical labor of planting and harvesting a large garden. Her ambitions were never going to fit with my fathers vision.

I was the dreamer, the person given to looking at something and saying “what if?”. The sounds emanating from my stereo gave me more solace than any book or garden. I didn't find any value in the social aspects of sports, and didn't appreciate the bounties of the land. And, I didn't have a green thumb to save my life. I was the person that wanted to go off and explore a library or museum on my own. I wanted to see how others had expressed themselves, and find my own form of self-expression.

My father predicted that Donald Trump was going to win the 2017 Presidential Election. When he told me this, I thought he was making a joke, trying to get back at me for predicting the election of Jimmy Carter. (To be fair, I hadn't made that prediction based on any understanding of politics. I just made a prediction based on how I saw other people reacting to Carter. It was as if I was channeling my mother.) What did my father know at that point? After all, in his advancing dementia he had suddenly become fascinated with Dr. Phil.

But now, I wonder if there wasn't something to that prediction? Could my father have understood that the rise of Donald Trump was exposing the deep divisions in this country? Did my father see the parallel between the rise of Donald Trump and the divisions that had been exposed in our family when we moved to this house?

There is no answer to these questions for me. Just as there is no answer to the future of this country. The only thing I know is: just as this building will still be a house tomorrow, there will still be a country called America when there is a different President.

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Categories: #Reflections Tags: #home, #house, #family, #division, #vision, #demise, #history, #future License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Angine de Poitrine in May 2026 at the Great Escape by Pauil Hudson. (Via WikiMedia — License: CC BY 4.0)

This morning I installed a music player that I am unfamiliar with, and decided that the first thing I should listen to is Angine de Poitrine Vol. 1 and Vol. II since I hadn't listened to them in a while. And then I found, by coincidence that they played the Montreal Jazz Festival last Saturday (June 27th, 2026) and broke the attendance record set by Stevie Wonder in 2009. I cannot imagine what the guys behind Khn and Klek are thinking right now. Just a year ago they were relatively unknown, and now they're playing for 200,000 fans in their hometown at the second-largest music festivals in the world.

There have been a couple of things that I keep hearing and reading about Angine de Poitrine that bother me. The first is they are the “Answer to AI” or “AI could never come up with this music”. The second is they are just a fad and won't survive. And, of course, I have some thoughts on both of these topics.

Are They The Answer to AI?

I both agree and disagree with people who say this. There are two ways to look at it. The first way, and this is what most people mean, is that Artificial Intelligence could not create microtonal music based on building loops. The premise is that we don't normally listen to microtonal music, so there is no way an AI could come up with it on it's own.

But, what if I were to say that we do listen to microtonal music, just not nearly as much or as often as we do equal temperament music? We've had groups like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard that have incorporated microtonality into their music for over a decade. True, they haven't risen to the same level of popularity of Angine de Poitrine, but they have proven popular enough to have produced twenty-five albums worth of music.

However, there are other things to consider. For some reason there are a lot of people that seem to assume that “microtonal” means using 24 EDO (Equal Divisions of the Octave), instead of the typical western style of 12 EDO instruments. But that isn't completely the truth. We have had composers and musicians going back as far as the 1940s that used (and often built) instruments with different tuning systems. The most notable was Harry Partch, who came up with his on 43-tone non-EDO tuning system.

But also, we should consider that instruments from other cultures do not adhere to the typical 12 EDO tuning systems. Possibly the most notable being the Sitar, which uses a tuning system that is unlike western tuning systems. Of course Indian Raja's have been reasonably known in the west, especially after George Harrison introduced the instrument on several Beatles songs.

Given that all of these types and styles of music are likely known to AI's, which have been fed vast catalogs of music, it's quite possible for one to come up with a form of microtonal music. The reason an AI hadn't come up with something that incorporated microtonality isn't because of the AI itself.

The reason that I agree with this statement is that Angine de Poitrine is more than just their microtonal music. They have an absurdist aesthetic combined with dadaism. They invented some lore for themselves as aliens that have come to earth and love rock music. Their music is more about making fun or parodying pop-rock music.

All of this is a complete package that would require someone with the imagination and artistic knowledge to have come up with. And, that's why there is no AI equivalent of Angine de Poitrine. The majority of the people prompting AI agents to create music don't have the level of knowledge and imagination.

Are They A Fad?

This is a more difficult question to figure out. There is one side of me that thinks the “gimmick” is likely to get old after a while. But, how long will that be? I don't know, and I don't think anyone really knows. If someone thinks they know they are likely just guessing. I mean, after all, how long did KISS go with their makeup and outfits? How long did Angus Young wear his schoolboy outfit in AC/DC?

In Japan, it's not at all unusual for music groups to adopt some form of aesthetic. Band Maid has been going for over ten years now wearing maid costumes. And I won't even get into the Visual Kei artists and their adoption of varying types of costumes. There is a whole culture in Japan which links visual aesthetic and artistry in a way that isn't a gimmick, it's expected and accepted.

What could be a bit trickier is where they go musically. Right now it seems that a lot of people see 24 EDO based sound as a novelty, instead of being a serious form of music. But I don't think that is an issue. There is still a lot of ground for them to explore musically with microtonality.

But I do think they will need to find some way to change up their format. Right now they have a uniquely identifiable music style. They will need to find a way to iterate on this style. They will need to find a way of keeping it fresh, while not alienating their current fans. I could speculate on several ways they could do this, but I am not them. I don't have the same thought process they do. After all, they've been playing together since they were thirteen years old. It's only for them to figure out where they want to go next.

So, in the end, are they a fad? Who knows, and who really cares? Just ride along with them. If they fail, they fail. If they succeed, then they succeed. I'll keep listening and decide when and if I want to stop listening. That's all you can do.

[Edit: 2026-07-03: fix mistakenly calling Montreal the hometown of Angine de Poitrine. It's actually Saguenay, Quebec.]

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Categories: #Music Tags: #microtonal, #antiai, #rockmusic, #parody, #dada License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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If you look up Neo-Luddite or Neo-Luddism in Wikipedia, Chellis Glendinning, who is considered to be one of the major influencers of the movement, wrote in her paper Notes towards a Neo-Luddite manifesto that Neo-Luddites are:

20th century citizens—activists, workers, neighbors, social critics, and scholars—who question the predominant modern worldview, which preaches that unbridled technology represents progress.

And, looking at the hobbies I am most interested in shows that at least half of them are rooted in more heritage ideas:

• Heritage style footwear
• Wristwatches
• Fountain pens
• Photography
• Audio gear
• E-books and E-readers

It could even be argued that my interest in Photography also fits in with the concept of Neo-Luddism. However, given that modern photography is highly dependent on current technologies, I don't count it.

But, just looking at my hobbies isn't a reflection of my thoughts in this area. While I absolutely agree with the sentiment that we should question the concept that unbridled technology represents progress, I cannot align myself with a number of other movements that appear to be related to neo-Luddism. Some of those are the anti-globalization movement, and the anarcho-primitivism movements.

Then what do I consider myself? I came up with a different term to describe my relationship with technology over a decade ago: Techno Curmudgeon. Basically, a curmudgeon is similar to a misanthrope, a person who distrusts other people and human nature. However, instead I have a distrust of technology. I maintain that a lot of the changes that we have seen over the last two decades have really been more change for the sake of change, instead of change with specific goals to improve technology for people.

This mistrust of technology is rooted in the many, many cases of the abuse of technology that we have seen. If I were to say there was any single story that made me into a Techno Curmudgeon it would be the story: How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did. (Note: the original story was in the New York Times, but it is heavily sourced in the Forbes version).

The fact is, that was, in my book a severe invasion of privacy. This is on the order of the Police or a government body requiring that your Library book records be made available to them. I also consider this on the order of an Insurance Companies building a profile on you so they can deny your claim because of something ridiculous.

This can be extended to more recent things that we have seen. For example, the Mozilla Foundation deciding to become an advertising company. Just because they lack imagination needed to stick to their original principles while raising the capital they need, all of a sudden you become the product for them to sell.

In the end, the concept of becoming a Techno Curmudgeon (a term I would love to spread even further) means that I don't accept technology for technology's sake. I maintain a healthy skepticism which is reflected in my hobbies. All of them are about minimizing my interactions with computers and the online world. Instead, I make use of technology to disconnect from technology (like using my E-reader to get away from the computer). Something else that isn't reflected in this list: I minimize the number of subscriptions I have. I don't have Spotify, Netflix, or other streaming services.

This isn't to say I am completely able to avoid harmful technology. For example, given where I live, I am stuck using Amazon. They are the only company that can reliably (most of the time) deliver things that I need. However, when possible, I avoid technology that has proven itself to be harmful, or technology that hasn't proven there is a need for it to change.

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I would like to supply a TLDR; for this document, but it's too long for there to be a simple summary. The closest would be the conclusion of the article, but there is a lot of information along the way that would be lost if you jump to that. Therefor, if you clicked on this article, I would recommend reading it completely.

Introduction

I read Jola's article The social contract of writing the other day, and was impressed by their well reasoned arguments. I then read the response from Segun Famisa: No. You can't tell it was written by AI, and felt that it was quite a bit off the point.

Jola's primary arguments were:

• The use of LLMs are homogenizing writing. Their repetitive use of specific idioms and patterns that are frequently occurring. Like, statistically too frequent to be an anomaly.
• Even if you don't use an LLM in your writing, you are being caught up in the blast-radius of LLM written works. These works have been tainted are affecting how you write.
• Writing that is assisted by the use of LLMs is a violation of the social contract between the author and their audience.

Segun, on the other hand, seems to have disagreed with concept that LLM assisted writing can be identified. He makes the arguments that:

• The tools used to identify LLM written works often fail.
• In order to judge a piece of writing you need to know the author of the work to determine if they wrote it.
• The reason for things like em-dashes, and unusual vocabulary is due more to the social background of the people who trained the LLMs.

There is a lot to be said about both of these pieces. I have some things that haven't been considered to toss into the discussion surrounding the use of LLMs in writing. And, along the way, I want to rebut a couple of the arguments that have been made.

I Am the Author

Before we dig into the exceptionally muddy waters of the ethical questions of using LLMs in writing it's necessary to be clear about this: I am the sole author of this article. Yes, I use some tools to assist in the writing of this article: (self-hosted) LanguageTool and Harper. Why? Because my grammar and spelling sucks.

But, rest assured, all the words on your screen were typed by me. All the awkward analogies, idioms, and other quirks of this text emerged from my mind, and not from an LLM. I will most certainly guarantee that this will lead vocabulary choices that are unusual, and may, therefore, not read in the same way that others might have written this.

And, I am the one making the choice to use properly formatted em-dashes and ellipses throughout this text. These have only been the convention for typeset prose since the invention of the movable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around the year 1440.

Donald Knuth spent years working on TeX, trying to find a way to automate properly typeset texts. Along the way he solved many problems that were far more complicated than anyone had thought they were. I don't understand why we don't honor the work of Knuth and use these machines to the fullest extent of their capabilities, especially when it comes to typesetting.

I do feel like these silly “tell-tales” were originally intended as a joke: “An em-dash? No one writes like that! Right?” and somewhere along the way the joke was lost.

Simple Tell-Tales Are a Lie

That's one of the first things I would like to contribute to the discussion. Simple, easy, tell-tales just aren't a reality. LLMs are not simple pieces of software that are just glorified “autocomplete” machines as some people would try to have us believe.

Even a cursory study of how an LLM is designed and trained will make this fact self-evident. While I am not an expert in this field (far from it), I have watched and read enough background information to have some appreciation for the complexity of the accomplishments in the field.

The facts are that there are many elements that go into an LLM:

• The design of the neural network
• The design of the model
• The algorithms used in the model
• The information used to train the model
• The people who performed the training
• The person(s) interacting with the model
• The bugs / shortcoming of the agents

This is only a top-level view of some of the factors. It's pretty clear that the resulting output from an LLM can be vastly different based on changes to any or all of these factors. This also points to the fact that this should still be considered a research technology, and not something that is being implemented as a tool for the public to use, In my opinion.

Given this level of complexity, how can we think that there are simple tell-tales for LLM written works? It's simply ridiculous.

There Are Indicators of LLM Writing

There is a whole field of study around linguistics which can, using varying methods be used to identify patterns in written language. This is often used with historically significant documents to verify the authorship of said documents.

How is this done? By analyzing works known to be authored by a person, and comparing the documents in question to the known writings of the author. This process involves numerous factors:

• Vocabulary of the author
• Unique grammatical constructs employed by the author
• The overall structure of a document
• The presentation of arguments, explanations, etc.
• Other narrative or exposition elements
• The references or supporting evidence

This idea of examining the constructs and patterns found within a document isn't limited to written bodies of work. These concepts are applied to analyze things like music compositions.

Then why have tools like OpenAI's AI Classifier failed?

Because it's kind of like a dog chasing its own tail. A dog generally chases its own tail not because it wants to catch it, but because the activity itself is fun. The dog knows how to catch its tail, it does so all the time by laying down bending over to get to its tail.

An LLM trying to analyze a text to determine its provenance is like the dog chasing its tail. It can do the assigned activity, but the results are unlikely to end in success. Why? Quite simply, an LLM is likely unable to make a distinction between the information it has been trained on versus information it has generated. In terms of an LLM these two things are equal. The LLM written document is the result of the information it was trained on. What things can it do to find a distinction?

The Author's Social Contract

This is a topic that authors discuss at length. The question of the relationship between an author and their audience is frequently questioned.

Take, for example, a mystery author. Just how much information do they have to present to the reader throughout the text to make the solution satisfying? Is there an issue with presenting too many facts that lead to the solution? What amount of misdirection is appropriate in a story? Where is the line between misdirection and confusing the reader to the point frustration?

Similarly, Science Fiction authors faced the dilemma of writing “hard” Sci-fi, aka basing the technology strictly on known science and technology, versus using known science and technology as the basis for more advanced systems. In some cases, is there a basis for inventing whole new scientific concepts or principles in order to introduce a new technology to their world. Where is the line? What will the reader accept or reject?

These, and many more, types of questions exist throughout all genres of fiction writing. And, likely exist through many more forms of written communication. This discussion is something that is not going away anytime in the future. And now, there is a new topic to add to this: what is the line with LLMs?

Jola's reference to the Oxide Computing RFD 576 brings a lot of subtlety to the questions surrounding the use of LLMs in writing. It simultaneously seems to be advocating for some roles for LLMs, while still acknowledging that there are issues and dangers in using LLMs.

The issue I see with this is there is little to no objective measurement for the effective use of LLMs in their environment. I see this as a missed thought that needs to be carefully addressed. For example, it is suggested that LLMs can be used as research assistants (which is something that I've thought about myself). However, the document warns of the propensity for LLMs to make things up, insert claims that aren't true, or hallucinate, or fail in other ways. Therefore, the user of the LLM for research needs to verify all the claims in the output, and go through all the references to make certain they are valid.

When I considered this question, I started to wonder what the impact would be on my personal research process? In other words, I wondered if the time that I would save would be sufficiently greater than the amount of time I needed to validate the work of the LLM? While I have no experiential data on which make such a judgment, I do have an experience that informed my thoughts on this topic.

A few years ago I asked ChatGPT to write a profile of an artist I am deeply familiar with. I asked it to write a profile under 500 words in length to be used in the liner notes for a new release by said artist. The results were scary. The first part was not all that bad, it got the artists real name, his approximate age, and the region of the world he was from. It then went on to explain his style of music, and his range within that style of music.

Then things fell completely apart. It started listing the most popular releases from the artist. First, several of the releases were little known works by him. But if that wasn't bad enough, it listed a work that he has publicly and widely disavowed. And, to take things to the last level: it made up two works.

I spent over an hour researching the releases, especially because I couldn't any reference to any of these works in the artists online discographies. Once I had determined all the facts surrounding those works, I went back to the LLM and challenged it on the works it had listed. It took numerous exchanges to get it to recognize the fictional works, but it would never explain where those works had come from. As for the disavowed work, it did acknowledge that the artist had disavowed it, but wouldn't answer why that work had been included on the list.

Realize, this is only a 500 word profile. About 2 pages of typewritten text. Several hours spent in validating, and interrogating the LLM about its output. This was a task that would have taken me approximately 30 minutes to complete. At this point I saw that using an LLM for such tasks had an actual negative impact on my work process.

Now, a sample set of one does not make for a good basis to draw broader conclusions. However, when considering what is the line with LLMs, it should be considered whether the use of the tool is going to significantly contribute to the quality of the work, or if it is going to become an unduly burdensome tool. While some roles, such as a proofreading or critiquing one's writing might be a viable and useful option, other areas such as researching, writing assistance, or editing a work might be more burden than useful.

Does AI Fit?

There is something that I have been thinking about. We have been worried that LLM writing are changing the way that we communicate. However, isn't that something that we have been doing throughout history? Consider a few brief examples.

Pens

Yeah, this might seem like a boring way to start things, but there are things that we have to consider, seriously.

The first writing implements were reeds or feathers that were cut to a point, and slit in them. When dipped into an ink pot they held a small amount of ink to allow a person to write. This was an actual advancement over earlier forms of writing. And, because of the limited education, at the time, only Royalty (and possibly extremely wealthy people) had access to these tools. From the quill, we moved on the dip pen. Same concept as before, but now we had nibs made from steel.

The next major change would be to what we now call “dropper” pens, but were referred to at the time as reservoir pens. These were pens where the barrel portion was treated as a reservoir which could be filled with ink. The ink would flow into a part of the pen known as the feed. The feed was connected to the nib, and supplied ink to it. There is a lot of uncertainty about when this was first invented. There are claims that such a pen was invented in the mid-900s in Egypt, but there is no physical evidence of such a pen existing. It is also believed that Leonardo da Vinci may have made one for his own use. His journals contain designs for such a pen, and it's notable that his journals reflect a more continuous ink flow than other writings of the same period. However, there is definitely evidence that there were reservoir pens being produced and sold in 17th century Germany.

Innovation in the design and manufacture of pens remained steady through the 19th century. However, at the beginning of the 20th century a new era of fountain pens was born when self-filling pens began hitting the market. These pens used various mechanisms to allow the pens to be filled by sucking ink into the barrel of the pen. These pens quickly became runaway hits with the general population.

However, their years were numbered. There were efforts to come up with what is known now as the ballpoint pen dating all the way back to the late 1880s. However, all the early versions of such a pen had problems with ink flow, reliability, and material choices. These were much the same issues that had plagued the progress in fountain pen development. However, László Bíró and his brother György decided to undertake this problem in the 1930s, and by 1938 they filed for their first patent for the Biro pen. After World War II, the design of the pen was refined, and eventually came down in price to the point where it was easily accessible to the general public, and quickly supplanted the fountain pen.

The first patented typewriter was developed in 1829. Known as the Typographer by William Austin Burt. (There were several machines before this one, but this is the first extensively documented machine.) In the mid-19th century the desire and need for speeding up communications brought the development of the typewriter to the forefront of technology. Typists, stenographers, and telegraphers could take down information at the rate of approximately 130 words per minute, whereas people writing with a pen tended to top out around 30 words per minute.

The first commercially successful typewriter was patented in 1868, and was sold under the name “Shoales and Glidden Typewriter”. In 1873 Remington would bring its first typewriter to market. In the early 1900s the design of typewriters reached a point where the design was somewhat standardized, and there were at least a dozen notable manufacturers of typewriters.

The first electric typewriter began production in 1900. However, the first practical electric typewriter wasn't produced until 1914, and successfully brought to market in 1920. From the 1920s to the 1940s the main company producing electric typewriters (Northeast Electric Company) changed hands several times, saw its typewriter division spun-off into a separate company, and was eventually acquired by IBM.

IBM would take the technology, and being producing its Electromatic series of typewriters, which introduced the ability to vary the spacing of the characters, producing a typewritten page the appeared more like a typeset document. In 1961 IBM would introduce the Selectric typewriter, which used a typeball, which could be changed, enabling different fonts or type styles to be achieved.

The final step in the development of the typewriter was the electronic (not to be confused with electric typewriters). Electronic typewriter distinctions were the use of the daisy wheel type head, and using circuitry to control the type head, instead of the purely mechanical mechanisms of the previous electric typewriter.

The typewriter market began to recede in the 1990s after the invention of the personal computer. Of course, much of the invention around the typewriter continues on today in the computer keyboards used by many people.

Getting to the Point

Why discuss the invention and progression of pens and typewriters? They are highly relevant to this discussion, as other communication inventions throughout the ages. These were just the two most direct examples that came to my mind.

What is worth considering is how did these technologies impact the work of creating written documents? The progress from using a quill / reed and ink or dip pens to the self filling fountain pens enabled writers to expand on their work. It made it easier for them to write in a continuous flow of thoughts. Writers like James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway were known to use fountain pens in composing their works. How much would they have been impacted if they only had a dip pen to work with? The invention of the ballpoint pen took writing to another level altogether, being more portable than fountain pens, and requiring fewer and less messy refills.

The typewriter removed many of the restrictions of the pen in terms of the speed at which a work could be produced, and the accuracy and legibility of the document produced by an author. The penmanship of the author was less of an issue. The speed at which a document could be typed was up to four times the speed of handwriting, and potentially higher with the invention of the electric and electronic typewriters. And, by the time electric and electronic typewriters emerged, the ability to correct the text as it was written was greatly improved.

We can move along and look at what the personal computer and the internet have enabled for authors… That is such a large topic I didn't even want to start writing about it.

Is AI Next?

Is AI the next fountain pen or typewriter? Is this a technology that will have impact on writing? That seems to be a foregone conclusion at this point as we look at the works that are being produced now.

The question then becomes where will AI fit in? AI is current still in its early stages, not the mature technology that the marketers and AI companies would like us to believe that it is. But, is there a point where it crosses the point of maturity and become a tool that is going to be seen in the same way as earlier tools were?

There were authors that resisted using typewriters. There were authors that resisted using specific brands of pens (there is a humorous story in which H. P. Lovecraft complained bitterly when he was forced to use a Conklin fountain pen after losing his Waterman pen. Meanwhile, Mark Twain was so in love with the Conklin pens that he endorsed them.)

What It Looks Like

The final question I have been asking myself win regard to AI and writing is: what does it look like? That is, if, and when the technology reaches a point where it is considered to be mature enough to become just another tool for writers and artists?

This is another question that I don't have an answer for, and I don't have any predictions on it. I only have some hopes for what will come. What hopes do I have?

My hope is that the technology will not remain under the direction of large corporations. I would rather see the technology becoming something that individuals chose implement for themselves, and have the ability to customize what it does for them, and how they interact with it.

This basically means local LLM implementations. We have machines that are capable of running small local LLM's right now. (I'm typing this on an AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ system right now). I think there are ways to allow individuals to implement and customize this tool in the same manner that many of us chose to install and customize our Linux systems. I think this could also open the door(s) to ways of correcting the wrongs of the current AI industry in terms of their use of other people's property. But that's a whole other thought process that I have been going through, which belongs in a different article.

Conclusion

The future of AI as it stands is uncertain. There are people that are both bullish and bearish on the state of the industry from a business standpoint. I tend to align myself more with the bears. I believe that the financing is a shame, and there will (hopefully) be either some kind of market correction, or day of reckoning where these companies are concerned.

While the things that many people think are tells really aren't, that doesn't mean it isn't possible to identify AI generated writing more accurately given the correct set of linguistic analysis tools. And at this point we should be identifying these works as the technology is really not at a level where it should be so broadly accepted.

When I look at a company like Oxide Computers I am encouraged that they are taking an approach that addresses many of the subtleties of the questions surrounding AI. However, what I am not encouraged by is that the missed the singularly most critical point: how does one quantify the usefulness of this technology? My personal experience showed me that it could quite easily and substantially get in my way, turning a thirty-minute task into two hours of work. That's not a productivity boon.

But, I am also wondering if we are looking at this form the wrong perspective. Throughout history there have been technologies that have substantially impacted our ability to write and create. Has the impact of those technologies been positive or negative? That's a question with an unknown answer, and one that should be researched more deeply in order to understand what we should expect as the impact of AI.

I know there have been artists and creators that have resisted the technologies that I brought up in this article. I mentioned that one author couldn't stand a self-filling fountain pen (Lovecraft), while another (Twain) loved it so much he endorsed the company. There were authors that resisted using the typewriter when it became a reasonably commonplace and affordable tool for writing, despite all of its benefits.

Where does AI fit in for writers? I don't know, but I do have some hopes for it. The primary hope is that it is a technology that does not remain in the hands of large corporations. I hope that it instead becomes a personal technology that the individual can implement for themselves, and customize it to integrate it into their life.

	FediRing
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