whoa oops sry

I hope you're wearing your seatbelt because the instinct to reach across the passenger seat isn't in me

Not my problem

The guy who speeds through a work zone is like the loud annoying guy at work who does absolutely nothing all day except distract the people that are still expected to get something accomplished 😡

Are you buying this?

 

I heard an AI rock rendition of 50 cents' "in da club" and it was amazing. Very entertaining. I would never have known it was fake if the content wasn't labeled as AI. 

When we watch a TV show or listen to the radio, or thumb through a magazine, these things exist to sell ads. Articles, skits, even music. Entertainment is a ploy to advertise things for sell.

What happens when everything is AI generated? The life will go out of the entertainment. We'll become featureless bots being mined for our financial resources by a landscape of empty, open, greedy hands.

In order to confront AI content we will need to see more live shows. We're going to have to be a civilization again, we're going to have to interact with each other again. The system is working against such activity by our insatiable pursuit of comfort and self indulgence. We can't sit back and let this autogenerated soulless content be piped directly into our minds through whatever our chosen media is. The junk food culture of quick entertainment offers a society-destroying satisfaction.

Liberty and Freedom

It is my belief people have died for this country for what makes it great. Freedom is great, but I think it goes deeper than that. Liberty is a freedom to be considerate, a freedom to be courteous, and a freedom to care, to look out for one another, to be kind, friendly, and understanding. Liberty is also the freedom to do the exact opposite of all those actions. Liberty gives us the opportunity to choose what type of Freedom we recognize. Were the heroes to have a preference, I can only speculate what they would choose.

shelter me

Feel the life in my tiny fingers

Opening up is my tiny hand

Reaching out for warmth and comfort 

Confused, am I, of this bless-ed land.

I am alone within myself,

with you I cannot conversate.

I see the fear in feeling eyes,

I feel the sorrow, love, and hate.

Touch my nose, my tiny face,

you and I are made the same.

Yet, you know more about our world,

and I don't even know my name.

Feel that I am just like you,

know that I have lonely fears.

Keep me safe, for I am weak,

I need your strength to dry my tears.

I'd like to do the things you do,

this world, to me, is all brand new.

As I grow, please don't desert me,

Love me much and never hurt me.

Please take special care of me,

without your love, I can't survive.

Weak and helpless, here I lay,

amazed and dazed, for I'm alive.

-D. Erick Bryan, 1995

James 4:4

A friend of the World is an enemy of God. What does that look like, to be a friend of the world? To me, it's being content to coexist with every World artifact, every little thing we use to fill out our day. 

And the songs are left

There is a moment when creating that jolts and sends sparks of excited energy into the room. It's almost tangible, it's thick like invisible fog. I'm most aware of this energy when I'm among a task-focused group of composers: guitars and drums, singers and audience. We're watching a song be born. Tempo is being chosen, melody is being hummed, riffs are taking shape, the beat is thumping along, stops and starts, quicks and breakdowns. We start from the beginning multiple times, the beginning where familiar becomes sharp, tight, and the sharper and tighter it becomes the more fun it is and then some new part, note, verse until we've started from the beginning again. Gradually we wind through the thick fog and the electricity lifts the hairs on our necks, our arms; the song oozes into our ears and buzzes our entire emotional beings. Once complete, the song becomes polished with timings and more subtle note affectations and the desire to share it with others sits itself on a lamp side table where it waits, glowing, buzzing. Eventually the song is immortalized, and moments from a specific day, specific studio experience are ripped and pasted piece by piece into a finalized representation of this amazing new baby of a song. It makes no difference whether it has achieved a live performance prior to its recording, the recording is just part of the evolution. Once it has been put on display the tarnish sets in and the shiny starts to dull. But among its creators, this creation never loses its place in the trophy case, it can be played and replayed. Though the memories of its birth might gradually fade, the creation remains as important as a doodle on a notepad or a painting on a wall. A masterpiece deserving attention. Eliciting feelings. Brilliant pops and tones that cause familiar shudders of ownership and pride.

Then the band breaks up, the one-hits go on the shelf with the others, and the songs are left to dissolve into a single pinprick of existence in an infinite universe. We are the finest of powder among quintillions of created blobs of matter.