Another weird AI moment from today’s explorations. I wanted to know if the woman in the scandalous cheater video was married. Here’s what AI gave me:
The video is hilarious, by the way.
A Married Divorcee
Author: Clarissa
Our Greenery
Look how overgrown my entrance is! I adore this little bit of wild nature we created in front of our house.
The shade in there is delightful.
And this is our mimosa that we grew from a tiny sapling:
We are practically drowning in greenery. I’m so happy.
AI Explorations
By the way, I forgot the name of the protagonist in Roses for Credit and asked AI. I wanted to see if it could do this task. AI told me the character’s name is Marilou, which it most certainly isn’t.
In questions relating to literature (which is 90%) of questions I ask AI, about half of responses I get is absolute crap. Mind you, I don’t ask AI to analyze works of literature. I only ask for straightforward facts. How many siblings does character such-and-such have and what are their names? When do the events in the novel take place?
The reason why I ask these questions is, for the most part, to be prepared for the weird things students will tell me about these texts in class.
Roses for Credit
Has anybody read Roses for credit (Roses à crédit in the original) by Elsa Triolet?
Triolet was Lilya Brik’s younger sister. And Brik was the famous mistress of the Russian poet Mayakovsky. Triolet emigrated to France right after the Russian revolution. But once a commie, always a commie. She married Louis Aragon and converted him to Communism.
In any case, she wasn’t a bad writer. I read her novel Roses à crédit when I was maybe 14, and it impressed me deeply. The main character, Martine, grows up amidst the grime and ugliness of extreme poverty. She wants things to be beautiful around her. And clean. Beautiful, straight lines. Everything clean and modern looking. She marries into the middle class and starts buying tons of furniture and appliances on credit, and then the novel starts the Communist indoctrination on how not wanting to live in misery and be surrounded by excrement will lead you to being eaten by rats. Which, I know, crazy. But the novel wouldn’t have been published in the USSR without that degree of cuckoo propaganda.
Roses à crédit did not make on me the effect desired by the Soviet apparatchiks. I really identified with Martine and rooted for her. Not with the stuff that entailed buying on credit. I have zero credit card debt, by the way. But I hate the grime and the ugliness amidst which I grew up.
Are there any other Martine fans here, by any chance? She’s like a French La de Bringas, a century later.
Grok Porn
It’s not enough for Elon Musk that he messed up his son so badly that the boy now poses as a girl, he now has a plan to make many more young people similarly inclined:
Anime porn is a #1 road that takes young men to “gender fluidity” and beyond. And by the way, all those dudes in very masculine jobs who declare, at the age of 56, that they are now called Jessica also almost always get there by way of this kind of pornography.
This stuff confuses parents and wives who think it’s an innocent, cartoon-type thing, but there’s really perverted shit happening in this genre. There’s a similar hormonal upheaval happening at 15 and 55, and people who are already not quite themselves can start glitching big time with this material.
A Proven Method
Not to worry. Democrats are proposing yet another immigration amnesty bill. We all know how much Americans want migrant caravans to come back. This is sure to bring those ratings right back up.
Book Notes: Angela Thirkell’s Wild Strawberries
Wild Strawberries is a charming British novel from the 1930s. This is the first book by Thirkell I’ve read, and it looks like she was inspired by Anthony Trollope to write a series that would continue his Barsetshire novels. Thirkell isn’t really Trollope, of course. She’s much lighter, and Wild Strawberries is sweet and lovely but it’s not a work of art. It’s exceptionally high-quality amusement. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
What Thirkell does share with Trollope is that her writing is a lot less about plot than characters. She creates some absolutely delightful characters, and they make her books worth reading. In Wild Strawberries, for instance, there’s Agnes, a mother of three, who is so blissfully happy being married and having kids, that it’s a joy to read about her. It almost never happens in literature that you meet a female character who is fine. Just simply fine. She’s not unhappy, resentful, oppressed, of covetous. Agnes loves everything about her life. And it really makes you sit up and notice when you realize that you can’t think of another female character who is so content with life. There are tons of male characters who dig their lives but no female ones.
Then there’s Lady Emily, Agnes’s mother. She’s hilariously fussy and exceptionally delightful. There’s also Martin, a teenage boy, who’s living his boyhood with great enjoyment. The whole novel is just so gosh darn enjoyable. If you need some peace and lightness in your life, do read it. It’s outstanding.
Growing Disappointment
This is very disappointing. I want to keep supporting Israel but it’s getting hard. It doesn’t seem like anything will be enough for Israel to stop going to war.
I’ve been extremely supportive but it’s getting so I’m starting to wonder if Russia is not the only culture of death on the planet.
AI Music
An AI-generated band got 1m plays on Spotify. Now music insiders say listeners should be warned
The Velvet Sundown released two albums before admitting their music, images and backstory were created by AI.
I listened to the song, and it’s very curious how recognizable it is. Of course, AI doesn’t create. It compiles snippets of what already exists. But so much exists that it can present its concoctions as standalone artifacts.
I couldn’t listen to more than 20 seconds of this AI-generated song not because of any ideological opposition to AI. My objection to it is on the same grounds as my objection to wearing a leopard print top with zebra print leggings. It’s in bad taste. It’s outdated, it’s vulgar. Not sexually vulgar but lacking all discernment. The song is bad precisely because it’s made out of snippers of past melodies. It’s outdated. It has the “God, not this again” flavor.
Unfortunately, many people sincerely don’t understand why Lays chips aren’t food and this music isn’t music.
By the Pool
I know I said it a trillion times already but I’ll never get over how well-behaved, polite, and sweet American children are. And how well American parents treat their children. You only know it if you grew up somewhere else, otherwise it feels natural and I don’t notice.
Three large families appeared at the resort in the past couple of days. One is definitely from the South, with accents that I’d place in South Carolina. Each family has a bunch of kids, plus there are grandparents and a couple of college-age youngsters. And everybody is calm. Nobody is screaming at the children or editing their behavior at all. I don’t know whether it changed but, in the country I left, moms would make themselves hoarse yelling at children to stand here and not there, sit, no, stand, no, come here, no, go away.
And the children have the loveliest manners. Older kids are very sweet with the little ones. Such a great environment.
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