Red

On the subject of the cello… I believe I have written about my recent experience playing with a cellist who’s a doctoral student (cello performance) in the music school here. Like @kluurs I loved having that amazing resonance in my living room. I’ve also played with violinists, and I really enjoy it, but there’s something that’s just so compelling about the cello. The first time I ever played with a cellist was many years ago (maybe around 2017? Before COVID, before I had a grand). I didn’t realize how amazing the cello is as an instrument, and so I wasn’t “emotionally” prepared for having that sound right next to me. As soon as he started to play, I teared up and found to very hard to maintain composure and keep playing. That’s the essence of music. It vibrates to the very core of your being. I think all music has the potential to do that, but maybe the cello just does it exceptionally well…

I know I talk a lot especially about this so I'll give you a recap. For thing- New College, my alma mater, has the College Seal it's founders gave it. You can see it at the top of this Wikipedia page. New College of Florida - Wikipedia https://share.google/lkwNvlmkGUrnkw5SO The Founders create the College Seal. It's been this way since the 12th century. Schools create logos; ...use them for different purposes; ...change them; ... get rid of them, ...create new ones, etc. What you don't do is change the College Seal. The College Seal is the prerogative of the founders. I've never heard of this being done in the US. My alma mater has changed the College Seal three (3) times in rapid suffering. So, leaving out the two changes in the middle chronologically (and I know what they look like and where they still exist in "monumental" form on campus. Strangely, the one I don't have an image yet of #2 and #3 yet, although I know where to find one of them ("2") on top of the sigh with schools name on it as you drive past it (technically through it) on US41 (Tampa to Miami). So, now they have a 3rd pretend seal. I'm not making this up. The current "seal" is the logo you see at the top of the link for the campus bookstore. Official New College Bookstore Apparel, Merchandise & Gifts https://share.google/sWbuWQrv9FWpDZTFH The "administration" makes up its own rules as it goes along. It's hard to believe but I know it's true. @andyd This is a national news story here in addition to being a local and state news story. This is for two reasons. New College met metrics that could only be compared with a very small group of other schools in a meaningful way for decades. Then, this should tie it together, DeSantis, a Trump ally, our Governor decided he hated New College with a passion because he said it was "woke". He went about destroying the school and hiding its true history. Here is the reference I was making. I'm sorry is was opaque. This history belongs in a library. It does not deserve to be not be remember. The narrative they're selling is this is and was ever a another school in the state system just small and lacking sports teams. He first went after Disney. He didn't have the power to do anything to them. He has succeeded in crushing New College into pulp. His goal is to turn it into a Christian Nationalist school. He can't do this according to our national Constitution. I don't think he has a snowflake's chance in hell on this score but then again I have to consider who are the Justice. One outright believes in

These four paintings are all by the same artist, a Youtuber named Siloe Oliveira (Suburban Homestead) whom I'm subscribed to. I have bought these from him over the years because I really enjoy his channel but I use an adblocker, so this is my way of showing support. [image: 9266.JPG]

I reduced costs by cancelling my Spectrum Internet account. No landline. That would be equivalent giving back 25% if what I just saved. Hard no. My mobile phone is Verizon via (Walmart) Straight Talk. $50 My phone was locked to Straight Talk but I think there was a limited period Straight Talk could keep it lock. I don't think it's locked no. I have to double check. So my next step is to lower my mobile bill. I don't know. Tello looks like a possibility. I have to read more. I paid my phone bill today and my goal is to change the carrier before this billing cycle ends.

@Bernard Corporations avoid a lot. Trying to place accountability will draw the opposition of corporations. That is a lot of money. Makes forcing universal healthcare against the health insurance companies look easy.

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Switzerland is one of the countries I have been to but not really. One of our river cruises ended in Basel and there was bad weather so our flight was cancelled. We ended up taking the train to Frankfurt to get a better flight out. So my entire Swiss experience was about four hours in and around the train station. I had caught a cold on the trip so popped into a pharmacy for something for a sore throat. The pharmacist gave me anti bacterial lozenges and they were the best lozenges I have ever had. They actually worked. They tasted decent. I hoarded them and only used them for the worst of sore throats until I finally ran out.

He asked for $5,000. I laughed in his face.

Clusterfuck

One more. I promise. Link to video This generation gap (specifically) is a cultural phenomenon at this. What made some of the younger ones so clueless, ignorant, self-righteous, arrogant and entitled? I don't know.

Bump Edited. BTW- This is a great example of the destruction of US education. New College was a public school by the time I went there. It's defacto privatized by now. The money generating potential of New College made it stand out like a lighthouse. The US public education system is generally wing starved of resources. There are charter schools (de facto private) being aggressively supported by policy makers. Then there is home schooling. I only know about home schooling in Florida. The toddler stage of home schooled kids in Florida seems to end between 5 and 6. "Is our children learning?"- George W Bush

As well you should.

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@jon-nyc I've started taking Jane Friedman's newsletter, because I trust her reporting. Today's newsletter spoke to your question about whether other big AI companies trained on pirated work: OpenAI’s piracy looks to be worse than Anthropic’s piracy One of the key AI lawsuits I’ve been following is this one in the Southern District of New York—a different district from the one where the Anthropic case was settled, and the home of New York publishers and landmark copyright cases. It involves both the Authors Guild and the New York Times, since the court consolidated the cases. Over the last couple of weeks, a lot of information has come to light from unsealed documents. The New York Times is probably taking great pleasure in publishing articles about what’s in these documents, revealing things like: A Microsoft director calling AI scraping the “largest theft of labor in human history” OpenAI’s head of ChatGPT writing that AI posed an “existential threat” to publishers OpenAI developing a hack to get around the New York Times paywall The disclosures related to books are equally bad. OpenAI, like Anthropic, created an internal library of books from the pirate website LibGen and even shared those works with outsiders. One of OpenAI’s employees testified, “The better we do on GPT-X, the more worried genre fiction authors will become about us substituting for them on Amazon.” And an OpenAI researcher described his mission as creating a machine to supplant human authors."