Media Tetrad: Generative AI

While generative AI (ChatGPT, etc) is red hot right now, and I’ve been rather cool on it. All of my experiments with it have resulted in rather ‘meh’, uninteresting, completely predictable outcomes. Maybe I’m missing something. Which takes me to one of my favorite tools for thinking through effects and consequences comprehensively, McLuhan’s Tetrad. While …

Earthed

I’ve always enjoyed the environment message within ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ it’s like a kid-friendly version of Harrison Ford is the Ocean. Nature can reclaim the earth. The world will continue on without us. It’s happened before:

INSIDE VOICE #10: “you don’t know if you’re doing it right. no one knows if they’re doing it right.”

I’ve been a fan of Mike Doughty since his Soul Coughing days and his new Ghost of Vroom project brings back the his earlier found art/jazz collage vibe to effectively comment on the craziness of navigating a pandemic from an small room in NYC. In Counterpart J.K Simmons struggles to navigate a post-pandemic world exuding German-ness; doppelgängers, bureaucracy, science, …

INSIDE VOICE #9: This Land is My Land

For years now, comparisons of the US to individual European states has troubled me. Primarily because in terms of GDP, population, and geographic size, the individual US states make for a more apples-to-apples comparison than the entirety of the union. So, why in the midst of this global pandemic are we still comparing US as a whole …

INSIDE VOICE #8: Just Look Around

The researchers stated that the impact generated an environmental calamity that extinguished life, but it also induced a vast subsurface hydrothermal system that became an oasis for the recovery of life. So, not only do we know exactly where the asteroid hit, we can also see the consequences of it in the K-Pg boundary in the sedimentary all over the globe. It’s one …

INSIDE VOICE #7: 400 years of beer innovating around tax law

In Europe, the growing conditions for beer ingredients – barley, oats, wheat, hops – are comparatively pretty narrow relative to grapes and other cereal grains. While beer traditions, and very intriguing ones, do exist outside of England, Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. I’m focusing on these 4 countries for right now as they’ve been the most influential …