Bob Schwartz

Cage match between Musk and Zuckerberg? Never gonna happen.

Coyote v AI? It’s happening right here!

Coyote
Length: 37 inches
Height: 18 inches
Weight: 20 to 50 pounds

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Length: Infinite
Height: Infinite
Weight: Infinite

Coyote

“No other personality is as old, as well known, or as widely distributed among the tribes as Coyote. He was the figure of paleolithic legend among primitive peoples the world over and, though he survives today in Eurasian and African folktales, it is among native Americans, perhaps, that his character achieves its fullest dimension.

In an essay on the psychological roots of the character, Stanley Diamond likened Coyote to a primitive essence of conjoined good and evil; at a time in the history of man when there was no rigid distinction between good and evil, Coyote was, Carl Jung, one of a number of thinkers intrigued with Coyote, wrote that he was “in his earliest manifestations, a faithful copy of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level. He is,” continued Jung, “a forerunner of the savior, and like him, God, man and animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a bestial and divine being.””

Barry Holstun Lopez, Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter: Coyote Builds North America

AI

You know.

The smart money is on Coyote. If you are smart, you will try to learn from Coyote instead of AI. Coyote is unmatched in adaptability, no matter what is thrown at it, including constant attempts at extinction. Coyote is not only succesfully aware of and responsive to the environment and itself. It is the environment and itself. Compared to Coyote, AI should be AS—Actual Stupidity. Plus, Coyote talks and sings better than anything.

What do you say?

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

Book and movie people associate “Bonfire of the Vanities” with the 1987 bestselling novel by Tom Wolfe or with the box office bomb released in 1990 based on the book.

The historic background of “bonfire of the vanities” is explained by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post:

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“For approximately four years, from 1494 to 1498, a Dominican monk and preacher was first the conscience, then the virtual king of Florence. His admirers, indeed followers, included the Neoplatonic philosopher Pico della Mirandola, the young Machiavelli and the painter Botticelli. His two greatest enemies were just as eminent: Piero de’ Medici, that feckless son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and heir to his father’s dictatorship of the city, and that charming arch-sensualist Pope Alexander VI, among the most notorious of the notorious Borgias. The simple monk himself would pass into legend as the scourge of the rich and corrupt, a fanatical moralist, an accused heretic and, finally, a martyr.

Nowadays, though, people tend to recognize the name Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) chiefly because he instituted the original “bonfire of the vanities.” In 1497, this crusading prior of San Marco (blessed with paintings by Fra Angelico) berated the Florentines over the fripperies they wore, the salacious books they read, the provocative paintings they hung on their walls, the gold and silver jewelry that flashed even in the half-light of the sacred cathedral, all the gaudiness, luxury and lasciviousness of their sinful lives. Away with these snares of the devil! And so, rather than celebrate the last day before Lent with a lewd carnival, Savonarola called for the faithful to cast their “vanities” onto a great pyramid of holy fire. And they did.”

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For those with biblical tendencies, vanities are associated with the famous line that opens the Book of Ecclesiastes, known in the Hebrew Bible as Kohelet [Preacher]. In Hebrew:

Hevel, hevel, amar kohelet, hacol havelim.

In the King James version:

Vanity, vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity.

But translation of the Hebrew hevel remains a challenge to modern translators. A number of English words have been proposed including:

Absurd
Futile
Senseless
Meaningless
Breath
Vapor

Each of these seems related to vanity, but each resonates differently to our ears.

Are we to burn the secular luxuries and distractions that pull us away from the divine, as Savonarola directed?

Or are we to keep those luxuries and distractions around—all of us are human and few of us are ascetics—provided we stay as unattached as possible, realizing that all of it is ephemeral. Like breath. And absurd. Like everything.

I’m going with hevel.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

Antidote to bitterness
Snack size chocolate bars
Take two and love
Everybody in the morning

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

Oh, you don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
Till the day I die
Till the day I die

Plenty of earnest Labor Day messages. Like this and this and this.

How about a song?

A 1973 song about unions that rose to #2 in the UK pop charts, by an unheralded band you’ve probably never heard of (only 17,000 listeners on Spotify), a song that became an unofficial anthem of the British trade union movement.

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Part of the Union by the Strawbs

Now I’m a union man
Amazed at what I am
I say what I think, that the company stinks
Yes I’m a union man

When we meet in the local hall
I’ll be voting with them all
With a hell of a shout, it’s “Out brothers, out!”
And the rise of the factory’s fall

Oh, you don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
Till the day I die
Till the day I die

Us union men are wise
To the lies of the company spies
And I don’t get fooled by the factory rules
‘Cause I always read between the lines

And I always get my way
If I strike for higher pay
When I show my card to the Scotland Yard
And this is what I say

Oh, oh, you don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
Till the day I die
Till the day I die

Before the union did appear
My life was half as clear
Now I’ve got the power to the working hour
And every other day of the year

So though I’m a working man
I can ruin the government’s plan
And though I’m not hard, the sight of my card
Makes me some kind of superman

Oh, oh, oh, you don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
You don’t get me, I’m part of the union
Till the day I die
Till the day I die

Songwriters: John Ford / Richard William Hudson

Once steaming hot
It shrinks to cold last gulp
More bitter less invigorating
An afterthought a chore
To finish
You do

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Whether you made it yourself or the effort of others, the coffee before you, once a magic elixir, comes down to a tepid puddle in the cup. Things to do people to see, you gulp it down, barely tasting. So you go.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz

30 Rock (2006-2013) is an all-time great TV comedy series. Created by Tina Fey, it combines non-stop absurd jokes and characters with sharp points about American society, culture and entertainment.

In the episode Idiots Are People Two (2012), Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), star of the TV show-within-the-show, is found to have performed an offensive stand-up bit. People protest Tracy and the show.

When his boss Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) calls him an idiot, he organizes a protest of the network.

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Tracy: Which is why I’m going to do exactly what they did and organize a protest of this network.

Liz: A protest? By whom?

Tracy: By idiots!

A protest crowd gathers in front of NBC headquarters. Tracy addresses them.

Tracy: The so-called idiot community will not be silenced.

Liz: For God’s sake, Tracy.

Tracy: We are legion. We are America. Frat guys, DJs, loud-mouthed old bitches, investment bankers, the tramp-stamped, parrot-heads, anti-vaccination crusaders, and people who won’t shut up about scuba diving. And now celebrity spokesperson, actress Denise Richards.

Denise: That’s right. I’m an idiot. Surprised? Well, I am. For all intensil purposes.

Tracy: Our community is mobilized now, L.L. And we’re not leaving until we’re heard. You can’t ignore us, Liz Lemon. We will be out here every day, misremembering movie quotes. Because as Braveheart said, “you can take our freedom, unless you take our lives.”

Liz and her boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) meet.

Jack: I would, however, like to ask you why Tracy is outside cursing this network on a megaphone.

Liz: It’s a good one, Jack. Tracy has organized a protest of NBC by his fellow idiots.

Jack: He what? No, no, no, no, no. We need idiots. You certainly need idiots. Who do you think is watching your show?

Liz: Funky taste-makers?

Jack: Black nerds, Jet Blue passengers who fall asleep with the TV on, pets whose owners have died, and, uh, idiots.

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