Rabshakeh

I gotcha

I've been trying to process for a few days. As I have mentioned in the past, my wider family were South Africans who left or were forced to leave in the 1960s as part of the same wave as the Blue Notes, in the wake of Sharpesville and Rivonia. For my parents' and grandparents' generations, the members of the Blue Notes were standard names. People whom they knew by sight and (in an either more or less limited way) socially. Even my father, never a jazz fan or a member of jazz-adjacent politically engaged circles (at least once he had come to England), could name them all. I think Moholo was the last of the Blue Notes. In truth, I maybe never fell deeply in love with their music, and, as I say upthread, I was not aware that he was still alive. Nonetheless, it is very sad news, part of the passing of those generations that had so much heart and integrity. Of the surviving members of my family my aunt and a cousin-once-removed, both on my father's side, are perhaps the last who knew him (the more hardcore SACP / jazz fan family members who were closely involved in those circles pre-emigration are long since dead). I have long since stopped notifying them of deaths, as it is getting too personally painful for them. Apologies for the egotistical post, but it is going to be a sad few years, as all the remaining legends pass.

This is a brilliant description. Give us an example, please.

Sad news.

I forget the exact wording but I think it was recommending things to do. Drink in a traditional pub in Bayswater, eat fish and chips and enjoy the north / south divide, was it, as I recall. Sorry to hear it. There is a level of unpleasantness that we are put to by modern technology enabled services that our grandparents would never have put up with.

Again, if you feed people a diet of Marvel films don't be surprised when people can't tell the difference between AI and the 'real thing'.

I am a jet lagged mess today but I found it extremely good. All the greats of Nordic jazz are on it but none were yet greats. It is basically a very good euro-jazz record of its era (stew together Electric Miles, free jazz and modal stuff) with some very sibilant Norwegian poetry over parts of it.

This is part of the issue. So much work is just producing words to a template. The same is broadly true of modern journalism in the post-Buzzfeed age and even literature. We are used to and expect jargon filled content with little thought or meaning, so it is easy to see why people are happy to use and sample AI. I took a flight back this morning on a Cathay Pacific flight. Lots of AI content there: 'Visit London with its amazing North-South Divide' was a favourite.

The place I see it most is job applications. People use it to write job applications and covering letters. Every time we have a graduate job opening I get 100 of these things that are all different but all the same. If you know that a tool is going to produce some functional words that will get you a D- mark in a school essay then sure, that's a pass. By why use it for a job application?

Abdul Wadud - By Myself

It shows up a lot? I am fascinated at how people are so aware of its limitations and yet still use it.

Jan Erik Vold and Jan Garbarek – Hav

I had not realised that he was still alive. A great loss. RIP.

But to describe the effects of "Women taking over"? Lyrics aren't entirely audible on the version that I could stream.

Maybe I'm misremembering. I recall it being how feminism is taking over the world or something, and being really quite misogynistic. Perhaps I am getting confused.