Nightswimming is still one of those songs that stops me in my tracks. It even got to me when I was young. I miss bands like REM - sure there are some out there but I’m too old to be cool anymore so I don’t know where to find them LOL!
I remember distinctly a buddy and I rushing after work to Strawberries Records & Tapes in Portsmouth, NH, to but AFTP on CD the day it was released before the store closed. It was a Tuesday night, I believe. One of my favorite R.E.M. albums, I’m glad to see it receive Welchian appreciation. It MATTers. (Sorry.)
My only complaint, and this is no reflection on the band — or is it? They’d have had to give their approval, presumably — is that the great, sad song “Nightswimming” now always reminds me of Brandon’s exit from 90210. The 90s...you had to be there, people. I wish I was still there!
Not to be overlooked: New Adventures in Hi-Fi, their last recording with Bill Berry on the roster. A different sound, but I dug it. Dig it. I can listen to it anytime. Technology!
Wow. Fall On Me is my number one (according to Michael Stipe on MTV Unplugged, his too, at least at the time). Half a World Away is another favorite, also Stand. (Don’t Go Back to) Rockville, and I Believe complete my top 5.
Let’s make it top 20, and add, in alphabetical order: Can’t Get There From Here, Driver 8, Electrolite, Everybody Hurts, Find the River, Losing My Religion, Man on the Moon, Near Wild Heaven, Nightswimming, of course, The One I Love, Radio Free Europe, Radio Song, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, Star 69, What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
I’d call Automatic for the People, Life’s Rich Pageant, and Out of Time their best albums. So many good tracks.
I fully admit that not only did I watch 90210, and Melrose Place — we all did, they were hugely popular — but I can reveal that my fellow R.E.M. CD-buying friend, Luis, and I, a couple of young republicans, had hairstyles that were very similar to those of Brandon and Dylan. With as much gel as I put in my hair, I’m lucky that I still have so much of it. Hair, not gel.
Luke Perry’s hair reminded me of Chris Isaak’s. I had no idea 90210 ended in 2000! Once I turned 16, my TV viewing was limited, and the only shows I prioritized were Seinfeld and SNL. I did see Jason Priestly at JFK in ‘95. He was with his girlfriend, and didn’t seem to garner any attention. I’m assuming he had left 90210 by then.
R.E.M. had so many good songs. Also, Indigo Girls’ Kid Fears ft. Stipe is 🔥
My coif was most like Luke Perry’s, another lanky guy with a prominent forehead. It had significant height and sheen. Hard to believe Perry is dead, gone to the Peach Pit in the sky. Only 52 years old. Weird to even think of him at that age. Of course, he was, like, 30 playing a teenager on 90210.
2000? Whew! Then there was the CW reboot that started in the mid-aughts, if memory serves. Then the meta revival a few years ago...
No one who watched the original series can discuss it without hearing in their head, and usually repeating, the opening chords of the theme song: da-na-na-na! da-na-na-na! chh! chh!
I met Brian Austin Green (David Silver) once, post-90210, at the NH Film Festival, of all places, where he was showing his directorial debut. My girlfriend at the time was a reporter covering the event, and we sat with him and his cast for the screening. Not a good movie but a nice guy.
I lived in the sticks. Guys were more likely to lean into Billy Ray Cyrus mullet than gelled coif. Luke Perry had the brooding James Dean look down. Wasn’t Green the only cast member who was actually a teenager?
Monster! Great album. “What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and “Star 69,“ which to this day I sometimes sing to myself if I miss a call, would be the two standout tracks for me.
Automatic for the People is the eighth studio album by American alternative rock band R.E.M., released by Warner Bros. Records on October 5, 1992, in the United Kingdom and Europe, and on the following day in the United States.
Oct. 5, ‘92 was a Monday — thank you, iPhone calendar — ergo... Still got it!
In a link between another Hitchcock and Leary, there's an enduring myth that it was Cary Grant who introduced Leary to LSD. It'd be nice if it was true.
Not that Pinker's answer is on Moynihan, but Pinker-like a lot of smart people who haven't really thought about WHAT IT MEANS TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT IS SMARTER THAN YOU AND THINKS 1,000 TIMES FASTER-gave a glib and foolish answer on AI safety. That's the go-to answer for people who haven't really read the scientific literature on AI safety, or interviewed the leading thinkers on it-which Pinker hasn't done.
There is a really simple thought experiment you can try to break out of the glib BS pedaled by people who say "Oh, we'll never have trouble controlling AI, even if it is smarter than us, and thinks faster than we do."
Those of you who have had kids- think of an intelligence that is only as much smarter and more capable than adult humans as adult humans are relative to their three year old child. If you've had a three year old-does that three year old have a great ability to physically and mentally control adult you? No? That's what "smarter than you" really means-you're basically a helpless child compared to it.
People who say AI alignment (and I'm not talking the ridiculous shit like GPT-4-we're talking 2-3 model generations hence) is NOT an issue usually either shrug it off, as Pinker did, or pose arguments that AI safety experts thought of and disposed of more than a decade ago. If you REALLY grapple with it, you understand why the "P-doom"-the estimated probability of AI going wrong in a way dangerous for humanity-has been growing among a lot of people who pay attention to AI, particularly the engineers building it.
Which just goes to show, like with everybody else-ask Pinker about the shit he's an expert about. On the stuff he hasn't investigated, he's no more learned or wise than the dude at the corner bar. He just sounds smarter when he's giving you incorrect info.
I'd kind of like the guys to have Zvi Mowshowitz on about AI safety. he's very reasonable (even in the places I disagree with him), and I think does a good job of communicating the issues.
However, I'm pretty sure it would be a little to far afield of the central fifth column episode.
I know you are kind of joking, but to give a serious answer:
As someone who doesn't have strong opinions on exact timelines, but thinks that short timelines are at least possible, I'd advise planning as if it either won't happen or it will happen in a very long time.
Mostly because, if it happens soon, and you lived your life normally, then you missed on a few years of hedonism. If it doesn't happen at all, or happens in a very long time, and you lived your life as if it was imminent, then you probably wind up having a very enjoyable few years, and then the rest of your life is pretty hosed as you've blown your savings, and probably damaged your professional life and maybe even some of your relationships.
So in my opinion, it's better to live your life under the optimistic assumptions, even if one believes that society should be investing time and effort under more pessimistic assumptions.
Listening to an economist who focuses on AI impact on the economy right now. His best guess is, if we get a slow AI rollout, society might navigate it well enough to figure out entirely new social structures. If we get a fast rollout, we will have very serious political instability. I'm personally pretty worried about AI-if you're a writer you're already screwed unless you have a big personal brand-but also taking comfort that current AI models-the generative pretrained transformers-seem to have hit a ceiling until someone can figure out how to fix the "hallucination" problem. So far, more than half of businesses that have tried to embed AI in their business have seen it fail either because it is not ready for prime time in many applications, or the workers don't trust it and rightly view it as a threat to their jobs, and so are slow adopters. If the "hallucination" problem gets solved- then we're in very deep shit.
I'm not *too* worried about "mundane" AI risks. That is, disruptions to various professions, cultural norms, etc. Not because I think they will be small or that it won't cause problems (I think that mundane issues could both be large and have pretty bad impacts), but mostly because I trust that, in the long run, society will be able to figure those out and adapt, and that afterwards it will be better off.
Rather, I'm worried (to the extent that I'm worried), about existential risks. I think the likelihood is pretty low, but you don't get a do-over. If it happens, that's it. Our species lost.
It's the same reason I think that we should be investing more resources in asteroid detection (although I think this one has actually gotten quite a bit better in recent years)
I still don't know how people can say he was wrongly accused. They was in a wooded area of the park and he said to her "if you are going to do whatever you want to do, I'm going to wherever I want to do." Is the woman not supposed to take that as threatening?
For what it's worth I agree. People get all super angry over this woman and want to cast her out of society. They fail to see how there could be another perspective.
When I reflect on the 2020 Racial Wrecking, which I do constantly — God bless Matt Welch for being someone who keeps beating the drum about the madness of that time and the need for us all to, for lack of a better word, process it — Amy Cooper is among those I think of who suffered collateral damage, and I wonder how it must feel for her, knowing her tormenter has been so venerated. Similarly, what it must be like for the woman who was robbed at gunpoint by George Floyd, to see her assailant practically canonized.
Oh, for God’s sake! What sickeningly hagiographic BS. Unsurprisingly, missing a few key details of the Central Park encounter, and he was the “Karen” (I hate that term), damn it!
I sincerely hope that somewhere safe, Amy Cooper has rebuilt her life, unaware of the advantages and accolades that continue to be rewarded to the man — a birder, pfft! — who helped destroy it.
I guess some people are just going to memory-hole things like, for example, Joe Biden’s Oct. 2021 CNN town hall where, among other odd moments and “misstatements” (lies), he stood strangely stiff as a board with his fists clenched in front of him while Anderson Cooper posed a question, leading to many memes including, most famously, the jet pack. Although, my favorite had him mounted on a pony, gripping the reins.
P.S. I’ve never heard/seen the All In podcast, and I don’t plan to take in the Trump interview — why would I do that myself? — but looking at that thumbnail, uh, yeah, I’d just assume those guys are campaign donors.
It’s pretty short, they only interview him for the first hour so if you do 2x it goes pretty quick. I’ve never heard of them either but they asked really good questions
Hope nobody thinks I'm raining on the REM reverence here, even if my fandom didn't extend past Green, but Corky and the Juice Pigs' REMember from MADtv back in the day is worth a look:
Props to Moynihan for keeping things mostly on track in the Honestly discussion with Kevin Sabet and Dr. Peter Grinspoon. Sabet came off desperate and insecure. He wasn't well prepared for any ideas or concepts that challenge his dogmatic position on MJ or drug prohibition overall.
I clicked on that interview link to "Check out a few minutes" after hearing the Fellas discuss it on the recent episode, thinking I would just listen for a minute or so and get either bored or tired of a fandom type interviews. I started working on some design projects with it on in background and lo and behold noticed 50 minutes had gone by ( The green card with diploma concept was something). Although incorrect statements were made (with no comment by interviewers) but what I walked away with is President Roomba ( Thanks Shane Gillis) is going to be in trouble next with if this version of this guy shows up to that debate.
That episode of Live From the Table was incredible. Kirchick was on fire. He pretty much perfectly articulated my view on Trump, Jan. 6th etc . And Periel got more involved than she usually does which can be a good thing. Highly recommended!
Tech Bros are the easiest marks ever. You tell them just a little bit of what they want to hear, mixed with some cheap compliments, and you've got them eating out of the palm of your hand.
It's actually embarrassing to think that people like David Sacks managed to get so wealthy, while at the same time, being such a puss-filled boil on the ass crack of our political discourse. Only in America.
The "Biden is old" thing has gotten stale, fast. We all know he's old. The other choice is far worse for a whole host of reasons that don't need to be rehashed here. But I suppose the most important reason, is that the other candidate has undermined our institutions at every turn, and would rather watch them burn than do anything to improve them.
REM has always had a way of making me reflect and question my entire life. Their music has always evoked a sense of nostalgia and now that I’m getting older some sadness.
Nightswimming is still one of those songs that stops me in my tracks. It even got to me when I was young. I miss bands like REM - sure there are some out there but I’m too old to be cool anymore so I don’t know where to find them LOL!
Yes what a great song. It’s hard to believe that Michael Stipe is 65!
To be fair, Jesse did put heterodox in quotes. He still gets points off though, for being Jesse.
Jesserodox.
Not listened to Automatic For The People in ages...what a great record! R.E.M outros for days, Matt Welch - keep 'em coming!
I remember distinctly a buddy and I rushing after work to Strawberries Records & Tapes in Portsmouth, NH, to but AFTP on CD the day it was released before the store closed. It was a Tuesday night, I believe. One of my favorite R.E.M. albums, I’m glad to see it receive Welchian appreciation. It MATTers. (Sorry.)
My only complaint, and this is no reflection on the band — or is it? They’d have had to give their approval, presumably — is that the great, sad song “Nightswimming” now always reminds me of Brandon’s exit from 90210. The 90s...you had to be there, people. I wish I was still there!
Not to be overlooked: New Adventures in Hi-Fi, their last recording with Bill Berry on the roster. A different sound, but I dug it. Dig it. I can listen to it anytime. Technology!
Are you admitting to watching 90210?? (If you deny it, I will need to see a polygraph;-)
More importantly, my favorite REM songs are Fall On Me, Half A World Away, and Stand (a silly song, yes, but it always make me smile)
Wow. Fall On Me is my number one (according to Michael Stipe on MTV Unplugged, his too, at least at the time). Half a World Away is another favorite, also Stand. (Don’t Go Back to) Rockville, and I Believe complete my top 5.
Let’s make it top 20, and add, in alphabetical order: Can’t Get There From Here, Driver 8, Electrolite, Everybody Hurts, Find the River, Losing My Religion, Man on the Moon, Near Wild Heaven, Nightswimming, of course, The One I Love, Radio Free Europe, Radio Song, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight, Star 69, What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
I’d call Automatic for the People, Life’s Rich Pageant, and Out of Time their best albums. So many good tracks.
I fully admit that not only did I watch 90210, and Melrose Place — we all did, they were hugely popular — but I can reveal that my fellow R.E.M. CD-buying friend, Luis, and I, a couple of young republicans, had hairstyles that were very similar to those of Brandon and Dylan. With as much gel as I put in my hair, I’m lucky that I still have so much of it. Hair, not gel.
Luke Perry’s hair reminded me of Chris Isaak’s. I had no idea 90210 ended in 2000! Once I turned 16, my TV viewing was limited, and the only shows I prioritized were Seinfeld and SNL. I did see Jason Priestly at JFK in ‘95. He was with his girlfriend, and didn’t seem to garner any attention. I’m assuming he had left 90210 by then.
R.E.M. had so many good songs. Also, Indigo Girls’ Kid Fears ft. Stipe is 🔥
My coif was most like Luke Perry’s, another lanky guy with a prominent forehead. It had significant height and sheen. Hard to believe Perry is dead, gone to the Peach Pit in the sky. Only 52 years old. Weird to even think of him at that age. Of course, he was, like, 30 playing a teenager on 90210.
2000? Whew! Then there was the CW reboot that started in the mid-aughts, if memory serves. Then the meta revival a few years ago...
No one who watched the original series can discuss it without hearing in their head, and usually repeating, the opening chords of the theme song: da-na-na-na! da-na-na-na! chh! chh!
https://youtu.be/4Ng1IAtrbok?feature=shared
I met Brian Austin Green (David Silver) once, post-90210, at the NH Film Festival, of all places, where he was showing his directorial debut. My girlfriend at the time was a reporter covering the event, and we sat with him and his cast for the screening. Not a good movie but a nice guy.
I lived in the sticks. Guys were more likely to lean into Billy Ray Cyrus mullet than gelled coif. Luke Perry had the brooding James Dean look down. Wasn’t Green the only cast member who was actually a teenager?
I'm partial to Monster. Up is also a gem - the song Daysleeper is one of my all time faves.
Monster! Great album. “What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and “Star 69,“ which to this day I sometimes sing to myself if I miss a call, would be the two standout tracks for me.
Yep, it was a Tuesday. Per Wikipedia:
Automatic for the People is the eighth studio album by American alternative rock band R.E.M., released by Warner Bros. Records on October 5, 1992, in the United Kingdom and Europe, and on the following day in the United States.
Oct. 5, ‘92 was a Monday — thank you, iPhone calendar — ergo... Still got it!
In a link between another Hitchcock and Leary, there's an enduring myth that it was Cary Grant who introduced Leary to LSD. It'd be nice if it was true.
Loved the MM-Steven Pinker interview, but damn, I wish it'd been twice as long.
Not that Pinker's answer is on Moynihan, but Pinker-like a lot of smart people who haven't really thought about WHAT IT MEANS TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT IS SMARTER THAN YOU AND THINKS 1,000 TIMES FASTER-gave a glib and foolish answer on AI safety. That's the go-to answer for people who haven't really read the scientific literature on AI safety, or interviewed the leading thinkers on it-which Pinker hasn't done.
There is a really simple thought experiment you can try to break out of the glib BS pedaled by people who say "Oh, we'll never have trouble controlling AI, even if it is smarter than us, and thinks faster than we do."
Those of you who have had kids- think of an intelligence that is only as much smarter and more capable than adult humans as adult humans are relative to their three year old child. If you've had a three year old-does that three year old have a great ability to physically and mentally control adult you? No? That's what "smarter than you" really means-you're basically a helpless child compared to it.
People who say AI alignment (and I'm not talking the ridiculous shit like GPT-4-we're talking 2-3 model generations hence) is NOT an issue usually either shrug it off, as Pinker did, or pose arguments that AI safety experts thought of and disposed of more than a decade ago. If you REALLY grapple with it, you understand why the "P-doom"-the estimated probability of AI going wrong in a way dangerous for humanity-has been growing among a lot of people who pay attention to AI, particularly the engineers building it.
Which just goes to show, like with everybody else-ask Pinker about the shit he's an expert about. On the stuff he hasn't investigated, he's no more learned or wise than the dude at the corner bar. He just sounds smarter when he's giving you incorrect info.
I'd kind of like the guys to have Zvi Mowshowitz on about AI safety. he's very reasonable (even in the places I disagree with him), and I think does a good job of communicating the issues.
However, I'm pretty sure it would be a little to far afield of the central fifth column episode.
Well said.
I just want to know, is AI going to destroy us all, and soon? Because if not, I’ll make other plans.
I know you are kind of joking, but to give a serious answer:
As someone who doesn't have strong opinions on exact timelines, but thinks that short timelines are at least possible, I'd advise planning as if it either won't happen or it will happen in a very long time.
Mostly because, if it happens soon, and you lived your life normally, then you missed on a few years of hedonism. If it doesn't happen at all, or happens in a very long time, and you lived your life as if it was imminent, then you probably wind up having a very enjoyable few years, and then the rest of your life is pretty hosed as you've blown your savings, and probably damaged your professional life and maybe even some of your relationships.
So in my opinion, it's better to live your life under the optimistic assumptions, even if one believes that society should be investing time and effort under more pessimistic assumptions.
Listening to an economist who focuses on AI impact on the economy right now. His best guess is, if we get a slow AI rollout, society might navigate it well enough to figure out entirely new social structures. If we get a fast rollout, we will have very serious political instability. I'm personally pretty worried about AI-if you're a writer you're already screwed unless you have a big personal brand-but also taking comfort that current AI models-the generative pretrained transformers-seem to have hit a ceiling until someone can figure out how to fix the "hallucination" problem. So far, more than half of businesses that have tried to embed AI in their business have seen it fail either because it is not ready for prime time in many applications, or the workers don't trust it and rightly view it as a threat to their jobs, and so are slow adopters. If the "hallucination" problem gets solved- then we're in very deep shit.
I'm not *too* worried about "mundane" AI risks. That is, disruptions to various professions, cultural norms, etc. Not because I think they will be small or that it won't cause problems (I think that mundane issues could both be large and have pretty bad impacts), but mostly because I trust that, in the long run, society will be able to figure those out and adapt, and that afterwards it will be better off.
Rather, I'm worried (to the extent that I'm worried), about existential risks. I think the likelihood is pretty low, but you don't get a do-over. If it happens, that's it. Our species lost.
It's the same reason I think that we should be investing more resources in asteroid detection (although I think this one has actually gotten quite a bit better in recent years)
I think the dollar imploding is a greater probability but yeah we’re basically fucked either way
Apropos of nothing, somehow you guys missed this important story about the bravest birdwatcher ever
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/emmy-award-goes-to-black-man-who-was-wrongfully-accused-in-central-park-and-his-brilliant-birding-show/
We missed *talking about it on the podcast*, anyway....
I just want to hear Kmele's review of "Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World"
https://a.co/d/07XWckjt
I still don't know how people can say he was wrongly accused. They was in a wooded area of the park and he said to her "if you are going to do whatever you want to do, I'm going to wherever I want to do." Is the woman not supposed to take that as threatening?
“Believe women...sometimes.”
For what it's worth I agree. People get all super angry over this woman and want to cast her out of society. They fail to see how there could be another perspective.
When I reflect on the 2020 Racial Wrecking, which I do constantly — God bless Matt Welch for being someone who keeps beating the drum about the madness of that time and the need for us all to, for lack of a better word, process it — Amy Cooper is among those I think of who suffered collateral damage, and I wonder how it must feel for her, knowing her tormenter has been so venerated. Similarly, what it must be like for the woman who was robbed at gunpoint by George Floyd, to see her assailant practically canonized.
Oh, for God’s sake! What sickeningly hagiographic BS. Unsurprisingly, missing a few key details of the Central Park encounter, and he was the “Karen” (I hate that term), damn it!
I sincerely hope that somewhere safe, Amy Cooper has rebuilt her life, unaware of the advantages and accolades that continue to be rewarded to the man — a birder, pfft! — who helped destroy it.
Wait... Does the Fif have bathrobes?! Odd merch flex, but I am here for it.
You have to be a guest X times.
Guess that beats a jacket 🤔
I guess some people are just going to memory-hole things like, for example, Joe Biden’s Oct. 2021 CNN town hall where, among other odd moments and “misstatements” (lies), he stood strangely stiff as a board with his fists clenched in front of him while Anderson Cooper posed a question, leading to many memes including, most famously, the jet pack. Although, my favorite had him mounted on a pony, gripping the reins.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-town-hall-strange-moments-cnn-anderson-cooper-1641533
Let the “cheap fakes” freak takes sweepstakes begin!
P.S. I’ve never heard/seen the All In podcast, and I don’t plan to take in the Trump interview — why would I do that myself? — but looking at that thumbnail, uh, yeah, I’d just assume those guys are campaign donors.
It’s pretty short, they only interview him for the first hour so if you do 2x it goes pretty quick. I’ve never heard of them either but they asked really good questions
https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1804537961301565542?s=46&t=X85I0ArZGDuiQPQElkx4vA
I admit, I’ve grown curious. I might watch.
Hope nobody thinks I'm raining on the REM reverence here, even if my fandom didn't extend past Green, but Corky and the Juice Pigs' REMember from MADtv back in the day is worth a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ES2rmibvA
Love it! He captures Stipe’s sound and peculiar pretentiousness.
And dance moves!
Props to Moynihan for keeping things mostly on track in the Honestly discussion with Kevin Sabet and Dr. Peter Grinspoon. Sabet came off desperate and insecure. He wasn't well prepared for any ideas or concepts that challenge his dogmatic position on MJ or drug prohibition overall.
I wore out the dub of that album in the backseat of my mother’s Saab heading to ski in Garmisch.
I clicked on that interview link to "Check out a few minutes" after hearing the Fellas discuss it on the recent episode, thinking I would just listen for a minute or so and get either bored or tired of a fandom type interviews. I started working on some design projects with it on in background and lo and behold noticed 50 minutes had gone by ( The green card with diploma concept was something). Although incorrect statements were made (with no comment by interviewers) but what I walked away with is President Roomba ( Thanks Shane Gillis) is going to be in trouble next with if this version of this guy shows up to that debate.
That episode of Live From the Table was incredible. Kirchick was on fire. He pretty much perfectly articulated my view on Trump, Jan. 6th etc . And Periel got more involved than she usually does which can be a good thing. Highly recommended!
Tech Bros are the easiest marks ever. You tell them just a little bit of what they want to hear, mixed with some cheap compliments, and you've got them eating out of the palm of your hand.
It's actually embarrassing to think that people like David Sacks managed to get so wealthy, while at the same time, being such a puss-filled boil on the ass crack of our political discourse. Only in America.
The "Biden is old" thing has gotten stale, fast. We all know he's old. The other choice is far worse for a whole host of reasons that don't need to be rehashed here. But I suppose the most important reason, is that the other candidate has undermined our institutions at every turn, and would rather watch them burn than do anything to improve them.
REM has always had a way of making me reflect and question my entire life. Their music has always evoked a sense of nostalgia and now that I’m getting older some sadness.