The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/12/new-musical-composition-ingenuity/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61094

It’s been a hot minute, as the kids no longer say, since I made an original musical composition; I’ve mostly been doing cover songs recently. But this evening I felt the urge to make something noisy and original, so I did what any musician would do for inspiration: I went to NASA’s “Sounds From Beyond” page and picked a recording from there to use as the basis for my composition.

Specifically, I used the “NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in Flight” recording. I used the original recording as is, and then I also ran it through MIDI, sliced it up, pushed it up a couple of octaves, filtered it through effects and so on. In the final composition, everything you hear is derived from the Ingenuity recording except for the drums and the 808 bass. It’s amazing what you can do with public domain recordings from another planet.

The resulting track is noisy, weird, asymmetric and in 7/8 time, because that’s pretty much how the original recording sort of laid itself out. I like it. Maybe you will too.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/12/new-musical-composition-ingenuity/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61094

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/12/various-sundry-6-12-26/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61084

What? Friday again?

David Hockney, dead: Hockney was one of those artists who I didn’t know who they were until I was adult, and then realized I had been surrounded by his work all my life. This was in large part because Hockney, who was originally from England, was besotted with California, and as a result his work was part of the cultural landscape while I spent the first part of my life there. Even if I didn’t clock the name, he added to the vibe, so to speak. When you think of California pools, you think of David Hockney (even if the most famous pool painting was based off of one in France). His work always made me happy and maybe just a little bit wistful. That’s not a bad legacy to leave behind.

Jane Yolen, RIP: I knew Jane both socially — we were both writers of science fiction and fantasy, although her total remit was much wider than that — and also because we were colleagues, working together on SFWA committees and in other ways as well (she and I are both past presidents of SFWA as well). She was a delight in conversation, and sharp as the proverbial tack when it came to dealing with committee work, and in both of these aspects of her being I was glad to know her.

Jane does not need me to valorize her work, and with more than 400 books to her name, if I were to attempt I would be here a while. But I will note that SFWA gave her its Grand Master award, and she also received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and won a hefty shelf of awards, in genre and out of it. She deserved all of them. She will be sorely missed.

VISA is letting ChatGPT buy things for you: It’s a thing called “agentic shopping,” in which you can (presumably) tell ChatGPT something you want, and it goes off to find it for you and then makes the purchase without any further intervention from you, because, after all, you gave it your credit card and permission to use it. This is, I will tell you now, a spectacularly bad idea, and not just because “AI” follows directions less than perfectly due to the very nature of its architecture, and sooner than later it’s going to make a very expensive fuck-up that the user will be on the hook for because giving an “AI” your credit card number isn’t fraud, it’s just stupidity, and there are few legal consumer protections for that. It’s also a bad idea because it’s one more layer of obfuscation between you and the actual costs of things, which makes it that much harder to manage one’s finances.

And while I’m sure you are smart with your money, given the average credit card debt in the US is over $6k and climbing, and that most people carry card balances at extortionate rates, this is a really really bad idea for most consumers. Great for the credit card companies! But bad for actual humans.

Please do me a favor and never let an “AI” do your shopping for you. Please continue to be the person who pushes the button on purchases. This won’t necessarily save you from impulse shopping, says the man with 30 guitars, but at least you have to acknowledge what you’re doing. That’s something.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/12/various-sundry-6-12-26/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61084