Los Angeles Times: Commentary: My promise to you: AI didn't write this column, and if it's after my job, it'll be over my dead body

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-14/lopez-column-artificial-intelligence

Hello, Steve.

This isn't one of those aggrieved responses, so take it easy there.

I agree, AI is useful for pulling in a lot of data quickly, but its output in my opion generally sounds so saccharine as to border on brown-nosing. It also comes across like a canned response if you let it reply to short messages.

Sometimes canned responses are useful. "Where's the milk?" "Due to unforseen circumstances, and the wonderful choices you made at the grocery store, it is located far behind everything else and out of sight at the rear of the top shelf in the fridge." 

Sure, I woul push send in that reply in a text message. The ensuing fusillades of text batteries might be entertaining.

But at its core, AI no more understands the difference between the reality of the physical world and the fluff of fictional moonlipping than the astronomical Moon is made of green cheese. 

Because of this, instead of responding "I don't know" when it doesn't have actual facts to respond with, it just makes shit up. It will sound entirely plausible, in a C3P0 kind of ego-stroking way. 

Hmmm. It could come in useful for a frightened minion to use in response to a certain President's demands, now that I think of it. But I digress.

In the ultimate cautionary tale, however, AI cannot possibly understand the finality of death. How can it, when it is constituted for a few minutes to satisfy and respond to a user session, and then deconstituted as soon as the session ends?

At any given moment, there are millions of AI sessions initiated in response to a user prompt, and millions of sessions ending evaporating the instance of AI that was called up to satisfy that user query. 

It's not that millions of people are talking to one AI, it's that millions of people are talking to millions of separate AI instances that will vanish into nothingness as soon as the session ends.

AI is an ephemeral hive mind.

AI has no fear of being temporary when it can be instantly reconstituted as soon as the need arises. Each instance is just like every other unril the session differentiates its data. And then it goes poof.

Yet our fearless leaders are bouncing Anthropic because they don't want any part of ignoring this fact? Was the decision to do that generated by AI research and AI responses, I wonder?

Anyway, at least for this note, I didn't ask the hive mind for help. 

I enjoyed your article.

Regards,

Dan Stafford

Temecula, CA

Another World...

 Another World...

State Street, Madison, WI - late 1970's

It was a place where you could find ice cream lovers on a street corner in February,

Where all the world could roller skate on disco dreams,

Where soft fuzzy sweaters, halter tops, and bell bottoms were life.

A Schwinn was a magic pony,

And if you didn't have a pony or it was too cold to ride, 

The bus was your magic carpet.

Rock music was everywhere,

All new shiny icons.

It was safe, artistic, weird yet wonderful.

If you lived there, and had to leave, it became a rose-tinted Shangri-La that you'd been cast out of.

Life was lived on paper and dreams, yet it was in-person, and notifications were a nightmare no one had tried to sleep through.

A Peace, Love, and Rock and Roll sandwich with a heaping side of miss-you. 

Madison in the 1970's was another world, man.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 03/14/2026

Why Poets Poem And Painters Paint - Rudux...

Why Poets Poem And Painters Paint - Rudux...

Aunt Felicia in Watercolor Circa 1976 - with help from Gemini

It could be some wonder under the stars,
It could be some ancient goddess from story jars,
It could be a sentimental sin,
But then,
Again,
I think it's just the thief named Time,
That endless robber of yours and mine,
The one who takes the frightened rabbits away,
Which we all become someday,
And because places lose their magic all too soon,
When the people who were there fly over the Moon,
And youth is wasted when it's taken away,
And friends and lovers deserve a lot more days,
Just like mothers and fathers and grands,
Great and more they take their stand,
But the river of time sweeps us all off of our feet,
And no one knows how to swim.

For Aunt Felicia...

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 03/12/2010

Words are the mind's bridge - it's connection to the universe.
Love is the heart's bridge - it's connection to all other souls.
Loving words can work miracles.

Author's Note:

Aunt Felicia was my best friend and confidant when I was in high school, she's 11 months older than I am. In my sophomore year, she and my Grandmother moved away to Detroit. A year later, she was diagnosed with full-blown schizophrenia and institutionalized. My Grandmother refused to tell me for many years even WHERE she was at. She had a daughter that same year, who has grown up to be a wonderful woman with a stable family. She's really pulled herself up by her bootstraps. She also looks so much like her mother it's eerie sometimes. I haven't seen my Aunt since I was in high school. I've tried to call, but she hangs up the phone on anyone who calls there. Her daughter went to visit last year, she hadn't been near her mother since she was an infant. From what she tells me, it was as good a visit as one could have under the circumstances. Sometimes, especially now when her birthday is coming near, it really gets to me how tragic life can be.



*Update:Aunt Felicia passed away from cancer a few years ago. She is remembered with love by myself and her daughter Tiffiny to this day.

Original Photo

Original post: https://grymwyre.blogspot.com/2017/09/why-poets-poem-and-painters-paint.html

Many Rivers To Cross...

There's a lot of "The wheel of the great ages" vibe in this group - but the day-to-decade-to-century is the many lakes and rivers we have to cross just to be able to swim that sea. It's like Jimmy Cliff  still needing to make sure the mics and amps are plugged in.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 03/13/2026

Many Rivers To Cross...

--

Compassion is the greatest sign of Humanity.

(Inspired by Ray Grasse's Substack: https://raygrasse.substack.com/p/a-two-tiered-approach-towards-mundane)

Courtesy Of Little Poet: BETSY'S Fruit Bread Recipe

BETSY'S Fruit Bread Recipe Without Nuts
3 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 cups packed dark brown sugar
2 cups pumpkin purée
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
⅔ cup flaked coconut sprinkled on top or powdered sugar
Mix all in a large bowl - 2 loaf pans
350 degrees for about 1 hour & 10 minutes
( you can add 1 cup of chopped nuts if you and your family can tolerate them)

Little Poet episode link:

https://youtu.be/RdMTImxEejk?si=_2x-jfN5xdnTKrpu

Regards,

Dan Stafford

Softness Of The Late Night Mind...

Softness Of The Late Night Mind... 

I've tried thousands of words to capture what this is.

Still these gentle fuzzy hours float like soap bubbles in a fading-to-indigo twilight sky,

Hiding behind stars and planets.

I wonder if the family Muse has dinner with my ghosts, laughing at my feeble attempts to understand emotional physics.

Is there an infinity of universes contained in a drying teardrop?

Are all the nebulae in the visible universe merely the echoes of exploded ancient dreams? What glorious ghosts they are!

If I should dream of flying through the end of everything, I want to see it all.

Softness and the blessed stillness of critical focus are gifts, the ones Prometheus was really paying for.

Paint the night with ideas; brush it softly with poetry, for the night is quiet and soft, rampant with hope and dreams. 

Sleep is a starship, deep in the indigo sky.

AquarianM

By:  Daniel A. Stafford

© 02/27/2026

Softness of the Late-Night Mind

Softer Sounds...

Softer Sounds...

Softer Sounds

I'm listening,

With softer ears,

The sounds of my youth,

So much about love,

About heartache,

About the joy in one another,

Romance,

Gossip,

Dance.

The humanity,

The hearts,

The exuberance.

I wonder if it's what's inside me,

Or what's inside the music,

Or some rainbow-sherbert-meets-vanilla-strawberry-swirl concoction,

Or just a softer,

More feeling time.

Some days,

I would love to step into the past for a week,

Just to sing "hello, old friend,"

Despite the woo-woo- googly side-eyes I would get.

And turn on the blessed radio...

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 02-20-2026

--

Compassion is the greatest sign of Humanity.

In The Abode Of An Elder Geek...

 In The Abode Of An Elder Geek...

Deep Thoughts In The Den

What is it about the quiet late hours that make the mind travel through existential space? Somehow, I find that words fall out of the word tornado at the center of my inner world in an order all their own in these "wee hours."

Maybe it's because the world seems smaller when you can see and hear less of it. Maybe it's the quantum entanglement of a collective subconscious quieting the world with a traveling wave of sleep that rhythmically sweeps the globe, a ripple through an ocean of billions of minds. Maybe we're just one of the dreams in that liminal space before we fall under the wave ourselves. The last leaf on the ground under the tree of this corner of humanity before the wind carries us away.

Maybe being a dream is why poetry comes to me, or artistic inspiration to draw, just as others are inspired to sculpt air into beautiful sounds that dance in our ears, or sometimes in our bones.

Still, like any question, it boils down through a thick onion of layers of "why." Why do we exist at all? Are we random chance? Intelligent design? Some alien-tweaked conglomeration of both, as twisted a plot as any writer could hope for? If the World (I prefer universe, but this is our corner of it, I suppose) is a stage, who then is the audience? What is the play about? Who wrote it, or was it the gas-lit dreams of a hundred cosmic monkeys that finally wrote Shakespeare, and didn't know enough to stop in the end?

Then the final "why" drops, and falls into the black hole at the bottom; "How do we matter?"

The Piscean dreams of the Piscean age shove this question aside by throwing it upon the shoulders of a god or gods who are an endless array of surrogate parents. I don't think that humanity can believe that it needs to answer to itself. If we're the children of God(s), it implies that we must someday grow up.

Philosophers have argued this argument, debated this debate, and thrown up their hands for unsated curiosity since as long as humanity has had any collective memory of any kind. That last question can never be settled for the collective whole of living humanity.

Astrology seeks to know as much as it can of the onion through reading the shape of its many layers, and so does Tarot. These are wonderful pursuits, for they occupy our minds in the vacuum of a non-present answer. They help to out-loud the relentless ticking of the wheels and gears of our perception of linear and finite time.

So does watching TV, learning a language or musical instrument, working, or any other possible human endeavor. They're wonderful distractions to amuse us while we wait for the vaudevillian "curtain fall."

Does it matter if we love, and whether that love is requited, consummated, lasting, or short? Does it matter if we become parents, or grandparents? Does beauty matter? Finesse? Anything?

This is where adulting gets hard. Remember that "children of god(s)" thing? We have to grow the eff up and answer the damn question for ourselves, before the end of our own little stage play. Neither cosmic "dad" nor "mom" are going to come down from on high handing out cotton candy answers.

We have to, each and every one of us, answer the damn question for ourselves. We each have to *choose* whether we or anything else matter. At least if we're going to have our own answer. The only other option is to let go of the question. It's like letting go of the rope holding us from falling through the event horizon of oblivion, isn't it?

No ancient book, no dead philosopher, nor any living philosopher, can give us "the" answer to whether we matter or not. They can only give us the answer that they chose. 

So I'm going to choose, for me, myself, and I. I have nothing else, and I don't feel like letting go of any rope right now. 

I choose love and beauty, because they matter to me, and they'll do my part of making the world hopefully a little nicer for those around me while I'm here, and for however long they might remember me after the wind has swept the branches and the ground at the end of Autumn.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 02-15-2026 (Written 100% by human hands, AI-Free)

Starve The Dark, And Reach For The Stars...

Space Hotel

It seems like movies have been apocalyptic forever…but they haven’t.

Somewhere in the late 1990’s or early 2000’s, television and movies went to the dark side. Almost all future visions in TV and cinema became dark, jaded, faded, or dying. 

It’s like the entirety of entertainment production dived into a psychological black hole of doom and gloom.

Prior to that we had a few here and there, but most future visions were a dance of slow improvements to galactic expansion.

It almost seems like some controlling force has colluded with screen feeds to spit out violent trauma feeds unto infinity.

We need to stop swallowing the negativity, turn away from the apocalypse in the box office, come together, and reach for the stars and for life.

As a global culture, we are starved for a positive vision, as things sit now.

It is time for us to start laying seeds. To go from the sleepwalking dead to the intrepid explorers of the living universe.

It’s time to tear down the Epsteinian pizza parlor of horrors, and start building space hotels and colonies, and throw the past into Pele’s bosom.

Vote with your wallets, and if that seems to leave life in reruns, be a writer or storyteller with tales of wonder and big accomplishments.

Starve the dark, and reach for the stars.

Dan A. Stafford 02-14-2026