I thought this book was going to be about the Vail fire. After all, there’s a picture of Two Elk lodge burning right on the cover!

But that’s not what it’s about, not really.

I thought this was a niche book, for a narrow audience, those who remember this 1998 fire. But then I saw it getting mainstream reviews and actually selling and I wondered, do that many people care?

Not about the Vail fire, but about the Earth Liberation Front, which is what this book is really about.

As for the Vail fire… It was international news back in 1998. If for no other reason than Two Elk lodge sits on a ridge at the top of the mountain, how in the hell did they get up there? The logistics were beyond daunting.

Now if you’re looking for a delineation of what happened in Vail, and I was, you’ll find a chapter on that, details that are intriguing, but the fascinating thing is the writer, Matthew Wolfe, gets it wrong. I mean if you don’t know Vail, you won’t know, but if you do know…it won’t make sense. Wolfe keeps talking about the Two Elk expansion. There was no such thing. It was the BLUE SKY BASIN expansion, which is nowhere near Two Elk lodge.

Now my old friend Tony Wilson told me about delivering inaccurate European football scores to the TV newsreader on a Saturday night. His boss was pissed, said the European soccer scores late on a Saturday night didn’t make that much difference, but viewers would think if they got those wrong, what about the more major things, could the audience trust the station to get the big things right?

The whole delineation of Two Elk, the landscape at the top of the mountain, is confusing and oftentimes inaccurate. And this is not complicated, it’s a physical plant, not theoretical physics. And anybody who was around back then could tell you about the issues with the Blue Sky Basin expansion, but Wolfe did not do the work, or did not get it right, or both.

So I’m slogging along, waiting for the book to get to Vail, realizing that “Fires in the Night” is really not about the Vail arson, but the Earth Liberation Front and…

There’s a lot of backstory, a lot of setting the scene, but then…

Wolfe starts introducing the characters, and then describing the arsons/actions.

So at times “Fires in the Night” is absolutely riveting, and at others if not quite a slog, less than calling out to you in the night to be read.

But the book is definitely worth reading.

No, let me say that I’m not going to wholeheartedly recommend “Fires in the Night,” because you may get bogged down and put it down. But if you have an interest in the subject and…

What makes the book so damn good is the people. WHAT IN THE HELL WAS GOING THROUGH THEIR MINDS?

Most of these people were offbeat, on the fast track to nowhere. But not all of them, some were college educated. So they’re in the crunchy Pacific northwest, mostly Eugene, Oregon, and they’re focused on climate change and physical destruction of the landscape and although they’re all fascinated with the established groups, playing by the rules, going through the motions, they didn’t think these were having any effect, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

And they were very, very good at it. As in not getting caught for years. And how they are caught is in accident, law enforcement believes a member was involved in an action that they were not.

So some of these people are from good families, others from bad. Some were square pegs in a round hole, others could function fine in society.

Then again, keeping a regular job? If they worked, they were at the bottom of the ladder. Then again, most were in their late teens or twenties. But these are not the people we read about in the news, going to college, lamenting the loss of opportunity, no, these people are working to survive, at best. Living the kind of life you could live in the late sixties and seventies, where you could pay the bills on minimum wage and what was going through your brain was more important than what you owned.

Now they never wanted to kill people, only property. But the potential downside! You could go to prison for decades! What kind of people would take this risk?

That’s what I found most interesting. I could never see myself in their shoes. But they existed.

Now things are different today, because there are cameras everywhere. Just watch TV to be aware, especially British television. Unless you’re alone by yourself in your bathroom, beware, you are not alone.

And the government really cracked down on what became labeled ecoterrorism.

And if you live on the east coast, this story may be incomprehensible. The vastness of the landscape at stake and the people without traditional roots in education, all the base values that east coasters take for granted.

So when this book gives the details of the actions themselves, it’s as good as any film, tense and true. But the history and machinations in between and…

You will marvel and then be bugged at some of the words. You can’t read much without encountering a word you do not know the meaning of, probably have never heard before. Is this really the writer’s lexicon, did these words just pop out of his brain, or did he rewrite with a thesaurus? He is secretly showing off, thinking his erudition is in evidence, but really it’s laughable. These words are completely unnecessary. I noticed it and as soon as Felice picked up the book she commented on it too.

But who these people were, how they dedicated themselves to these actions, took all these risks…

I can’t stop thinking about it.

https://ai.meta.com/muse/

The AI platform, not the band.

Mark Zuckerberg gives piss-poor presentation.

It’s funny, Steve Jobs created the paradigm. You write it and you rehearse it, to the point where even Tim Cook could keep the audience’s attention… But Zuck? He looks like a dweeb in AP English standing up to give a book report. Such that when he is announcing products, we shrug.

Not that Zuck has a great track record. I mean he changed the name and direction of the company to focus on the metaverse, Facebook becoming Meta, blowing billions in the process, if he didn’t control the company he would have been blown out, and then he introduced those spy glasses… Seemingly everything he accomplished since Facebook was based on an acquisition, like Instagram, or an imitation, like Threads. We did not look to Zuckerberg for breakthroughs.

Those came from Apple…

In the Jobs era. Has Apple missed the boat with AI or is it going to end up sitting pretty? The economics of AI…let’s just say all the profits are theoretical, and the costs are beyond high…these are not railroad tracks, you’ve got to replace the infrastructure on a regular basis, chips are superseded seemingly the moment you get them installed (well, at least within a few years). So, the AI mania could be equivalent to the Enron mania or the Jack Welch GE mania. Seen as paragons of excellence, with hindsight… Remember when Welch was anointed the CEO of the Century? Now to say GE is a shadow of what it once was would be charitable, and Welch’s lieutenants have gone on to wreak havoc and ruin other legendary companies, like Boeing.

So… All those data centers, all those job losses, will they be seen as a boondoggle in the future?

No one knows for sure, but sitting on the sidelines Apple could emerge a winner, having dodged a bullet.

Meanwhile, the Cupertino company is experiencing a brain drain. Meta poached a lot of people for its AI effort.

And all the hype has been about ChatGPT and Anthropic, Meta has been seen as an also-ran, but now…

So Zuck gave a presentation last week, if there was a run-up, advance hype, it eluded me. And based on all his previous failures and/or less than exciting news, I wasn’t paying much attention, until I was led to a clip about the new glasses functioning as hearing aids. Watch the demo… If you’ve lost some hearing, which seemingly every boomer has, and you wear glasses, and your vanity prevents you from wearing hearing aids, this could solve your problem.

And then comes Muse.

Okay, what exactly is Muse?

An AI agent.

Which I wasn’t that excited about, which I was keeping on the periphery, until I read Joanna Stern’s article.

I mean I’d seen the stories, but I’m AI’d out. Yes, Muse could be my agent, but did I need an agent?

Before I read Stern’s piece, I was intrigued by Amazon declaring Muse off limits. And reading that Muse was number one in the app store.

But then I read Stern’s piece on Friday”

“Musing around… How much should you give Meta?”

https://thenewthings.com/p/musing-around

That’s a big question, should you trust Meta/Muse?

It’s not like Zuckerberg has earned our trust. And to tell you the truth, I’m not giving it access to my inbox, but I did try it (you can access Muse in a web browser using the link above or download the app).

Try it out, Muse acts like a personal assistant. It does the work for you.

Now the truth is we haven’t seen anything this interesting…at least since ChatGPT itself, nearly four years ago.

But, we used to see technology breakthroughs on a regular basis. First it was hardware (remember the iPod?), and then there was endless software from MySpace to music apps to…

Now we used to have a new sound every three to five years in the music business. That ship sailed long ago. It’s mostly just endless drivel, variations on a theme. Something that demands attention from the public at large… We really haven’t seen that since Adele, who was more of a throwback than a great leap forward, focusing on singing and songs. But still…

You’ve got to experiment with Muse. Give it a few assignments.

Am I asking you to trust it with your data? NO WAY!

But if you want to be part of the conversation, if you want to be in the now, this is truly a breakthrough, a harbinger of what’s to come.

It’s exciting.

Gentlepeople, START YOUR ENGINES!

He takes swings at not only Taylor Swift, but Paul McCartney!

Beck has a new album, I see the press everywhere. About an old girlfriend, a return to form…can’t say I read any of them, for numerous reasons. First, I loved “Loser,” an iconic number, nothing else Beck has done has been in the league of his initial hit. I mean if this is a major artist, who are the Beatles? Remember when stars walked the earth? They keep telling us today’s acts are in the same league, but nothing could be further from the truth.

But it’s more than that, these articles are pure hype. Trying to convince us the latest work deserves our attention, that we should listen to it, believing if we see enough stories we’ll think something is happening here, even if it is not exactly clear, and then like lemmings, we’ll follow the bread crumbs to it. Assuming you think print means anything anyway. Even mainstream stuff online. We’re overwhelmed, we do not want to waste our time on fluff, we’re immune.

And then comes this Todd Rundgren interview.

I read about it on Twitter, now called X. There was some headline, not from “Vulture,” the “New York” magazine section where the interview appeared, but some other source. If you’re hyping yourself… You don’t know how bad you look. Whenever someone’s name is in the paper, they spam everybody they know to alert them to it. Cracks me up. Is this how desperate for attention you are, is this how insecure you are, that you need to be anointed by others in order to believe your life works? I mean if I’m on TV saying something interesting or funny, I’ll let you know, but every time I’m in the news…I’m not that desperate.

And I’m a Todd fan, so I click through.

Now the funny thing is this interview/story has now been spread amongst all the other music sites, from Pitchfork to Consequence of Sound to NME…it’s endless, they’ve got brain dead workers (they can’t get anybody good, the pay is so bad), just plucking headlines from somewhere else hoping for clicks. And you wonder why the music press is derided.

And in this case, you can go to the source.

Then again, can you? The article is kind of behind a paywall, as in you have to register to read it for free. Assuming you do not subscribe to Apple News+.

Now 60% of Americans use iOS, i.e. use iPhones, so they have access to Apple News, and they should sign up for +, for only $12.99 a month. You can read some articles for free, but I don’t know what you can and cannot, but pound for pound, dollar for dollar, this is your best news investment period, even includes the “Wall Street Journal” and the “Washington Post” along with many other newspapers and magazines.

In any event, here is the article:

“The Wizard of Rock Would Like a Word – ‘The biggest artists in the world are female,’ Todd Rundgren observes, ‘and that’s because of video games.'”

https://apple.news/AtQKnT2jGR6-5O6_Bd66PCQ

https://www.vulture.com/article/todd-rundgren-has-seen-everything.html

Yes, Todd posits music is female-dominated because boys are too busy playing video games. I’m not sure if this is true, but it’s an interesting theory, one worthy of debate, as opposed to the fluff in most interviews about acts’ significant others and clothing.

But there is that swing at Taylor Swift.

“Taylor Swift, of course. There’s an argument to be made that she ruined music. It’s an understandable phenomenon. It’s just that, to me, Taylor Swift is the apotheosis of mediocrity.”

YOU CAN’T SAY THAT!

There’s some criticism of the four tracks Swift just added to her “Showgirls” album to increase its Grammy possibilities, but the media has agreed that Swift is an icon, deserving of 24/7 coverage, and if you say anything negative you’re a mean hater who deserves to be driven back into the hole you climbed out of.

Todd does praise Gaga as being a real musician, but then he sticks the knife in Swift’s heart:

“Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything particularly great except grow hair. She’s not a great singer. She’s not a great songwriter. She’s not a great dancer. She’s a role model for what was a very young generation of women, and now for those women’s daughters as well, because it’s mothers and daughters going to Taylor Swift shows.”

Chew on that as you see Swift cheer on her husband Travis Kelce from the skybox, finally able to be the cheer captain that she always dreamed of being.

Then there’s “Sir Paul.” Why people insist on using the “Sir”…if John Lennon were alive, he’d be puking.

Anyway, Todd says:

“Paul McCartney, even today, is so afraid that people forget who he is that he’ll show up at a mall opening.”

This is sacrilegious! Paul is off limits, he’s a Beatle!

But it’s true, McCartney even appeared on Chicken Shop Date to try and promote his last album. Did this even move the needle? Just because you can do it, that doesn’t mean you should.

And there’s a lot of other meat on the bone in this interview. Makes for fascinating reading.

Todd’s got a personality, but not an agenda. He’s not a rapper in a pissing match. These are his real opinions, ask him and he’s going to tell you. HOW REFRESHING!

READ IT!

So, tune in Saturday September 26h to Faction Talk, channel 137, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863 

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz