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are beyond high…these are not railroad tracks, you’ve got to replace the infrastructure on a regular basis, chips are superseded seemingly the moment you get them installed (well, at least within a few years).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

I picked the wrong line.

I went to Pep Boys to get my tires rotated and the front end aligned. You’re supposed to rotate every 5,000 miles, and I adhere religiously to that, since this car wears out tires long before the warranty expires, I want to make sure I dot every “i” and cross every “t” so that I’ll get a discount on the replacements. As for the alignment… I bought a lifetime one, most people don’t, figuring they won’t have their automobile that long, but I do. And why not get it done while the car is in the shop, it’s always off by a bit. As for buying the tires at Pep Boys, whenever I say this people go wild on me, tell me to go somewhere else.

Now as a result of the internet, tires are essentially the same price everywhere. So it becomes about the service. I originally bought my tires at Globe, on La Cienega, a legendary shop, but it ended up taking all day, never mind not being close if I needed rotation, etc.

So I ended up going to the Discount Tires right around the corner from my house in Santa Monica, I’d drop off the car and wait for the call that it was ready. And then Pep Boys bought Discount Tires (there are multiple chains named Discount Tires, this is the one in Southern California), and I stayed with them, because they honored the lifetime alignment! Now in reality, after a number of years, they wouldn’t honor it, and I had to buy it again, but I wasn’t going to protest that much, you have to pick your battles.

Now of course I could buy my tires at Costco, a seamless experience, BUT THEY DON’T DO ALIGNMENT! Which might warrant barely a shrug from most people, but if you’ve been driving fifty-odd years you or your friends have experienced issues with alignment, wearing tires out, and I don’t want to risk it.

Now of course, I could buy the tires at Costco and get them aligned at Pep Boys, but as I referenced, these tires are warranted at 40,000 miles, and if you get twenty, you’re doing well. These are Michelin Pilot Sports. If you’ve got a performance car, you want a performance tire, and I’m a Michelin man anyway (figuratively, not literally). And since they always give me credit at Pep Boys for the tires that didn’t reach 40,000, I keep buying my tires there.

So I had it all planned out in my brain. I found a window of time within which I could do this. And I drove all the way to Pep Boys and…

Turns out I needed an appointment.

Who knew? This never used to be the case.

This is great for the future, but right now… Turns out appointments are not hard to get, but I’ve got an hellacious schedule, I don’t know when I’ll be able to do it, I was frustrated, however…

Now that I have a Costco credit card, I decided to get gas at the Costco station on the same lot.

Yes, I have a Costco credit card. I couldn’t qualify for years. Even though my credit rating is 800. And after applying a number of times and wasting so much time in the process, I gave up. But back in August, I was at Costco and they had a kiosk, well, really just a table, with banners and other displays, trying to get you to sign up for a Costco credit card.

And if you tried, you got a reward. A hat, a Stanley-style cup or a duffel bag.

But that still wasn’t enough of an enticement. However, I had to go into the store to go to the bathroom and I ultimately got a flu shot, so I had to come back out to get a cart, and there was no one waiting at the table and I asked the girl, and she was a girl, how long this would take.

She said a couple of minutes.

I didn’t believe her, but I decided to take the risk.

Now the good part was that just by scanning my Costco membership card most of the information filled itself out instantly. I still had to answer a few questions, and then I handed the iPad back to her, starting to think about my reward, but in a matter of seconds, she said YOU’RE APPROVED!

I was stunned. What was different today?

But I didn’t want to argue.

And she wanted to give me this slip of paper so I could qualify for the discount that very day, but I didn’t want to waste any more time, it wouldn’t be that much money, and isn’t time money, or so they say? So I took my duffel bag, placed it in a cart and went into the store.

The day after the card arrived in the mail, I filled out the form to lease my new iPhone via Klarna. It wouldn’t take my Amex, but it also wouldn’t take my Costco Visa, which really didn’t add up, I thought it was a glitch. So I went to AI, which of course told me Klarna takes Costco Visa, but after it continued not to, I went back to Google and found out that no, Klarna does not take the Costco credit card. So if you’re depending upon AI…don’t.

I ended up using my debit card for Klarna, since it’s associated with Visa, even though I don’t like to use my debit card for stuff like this, since there are fewer protections, but you can’t win them all.

Now when the Costco credit card finally arrived, I found out that not only did I get 5% back on gas at Costco stations, but 4% at other stations. And there were paybacks for other purchases, like at restaurants, but what is better, Amex points or a 1-3% discount? I don’t know, I figure I’ll just go with the Amex points, to keep it simple, I don’t want to do the math every time I buy gas or go shopping elsewhere.

Now if you’re living in California, you know that gas prices are through the roof. I’m not complaining, it’s a privilege of living here, I’m down with clean air, which is why it’s so expensive, there is extra refining involved (yes, as well as a lot of taxes, save your replies). And my car needs premium gas. This ain’t one of those automobiles where you can use regular and the computer will adjust and you’ll just get a bit less performance, they make a big point in the manual if you don’t use premium, you’ll cook the engine.

In addition, my car has a small tank and gets horrible gas mileage (but like I told you previously, it’s paid for). If I’m in town, stop and go traffic, I’ll get in the 17s. If there’s a decent amount of freeway driving and cruising… Let’s just say I get 20, occasionally more, but not by much. Your jaw might drop, but this is the price you pay for performance.

And I pay the price.

And I’ve learned not to nickel and dime, because there was a robbery in the middle of the day when my friend was filling up at the Shell station on La Cienega. I used to stop in an even worse neighborhood, but not anymore. And especially since I tend to buy gas late at night…I do so in safe neighborhoods.

But I don’t want to be ripped-off.

And driving back from one of my umpteen eye appointments yesterday, I saw the price per gallon at the 76 station was $6.95. But that’s an expensive station. And then my regular Chevron, which is a bit cheaper, last night it was $6.99! I’ll pay the freight, but really, psychologically, I didn’t want to cough up seven bucks a gallon.

But now I was by Costco! With a cheaper price and % back.

So I moseyed my car over near the pumps and…

It was the longest line I’d ever seen.

Now let me see, how many pumps are there? At least twenty, they expanded it only a couple of years back.

But for the first time ever, you couldn’t even get in one of the lines in the main area, no, the line snaked all the way into the parking lot. But I decided to wait, as an experiment, to see how long it actually took.

And I’m thinking how everybody is trying to save money. I did see a couple of German cars, but in truth, if you can afford a truly expensive automobile you don’t want to waste your time to save so little money.

And the line is barely moving and then…

Everybody is waiting to get into the first few lines, no one is going to the lines further down!

So thinking that I’m brilliant, when I finally can, I squeeze my car past those trying to get into the closest lines, and I go to a marginally shorter line further down. I figure this is like parking ramps/structures, makes me crazy how people are always slowing down, trying to get a spot on a lower floor. Especially today, when there are signs telling you how many spots are available above. And they want to make use of every available space in these structures, so there’s no room to pass the person waiting for the shopper walking towards their car… So you wait and wait and finally the person in front of you pulls into the space after the shopper leaves, and you’re so frustrated you mash the gas pedal like you’re at Le Mans and…

I’m feeling satisfied.

But I am not moving.

I accept this, but then time is going by, what is going on?

And then I figure out the system…

At every row of pumps, there is an electronic sign. When I first looked, they were all covered with red X’s. I couldn’t figure out what they meant, did not think they were significant, but then one of the X’s would occasionally turn green, and that’s when I realized these X’s represented available pumps. And the reason everybody was going into the initial lines, the ones I scooted past, feeling victorious, was because those had three pumps a side, and where I was there were only two!

Everything is a learning curve, and then you die.

And I can see way up front, this guy in a black pickup truck, filling his tank, he never seems to move, I mean how much gas is he buying…I guess it’s worth it for him to buy fuel at Costco.

And it’s in the high eighties, so you’ve got to have the engine running with the A/C…in the old days, this would make your car overheat, but mine was fine, however I did burn gas.

Took me over fifteen minutes to reach the pump. But I was doing an experiment, I tried to rationalize it.

And when I got out of the car and stood in front of the pump, I suddenly felt guilty. I didn’t already have my credit card out of my wallet, I was wasting people’s time, I’d be frustrated if I was behind me.

But I insert my Costco credit card, using it for they very first time, and it’s not instant, but it is seamless, and then I go to push the button for premium and I see it’s $6.29 per gallon.

Okay, and then I fill up with 10.28 gallons. So I saved seventy cents per gallon over the normal brand name station (and you can’t risk an independent, odds are they’re not selling Top Tier gas). Okay, that’s seven dollars. But I get an extra 5%. So that’s another three dollars. So I spent the better part of twenty minutes to save ten dollars?

I won’t quite say I felt like an idiot, but I wouldn’t do it again.

Then again, if I’d picked the right line…