Check out my new blog at https://aaia.substack.com
For the last 18 months I have been enjoying writing a blog that was initially intended to describe my progress (or lack thereof) on recreating the glass flutes of Claude Laurent. Inevitably this turned into a random blog of humor, commentary, news and repeated posts about the lack of progress on recreating the glass flutes of Claude Laurent. I will still continue that blog and report on future lack of progress on recreating the glass flutes of Claude Laurent. You can be sure of this.
The Glass Flute delay is from having to earn a living as a production flute maker, boring and turning the same kind of wood flutes that I have made for the last 40 years. Unfortunately this leaves no time or energy to pursue the glass flute project. Production Flute Making is also wearing out my hands. I have been looking for an exit strategy for some time and a new blog may be that exit strategy.
I have always enjoyed parody, especially scientific parody ever since I discovered the Worm Runner’s Digest in high school. I grew up reading Mad Magazine, then National Lampoon. Later on came the Comic News which is a good digest of comics and articles. Then came the Borowitz Report and The Onion. On the serious side I have read Science News since an early age, and many other science journals and periodicals, such as Journal of Paleontology and everything from the Geological Society of America. I began reading about Pacific Northwest Geology when I was about 7 years old.
In my Laurentflute blog posts my favorite ones are the ones that make people laugh. The best of these was the one called Acres of Cures. Something clicked last week when I combined the news about the Earth’s Core and an old conspiracy theory about The Beatles and suddenly I am pursuing a new blog called The Beaver which will be mostly Scientific Satire and entirely made up, unless there is something real to comment or report on that is just too silly not to report on, such as the IgNobel Awards.
I am using some Artificial Intelligence (currently ChatGPT) to generate rough copy of various ideas that pop into my head after a perusal of the morning’s news. This gets combined and recombined with additional thoughts that I write. Sometimes the posts are entirely human-derived on days in which I am on fire. The original trigger is referenced by a number in parenthesis with references listed below. For now you will have to copy and paste to look up these references. They are real.
At least one illustration will be added to each post as it looks better on the archive page. Some of these such as the beaver above will be drawn using Dall-E. Notice that this beaver has no hands. I have no qualms about these new inevitable technologies that Humans will come to terms with similar to how they came to terms with moveable type. What is surprising to some is that a Baby Boomer can figure out how to use these tools.
This week I am hoping to add everyone in my current Laurentflutes subscribership to this new blog (This.Means.You!), and send out the posts in the order these were written, probably over a few days spread. You can unsubscribe if you do not want to receive these. Anyone can subscribe to The Beaver for free until the end of the month. Laurentflutes will remain free.
On March 1st I am turning on paid subscriptions for The Beaver. Note: everyone subscribed before that date will remain comped in. Occasionally there will be free posts so people recognize that this is ongoing but only the paid and comped subscribers will have access to everything, including accessing the archive and the ability to comment.
If I get enough paid subscriptions and if I can sustain this I will be able to drop out of production flute making while remaining a researching flute maker - and get these glass flutes and other prototypes underway. Until then I am not quitting my day job!
Why “The Beaver”? Initially I called this the Journal of the Artificial Allium Intelligence Alternative Society which gave me a handy acronym AAIA which Autocorrect insists I spell “Asia” but that was a mouthful. In the opera La Boheme, Rodolfo stays behind fo finish an article for some rag called “del Castoro”. He’s not really into it when Mimi knocks on the door, breathless with her candle out. R. lets her in and they fall in love and she dies at the end of the opera.
Thus “The Beaver” it is.
Future plans include maybe periodic lives on Zoom, YouTube or TikTok where I do a live reading and discuss some of my posts or whatever we want.
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Enjoy!
Casey