I just read that a bunch of authors got a $1.5 billion settlement from Anthropic, the company that makes the AI chatbot Claude among other AI tools. Anthropic pirated a bunch of novels and used them to train their AI. After a court ruled it to be a copyright violation (the copying, not the training use) the company settled. I looked up my name in the database of authors used for the training and was disappointed to find my name wasn’t on it. I decided to ask Claude to write a short story in my style (the style of the Cliff Knowles Mysteries). Claude replied that it wasn’t familiar with that author but would use typical crime fiction elements. Here’s what it produced:

The Vanishing Witness

Detective Sarah Chen stood in the empty apartment, her breath visible in the cold air. The heat had been off for at least three days, maybe four. On the kitchen counter, a half-drunk cup of coffee sat next to an open laptop, its battery long dead.

“No signs of struggle,” Officer Martinez said from the doorway. “Looks like she just stepped out.”

Sarah didn’t respond. She was studying the coffee cup, the laptop, the jacket still hanging on the back of the chair. Emily Rodriguez hadn’t just stepped out. Emily Rodriguez had been scheduled to testify against Vincent Calabrese in forty-eight hours. And now Emily Rodriguez was gone.

The Calabrese case had consumed six months of Sarah’s life. Money laundering, racketeering, conspiracythe charges read like a greatest hits of organized crime. But it all hinged on Emily, a bookkeeper who’d kept meticulous records and finally found the courage to come forward.

Sarah walked to the window. Three stories up, fire escape access. She tested the windowunlocked. Her stomach tightened.

“Pull the security footage from the building,” she told Martinez. “Every camera, every angle. I want to know everyone who came and went in the last week.”

“You think someone grabbed her?”

“I think Emily was smart enough to keep her windows locked.” Sarah turned from the window, scanning the room again. Something wasn’t right. The apartment was too neat, too staged. No one lived this carefully.

Her phone buzzed. It was her partner, Detective Mike Warren: Found something. Meet me at Emily’s office.

Twenty minutes later, Sarah stood in the reception area of Meridian Financial, where Emily had worked before becoming a star witness. Mike emerged from a back office, holding an evidence bag.

“Security guard found this taped under her desk drawer,” Mike said, handing her the bag. Inside was a flash drive and a handwritten note.

Sarah read aloud: “If you’re reading this, I’m either dead or I ran. The evidence on this drive is everything, but it’s not what you think. VC isn’t the one I’m afraid of. ER”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “Not Vincent Calabrese? Then who?”

Sarah’s mind raced through the case files, the witness interviews, the evidence chain. If not Calabrese, then someone close to the investigation. Someone with access. Someone who knew Emily’s every move because they were supposed to be protecting her.

“We need to get this to tech immediately,” Sarah said. “And Mike? Don’t tell anyone about it. Not the DA, not the task force. No one.”

“You think it’s one of ours?”

Sarah looked at her partner, someone she’d trusted for five years. In this moment, she realized she couldn’t be certain of anyone.

“I think Emily Rodriguez was smart enough to know the difference between running from a mobster and running from someone who’s supposed to keep her safe,” Sarah said. “And I think we have forty-eight hours to figure out which one it was before this entire case falls apart.”

Mike nodded slowly. “Or before Emily winds up in the harbor.”

Sarah gripped the evidence bag tighter. The laptop, the unlocked window, the too-perfect apartmentit was all misdirection. Emily had planned this. But the question wasn’t whether she’d run.

The question was what she’d discovered that made running her only option.

And Sarah had a sinking feeling that when she found out, she wouldn’t like the answer.

Hello music lovers. Here are the additions and removals from my playlists. I’ve reduced the number of piano solos quite a bit, added a classical piece, a calypso rock number, a gospel song, and some original folk recordings.

Additions
Bushland Boogie (ABC Kids)
Fall in California (JillSuttie)
Gotta Lot Of Rhythm In My Soul (Dixie Aces)
Honky Tonk Blues (Stacey Earl)
Hungarian Dance No 5 (Johannes Brahms)
Rock Around The Clock (Calypso Steelband)
Rockaria (Electric Light Orchestra)
Skin Deep (Jill Suttie)
Songs Stay Sung (Zoe Mulford with Windborne)
This Old World (Goldia Haynes)

Removed songs (but not deleted, just rotated out of current playlists)
Barrelhouse Woman
Boy from NYC
Down the road a piece
Feel it Still
Jelly Roll
Jimtown Blues
Joe Louis Rag
Memphis Blues
Slow Blues with Stride
Alexanders Ragtime Band
Aunt Hagar’s Blues
Bloominton Breakdown
Death Ray Boogie
Dream Rag
Just Strollin’
Nordeast Rag
Stompin’ One for Sonny
The Davis Street Blues
Cold Mountain Shout
Down the road a piece
It’s Right Here for you
Little Brothers Little Boogie
Mac’s Boogie
Sammy Price Boogie
Sun Flower Slow Drag
The 31 Blues

A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings by Peggy Noonan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, is a conservative Republican, but not a MAGA one. If the GOP was still where she is, I would probably still be a Republican. But it isn’t, and I’m not, and Noonan recognizes Trump for what he is. She doesn’t mince words about either party or politicians of any stripe, in fact. She’s very good at criticizing people. This is a collection of those criticisms and other musings, all of which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in her regular column there.

She writes well enough and I agree with much, maybe most, of what she says in the book. But there are some significant problems with it. It is highly repetitive. It is preachy. It is out of chronological order, so in some cases she has declared some things to be certain that turn out not to occur later. At times she seems prescient and other times foolish. I read this for my book club. It got boring so fast that I wouldn’t have read past the first third had I not felt obligated to complete it. As a reading experience Noonan is better absorbed in weekly or monthly articles, not all crammed together like this.

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The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It’s hard to rate a book highly when it is so unpleasant to read. This was billed as a psychological thriller and murder mystery, but it’s better characterized as a horror story. No one who reads this will ever want to take in a foster child or adopt. The writing isn’t bad and there is enough suspense to keep the reader engaged, but it’s a long trip to a disturbing climax.

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Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book tells about how intellectuals, largely professors in the humanities, but librarians and other bookish types contributed to the intelligence success of the Allies during WWII. There are many exciting or fascinating stories, such as the raid on the Telemark heavy water plant in Norway and Operation Mincemeat. For someone new to the subject the book will be a treat. Unfortunately, this is well-trodden ground and there is very little I haven’t heard or read about often many times in books, movies and TV. I only read this because it was a selection by my book club. While I enjoyed the book in places, it felt like a slog at times since I knew so much of it. I realized the author was trying to put a new slant on it by focusing on the egghead angle, and I’m glad to see them get their due, but I think she was pushing it a little too far. There were places where she said, perhaps rightly, perhaps not, that such and such a triumph was due to the intelligence work of these scholars. In a sense it might be true since every step by every single participant was probably necessary to reach success, that a bit like saying the tailor who made Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves beat Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manilla because he couldn’t have won without those gloves. For us jaded intel types, there’s not much new here.

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I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Abbott is a nerdy, pasty-faced, 20+ year-old living at home with his dad, spending his days playing video games and occasionally working as a Lyft driver. Ether is a wacky young woman in green sunglasses who calls for a ride. She persuades him to log out of Lyft and agree to drive her across the country (from California to Washington DC) for a six-figure sum. The catch is that they have to take a large black box that is sealed shut and leave phones and computers behind so as not to be tracked. The adventure begins there, but Abbott’s online clique get suspicious and also concerned at his absence. Soon various Twitch and Reddit threads start up speculating what happened to him. Some visual evidence is found showing him in his father’s car driving with Ether. The speculating goes crazy with conspiracy theories. A radiation warning symbol is spotted by one commenter on the box. Then online it becomes a plot to explode a dirty bomb at the capitol to wipe out the Supreme Court. Another person claims it’s a dead body in the trunk, and yet another, an alien. As wacky as it becomes, the story is written with wit and humor. It’s a hard trick to be funny and keep up suspense and action but the author pulls it off beautifully. I’ll definitely be looking for more books by this author.

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The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I thought I had checked out a crime/detective novel only to find it was a fantasy novel – a teenage girl’s fantasy. A gorgeous teenage boy comes waltzing into a diner in Podunk, America to recruit the teen heroine to be a “natural” sleuth for the FBI in Washington working on serial killer cold cases and she accepts, because of course she did. As a retired FBI agent I found the whole setup beyond ludicrous. The author has done not one iota of research about the FBI’s jurisdiction or practices and clearly did not intend for the story to be even slightly plausible. It’s been over 20 years since I retired, and who knows what god-awful things Kash Patel has done to the FBI, but I’m quite sure it still isn’t sending teen heartthrobs around the country to recruit psychics for help solving a non-existent backlog of cold serial killer cases that the FBI has no jurisdiction over. Obviously I didn’t get very far in the book. And by the way, Ms. Barnes, the word you meant was incredulity, not incredulousness. You need to retake bonehead English.

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I just read that a fellow has published the Spotify playlists of a bunch of politicians and celebrities. These were not hacked. It turns out the playlists people create there are public by default. I don’t use Spotify, but I make my playlists public on this blog from time to time. Rather than list the hundreds of songs in my playlists, I thought I would list my favorite performers. These are in order of the number of different recordings in my current playlists. I have hundreds more on my hard drive or phone so it’s really only a sample of my current preferences.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The subtitle accurately describes the content of the book. It is crammed full of interesting facts about animals, especially about how their senses differ from humans and from other species. I read this because it was assigned reading for a book club. The assignment was only for about half the book, but I read nearly all of it because it was so interesting. I consider myself something of a science fan/nerd, but not so much in the biological sciences. So I was surprised that almost everything in the book was new to me, which, of course made it much more interesting than I expected.

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It’s time for another What3Words on the News post. Search W3W in this blog to learn how it works if you don’t already know.

As you know, President Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska a few days ago to try to make a deal ending the war in Ukraine. He chose an appropriate site. Only a few miles from the air force base where it took place, W3W assigned the combo Trump.failed.ally.

To get into a little more detail, the building where it took place was the Arctic Warrior Event Center. It’s a large building with quite a few assigned word combos. Even so, several seem surprisingly apropos. To see how Putin succeeded in stringing Trump along look no further than delay.string.refuse and rival.hangs.effort, which are both in the building. Lastly, Putin beats.leader.anyway.

Trump’s performance may have been anticipated by these spots within the building: wooden.legal.ruler, fails.divisions.liability, and random.lost.played.

Once again What3words has proven to been clairvoyant in assigning word combos to future world events. Bravo!

Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Julie Chan is an identical twin who became separated from her twin Chloe at a young age when her parents were killed. Julie ended up with an aunt who was nasty, miserly and dishonest. Chloe was adopted by a wealthy white family on the east coast and become a successful online influencer. The girls become almost complete strangers until by an unlikely set of circumstances Julie appears at Chloe’s apartment to find to her dead. Of course Julie is mistaken for Chloe and takes over Chloe’s persona. The basic premise is an old one going back at least as far as Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. A quick google search turned up at least a half dozen twin/doppelganger switcheroo books, movies or TV shows on the first page. I have no objection to using a common trope if the author would do something new with it. Unfortunately, Zhang doesn’t.

The basic plot is a very predictable “grass is greener” fantasy for the most part. Julie falls in with a bunch of vapid, vain Internet influencers, all of whom seem to be fabulously wealthy, especially the queen of them all, Bella Marie. Thus follows hundreds of pages of descriptions of vulgar wealth and obsession with followers and likes on various platforms. Of course there are those who discern that Julie isn’t Chloe and that leads to complications. The ending is … well, let’s just say unsatisfying. The book was boring for anyone like me who has no interest in makeup, social media followers, jewelry, etc. But most of all, the book was disappointing because none of the characters was in the least bit appealing. They range from shallow and greedy to absolutely despicable.

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State of Fear by Michael Crichton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m generally a fan of Michael Crichton, but I wasn’t impressed with this one. The story line involves a cabal of environmentalists who are portrayed as evil ignoramuses trying to convince governments to give them vast sums by pushing a false narrative about global warming and, oh by the way, murdering people and trying to cause global environmental catastrophes to bolster fund-raising. The author’s extensive end notes state that he is skeptical of people on both sides, pretty much landing on the notion that no one really understands much about the environment and how to manage, must less control, it. Despite this disclaimer, he portrays anyone working to clean up the air or preserve nature as either greedy, stupid, or evil, or maybe all three, while the good guys who are saving the world from the murderous cabal all know that global warming is not caused by greenhouse gases if it exists at all, that preserving open spaces is pointless or harmful, and so on. The book was much too didactic to be very entertaining no matter what your feelings are about global warming. The characters are one-dimensional, the action scenes preposterously implausible, and the constant lectures just too boring. Still, it was readable and kept me going for a few days. I also agree with one of his main points, and that is that activists, politicians, and media people all seek attention to their views, cause, or business by trying to cause fear and that false fear is not only unwarranted but also making people unhappy for no reason.

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The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a well-written, intriguing murder mystery. Or is it? I ask because it appears to be a murder mystery at first, but really it’s about the disappearance of two children, “Bear” Van Laar who disappeared in in 1961 and then his teenage younger sister Barbara in 1975. The Van Laars are a wealthy family of snooty New York bankers who own an estate in a nature preserve including an upscale summer camp for kids. Bear’s body was never found, but a local firefighter who had befriended him, and then died of a heart attack right after the boy went missing, was blamed and murder was assumed. Barbara, now a teen in 1975 – the setting of the book’s “current day” – has decided to attend the camp her family owns. She thrives at the camp, but kids and counselors alike are sneaking around, drinking, having romantic encounters, and smoking pot. Fighting and much ado follow and Barbara disappears. The state police are soon called in and Judyta “Judy”, a rookie investigator, becomes the investigative focus of the book. She makes some significant investigative finds that others overlooked or at least didn’t think of.

It’s a long book (over 500 pages) with a long list of characters, too many to set forth here. I printed a paper list when I was 1/3 of the way through with 14 names on it, then had to add a half dozen more later. They all come into play, so don’t skip over any of them as minor. Have some patience because the pace is a bit slow at first, but it’s worth it. It jumps back in forth in time as is the current fashion, but I really appreciated how every chapter, even subsections, are marked in bold print with the year/day of that section as well as the name of main character followed there. I recommend the book. It gave me many hours of entertainment.

That said, I have one significant criticism. The book is ridiculously sexist, portraying almost every male and many women, too, as condescending sexist pigs especially toward Judy but toward other women and girls, too. The author is guilty of exactly what she portrays the men as doing only in reverse. I’m familiar enough with the publishing industry to know that 80% or so of fiction book buyers are female so portraying men badly sells books, but this one is comically inaccurate and very unfair. I was in the FBI in 1975 and worked with both male and female agents, local police too, in three states, including New York. Never once then or after did I ever hear an officer, agent, or civilian call a woman agent/officer “Honey” or “Dear” or anything similar as happens in the book. Never did I see an interviewee just walk away from one mid-interview, either. If the author objects to how the men treat Judy as a helpless little girl, then maybe she shouldn’t make Judy behave like one. Judy chickens out when she hears footsteps upstairs and runs to get some men cops to help her investigate. Jeez, she’s 26, has a gun and years as a state trooper. Any investigator I ever worked with would have gone up herself gun drawn. She is often described as afraid, nervous, or embarrassed. She lives with her parents and is afraid to move out for fear it might upset them. Both her partner, Hayes, and the captain from Albany publicly praise her good work often and give her significant leads to cover, but at the end she says something to the effect that every investigator she ever met treated her like she couldn’t make a good investigator because she was a woman. Judy is the one who acts biased and childish.

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I like to share my playlist updates both to keep a record for myself and to let anyone interested be exposed to a wide range of music. This new set includes some classical pieces, a Norwegian Children’s song, and some vintage early jazz stuff. I replaced one version of Tico Tico with a better version.

Here the list of adds:

I also removed some songs from my current playlists, although I did not delete them. In some cases I left them in one playlist but not others. Songs often disappear from my playlists but reappear after some months or years. Here’s that list (some names shortened):

Barbara Ann
Between the Devil
Carle Boogie
Head Rag Hop
I feel Good
I’m Walkin
Moonlight Boogie
Mr Freddy Blues
My old man
Pierre’s Blues
Powderhouse Rag
Pratt City Blues
Rag Mama
Ragtime without shot
Red Wing
Rock That Boogie
Sammy Price
Shirt Tail Stomp
St. Louis Boogie
Street Corner Rag
The Ma Grinder
Tico Tico
Tim Sparks Mississippi Blues/Carolina
Travelin Shoes
Vitality Rag
Walk Don’t Run
Warm Baby
When I go Walkin
Wipeout
Yes Sir That’s My Baby

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author deftly tells the true story of a British couple who sold off their earthly possessions to buy a yacht and sail to New Zealand to start a new life. Before reaching their destination a whale surfaces under their boat, sinking it. They grab what they can and move to a life raft and dinghy to await rescue. But they have no radio or other way to contact anyone. Their flares are all duds. This tale is page-turning fun to read and rates five stars, but ultimately makes for a rather short book. The author, perhaps encouraged by her editor, chooses to carry the story on past that event. Inevitably the rest is anticlimactic and drags my rating down. Still, I enjoyed the book and was amazed at the courage and resourcefulness the couple displayed.

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Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Michael Lewis does his usual journeyman job of writing about a timely, complex subject in a very accessible style. This book is about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder of FTX the crypto exchange and now a convicted felon doing 25 years in federal prison. The book focuses almost entirely on SBF’s childhood and college education for the first half, then discusses the world of cryptocurrencies, trading, and the players in that universe. The actual collapse of FTX and the criminal convictions are a small fraction of the story handled only briefly at the end. Much of it remains a mystery. While it’s an interesting story, Lewis has made the mistake of publishing too soon. He doesn’t even mention SBF’s conviction, only those of the people who pled guilty immediately. He doesn’t explain what led to the collapse except in the most general terms; it appears from the book that as of the writing more money is being found and more malfeasance or idiocy uncovered almost daily. He makes no mention, or even speculation, of the lasting effect the FTX case may have on cryptocurrency in general. If he’d waited until Donald Trump went in whole hog on the idea, we’d have a more interesting and balanced book.

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Homecoming by Kate Morton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This murder mystery is more of an exploration of women, motherhood, family, and the role women were expected to play in the 1950’s in Australia than a crime novel. It’s written by a woman and all the main characters are women, which is unusual for a murder mystery, but as I said, it’s mainly about women and family. The murder (or perhaps an accidental poisoning) takes place at a family picnic in Australia. The mother and three of her children die, but there was an infant in a wicker basket who disappeared. Fast forward to modern day and Jess, a successful writer who was raised by her grandmother Nora, is called to attend to Nora who had suffered a fall. Nora is incoherent but babbles something about a baby. Jess eventually finds out Nora was present at the scene of the family death as her brother owned the estate. Nora also gave birth that same day, we learn. The truth is complicated, convoluted perhaps is a better word, but it all comes out in the end.

The story kept me interested for several days as it is a long book (835 pages LT edition), but it was a struggle to get to where the plot really takes off (page 577). The author pads it, especially the first half, way too much with backstory, much of which is implausible or fanciful, but it’s manageable until it gets interesting. As an American I had almost no concept of Australian geography, but that’s what Google maps is for. Still, much of the logistics and differing terrain were lost on me. The author was too clever by half at the end with red herrings and switcheroos but found a satisfying resolution. The author seems to think that almost every man deserts his wife and children, either literally or by marrying his work. At least that’s the impression the book gives. Perhaps I’m just the rare exception (still with my wife of 45 years). Four stars is a stretch, but I’ll make that stretch.

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Polostan by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’d read a couple of Stephenson’s books before this one, so I had an idea of his style: epic scope, jumping around to widely different places, non-linear time. That combination can be tiresome if you don’t have the patience for it, but here it works okay to a point. The protagonist is Aurora (name while in Russia)/Dawn (while in the U.S.), a tall, striking American Communist woman living in the time of the Chicago World’s Fair (1933) and Joseph Stalin. She experiences a wide variety of fantastical and improbable situations – learning to train polo ponies in Montana – learning to use a Tommy gun (and then using it) – forms of torture at the hands of both Americans and Russians, taking in the fair as a walking billboard, and many more. The plot doesn’t really come together until the very end and gives the impression the author just kept writing a series of anecdotes or short stories until he figured a way to unite them. There is a lot of originality in the style and considerable research, especially as to the Chicago Fair. I had trouble keeping characters, settings, and places straight. The plot is too scattered and implausible to give it a high rating, but it was entertaining enough when viewed as a collection of unrelated stories. I was not aware until writing this this review that it was the first in a series. It didn’t catch my interest enough to make me want to read the next one.

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The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Preston writes a compelling non-fiction work about infectious disease, his second. The book begins with a description of the mysterious anthrax bioterrorism attacks of 2001. The victims were some politicians, their staff, mail handling personnel, and one random woman believed to have contracted the disease from her own mail which had been sorted in proximity to a contaminated letter full of anthrax spores. I thought it would be a cracking good real crime story detailing how the FBI and the scientists who helped them cracked the case. Much of the book is about that case, but the case was not solved by the time the book was published and the book does not identify any individual to be the perpetrator. Most of the book focuses on smallpox, specifically the weaponization of smallpox. The history of smallpox as a disease and then as a weapon is fascinating and well depicted. The author humanizes it by describing the laboratory procedures various scientists use to deal with samples or treatment of patients, and he provides the back stories, i.e. brief bios, of the scientists and doctors along the way.

There’s a lot of good science in the book and some tense moments that demonstrate how easily a smallpox epidemic could start that would wipe out forty percent of humanity. Still, a lot is unknown about whether there is a credible bioterror threat. Scientists disagree. The author comes just short of pointing the finger at a particular scientist as the perpetrator of the anthrax attack, but that person turned out not to be person the FBI eventually identified. The book quotes several scientists as stating with great certainty that Saddam Hussein definitely has a stock of weapons of mass destruction, i.e. biological weapons, but one year after the book was published, the U.S. invaded Iraq and found no evidence of such weapons. The book may be relegated to irrelevance as it is over twenty years old now, but the Covid pandemic showed how relevant it still is. A global pandemic is a genuine threat whether occurring naturally, accidentally, or intentionally. The difficulties involved in defending against it, both in the labs and in the outside world are made evident in the book. Smallpox is supposed to exist solely in two closely guarded facilities in the world, one in the U.S., one in Russia, but the book shows how that belief is probably a pipe dream. The development of antiviral medicines against AIDS and HIV give us hope that something similar could be done with smallpox, but the death toll would probably be devastating in any event.

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Donald Trump just installed two new overly tall flagpoles in the White House residence, the first on the South Lawn. I just submitted the following anagram to the Anagram Times to honor it:

Trump installs new White House flagpoles = Oh, swell – powerful male penis status thing

I also decided to try to find an appropriate What3Words triplet for the installation site. The best I could find is : flags.slug.secret. That’s very close to the site.

Slug’s secret flags would have been more appropriate, but I don’t assign word combos. Don’t get me wrong: I like flying the American flag and have no objection to that. It’s just the idea that Trump has to have even bigger poles that the ones that existed that I’m ridiculing. Pardon the male penis redundancy.