Odd Week, That

So apparently, Anthropic's AI used my collection, Live Nude Aliens and Other Stories, to train itself. Granted, it falls among a lot of texts, but it's an odd sort of compliment and an affront. In an American lawsuit, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion in damages to authors whose books they scraped from pirating sites for the purpose of training their generative. The settlement only applies to American authors, but a Canadian lawsuit may follow. My sister Jo (whose book Just Gone was also among those scraped, along with one of her academic papers) and I have both filed our names, in the event of a Canadian settlement coming through within our lifetime.

The American settlement (which would amount, reportedly, to about $3,000.00 for each book used) has already encountered obstructions.

And then there was my passing encounter with "Canada's second-greatest rapper," my online entanglement with a celebrated best-selling

"Right, now, expect the the first ghost -- "

"Hang on a second, Marley, you can't do this ghost-of-Christmas stuff at me. I'm Jewish."

"Oh? Oh yes, I'd forgotten. Well, not to worry, we cover all major and minor holidays. We can certainly shift gears here and do the ghosts of Yom Kippur. Which, I should note, is even more relevant to the things you must do, since it is the

Coffee for the love of coffee.

"coffee is not about caffeine"
—longwinter

I'm totally down with the sentiment of this title. My first coffee these days is a pourover at around 0700, partly for the wake-up-juice and partly the ritual. The very process is making my coffee is a pleasure; the smell of the beans grinding, the artistry in setting up the brewer, even folding the filter is a vital part of the