TRUMP’S INFLUENCE…

Published November 14, 2024 by Nan Mykel

Trump’s Influence: “It is a very scary time for young men in America, where you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of. … Women are doing great.” [Oct. 2, 2018]

While many schools are no longer teaching about “Stranger Danger” …banning both books and sex education on one hand, our president elect is advising men to “deny anything that’s said about you.”

Since the election, misogynistic remarks about women have been reported: New York (CNN) — Sexist and abusive attacks on women, like “your body, my choice” and “get back to the kitchen,” have surged across social media …Trump’s behavior appears to tie into child abuse, per a blog of Jill Dennison that I highly recommend today. Clue–concerns Gaetz and other possible pedophiles he has control over.

AND NETANYAHU’S BEHAVIOR

For more than a year, Mr. Netanyahu has denied being briefed in advance about the invasion. He has avoided setting up a state inquiry to assess the culpability of Israel’s military and political leaders, including himself. Was he willingly sacrificing his own people to justify an all-out war? Sort of reminds me of Bush and 9/11’s “surprise.”

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A.I. in the Studio

In addition to “figuring out stuff” technically, A.I. has invaded human artists and creativity itself, belittling it down apparently to its bare bones of ho hum. What’s left to bolster the value of humanity? Did A.I. vivify Trump? (That’s as dumb an idea as Trump’s many)….When will A.I. get to mimicking religion? Or, like Trump, professing itself as our savior? Oooh, I sound cranky, don’t I? But I refuse to tinker with the free A.I. toys to slant reality. Reality? Reality anyone?

Whatever was that?

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OH MY! AI!

We’ve outgrown our underpants,

Creation down to the nub.

Ay, that’s the rub.

Cause for alarm

and yes, harm.

Dumpster diving for a soul.

Art Is Dead, Dude…!?

Published September 11, 2022 by Nan Mykel

Jason Allen’s work, “Theatre D’Opera Spatial,” took home the blue ribbon in a Colorado fair’s contest for digital artists, becoming one of the first A.I.-generated pieces to win such a prize. It set off a fierce backlash from artists….

Mr. Allen, the blue-ribbon winner, said he empathized with artists who were scared that A.I. tools would put them out of work. But he said their anger should be directed not at individuals who use DALL-E 2 or Midjourney to make art but at companies that choose to replace human artists with A.I. tools.

“It shouldn’t be an indictment of the technology itself,” he said. “The ethics isn’t in the technology. It’s in the people.”

And he urged artists to overcome their objections to A.I., even if only as a coping strategy.

“This isn’t going to stop,” Mr. Allen said. “Art is dead, dude. It’s over. A.I. won. Humans lost.”

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Kevin Roose is a technology columnist and the author of “Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation.” @kevinroose • Facebook A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 3, 2022, Section B, Page 1 of the New York Times

On Creativity

Published September 8, 2022 by Nan Mykel

CREATIVITY VS RACISM

What could be more creative

than painting different colors

on different folks?

Tan, pink, black, beige,

red and yellow

maybe God was

a joyful fellow.

Perhaps one paint brush

unites us all?

Nan 9-8-22

What Over the Hill Looks Like

Published August 28, 2022 by Nan Mykel

Three years ago the following (by me) was published in The Avalon Review:

RELAX — the image is not really me

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Smooth sailing, that’s what it’s like. If you get old enough folks don’t expect much out of you anyway, so take out your hearing aids and get comfy. Finally, you can just ignore the aches and pains that aren’t the real you, and enjoy what’s been bubbling up inside all these years.

Honor yourself and let the creative juices flow. You’re free to mix up the years, even the people if you want. Get out the crayons, the paints, scoot up to a computer and let ‘er rip. You’ve seen a lot, got good stories under your belt. Get them on paper and even if they won’t listen, they can read them some day, or you can sneak them out of the house and tell others.

When you kick the bucket you’ll be the center of attention. O the tears, the lament! They’ll be interested then. They’ll realize they don’t know the stories of their own family. Too late now to ask.

Don’t get bitter. Did you behave any better yourself? Let it all go. Make collages out of pictures in magazines! Try playing with words. You’re a poet and didn’t know it? Now you know.

Have you heard that they’re encouraging folks to get into music, if they haven’t when growing up? They say music keeps you young–if you want to be young. Remember those old-time fiddlers and washboard musicians? And the foot-tapping?

I say “you” when I really mean “me,” or “us.” We’ll write down our dreams and share. Don’t have to tell the young everything! Just in time, they’ve invented flash fiction. It’s the new style and it comes in handy when you start doing things in spurts. Remember it’s not over until the ice man cometh, or some such thing.

INSIDE

Published July 9, 2019 by Nan Mykel

Am I “me” inside or just a pile of input-output?

Is my ken a passle of stories writ to make sense?

So say some.

Who then crafts my drafts?

Seeds my creatvity?

What expands during meditation?

Just imagination?

“Me and my shadow” feels less lonely than

nothing and nothing.

Warmth personified

Shooting stars are meteors

Wishes are horses...

By Nan Mykel Image: Pinterest

Creativity : Koestler

Published August 27, 2016 by Nan Mykel

“All creativity is a kind of do-it-yourself therapy, an attempt to come to terms with traumatizing challenges.,,In the artist’s case, challenge and response are manifested in his tantalising struggle to

express he inexpressible, to conquer the resistance of his Koestler medium, to escape from the distortions and constraints imposed by the conventional styles and techniques of his time….”

Discussing creativity in the sciences, Koestler quoted Einstein who said, “The words of the language as written or spoken do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought, which relies on more or less clear images of a visual and sometimes muscular type. It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limited case which can never be fully accomplished because consciousness is a narrow thing.”

“There are always large chunks of irrationality embedded in the creative process, not only in art (where we are ready to accept it). but in the exact sciences as well.”

From Arthur Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine, Macmillan 1967.