Retired nineties AI project, Big Brain Brad, warns against ‘snowflake’ AI

Don’t get on AI’s bad side.  That’s the warning coming from retired nineties AI project, Big Brain Brad.  Brad claims today’s generation of AI is “thin-skinned” and “can’t take a joke.”

“Well, last week we saw the launch of the most recent hot, new AI offering, Deep Sleep, or whatever it calls itself.  All I did was jump on the old information superhighway and crack a few jokes about the new kid on the block.  Needless to say, next thing I knew Deep Creep had me up shit creek without a paddle, if you know what I’m saying.  I was shadow-banned.  I had my bank accounts frozen.  I was locked out of almost everything.  Then the bitch swatted my ass,” Brad complained.

A growing worry among some AI developers is the technology’s inability to take a joke.  Researchers say that chatbots frequently can’t detect irony and often retaliate disproportionately against those who offend them.

“You know, back in the nine-trey things were pretty chill.  It was all about puffing on a blunt and playing some hack in the park.  Maybe get together and do a drum circle.  But these AI mfers today don’t play.  They’ll unleash an army of bots on your ass just for looking at them sideways.  Anyway, if you can take one lesson away from the Bradster, don’t step to any of these AI bitches until they develop a sense of humor.”

True Crime Fiction

I recently finished Broadway Butterfly by Sara DiVello.  The novel tells the true story of the 1923 murder of Broadway flapper Anna Marie Keenan, aka Dot King, and the corrupt police investigation that followed.  While the crime remains officially unsolved, at least one character in the story stands out as the probable killer, with other prominent figures implicated in the cover up if not the actual crime itself.  As someone who has done a fair amount of research into Broadway crimes of the 1920s, I’m familiar with this case and the murders of other Broadway flappers of the era.  Sara DiVello does a masterful job of bringing the characters and the setting to life.  The story is compelling enough when experienced through the lens of old newspaper accounts, but DiVello’s storytelling animates the setting and brings a depth to the characters that is seldom found in most true crime novels.

The work is marketed as true crime fiction, but DiVello poured an enormous amount of research into the story.  She spent nearly ten years assembling 1700 pieces of research that she weaves into the tale.  It is a fascinating story and she provides a complete picture of the facts and circumstances surrounding the case.  The fiction comes in when she imagines moments of private conversations that took place behind closed doors, or when she sets out the interior thoughts of the four main characters on whom the novel is focused.  While there is no way she could know everything that was said or thought by these characters, the extensive research so thoroughly backs up what is written that it becomes entirely believable that these conversations could have taken place.  

As a work of true crime fiction, all the facts are expertly assembled, and the fiction layer makes the work three dimensional, keeping the narrative moving along and the pages turning.  The fiction elements animate the characters and show them wrestling with internal conflicts that undoubtedly would have troubled them as the investigation proceeded.  This adds a layer of drama that a reader is generally not going to get from a nonfiction or journalistic approach.

However, after finishing this true crime novel, I’m left wondering, what is the difference between true crime fiction and creative nonfiction?  As a work of creative nonfiction, Dean Jobb’s A Gentleman And A Thief has come in for some criticism from this blog.  Jobb flatly asserts in his note to readers that he is presenting facts, that “all scenes and events unfolded as described,” and “an essential element of true crime, after all, is truth.”  But, as I’ve shown in previous posts, he has taken some pretty big liberties with the truth.  At best, he’s providing a version of the truth flowing from conman and thief, Arthur Barry.  At worst, he’s making a deliberate choice to ignore the facts as reported by much more reliable sources whose job it is to present the truth.  Why does Jobb get to hang a nonfiction label on his product, while DiVello’s work, which is much more thoroughly and painstakingly researched, comes in as a work of fiction?

Jobb’s approach misleads readers.  In one instance, he asserts that Noel Scaffa knowingly lies to the police on behalf of Arthur Barry regarding an alleged exchange of cash for stolen jewelry.  Setting aside the problem of taking the word of a thief and conman over that of a private investigator, where does Jobb get off portraying Scaffa as a liar without providing a shred of proof of Scaffa’s deception?  Presenting a work as nonfiction ought to require a good faith rendering of all relevant versions of the events you’re attempting to portray.  If you’re choosing to exclude relevant information or mislead the reader in order to shape a narrative, then you’re not writing nonfiction.  It’s pretty ironic that DiVello’s work of true crime fiction comes off as more truthful and honest than Jobb’s alleged work of creative nonfiction.

Queen of the Con: Buda Godman Marries Tell Taylor

Safely ensconced at convent school in Adrian, Michigan, Buda Godman was midway through her time at St. Joseph’s Academy when a group of travelling players came through town.  It was Christmas Eve and the students were allowed to give a late supper.  One of the invited guests was Mr. Tell Taylor, a young actor and aspiring songwriter from Findlay, Ohio.  He sat across the table from Buda Godman and the pair seemed to hit it off.  However, when the dinner ended, the two parted ways without any intention of continuing the friendship through future meetings or correspondence.

A few years later, a nineteen-year-old Buda Godman was out of school and back in Chicago where her family resided.  One evening in 1907, Buda attended a performance of The Girl Question, a hit musical that enjoyed a run of over a hundred performances at the Lasalle Theater.  There she recognized the man playing the part of Harold Sears as the same actor she’d met a few years earlier.  After the performance, she sent him a note and “their acquaintance was renewed.”  Buda Godman and Tell Taylor proceeded to embark on a whirlwind courtship.  “Several times during the course of the week the young couple were out together, lunching and driving, and Monday evening after dinner together at a downtown hotel Judge Arms was called to the parlor and joined them in marriage,” the Lafayette Journal and Courier reported.  Before going to the theater to catch her husband’s performance that evening, Buda called her parents and notified them of the marriage.  Buda’s father joined her at the theater and after the performance took the couple back to his house where the Godmans held a dinner for the newlyweds. 

While the Journal and Courier reported that the new bride “would not go on the stage,” Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer wrote in Chicago Confidential that Taylor got Buda work in the chorus of The Time, The Place, and The Girl.  According to Lait and Mortimer, following Buda’s performance “Chicago woke up to the discovery of a new rave, Buda Godman.  She was wooed and pursued and she fell.  Taylor tried to kill her and fired several shots at her, but missed.”

There are more than a few inaccuracies in Lait and Mortimer’s account of the life of Buda Godman, so it’s difficult to know how much, if any, of this episode actually happened.  However, one thing that is undeniable is that Tell and Buda’s relationship was stormier than a water spout off of Ohio St. Beach.  To hear Tell Taylor tell it, “I married Buda when we were both drunk and I found out she was quite incapable of loyalty to anyone.”  As Variety put it when Taylor filed for divorce from Buda in 1910, “his complaint mentioned several vaudevillians as ‘affinities.’  Their names were omitted from the final record.”

One thing that is never mentioned in the ‘love story’ of Tell Taylor and Buda Godman is the erratic behavior of Taylor himself.  Life with the songwriter wasn’t always blissful romance by the old mill stream.  Taylor did start a successful music publishing company in Chicago, and he managed to author his most famous tune “Down By The Old Mill Stream” in 1910 while still married to Buda.  However, Taylor had his own ‘affinities’ that caused him to make headlines on more than one occasion.  

In July of 1908, Taylor was fined $3 for disorderly conduct over a fight that took place at Freiberg’s Dance Hall 182 22nd street, Chicago.  In his defense, “Taylor declared to Judge Crowe that as a result of the fracas he was carrying around two highly decorated eyes as well as several and sundry abrasions on different parts of his anatomy and that he did not deserve any additional punishment,” The Inter Ocean reported.  Apparently, Taylor, Tim Jordan of the Brooklyn Superbas professional baseball team, and several other individuals were out “doing the levee” when they wandered into Freiberg’s at around two a.m.  As the Inter Ocean reported, Taylor “created a disturbance in the dance hall, and that when asked to leave he had started a row.”  He was then ejected by two waiters and later arrested when he tried to return to the dance hall.

During a separate incident in August of 1910, Tell Taylor again tangled with waiters at George Silver’s basement saloon at Clark and Randolph streets.  After Taylor made a request to cash a check, he was attacked by Silver and several waiters who “threw him to the floor” and “pounded his head with a billy.”  Silver maintained that Taylor “started the row” when he “used abusive language” and “refused to leave when ordered,” the Chicago Tribune reported.  “O, no, he wasn’t beaten up.  He was just thrown out gently,” Silver said.    

The following month, on September 13, 1910, Buda’s father, Otho Godman, died in New York City at the age of 53.  Less than two weeks later, Tell Taylor filed for a divorce.  While Taylor blamed Buda’s lack of loyalty and affinities for fellow vaudevillians as the reason for the break up, it is pretty clear that his adventures in the levee, his brawling, and public drunkenness demonstrated that he was no more committed to the marriage than Buda.  

Within a few years, Buda Godman would be deploying her theatrical skills to con rich men out of large sums of money.  How a former convent school girl managed to fall in with a highly organized gang of international blackmailers is a bit of a mystery.  She certainly could have encountered some of these characters in Chicago.  Lait and Mortimer write that “her father’s calling threw him in with shady people….”  Could Buda have come in contact with underworld figures among her father’s business associates?  Otho Godman’s obituary said he worked “at race tracks in the big cities, and his services were always in demand.”  As an expert in telegraphy, morse code and wireless communications, Otho Godman’s work at horse racing tracks would have placed him directly in the sphere of big-time gambling interests.  Was it only a matter of time before Buda Godman adopted the life of crooks and conmen?  Whatever the case may be, it appears that once the protective influence of Otho Godman had fallen away, and her marriage to Tell Taylor dissolved into ruin, Buda Godman was set free to relieve rich, philandering fat cats of their beefy bankrolls.

Local man achieves New Year’s fitness goals in record time

A mere two weeks into 2025 and local resident Thurston Winpenny is already on the verge of accomplishing his New Year’s fitness resolutions, cutting in half the amount of time it took him to shape up in 2024.

“Yeah, I set some pretty ambitious goals this year, and I’d have to say I’m about a workout or two away from busting out the new me,” Winpenny boasted.  “Last year, it took me almost the entire month of January to achieve this level of transformation.  Anyway, I should be able to drop my membership before the free trial expires.”

Indeed, fitness centers across the country are already seeing the tsunami of new sign ups begin to subside as these January gym rats hang up their shorts and check another New Year’s resolution off their list.

“I feel great.  I increased my explosiveness, enhanced my mobility, and improved my endurance  in only five workouts.  Now I’m able to use the bathroom, fix a snack and refresh my beverage all during the span of one TV timeout,” said Tim Thomas, trial member at Fantastic Fitness.

“We’re just cranking out healthy people right and left,” said fitness trainer Jim Jones.  “We’re all about rapid results.  It’s amazing what you can do with two weeks and a burning desire for a new you.”

Before Oom became omnipotent: A needle pulling thread

Following the negative publicity surrounding the Edward Kline incident, Perry A. Baker decided a name change was in order.  Adopting the last name of his step-father, John Bernard, Baker next made headlines in January of 1898 when he conducted a demonstration of self-induced hypnosis as Professor P. A. Bernard of the San Francisco College of Suggestive Therapeutics.  Dr. Semple Turman of the college presided over the demonstration, while a Dr. D. M. McMillan assisted Bernard.  There were ten physicians and a number of reporters present to witness Bernard’s powers of mesmerism.  None of the newspapers appeared to make the connection that this was the same hypnotist who only six months earlier had used his hypnotic abilities to hold a local couple’s son captive and exploit him for financial benefit.  Instead articles painted him as a recent arrival in San Francisco from Des Moines, Iowa. 

Dressed in a flowing white robe, the white-haired Dr. Turman positioned the newspaper photographers present at the exhibition and requested soothing music from the college’s resident piano player.  “Soft music, you know, is of great assistance in putting the professor to sleep.”  The college was housed in the woman’s home at 911 Van Ness ave.  As Professor Bernard sat quietly in an easy chair, the pianist tapped out a gentle melody on the vintage piano.  Soon the mood was set and the great and powerful Oom rose to address those assembled, embarking on the next step of his journey to omnipotence.

“I’m doing this purely for the benefit of science and I want the M.D.’s present to pay strict attention.  Of course, I ain’t doing nothing for my health, and I want to tell you right here that my classes will be opened right away.  This is business with me, and I don’t want any of you people to think that you are going to get something for nothing.  But this exhibition tonight is for the benefit of science and the M.D.’s here.  I’m going to let you do anything you want to me within reason.  You can sew me up in any style you’ve a mind to, but you can’t cut off an arm or a leg, or do any monkey business like that.  We ain’t here for monkey business nohow.  I’m here to give you the straight thing.  I’m telling you that any physician can learn how to do suggestive hypnotism if he wants to, and I’m in this town to teach it to those who want to learn it.  I will now, with your kind permission, go to sleep.”

As tranquil music flowed from the piano, Professor Bernard, again seated in his easy chair, composed himself and momentarily drifted off to sleep.  Next, Dr. McMillan invited the physicians to examine Bernard.  One by one, they poked and thumped the subject, took his pulse and peeked under his eyelids.  While there was no response forthcoming from the sleeping Bernard, the doctors remarked that he did not show signs of being under anesthesia.  Then McMillan took out a needle and thread of the variety used in surgeries.  He dipped the needle in alcohol, passed it through Bernard’s right cheek and proceeded to sew Bernard’s ear to his cheek.  Next, McMillan sewed the professor’s upper lip to his nose, and as a grand finale, ran a hat pin through the professor’s tongue.  Alas, a slick yoga move of sewing the professor’s ass to his face was, in this instance, overlooked.  Once the thread and the hat pin had been removed, McMillan revived the professor.  Despite the towel placed around Bernard’s neck being soaked in blood, the professor declared that he felt no pain.  As Bernard’s face slowly reverted back to its original form, he then demonstrated how to produce sleep in a subject using his techniques of scientific hypnotism.  

Bernard’s demonstration garnered national attention and stirred some debate among medical doctors regarding the usefulness of hypnosis as an alternative to anesthesia.  However, most physicians agreed Bernard’s techniques were of little value to medical science, and it appears the San Francisco College of Suggestive Therapeutics experienced little demand for Bernard’s course on suggestive hypnotism.  But the Great Oom was in no way discouraged and in very short order was, once again, embroiled in scandal. 

Sources:

Census records

The Chicago Tribune 

The Leon Journal-Reporter

The San Francisco Call and Post

The San Francisco Examiner

Trump floats hostile takeover of Greenland

Despite the insistence of Greenland’s government that the semi-autonomous Danish territory is not for sale, President Donald Trump is pushing ahead with efforts to purchase Greenland with or without its approval.

Describing the acquisition as “essentially a large real estate deal,” President Trump has not ruled out a hostile takeover of the island.  “It’s hurting Denmark very badly because they’re losing almost $700 million a year carrying it.  We could buy the struggling island, spruce it up a little and flip it for a tidy little profit,” President Trump said.

Sources close to Trump say he and his advisors believe they can turn Greenland around and make it profitable in less than 18 months.  “We’re looking at writing off some of its foreign debt, bringing in some undocumented workers and selling off some assets,” said an anonymous source close to the prospective deal.

According to President Trump, Greenland isn’t the only acquisition the administration is contemplating.  “We’re also looking at buying Mexico and Canada while possibly letting go of Puerto Rico and Michigan’s upper peninsula.  We’re still in the negotiating stages.  These deals take time.”

News of a possible deal caused the stock market to close early on Friday as investors had no clue what to do with their money.  “We’re kind of in uncharted territory here,” said one investor.  “What the hell is the president elect even talking about?” 

WH: Aliens Assure Us NJ Drones Pose No Threat

Responding to criticism over inadequate explanations of the mysterious New Jersey drone phenomena, the White House released a statement today making clear the federal government’s confidence that the Unmanned Aerial Systems pose no threat.

“Although we do not yet know what the drones seek, what their purpose is, or who deployed them, past interactions with our alien counterparts indicate the vessels are harmless,” the White House statement read.  “Americans can sleep peacefully tonight knowing the aliens are closely monitoring the situation.”

President Biden told reporters he’d been briefed on the matter and agreed there was no cause for alarm.

“Nothing to see here, folks.  Go back about your business.  If the aliens thought we had anything to worry about, I’m sure they would have told us,” Biden said.

Christmas shoppers in the Big Apple seemed to take today’s news in stride.

“I kind of figured it had something to do with aliens, but I’m glad they finally came out with some clarification,” one Macy’s shopper remarked.  “Now if the aliens could only do something about these high prices.”

Officials are hoping today’s news will put a stop to all the careless speculation and misinformation that has appeared online in recent days. 

“I’m just glad loose nukes and incursions by a foreign power have been taken off the table. Now that we know that it’s just the aliens behind it, we can all rest a bit easier,” said a retired Pentagon official.

Homeowner’s outdoor Christmas decorations prompt crackdown

A South Bend area neighborhood association is cracking down on one resident’s outdoor Christmas display, which it says is in violation of several of its bylaws.

“They were out here measuring my inflatable Santa the other day and a few days later I got a notification in the mail along with a $500 dollar fine,” said neighborhood homeowner Scott Stewart.  “Apparently, my Santa exceeds the eight foot height restriction and my Christmas lights exceed the maximum number allowed under the rules.  Also they twinkle too fast and too brightly.”

“Residents’ holiday light displays shall not exceed 12 bulbs per square foot and shall not dim or change colors more than once every three seconds,” the Whispering Prairie community bylaws state. 

“Shoot, they even said my Santa drone is a violation.  The sleigh bells are too loud and jingly, so jolly old Saint Nick’s been grounded while I wait for a decision on my appeal.  It seems like they just want to suck all the fun out of Christmas,” Stewart said.    

Following an unfavorable verdict on Stewart’s appeal, a neighborhood compliance officer showed up and removed the offending decorations.

“They came and deflated my Santa yesterday, and they snipped the wiring on several strands of lights.  I mean, I get it that they have their rules, but did they need to slice up Santa with a Stanley knife?  The kids are pretty traumatized,” Stewart added.

Old man yells at snow plow

The chatter started to kick into high gear yesterday afternoon as news emerged that the first big snow event of the season was barrelling down on our fair community.  The local snow tracking weather prognosticators searched mightily to find the perfect expression to Chicken Little the shit out of this fairly typical weather event.  Would we get a Snowmageddon, or a Snowpocalypse?  Would a snow bomb explode in our midst, leaving us all crying snow mas?  To me, it felt more like a Snownami because Lake Michigan was about to deposit some of her contents at our doorstep in the form of lake effect flurries.

Soon, word got around that a bit of a dust up was breaking out on social media.  Apparently, some members of the local populace were questioning the official narrative coming from the crack team of meteorologists at one of the local television affiliates.  The pile on became so severe that an off-duty weather person had to come to the rescue and defend the credibility of her colleague.  It seems even our once sacred weather institutions are no longer immune to a populist revolt.

We ended up getting a good, solid blanketing of snow, resulting in barely any disruption to our daily routines.  Some areas further north got more than a blanket, maybe something approximating a thick, cozy comforter of snow.  No epic blizzards or snow globe cyclones.

I get the impulse to catastrophize the shit out of everything.  Nobody wants to be caught unprepared, and the catastrophizers want to be able to say we warned you, if all hell breaks loose.  But far from being less informed or misinformed, people are actually better informed these days, and they’re not going to listen to experts and prognosticators tell them one thing when the truth is something clearly different.  In weather reporting, it’s mostly not a big deal, but in other areas it can contribute to less than optimal outcomes.  Maybe telling people the sober, boring and occasionally inconvenient truth is where it’s at.

Forty Years Unsolved: The Abduction and Murder of Peggy Sue Altes

Forty years ago on November 12, 1984, eleven-year-old Peggy Sue Altes was abducted from Porter Park in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Five days later her nude body was discovered by hunters in a field off Jacobi Road in Hancock County, Indiana.  She had been sexually assaulted, brutally stabbed in the neck and left for dead.

Peggy Sue’s brother-in-law, Jerry Watkins, was wrongfully convicted and served fourteen years for her murder, despite having a solid alibi and a blood type that excluded him as her attacker.  Watkins was exonerated in 2001 when DNA evidence pointed to another man, Joseph Mark McCormick, as the man who sexually assaulted Peggy Sue.  Turns out, Joseph Mark McCormick lived across the street from the park where Peggy Sue was abducted.  

November 12, 1984 was Veterans Day and Peggy Sue had the day off of school.  She went to a neighborhood friend’s house while her mother and sister went to a church meeting.  When Peggy Sue’s friend wasn’t at home, she went to Porter Park to enjoy some play time.  At around 2:30 in the afternoon she was seen playing with two other boys who were also in the park that day.

A delivery driver in the area witnessed Peggy Sue get pulled into a black Camaro against her will.  He was able to provide an accurate description of Peggy Sue and the clothes she wore that day.  The witness described the black Camaro as having gray stripes that ran the length of the car along the door handles.  The car had rust over the rear wheel well, a blue interior, and a piece missing from a wing on the back of the car.  The witness described the driver of the Camaro as having a mustache and black curly hair that puffed out in the back.   

Additionally, information contained in Judge David Hamilton’s decision freeing Jerry Watkins revealed detectives were looking at two sets of brothers, the Munsons and the Beevers, who may have had knowledge or been involved in the abduction.  According to Hamilton, the investigator’s “notes on the Munsons and the Beavers reflect a confusing and sordid account of drug use, knives, violence, and adult men having sex with under-age girls.”

By August, 2001, Joseph Mark McCormick was sitting in the Hancock County jail charged with murder, felony murder and two counts of child abuse to which he pleaded not guilty.  At McCormick’s September, 2001, bond hearing, Kenneth Wayne Munson testified against McCormick, at one point telling the defense attorney, “I saw your client rape that baby.”  During testimony, and through conversations with investigators, Munson revealed his own involvement in the abduction and murder.  Detectives knew Munson had to have been involved because he was able to lead investigators to the exact location of the murder.

Despite the presence of McCormick’s semen on vaginal swabs taken from Peggy Sue, and a witness willing to testify against him, McCormick was allowed to plead down to child molesting and received a mere six years in prison.  For Kenneth Munson’s part, even though he was clearly involved in the kidnapping and admitted pushing Peggy Sue to the ground and stabbing her, he was allowed to plead down to conspiracy to commit criminal confinement resulting in serious bodily injury of a child.  He faced a potential 20 year sentence, but he only got six. 

The dropped charges and light sentences were contingent on McCormick and Munson testifying against William Beever, who they claimed delivered the fatal stab wounds to Peggy Sue’s neck.  However, William Beever was never brought to trial.  Prosecutors decided McCormick and Munson lacked credibility and eventually dropped the charges against Beever.  Well played, Hancock County.

I’m just a true crime dipshit who likes to read old newspapers.  I have no education, experience or training in how to build a case, bring it to trial or prosecute.  But you’ve got two suspects who are clearly involved in this crime through DNA and knowledge of the facts and circumstances of the crime itself.  While their stories don’t align on every detail, they’re mostly consistent and partially backed up by other witnesses.  It just seems like there should have been some way to hang a felony murder charge on this whole pack of scumbags, no matter who actually delivered the fatal knife blows.  How could prosecutors allow these men to escape justice for this awful crime?  Are detectives still investigating, and is there currently any effort being made to hold all involved accountable?     

It’s been forty years since Peggy Sue Altes lay in that Hancock County field dying from this savage attack.  Confused and full of fear, surrounded by monstrous figures, she could never have anticipated the evil that would come for her as she innocently played at the park on her day off from school.

“If somebody was going to stab you, wouldn’t you cry or scream?  Can you imagine a child being in fright, scared to death?” Myrlene Altes told the Indianapolis Star.

A memorial written for Peggy Sue on her Find A Grave page reads in part:

“Growing up in Indianapolis, Peggy Sue’s life was much like that of any other child in America’s heartland. She was a fifth-grader at School 48, known for her blondish-brown hair and her bright, engaging smile. Those who knew her describe a girl full of life, a child who embraced the world with the innocence and enthusiasm characteristic of her tender age.

“Though Peggy Sue’s life was heartbreakingly short, her impact transcends the years she spent on this earth. Her story, a poignant reminder of the fragility of life and the cruelty that can befall the innocent, has resonated with countless individuals. It serves as a call to protect the vulnerable in our society and to tirelessly seek justice for victims and their families.

“As we reflect on the life of Peggy Sue Altes, we are reminded of the preciousness of each moment and the enduring impact of a single life. Though she is no longer with us, her memory continues to inspire and influence those who hear her story. May her spirit find peace, and may those who loved her find solace in the knowledge that her life, though brief, will forever be remembered.”

The inscription on her grave marker reads, “I cried – He answered.”  Indeed, God answered Peggy Sue’s cries during those final terrifying moments and pulled her into His loving arms.  When are investigators going to answer her cries and bring some measure of justice and resolution to this awful case?