The House Opposite that lights up at dawn to presage the coming of spring...

The House Opposite that lights up at dawn to presage the coming of spring isn't looking too good right now. Its lesser-known manifestation, the House Opposite That Lights Up at Dawn in October put on a poor showing this year. 

The first couple of days of the phenomenon, it was misty. On the last day, a faint glimmer in the leftmost upper window appeared. On closer examination today, that's the only window remaining in the building. There's a tree growing in front of the window, too, which isn't helping. 

Gone are the blinding glints of yesteryear.

Two days ago, a faint glimmer, upper left.

Today, misty vista at dawn.

DIGITAL IMAGINING: Wordfest OC at Saddleback College, October 2024

 

From left to right: Brett Myron, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Amy Cameron and Rylee Robles. 

Friday 18th October was Wordfest OC at Saddleback College. 

The day featured poetry readings, a talk on Latinx voices, a conversation with Gustavo Arellano, a workshop on creative writing headed by Sarah Rafael Garcia and a discussion on artificial intelligence, DIGITAL IMAGINING: Creative Writing in the Age of AI. 

I was particularly interested in the last one. The panel included my Creative Writing teacher Barbara DeMarco-Barrett along with Brett Myron, Amy Cameron and Rylee Robles. 

Barbara's main point was that AI (or rather large language models, LLMs) is being 'trained' to write by hoovering up every book, article, blog post, and Reddit post along with any other digitized text. The texts are (in all modern cases) under copyright, and no one was paid for their participation - and not even informed about the project taking place. The products of this surreptitious activity are being sold for money. 

Ethically, writers are owed compensation for this unpaid work. Barbara mentioned that Amazon (the bookseller) now limits individuals to uploading three books a day in order to at least slow down the flood of machine-generated stories and novels. Soon there will be a mass transfer of wealth from current copyright owners and future writers to the owners and users of "Generative AI." 

Whether a LLM "reading" a text for its own use constitutes unlawful copying is yet to be decided by the courts, but cases of an LLM's output matching the input closely, i.e. plagiarism, has already been detected and apparently court cases are proceeding.

Amy talked about Narrative Magazine, where co-founder Tom Jenks has banned people submitting machine-generated text and updated the magazines robots.txt file to disallow web crawlers from 'hoovering' the magazine's contents.  I submit to a lot of speculative fiction magazines, and can confirm that most have strong policies banning AI-written submissions. But how to recognize and prevent it? Amy said that at UC Irvine, use of AI is not "policed" but she can recognize it because it "sounds robotic." She admitted that a time may come when she would be unable to recognize machine output.

Rylee, a high school senior, took a different tack. She is a Marvel fan and asked an AI if it could put her in a Marvel movie--and it made her a superhero. She said that her group created characters with AI and within 45 minutes they had produced three stories that gave representation to everyone in the room. As a base layer to build off, she said, it helped people create their stories. 

The panel discussed whether AI could be a valued part of the creative writing process in that way, by producing a "kernel of an idea."  Barbara said prompt generators (programs that give you ideas for characters, setting and/or plot) had been around for years, and AI was an "unnecessary" improvement. Amy said "rising waters lift all boats" and Google Search had raised the standard for good and mediocre writers alike. She felt that AI would do the same, and it was important "to have a boat in the water" -- get used to generative AI -- or be left behind. 

There was a general agreement that current AI models produced output that lacked nuance, did not adequately express human emotion, and in Brett's case, was "not weird enough." 

During the audience question time, a listener mentioned that sometimes an apparently clear prompt will produce an AI output that "goes in the wrong direction." Rylee answered that sometimes human communication does that too, and the opportunity to rephrase and redirect the AI is good practice for clear communication in general. 

And on that high note, I'll finish. 

Blood Fiction v3 book signing - Lyle Hopwood and other authors

 

A good time was had by all at the book signing for Blood Fiction v3 at Book Carnival in Orange on Sunday.  Thanks to editor Mark Sevi (shown in photo, speaking) and Anne, the proprietor of Book Carnival. 

And to everyone who came to listen to us authors read and bought books to sign. 

Blood Fiction v3 is available from Amazon, in print and ebook. Two stories by me- Lyle Hopwood - in this volume (and one in the previous one, v2.)

Batley's Torchlight Procession, 7th October

 

Tomorrow night, in Batley, it’s the annual torchlight procession. This historic tradition, sometimes called the "Lourdes of the North," brings together the Catholic community of Batley and surrounding areas in a display of faith and devotion to the Virgin Mary.

The first I ever saw of it, I was 11 years old. There were hundreds of people walking past our maisonette, each with a candle glowing in a paper holder. They sang, or chanted“Ave Maria.”  The line of reverential people went on, in the cold Autumn night, for almost half an hour.

My own family was not religious. I’d been to a protestant church two or three times in my childhood, and a Catholic church never. I had never seen churchy people outside a church or churchyard, and the effect on me was much like that of a somehow unsuspecting local of seeing the Padstow ‘Obby Oss come past unexpectedly. To my eyes, it was a “folk tradition” of people venerating an unfamiliar entity – a Wicker Man scenario, but reversed, as I was the pagan, and they were the Christians. (And, as far as I know, they didn’t barbecue anyone afterward.) There are many Festivals of Light at this time of year, and now, fifty years later, I can slot the procession in as one of these – comparable with Diwali, held this year on October 31^st, Imbolc and Kwanzaa. It’s one thing to read about it in a book, quite another to see people enacting it on your literal doorstep.

The procession was kicked off in 1951 by the arrival at St. Mary’s of Father Gallon, lately of St. Patrick’s Sheffield. The event is still organized by St Mary of the Angels Catholic Church on Cross Bank Road and has become a significant part of Batley's cultural and religious calendar.

The procession begins at St Mary's Catholic Primary School and wends its way to St Mary of the Angels Church. This route through the streets of Batley creates a river of light and sound. The sight of hundreds of flickering flames moving through the streets is visually stunning and moving for spectators and participants alike.

Like many public events, the Batley Torchlight Procession went into hiatus due to the pandemic. The 2022 procession marked a triumphant return, with the community embracing the opportunity to participate in this august tradition.