Our dinner table, last night, was the scene of a lively discussion about UFOs.

The current term used is UAP–Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena–but I prefer the term UFO, as UAP makes me think of the upper peninsula of Michigan, rather than mysterious objects in the sky.

At any rate, I bet a large number of people these days are talking about UFOs due to the information recently released by the Department of War (one collection of documents on May 8, and a second collection on May 22). The DoW further stated that they will release more information in the future as “they are discovered and declassified, with tranches posted every few weeks.” I wonder if a lot of the conversations are similar to the one at our dinner table?

Our conversation, conducted by three sons and two parents over a dinner of spaghetti and salad which yours truly made, centered on what the possible explanations are for the UFOs. Fairly standard question, I would imagine.

Philosophical Boundaries?

If you set aside all philosophical preconceptions of the entire gamut, from atheism to various forms of spirituality, there are only four possible answers to the question: unexplained natural/weather phenomena, secret human/government technology, extra-terrestrials, spiritual activity. I might be missing an additional potential answer but I can’t think of anything else.

We didn’t spend any time on options 1 and 2. You could build a case for drone-pranks as part of option 2, but that answer doesn’t work too well with some of the sightings over mid-ocean by naval aviators, etc.

Instead, we focused on options 3 and 4. The argument careened into ad hominems from time to time, but it basically revolved around whether or not the behavior of the UFOs broke the laws of physics in any way (such as lack of observable friction), whether or not this simply means human understanding of physics still has a long way to go, and whether or not spiritual activity would have any reason to mess about creating UFO behavior.

In terms of spiritual activity, most of our conversation–which really had turned into a raging argument about halfway through–assumed malicious spiritual activity. Demons.

Mayans, Aztecs and…

One of the more interesting perspectives on the demons-as-UFOs argument is the parallel between sky activity now and sky activity back during the time of the Aztecs and Mayans. The Mayans, for example, had several sky gods they revered, such as Itzamna and Kukulcan. These gods were nasty pieces of work for the most part, despite the occasional good they were supposedly responsible for (such as Itzamna teaching people how to farm). The descriptions of human sacrifice common to both those civilizations are extremely unsettling. Not exactly the church you want down the street.

If I put on my story hat, it’s pretty easy to see a narrative of some dark god playing a long game. Get the natives running around several thousands of years ago, and then come back in the modern era and see about resurrecting the same behavior.

On the extra-terrestrial side of the equation, we can argue that human knowledge is quite limited, the universe is quite large, and it’s certainly presumptuous to think homo sapiens of Earth are the only sentient beings in the multi-galactic neighborhood.

Enter the Steven

In a timely fashion, Steven Spielberg is about to release a UFO conspiracy thriller movie called Disclosure Day. A rather fitting production for the same director of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The two films almost serve as book-ends for his career. I’m not entirely certain, but it sounds like Spielberg’s new film will contain the theme of Concept Normalization (I think I just made that term up): that is, how do you introduce an extraordinary concept to a society in a way that does not alarm the general populace?

Angels, demons, extra-terrestrials… whatever the source of UFOs is, they all intersect with Concept Normalization. Or Mainstreaming Madness. Frog-in-Boiling-Pot. Or whatever you want to call it.

Regardless of the answer, I think we still have some interesting things to learn. I’m pretty convinced the answer is not Leroy and his buddies stringing Christmas lights on drones and then flying them around at night.

The Places We Know

The Places We Know is a song I wrote about six or seven years ago as part of my Inflatable Hippies project. It’s somewhat about mortality, a little bit about fate and free will, a bit about where we end up in life. Or after life. Plus a tiny reference to Philip Jose Farmer and John Donne. But, really more Donne than Farmer.

Anyway, I started running some of my songs through Suno AI. Yes, I’ve gone over to the dark side with my music. Using Suno is kind of like hiring a bunch of studio musicians to re-record the various parts of your song. Some people use Suno to write songs for them from scratch–lyrics and music.

That’s a bridge too far for me.

I upload songs that I’ve written and recorded: lyrics, various instruments, structure, melodies and harmonies, etc. And then I tell Suno to recreate the song as is. Which it then does. Yeah, it’s not me recording each part like I do with the starting version of the song, but it faithfully recreates each part according to my original.

I’m not that great of a musician, and not that good in the studio, so I’m definitely okay with the AI assist. Plus, it’s a lot of fun.

Sanderson and Apple

Interesting to see that Brandon Sanderson and Apple have signed a deal to bring some of his works to screen. It’s even more interesting to see that Sanderson has secured the right to control the process, from writing scripts, controlling creative approvals, casting, etc. That’s a relief, as Hollywood is incredibly adept at ruining book adaptations.

Sanderson is probably one of the few authors alive on the planet with the power to get that kind of deal. I suppose JK Rowling is also in that tiny demographic, along with… that’s about it.

Mistborn and the rest of the Cosmere books are unique, creative stories. Sanderson, whether you like his writing or not, has a very distinct vision; it’s a very comprehensive vision, given the complexity and integration of his stories within the massive framework of the Cosmere world he’s created. I enjoy his writing quite a lot, though I had some trouble getting through the Stormlight Archives.

The thought of turning that body of work over to the shiny suits in Hollywood-land is disturbing. I’m still shuddering over what Amazon did to Tolkien’s legacy with their Rings of Power series (I began shuddering over a year ago). Though, to be fair, my teenage boys enjoy the series and have watched it at least three times now. They claim it stays faithful to Tolkien, which means we have recurring arguments about this every now and then (I think I always win the arguments, but the boys think they always win–my wife stays out of the fray).

Another fantasy coming to screen is Brandon Mull’s Fablehaven. Angel Studios secured that property and apparently is in pre-production. My middle son loves this series–so, for his sake, please don’t mess it up, Angel Studios.

Free science fiction and fantasy in February

Another collection of free ebooks in science fiction and fantasy, including my Fury Clock. Please take a look and see if there’s anything that strikes your interest.

Etymology or linguistics? Specifically, which branch of science (if is actually is a science) governs the study of linguistic expressions? Off the top of my head, I guess it’s not etymology, as that’s the study of individual words–origin, evolution, meanings, etc–as opposed to the study of phrases. I think.

So I guess that means linguistics. Though, I’m probably missing some other obscure branch of language study that isn’t linguistics.

Regardless! My apologies for being pedantic, but a question just “struck” me. Why do we use the phrase “strikes your interest” as opposed to “hits your interest” or “taps your interest” etc etc. Why the verb strike?

Sorry. That question appeared out of the blue. As if it was the tip of an arrow that some Grecian language-Cupid fired away at me for sudden and no reason at all.

The Lunch Hour of AI

I’m pretty confident we are well past the dawning of the age of AI. We’re most likely somewhere in the lunch hour or even past noon. Perhaps we’re in the afternoon siesta–that time of day when we’re all taking a nap indoors or in a hammock under the shade, while the AI server farms are busily planting, weeding and harvesting. They don’t take naps.

There’s a plethora (yeah, I consider The Three Amigos to be one of the pinnacles of cinematic history) of books these days on Amazon that seem to be AI-generated. Self-help books, how-to books, all the way through to oddly written fiction books. AI? Perhaps, maybe, possibly, a great deal of them probably. Though, the oddly written fiction books are either the product of (very confused) AI or creative writing graduates who are intent on winning the Booker or something equally “prestigious.”

You gotta be careful these days with “prestigious.” Definitions are definitely changing. Bob Dylan forgot to write that verse. The definitions, they are a-changin’…

I just saw a fairly alarming ad on Youtube for an AI writing program that will apparently take a simple prompt and craft it all the way to a finished book, complete with formatting and illustrations. The ad was focused on non-fiction, but I imagine the program could tackle fiction as well.

We live in a quickly changing world. Some days I wonder if it’s time to go live on a mountain top in Idaho. Off the grid. Dump my cell phone. Buy a library’s worth of physical books. A modern day Stylite monk.

But, that wouldn’t work. I imagine a government inspector would show up soon enough. “Excuse me, do you have a permit for all those books?”

I don’t imagine ever having an AI write my stories, though there are some sensible tools for editing, creating marketing material and things like that. Stories, from a writer’s perspective (and I mean this writer, as in me, myself and I), are almost like an extension of the soul. Or maybe a better way to put it, a shadow cast by the soul. How could you turn that over to an AI and expect it to walk out into the metaphorical sunlight and cast a shadow that genuinely represented you as a soul-ful human being?

What I do intend to use AI for on the actual creative side is for music and video.

Music and AI

I’ve written dozens of songs over the years. I don’t just write the songs, I record them in multi-tracks of voices and instruments. That’s easy enough to do these days with a computer, a decent audio interface and some recording software. It’s easy in terms of inexpensive gear. It’s not easy in terms of writing a good song. And it’s definitely not easy in terms of pulling off a good recording with both professional execution and professional recording quality.

That’s where the AI comes in. There are quite a few options, but I’ve been experimenting with Suno. Suno is both amazing and depressing. Amazing due to quality, depressing due to how it will certainly put some musicians and engineers out of work. Also depressing in that, due to its high quality, it might make kids think twice about putting in the time and effort to develop their own skills.

The ability to create is one of the most unique traits that humans have. It sets us apart from animals and reflects the fact that we are made in the image of God. Anything that discourages creativity should be, in my opinion, suspect, because the reduction of creativity reduces our humanity.

I think…

Video and AI

I used to work in television, many long years ago, so I have a painful appreciation for how much work, time, personnel and money goes into making a show. I have zero interest in getting back into actual show production, but I am intrigued by the option of creating short, one-off productions on my own with AI. Either just for fun or to marry to a song and put that out in the ether (also just for fun).

After some reading and investigating, I’ve decided to try LTX. They have a robust work space in terms of tools and work flow. Flexible controls, fairly specific prompt results, built-in-editing tool (very helpful to have that bundled together). Not a bad price either.

Anywho, once I come up with results good enough for public consumption, I’ll put them up here. And, in the meantime, I have a book to finish. Almost there.

Update: After experimenting with both LTX and Neural Frames, it’s pretty clear that current AI video models only work if you’re able to put excessive time into them and spend large amounts of credits on your projects. Even at a mid-tier subscription plan, you’ll burn through your monthly allotment of credits in a few hours of tinkering. Not worth it at this point. Both of those outfits are at the top of the heap, apparently, but they both leave a lot to desire. For example, if you want to create a video of someone simply driving down the street in a car, you very well might have to hold the AI’s hand in order to convince it that, yes, the driver needs to be seated behind the steering wheel and not just in the passenger seat.

Thus ends my AI video experimenting of early 2026. Perhaps I’ll investigate again in 2027. Depends on the innovation rate, exponential or otherwise.

 

 

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