The Wind

Won Gold for "Best Writing" www.signalaward.com/winners/#202...

A contribution from Basque immigrants, 'Picon Punch' is having a big year in Nevada The Picon Punch, a strong cocktail brought to Nevada by Basque immigrants, is having a big year. It just became the state's official drink, and a Nevada distiller is now making its main ingredient.

Had a piece on All Things Considered yesterday! All about Nevada's official state drink (as of June), the Picon Punch. @npr.org

Well One Battle After Another was as good as everyone says, if not better

what's the pact?

Anyway not a particularly unique experience but it was my first interaction with AI as a bafflingly bad search tool with no basis in reality. I imagine many people would have seen chat gpt’s claim that the quotes were verified and called it a day, which is concerning.

Since I was desperate at this point, I tried it out and it said every quote I used was correct, accurate and completely attributable to the source. But not a single one offered a verifiable primary source. They all just pointed to other quote sites, which pointed to eachother.

I found a quote verification page run by humans but the quotes I used didn’t appear, so I searched for a “quote verification tool” at which point chat gpt came up.

Google ai kept popping up and confirming quotes were “accurate and correct” but the sources were garbage sites that were definitely unreliable

first I used Google to search, but every quote was filtered through a million other seo articles and quote pages so I couldn’t find a single page that could confirm some of the quotes (just a million reposts of it)

Anyway, they provide assignments and a recent article assignment had me include a few “famous quotes” about the topic. The assignment said to make sure the quotes are accurate and attributable.

Obviously not glamorous or particularly useful work but it pays well and lets me make art.

On the insane inaccuracy of AI and a new realization of information dystopia…

In addition to the show, I pick up freelance work to pay the billz. Most of it is audio editing, mixing, engineering, etc.. but one gig is writing SEO articles for a big brand company.

This episode gets into pre-colonial understandings of gender, lithium mining, the completely true fact that 80% of cowboys are bisexual, and more.

A triangular prism shaped wooden box stands upright in a freaky ass tunnel. The wooden object is an aeolian harp, aka wind harp, which sings in the wind. Single string runs length wise over 3 sound holes.

Also, the episode features scoring by two Aeolian Harps. This one was built specifically to provide drones for this episode. Hope you dig it.

Those Who Feast with the Mountain Lion — The Wind The story of a lithium mine in remote northern Nevada, and the two-spirit Paiute elder who fought to stop it.

thewind.org/episodes/tho...

One of those protestors was a two-spirit Paiute elder of from nearby Pyramid Lake. Dean Barlese went out to camp a few times, and this is the story of why he was there and what happened next.

While the lawsuits worked their way through the courts, the protestors stood in the newly cut mine road.

In early 2021, the federal government approved a new Lithium Mine in northern Nevada. Almost immediately, a protest camp went up in the sagebrush about 65 miles north of Winnemucca, the nearest sizable town.

Hey y'all, I've been directing a new youtube show called Giant Leap, shot in Taylor Wilson's nuclear lab. If that sounds like your thing, check it out!

sadly, they later remodeled.

the diner was "farm house" themed, so it had all these cheesey old timey down-home posters and I often think of the one that said "Barley and Groats! For nursing women and invalids."

When I was a kid in rural Nevada there was a 24-hr diner in the local casino. After punk shows in high school (or just any night) we'd go there and drink coffee and eat hash browns in the smoking section (still legal in NV as of mid 2000s)

[Chicken cowboy billboard wreck, B-80, Elko, Nevada. 1991]

www.loc.gov/pictures/ite...

Hear the full episode here: thewind.org/episodes/the...

"You have to have your community who are all working together with true spirits to make this magical spark happen. …But I truly believe they, they emerge through moments of human communities trying to make sense of the world through which they're moving.""

"You gotta be pure, you have to have the right intentions. You have to have your tools. You have to have your space. You have to have your sound. You have to have your movement."

Chris Smith: "Although it is a myth that some of those blues guys attached to themselves or that some other blues guys attached to people like Robert, It recognizes that creativity is a mysterious thing.…you have to create the circumstances that permit the God to come or that the creativity to come.

Isaiah "ike" Zimmerman - gravestone with a guitar on it, teacher of Robert Johnson buried in Compton, CA

Robert Johnson learned guitar not from the devil, but from Ike Zimmerman.