jameswharris

Another Way Amazon Impacts Used Book Buying

by James Wallace Harris, 5/28/24

I was just at my library’s Friends of the Library bookstore, called Second Editions. They sell used books people have donated to the library. It’s probably the second-best used bookstore in Memphis. Today, the place was in a mess. It had just been picked over by an Amazon used bookseller. They had spent over a day scanning every volume in the store that had a barcode and bought nineteen boxes of books.

This is great for Second Editions. The Friends of the Library have two giant, four-day sales every year, and keep a bookstore open in the main library five days a week. Evidently, this still doesn’t put a dent in the donations. The staff today was hauling up cartloads of books to fill in all the empty places on the shelves.

However, I was a little miffed. I went hoping to snag something specific. I often find recent bestsellers in hardback, usually in fine condition for $4 in a dust jacket. I was hoping to snag a copy of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles because we’ve been enjoying the limited series on TV. I’ve often seen it at Second Editions. But not today.

The cheapest used hardcover copy in very good condition at Amazon, with shipping is $10.74. Those guys who sell used books on Amazon should make a good profit if they found a $4 copy at Second Edition. The cheapest good condition hardcover at ABEbooks is $9.16. The cheapest softcover copy is $7.47. Those usually go for $3 at Second Editions.

Amazon used booksellers buy Friends of the Library memberships so they can go to the preview day sales for members. Whenever my friends and I go to those preview sales we see hordes of Amazon resellers with scanners grabbing everything they can as fast as possible. Us bargain shoppers resent that.

However, I do admire their enterprising efforts. The guys who cleaned out Second Editions were in a truck from Texas and were driving around on a mission. If I were younger, and needed money, I would consider doing the same thing. I used to dream of owning a bookstore.

Evidently, most of these resellers rely on scan codes and software to tell them if the book is worth buying. They ignore books before ISBNs. I admire old-style book dealers like Larry McMurtry who knew the books, their history, and values without a computer.

Still, today, I had a decent haul. All books without ISBNs.

Letters From the Earth by Mark Twain. Original hardback, but it has no publication information. Wasn’t listed as a Book Club edition. This copy had a worn dustjacket.
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. Book club edition in dustjacket. Very good condition. Cloth binding.
The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch. Paperback, Berkley Medallion, December 1965. Near fine.
Sex and the High Command by John Boyd. Paperback, Bantam, September 1971.

I could have easily bought all of these online, but for a good deal more than $7.63 I paid for them at Second Editions.

It’s fun to shop at used bookstores. But I depend on serendipity for what I’ll find. When I want something specific right away, online bookstores are the best.

I guess Amazon resellers are good for local used bookstores because they buy a lot of books. And they are good for book buyers who want specific books. Shopping on ABEbooks or Amazon for used books is like instantly searching thousands of used bookstores all at once.

However, it kind of ruins the fun for us bargain hunters who like to shop locally.

JWH

The Best Albums Lists I Wish Apple/Spotify Would Give Us

by James Wallace Harris, 5/27/24

During May, Apple released the Apple Music 100 Best Albums list. This is always a controversial thing to do because few people ever agree on Greatest of All-Time lists. Such lists are fun to study, but hard to make. I wish Apple had given us the exact details of how they curated their list. Let’s just say, if you were born in the 20th century, you’ll probably won’t agree with Apple’s list. But that’s cool. All the streaming services offer lists that reflect current popularity.

I’d like to know more about which older albums are played the most.

Wikipedia offers a quick way to look at Apple’s new list. Over the years I’ve bought 34 of the 100. And through Spotify I’ve heard several others. But there were quite a few that I never heard of the album, or the album/artist.

I continually look for such lists to help me discover new albums to listen to on Spotify. Music streaming services offer a tremendous bargain that few subscribers take full advantage of. I try to listen to as many albums I’ve listened to in hopes of finding new favorite songs for my playlists. And I think that’ the intention of Apple with their 100 Best Albums list.

I wish all music streaming services would offer lists that would help us find older albums. I really don’t care if they are ranked. It only stirs up trouble claiming some albums are better than others. What I would like is a variety of lists that were constantly updated that revealed the attention that older, forgotten music was getting.

Top 100 Albums That Are Played Since 1948

Give us a monthly list based on which albums are played the most. Limit each year since 1948 to no more than two albums. Cut the least played albums from any year so the list adds up to 100 albums.

Sales for vinyl records began in 1948, but it took a few years before they became regular sellers. There have been 74 years since then, so we could have one record from every year, and 26 years could also have the next most played album for that year. The bonus 26 could be determined by which were the most popular.

This would encourage subscribers to try out old music. As they explore new albums each month, the list should change. Over time, the solid favorites will be revealed.

Top 10 Albums by Year That are Played the Most

Then for every year, offer a monthly update for which ten albums were played the most. This will help subscribers find albums by year to listen to. Over time, it will reveal which albums from every year are the most popular.

Right now, the website Best Ever Albums does this the best. They aggregate lists to reveal the rankings. But I’d love to see streaming services reveal their statistics by what’s being played every month. Here’s an example for 1965.

Top 100 Albums by Genre That are Played the Most that are Over 1 Year Old

Keep statistics on each genre of music and list the albums that are currently played the most but exclude recent albums. There are plenty of charts for current hits.

Streaming services tend to promote listening to hits. But if you’re a real music lover, you want to listen to whole albums. If each streaming service offered these lists they would promote album listening, and album history.

There are sites that give more statistics on streaming, such as Chartmasters.org, but they focus on current music and popularity. What I want to learn about is old albums. I imagine that lots of great old albums are mostly forgotten and get very few plays. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worth discovering.

Wikipedia offers List of Spotify Streaming Records which charts the songs that have been played the most on Spotify. It statistically breaks down the most played songs in numerous ways. It’s great for understanding what is popular now. Of the 100 most played songs on Spotify, only “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, “Every Breath You Take” by the Police, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, “Wonderwall” by Oasis, and “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen are from the 20th century.

JWH

Why Do My Cats Ignore Loud Music?

by James Wallace Harris, 5/20/24

My cats usually freak out over sounds. If the yard guys come and start mowing outside, they run and hide. If they hear a tiny noise, they will run around until they find it. But if I play my loud rock music, they don’t even wake up.

I worry my music will hurt their ears. At times, I’ve thrown them out of the room and shut the door to protect them, but then they beg to get in. They are very insistent, scratching furiously at the door until I open it. They want to sleep on me while I listen to rock music at 85 decibels.

I just read this report, and it says 120 decibels will damage their ears, and long exposures at 95 decibels will cause harm. I’ve read that I can safely listen to loud music at 85 decibels for eight hours, and at 88 decibels for four hours, and 91 decibels for 2 hours. Well, I listen one to two hours a day, and try to keep it under 85 decibels, although it sometimes peaks at 90. (I have an app on my phone that measures loudness.)

I guess we’re okay. But why do the cats just completely ignore my music? It doesn’t even faze them. Even when I first turn it on, or when a new song plays. They never jump or startle at the stereo.

How do your cats react to music?

Maybe my cats are like me. Music puts me into a meditative state, even kinetic rock music. So, we all rock-out to the tunes for an hour with our eyes closed.

If you’re curious what kind of music we listen to, here’s my standard playlist.

That’s Ozzy above and Lily below.

By the way, Ozzy and Lily don’t seem to have any musical preferences.

JWH

Science Blasts Past Science Fiction

by James Wallace Harris, May 14, 2024

Since the 1960s I’ve fantasized about writing a science fiction novel. Since the 1990s, I’ve fantasized about writing a science fiction novel about artificial intelligence. The likelihood of me ever writing this novel is nil, but I still imagine and refine it in my head. The trouble is, artificial intelligence has gotten real, making writing a novel about AI more difficult.

Yesterday OpenAI announced ChatGPT 4o. (That’s a little o – pronounced four oh.) If you haven’t seen any of the news stories or demoes, watch this video.

I first encountered the concept of artificial intelligent back in 1967 when I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. That novel featured a sentient mainframe computer named Mike. He was my favorite character. Heinlein didn’t use the term AI. I wouldn’t encounter it for a few more years when I went to a two-year technical school to study computers. Along the way I read two other books that featured a sentient computer, When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One (1972) by David Gerrold and Galatea 2.2 (1995) by Richard Powers. There were plenty of other novels and movies about intelligent computers, but these three were my favorites.

In other words, I’ve been waiting a long time for science to catch up with science fiction. It’s funny though, when reality finally caught up and surpassed fiction, it’s been kind of anticlimactic. Most AI science fiction today has more in common with 1960s science fiction than it does with 2020s computer science. I’m currently reading a 1983 story by Poul Anderson, “Vulcan’s Forge” that has a sentient computer, but not much different from Mike in Heinlein’s 1967 story, or the female AI in the 2013 film Her. It seems now that science fiction writers never pushed their imaginations enough.

ChatGPT 4o is way cooler than anything I’ve ever encountered in science fiction. For one thing, I’ve always assumed an AI computer would talk like a person, capable of holding only one conversation at a time. Real AIs now converse like real people, but with thousands, if not millions of people at once. Never imagined that. And ChatGPT 4o sounds like a real person. I’ve always assumed they would sound like a computer.

I also thought intelligent AIs would have to be sentient beings. Evidently, massive amounts of intelligence can still be unaware even while coming across like people. We’ve always assumed that the growth of intelligence paralleled the growth of consciousness. That might not be true. Of course, there are philosophers who claim that consciousness is an illusion. Maybe they were right. But where does that leave us?

Computer scientists are quick to point out that ChatGPT 4o isn’t real AGI (artificial general intelligence). Critics constantly point to the factual mistakes that even the best of current AIs make. The old Turing Test concept only required a human not to be able to tell the difference between a machine and human when communicating through a teletype. Humans make factual mistakes all the time. Both presidential candidates frequently misspeak, but we don’t accuse them of hallucinating. That’s the term computer scientists use when AIs make up shit. If we applied the same term to humans, humans hallucinate their asses off. I’m not sure the average person can tell the difference between a computer and a person anymore in a Turing test. And neither can we tell the difference between AI and AGI.

For many measurable areas of information, current AIs are far smarter than humans, and are getting smarter all the time. They may not be perfect at any single discipline, but they are far better than average at most subjects they are tested on. When computer scientists talk of AGI, I get the feeling they are expecting the machines to know absolutely all about everything. Haven’t they up the ante to AO (artificial omniscience)?

Here’s the thing. I always thought the world would go nuts when AI singularity happened. And it may have happened or may not. But that’s my point. I think it has happened and we’re just not smart enough to recognize it — yet.

People are embracing artificial intelligence in the same way they embraced smartphones and the internet. They just incorporate recent technology in whatever way they find useful or advantageous. They don’t philosophize about it. They might bitch they’re losing their jobs, but not because AI is a science fiction sense of wonder come true.

Why did talking computers evoke a sense of wonder in science fiction, but not in real life? How come I haven’t seen one person’s mind blown? Not even a, “Dang! I’m talking to a dang computer!” Instead, people are whining about AIs making math mistakes or getting dates wrong. Every human I know does that, so why not cut the machines some slack?

Why isn’t the current state of AI development a boom time for philosophers and science fiction writers? People treat ChatGPT 4o like an iPhone 15, just enother gadget. The only speculation seems to be when will we get ChatGPT 5 or the iPhone 16?

JWH

The Agony and Ecstasy of Working in the Yard

by James Wallace Harris, 4/25/24

My backyard is an example of entropy in action. Working in my yard is a never-ending battle between chaos and order. If I had my wish, I’d move to a retirement condominium so I wouldn’t have to worry about a yard, or any kind of house maintenance. However, with rising HOA fees, and private equity takeovers, that wish could turn bad, and we’d be homeless. I see our paid for house as our last bastion of security, so I want to hang onto this home as long as possible.

Regarding yardwork, I must choose between two options. Either I pay someone to do it, or I do it myself. I’m not keen on either option. I’ve known lots of folks who got into gardening as they got older, and they found enjoyment and exercise in the pursuit. Right now, I strongly dislike working in my yard. I wonder if I can change my spots. Since I find hiring people frustrating, I’m agonizing over choosing between two things I don’t want to do.

My front yard is mostly weeds and dirt. My friend Annie told me how she was seeding her lawn with mini clover and told me about all its advantages. So, I ordered a couple pounds of mini clover seeds from Amazon. It’s been fun seeing it come up, that is until the lawn guys mowed the lawn for the first time this year. I had texted them to raise the cutting height to three inches. They didn’t. My front lawn was sheared so close to the ground that nearly everything green is gone. That annoyed the crap out of me. Like they say, if you want something done….

The mini clover can be trained to grow just 3-4 inches high, so after a few mowings it will require no more mowing. If I really want that to happen, I need to buy a mower and mow the lawn myself. Unfortunately, I don’t have any place to keep a mower. So, I’d also need to buy a storage shed. And if I fire my yard guys, I’d also need to buy a blower, trimmer, and chainsaw. And if I got into landscaping, like I need to do, I’d also need to buy a wheelbarrow and other gardening tools. This is getting expensive and a commitment.

My friend Leigh Ann hired a yard planner. He produced a 24-page document advising her on how to beautifully landscape her yard. I’m thinking about hiring him too, but I want him to advise me to create a simple easy-to-maintain lawn. I don’t want a beautiful, landscaped yard, but a yard the neighbors won’t feel embarrassed to see in the neighborhood.

Our house used to be Susan’s parents’ house. We bought it after they died. They loved working in the yard, and it was nicely landscaped. We’ve neglected the yard for thirteen years, and the landscaping has gone wild. I want a new landscape design that’s easy to maintain.

I rationalize letting it go wild was good for the environment. Birds, insects, and little creatures love it. We even have a possum living out back. However, twice now the utility company has had to hire a crew to cut a path to the power pole during power outages. They don’t tell us to keep our yard clean, but they do give us dirty looks and act mighty unfriendly.

One reason I don’t work in the yard is I have spinal stenosis, and I can only do a limited amount of physical work before I’m in a lot of pain. But I do believe I could put in twenty minutes a day. Susan absolutely refuses to work in the yard.

I theorize I might eventually conquer the yard by working twenty minutes a day and it might even be good for me. Hell, it could even turn into a hobby I enjoy. That seems to happen with a lot of older folks I know. On the other hand, I might invest thousands of dollars and want to give up in a month.

I really would like to make the mini clover work in the front yard. I’ve kind of enjoyed working with it. I go out twice a day to see how it’s doing. It does take a lot of watering, but if I can get it established, the mini clover is supposed to fix nitrogen in the soil and be minimal in maintenance. That would give me a sense of accomplishment if I pulled it off.

Reversing the entropy in the backyard will be a full-scale battle. I’ll need some dangerous power tools to conquer the reemerging forest. I’ll feel bad about killing all those wild bushes and baby trees, especially if they’re sanctuary to wildlife. However, if I want a yard that’s a yard, I will have to do that.

I’m just not sure what to do. I’ve been trying to get away from all my screens and do something real, and yard work is very real. I just don’t know if I can handle it, either physically or mentally. My friend Janis’ father still works in the yard, and he just turned ninety-nine. I wonder if his longevity and vitality come from yard work.

JWH