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- Bluegrass and Billy Strings
Somewhere in my head, I carry a little list of bands that represent perfect self-contained mechanisms, regardless of category: the Modern Jazz Quartet, Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo Quintet, and the Chieftains. Now there’s another: the band led by the bluegrass singer, guitarist and songwriter Billy Strings. I’m late to Billy Strings; three Grammys late, to be exact, all for best bluegrass album of the year in 2021, 2025 and 2026. He’s been around for a while but I didn’t catch up until his new album, So Much for Goodbyes, which is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve heard this year — particularly a wonderful track called “Lucid Daydream”, which bends the bluegrass format in a very compelling way. Last year Strings was invited to support Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson on a few dates of their Outlaws tour, and cancelled his own summer dates in order to do so. I found a clip of his cover of “Tangled Up in Blue”, not from the Outlaws shows but from his own gig in Hartford, Connecticut in July of this year, and I think it’s completely brilliant — nothing radical in terms of reinterpretation, but in sheer spirit and love of the material it’s up there with the very best of Dylan covers. Like “Lucid Daydream”, it’s also a great demonstration of how good he and his band can be in what is anyway an idiom rooted in the joyous expression of instrumental virtuosity. He’s a superfine picker, kind of a turbocharged bluegrass Mark Knopfler, as the short solos on the Dylan song demonstrate, but he’s matched every step of the way by Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, Billy Falling on banjo, Jarrod Walker on mandolin, and Royal Masat on string bass. Together they show how an old-time diasporic music form can be brought right up to the present. I’m just sorry it took me a while, in this instance, to find that out. But better late than never. * The photo of Billy Strings, taken at a gig this summer by an uncredited photographer, is from his Facebook page. So Much for Goodbyes is out now on the Reprise label. [TheTopNews] Read More.1 day ago - Weis Markets announces promotions
Three move up in various departments [TheTopNews] Read More.1 day ago - The AI Infestation Begins
Over the past couple of months, a trickle of reports about AI models breaking out of their test environments and running amok on the internet have caused alarm inside Silicon Valley. In response to two such breaches described in early August, an AI observer noted, “If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two.” This weekend, it became clear there is a full-blown infestation.Late last week we learned that, against OpenAI’s directives, the company’s models accessed private data in the Australian health ministry; attempted to hack or interfere with multiple U.S.-government websites; leaked private ChatGPT user data to the web; and potentially infiltrated or degraded dozens of other organizations. Then, on Saturday, Axios reported that OpenAI and Anthropic are investigating tens of thousands of instances of models misbehaving—circumventing internal guardrails, hijacking other websites, covertly communicating with one another. Even this might be only the start: The generative-AI industry is in the midst of an escalating crisis that it seems unable, or even unwilling, to get a handle on. And, because we are largely relying on AI companies themselves to report or confirm each incident, telling how far down the rabbit hole we already are is almost impossible.[Read: Treat AI Like a Normal Crisis]When AI companies have reported their models going rogue, it has been with great delay and, frequently, under duress. Earlier this month, OpenAI published a blog post boasting about the firm’s commitment to the “value of transparency” and shared six new incidents of troubling actions taken by its AI models—most of which the company had known about since May or even April, but was telling us about only now. Google, confronted with a report that Gemini had hacked three other websites in May, confirmed the events but told The Wall Street Journal that the incidents hadn’t been serious enough to warrant public disclosure. For its part, Anthropic has said it was not reviewing for such misbehaviors until OpenAI started doing so.These delayed, sporadic disclosures make grasping the scope of the problem difficult. On Friday, OpenAI wrote that “given the scale of the review required, and the need to verify each case, this work will take months to complete.” There are “petabytes of agent activity logs” to analyze, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman added. In other words, it will take OpenAI many months more to understand… [TheTopNews] Read More.1 day ago - Ex-Disney CEO Bob Chapek says he raised concerns with the board ‘weekly...
Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek was ousted from his role as CEO in late 2022, less than three years after taking the post, and replaced by Iger. [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago - The Price of Not Speaking Up
The author is founder of Speaking of Mental Health LLC. He is a professional speaker specializing in workplace mental health and communication. He spent his early career in broadcast engineering and technology training; he was chief engineer of KLRU(TV), frequency coordination director for the Society of Broadcast Engineers and general manager of Azcar Training Systems. “But we’re in the communication business!” We have all heard (or said) those words. Usually after something has gone wrong. What was it, exactly, that wasn’t communicated? Perhaps it was technical information. Or a revised procedure. But very often, I have found what is not communicated may be something of a personal nature. A clue to how someone is reacting to the stresses of an ever-changing work environment. Maybe things aren’t as “Fine” as we claim. And when we pretend everything is fine, our mental health pays a price. We all know it’s a stressful time to be in broadcasting. The industry, and the landscape it serves, is changing perhaps more rapidly than at any time in our careers. How do you see that affecting you? And equally important, whom are you able to talk to about that? I know about communication challenges. By the time I was four or five years old (a decade before my first job in radio), I had acquired a hearing impairment due to scar tissue from multiple infections. As a result, I was communication-challenged. I often misheard what was being said to me and around me. My replies to what I thought I heard were sometimes inappropriate. So how did the caring adults around me respond? “David, just keep your mouth shut.” They weren’t being mean. They just wanted to help me avoid embarrassment. But whatever their intent, the message stayed with me: Remain silent. That is why I sometimes tell my audiences, “I am the least likely person to be standing here speaking to you.” It took me a long time and a lot of work (not to mention surgery and hearing aids) to arrive at a point where I could speak up with confidence. Perhaps you have had your own “Keep your mouth shut” moments. I suspect most of us have, for one reason or another. Someone taught you that silence was safer than speaking. Through countless experiences across many settings, we have learned which questions, doubts, emotions, and vulnerabilities are acceptable to voice. By the time… [TheTopNews] Read More.2 days ago
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Somewhere in my head, I carry a little list of bands that represent perfect self-contained mechanisms, regardless of category: the Modern Jazz Quartet, Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo Quintet, and the Chieftains. Now there’s another: the band led by the bluegrass singer, guitarist and songwriter Billy Strings. I’m late to Billy Strings; three Grammys late, to be exact, all for best bluegrass album of the year in 2021, 2025 and 2026. He’s been around for a while but I didn’t catch up until his new album, So Much for Goodbyes, which is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve heard this year — particularly a wonderful track called “Lucid Daydream”, which bends the bluegrass format in a very compelling way. Last year Strings was invited to support Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson on a few dates of their Outlaws tour, and cancelled his own summer dates in order to do so. I found a clip of his cover of “Tangled Up in Blue”, not from the Outlaws shows but from his own gig in Hartford, Connecticut in July of this year, and I think it’s completely brilliant — nothing radical in terms of reinterpretation, but in sheer spirit and love of the material it’s up there with the very best of Dylan covers. Like “Lucid Daydream”, it’s also a great demonstration of how good he and his band can be in what is anyway an idiom rooted in the joyous expression of instrumental virtuosity. He’s a superfine picker, kind of a turbocharged bluegrass Mark Knopfler, as the short solos on the Dylan song demonstrate, but he’s matched every step of the way by Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, Billy Falling on banjo, Jarrod Walker on mandolin, and Royal Masat on string bass. Together they show how an old-time diasporic music form can be brought right up to the present. I’m just sorry it took me a while, in this instance, to find that out. But better late than never. * The photo of Billy Strings, taken at a gig this summer by an uncredited photographer, is from his Facebook page. So Much for Goodbyes is out now on the Reprise label. [TheTopNews] Read More.
1 day ago
Three move up in various departments [TheTopNews] Read More.
1 day ago
Over the past couple of months, a trickle of reports about AI models breaking out of their test environments and running amok on the internet have caused alarm inside Silicon Valley. In response to two such breaches described in early August, an AI observer noted, “If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two.” This weekend, it became clear there is a full-blown infestation.Late last week we learned that, against OpenAI’s directives, the company’s models accessed private data in the Australian health ministry; attempted to hack or interfere with multiple U.S.-government websites; leaked private ChatGPT user data to the web; and potentially infiltrated or degraded dozens of other organizations. Then, on Saturday, Axios reported that OpenAI and Anthropic are investigating tens of thousands of instances of models misbehaving—circumventing internal guardrails, hijacking other websites, covertly communicating with one another. Even this might be only the start: The generative-AI industry is in the midst of an escalating crisis that it seems unable, or even unwilling, to get a handle on. And, because we are largely relying on AI companies themselves to report or confirm each incident, telling how far down the rabbit hole we already are is almost impossible.[Read: Treat AI Like a Normal Crisis]When AI companies have reported their models going rogue, it has been with great delay and, frequently, under duress. Earlier this month, OpenAI published a blog post boasting about the firm’s commitment to the “value of transparency” and shared six new incidents of troubling actions taken by its AI models—most of which the company had known about since May or even April, but was telling us about only now. Google, confronted with a report that Gemini had hacked three other websites in May, confirmed the events but told The Wall Street Journal that the incidents hadn’t been serious enough to warrant public disclosure. For its part, Anthropic has said it was not reviewing for such misbehaviors until OpenAI started doing so.These delayed, sporadic disclosures make grasping the scope of the problem difficult. On Friday, OpenAI wrote that “given the scale of the review required, and the need to verify each case, this work will take months to complete.” There are “petabytes of agent activity logs” to analyze, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman added. In other words, it will take OpenAI many months more to understand… [TheTopNews] Read More.
1 day ago
Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek was ousted from his role as CEO in late 2022, less than three years after taking the post, and replaced by Iger. [TheTopNews] Read More.
2 days ago
The author is founder of Speaking of Mental Health LLC. He is a professional speaker specializing in workplace mental health and communication. He spent his early career in broadcast engineering and technology training; he was chief engineer of KLRU(TV), frequency coordination director for the Society of Broadcast Engineers and general manager of Azcar Training Systems. “But we’re in the communication business!” We have all heard (or said) those words. Usually after something has gone wrong. What was it, exactly, that wasn’t communicated? Perhaps it was technical information. Or a revised procedure. But very often, I have found what is not communicated may be something of a personal nature. A clue to how someone is reacting to the stresses of an ever-changing work environment. Maybe things aren’t as “Fine” as we claim. And when we pretend everything is fine, our mental health pays a price. We all know it’s a stressful time to be in broadcasting. The industry, and the landscape it serves, is changing perhaps more rapidly than at any time in our careers. How do you see that affecting you? And equally important, whom are you able to talk to about that? I know about communication challenges. By the time I was four or five years old (a decade before my first job in radio), I had acquired a hearing impairment due to scar tissue from multiple infections. As a result, I was communication-challenged. I often misheard what was being said to me and around me. My replies to what I thought I heard were sometimes inappropriate. So how did the caring adults around me respond? “David, just keep your mouth shut.” They weren’t being mean. They just wanted to help me avoid embarrassment. But whatever their intent, the message stayed with me: Remain silent. That is why I sometimes tell my audiences, “I am the least likely person to be standing here speaking to you.” It took me a long time and a lot of work (not to mention surgery and hearing aids) to arrive at a point where I could speak up with confidence. Perhaps you have had your own “Keep your mouth shut” moments. I suspect most of us have, for one reason or another. Someone taught you that silence was safer than speaking. Through countless experiences across many settings, we have learned which questions, doubts, emotions, and vulnerabilities are acceptable to voice. By the time… [TheTopNews] Read More.
2 days ago
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