juliebata

Arthur was an old friend of mine, in both senses of the word. I'd known him through apas from 1978, and we met in person a couple years after that. But he was also older than most of his cohort in fandom, having entered with a splash with his first personalzine in the spring of 1977, when he was 34, an unusual age when most neofans were in their teens or early 20s. He died a couple days ago at 83, after long illnesses.

Living at first in Westchester County, New York, and then moving to Durham, N.C., to attend library school, he was geographically far removed from most of the members of the apas I knew him in. When one of the apas ran a photo-cover, Arthur submitted a picture taken in a photo booth which made him look like a gnome tucked in a corner. I attended the collation, and as members perused the completed mailing with its key to the cover photos, I heard occasional cries of "That's Arthur?"

Without physical presence, it was the quality of his writing that made him a valued member of both our apas and fanzine fandom in general. He wrote long and thoughtful essays, many informed by his reading of Thomas Pynchon, Ayn Rand, H.P. Lovecraft, and above all the Illuminatus! trilogy of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, all of which he took as very interesting and provocative, but none of which he viewed without a skeptical eye. Arthur was also a great quipster, leaving fanzines littered with witty and insightful bon mots. Someone sent him as a joke some volumes of treacly moral tales for children called Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories, and our Arthur used that as a fanzine title for a while.

He was full of wit and bon mots in person, also, in a light textured voice with a trace of New York accent, when I finally met him at a convention. Without the gnome extension, he looked like this - a little later on, after his dark hair and beard turned white. Earlier than that, in 1983, I actually ventured down to Durham to visit Arthur at home. By this time he had acquired a permanent romantic partner, an English lit grad student named Bernadette Bosky, whom Arthur had first met in the pages of a Lovecraft-oriented apa. She seemed so perfectly matched for Arthur's distinctive character that some of those reading about her from far away doubted that she could possibly be real, and one of my goals in traveling to Durham was to be one of the first outside fans to meet her and confirm her corporeal existence.

Later, after my visit, Arthur and Bernadette were joined by Kevin Maroney as a third for their romantic triad. I'm not the only observer who's frequently pointed at them as proof that such a relationship can be stable and permanent. Then they moved back up to Westchester, whence Arthur had originally come, and settled in a house in Yonkers they called Valentine's Castle (Valentine was the name of the street). Here they became much more personally active in fandom, going to conventions especially the ICFA in Florida. I never got to that, but I do cherish having introduced my own B. to all three of them at Nolacon in 1988. Meanwhile, they had founded their own apa and held private conventions for its members; and many people came to see them at home, including me. I think I stayed over twice, and I met their pet rats, which were actually quite cute and had rat-pun names.

I got to know both Bernadette and Kevin as individuals, but Arthur was always there, though receding in the background a little as age-related illnesses began to take over. I'm sorry that physical problems of my own prevented my attendance at a big party they held a couple years ago. And now Arthur is gone, but at least we still have vivid memories of him, and his fanzines to read.

I've been to a number of concerts by this nonpro string ensemble, conducted by Kristin Turner Link, and today was another one. They did a very nice job with Corelli's Christmas Concerto, and acceptably with Grieg's Holberg Suite. The other major work on the program was a tonal but astringent suite by a turn-of-the-20th composer named Mieczysław Karłowicz. The program said it was his Serenade No. 2, but I think they meant his Serenade, Op. 2.

As for the music, the low-frequency kick of the bass - amplified by the subterranean setting, contained within SoFi's steep sides, and ricocheting off the E.T.F.E. roof - was crushingly loud. It penetrated to the bone. A friend who'd joined me ... retreated from the volume and sat in a chair next to the congealing remains of a spread of wings and sliders, her head in her hands. I sought refuge in the suite's private bathroom.

- John Seabrook, The New Yorker, 12/8/25

And this was a Beyoncé concert. Beyoncé. Not a heavy metal band or anything like it, the sort of thing I wouldn't listen to regardless of the volume.

I would not have sat with my head in my hands or sought refuge in a bathroom. The moment this assault on the sense of hearing began, I would have stood up and walked right out of the stadium. Then, if possible, I would have gotten in my car and driven home.

The one time I actually heard a performer in an arena was back in the '90s when B. was working for AMD and they were riding high, so Jerry Sanders rented the local hockey arena for a big corporate party and put Faith Hill in it. The sound wasn't as bad as the above description, and the music as such was not at all objectionable, but I lasted about two minutes.

Reading a news digest gives me my only glimpses into worlds like those of National Review, a contributor to which complained, "The U.S. has some of the greatest and most interesting cities in the world - New York, Chicago, San Francisco - and, over the last five or so years, almost all of them have become unpleasant to walk around in thanks to the ubiquitous smell of weed. Truly, it is everywhere - including, most distressingly, wafting through open-air restaurants and sidewalk cafes."

Really? In my college years, I hung around with people who smoked marijuana, though I never partook directly of it myself, so I know what it smells like. And I haven't encountered it lately in San Francisco, which I visit frequently.

The writer finds the smell of marijuana to be noxious, and I won't dispute someone else's personal tastes, but for me the smell is not particularly objectionable, in fact pleasantness itself next to the truly toxic, hellfireish stench of tobacco. Which used to be everywhere and completely inescapable. But, thanks to cultural change and anti-smoking laws, I haven't had to smell any, certainly not more than momentarily, for about 20 years. And I could go much longer than that.

The Guardian has a long story about the development of artificial intelligence - and since much of it is going on in Silicon Valley and that's where the author did his research, it's full of Silicon Valley local color, focusing on the CalTrain line that many take to commute to work - I've commuted on it myself in time past.

But don't take it too much on trust: it's not "a short walk" to the Stanford campus from the Palo Alto station. Try to walk to the center of Stanford, where the work is going on, from the train station and you're in for a big surprise as you tromp for over a mile along the path paralleling a road running straight along a line of palm trees through a grove of oak and eucalyptus, the garish front of Stanford's Memorial Church growing faintly larger in the distance as you walk. You're on the Stanford campus, yes, but you're not there yet. This is why the university operates a shuttle bus line from the train station.

One thing the article doesn't mention is that the 101 freeway between Silicon Valley and San Francisco, another major commuter route, if one less drawing to a reporter from the UK where people are more likely to take the train, is littered with billboards with cryptic messages from AI companies. And almost every single one of those billboards is printed in sans-serif type. As a result of which, the initials "AI" look as if they say "Al" as in Al Gore or Al Haig.

This is annoying. I've started pronouncing it that way in protest. Whenever I see it without periods ("A.I.", which nobody uses) and without serifs, I'm saying "Al," the personal name.

2. Oh ghu, is this ever true.

3. Bruce Schneier, computer security expert, reports on a movement to ban VPNs. He doesn't tell you what a VPN is. If you Google VPN, the first entries and the Al responses don't tell you what a VPN is either. Eventually there are articles that do say what it stands for, but the explanations are aimed at people who already know what it means.