Five Things on a Friday: Pics with My Love

Busy week, friends. 

Sally and I had a really great weekend last week, to the point that letting it go this past Monday felt actively difficult. We managed, obviously, but this week quickly became long and perhaps a bit more challenging than was strictly necessary, even if it's been no worse than normal on anything like an objective basis. Nothing has gone wrong this week, and we're both doing well enough if not a little better than that. But we've also both been looking quite forward to this weekend since very early this past Monday morning, and that's a tough way to spend five long days.

Oh, by the way, happy Halloween. 

I can't say that I'm super into it, but both my kids are going out tomorrow, even Hannah down in Paraguay. That's good. They both work really hard and deserve to have some fun.

1. Pics with My Love

We celebrated Sally's birthday last Sunday with a hike and dinner at a French bistro out in Eastern Connecticut. I've shared a few of the pics this week both here and on Instagram, but here are a few more... just because.

Like I said, it was hard to let this go this past Monday. Even now, as I'm headed into the office on a fine-looking Friday morning, I'm still a little hung up on how well this day went.

While we're talking about pics here, I'd like to note that Blogger's most annoying feature is its lack of a gallery function. So there's no easy way to share a bunch of pictures with you. This is the best we can do.

I've long needed to move this blog to a WordPress site for exactly these kinds of reasons. I mention it because I want you to know that I know I need to do it. It's just a pain in the ass -- and also not free the way Blogger is.

2. New Story Idea: The Singlestick

In our story, The Singlestick is an upscale backroom lounge located right at the border of the Bowery, Little Italy, and Chinatown. It sits hidden beneath The Brass Lantern, a gritty, working-class Bowery gin joint.

I thought of a new story idea a couple of months ago and then finally spent some time earlier this week outlining it, so it wouldn't get lost. If you're interested, I posted about the concept yesterday before reluctantly deciding that I needed to do some serious period research before tackling the actual draft.

It's probably for the best. I'm already in the middle of the third Necropolis book and really should finish that first. But, y'know, "Oooh, shiny!" is a thing. And I really like this idea, for whatever that's worth.

3. Faith (Live in Paris, 1988)

I haven't even heard this yet, but just the fact that it exists feels like a miracle.

4. I Used AI to Fake a Scientific Paper. Here’s What Happened (IEEE)

Borrowing from the idea of “vibe coding,” in which programmers use natural-language prompts to generate code, I decided to “vibe-research” a made-up paper by prompting LLMs to generate hypotheses, code, and text with minimal human input. Then I asked Jenny Mahoney, managing editor of the multidisciplinary and open-access journal IEEE Access, if we could war-game an attempt to sneak my AI-generated monstrosity past her journal’s defenses. She and IEEE kindly agreed.

The experiment would become a two-part test. First, whether someone with no special AI expertise could use off-the-shelf AI tools to generate a convincing paper describing research that had never been performed, and do it well enough to fool a publisher’s defenses. Then I would raise the stakes: What happens when more advanced AI systems don’t just write the paper but conduct underlying research?

I'm sharing this because his experiment, conducted with the approval of IEEE's editorial staff, failed spectacularly. The editorial board caught both of his AI-generated efforts -- easily -- because of their hallucinated references and nonsense mathematics. 

So who knows? Maybe there's hope for us yet.

If you're curious about the way AI works, is evolving, and remains limited in scope, this is a pretty good piece. For context, IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. I've published there on the subject of electric reliability in bulk power operations, and I read their stuff a decent amount, too.

5. Marvel Studios Unveils Phase 7's First 8 Movies & Disney+ Shows for the Mutant Saga (The Direct)

Marvel Studios is in the final stages of Phase 6 and the Multiverse Saga, with Avengers: Doomsday coming in December and Secret Wars wrapping up the 7-year-long saga in December 2027. After that, the MCU will launch its next three-phase saga in 2028, as Phase 7 kicks off what is widely rumored and theorized to be the Mutant Saga, finally bringing the X-Men and other X-gene-infused heroes and villains to Earth-616.

Bottom line, they've got the X-Men starting again on May 5, 2028, and friends, that feels like a very long time from now. I mean, I realize that it takes a long time to make a modern blockbuster, and that's fine. However, I also think a lot of this remains speculative, no matter how confidently they're talking about it right now, because they don't yet know how well the next (last?) two Avengers films will perform. 

If either of those movies flop, I'd imagine all bets are off.

Moondragon's costume is not screen-ready.

A guy on Bluesky the other day asked who the highest profile character is that we've not seen adapted in any form in the MCU. I replied that it was either Spider-Woman or the Black Cat, but those didn't count in his mind because the rights to those characters are tied up at Sony. From there, we decided that it was either Moonstone or Moondragon, and friends, those are two super deep cuts.

All of which tells me that they could maybe afford to turn this thing off for a minute and maybe work on something else. Unfortunately, though, no one thinks like that in the world of big business or finance.

I love comics, but if I was running these companies, I'd be using the actual comics themselves as loss leaders to try crazy fucking ideas that could maybe become more if they catch on. Instead, it feels like everyone at every level is just trying to make the most money possible right now with the predictable result that truly long-term thinking isn't much of a thing. And so here we are, recycling the same ideas endlessly.

Sigh. I mean, sure, there is a LOT of X-Men source material that no one has tried yet in live action. However, diving into, like, years worth of that stuff would be much easier to do in a TV show. Note, we're getting that right now in the X-Men '97 continuation. In live action, the costs are prohibitive, and anyway, why is live action better than animation?

I don't know. I mean, if I'm not the target audience for this, then who is? But even with that in mind, I don't understand why people freak out about live action adaptations when the original issues are right there. And anyway, animation almost always looks good.

What can you do?

* * *

The Black Knights have a monster game tomorrow night down in Memphis, and all I've been thinking about all week is sitting out on our back deck and watching that thing with my beautiful wife. 

Suburban marriage gets an unrelentingly bad rap in popular culture, and it has since the dawn of modern publishing. But I actually really love my wife, and I'm looking forward to spending some time with her this weekend. If that's not you, then I'm sorry, but it's still true for some of us. 

Sometimes, I think the key to real happiness is to not let the world's cynicism get too close to your heart.

Happy Friday, friends.