Category Archives: Other Vistas

A Voice From the Past

… I know I feel differently in the morning, after seeing the pictures and reading the stories of lives arbitrarily snuffed out and people who had little reduced to people who have nothing at all. But tonight I’m going to bed in a vicious mood, with a stomach so full of contempt for this poisoned republic and its brain-dead citizens that I can taste it in my mouth, like bile.

And the only thing I can think to ask God—if she does exists—is why, just for once, can’t you smite the wicked instead of the innocent?

Posted by billmon at 01:09 AM

(Billmon’s full post can now be found on the Internet Wayback Machine at  https://web.archive.org/web/20051001001007/http://billmon.org/)

This 24 September 2005 post was made during the height (or depths) of the Iraq War during the Bush-Cheney regime.  Also recall the other Bush debacle, Hurricane Katrina, was just the month before, August 23–31, 2005.  We thought we were in the depths of depravity and had no inkling that we were only at the higher rings of hell.

Voice Stealing

This essay is slightly tangential to my usual fare, but it is prompted by a most amazing video that convinced me that the impact of AI this time is not hype, but rather a real threat to our society.  I found the video at 3 Quarks Daily and it was of Johnny Cash singing a song called “Barbie Girl” to the tune of his trademark Folsom Prison Blues—only it wasn’t the late Johnny Cash (1932–2003), it was AI!

See Voice Stealing

(Update 11/2/2023)  I was wondering why the seeming lack of interest in this post, and then I tried the link to the video and found it has been removed from the public.  There must be a reason, probably copyright issues somewhere, so even though I got a copy when it was public, I don’t think I should post it.  This is really too bad, since it is in incredible example of what may be our dystopian future.  I just rooted around and found another link that seems to be working.  I have updated the text above.

(Update 5/4/2024)  It gets worse.  The Atlantic article “My Journey Inside the Voice-Clone Factory” shows what happens when voice-cloning is combined with image-cloning and OpenAI language models.  It is a dystopian nightmare beyond imagining.