Your Fear will set you Free

The chatGPT thing that you’re starting to hear about is at least as important to the future of humanity as the internet was in 1995.    If I was to describe it in one sentence, it has an uncanny ability to synthesize all of human knowledge with very accurate insights. (As long as you don’t behave in “unethical!”  ways)

My request: 

Rewrite the lyrics for “16 Tons” as if sung by an unemployed political science PhD demanding the government forgive his student loans:

The result:

I was born one morning, it was drizzling rain
Raised in a college town, never knew no pain
But I got my degree, and I thought I was free
Until the student loans came and they shackled me

You load 16 tons of debt on my back
And what do you get? A broke intellectual hack
St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Sallie Mae, don’t you know

I studied politics, theories and stats
I thought I’d change the world, I’d have a few pats
On the back for the research I’d do
But now I’m just a bum with a PhD, it’s true

You load 16 tons of debt on my back
And what do you get? A broke intellectual hack
St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Sallie Mae, don’t you know

I wrote my dissertation, defended with pride
But the job market’s tough, and I’m dead inside
I teach adjunct classes, no benefits or pay
But the loans keep coming, they won’t go away

You load 16 tons of debt on my back
And what do you get? A broke intellectual hack
St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Sallie Mae, don’t you know

So here’s my demand, to the powers that be
Forgive my loans, set my intellect free
I’ll still teach and write, contribute my part
But I can’t do it broke, with this weight on my heart

You load 16 tons of debt on my back
And what do you get? A broke intellectual hack
St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to Sallie Mae, don’t you know

Bravo!

If you don’t like that version, you can click regenerate and keep making one until you do like it

Some people say a man’s made out of muscle and bone
But this PhD’s made out of debt and loans
My education cost me a mountain of cash
But now I’m unemployed and my dreams are smashed

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
I owe my soul to the government loans
And my degree’s worth less than a pile of stones

I went to college with the promise of a bright future
But now I’m stuck with a bill I can’t nurture
I studied hard and earned my degree
But now I’m broke and can’t even afford tea

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
I owe my soul to the government loans
And my degree’s worth less than a pile of stones

I’m not asking for a handout or a free ride
I just want a chance to get my life back in stride
Forgiving my loans would give me a fresh start
And help me rebuild my broken heart

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
I owe my soul to the government loans
And my degree’s worth less than a pile of stones

So please, Congress, hear my plea
Don’t let me drown in this debt sea
Forgive my loans and set me free
And I promise to pay it forward for eternity.

My instructions to ChatGPT

Write a 90 second script about people working in a radio station during a hurricane

The result (after picking appropriate? free video)

I grew up in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.  The Pittsburgh Railway company was owned by Andrew Carnegie’s empire.   An important aspect of the streetcar system was that it allowed the workers to get to his steel factories.

This map was for sale at what originally was called the Arden trolley museum.   It went from being a non-profit organization to a museum operated by the state of Pennsylvania.  I scanned this a very long time ago, and then created a KML file for Google Earth that showed all of the routes and to the extent possible where they ran.

It’s been many months since I’ve looked at the data the software downloads from the FCC each night. As long as this website has existed, which is almost 20 years, the FCC has maintained a list of radio stations that have officially applied for and received silent status.

Normally, if you believe your radio station is going to be off the air for more than 30 days, you need to notify the FCC within 10 days and get permission, in theory.  You have to state a reason why you’re not fulfilling your obligations as a radio station’s license holder. It used to be that it had to be something that was beyond the control of the licensee, like a hurricane, tornado, a truck accidentally toppled your tower, your building burned down, etc.

During the Obama years, the FCC relaxed these rules very much and would accept reasons like we have no money, all our employees quit, the owner died, we don’t have any source of programming, we can’t get spare parts for our ancient transmitter.   I noticed the pattern that they’re especially lax on stations with minority owners or women owners, as the FCC and Democratic politicians have been trying to solidify the notion that everyone is equally capable of running a radio station.

If a station fails to resume broadcasting in one year, they automatically forfeit the license, unless there’s some really extenuating circumstances.  A few examples of that are that the license is tied up in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy judges are the most powerful people in the federal government and can override other government agencies.  Sometimes the licenses get tied up in probate Court when an owner dies.

Lots of games are played with this rule, especially as it relates to newly issued licenses. Despite the efforts of the FCC, people get awarded licenses who have absolutely no intention of ever actually building and operating a radio station.  They get the licenses on the hope that they will be able to resell the license at a profit.

When you’re awarded a new license, you have three years to build the station and begin operations.   People have been known to take a portable 10 watt transmitter in the back of a pickup truck, go to the theoretical Tower location, turn it on for 10 minutes, and then declare that the station has been on the air, then immediately request permission for the station to be silent.  People might transfer the license to their wife, with the idea that now it would be a woman owned station, that would reset the clock. A federal judge shut down that way of beating the system sometime after 2008.

The FCC has stored its information related to radio and TV station licenses in a thing called the CBDS database.  This reflects the organization of the FCC, where the licensing of broadcast stations was one of the very earliest activities when all the information was maintained on index cards and filing cabinets.  Prior to the creation of the FCC in 1934, licensing was handled by the Commerce Department in the federal radio administration (FRA).

But the FCC has gained a lot of responsibilities over the years. In addition to broadcast stations, the FCC licenses amateur radio operators, CB radio operators (no longer), business communications, paging services, state and local government radios, airport radios, train communications (like PTC), cell phone towers, microwave relay towers, satellites, etc.

Over the years, there have been multiple efforts within the FCC and their beltway consultants to create the Nirvana of a single Central database of all licenses, which is total nonsense. While an AM radio station has data related to the power of its transmitters being reduced at sunset, that has nothing to do with the height of a TV station transmitter or the specific frequencies used by a cell phone tower.

Starting several years ago, the most recent attempt is called LMS (License Management System).  I wrote at the time that this conversion would doom this website because streaming radio guide was built around the cdbs database extract each night.  That update has not stopped, which is sending a huge signal that the FCC decided they can’t turn off their old database because it does so many things that the LMS does not understand.

So now to the point! The FCC has maintained a list of officially approved silent radio stations.   I used to pull that data down about once a month to find out what radio stations had asked for silent permission, and those that had been silent which had returned to the air. The FCC had a 2-month delay before a station would appear even appear on the list.  Most legitimate silent stations try quickly to return to the air and never appear on the list.

So here is the caution you now see when you visit the list:

Greetings!

The handful of people who have been here for a long time may remember that I left this website up primarily as a way to keep in touch in the event that society fell apart.

Well, unfortunately, it looks like my instincts were correct. We are on the verge of World war 3 with a president who can’t string a sentence together as our leader. We’re still dealing with the damage caused by the shutdown of our society by the government with covid as the excuse this time.

Monkeypox!  Monkeypox!

Some of you will remember that I met my wife from this website. I don’t regret doing it, but the marriage did not work out.  After about 2 years, there were too many problems to believe that it could be fixed, so I decided to end the marriage.

I used to joke about people from New Jersey who moved to Charlotte North Carolina with the idea that they were going to fix it and make it more like New Jersey. That’s a fairly good summary of the problems we had. She has returned back “home” to  New Jersey.

We sold my condo in Charlotte North Carolina, and I moved to Greensboro North Carolina, which is about a hundred miles up I-85 toward the Northeast. The cost of living here is much less, and a lot fewer people have moved here from somewhere else.  Greensboro is much smaller than Charlotte, and the people are infinitely more pleasant.

Basically, I spent the next two years in isolation waiting for the covid thing to sort out, and taking vitamin D3 to deal with the fact that I was getting no sun.

I got vaccinated using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in May 2021, which I wrote about previously.   To the best of my knowledge, I have not been infected with covid. My brother caught covid over in Spain, and my former wife caught it up in New Jersey about 2 months ago. My next door neighbor caught covid in the summer and was still infectious after 8 weeks.  None of them have died.

I’ve hired a woman to help me 2 days a week. She is 64 years old and does not have the mobility problems that I do.  She is a CNA and caught covid during the alpha wave in 2020.  It wiped her out for almost a year. She just recently told me that the turning point for her was she started taking vitamin B12.

I don’t really know what her politics are other than she absolutely hates Joe Biden, because “he made me get the covid vaccination after I’d already recovered and had natural immunity”.  She is a very smart, well informed woman.

In the event you missed it, the White House advisor on covid just blurted out the other day that there was never any evidence that masks actually do anything to stop the spread of the disease.   Now that we’re getting all of the inside information from Twitter, we see how just complicit the FBI has been in limiting public discussion of this virus, and other things like suppressing the Hunter Biden story.

My brother was adamant that Donald J Trump was a fascist.  He probably still believes that.

Inside Radio

Scott Shannon was a legend with ABC radio, based out of New York City.  After Cumulus took over ABC, Scott Shannon was kicked loose and landed over at wcbs- FM, which is where he finished his career.   His audience followed him to CBS  which devastated the ratings of WPLJ.  He also produced the syndicated true oldies channel, and for a while was the overall program director of the ABC/Cumulus radio network.

Following their chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021, Cumulus has been busy selling off the legacy ABC radio stations including WPLJ FM and WABC-AM.  None of this should be a surprise when you put a person in charge who had absolutely no radio experience.

World Economic Forum

Must buy milk and bread!

Don’t Panic!