Jim Richardson (aka Lake Superior Aquaman)
I tested ChatGPT’s morals and things escalated quickly
I asked the AI illustrator craiyon.com “Are you sentient?” Its cagey reply was the pantheistic picture above. So I was eager to see how ChatGPT would reply to the question. I also wanted to test its AI morals. Here’s how it went. (more…)
Great Lakes Now episode: “Great Lakes Wildlife”
This contains several segments including one about Enbridge Line 3 (@17:15), and a mention of Duluth’s “Water is Life” festival (@24:58).
A Psychogeographical Map of Duluth, 2004
I drew this conceptual map of Duluth’s arts-and-music-scene in 2004, then filed it away for 18 years. The details may only interest old-school scenester hipsters, but the broad strokes reflect my thinking on what makes Duluth cool, and the nature of scenes as social units. The word “psychogeographical” refers here to the artistic arrangement of my little sociological analysis.
Local rocker Nat Harvie once observed to me that old-school Duluthians gush about these bygone days with little provocation. True. I moved to Duluth in 1998 in what is widely regarded as its heyday, its coming-to-awareness-of-itself as a music-and-arts scene. This can be roughly correlated with the formation of the Ripsaw News, now long defunct. That storied rag began in opposition to the Reader as the premier alternative newsweekly and we were off to the races. I remember an early Ripsaw meeting with Brad Nelson and Cord Dada and a room of creatives, and the question was, “Who can do what?” I said, “I am a writer and cartoonist,” and I was in.
Duluth had everything I wanted in its vital percolations. I graphed the scene as I saw it, below: (more…)
Duluth Canal/Lift Bridge stock footage in ghost ship doc
I was watching this YouTube documentary on the Big Old Boats channel, like ya do. It is about the Carroll Deering, which wrecked on Cape Hatteras without her crew in a nautical mystery. But a lot of the footage used is stock footage from other sources, for seaside vibes. So when I saw Ol’ Lifty on screen @17:30-17:46, I wasn’t too surprised. Duluth as generic sea location, thrown into amateur doc about unrelated East Coast disaster.
The Institute for the Study of Light and Water: Another psychedelic weather report
Sunset a silent H-bomb
Now a burning Saturn, now an apricot pastel dab on slate. Sun zips the sky closed behind it as it goes, now dying, now resurrecting in orange creamsicle. Color cosmologies. Gold birch leaves rattle like paper coins. Leaves crunch, clatter, gather against curbs. (more…)
The Bass Players of Low
The paper said the eulogy began: “Friends, family, and bass players, welcome.”
Cruising the Great Lakes with Dan Kraker, MPR
Minnesota Public Radio’s Dan Kraker talks about the Great Lakes cruise ship industry.
Remembering the Fitzgerald
Great Lakes Now is a production of Detroit Public Television.
The Institute for the Study of Light and Water: Fall weather report
Green-red and other impossible hues
Evaluation of Impossible Colors
On the grounds of the Institute, which really are all grounds, observations were made of maple and oak leaf colors absent from Newton’s spectrum: green-red and other impossible hues. The Institute conducted evaluations along subjective parameters as follows:
Duluth’s Granny: Nazi Sub Hunter
August 8, 1945. Duluth, Minn. Heavy with depth charges and a crew of four, the B-25 bomber Beach Baby grumbles off the dusty airfield into the sky on routine sub patrol. The pilot, a Jewish kid from St. Paul, heads into the sun over gleaming Lake Superior. He is the oldest aboard at 22. Light moves around the cabin. The shore drops away and open blue water comes into view all around.
The tail gunner, a mook from Milwaukee, pipes up on the com: “Everybody knows there ain’t no Nazi subs in the Great Lakes. Hitler’s been dead three months.”
“Tell that to Granny down there,” the pilot says, “War’s not over.”
They spy the fishing boat to starboard and the zig-zag black-and-white lines of its weird paint job. The navigator speaks with his Michigan accent:
“She’s doing up here what Hemingway’s doing in the Caribbean: hunting for U-boats at the bottom of a whiskey glass.”
The side gunner laughs like the North Dakota yahoo that he is. “Well what do you expect, she’s from Duluth.” Now they’re all laughing. (more…)
The Institute for the Study of Light and Water reviews endless summer 2022
Records of Spring: Spotty
Lightbeams solid enough to climb pierce the windows of the Institute for the Study of Light and Water, rousing my eye like a hibernating bear. Dawn presents a temporal crisis. Borges said no one staying up all night welcomes the dawn. So the arrival of spring at the Institute. Records of spring are spotty. The brook babbled after a long vow of silence. The snow was gone which meant April had definitely passed. Cautious leaves popped out. Then the Institute blinked and endless summer began.
Index of the Duluth Superhero Community (the Richardsonverse)
800 entries, 250 illustrations, 50 footnotes
Co-written with Allen Richardson. Illustrations by the Richardson brothers using craiyon.com, stablediffusionweb.com, and DALL-E 2
Contents
1. Preface: I Destroyed the Universe
2. Introduction: Superhero Exegesis
3. Index of the Duluth Superhero Community
4. Footnotes
Preface: I Destroyed the Universe
From the Journal of the Morphogenetic Field Technician: I am trapped far beneath the UMD campus in the Novelty Sphere as the global catastrophe intensifies. My team’s experiments in this underground lab are directly responsible for the apocalypse overtaking the planet. The quakes grow steadily. Portions of the lab visible through the Sphere’s cyclopean porthole have caved in. Soon the roof will collapse releasing tons of basaltic bedrock. If the Sphere’s integrity holds, I will have limited air. One thing I have an unlimited supply of: claustrophobia. It is as if I am in an untethered bathysphere sinking into the mounting pressures of the deep. The Sphere’s instrumentation confirms my worst suspicions: this is no mere global extinction. We destabilized probability itself, and the vertical line on the catastrophe graph indicates structural failure of the universal constants. Like a landslide, the cosmos races toward physical destruction. Gravity will be the first to fail, centered on the Sphere. The well of the Earth is popping like an old spring.
Alternate Duluths
Co-written with Allen Richardson
Dr. Mallard McPurdy disappeared in 2005 while surveying regional probability for the University of Minnesota Duluth’s short-lived Anomalies Department. A team led by Dr. Leon Oswald recovered McPurdy’s yellow pressure suit on Skyline Boulevard, but McPurdy remains at large. His suit contained video files from which the following transcriptions were made; we obtained these with a Freedom of Information Act request.
Duluth 1. Air analysis complete: Bacteria Spore, Origin Unknown. I hope these cheap-ass containment suits actually contain.
The dim, overcast light coming through my smeared faceplate told me little about season or time of day. “Dr. Oswald!” I screamed, weeping as the dread and isolation overwhelmed me. I put on a brave face, clenching my fists, unimpressed by the amount of courage I could muster. (more…)
Duluth’s Building For Women featured in abortion-access article
Minnesota Set to Become “Abortion Access Island” in the Midwest, but for Whom?
“For nearly three decades, long before the fall of Roe v. Wade, the blond brick Building for Women in Duluth, Minnesota, has been a destination for patients traveling from other states to get an abortion. They have come from places where abortions were legal but clinics were scarce and from states where restrictive laws have narrowed windows of opportunity.” (more…)
My Psychic Powers
Keeping in mind that I have no credibility, this is the true story of my psychic powers, which I don’t believe in. The reader may decide if I have psychic powers or not. I’ve already told you I don’t believe in them. I used to but not anymore. However, even though I quit believing, psychic things keep happening, which is profoundly irritating.
In chronological order:
Porky Pig Clairvoyance, 1st-2nd Grade (?)
Family Florida trip. A full-page ad in the back of a comic book transfixed me. I read it on my hotel room bed in a block of sunlight, sounds of the ocean in the distance. The ad was for a book about developing psychic and magic powers. It had fine print about the powers, psychic ways to make money, etc. I read every word, thinking it was real or could be.
Then I remember Dad driving and I was in the front seat with him. It was the just the two of us. Florida seemed particularly packed with road signage. A random thought flitted through my head as stores and restaurants flowed by: a line of Porky Pig dialog. No surprise there. It was fleeting and I paid it no mind. Within a couple minutes we drove past a barbecue place with a Porky Pig knock-off on its signage. I said, “Hey, I just thought about Porky Pig and here we are driving past this sign! That’s psychic!”
“Do you think so?” Dad asked, humoring me.
I did think so. Now I knew: I had psychic powers. (more…)
On underwater microphones and the acoustics of Lake Superior
In this video, the Embassy‘s Sub Superior Festival (feat. Troy Rogers AKA Robot Rickshaw) teams up with Cafe Scientifique Twin Ports. They address the technical challenges of producing an underwater music festival, review favorite moments, and dream about the future of Sub Superior. Broadcast live from the Embassy’s secret Industrial Temple.
Duluth Kayak Rescue
Via WCCO-TV, reported July 15.
Escape From Wisconsin
If you’re wondering where I’ve been, three years ago I survived an assassination attempt on the Blatnik Bridge. Locally called “the High Bridge,” it is in fact 120 feet high over the St. Louis Bay. It is co-owned by Minnesota and Wisconsin, and when you cross the state line, you have a bird’s eye view of the bay, Park Point, and Lake Superior. For a moment, I thought it would be my final view.
Earlier that morning, I swam through the ruins off of Washburn, the tiny Wisconsin town with big secrets. On the way back to Minnesota in my blue 1976 Lotus Esprit S1 — the Aquamobile — I stopped at the Anchor Bar in Superior. Time: 11 a.m. The streets were quiet, church was still in session. I parked across the avenue and went inside. Joining my confidential informant for a burger in a booth, he slipped me a list of every crooked cop in Wisconsin. I put it in my shark-themed backpack, returned to the Aquamobile, and put the backpack in the passenger seat next to the speargun. I got in and rolled my window down. Now for a little drive to the U.S. Marshals office in the Federal Building at the Duluth Civic Center. (more…)
Duluth: Bird City
Raptors: The sight of a bald eagle stirs a person. I used to live in more southerly climes where they were less common, so it has been a treat to see one every now and then up here. I saw them a lot after my divorce, when I had to drive halfway through Minnesota every two weeks to exchange my daughter like a prisoner. I pointed out bald eagles to my child on these drives, barely able to contain my excitement, while she did that kid act of being bored with everything. Later I visited her at her mom’s house in a rural Winona valley. There was a field of tilled earth on the dirt road to their home, and it was positively overrun with bald eagles. As I drove past, I saw fifty of them together walking around in the mud with their dirty talons. I said to my daughter, “Now I understand why you’re never excited to see a bald eagle — you see so many of them every day, they’re like rats here.” She said, “Yup.”
Hawk Ridge overruns with bird nerds. Hawks soar over the city alone or in twos and threes, or by the dozen during migration. Cold air off the lake hits the warm hillside, a clash of airmasses creating lift — they love that. Unimaginably high with laser vision watching for unwary pigeons or rabbits, eating them on the roofs on people’s houses. I saw feathers raining past my window one day. By the time I figured out a hawk was eating a pigeon on my roof, it was gone. (more…)