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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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Cleantech has an enshittification problem

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

EVs won't save the planet. Ultimately, the material bill for billions of individual vehicles and the unavoidable geometry of more cars-more traffic-more roads-greater distances-more cars dictate that the future of our cities and planet requires public transit – lots of it.

But no matter how much public transit we install, there's always going to be some personal vehicles on the road, and not just bikes, ebikes and scooters. Between deliveries, accessibility, and stubbornly low-density regions, there's going to be a lot of cars, vans and trucks on the road for the foreseeable future, and these should be electric.

Beyond that irreducible minimum of personal vehicles, there's the fact that individuals can't install their own public transit system; in places that lack the political will or means to create working transit, EVs are a way for people to significantly reduce their personal emissions.

In policy circles, EV adoption is treated as a logistical and financial issue, so governments have focused on making EVs affordable and increasing the density of charging stations. As an EV owner, I can affirm that affordability and logistics were important concerns when we were shopping for a car.

But there's a third EV problem that is almost entirely off policy radar: enshittification.

An EV is a rolling computer in a fancy case with a squishy person inside of it. While this can sound scary, there are lots of cool implications for this. For example, your EV could download your local power company's tariff schedule and preferentially charge itself when the rates are lowest; they could also coordinate with the utility to reduce charging when loads are peaking. You can start them with your phone. Your repair technician can run extensive remote diagnostics on them and help you solve many problems from the road. New features can be delivered over the air.

That's just for starters, but there's so much more in the future. After all, the signal virtue of a digital computer is its flexibility. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing complete, universal, Von Neumann machine, which can run every valid program. If a feature is computationally tractable – from automated parallel parking to advanced collision prevention – it can run on a car.

The problem is that this digital flexibility presents a moral hazard to EV manufacturers. EVs are designed to make any kind of unauthorized, owner-selected modification into an IP rights violation ("IP" in this case is "any law that lets me control the conduct of my customers or competitors"):

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

EVs are also designed so that the manufacturer can unilaterally exert control over them or alter their operation. EVs – even more than conventional vehicles – are designed to be remotely killswitched in order to help manufacturers and dealers pressure people into paying their car notes on time:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Manufacturers can reach into your car and change how much of your battery you can access:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

They can lock your car and have it send its location to a repo man, then greet him by blinking its lights, honking its horn, and pulling out of its parking space:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

And of course, they can detect when you've asked independent mechanic to service your car and then punish you by degrading its functionality:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2024/06/26/two-of-eight-claims-in-tesla-anti-trust-lawsuit-will-move-forward/

This is "twiddling" – unilaterally and irreversibly altering the functionality of a product or service, secure in the knowledge that IP law will prevent anyone from twiddling back by restoring the gadget to a preferred configuration:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

The thing is, for an EV, twiddling is the best case scenario. As bad as it is for the company that made your EV to change how it works whenever they feel like picking your pocket, that's infinitely preferable to the manufacturer going bankrupt and bricking your car.

That's what just happened to owners of Fisker EVs, cars that cost $40-70k. Cars are long-term purchases. An EV should last 12-20 years, or even longer if you pay to swap the battery pack. Fisker was founded in 2016 and shipped its first Ocean SUV in 2023. The company is now bankrupt:

https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chapter-11-official/

Fisker called its vehicles "software-based cars" and they weren't kidding. Without continuous software updates and server access, those Fisker Ocean SUVs are turning into bricks. What's more, the company designed the car from the ground up to make any kind of independent service and support into a felony, by wrapping the whole thing in overlapping layers of IP. That means that no one can step in with a module that jailbreaks the Fisker and drops in an alternative firmware that will keep the fleet rolling.

This is the third EV risk – not just finance, not just charger infrastructure, but the possibility that any whizzy, cool new EV company will go bust and brick your $70k cleantech investment, irreversibly transforming your car into 5,500 lb worth of e-waste.

This confers a huge advantage onto the big automakers like VW, Kia, Ford, etc. Tesla gets a pass, too, because it achieved critical mass before people started to wise up to the risk of twiddling and bricking. If you're making a serious investment in a product you expect to use for 20 years, are you really gonna buy it from a two-year old startup with six months' capital in the bank?

The incumbency advantage here means that the big automakers won't have any reason to sink a lot of money into R&D, because they won't have to worry about hungry startups with cool new ideas eating their lunches. They can maintain the cozy cartel that has seen cars stagnate for decades, with the majority of "innovation" taking the form of shitty, extractive and ill-starred ideas like touchscreen controls and an accelerator pedal that you have to rent by the month:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

Put that way, it's clear that this isn't an EV problem, it's a cleantech problem. Cleantech has all the problems of EVs: it requires a large capital expenditure, it will be "smart," and it is expected to last for decades. That's rooftop solar, heat-pumps, smart thermostat sensor arrays, and home storage batteries.

And just as with EVs, policymakers have focused on infrastructure and affordability without paying any attention to the enshittification risks. Your rooftop solar will likely be controlled via a Solaredge box – a terrible technology that stops working if it can't reach the internet for a protracted period (that's right, your home solar stops working if the grid fails!).

I found this out the hard way during the covid lockdowns, when Solaredge terminated its 3G cellular contract and notified me that I would have to replace the modem in my system or it would stop working. This was at the height of the supply-chain crisis and there was a long waiting list for any replacement modems, with wifi cards (that used your home internet rather than a cellular connection) completely sold out for most of a year.

There are good reasons to connect rooftop solar arrays to the internet – it's not just so that Solaredge can enshittify my service. Solar arrays that coordinate with the grid can make it much easier and safer to manage a grid that was designed for centralized power production and is being retrofitted for distributed generation, one roof at a time.

But when the imperatives of extraction and efficiency go to war, extraction always wins. After all, the Solaredge system is already in place and solar installers are largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, the reasons that a homeowner might want to directly control and monitor their system via local controls that don't roundtrip through the cloud.

Somewhere in the hindbrain of any prospective solar purchaser is the experience with bricked and enshittified "smart" gadgets, and the knowledge that anything they buy from a cool startup with lots of great ideas for improving production, monitoring, and/or costs poses the risk of having your 20 year investment bricked after just a few years – and, thanks to the extractive imperative, no one will be able to step in and restore your ex-solar array to good working order.

I make the majority of my living from books, which means that my pay is very "lumpy" – I get large sums when I publish a book and very little in between. For many years, I've used these payments to make big purchases, rather than financing them over long periods where I can't predict my income. We've used my book payments to put in solar, then an induction stove, then a battery. We used one to buy out the lease on our EV. And just a month ago, we used the money from my upcoming Enshittification book to put in a heat pump (with enough left over to pay for a pair of long-overdue cataract surgeries, scheduled for the fall).

When we started shopping for heat pumps, it was clear that this was a very exciting sector. First of all, heat pumps are kind of magic, so efficient and effective it's almost surreal. But beyond the basic tech – which has been around since the late 1940s – there is a vast ferment of cool digital features coming from exciting and innovative startups.

By nature, I'm the kid of person who likes these digital features. I started out as a computer programmer, and while I haven't written production code since the previous millennium, I've been in and around the tech industry for my whole adult life. But when it came time to buy a heat-pump – an investment that I expected to last for 20 years or more – there was no way I was going to buy one of these cool new digitally enhanced pumps, no matter how much the reviewers loved them. Sure, they'd work well, but it's precisely because I'm so knowledgeable about high tech that I could see that they would fail very, very badly.

You may think EVs are bullshit, and they are – though there will always be room for some personal vehicles, and it's better for people in transit deserts to drive EVs than gas-guzzlers. You may think rooftop solar is a dead-end and be all-in on utility scale solar (I think we need both, especially given the grid-disrupting extreme climate events on our horizon). But there's still a wide range of cleantech – induction tops, heat pumps, smart thermostats – that are capital intensive, have a long duty cycle, and have good reasons to be digitized and networked.

Take home storage batteries: your utility can push its rate card to your battery every time they change their prices, and your battery can use that information to decide when to let your house tap into the grid, and when to switch over to powering your home with the solar you've stored up during the day. This is a very old and proven pattern in tech: the old Fidonet BBS network used a version of this, with each BBS timing its calls to other nodes to coincide with the cheapest long-distance rates, so that messages for distant systems could be passed on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

Cleantech is a very dynamic sector, even if its triumphs are largely unheralded. There's a quiet revolution underway in generation, storage and transmission of renewable power, and a complimentary revolution in power-consumption in vehicles and homes:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

But cleantech is too important to leave to the incumbents, who are addicted to enshittification and planned obsolescence. These giant, financialized firms lack the discipline and culture to make products that have the features – and cost savings – to make them appealing to the very wide range of buyers who must transition as soon as possible, for the sake of the very planet.

It's not enough for our policymakers to focus on financing and infrastructure barriers to cleantech adoption. We also need a policy-level response to enshittification.

Ideally, every cleantech device would be designed so that it was impossible to enshittify – which would also make it impossible to brick:

Based on free software (best), or with source code escrowed with a trustee who must release the code if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

All patents in a royalty-free patent-pool (best); or in a trust that will release them into a royalty-free pool if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

No parts-pairing or other DRM permitted (best); or with parts-pairing utilities available to all parties on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best);

All diagnostic and error codes in the public domain, with all codes in the clear within the device (best); or with decoding utilities available on demand to all comers on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best).

There's an obvious business objection to this: it will reduce investment in innovative cleantech because investors will perceive these restrictions as limits on the expected profits of their portfolio companies. It's true: these measures are designed to prevent rent-extraction and other enshittificatory practices by cleantech companies, and to the extent that investors are counting on enshittification rents, this might prevent them from investing.

But that has to be balanced against the way that a general prohibition on enshittificatory practices will inspire consumer confidence in innovative and novel cleantech products, because buyers will know that their investments will be protected over the whole expected lifespan of the product, even if the startup goes bust (nearly every startup goes bust). These measures mean that a company with a cool product will have a much larger customer-base to sell to. Those additional sales more than offset the loss of expected revenue from cheating and screwing your customers by twiddling them to death.

There's also an obvious legal objection to this: creating these policies will require a huge amount of action from Congress and the executive branch, a whole whack of new rules and laws to make them happen, and each will attract court-challenges.

That's also true, though it shouldn't stop us from trying to get legal reforms. As a matter of public policy, it's terrible and fucked up that companies can enshittify the things we buy and leave us with no remedy.

However, we don't have to wait for legal reform to make this work. We can take a shortcut with procurement – the things governments buy with public money. The feds, the states and localities buy a lot of cleantech: for public facilities, for public housing, for public use. Prudent public policy dictates that governments should refuse to buy any tech unless it is designed to be enshittification-resistant.

This is an old and honorable tradition in policymaking. Lincoln insisted that the rifles he bought for the Union Army come with interoperable tooling and ammo, for obvious reasons. No one wants to be the Commander in Chief who shows up on the battlefield and says, "Sorry, boys, war's postponed, our sole supplier decided to stop making ammunition."

By creating a market for enshittification-proof cleantech, governments can ensure that the public always has the option of buying an EV that can't be bricked even if the maker goes bust, a heat-pump whose digital features can be replaced or maintained by a third party of your choosing, a solar controller that coordinates with the grid in ways that serve their owners – not the manufacturers' shareholders.

We're going to have to change a lot to survive the coming years. Sure, there's a lot of scary ways that things can go wrong, but there's plenty about our world that should change, and plenty of ways those changes could be for the better. It's not enough for policymakers to focus on ensuring that we can afford to buy whatever badly thought-through, extractive tech the biggest companies want to foist on us – we also need a focus on making cleantech fit for purpose, truly smart, reliable and resilient.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

Image: 臺灣古寫真上色 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raid_on_Kagi_City_1945.jpg

Grendelkhan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ground_mounted_solar_panels.gk.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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balladofthe101st · 5 months ago

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Buck Compton came back to see the Company to let us know that he was alright. He became a prosecutor in Los Angeles. He convicted Sirhan Sirhan in the murder of Robert Kennedy, and was later appointed to the California Court of Appeals.

David Webster became a writer for the Saturday Evening Post and Wall Street Journal, and later wrote and book about sharks. In 1961, he went out on the ocean alone, and was never seen again.

Johnny Martin would return to his job at the railroad and then start his own construction company. He splits his time between Arizona and a place in Montana.

George Luz became a handyman in Providence, Rhode Island. As a testament to his character, sixteen hundred people attended his funeral in 1998.

Doc Roe died in Louisiana in 1998. He’d been a construction contractor.

Frank Perconte returned to Chicago and worked a postal route as a mailman.

Joe Liebgott returned to San Francisco and drove his cab.

Bull Randleman was one of the best soldiers I ever had. He went into the earth moving business in Arkansas. He’s still there.

Alton More returned to Wyoming with a unique souvenir: Hitler’s personal photo albums. He was killed in a car accident in 1958.

Floyd Talbert we all lost touch with in civilian life, until he showed up at a reunion just before his death in 1981.

Carwood Lipton became a glass making executive in charge of factories all over the world. He has a nice life in North Carolina.

Harry Welsh – he married Kitty Grogan. Became an administrator for the Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania school system.

Ronald Speirs stayed in the Army, served in Korea. In 1958, returned to Germany as Governor of Spandau Prison. He retired a Lieutenant Colonel.

Lewis Nixon had some tough times after the war. He was divorced a couple of times. Then in 1956, he married a woman named Grace and everything came together for him. He spent the rest of his life with her, travelling the world. My friend Lew died in 1995.

I took up his job offer and was a personnel manager at the Nixon Nitration Works, until I was called back into service in 1950 to train officers and rangers. I chose not to go to Korea. I’d had enough of war. I stayed around Hershey, Pennsylvania, finally finding a little farm. A little peaceful corner of the world, where I still live today. And there is not a day that goes by that I do not think of the men I served with who never got to enjoy the world without war.

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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Stories about AI-generated political content are like stories about people drunkenly setting off fireworks: There’s a good chance they’ll end in disaster. WIRED is tracking AI usage in political campaigns across the world, and so far examples include pornographic deepfakes and misinformation-spewing chatbots. It’s gotten to the point where the US Federal Communications Commission has proposed mandatory disclosures for AI use in television and radio ads.

Despite concerns, some US political campaigns are embracing generative AI tools. There’s a growing category of AI-generated political content flying under the radar this election cycle, developed by startups including Denver-based BattlegroundAI, which uses generative AI to come up with digital advertising copy at a rapid clip. “Hundreds of ads in minutes,” its website proclaims.

BattlegroundAI positions itself as a tool specifically for progressive campaigns—no MAGA types allowed. And it is moving fast: It launched a private beta only six weeks ago and a public beta just last week. Cofounder and CEO Maya Hutchinson is currently at the Democratic National Convention trying to attract more clients. So far, the company has around 60, she says. (The service has a freemium model, with an upgraded option for $19 a month.)

“It’s kind of like having an extra intern on your team,” Hutchinson, a marketer who got her start on the digital team for President Obama’s reelection campaign, tells WIRED. We’re sitting at a picnic table inside the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, and she’s raising her voice to be heard over music blasting from a nearby speaker. “If you’re running ads on Facebook or Google, or developing YouTube scripts, we help you do that in a very structured fashion.”

BattlegroundAI’s interface asks users to select from five different popular large language models—including ChatGPT, Claude, and Anthropic—to generate answers; it then asks users to further customize their results by selecting for tone and “creativity level,” as well as how many variations on a single prompt they might want. It also offers guidance on whom to target and helps craft messages geared toward specialized audiences for a variety of preselected issues, including infrastructure, women’s health, and public safety.

BattlegroundAI declined to provide any examples of actual political ads created using its services. However, WIRED tested the product by creating a campaign aimed at extremely left-leaning adults aged 88 to 99 on the issue of media freedom. “Don't let fake news pull the wool over your bifocals!” one of the suggested ads began.

BattlegroundAI offers only text generation—no AI images or audio. The company adheres to various regulations around the use of AI in political ads.

“What makes Battleground so well suited for politics is it’s very much built with those rules in mind,” says Andy Barr, managing director for Uplift, a Democratic digital ad agency. Barr says Uplift has been testing the BattlegroundAI beta for a few weeks. “It’s helpful with idea generation,” he says. The agency hasn’t yet released any ads using Battleground copy yet, but it has already used it to develop concepts, Barr adds.

I confess to Hutchinson that if I were a politician, I would be scared to use BattlegroundAI. Generative AI tools are known to “hallucinate,” a polite way of saying that they sometimes make things up out of whole cloth. (They bullshit, to use academic parlance.) I ask how she’s ensuring that the political content BattlegroundAI generates is accurate.

“Nothing is automated,” she replies. Hutchinson notes that BattlegroundAI’s copy is a starting-off point, and that humans from campaigns are meant to review and approve it before it goes out. “You might not have a lot of time, or a huge team, but you’re definitely reviewing it.”

Of course, there’s a rising movement opposing how AI companies train their products on art, writing, and other creative work without asking for permission. I ask Hutchinson what she’d say to people who might oppose how tools like ChatGPT are trained. “Those are incredibly valid concerns,” she says. “We need to talk to Congress. We need to talk to our elected officials.”

I ask whether BattlegroundAI is looking at offering language models that train on only public domain or licensed data. “Always open to that,” she says. “We also need to give folks, especially those who are under time constraints, in resource-constrained environments, the best tools that are available to them, too. We want to have consistent results for users and high-quality information—so the more models that are available, I think the better for everybody.”

And how would Hutchinson respond to people in the progressive movement—who generally align themselves with the labor movement—objecting to automating ad copywriting? “Obviously valid concerns,” she says. “Fears that come with the advent of any new technology—we’re afraid of the computer, of the light bulb.”

Hutchinson lays out her stance: She doesn’t see this as a replacement for human labor so much as a way to reduce grunt work. “I worked in advertising for a very long time, and there's so many elements of it that are repetitive, that are honestly draining of creativity,” she says. “AI takes away the boring elements.” She sees BattlegroundAI as a helpmeet for overstretched and underfunded teams.

Taylor Coots, a Kentucky-based political strategist who recently began using the service, describes it as “very sophisticated,” and says it helps identify groups of target voters and ways to tailor messaging to reach them in a way that would otherwise be difficult for small campaigns. In battleground races in gerrymandered districts, where progressive candidates are major underdogs, budgets are tight. “We don’t have millions of dollars,” he says. “Any opportunities we have for efficiencies, we’re looking for those.”

Will voters care if the writing in digital political ads they see is generated with the help of AI? “I'm not sure there is anything more unethical about having AI generate content than there is having unnamed staff or interns generate content,” says Peter Loge, an associate professor and program director at George Washington University who founded a project on ethics in political communication.

“If one could mandate that all political writing done with the help of AI be disclosed, then logically you would have to mandate that all political writing”—such as emails, ads, and op-eds—“not done by the candidate be disclosed,” he adds.

Still, Loge has concerns about what AI does to public trust on a macro level, and how it might impact the way people respond to political messaging going forward. “One risk of AI is less what the technology does, and more how people feel about what it does,” he says. “People have been faking images and making stuff up for as long as we've had politics. The recent attention on generative AI has increased peoples' already incredibly high levels of cynicism and distrust. If everything can be fake, then maybe nothing is true.”

Hutchinson, meanwhile, is focused on her company’s shorter-term impact. “We really want to help people now,” she says. “We’re trying to move as fast as we can.”

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verifiedmovingreviews · 1 month ago

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justforbooks · 7 days ago

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Quincy Jones, dies aged 91

Widely and wildly talented musician and industry mogul worked with Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Will Smith and others

Quincy Jones, a titan of American entertainment who worked with stars from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson and Will Smith, has died aged 91.

Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, said he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones was arguably the most versatile pop cultural figure of the 20th century, perhaps best known for producing the albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad for Michael Jackson in the 1980s, which made the singer the biggest pop star of all time. Jones also produced music for Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and many others.

He was also a successful composer of dozens of film scores, and had numerous chart hits under his own name. Jones was a bandleader in big band jazz, an arranger for jazz stars including Count Basie, and a multi-instrumentalist, most proficiently on trumpet and piano. His TV and film production company, founded in 1990, had major success with the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and other shows, and he continued to innovate well into his 80s, launching Qwest TV in 2017, an on-demand music TV service. Jones is third only to Beyoncé and Jay-Z for having the most Grammy award nominations of all time – 80 to their 88 each – and is the awards’ third most-garlanded winner, with 28.

Among the tributes to Jones was one from actor Michael Caine, who was born on the same day as Jones: 14 March 1933. “My celestial twin Quincy was a titan in the musical world,” Caine wrote. “He was a wonderful and unique human being, lucky to have known him.”

Playwright and actor Jeremy O Harris paid tribute to Jones’s “limitless” contributions to US culture, writing: “What couldn’t he do? Quincy Jones, literally born when the limits on how big a black boy could dream were unfathomably high, taught us that the limit does not exist.”

Jones was born in Chicago. His half-white father had been born to a Welsh slave owner and one of his female slaves, while his mother’s family were also descended from slave owners. His introduction to music came through the walls of his childhood home from a piano played by a neighbour, which he started learning aged seven, and via his mother’s singing.

His parents divorced and he moved with his father to Washington state, where Jones learned drums and a host of brass instruments in his high-school band. At 14, he started playing in a band with a 16-year-old Ray Charles in Seattle clubs, once, in 1948, backing Billie Holiday. He studied music at Seattle University, transferring east to continue in Boston, and then moved to New York after being rehired by the jazz bandleader Lionel Hampton, with whom he had toured as a high-schooler (a band for which Malcolm X was a heroin dealer when they played in Detroit).

In New York, one early gig was playing trumpet in Elvis Presley’s band for his first TV appearances, and he met the stars of the flourishing bebop movement including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. (Years later, in 1991, Jones conducted Davis’s last performance, two months before he died.)

Jones toured Europe with Hampton, and spent much time there in the 1950s, including a period furthering his studies in Paris, where he met luminaries including Pablo Picasso, James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. At the age of 23, he also toured South America and the Middle East as Dizzy Gillespie’s musical director and arranger. He convened a crack team for his own big band, touring Europe as a way to test Free and Easy, a jazz musical, but the disastrous run left Jones, by his own admission, close to suicide and with $100,000 of debt.

He secured a job at Mercury Records and slowly paid off the debt with plenty of work as a producer and arranger for artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan and Sammy Davis Jr. He also began scoring films, his credits eventually including The Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night, The Getaway and The Color Purple. (He produced the last of these, which was nominated for 11 Oscars, three for Jones himself.) In 1968, he became the first African American to be nominated for best original song at the Oscars, for The Eyes of Love from the film Banning (alongside songwriter Bob Russell); he had seven nominations in total. For TV, he scored programmes such as The Bill Cosby Show, Ironside and Roots.

His work with Sinatra began in 1958 when he was hired to conduct and arrange for Sinatra and his band by Grace Kelly, princess consort of Monaco, for a charity event. Jones and Sinatra continued working on projects until Sinatra’s final album, LA Is My Lady, in 1984. Jones’s solo musical career took off in the late 1950s, recording albums under his own name as bandleader for jazz ensembles that included luminaries such as Charles Mingus, Art Pepper and Freddie Hubbard.

Jones once said of his time in Seattle: “When people write about the music, jazz is in this box, R&B is in this box, pop is in this box, but we did everything,” and his catholic tastes served him well as modern pop mutated out of the swing era. He produced four million-selling hits for the New York singer Lesley Gore in the mid-60s, including the US No 1 It’s My Party, and later embraced funk and disco, producing hit singles including George Benson’s Give Me the Night and Patti Austin and James Ingram’s Baby Come to Me, along with records by the band Rufus and Chaka Khan, and the Brothers Johnson. Jones also released his own funk material, scoring US Top 10 albums with Body Heat (1974) and The Dude (1981).

His biggest success in this style was his work with Michael Jackson: Thriller remains the biggest selling album of all time, while Jones’s versatility between Off the Wall and Bad allowed Jackson to metamorphose from lithe disco to ultra-synthetic funk-rock. He and Jackson (along with Lionel Richie and producer Michael Omartian) also helmed We Are the World, a successful charity single that raised funds for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1985. “I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him,” Jones said when Jackson died in 2009. In 2017, Jones’s legal team successfully argued that he was owed $9.4m in unpaid Jackson royalties, though he lost on appeal in 2020 and had to return $6.8m.

After the success of The Color Purple in 1985, he formed the film and TV production company Quincy Jones Entertainment in 1990. His biggest screen hit was the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for 148 episodes and launched the career of Will Smith; other shows included the LL Cool J sitcom In the House and the long-running sketch comedy show MadTV.

He also created the media company Qwest Broadcasting and in 1993, the Black music magazine Vibe in partnership with Time Inc. Throughout his career he supported numerous charities and causes, including the , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Jazz Foundation of America and others, and mentored young musicians including the British multiple Grammy winner Jacob Collier.

Jones’ illustrious career was twice nearly cut short: he narrowly avoided being killed by Charles Manson’s cult in 1969, having planned to go to Sharon Tate’s house on the night of the murders there, but Jones forgot the appointment. He also survived a brain aneurysm in 1974 that prevented him from playing the trumpet again in case the exertion caused further harm.

Jones was married three times, first to his high-school girlfriend Jeri Caldwell, for nine years until 1966, fathering his daughter Jolie. In 1967, he married Ulla Andersson and had a son and daughter, divorcing in 1974 to marry actor Peggy Lipton, best known for roles in The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks. They had two daughters, including the actor Rashida Jones, before divorcing in 1989. He had two further children: Rachel, with a dancer, Carol Reynolds, and Kenya, his daughter with actor Nastassja Kinski.

He never remarried, but continued to date a string of younger women, raising eyebrows with his year-long partnership with 19-year-old Egyptian designer Heba Elawadi when he was 73. He has also claimed to have dated Ivanka Trump and Juliette Gréco. He is survived by his seven children.

Other artists paying tribute included LL Cool J, who wrote: “You were a father and example at a time when I truly needed a father and example. Mentor. Role model. King. You gave me opportunities and shared wisdom. Music would not be music without you.” Femi Koleoso, bandleader with Mercury prize-winning jazz group Ezra Collective, called Jones a “masterful musician and beautiful soul”.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Quincy Jones #in memoriam

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billthedrake · 1 year ago

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NO PROFILE PIC

I wasn't sure I wanted to move to Chicago, but the company that was flying me there for the interview was one of the better places to work for and even as a holder of a newly minted Harvard MBA, I knew this would be an incredible job to land. Executive leadership track, and high-paying in a medium cost of living city.

It wasn't like I was eager to leave Boston, either. I'd had a good bit of luck as a younger man into topping older, exec types. Between the middle-aged professional gay men and the straightish dudes looking to play with a guy, I had achieved a nice mix of regular fuckbuddies and new conquests over two years. Some provided oral service only, and that was great, while some let me fuck them. I didn't think of myself as a shallow asshole, but maybe with sex I was, getting off on the fact these older, successful men would drop things for me to take care of my needs.

Maybe the only drawback was that New England reserve. During my college years at Clemson, I'd gotten very used to a needy, hungry type of Southern daddy. I wouldn't say those years turned me onto older bottoms, but they cemented my love of a 40- or 50-something masculine man with a submissive side. I found my share of bottom dads in Boston, but few really wanted to embrace or indulge the kind of submissiveness that really got me going.

When I started my MBA program, I had my sights set on New York, of course. Even if less than 1% of those hot Wall Street types were bottoms, that was still a lot to have fun with. About once every couple of months, I'd take the train down and line up a couple of hot hookups that put those Boston execs to shame.

But I was starting be realistic. I sent some applications to a number of New York companies and had some initial interviews, but I wasn't going to land an opportunity like William Blair.

So I bought a new interview suit, on the conservative side of conservative business dress, and a new, equally conservative, tie, and I flew out to Chicago. They were putting me up for two nights in a hotel in the Loop, and I decided to tack on a third night to enjoy the city and do a little reconnoissance.

After a delayed flight, I thought maybe I'd just keep that first afternoon and evening low key. Walk around downtown a little, grab a bite somewhere, that kind of thing. As a Southern boy, I'll admit I wasn't keen on the idea of Chicago weather, but spring had sprung in the best way for my arrival. I checked in to my hotel and freshened up. When I stepped out again, the city's energy gave me a second wind. Best of all there were a fuck ton of hot guys walking around, some in business casual, some in suits. A lot with that cornfed Midwestern look that I decided I liked.

That's why I pulled up the apps. I knew I'd love have a hot older guy sucking me or bending over for me that evening. Perfect way to see what Chicago was about, I figured.

Of course, there's often that disconnect between the hotness you see walking around and the guys available on the apps. Don't get me wrong: some other dude would have been happy enough with what I saw. But there was a sea of regular "jocky" gay men that didn't push my buttons, and a good majority of the older guys who did listed total top or top vers. I had a profile that was specific in who I was and what I wanted: total top, very verbal, into fit/regular professional/executive men 40+, love submissive guys, but newbies/DL guys OK. In reality, if the guy was hot enough, I'd ease back on the dom talk, and in Boston that seemed to happen a lot, but that was on a case-by-case basis.

I checked out Sniffies for a few prospects. But either I didn't hear back from them or nothing clicked. I got a few hits myself. Two were not my type at all, one was more a "not now but maybe later" groundwork chat.

I grabbed some dinner in a restaurant bar. The happy crowd was still lingering and I had a good sightline to a couple of middle aged businessmen at the other end of the bar. Blond, beefy, tall... Chicago certainly gave me some welcome eye candy.

I enjoyed the surreptitious bone I was forming sitting at the bar. Maybe I had a libido that could spill over into sex addiction, but it had been a solid week since I'd had a business daddy suck me, and the number of hot business guys in the airport and walking around downtown Chicago had my imagination running wild.

I opened Grindr again. Nothing caught my eye, but as I browsed Sniffies I got a message. The profile was a shell that had no picture, showing up about 4 blocks away, but the stats listed sounded up my alley: 58, 6'2" 195# bottom, corporate/clean cut married looking for corporate/bro/jock/son. Not hosting.

His tone was perfect, too: "Hi man. Fucking hot profile. Long day in meetings and I need to let off some steam..."

I didn't have pictures of him to go by, but was willing to engage. "How would you do that?" I asked.

The response was immediate. "It's been too long since I sucked a cock."

OK, I wanted pictures. "Pics?"

He sent me a few. No face, but there was one framing a chin/mouth shot and the top of a shirt/tie combo, all drenched in dripping cum. Very nice jawline and, I dunno, he had a hot mouth. The other was a mirror selfie of his body. He might be 58 but had that fit-daddy look, like a man who lifts and runs and plays racquetball regularly. He had my attention a big way.

"Hot profile yourself," I typed back. The man was about two blocks away. "I can send you more pics if you want," I typed.

"Feel free," he wrote. "But your cock is enough man. I wanna take care of that."

OK, I was rockhard beneath the bar ledge. I'd have to think of something unsexy to be less obscene when I left. I had more than a prospect, I had a pretty sure thing.

"I don't recripocate," I clarified. As much as I put on my preferences and expectations on the profile, some dudes had reading comprehension problems, or liked to play cute by pushing their luck.

"I just like being on my knees for a guy like you." Goddam. "I just can't host."

"I'm staying at a hotel," I typed back. "When can we make this happen?"

"Give me 45 minutes? I still have some work bullshit to tend to."

"Sounds great," I typed him my hotel and room number, then flagged the bartender to pay my check.

I was getting so turned on by the time I got back to my room. Maybe I shouldn't let it go a week between blowjobs, but even with the apps and overall having the goods that attracted men, it wasn't always feasible to get the service I wanted. I'll be honest: the more luck I had, the pickier I got about the kind of older men I wanted.

I told myself not to get too excited for this hookup. Maybe the guy was a bullshitter, or maybe he wouldn't be as hot as the corporate daddy in my mind. Still, I was feeding off his submissive vibe and wanted to set the tone for the encounter. Once in my room, I stripped down naked.

I took a look in the mirror to check my appearance. I had an athletic build, from years of playing tennis, including on the Clemson men's tennis team, and in my last couple of years I'd kept up my game and a regular gym routine. Maybe it helped being into older men, but that's just how I was wired. My first time with another guy was with my high school tennis coach, and I hadn't looked back.

A knock came at the door. I went and peeked through the peephole to make sure it wasn't housekeeping or anyone else. Indeed, a suited handsome daddy stood outside. I didn't get a great view of him that way, but I opened the door, and let him in.

Up close, he was just incredible. Executive cut brown hair showing some wisps of gray at the temples, upright posture, a trim but muscular body that filled out a clearly expensive and well tailored suit.

His eyes widened and he laughed a little when he saw I was completely naked.

I took the initiative though. "You said you were here to take care of me, right?"

He nodded, looking down at my erection. "Definitely," he said. Then without fanfare the exec got onto his knees and started to kiss and nuzzle my dong, while letting out a soft, deep grunt.

I actually loved this give and take. When an older man so clearly is there to service me. But I also loved for a cocksucker to enjoy my dick in the way that turns him on. Exec Daddy liked the slow approach, working me to steel hardness with his tongue and fingers before actually taking me in between his lips.

I was curious how long it had been for the guy, he was just attacking my bone like an addict getting a needed fix. Deep descent onto my cock with each bob, and getting deeper. He gagged a little before settling into the pace. That was hot as fuck.

He took the liberty of running his hands along my hairy thighs and curling around the hamstrings for leverage and balance as he really got into it. It was starting to feel real good. This was gonna be a blowjob to make me forget my last five. There was just no comparison.

Exec Daddy spit out my dick. He swallowed the spit and cleared his throat. "I forgot to ask," he said. "You like to get off fast? Or you prefer me to take my time?"

Both sounded great. But I knew my answer. "Fuck... take your time."

He smiled and muttered, "thanks," before going down on me again. I could tell he was excited to blow me. Maybe excited to blow any guy, but I was the right dude at the right place and time. And though I didn't have his full story, I seemed to fit his type or what he was looking for. Young, bro-jock type in spades.

His sucking now was exquisite torture. Glacial-slow down my hardon, taking in my girth and running his tongue along the tube of the underside. Maybe he was showing off for me, maybe he was just enjoying the opportunity to worship a cock. He neared the base of my prick, then pulled up just as slowly. The third time down he was kissing my pubes.

From there, Exec Daddy worked me up with precision. Even if this guy's technique was lousy, he would have pushed my buttons big time. I ran my fingers through his hair as he picked up speed, keeping the deep throating with each swallow.

The man spit out my dick again, licking up the spit to make sure none got onto his tie. "God, this is a big cock,"" he muttered, not even taking his eyes off it.

"You know how to take it," I hissed. My dick twitched in front of him.

That made the executive smile as he looked up at me. "It takes a good bit to trip my gag reflex, actually."

"Yeah?" I asked, excitedly.

He nodded, reaching forth to gently stroke my hardon. "I mean, I definitely have one and this bad boy would be enough to do it.... fuck...!"

He took the initiative now in sucking me back in. All in one go. I'd never get sick of this view, his expensive suit framing that fit-dad body. I don't know Executive Daddy's story, but he was the real deal all right. And he was giving me some primo head.

I got greedy though. I head onto his skull and started thrusting. It had been too long since I'd used a mouth. I might be putting Exec Daddy's skills to waste but this is what I craved at the moment. My dick can do some damage if I'm not careful, and I heard some choked grunts, then Exec Daddy pushed against my hips to signal a break. I gave it to him.

He swallowed his spit and caught his breath. "If you're gonna do that, let's try on the bed. The angle's better that way," he hissed.

"Fuck yes," I said. I watched excitedly as the man got onto the bed crosswise and lay back with his head over the edge. I gave him a second to get settled then I stepped up. His tongue darted against my cock head, then I felt the warm wetness of his mouth enclose my dick.

I wasn't rough but my entry was direct and insistent. Pushing in to bottom out in one go. Exec Daddy moaned around my cock, but in a good way. I tapped his cheek as a signal I was about to start.

Then I did it. I looked down on this suited middle aged stud and just began fucking his throat. I had restraint in keeping from shoving in too hard but I was deep and steady in my thrusts. It had been too long since I'd found a man who'd let me do this, who was capable of letting me do this.

My height meant I wasn't at the perfect level so I leaned forward to allow me to fuck his mouth like a fleshjack. The noises were obscene, with wet slick moans and a little light gags, but mostly Exec Daddy took it. The angle meant I was penetrating his gullet more deeply, and the wet snugness was gonna milk me off, quick.

The trigger though was his reaction. He was throwing hard in his suit trousers, his spike forming a tent in the wool. Exec Daddy arched his back to accommodate my thrusting. That action made me blast. Six, maybe eight, hard spurts of cum right into his stomach. The man was only going to taste the dribbles on the withdrawal.

His face was red from the blood rushing to his head and he had some spit on his face. The man caught his breath and kissed my wet dong as I slipped out. I let him enjoy this, but it was clear he wasn't going to get off in this session, so I stepped back and gently patted his face.

"Fuck, thanks," I hissed. After a good cum, I generally become more easy going, even after more dominating sex.

He got up and washed his face at the sink. He was still hard as he stepped back, adjusting his shirt in his suit to look presentable. I was naked still, and enjoying his eyes on me. "Glad I logged in today," he said. "It's been a long time since I've played."

I still had to square the words and easygoingness about sex with his boardroom-ready looks. Maybe he was fibbing to assure me he wasn't a slut, but given the quality of the suit, I could very much picture him as the kind of man who indulged his need to suck cock only occasionally.

"Glad you did, too," I said. "You're an incredible cocksucker," I added. Friendly in tone but also asserting his submission to me. "I don't know if you ever do repeats but I'm in town for a few days...."

I could his battling thoughts. But he hadn't gotten off just now and maybe was letting his dick think for him. "I gotta be careful, man," he said. Which was basically a yes.

"Absolutely," I assured him. "I'm totally discreet. I just want your mouth on my dick again, before I head back home."

He asked if I used a certain message app, and I did. We swapped contact info. Part of me wanted to kiss him but felt it wasn't his thing. So we bumped fists at the door as I showed him out.

Fifteen minutes later I got a message. "Thank you for that," he wrote. "You pleased and all drained?"

I felt my dick chub up. "Pleased. Probably could go again to be honest."

"I wanna suck you again. Maybe first thing tomorrow?"

"I have a meeting to go to 8:30," I wrote. "But if before 8 that works.

"Yeah, I'm an early riser." Then, "want your cum to start my work day."

"Well hit me up first thing. I'll be up early to hit the gym." Chicago was only one hour behind, but that meant I'd easily be up before 6.

"I will man. You're so fucking hot."

***

I didn't fuck Exec Daddy's face the next morning. Instead, I let him show off his skills on me. I'm a morning guy when it comes to sex, so it took maybe 3 minutes from the time he came in till the time he left, my cum as his breakfast.

I felt happy and relaxed and I wondered if the experience had tipped the scales in favor of moving to Chicago. I mean, there were hot men everywhere, but Exec Daddy was my type to a frickin T. Even if he was just an occasional thing, I'd be very into establishing something regular with him.

But that was putting the cart before the horse. I hadn't been offered a job, and hell I had no idea if the middle aged corporate guy was up for anything more than a couple of times.

Still, the experience had me ready to do my best for the interview. I made sure everything was perfect for my suit and tie combo and that my black dress shoes were polished, then made my way across the river to William Blair. I met with HR then had a round of VP interviews. I think I did pretty well, but you never really know. I'd been overconfident in one job interview already. I learned and adapted.

They took me to lunch. Even if I didn't end up landing the job, it was nice to be courted.

At 1:30, they took me to meet the new director of global wealth management, who'd basically be my boss's boss and someone I'd be working with as a member of the leadership mentor program.

It was a nice office with a great view of the river and the Chicago high rises. But as the man stood up, I saw the fear and shock and embarrassment on his face. It was Exec Daddy, who'd blown me just six hours earlier. Robert Lyman was the only member of the leadership team whose photo I hadn't seen; his hire was very recent and his profile page on William Blair's website still lacked a photo.

I knew my own face betrayed a million emotions, too, but I played it cool. "Cole Edwards," I said, extending my hand to shake his. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Lyman."

"You can call me Robert," he said, recovering without too much slipping. "Nice to meet you." He turned to the HR specialist who was my guide for the afternoon. "Give us 30 minutes, Dan?" he asked. The HR guy nodded and backed out, shutting the office door behind him.

I was wrapping my head around the fact that I'd blown my chances at the job. No way would this guy hire me now. At least I'd gotten some hot sex out of it.

"Of all the cocks in Chicago to suck," he laughed, face blushing some.

I leaned back in my seat. Even now, I was getting hard, looking at the man and remembering him going down on me. "Don't worry Robert," I said. "I meant what I said about being discreet."

I wasn't fishing for anything, but after seeming to think things over he said softly. "You texted earlier you'd be up for another blowjob at the end of the day."

I was incredulous. "You still offering?" The man must really be cock crazy. Or Robert realized he'd already cross the line, so why stop?

He grinned. "I have plans I can't get out of," he replied. "But if you want one now..."

My cock made it all the way to erect in my new suit. "God yes," I hissed. Reaching down to undo my belt.

"Let me lock the door," he said as he bounded up. I liked his suit yesterday better, but this one was equally expensive and perfectly tailored. I unzipped and hauled out my cock and watched him walk back, a naughty grin on his face.

Right there, in his own office, he got down on his knees on the carpet and scooted in between my spread legs. This was just about the best sex I'd ever had. The emotional power of having this subservient exec going down on me, the fucked up situation, and the amazing cocksucking technique. Blowjob #1 had been about me fucking his face, #2 about him doing all the work. Blowjob #3 was a mix, him bobbing and me assertively pressing his head down on each downstroke. He was probably getting some spit on my trousers, and I hoped to hell I'd be able to pat it dry before my next appointment.

"Shit!" I growled in a whisper as I fed him his second meal of cum in a day. He slurped and suckled and licked my dick as I rode the aftershocks.

He finally pulled back, a proud smile on his face. I still couldn't believe a man that powerful and handsome had made me cum three times in less than 24 hours. He got up and walked back to his desk as I did my best to tuck in.

"You need a napkin?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. Then tried blotting the spit wetness from the charcoal gray fabric.

"We have about 20 minutes," he finally said. "Let's talk about why you think you'd be leadership material at William Blair."

***

I still didn't know where I stood. Robert Lyman could kill my application with the lift of his finger, I knew. If I were him, that's what I'd do. I was an HR nightmare waiting for him to step on if I joined the firm.

So as I got to my hotel room that night, I was a little moody. But I still replayed those blowjobs in my head. Especially #3. Feeling I'd already done the best - and worse - that I could for the interview, I typed Robert a message.

"My only regret was that I couldn't fuck you." I normally felt a guy out longer or waited for him to bring it up. At least if he was a married with kids type like Robert. With gay daddies you didn't have to be so coy. I was now feeling like I had nothing more to lose.

I expected radio silence, actually, but got a reply within ten minutes. "It's been a long time since I've done that."

I was hard again. "I'd go easy on you. Scout's honor."

"LOL. I think I prefer cocksucking, but you would be the kind of man to persuade me otherwise."

"What kind of man is that?"

"Jock next door type. Hung. Horny," he wrote. Then, "Your accent drives me wild, too."

I smirked. "I look forward to the chance to let you hear it again."

He took a minute to reply. I wondered if he was with his family, maybe having a late dinner, or watching TV. "You still trying to interview for the job?"

"I'm more interested in interviewing you for a good sub dad," I answered truthfully.

He didn't reply.

***

"May I speak to Cole Edwards?" the woman said. I had gotten so used to not answering phone calls, because of the spam robocalls, but the area code was a Chicago one.

"Speaking," I said. I'd just gotten back from the courts where I'd played a game of tennis one of the finance professors. He wasn't a sub daddy, and was even on the younger side of what I normally went for at 38. But he was extremely handsome and extremely open to giving me head. He sucked me off in the seat of his SUV before dropping me off at my apartment building.

"I am calling with good news, Mr. Edwards. William Blair was very impressed with your interview and would like to offer you the position."

The rest of the conversation was short but sweet. She gave me the basics of the offer - compensation, expected hire date, and the next steps. I'd have a week to give my decision. I thanked her and hung up. I was thrilled. I'd been going over the pros and the cons of the job and of Chicago, and I'd practically talked myself into thinking I didn't even want it. But now the offer was there, I realized how amazing this opportunity would be.

I wondered if Robert had pulled some strings, or if I'd gotten the position on my own merits. I thought of texting him, but figured now that I would actually be working at the company, I'd have to play it safe.

But within an hour I got a message from him. "Did I pass the interview?" was his message.

I smirked and typed back. "It's a start." I set down my phone and stripped down to shower up.

Fuck, I was gonna love Chicago.

#drakestories

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