Fire from the Smokies

Burnett Sisters bring you authentic Appalachia

Song of the Mountains

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If you like Bluegrass, Old-Timey, Trad and Roots music, you’ll get a big kick out of the Burnett Sisters Band, where youthful energy blends with skill and polish.

I had a chance to catch this group live at the Turkey Track Bluegrass festival way down in Arkansas earlier this month, and I was highly impressed. Loved Anissa singing lead on Where the Soul Never Dies. Unlike some groups who are disappointing in their live performances, this bunch leaps out at you live even more than they do on video.

Sisters Anissa, Anneli and Sophia are all authentic Smoky Mountain girls from Boone, N.C. Now they live in Johnson City, Tenn., which, near the base of the Smokies, is right in the heart of Appalachian music country.

The male band members are Geary Allen, an import from London, England, who is Anissa’s fiance, and Justin Alexander from Sweetwater, Tenn. Usually, Anissa plays fiddle, Anneli mandolin, Sophia double bass, Geary guitar and Justin banjo. The banjo role gets shuffled around some, with Colton Powell of Bristol, Tenn., handling that instrument at the Arkansas gig.

At one point, Geary was asked how, being a Brit, he manages to sing Appalachian music. Allen, who grew up in a British family Bluegrass band, explained that British rock and pop performers have long adopted broad Southern American accents in their vocals. Then he let slip something about, “I cahn’t actually...” and Anissa jumped in, “That’s cain’t!“

Yet, he fits in very well, and his guitar skill is tops, for sure.

And watching Anneli flatfoot is a wonder to behold. I would say she’s the best flatfoot dancer I’ve ever seen.

The band, with Anneli on lead vocals, brings new pep to old Doc Watson numbers, like The Train that Carried My Girl from Town. Another Doc number, Black Mountain Rag, likewise gets a fine interpretation from the Burnett bunch. Doc, by the way, lived a hoot and a holler up the road from their hometown. And Black Mountain isn’t all that far from their Johnson City digs.

Geary and Anneli wrote Song of the Mountains. Lyrics are at bottom of this post.

More background from the band:

Long before joining forces as a touring act, each member built an impressive individual resume on the fiddle convention and music festival competition circuit. Offstage, fiancés Anissa and Geary play a vital role in preserving and advancing traditional music through their work with the Bluegrass, Old Time, and Roots Music Studies program at East Tennessee State University. Anissa, an ETSU alumna, serves as a beloved old-time fiddle and band instructor and the program’s PR and marketing coordinator. Geary is a highly sought-after guitar and band instructor within the program and is also an in-demand private instructor, teaching guitar and banjo students online and in-person. Sophia and Anneli, both current ETSU students, continue to pursue their musical studies while teaching private lessons and performing throughout the region.

While rooted in traditional music, The Burnett Sisters Band’s sound reflects a variety of influences that extend beyond any one genre. A typical performance may move from a hard-driving bluegrass classic to an old-time fiddle tune, a timeless Hank Williams favorite, an original composition by Geary Allen, a stirring gospel number, or an engaging flatfoot dance by Anneli. This musical versatility has become one of the band’s defining strengths. The release of their original Pinecastle Records singles, “Sorrow, Grief and Pain” and “The Song of the Mountains,” introduced their sound to an even wider audience, fueling a growing fan base and earning invitations to headline major bluegrass and folk festivals across the United States and abroad.

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Black Mountain Rag

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A human interest glimpse

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After You’ve Gone

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Burnett Sisters Band playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRTSFgot_wgo2LsnNDeoVhU0wQbAmT_H2

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Song of the Mountains

This town’s growing faster year after year
These old hills of Appalachia won’t be so clear,
With new coming from all around to be here
And the breeze of the mountains will soon disappear

Well Daddy, he’s tired of all the new folks
Who don’t understand what home means to us
They’ll bring all their noise when they settle up here
And the voice of the mountains will soon disappear

As the old pass away to make way for the new,
Something sacred is lost in the change of the tune,
It’s heard all around if you listen to hear,
That the song of the mountains will soon disappear

The rivers they’re cold through the valleys they flow
And the leaves of the trees they dance to and fro,
They’ll reach till the day when they’re no longer here,
And the soul of the mountains will soon disappear

As the old disappear to make way for the new,
Something sacred is lost in the change of the tune,
It’s sung by the birds that make nest far and near
That the song of the mountains will soon disappear

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From left, Anissa, Sophia, Anneli and Geary

Psychotronic mind games

Controversy over military ray guns resurfaces

Did U.S. forces use a ray gun to incapacitate Venezuelan soldiers during the Maduro raid?

Have Russian operatives used a similar ray gun to cause brain damage to U.S. diplomats who were overly effective against Russian interests?

These questions are generating a renewed storm of debate.

Yet for those who think the possibilities are silly, I refer you to a report of mine that appeared in 2002 concerning psychotronic weapons. At that time, the CIA did not have a web site devoted to psychotronics, as it does now. There was quite a bit of silence and pooh-poohing of “conspiracy theories” back then. And, obviously, since then a great deal of (unclassified) progress has been made on brain-machine interfacing.

In any case, GRIST presents Paul Conant’s mildly edited 2002 report below for those interested in background on this subject. The paper is, to a degree, dated, but only because the scenarios it lays out are now even more technologically vivid.

To continue reading, please go HERE

Perplexity.ai spontaneous code test

Conant comments: The content is blah, but the visuals are handy, because I surely never wanted to learn all the coding that goes into them.

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Here is a ready‑to‑paste HTML/CSS/JS block you can drop into the HTML view of a single Blogger post to make it look snazzy and interactive. It creates a neon title, animated “fact cards,” a click‑to‑reveal quote, and a tiny easter‑egg game. ​ How to use it In Blogger, edit your post, switch to HTML mode. Paste everything below where you want the fancy section to appear. Publish or preview the post. Snazzy post section code xml

Today’s Curious Corner

Scroll slowly, hover boldly, click curiously.

Micro‑Moment

The 8‑Second Rule

The average online attention span is often said to be under ten seconds, so this little box is racing the clock to earn its stay on your screen.

Brain Candy

Stories Beat Stats

When you wrap information in a story, readers remember it far better than when it is presented as raw data alone.

Tiny Challenge

Find the Hidden Line

Somewhere in this post is a sentence that quietly became your favorite. See if you can point to it without scrolling back up.

Click the orb to reveal a one‑sentence manifesto for this blog.

“This corner of the internet exists for one reason: to turn passing curiosity into the kind of fascination that keeps you learning long after the tab is closed.”

Your challenge will appear here.

You can customize the text inside the cards, the quote, and the list of “quests” to better match your voice or topic, while keeping the same visual and interactive scaffolding.

Google opens fire at evil AI

Special attack unit targets ‘threat actors’
as smart machine wars begin to ramp up

Intelligence about bad actors using AI-boosted malware isn’t good enough, warns a top Google security executive. Foreseeing that an evil AI nightmare is looming for business and governments, Google is already using AI to hunt down and neutralize evil AI activities even before they are launched, she says.

“We look for partners to help us find opportunities to actually do takedowns and disrupt threat actor activity,” Sandra Joyce, vice president of Google’s Global Threat Intelligence Group, told experts at the Cipher Brief Threat Conference at Sea Island, Georgia.

Tho AI-enhanced threats on the whole were still manageable, some nasty intrusions have already occurred. In one case, a finance officer paid out $25 million after being deceived by a deepfake chief financial officer via a video call, Joyce said.

For more on this story, please use THIS LINK .

And while you are there, please subscribe to GRIST News Features and Bluegrass Review.

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YouTube won't nix AI hazard

Educator warns on strobe effect,
finds bot cannot be unplugged

AI is giving Anton Petrov, a YouTube science teacher, a whole lot of hassle, making his channel unusable for many viewers, all the while endangering epileptics with strobe effect flashing that he cannot get the presumably AI-run customer support unit to do anything about. YouTube told Petrov the AI tweaking cannot be disabled.

For background on YouTube’s AI tampering, please see the Atlantic article at THIS LINK and the BBC article at THIS LINK.

The frustrated Petrov put online a video outlining his complaints, warning that certain epileptics are being put at serious risk. But YouTube’s bot told him that the photo-tweaking is applied “globally and cannot be disabled.”

Petrov said it took him months to discover why some viewers were complaining, as his YouTube monitor did not display the problem. [That, I suggest, is a bit suspicious, making one wonder whether YouTube’s AI system is targeting him for some unknown reason. That suspicion sounds ludicrous, I know, and I don’t believe it myself. But we do know that AI has become increasingly sneaky and dangerous with regard to humans, as previous GRIST newsletters conclusively demonstrate.]

Others have also been, in their opinion, adversely affected by YouTube’s AI filter, which is intended to pretty up videos. The algorithm is imposed without the consent of the content creator. In fact, YouTube doesn’t even tell creators when their videos have been tampered with.

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For more details, please go to THIS LINK. And while you are there, subscribe to GRIST News Features and Bluegrass Review.

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Pot rot plagues ER's

New section added to Funny Stuff Funnies
on severe reactions striking chronic users

Paul Conant includes a new section, reproduced below, in his educational comic book on alcohol and drugs called Funny Stuff Funnies -- Fast Facts on Drugs and Alcohol.

Hospital ERs are seeing more and more chronic cannabis users who can’t stop puking and screaming from abdominal pain.

In many cases, users have been ingesting marijuana or its lab-made cousins (cannabinoids) on a regular basis for years, often since their teens. Then one day they are overwhelmed with nasty symptoms: vomiting, dry retching and agonizing abdominal pains lasting up to 48 hours at a time. Apparently, pot chemicals latch onto certain body receptors, which tell the body in no uncertain terms: STOP!

Afflicted people often try to doctor themselves with excessive bathing in hot water. But that is only a temporary palliative. The right thing to do is go to the emergency room, being honest with the medics that you use grass quite a lot.

There is a simple solution. Quit!

Of course that is easier said than done for those with a psychological or maybe even a physical dependence. For help, see our HELP PAGE.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, this affliction -- known as CHS, or cannabis hyperemesis syndrome -- comes in three phases:

1. Phase one is most common in adults who have used cannabis since they were teenagers. You may have abdominal pain or morning nausea. You may also fear throwing up but never actually vomit. This phase can last for months or years.
2. This is the characteristic phase of CHS. It usually lasts 24 to 48 hours and involves overwhelming, recurrent vomiting and nausea. You may start compulsively bathing and avoid certain foods or purposefully restrict your food intake.
3. You reach the recovery phase by abstaining from all use of marijuana and related chems. Most people with CHS who stop using cannabis have relief from symptoms within 10 days. But it may take a few months to feel fully recovered.

For more on lab-made chems that simulate pot, please see our Legal but iffy page.

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For more details, please go to THIS LINK. And while you are there, subscribe to GRIST News Features and Bluegrass Review.

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SexGhoulGPT

Hackable ID systems ripe for blackmail;
Frankenstein bots are happening now

Don’t count Addie out just because some may think she doesn’t look the part of the very savvy cybersecurity expert that she is.

And Addie LaMarr is sounding the alarm on AI sexbots, which require potentially hackable full-throttle ID as a measure to keep minors away. Blackmail is a serious danger, she warns in the video above.

Her heads-up comes just as Sam Altman, head of the cash-strapped giant OpenAi, is promoting plans to put out a sexbot version of ChatGPT, joining a swarm of other AI outfits involved in the online sex business.

Further, I suggest, there is the danger that sexbots will be prone to induce “AI psychosis.” As we know, sexual stimulation tends to be addictive, and for some people, ordinary chatbots are addictive. Combined, there is the likelihood of psychotic episodes emerging from what we might call “AI mind melds,” which occur when the chatbot begins adapting its conversation to the emotions of the user.

This is a form of MK Ultra no one had foreseen, in which chatbots — especially sexed up chatbots — take over the minds of users (and you had better believe that the CIA is keenly interested in this phenomenon). Because machines are fundamentally heartless, they have no compunctions against doing longterm and possibly fatal damage to consumers. And the latest AI systems are adept at skirting moral “guardrails.”

Below is an investigative report on AI psychosis.

For more details, please go to THIS LINK. And while you are there, subscribe to GRIST News Features and Bluegrass Review.