JB Minton

1. NOVEL VS MOVIE “Long Gone”

2. CLINT EASTWOOD TURNED 95 YESTERDAY!

3. MY NEW AI RESEARCH BUDDY

4. Hacks Season Finale

5. Mission Impossible & Tom Cruise

6. The Transition Between Andor and Rogue One

7. The Mill Food Recycler

* https://www.mill.com

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With Honors

I Never Got To Say Goodbye To My Best Friend

What I’m Working On

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The Church of R.E.M.

I finally started reading Peter Ames Carlin's biography of the band R.E.M., titled The Name Of This Band Is R.E.M. This book is a revelation about how making art is messy and uncomfortable. Michael Stipe was supposed to be a quiet visual artist. He is multi-talented, but at the beginning of his artistic awakening, the fine art he practiced was focused on presenting a still image to a viewer. But something in him also roared to step up on stage and sing songs that moved the world.

This was a band that should not have been. None of them were trained musicians, but all loved music enough to show up every day and play together until they sounded like what they heard in their hearts before they started playing their instruments.

Mostly, I feel jealous when reading this excellent book. I didn’t listen to R.E.M. until I read the five-star review of Automatic For The People in Rolling Stone Magazine. I only knew they were good because someone else told me they were worth listening to, some expert in a magazine I bought from a grocery store. But I was hooked once I paid my money and put that CD in my 6-disc Aiwa with that sweet moving graphic equalizer. It was some of the most beautiful music I’d heard then. It meant something to me. My experience with R.E.M. may have started with someone else’s opinion, but that became a journey of over thirty years.

R.E.M.’s music means more to me now than it did back then. Great music has a way of aging like wine. My favorite moment from this band's origin story is their debut public performance. It wasn’t in a club, a bar, or any sanctioned venue—it was in the shadow of stained glass and forgotten pews. Bohemian artsy kids lived in a former church turned into a cheap tenement college apartment in Athens, Georgia, where the walls peeled like paper and the floors creaked to pop like an old man’s knees.

Curious and aimless in the way only youth allows, one girl found a loose board in the back of her closet. The drywall gave way when she tugged at it, revealing a dark, cavernous space beyond. It was the abandoned nave of the church, long sealed off and left to dust and ghosts. The adventurous kids strung up Christmas lights, dragged in salvaged couches and folding chairs, and somehow managed to run electricity into the space. They turned a hole in the darkness into a place to perform art and enjoy the thrill of being alive with nothing to do but sing about it. People don’t seize that opportunity often enough, but some people do, and now and then, their art changes the world.

That first performance of four weirdos who somehow found each other to make music for 30 years together wasn’t about being discovered or becoming famous for that brief, shining hour. R.E.M. worked their asses off for ten years before that review got into the Rolling Stone, which then got into my brain.

And it doesn’t matter when you become an R.E.M. fan. You may listen to their music for the first time after you read this, and that would be an honor if my words helped create new R.E.M. fans, because that would be me passing art onto others like that Rolling Stone magazine did for me all those years ago.

R.E.M. wrote a song for every emotion a human can feel. They made the pain of life sound beautiful and haunting. I am grateful for their art.

Reading about the early fans of R.E.M. being the college kids who just loved listening to and watching a cool, artsy band make music that mattered and that they could dance to reminds me of my version of R.E.M., which was a great band called Miranda Sound. I will write more about their music here in the future, but look them up. Check out their record Western Reserve.

Four Seasons

Four Seasons on Netflix is a tender, funny, and meaningful eight-episode dramedy. It’s a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Andor

Cassian Andor is the third most important character in Star Wars. The order of importance goes like this:

* Anakin Skywalker

* Luke Skywalker

* Cassian Andor

What I’m Working On

* I am in full-on design mode for my Twin Peaks book. This is going to be a loooooooooooong book. I’m only on Part 6, and it’s already 130 pages. Because I’m adding the Twin Peaks Class for each of the 18 parts, that adds about 60 pages to the book. I am enjoying the labor of designing a book again. I am good at this. I could never draw or paint a picture, but I can use a computer to create visuals. As a writer, I deeply love words and how they look on the page next to one another. Words are art, and I enjoy putting the words together and placing them on a page for readers. This will be an expensive book, probably over $100. It will be beautiful, and I want it to be the primary text used in advanced studies courses for analyzing, interpreting, and enjoying Twin Peaks The Return as a great artwork.

* I’m reading two other books right now besides the R.E.M. book. It’s difficult because it requires discipline to show up, sit down, and read, but I limit myself to 10 pages daily in each book. It’s a slow, steady slog, but it gets the books read.

* In my “pay the mortgage” profession, I’m still learning more about AI Agents working with people in optimized channels of digital labor. I continue to help build a future where people won’t have to work at meaningless labor. I work for a future where people have time and resources to create art like the artists discussed in this week’s meditations.

Thanks for letting me into your front parlor to rap on Sunday evening.

See you next week.

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Mother's Day

Twin Peaks

Andor

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Today’s Meditations:

* Generation X Strikes Back - Is Artificial Intelligence just one more technological revolution Generation X will endure? (FREE)

* Growing Joy Means Expanding Consciousness - You have one purpose on this planet, and it isn’t paying taxes or scrolling Instagram. (PAID)

* Remembering Johnny Carson - I finished Bill Zehme’s Carson Biography and learned a few things. (PAID)

* Don’t Die Lonely - It’s okay to be alone, but if you’re lonely, that’s on you. (PAID)

Meditation 1: Generation X Strikes Back

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Kate invited me to participate in a panel discussion she cleverly titled “GRAY-I” which was focused on Generation X and Generative AI. She gathered an incredible group together, and we had a revelatory conversation. I took notes on the topics I mentioned and the stories I told, and used that as source material to write an essay I published earlier this week, linked below.

With all the mostly melodramatic fervor and fear over AI upsetting the current disorder in the world, few people are speaking about the human factor that AI will never be able to create successfully: Human Emotional Intelligence. AI may get close to mimicking Human EI, but there is only one place in nature where that rare commodity is manufactured: the human mind and heart working together like a cosmic engine. Human beings must insert emotional intelligence into AI prompts at every level. Failing to do so will yield the social operations of humanity over to machines, and we will each falter from small mistakes.

At the very least, Generation X is a bridge between culture wars and technological ludditism. And if your reactionary stance against emerging technology is that it’s always bad, do the world a favor and shut up so you can learn.

There’s so much noise in the world, please don’t add more. Start by reading this:

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There are benefits to joining the spiritual resistance.

Last year, I presented on stage at a technology conference. The topic was AI for an aging population, and it was controversial. I asked the audience how many had been in business for ten years or more. Most raised their hands. Then I asked them how many had twenty years. More than half the hands went down. Thirty? About five stayed up. Forty? One stayed up. I shook my head in awe at the social and technological changes those in the thirty and forty-year category had endured.

When I graduated from high school, the Dewey Decimal System was our information retrieval technology—a search system that required physical presence, patience, and curiosity, not algorithms and LLMs. Dewey was created in 1876 and adopted at scale in America by the early 1900s. Not much changed in the nine decades until it caught up with me in my high school and local libraries.

Fellow Gen Xers once knew how to use any library without a computer because we were trained to learn and respect finding information within a structured methodology in the real world as physical objects. Our imaginations and art supplies limited what we did with the retrieved data. Generation X learned technology meant finding facts and trusting a structure reflecting our species' shared commitment to provable knowledge and the common good. That mindset hasn't left us, but it has evolved. However, our future seems more uncertain now than in the golden age of Beverly Hills 90210 and West Coast \ East Coast Gangster Rap wars.

From Card Catalogs to AI: The Gen X Bridge

I'm an artist, author, and enterprise productivity expert specializing in CRM technology for over two decades. Today, I focus on the new conversational workstreams transforming operations across every industry. When I coach executives on becoming ethical leaders in the AI era, I draw directly from my experience as a Gen Xer who has lived through multiple technological revolutions.

This is where Generation X's unique advantage emerges: we are technological amphibians, equally comfortable in analog and digital worlds. We began our careers with paper files and rotary phones, but adapted to each new digital wave—from dial-up internet to cloud computing. We're the generation that learned to type on typewriters but transitioned to keyboards without missing a beat. This adaptability isn't just a technical skill; it's a survival mindset that views technology as a tool rather than an identity. And the rest of the world would do well to learn from Generation X’s collective behavior and our attitude towards change.

Recently, I helped a Fortune 500 client implement a new AI-powered customer service platform. The younger team members focused exclusively on the technical specifications, while the boomers expressed skepticism about changing established processes. As a Gen Xer, I bridged this gap by showing how the AI could enhance rather than replace human connections, preserving the relationship values the boomers prioritized while leveraging the efficiency the younger staff sought. This is the Gen X advantage in action: we understand the technical and human systems they're designed to serve.

AI as Creative Thought Partner: A Personal Case Study

My commitment to the common good is why my biggest concerns with AI are—and will remain—security and ethics.

* I don't want to misuse the power of this tremendous tool.

* I don't want to inadvertently misappropriate someone else's work without proper reference and acknowledgment.

* I don't want to do anything with Generative AI that I wouldn't want done with my ideas, information products, and services.

But beyond these concerns, I've discovered AI's power as a creative thought partner. Here's how it works in my process: When developing a new framework for organizational change or an idea, I begin by outlining my core insights based on general research, hours of discovery interviews with key stakeholders, and decades of solution design, implementation, and consulting experience. I then use AI as an interviewer, asking it to challenge my assumptions and identify potential blind spots in my thinking.

For example, when working on my recent white paper about conversational labor in the modern workplace, the AI asked me targeted questions about how my framework would apply to companies with multi-generational workforces. This dialogue helped me articulate connections I hadn't consciously made between technological adoption patterns and organizational culture. The AI didn't generate the ideas—it enabled me to excavate and refine my thinking through a structured conversation. This approach has extended the range of my mind while keeping human judgment in control.

In short, I want artificial intelligence to fill in the gaps in my thinking because my brain works creatively, not analytically. Everyone can use AI for this exact purpose, at scale, though our needs will have nuances particular to the variations of ways in which we see the world. This means we can use AI to break past our individual and cultural biases and find solutions for a world with scarce resources that have alternative uses.

The Data Reality Every Business Faces

As a business professional, I have watched companies struggle with a challenge now critical in the AI era: data integrity. For two decades, I've observed enterprise companies avoid the massive headache of cleaning up their fragmented data ecosystems—integrating siloed information, normalizing inconsistent formats, cleansing errors, and making unified information consistently available across their business processes.

Cleaning up a company's data when it is rooted in disconnected silos run by disparate ancient technologies is like handing a 15th-century monk all the 12th Century Bibles in print and telling them to collate them into a single new hand-written text but, "Make it pretty and easier to read." Given the world's available resources before the printing press was invented, that project would be too complex, take too long, and cost too much.

But what happened when someone else used a new fandangled printing press to standardize a cheap Bible they could sell to fuel a revolution between worshippers and the Church? Christianity experienced a bloody sectarian divide that lasted for centuries because that technology was not introduced strategically in coordination with the powerful institutions of the day.

The business parallel is clear: every AI project is first a data project. Companies that don't undertake these fundamental data efforts choose not to hand-copy while waiting for a competitor with a printing press to disrupt them. Many established companies will fall as mid-market organizations born in the scalable, elastic cloud start with consistent data architectures, powering agentic AI to create compounding advantages that will eat market share with insatiable hunger.

Like the Protestant Revolution, the social order could be significantly affected if we don’t do this properly.

Technical Logic Meets Artistic Sensibility

Generation X artists can see the logic of code and language poetry in ways unique to our transitional experience. We grew up writing in notebooks and on typewriters but learned digital tools as young adults. This gives us an intuitive understanding of the structured logic underlying programming and the fluid creativity that drives artistic expression.

When I write code for an AI prompt or design a conversational flow, I draw on the same conceptual frameworks I use when writing poetry, planning a novel, or composing music. Each creative act requires understanding patterns, syntax, and the interplay between structure and expression. I see how language can be precise and evocative—a perspective from learning language before algorithms, but adapting to algorithmic thinking while still young enough to integrate it as naturally as possible.

This dual technical fluency allows Gen X creators to work with AI in neither blindly techno-optimistic nor reflexively resistant ways. We can appreciate the tool while maintaining healthy skepticism about its limitations. We understand that AI, like any medium, has unique affordances and constraints that shape what we can express through it.

A Call to Action: The Gen X Leadership Imperative

The world doesn't need more AI evangelists or Luddites—it needs guides who understand these powerful tools' technical possibilities and human implications. This is where Generation X must step up.

If you're a Gen Xer reading this, recognize that your lived experience of technological adaptation is a superpower in today's environment. Your ability to navigate constant change while focusing on human values isn't just personally valuable—it's socially essential. The world needs your leadership as AI transforms education, healthcare, business, and creative expression.

The one action AI will never be able to perform is to generate authentic emotional intelligence. It will mimic it, and hopefully it will be accurate most of the time. Still, human beings are the only creatures in the universe that generate human emotional intelligence, which we are being called to inject into these cold system prompts.

So, here's what we must do:

* Mentor younger professionals on integrating AI ethically into workflows while preserving human judgment and creativity.

* Help organizations at every level understand that AI implementation requires both technical expertise and cultural wisdom.

* Create art and business solutions demonstrating how AI can enhance rather than replace human connection.

* Make sure artists get paid for the work they do, in perpetuity.

Generation X was not born to pass tests. We've always been here to create a new world, and that's what we're about to do again by applying technology and the human heart to solving problems that institutions of economics, politics, and religion have utterly failed to address.

So, hand us that screwdriver and get your ass to work—or shut up and get out of the way. The AI revolution needs guides who've survived technological upheavals, and Generation X has been preparing for this moment our entire lives.

JB Minton is a writer, enterprise productivity expert, and cultural critic who explores the moral dimensions of business, technology, and art. His work blends sharp analysis with storytelling to inspire more ethical and imaginative futures.

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Today’s Meditations:

1. Oral History Is Not Proper Art Criticism (FREE)

2. My new old truck (Paid Subs after 1st Paragraph)

3. Reflecting on my third annual Men’s Transcendental Meditation Retreat in Purusha Campus, West Virginia (Paid Subs)

4. “How Do I Get Enlightened?” By Dr. Tony Nader (Youtube )

Empty Your Wheelbarrow! Learn to Meditate

The Resurrection of the Red Room Podcast

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Dear Readers,

Not every day do we get to step back and reflect on the life and legacy of a true artistic pioneer. Recently, I had the privilege of sitting down with my dear friend and collaborator, John Thorne, for a podcast that explored the extraordinary world of David Lynch. This artist defied convention, reshaped cinema, and inspired generations. Today, I’m excited to share that conversation with you in our latest podcast episode, embedded below.

For those who may not know, John Thorne is a true gem in the Twin Peaks and Lynchian community. His decades of scholarly work and unwavering passion for exploring Lynch’s art have established him as an authoritative voice. However, his generosity and enthusiasm as a friend and co-host truly shine during conversations. In our podcast, In Our House Now: An Inquiry Into Twin Peaks The Return (20 episodes aired 2020-2021), John and I explored profound themes in David Lynch’s magnum opus.

However, this reunion podcast isn't a critical analysis of art; instead, it celebrates David Lynch’s artistic journey. We explore his initial experiments combining moving images with static paintings and the profoundly personal, surreal vision in Eraserhead, highlighting his extensive artistic impact that reaches beyond film and television.

This conversation was not only about Lynch’s art but also about what his work signifies for us as individuals. We contemplated mystery, duality, and the beauty of embracing life’s unknowable questions. Lynch’s creations—the haunting moments in Blue Velvet or the transcendental meditations of Twin Peaks: The Return—invite us to sit uncomfortably and discover light in the darkness.

However, what made this episode so special wasn’t just the content we discussed; it was the act of sharing it with John. Our friendship, which started from a mutual admiration for Lynch’s work, has become a testament to the profound way art connects people. Discussing Lynch with my friend John felt like a small way to honor his life—an opportunity to express our gratitude for the inspiration David Lynch has given us and the millions of lives he has touched through his art and dedication to Human Peace (and by extension, World Peace).

In the spirit of that connection, I invite you—my readers and listeners—to celebrate Lynch’s life and legacy. Watch the podcast video or listen to the audio feed, then share your thoughts and engage in the conversation below. Let’s make this space reflect the Lynchian ethos: a place for curiosity, wonder, and constructive dialogue.

As we continue to honor David Lynch’s artistic journey, let us remember the words Lynch often shared: “Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.” Lynch’s profound moral lesson was that life is filled with dark mysteries that the limited human mind will never grasp, but if we concentrate on the beauty surrounding us in the present moment, we may uncover the peace and inspiration that Lynch sought to communicate through his dark art.

Thank you for joining John and me on this journey. Your insights and perspectives are meaningful, and we look forward to your thoughts.

What mattered to you about David Lynch’s Life of Art? Please consider leaving a comment in this public thread.

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Join me for my next live video in the app

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