Book Review: Running Deep: Bravery, Survival, and the True Story of the Deadliest Submarine in World War II by Tom Clavin. This book is about the USS Tang, a US World War II submarine operating in the Pacific. Tang sank more ships than any other US submarine during the war. However, on October 24, 1944, at the end of its most successful cruise, its 24th and final torpedo malfunctioned. Immediately after leaving the sub, the torpedo went into a tight turn that within seconds caused it to hit the surfaced submarine which fatally damaged the vessel and caused it to rapidly sink. A handful of crew members who had been topside, including its captain, Richard O’Kane (from New Hampshire), were thrown into the water and survived. Due to water tight doors, nearly three dozen crew were alive within the sunken sub which came to rest 180 feet from the ocean’s surface. About a dozen of those men used the escape hatch and emergency breathing gear to leave the submerged sub. Only five of them survived. Topside, a Japanese ship picked up the survivors who were incarcerated in a brutal prison camp for the remainder of the war. All survived, but just barely. After liberation and recuperation, the men tried to get on with their lives. Commander O’Kane was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. The author explains that of all the methods of military service during World War II, being onboard a submarine was the deadliest with 1 out of 5 sailors who served in subs perishing during the war. This was a fascinating book that shows how these submarines operated and how the crews showed enormous courage in performing their duties despite the peril. And of course there’s a Lowell connection: The author explained that another US submarine, the USS Tullibee, also was sunk by its own torpedo. One sailor who was topside was thrown in the water, was rescued, imprisoned and liberated at the end of the war. He explained what had happened. One member of the crew who perished was Torpedoman Paul Vigeant of Lowell, Massachusetts. 

Movie Review: Train Dreams – I watched Train Dreams on Netflix this week, mostly because it is nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. I thought it was a tremendous movie although I’d rate One Battle After Another and Sinners above it in the Best Picture race. Set in Idaho in the early 20th century, the film follows an itinerant logger who starts a family but follows the seasonal work. Tragedy strikes midway through the movie and he is left to carry on. Much of the movie dips into philosophy, how humans fit within the natural world, and the impact of modernization. When the movie finished, I wondered what else it was about. A promotional ad which said, “Train Dreams is about the big picture of existence itself and finding our place in it – the small moments of life that accumulate into the immensity of all we are.” The same ad praised the movie’s cinematography (it’s nominated for an Oscar for that, too). Retracing the movie in my mind, there were plenty of scenes of scenery that likely packed more punch on a big cinema screen than on my family room TV. (Still, the convenience of watching the film at home outweighed the loss of a big screen for me.) Here’s how Alissa Wilkerson finished her NYT review: “The grand sweep of our lives, “Train Dreams” suggests, is the sort of thing we can only begin to understand when we’re reaching life’s end, and even then we may only grasp it dimly. Like the boots nailed to the tree, human life is fleeting in the face of the earth’s long life span, the forests that were there before we existed and will still be there long after we’re gone, if we don’t tear them apart first.”

Globe Arts One Special Thing – MIT’s Deepfake about a Moon Disaster – In Sunday’s Globe Arts section, Mark Feeney wrote about an AI created “deepfake” film from the MIT Museum. When US astronauts first went to the moon, no one was sure if they would survive. In case they didn’t, speech writer William Safire composed remarks for President Richard Nixon to give in the aftermath of the tragedy. The astronauts survived and the speech was never given, but its text survives. MIT has taken that text and, using artificial intelligence, has created a “deepfake” short film of President Nixon “giving” the speech on TV. The film is on YouTube. The early parts are actual documentary footage but the end has Nixon reading the Safire-written speech. It looks disturbingly realistic and provides a glimpse of the challenges we confront from the ability of AI to distort reality at a time when Americans have proven quite capable of disturbing reality without any boost from AI. 

Digital Newsletter: Platformer – I subscribe to Platformer, a digital newsletter founded by Casey Newton, a prominent technology journalist. The newsletter covers the intersection of big tech and democracy. Last week’s newsletter, “The authoritarian AI crisis has arrived,” covers the Pentagon’s fight with the AI company Anthropic. That company is one of several that have publicly available AI models. Antropic’s model is called Claude; others include OpenAI’s ChatGPT” and Google’s Gemini. Thus far, only Claude has been permitted to operate on classified networks operated by the Pentagon. Anthropic is also seen as the most restrained and socially responsible company in the AI field which is at the root of its dispute with Secretary of War Hegseth. Anthropic insists that it must limit Claude’s ability to perform “autonomous killings” (as in the AI directs a weapons system to kill someone without any human agency involved) and also Claude’s ability to conduct mass surveillance of residents of the United States. Hegseth is outraged by these limitations and insists that Anthropic must allow Claude to perform “any lawful” use. Of course since there are no laws limiting the use of AI, that just means that Hegseth can use the AI model to do anything he wants including killing people on its own and do mass surveillance of the regime’s “enemies.” In retaliation, Hegseth has declared Anthropic to be a “supply chain” risk which means the Pentagon can no longer do business with Anthropic, but also that any other companies that do business with Anthropic will also be banned from doing business with the Pentagon.