Kickoff For May 13, 2024
Over the last several weeks, I've received an email or three asking me if I create each edition of this letter using a large language model like ChatGPT. The answer is no. Each edition is crafted with my hands on my laptop at my desk. No AI is involved. And it's going to stay that way.
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links.
A 23-Year-Old’s Quest to Be the First Matadora — Wherein we learn how an American named Honey Anne Haskin became a female bullfighter, her struggles to gain experience and acceptance, and how her dream came to a slow, sad end.
From the article:
She looked up. The crowd was a blur of white handkerchiefs, all pumping and rooting for her. Two ears were awarded. Then a tail. She passed her mom, a handful of friends, and the Portuguese American kids from her apartment back in Madrid. She handed the tail of her bull to one of them, the little boy, and the applause only continued, the white handkerchiefs waving. Then the chanting started.
AI Companies And Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like — Wherein Robert Evans visits the Consumer Electronics Show and ponders why anyone would want to shunt their decision making to chatbots (even though the tech bros definitely want us to), and what doing that means for all of us.
From the article:
[W]hat I saw this year and last year, from both excited futurist fanboys and titans of industry, is a kind of unhinged messianic fervor that compares better to Scientology than to the iPhone.
Software Is Beating The World — Wherein Ed Zitron looks at how venture capitalists focusing on growth at all costs in the tech world are creating evil companies that consume market share rather than creating that oft-advertised better world.
From the article:
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that some venture capitalists worship a machine that can create soulless facsimiles of other people’s ideas. It’s how they built billion-dollar empires without ever having any ideas of their own.
World War II ‘Rumor Clinics’ Helped America Battle Wild Gossip — Wherein we learn how a grassroots movement arose to fact check misinformation during the war and the effect it had on morale on the home front.
From the article:
[T]hese clinics collected the latest war rumors from local citizens, chose the most persistent ones, and assigned professional reporters or volunteer “rumor wardens” in the community to fact-check them. The results of these investigations would appear in the publication’s rumor clinic column, often on the front page.
Notes on Craft — Wherein Greg Jackson looks at the nuances of writing fiction, which are different from the ways in which it's often taught.
From the article:
This is hard. It is hard to devote yourself to something that makes you feel constantly like an amateur. Writing confers only to retract and stubbornly withhold its gifts. I think I am not unusual when I say that the predominant experience of writing is failure.
How the iron lung paved the way for the modern-day intensive care unit — Wherein we learn about the origins of the full-body contraption created to keep victims of polio alive, how it works, how it drove innovation in the area of assisted breathing, and how it helped form the idea of the ICU in hospitals.
From the article:
The development of iron lung technology created the concept that you could put a whole lot of people into a room and support them with this life-saving gas exchange that they needed. Thus, the idea of an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) was born.
F**k the Cult of Productivity — Wherein Joan Westenberg joins the growing chorus of people pushing back against the mindset of constant work and achievement, and discusses why that mindset is diminishing us.
From the article:
It’s not just me. I see the same exhaustion and frustration in the faces of my colleagues, my friends, the folks I spend 90% of my time around. We’re all caught in the same trap, chasing an ideal of productivity that seems to always be just out of reach. And in the process, we’re losing touch with the things that make us truly human — our creativity, our empathy, our ability to connect with others.
AWOL from Academics — Wherein Aden Barton tries to examine why students at Harvard (and perhaps universities elsewhere in the US and around the world) are devoting less time to classes and studies and more time on extracurricular activities.
From the article:
Amanda Claybaugh, dean of undergraduate education, made this point in a recent New York Times interview, saying that “Students feel the need to distinguish themselves outside the classroom because they are essentially indistinguishable inside the classroom.”
Through the Psychedelic Looking Glass — Wherein Winston Ross explores the so-called psychedelic renaissance and how a lot of that renaissance is being driven by corporate interests, looks at the good and the not-so-good of that.
From the article:
Whether they can articulate it or not, people are desperate for better ways to think and live. That’s why the renaissance is happening now. But if psychedelics in the modern era are less about the counterculture and more about money, what will that mean? Will these drugs heal, free, and enlighten us?