A correction: last week I got Alex Sujong Laughlin's name wrong. Many regrets for the error.
A baby, absolutely shellacked with drool, tried to befriend the puppet.
"Getting Off With the Luddites", Sarah Thankam Mathews for n+1
Mita submitted this from the same essay:
Lord Byron, who had been twerking for some reason, now challenged Parliament on behalf of the Luddites.
As humans, our basic currency is our lifespan.
Intelligence Is the Art of Remaining Faithful under Shifting Circumstances, Alexander Kluge and Anselm Kiefer (translated by Alexander Booth)
Submitted by Brian.
We ordered something orange and natural, the kind of wine that signals you have opinions.
"Meet the Sad Wives of AI", Alessandra Ram for Wired
Via manu who did not submit the phrase "men somewhere on the AI spectrum" but wanted me to know about it.
A nervous system is a good place to keep a word warm.
"Fringe Report 0003", Tori Pastore for her blog Fringe Report
Submitted by Robin.
We build our computers the way we build our cities—over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.
Life In Code: A Personal History of Technology, Ellen Ullman
Via Sarah Friend quoting it in the documentary The End of the Internet, seen at its US premiere at the gallery space Earth on Friday.
And yet from time to time these cranks, wiles, quips, jests arouse a vague uneasiness in the King: this too is surely foreseen, actually guaranteed in the contract between King and Jester, and yet it is a little disturbing all the same, and not only because the only way to make the most of an uneasiness is to be uneasy, but precisely because the King really does become ill at ease.
The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Italo Calvino (translated by William Weaver)
Submitted by Sam.
The historical demise of legal cocaine could provide us insight into the future of AI.
"Lines of Code: Your AI is on Cocaine", Lua Vollard and Ying-Tzu Lin for Network Cultures
This first book is almost unbearably tender, its prose like someone trying to embrace a heavily injured friend.
"Maybe It Will Happen Today", Helena Fitzgerald for Oakland Review of Books
Rosebush Pruning shares DNA with both Dogtooth and a Ryan Murphy production with a traumatic brain injury.
Review of Rosebush Pruning by Leila Latif for The AV Club
We had entered the era of mascara incarceration, of detergent detention, of—and I promise this is the last one: the ham hoosegow.
"We used to be able to buy things in this country", Danny Katch in his newsletter Revolution for Cowards
My filmsets, by the way, are a NO CRYING ZONE.
Werner Herzog in an email to Jack Weisman
What are we now but voices / who promise each other a life / neither one can deliver / not for lack of wanting / but wanting won't make it so.
"Tigers", Eliza Griswold
Encountered this week on the subway via the MTA's Poetry in Motion program. I have a very distinct memory of reading this poem for the first time in 2005, in an issue of The New Yorker—maybe the first time it appeared in print? I was in high school (and the kind of pretentious teen that read my parents' copy of The New Yorker) and really had no business feeling such resonance with a short poem about a relationship not working out considering my primary mode of romantic relationship was Unrequited Yearn and thus had no frame of reference for the "not working out" part. (No disrespect to the Yearn here; she's still an all-timer but not necessarily the best lifelong way to be.) I brought it in to my high school creative writing class and the teacher, a poet himself, was so taken by "What are we now but voices" as an opening line.
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