Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1595
Reading list roundup. The coming Advil wars. Secret poaching societies. Reclusive band interviews. Too much about AI.
Hello hello hello. Good morning.
It’s article day!
To recap: I have this whole complicated system wherein whenever I come across a long-ish article, paper, etc. that I want to read but do not have the time at the moment, I send a PDF to my Kindle Scribe. I do this by way of an Automator script on my Mac and a Shortcut on my phone (though the Shortcut broke last week, gotta investigate that). Automator script turns the webpage into PDF and emails it to my Kindle email address. I like this process because my Kindle Scribe has a pen and you can mark up, highlight, etc the PDF and mail it back to yourself. And I am blind, so I hate doing this on my phone.
Then, when I have spare time I read all the articles in a batch. Most of the spare time I allocate to this is on airplanes. Which is a problem because I have no idea when I am going to be on an airplane again. I have been experimenting with reading some of the articles on my phone while at the Playground with Jane on Sunday mornings why did I capitalize “playground” there I don’t know. But I have been doing that on my phone, and, like I said, that is unpleasant. Seems weird to bring a Kindle to the playground but, you know, maybe. But, then, more anti-social to the other parents. A dilemma!
Anyway, I just finished a nice long trans-continental trip and read articles in both directions and mostly finished my reading queue and it feels very good.
SO, I bring to you the ultra-rare “link roundup” edition of GMHHAY, because I generally don’t like newsletters that give you a bunch of homework by giving you a bunch more to read I have enough to read, thank you. You don’t have to read any of these if you don’t want to.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
We are listening to Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith this morning, new album, Gush, it is great. Moody atmospheric synthpop with a hint of more sophisticated electronica that is not a very nice thing to say about synthpop Rick, it can be moody and atmospheric too you know. You are right, Rick. I am sorry.
Without further ado:
Recommended to me by a WITI Media Monday edition by Ben Schott: The Paul McCartney/Heather Mills divorce judgement. Oh man was this a great read. Ben himself explains the allure better than I could:
This may sound strange, but not only are these documents remarkably well written (cool, brisk, and analytical), they often counter the prevailing social-media analysis of a trial and its sentencing. (Professionally, I use their clarity and structure as the model for my consultancy work.) They can also be darkly comic;
Just great. Strong recommend. Makes me like Macca more. I would like to call particular attention to the (hilarious) ultimate fate of the “Norwegian” cabin, and the dark irony of the judge saying Macca was probably gonna slow down and tour less as he got older and his rights catalog would probably be worth less as the years went by. This was before Hipgnosis re-invigorated the world of blockbuster rights purchases, and Macca went back on the road for literal years, raking in the dough. No sympathy for Heather but that guy is earning these days.
Next: Recommended by Buzz Anderson: This fantastic Wired article about Peter Theil, René Girard, Wolfgang Palaver and Carl Schmitt. It sheds light on Theil in general, his weird-ass obsession with the antichrist, and makes you generally sad at how this supposedly smart guy completely missed the boat on his hero’s supposed primary message. Real downer but super illuminating.
Also read the UN Human Rights Council’s analysis on Israel and Gaza which was as horrific as you would assume. If I were judging it without a heart as a work among many of the genre, I would say it does not have quite the sting as the ICJ’s judgement, but a) it does have the benefit of another year’s worth of evidence, and b) as ever, the part that matters the most, that really gets you, are the quotes from the Israeli leadership denoting intent. That’s the part that really gets you. You know, aside from all the dead kids.
The always-excellent-but-sometimes-slightly-too-Silicon-Valley-libertarian Statecraft has an excellent interview with a gentleman named Dan Wang, who has written a book entitled Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future that sounds very good, very good interview, wherein I learned that China makes 90% of all the world’s Ibuprofen.
I read this as my plane was landing at PDX, turned off airplane mode, did some quick math, and spent $400 ish dollars to purchase enough Ibuprofen to last me the rest of my life. I feel very good about this particular bit of prepperism, no shame. Now, did Trump then immediately go to Asia and supposedly settle the trade war? Did the Senate grow a spine last night and vote to cancel a (single) tarrif? Sure, sure, but how many trade wars has this been with China now for that dude? How much longer does he have in office? Didn’t he just throw a ten percent additioanl tarriff on Canada because he got butthurt about a non-fiction advertisement? It will happen again!
You think China pulled out the big guns this time when they cut off our access to rare earth metals? Let me ask you this: if you had to choose in your life between microchips and painkillers, which would you choose? We are so fucked. We can never, ever win a trade war with China. These people all going on and on about making TSMC factories in Arizona or rare earth metal mines in Alaska or Wyoming? Make a fucking Advil factory. Also they control 70% of our acetaminophen, btw. I’ll be stocking up there, but just enough to get through any shortage before whatever non-Chinese factory can ramp up. Maybe a couple thousand pills.
You think I’m crazy but who will be laughing with the Advil Wars break out buddy.
This Damon Krukowski piece on viewing the end of US Empire through the prism of a touring musician was very evocative and fascinating.
Speaking of Galaxie 500, this excellent interview in the always excellent The Quietus with all three of the members is the first time I can think of in literal decades that they have all been interviewed together.
Speaking of the first interview in decades from a hugely influential band, Radiohead have been interviewed together for the first time that anyone in their management can remember. I would rate the Galaxie 500 interview higher, and I am a bit shocked at Yorke’s guilelessness about the modern media environment but it is still a good piece.
This article in The New York Times about under-age sex trafficking on Figueroa street in Los Angeles is a condemnation of pretty much all levels of government, and a harrowing, disturbing read. Just wrenching. It inpsired me to donate to the only organization that seems to be doing anything about it, Run 2 Rescue, and I hope you consider donating as well.
Speaking of harrowing articles about kids getting fucked up by adults, this article about the suicide of a fourteen year-old boy brought on by his addiction to an AI, sexed-up and horny Daenerys Targaryen created by the AI chat app Character.AI is infuriating and educating. Infuriating for the obvious reasons, but also for the colossal misjudgment of the blinkered founders who left Google so they could escape Google’s Safety protocols when Google saw danger in what they were creating and refused to launch it.
I would read more about all this corporate intrigue, because it seems to me that Google pretty much invented ChatGPT before OpenAI, but didn’t launch it because of safety concerns. This of course makes me respect Google more, except once OpenAI ate their lunch at launch, they completely caved, and bribed the aforementioned blinkered founders with a half billion dollars to come back to Google and they licensed the suicide-inducing tech from them. Just great.
(There is also a very interesting segment on the impending court cases deciding whether or not AI outputs count as free speech and the ramifications of an adverse ruling there are somewhat horrifying to me).
Speaking of AI here is an article in NY Mag about supposedly smart parents thinking about how to raise kids in a world of AI. It is… I mean, I will grant these parents are doing what they think is best for their kids. I won’t say 100% but, um, 80% of the article is a bunch of people who are basically white tiger moms who never question their own deep-seeded needs for their kids to “succeed,” though a few thankfully do. I am getting so cynical with the current zeitgeist pablum that every one of these Silicon Valley tools is spouting that I worry that when some new innovation or insight that is actually good comes along, I will eschew it. And get old. There are a few worthy insights in here amongst the chaff. Makes you think if anything else. Thank you Chad, for posting it in the Slack.
Speaking of AI I got around to reading the “recent” “seminal” paper AI As Normal Technology, by Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor. It is as good as everyone says, and I mostly agree with all of it, though I find their lack of wrestling with the IP theft somewhat concerning. People love to just forget about the IP theft. But their central arguments about how AI is not going to destroy us all, and is more akin to the internet, railroads and electricity as a technology seems right and reassuring.
It makes an excellent point about folk wisdom and insider knowledge at companies and how that will never, ever be consumed by LLMs, because people already don’t write that shit down, in order to preserve their jobs, and this is obviously a potentially very fertile area for labor action against AI: Don’t ever write down how to do your job. Give them nothing to consume.
It really sort of brought full-circle a thing I have been thinking about for years, which is how much knowledge is not actually on the internet. We love to say that all knowledge is on the internet, but there are vast bodies of knowledge that are not on the public web: folk wisdom, consulting research, non-public corporate information, trade secrets, old books, most academic research, paywalled articles. If you stop and think about it, it becomes very clear that most LLMs are trained off of the chaff, while the wheat is hidden behind paywalls and passwords. They are, by their very nature, dumb. That ought to concern us.
Speaking of resistance, I read this great seminal article by anthropologist and political scientist James C Scott: Every Day Forms of Resistance. It identifies approaches and impact of anonymous, soft forms of resistance to authoritarianism and governments, such as poaching, tax evasion, company sabotage, withholding information, etc.
You know, not for any reason, just found it interesting is all.
(Also this is the article I mentioned yesterday that talked about “Secret Poaching Fraternities” and man I want to join a medieval poaching fraternity.)
Other than these, read a ton of the always excellent Grocery Nerd newsletter, The Checkout and all of Ed Zitron’s recent lovely screeds agaist AI. Particularly enjoyed his somewhat older How to Talk to an AI Booster entry in the series. That guy is so gloriously acerbic I just love it. I swear for the past year or two, every time my flight is landing, I find myself in the middle of a Zitron polemic. Very satisfying.
Do I have a Jane anecdote for the day? She opened her presents from her Auntie Val yesterday oh right I gotta send Val the photos of that. Then we went to get Tacos only I got a fajita quesadilla and it had sliced tomatoes in it I am sorry sliced tomatoes do not belong in a fajita thing I kept thinking they were red peppers. Ick. Who does that.
I leave you not with a playlist today but with an hour long video about cash register technology that I found absolutely mesmerizing and could not stop watching my god this fucking ruled.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.