Writing update (7.16.23)
Welcome, ye blighted souls.
If you’re new, welcome. This “Writing Update” is a semi-regular post that collects all the work I managed to finish in the past two weeks. You also get bonus content like a cute pet pic. Pretty great deal I think.
Here’s a link to the previous installment, in case you missed it.
A friend this week called me an “anti-futurist” and I genuinely appreciated that because I think it pretty much nails the persona I try to cultivate. It’s nice to feel seen.
Here’s how I see it: I’m being dragged by my feet into the future as I claw and scrabble at the hardwood with my fingernails. I can’t stop it from happening but I can make a lot of noise about it and maybe leave some visible scratches.
Do I like some things about the future? Yeah duh I’m not a psycho. (I’ll try to think of something and get back to you stat.) But I don’t relish the direction of our current timeline.
Readers of this newsletter already know about my dislike of generative AI, and it’s distressing to see the journalism industry — where so many of my friends work — tripping over itself to embrace these kinds of unreliable bullshit generators financed by Silicon Valley tech moguls who have an open disdain for the media. It kinda feels like a devil’s bargain but even worse because you’re supposed to at least get some worldly pleasures when you sell your soul.
Plus it is tough to stay cheery in a world where the three hottest days ever recorded happened earlier this month.
But I’m still here and you’re still here and I’ll keep sending you this newsletter until the seas rise and the future swallows us whole.
Subscribe and also share this newsletter with your friends to help me embrace my true Luddite self.
Everything I've published recently:
The book people just want a nice place (Journal of Post American Studies)
The men in charge of Meta are still out here talking about internet community like we’re all naive young millennials in 2006 and not aging millennials jaded by years of terrible decisions from terrible tech giants. The head of Instagram would like you to believe that Threads is supposed to be about cultivating a “vibrant community of creators that’s really culturally relevant.” But I don’t believe him!
Review of Nod Away, Vol. 1 by Joshua Cotter (Instagram / Goodreads)
This is an enigmatic and dense science fiction narrative. The story is difficult to condense into a brief review, a task hampered by the fact that this is the first of seven planned volumes.
Review of A Creature Wanting Form by Luke O’Neil (Instagram / Goodreads)
I never considered whether despair could be a literary genre, but if I had to put this book onto a little shelf in the bookstore and label it, despair is the word I'd choose.
Review of The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour (Instagram / Goodreads)
Richard Seymour's The Twittering Machine is an important book for understanding the two-way relationship between humans and social media — the way we shape it, and the way it shapes us.
Woah look at that:
That’s right. I’ve tricked 100 blighted souls into believing my bookstagram is worth following. And I did it without posting thirst traps. Who said the American Dream was dead?
Here’s to another 100. Spread the word.