@jeffsharlet
Bestselling author of THE UNDERTOW: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, THE FAMILY, also a Netflix series, C St, THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS, & SWEET HEAVEN WHEN I DIE. AI stole them all. Professing @ Dartmouth. That's not my cat.
I've been re-reading "Joe Gould's Secret" since 1993, have taught it 8 or 9 times, & only this time does a student comment on Mitchell's "fear of time & space" open my eyes. Time, I knew. But "space." The city both men loved to wander, then both locked away in rooms, the psych ward & the office.
I've said nothing about not taking kids away from abusive parents. I'm talking about AI. My single mom worked long hours & was distracted when she was home. I knew parents who were always present & attentive. By the logic of AI, they were "better." Not for me.
I made one -- Sagan, by which I stand. The AI's passage is "better"; but what is a decontextualized passage "better" at? My opinion doesn't matter there: Carl Sagan was better at being Carl Sagan than a computer ever could be, even if it really was intelligent, even if it was "smarter."
I think I've had a lot of students who thought that...
Asking who is better is a question so dumb it's nearly suicidal. Who is better at being human? We are. If it could be shown someone would be a "better" parent to your child, would you think your child should be taken away? I am better at being me than AI, every time.
This was such a good job by the NYT's Shawn McCreesh.
He asked a very pointed and direct question to Trump about the school bombing, leading the president to corner himself (was he claiming the US sold Iran Tomahawks???) before admitting he doesn't "know enough" and will abide by the final report.
For me? No. See the thread in which that post is embedded. Imagine how much a writer makes. Halve that, and then halve it again. Netflix, for a book adaptation, isn't life-changing money at all.
Oh, you're ahead of me! But I'll get there. If it wasn't so profane, I'd build a course around it. Then again, if it wasn't so profane, it wouldn't be worth building a course around.
No, but working on a $7 million advance book called "Kids Today: Get off My Lawn," with a CBS News tie-in deal.
Slightly reductive, but it appears to be fascist on fascist violence. Young fascism-inclined fools who wrap themselves in an idiot's version of Islam attacking middle-aged fascist fools who wrap themselves in an idiot's version of Christianity.
It's just one story, one illustration of all the terrible things that have happened. It's been a week since the very great noise/drone artist Siavash Amini posted this, from where he lives Tehran. There has been no update since. It could be for any number of reasons. We just don't know.
I remember a student who said he’d like to be an English prof but couldn’t live on that little money. “Oh IF you get a tenure job it’s not bad at all, how much do think we make?” He looked embarrassed for me. “Like, only 500?” As in K. I told him he was right, it wasn’t the job for him.
Seasoned journalist here, bestsellers & glossies. Never made this much. Of course, I forgot “investments.” You know, the way us journalists all have successful restaurants and crypto portfolios on the side.
“Buy books,” period, would be enough. “But there’s so much free content online!”
Many pundits, journalists, and some professors helped legitimate the basic canard here—that DEI is reverse leftist discrimination. Arbitrary, purely ideological censorship was the inevitable result. In my view, they should engage in serious reflection on professional ethics and accountability.
A few weeks ago, I saw a group of people in a Facebook comments section trying to figure out if a picture of Ilhan Omar was real. (It was not.) I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I wrote about what I'm calling "strategic memes against public participation." www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Guess we'll learn more, but it seems to me a sad story. 18, 19 year old foolish kids, genuinely disgusted by fascists like Jake Lang, googling around online. Doubt they have any real understanding of what ISIS was. More likely accelerationist masculinist youth culture. They wrecked their own lives.
I don't think our rebukes from the left hurt them at all. I'm more worried about the very real left-to-right slide that figures like Candace Owens -- or Greenwald, or Taibbi, or Blumenthal -- are skilled at facilitating.
Goes without saying Post editorial board are Islamophobic, racist bigots, fascists or fascist fellow travelers. But Mamdani wasn't the target, the fascist Islamophobic protesters were, targets of fools who cld just have easily hurt Mamdani.
What's left is a meme, the main weapon of self-destruction--that's what these fools did--of our times.
You know I agree this is an evil & stupid war. But, friend, what is the value in quoting Kirk, who comes to that conclusion from a fascist position, by definition malleable to the desires of power? You must know some less-informed will say, "He has a point," & from there over to Candace Owens...
The guy who voices Master Chief from the video game "Halo," who was featured in a White House meme video showing missiles blowing people up in Iran, calls it "disgusting and juvenile war porn" wapo.st/3NhffGm
My recollection is Seeger and the Weavers were then following party line. Anyway—Mayer’s book is brilliant. Being wrong in ‘39 doesn’t invalidate that.
Sounds like wrong call. Wasn’t the only one. Pete Seeger, Wood Guthrie…
Breaking: SC newspaper verifies portions of Trump accuser's story. Textbook journalism. Local journalism. Support your local news outlets. www.postandcourier.com/news/epstein...
“Here at the Institute”
Seconded
If you were presented a ballot with Anthropic or Hegseth and forced to vote… I dunno which is lesser. But anyway good news is we’re not in that bind.
It is indeed a bread and puppeteer
Well, there are “other” alphabets, but I meant the rest of this one. You know what I meant. But I get anxious about my typos.