This is good and true and important to remember, but whenever I imagine the lunatic narcissist who only wants to vote if they get to decide who wins I feel like throwing myself into space. Being part of the voting body is the act! As is supporting your coalition
Uggggh
This week's Library Pizza is a conversation with AWP correspondent and beloved partner (but we kept it very professional for the episode's duration, use of the word "fuckfest" notwithstanding) Tracy Rae Bowling. Listen anywhere that pods are pods. Links at librarypizza.com.
Immediately furious with myself for not typing "comms are cums"
Next time.
Not the most directly relevant here. This is all just to say, if comms are running the ship, your ship sucks and it is wasting everybody's time. Comms are a byproduct of the org's body. They are piss.
I suspect this is how it works in a shocking number of institutions, though usually less nakedly so: leadership is too weak to actually make and execute plans, so the schedule of announcements ends up being the only thing that forces anyone to do anything—just enough for the next announcement.
People didn't want to do any work, so they looked to me to decide what we would do that looked like work from the outside, so I was functionally overseeing several programs. I had to use the threat of social media posts going live to make people do the things the posts referred to.
Having served in (much lower stakes) comms positions before, you can judge pretty well which institutions have their shit together and which are totally worthless if you know whether comms come first or the actual work of the org. In my last job I might as well have been in charge most of the year.
The Strait of Hormuz is open for transit
Went to bed genuinely anxious that I would wake up and find we had dropped a nuke on Iran or something because of the president's deranged posts. This sucks and we should end it.
Topics include the AWP experience, the end of the dominance of the "Mike Type Guy" at the conference, John Waters, the virtues of Wokes 1 and 2, C. Thi Nguyen's THE SCORE, and the Midwestern habit of no-selling a tornado siren.
This week's Library Pizza is a conversation with AWP correspondent and beloved partner (but we kept it very professional for the episode's duration, use of the word "fuckfest" notwithstanding) Tracy Rae Bowling. Listen anywhere that pods are pods. Links at librarypizza.com.
there's no best in this world but Always Crashing is the best
Friends, there is a Butter Building in this trailer.
They did a Butter Building
that is the reaction of a guy who just saw a real ghost
These videos make me laugh out loud consistently, which is not generally a thing that anything but human conversation does
But I feel unambiguously that the use of our languages, our Internet, our global culture to train the AIs means that we collectively own them and must benefit from them. We can negotiate how that will be structured. It needn't be too literal. But they do belong to all of us. They should pay for UBI.
Regarding the theft of intellectual property in development: to be honest I have always had mixed feelings about this idea, because philosophically I think describing it as theft makes less sense as the models become less regurgitative.
I think we probably need heavy regulations and the ability to collectively understand the technology well enough to help determine what those regulations should be.
My current AI take is that it's genuinely getting useful in a way that changes my default stance from one of resistance (because I don't want bosses using it to discipline and terrorize labor) to one of taking a seat at the table (so we can demand that workers and people generally benefit).
Bravely questioning the consensus that it's wrong to shit on the floor in public places and roll around in the mess
Also JD Vance is there with me taking notes and nodding seriously
I am thrillingly contrarian
Yeah, every now and then you see someone defending one of these dudes by arguing that they're interesting because they question the consensus and 1) what about the world right now makes you think we have a consensus and 2) it should matter at some point that their ideas are stupid and destructive.
I have mixed feelings about boycotts as a strategy that aren't worth getting into here, but if I have an opportunity to help actually punish one of these companies I will always take it. They should fear us more. I still can't believe people didn't get together to kill Twitter.
Yeah I'm not boycotting them, they're just dead to me. Does not exist in my mind as an option.
I am extremely taken with the phrase "no process can produce the future faster than the passage of time"
Also, I like to think it's less that readers want bad things (they do, but only to the extent that people want bad things from all kinds of art, or maybe a little bit less) and more that publishers have lost all sense of vision regarding what is good and how to sell it.
I can't say I find this makes it easy but each of these choices does make it easier. (I do care how much my books sell though, if I'm honest, which isn't to say I have any control over that.)
I can't believe I underestimated how stupid they could be
I have been oversteeping my green tea
