I am so late to this one. May is almost done. I’ve had a shit crazy month, but someone tweeted if I’d be sharing my April reads/watch/listening, so here we go:
- Constance Debre’s essay on their father and mother. I hope the paywall is still open. I’ve been trying to take my literary writing a lot more seriously. Creative writers write about their parents every other day, but this one is a bit different. I honestly cannot put it in words, but it makes you finish reading and stop for a moment to think about your own parents and all the creases and folds in their love and life. So yeah.
- I am trying to write a Noema piece and I’ve been reading many of their works. This is one of my favorites. It’s about a particular animal, the Australian dingo, which is now a wild animal, but started out as a domesticated dog breed brought in for pest control in the country. It explores the bigger question of what defines a species, the politics of conservation, and how humans alter the life of a species, both in its own life and in the bigger politics of humans themselves. Read Tristan on the fate of the dingo.
- Vox’s video on the pictures that changed America’s stance on child labor
- If a military AI-drone programmed to make the best decision for mankind gained sentience, what would it do? In this story, it destroys other AI and then itself. There’s a line I love here: “My only means of expression is through destruction.”
- Reading is a form of expression. Reading is a political act. Reading is a means of development. Reading is an act of rebellion. Read. Read. Read. Ross’ essay is about reading, so yes.
- I love essays that push my thinking on the philosophical questions of AI and creativity. This one explores how AI waters down art, and it has an example I like on how a certain shade of blue was considered royal because it was only found in Afghanistan caves, and how things, of course, changed after scientists figured out how to synthetically produce that exact shade for cheap.
“We have recontextualized the semantic apocalypse from a one-time problem with GPT-4 to a recurrent historical pattern of technology undermining the uniqueness of art. But maybe we should zoom out further. This isn’t just about art. Technology breeds hedonic adaptation, and hedonic adaptation undermines everything.”
- You know this meme about equality and equity? Yeah, turns out philosophers hate it for some fundamental flaw in how it defines itself. Read a philosopher on why.
- Yeah, another Noema essay about how when a society becomes too optimized for agency, it stops being a society. It explores this through the story of a now-closed good society department in America and its functions.
- I have been to a few cities myself, and even though this is titled as a way of writing about cities, it’s especially, more importantly, a case for how to see and experience different cities. So yes, read Rida on seeing and writing about cities.
- I’ve worked and still work a lot in the development space, and I literally read and share anything that explains, with nuance, the industrialization of poverty and underdevelopment. Johnny Harris and the poverty industrial complex
- Of course, go to an IMAX cinema and see Sinners. Please. Please. Please. I feel weird advocating/advertising elitist consumerism but like, that can be argued with more nuance. Point is, go and watch Sinners.
