I have a large collection of Library of America volumes, and I love almost all of them, but one big disappointment is American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. I’m disappointed because the collection exemplifies an attitude that I questioned in my little essay “How Not To Save the Planet.” Too many pieces in the collection are about “the Earth” or “the planet” or “Nature” or “the environment”; not enough are about specific places.
That’s because in AItopia nobody will ever go anywhere.
Jane Freilicher, The Painting Table
This Adam Neely video about his alma mater, the Berklee College of Music, which is simultaneously fascinating and immensely discouraging, provides an excellent illustration of the ways that all the institutions scrambling to get on board the AI train, in the belief that that will make them seem up-to-date and relevant, just end up giving a “How do you do, fellow kids” vibe.
To each his own, but I’d rather go to the First Church of Lucifer Antichrist than to James Talarico’s church. Say what you will about the tenets of Satanism, dude, at least it’s an ethos.
Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want | The Verge: I don’t think this is the right framing. The Valley techbros have never known what normal people want, do not care what normal people want, and do not believe that they need to know or care. They’re planning to do what they want to do in complete indifference to the preferences of anyone else.
Over at Cosmos Malick, a long post on Knight of Cups.