The New York Times, July 23: A.I. Can Write Poetry, but It Struggles With Math
The New York Times, July 25: A.I. Is Getting Good at Math
A Defense of Woke
Tyler Cowen: Some commentators have suggested that the current woke movement, say from the progressive left, that it’s intellectually and ideologically an outgrowth of an earlier American Protestantism, that it has roots, in a sense, in the 17th century. Do you agree with that? . . .
Marilynn Robinson: Having lived among the American Protestants for 80 years, I would not necessarily say that that is a phenomenon that is in any way especially peculiar to us. Insofar as any social movement wishes to alleviate injustice, unhappiness, pointless cruelty — the way so many discriminations do — insofar as the point is to reduce that kind of criminal misery, really, I’m perfectly happy to adopt it as a Protestant and say, “Yes, we did that.” But I think, in fact, it is just the generous evolution of a democratic society.
Read the full transcript. Cowen’s podcast, “Conversations With Tyler,” is one of my favorites.
10 years, 10 photos
Putting the South in Your Mouth Since 1948
I didn’t eat at the Mayflower a lot when I was a student at the University of Georgia, but it was nevertheless a constant, reassuring presence in downtown Athens. Entering the restaurant — all chrome and Formica, with a long lunch counter and barstools — was like going through a time warp, back to the 1950s.
After a long absence, I returned to Athens in 2011, and was gratified to see that the Mayflower was still “putting the South in your mouth.” I went in and had breakfast and congratulated the hard-working owners on their perseverance.
I’ve been lucky enough to return to Athens and the Mayflower a few times since, including with family and friends on the morning of my wedding on North Campus. I’m sorry to see it go, and to hear that it will likely be replaced by yet another of the national chains that have opened downtown since I was a student.
If you’re anywhere near Athens, please go have a biscuit for me.
Oh So Social
How It Started, How It’s Going
“When the new Bing works, it’s not just a better search engine. It’s an entirely new way of interacting with information on the internet, one whose full implications I’m still trying to wrap my head around.”
— Kevin Roose, The New York Times, 8 February 2023
“I’m still fascinated and impressed by the new Bing, and the artificial intelligence technology (created by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT) that powers it. But I’m also deeply unsettled, even frightened, by this A.I.’s emergent abilities.”
— Kevin Roose, The New York Times, 16 February 2023
My morning reading usually includes the Economist app’s “world in brief” section, which ends with a notable quote. I particularly enjoyed this one:
“On a slow news day, we hung suspended from meathooks, dangling over the abyss. On a fast news day, it was like we had swallowed all of NASCAR and were about to crash into the wall. Either way, it felt like something a dude named Randy was in charge of.”
— Patricia Lockwood, “No One Is Talking About This”
“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”
“Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.”
“What injures the hive, injures the bee.”
— Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations”
The front page on Sunday, 24 May 2020. The list of 1,000 names — about 1 percent of those who had died of the coronavirus in the U.S. at the time it was published — continued inside.
The online presentation is also striking.
At Least We Had Fun
“If you spend a lifetime in journalism, you may have some stories that matter more, you may do work that is of greater importance, and you may serve some greater societal purpose. But you will never have as much fun as when you and the other sleep-deprived and beerstained wonders around you published your own damn newspaper.”
— David Simon, The Diamondback, March 10, 2020
David Simon feels about his experiences at his college newspaper the way I do about mine.
‘Media Is Broken’
“Journalism about matters of public importance either isn’t actually essential, or it needs a more reliable support system, because in most instances its sources of commercial revenue have collapsed, possibly forever.”
— Nicholas Lemann, The New York Review of Books, February 27, 2020
This Is London
Taken on 20 July 2019 from Golden Lane Estate on the roof of Great Arthur House, which was the tallest residential building in London when it was completed in 1957.
(Top, looking west, with the BT Tower in the distance; from left, Crescent House; looking southeast, toward the City; looking south-southwest, featuring two of the Barbican’s residential towers and St. Paul’s Cathedral.)
“In the ’80s, I was sent to teach etiquette to yuppies in Leeds . . . and one of the things they wanted to learn how to eat was the artichoke. They were very worried about eating artichokes. And I used to say, ‘Well, use your hands . . . you can’t eat it any other way. You’ve just got to pull the leaves off, dip them in your sauce and eat them. And only when you get to the bottom, when you get to the heart of the artichoke, do you pick up your knife and fork.’ They couldn’t understand this at all. And I said, ‘Well, you try eating it any other way.’
“But the yuppie is gone, and the artichoke remains.”
‘Subverting America’
“What would constitute tyranny in the United States? It would involve reducing Congress to a peripheral role in making Government policy, discrediting the political opposition, suppressing the more aggressive forms of dissent, intimidating television, radio and the press, staffing the courts with one’s own supporters, and centralizing all of the executive power in the hands of the President and his totally dependent aides.”
— New York Times editorial, June 17, 1973
“In hell there is no mystery cause in mystery there is always hope.”
— Ali Smith, “How to Be Both”
Podcast listening
I’ve recently returned from a week of vacation in the U.S., which involved 10 hours of free time on a roundtrip trans-Atlantic flight. I won’t say I “caught up” on podcasts, but I made a very small dent in my backlog. My current rotation, which, as ever, features a heavy dose of tech, self-improvement and pop culture:
Art of Manliness: A goofy title but some useful advice. Specifically, I recommend this episode about decluttering your digital life.
Automators: As someone who spends a fair amount of time at a computer, I’m interested in off-loading repetitive tasks to the machine. Nevertheless, I’m a novice, and this podcast offers a good introduction with practical tips.
Conversations With Tyler: I’ve been a fan of Tyler Cowen’s since discovering his guide to ethnic restaurants in the D.C. area years ago. He’s an economist with wide-ranging interests whose interviews with similarly smart people rarely disappoint.
The Ezra Klein Show: Another podcast in the category of “smart people discuss the things they know about.” I’ve admired Ezra since his time at the Washington Post, where we overlapped but didn’t meet.
The Incomparable: I’m a nerd/geek who enjoys pop culture, and this is a podcast by nerds/geeks who enjoy pop culture.
Literary Friction: Book talk and recommendations. Good for getting me out of my comfort zone and introducing me to the unfamiliar.
Reply All: The popular celebration of all that’s wacky, weird and wonderful on the internet, with a human heart.
“Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.”
— George Eliot, “Middlemarch”
“. . . there was no golden era when evildoers did their business and loudly proclaimed it as such.”
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me”
“All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear.”
— Ann Patchett, “Bel Canto”