2023
Aack! A Millennial’s Audio Odyssey Through the ‘Cathy’ Comic Strip . “The comedian Jamie Loftus returns with another limited-run podcast, this time exploring white boomer women through the lens of a much-maligned comic strip.” I loved Loftus’s multi-part podcast about the Cathy comic strip and its creator, Cathy Guisewhite, though I found the Boomer-bashing infuriating at times.
Turn Off Push Notifications. App developers want to blast you with trivial notifications all day, every day. The best way to take your attention back is to get rid of notifications altogether (or nearly so).
I’m extremely online, but nearly all my mobile notifications are switched off. There’s nothing Facebook has to say to me that needs my immediate attention.
Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles
I read Anne Rice’s “Interview With the Vampire” when I was a teen-ager, and did not find it erotic, and didn’t realize it was intended to be erotic. The eroticism just went right over my head. I thought it was long-winded and Louis was a self-absorbed whiner. But I did finish the book.
When I was in my 20s, I read “The Vampire Lestat” and loved it. Again: If it was intended to be erotic, I didn’t realize it or even register it. I grooved on it as a science fiction nerd. It turned a science fiction cliche on its head—the belief that a person from the past, transported to the present, would have his brain fried by all the technology and science. Lestat tells us he grew up in the French Enlightenment—science, technology, sexual freedom and exalting the common people were all familiar to him.
I loved that the book “Interview With the Vampire” existed in the Vampire Chronicles universe, and Lestat felt about that book exactly as I did.
I loved the idea of vampires as heroes. Or at least protagonists.
And I loved the Deep Time history of it. You think events in the Enlightenment were long ago? How about Ancient Rome? OK, you think that’s old—how about ancient Egypt? I’m still a sucker for that kind of thing today. I’m currently reading Kage Baker’s series about the Company; she makes ancient Egypt look like current events.
The Incredibly Strange Career of Anne Rice
Anne Rice is known for her Vampire Chronicles, including “Interview With the Vampire” and “The Vampire Lestat.” She also wrote bestselling BDSM erotica and two historical novels about Jesus, and fought in a fan war against her own movie. The Our Opinions Are Correct podcast discusses her career and the movie and TV adaptations of her work., including the “Interview With the Vampire” TV series.
I tried to draw a turkey in spray cheese for the dog’s Thanksgiving dinner last night.
Spray cheese is not my medium.
However, the dog was not unhappy with the outcome.
AI developers have turned science fiction stories about godlike supercomputers into a religion, leading to the current infighting at OpenAI. “The field of AI … is profoundly shaped by cultish debates among people with some very strange beliefs.” Crooked Timber: What OpenAI shares with Scientology
OpenAI’s alignment problem. The company’s board failed the institution. But did it have a point?
Casey Newton defends – or at least explains – the OpenAI board’s position. The company was supposed to be moving slowly and avoiding the harms of AI while harnessing good for humanity. Altman was running the company as a fast-track start up.
Whenever I see an Econoline van, I think of a short story that Joe Haldeman wrote about a man who sets off a series of nuclear bombs in cities. Econoline vans play a role in the conspiracy. I read that story 50 years ago, but I still think of that story every time I see one of those vans.
“Doctor Who” showrunner Russell Davies says he grew up twice-closeted, hiding that he was gay and that he was a Doctor Who fan. For him, the two are tied together. “I’d walk home from school wishing I could turn the corner and see that blue box and run inside to escape everything. I don’t think that wish has quite gone.”
Recent college graduates are drinking less. It’s even a movement with a name, NoLo—no-alcohol, low-alcohol.
I’ve never been a heavy drinker, and over time I drink less and less. I rarely like the effect alcohol has on me.
But I do sometimes like a drink. I expect I’ll have one or two on Thanksgiving.
Search Engine: Why don't we eat people?
Today I learned that on Christopher Columbus’s second voyage to the Americas, he encountered a friendly tribe, the Arawaks—“fitted to be ruled and to be set to work to cultivate the land and do all else that may be necessary”—that warned him about another tribe, the Caribs, that were vicious and ate their enemies. We get the word “cannibalism” from their name. Queen Isabella of Spain said it was OK to treat the Caribs harshly because of their vile barbaric practices.
Search Engine podcast host PJ Vogt and his guest, writer Kelefa Sanneh, note that the Spaniards themselves were practicing something vile and barbaric—slavery. Finding slaves was a primary purpose of Columbus’s mission.
Also, the Europeans were big hypocrites because they themselves practiced cannibalism—grinding up mummies and consuming the powder as medicine. When mummies from Egypt became hard to procure, Europeans figured out how to accelerate mummification in fresh human corpses.
Search Engine: Why don’t we eat people?
Why the Senate is increasingly skewed on race, parties and policy The Senate overrepresents Republicans and disenfranches people of color and people who live in large states. The Washington Post, by the numbers:
If you are a resident of California, with 68 times the population of Wyoming, your influence in the Senate is paltry.