Here we are in the last weekly round-up of the year. I am in the middle of a two-week break from work, which was long overdue, and not even remotely adequate. But the holidays are a break from work, not really a restful, relaxing time, except in the spare moments when not being sociable.
Reading
I just finished Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and it was wonderful and weird. This was my first Pynchon, and I may need to wait a bit before diving in again.
Writing
I don’t have much to report here. Maybe in the second week of my vacation I will have some energy and focus.
Weekly Writing Prompt
Subject: Dreams, Robots
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Literary Fiction
Listening
Traffic, “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys,” from their 1971 album of the same name. This song entered my head through a silly little meme which was fed to me by the Facebook algorithm. And it is beautiful!
Interesting Links
- “The Politics Of Superintelligence” (James O’Sullivan, Noema)
- “The “machinal bypass” and how we’re using AI to avoid ourselves” (Deanna M. Kaplan, Roman Palitsky, and Charles L. Raison, Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences)
- The pulled 60 Minute segment on CECOT
- “The Kill Switch” (Parker Molloy, The Present Age)
- “American Reality from Chinese Perspective” (Karl Sanchez) – The real poverty line is $140,000 a year.