- Ted Gioia: 25 Propositions about the New Romanticism. Consider this the antidote to the techno-optimist
bullshitfestomanifesto. It rings true. - Chris Arnade: Engineering as Humanity’s Highest Achievement. But then so des the title of Arnade’s latest essay. The answer, of course, is est modus in rebus, including engineering.
- Ed Zitron: This Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble. “This” being the AI boom, which is putting its final putrid touches on the American rot economy.
- Lily Lynch: Europa.–Make War.–Zenitism.. Wherein Lynch attempts to triangulate one of the distant sources of the rot, which is the hypocrisy built into the foundations of the post-WW2 economy. I will add Lars von Trier’s Europa (1991) to my to-watch list.
- Kabir Chibber: What rewatching ‘The Wire’ taught me about nostalgia for a lost America. Here are more proximal sources. I remember watching the last season of The Wire in 2008 while on medical student exchange in Thailand. I spent the last two weeks on Koh Samui and passed the too-hot early afternoons in front of a tiny Asus Eee netbook (remember those?) watching Season 5, which back then I thought was too far-fetched in how it portraid the media. Maybe I should rewatch.
- Hollis Robbins: Embrace your lack. Let’s end on a positive note, with a review of another great TV show. I didn’t think that Pluribus was about LLMs at all, but Robbins makes a convincing case for a connection. May need to rewatch that one as well, and Season 2 isn’t event out yet.