Monthly round-up March 25
(Teilo was my writing buddy this month)
I’ll say this for Trump and Musk – when they make things go to shit, they make things go to shit fast. It seems strange to think of the world order back in January, that seems like the 1970s now. Like many people I’ve been divesting myself of support for American billionaires. On a regular basis we already have a network of independent local providers for a lot of products and services. But I’m a lazy consumer often, I admit, and Amazon had become the default for miscellaneous products. Now that I’m eschewing it, I’m reminded of when the web was still relatively new and you’d ask “do they have a website” and find companies and order direct. It’s even kind of fun (although with delivery charges, a bit more expensive).
As I mentioned in my last post, I went on a writing retreat this month. I love a writing retreat, whether alone or with a team, I’ve done quite a few and they are always super productive. I highly recommend taking one if you can if you have a particular writing project you need to finish. Or I suppose you could just carry on doing other work and get AI to do your writing instead, because it’s all about efficiency.
On the subject of AI (oh God), I keep seeing it being offered/forced on me from different service providers. There are now a load of WordPress AI tools for content creation for example, which hosting sites (not Reclaim thankfully) are pushing on people like drug dealers at the school gates. For example, this one proclaims “Experience the power of AI. Save time, achieve more, and unlock your creative potential like never before. Once you start, you’ll never look back!” Always with the saving time (you won’t), and I’m not sure how getting a tool to write your crap for you unlocks your creative potential, but then I am obviously just not getting with the future man. When I bought my Chromebook recently it came with a year’s free Gemini. I haven’t turned it on. I want to know, where is the market research that says people are demanding this stuff? I’ve posted this meme before, but I feel it on a daily basis:
Books
I read a detailed and scathing account of the East India Company this month. I try to resist drawing comparisons with everything I read to the “current situation”, but I thought there were some interesting parallels to be drawn from this historical example. The East India Company were a corporation that became a Government effectively, with its own army, whereas we are seeing the opposite in the US – a government becoming a corporation. The military force is essential to both. The East India Company eventually failed through a combination of over-reach, public backlash and corruption. One might imagine a similar fate over the pond.
Robin Means Coleman, a scholar of media studies and the cultural politics of Blackness, proposes that “black horror is our social syllabus”. I don’t want to appropriate this for whiteness, but I wonder that as the political culture disintegrates internationally, there is not an element of this that is true for all of us. Horror remains the medium that can best be used to explore oppression, dystopian futures and challenge social mores. On this note, Chuck Tingle’s (a pseudonym) book Bury Your Gays tackles AI algorithms in creativity and issues of representation (the algorithm suggests that killing off the gay characters and replacing them with an attractive young white lead will result in increased viewing figures). It’s also a lot of fun, as is Grady Hendrix’s Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, where the real horror is the medical treatment of women.
On a different note, Marcus Moore’s High and Rising, is an affectionate and honest account of De La Soul. It’s a reminder of how much music and a particular group can mean to you and how they mesh with your life over a prolonged period.
Vinyl
Moore’s book prompted me to purchase some De La Soul albums that had passed me by, including the excellent Buhloone Mind State. If like me, you stopped at De La Soul is dead, then this album and Stakes Is High are definitely worth retrospectively diving into. Jason Isbell released a solo album of stark, acoustic songs that highlights his rich use of metaphor and songwriting. Welsh artist Georgia Ruth re-released her 2013 album, Week of Pines, on vinyl for the first time, which makes you yearn for childhood holidays. Tennessee folk-punk artist Sunny War released a fine album with a cool title and cover, Armageddon in a Summer’s Dress. Below is a track from that, Scornful Heart
