Tag: quotes
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What AI is and isn’t
Mandy Brown with a barnburning breakdown of what “AI” is and isn’t: “Artificial intelligence” is not a technology. A chef’s knife is a technology, as are the practices around its use in the kitchen. A tank is a technology, as are the ways a tank is deployed in war. Both can kill, but one cannot…
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On lawns
Oliver Milman writing for Noema on the cult of the American lawn: “The American lawn is a thing, and it is American, deeply American,” Paul Robbins, an expert in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of the book “Lawn People,” told me. “There becomes a kind of local social pressure to…
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Tyrannies and typewriters
Richard Polt typecasting about why we need typewriters in our age of AI and authoritarianism: When you choose to write with a typewriter, you are quixotically, nobly flying in the face of the assumption that good = fast, efficient, perfect, and productive. Type your gloriously imperfect, expending ineffiencient time and energy — and declare that…
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That poor little tree
Ken Priebe on why A Charlie Brown Christmas works so well: There are so many reasons why this perennial special from 1965 shouldn’t work. It’s weird, sloppy, has no real plot, its storyline meanders all over the place, and it feels like it was edited with a chainsaw. … And yet, this is exactly why…
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A giddy mass of waltzing things
A quote about the earth from Orbital by Samantha Harvey: It’s not peripheral and it’s not the centre; it’s not everything and it’s not nothing, but it seems much more than something. It’s made of rock but appears from here as gleam and ether, a nimble planet that moves three ways—in rotation on its axis,…
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True centrism
Kai Brach, in his Dense Discovery newsletter, responding to an essay about the political “center”: True centrism shouldn’t simply find two opposing positions and place itself in the middle of them. Instead, it should anchor itself in core principles of human decency, compassion, moral integrity, etc. This version of centrism isn’t about always falling neatly…
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There are no coincidences
Austin Kleon on clues and curiosity: Something I learned a long time ago is that it is a great help to the artist to believe that there are no coincidences. One way to boost your curiosity is to just assume that everything in life is a clue left from the universe for further investigation. Follow…
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What is art for?
Nick Wolterstorff on the purpose of art (via Alan Jacobs): What then is art for? What purpose underlies this human universal? One of my fundamental theses is that this question, so often posed, must be rejected rather than answered. The question assumes that there is such a thing as the purpose of art. That assumption…
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Barbenheimer: screenwriting edition
Well, not exactly, but Christopher Nolan’s recent appearance on the Scriptnotes podcast was excellent and inspired me to check out Greta Gerwig’s 2020 appearance for Little Women too. Both have really thoughtful things to say about the craft of writing and how it relates to moviemaking. Here’s Gerwig on the ache of absence in Little…
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Cut the intro
Robin Rendle preaching the truth: Here’s one way to improve the thing you’re writing: cut the intro. Writing about the symbiosis between trees and mushrooms? Don’t start talking about how humanity has depended on trees since the blah blah blah. Just jump right in! Talking about new features in your app? Don’t start with the…
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Opposite views
From Mari Andrew’s 100 Things I Know: I know how easy it is to get disoriented. When you don’t want to get lost on your way back, look backwards frequently. Everything looks completely different from the opposite view. From the Okee Dokee Brothers’ “Possum’s Point of View”: Hangin’ upside down I learned The thing I…
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Journalism is just the art of capturing behavior
The opening monologue of the 2003 film Shattered Glass: Some reporters think it’s political content that makes a story memorable. I think it’s the people you find… their quirks, their flaws, what makes them funny, what makes them human. Journalism is just the art of capturing behavior. You have to know who you’re writing for.…
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Towards a better masculinity
The Washington Post essay by Christine Emba called “Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness” has made the rounds over the last month, and for good reason. Emba takes stock of the currently tenuous state of American masculinity, with insightful commentary from Of Boys and Men author Richard Reeves and professor Scott…
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The Church of ‘Bull Durham’
Really enjoyed reading Ron Shelton’s The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham, which I followed up with a rewatch of Bull Durham. He has such a wry, matter-of-fact style and perspective on his careers, most notably minor-league baseball player and movie writer-director. Some quotes… On being an athlete with intellectual curiosities: Around this…
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Quotes of the moment
An ongoing series “To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.” – Viggo Mortensen “The modern dogma is comfort…
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Those tender trenches
Wanted to spotlight something from A.O. Scott’s interview with Steven Spielberg, where he talks about collaborating with screenwriter Tony Kushner on The Fabelmans: It’s hard to hold someone’s hand over Zoom, but Tony did a good job in giving me the kind of comfort I needed when we were tapping into moments in my life,…
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In praise of microhistories
Clive Thompson on the appeal of microhistories: When you drill down deeply into a single subject, you nearly always realize: Holy crap, this is more complex than I’d have thought. This is true of just about any subject, right? And it’s exactly the opposite feeling you get from a “big” book, which strives to make…
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Maybe join a book club instead
Adam Mastroianni, in an article on the myths of political hatred: I think there is one very good reason to cap our political hatred: it makes us miserable. Not because we’re always coming to blows with our political enemies—the data suggests that doesn’t happen very often—but because we’re always thinking about them. I’ve seen perfectly…