“Ship time” is the time aboard the ship, and is the only time that matters when on a cruise. Ship time has nothing to do with real time. I never came across anyone on Southwest Airlines who wasn’t either returning from or going to a cruise. I know this because I talk to people as a distraction during take off. I met a young pianist on a flight from Fort Lauderdale to Nashville. I noticed her style, which was why I sat next to her. She was different, which was why I was surprised when she told me she’d just taken a job playing piano at a restaurant on Holland America.
“The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power.” –E.M. Forster, by way of Janet Malcolm
As allegations of LLM use rock the literary and media worlds, linguists explain what really distinguishes human and machine writing, while n
In fact, our capacity for innovation might ultimately be the thing that truly distinguishes human writing – particularly the literary kind – from AI. “The whole point of an LLM is that it’s trained on existing language. So it’s always retro,” says Stockwell. “I could get an AI and say ‘write me a short story in the style of Virginia Woolf’ and it’ll do a decent job. But what you can’t say is ‘write me a story in the unique style of the next great, serious literary innovator’. It couldn’t possibly do that.”
That’s because, once again, it lacks the social environment, and the body, that give rise to characteristically human motivations. “Why does somebody do something new in an art form like literary writing? It can be out of annoyance or irritation with what’s gone before. Or it’s because somebody sees things in a different way than the run of the mill, or sometimes just because people are antsy and wanting to do something different, or a little bit crazy or isolated.”
The are plenty of examples from history, says Stockwell: “After the bureaucracy and uniformity of the first world war, you’ve got this sudden, huge, antithetical artistic movement in the rise of surrealism and Dada; similarly, after the austerity of the second world war you get the psychedelic movement, art and literature changes again, quite radically. So there always seems to be that sort of kicking against the norms. It’s hard to think how you would program an AI to do that, because AI works on an existing large body of material. It’s the embodiment of the conservative-with-a-small-c status quo.”
"He wanted to paint the sea, the sky, the mountain, even while knowing it was impossible to do so without automatically painting the social meaning of the sea, the sky, the mountain. The blurred landscape — teasing us with the pleasures of the pastoral, and then letting it melt before our eyes — was nothing less than a moral argument for how to look and how to think when every route seemed barred. You had to do it ambivalently, self-critically, and while risking irrelevance or cliché. But it could be done."
Jonathan Han reviews a bracing debut collection of poems that navigates the translations of a transnational life.
Dedicated to the art of translation, Xuela Zhang’s To Compare is an ambitious debut. A book of poetry split into seven parts, there is no overarching narrative. What holds it all together is how Zhang treats the theme of translation, not just as a vehicle between languages, but as a way of life.
Bryan Barcena takes a trip to Reno to review an exhibition of art and ecology and understand how it fits into the fractured ecology of the r
The following section, “Altered Lands and the Anthropocene,” devoted to landscape photography, proves unexpectedly sobering and sublime, and features works drawn mostly from the museum’s growing collection of art focused on the land. Among the offerings is Edward Burtynsky’s photo diptych Oxford Tire Pile #9a and #9b, Westley, California, USA, 1999, which captures an oceanic accretion of filthy discarded tires; Robert Adams’s Burning Oil Sludge, Boulder County, Colorado, 1974, depicting a vast landscape punctuated by oil derricks as a giant black plume of smoke pollutes the sky; and Rondal Partridge’s Pave it and Paint it Green, Yosemite National Park, ca. 1965, a picture of a parking lot choked by cars sitting in the shadow of Yosemite’s El Capitan. It feels incorrect to suggest that viewing these works incites pleasure. Yet each is so engaging in its framing, perspective, and depictions of the harm people have inflicted on the planet—it’s like watching a car crash, gruesome yet impossible to look away from.
You see, our house is cold and empty now, and each night so willingly we walk into it.
My Father
October 30, the day before my father died, we argued about a piece of paper. Around this time, I made an announcement regarding my identity on social media, and I wrote or called close friends to tell them about it. No one was surprised, which surprised me. I sent a letter to my parents in Wisconsin to let them know about my changes. My letter was clear and decisive; it also expressed a deep desire for understanding and compassion. As an adult, I didn’t need their approval, but I hoped they would be glad. Because of their conservative politics and Catholicism, I did not expect them to be ecstatic.
I knew that a part of him, if it could be said that there are parts of people, could be loving.
On the phone that day in October, the day before he died, my father and I didn’t talk about my decision to change my life. From my parents’ perspective, a part of me, if it could be said there were parts, was dying, the part that once had long black hair past my shoulders, the part that did the dishes without complaint. I grew up in a household with traditional gender roles. I never saw my mother drive the car with my father in the passenger seat, not once. My father didn’t want to talk about what was happening, what I had chosen for myself. He tended to avoid uncomfortable subjects in his quiet, Midwestern Catholic way. He was obsessed with church, charity, airplanes, and forgiveness. A Buddhist therapist wrote: “It doesn’t work that way. You’re not made of parts.” Recently my father had stopped saying “I love you” when we ended our conversations on the phone. He was friendly enough when discussing financial matters, but preoccupied and anxious, almost as if he were calculating how to end the call as quickly as possible. “Is that it?” he would ask.
The day before he died, in our last phone conversation, the subject of my changes, my transformation, did not come up. Instead, we talked about health insurance and medical providers. We talked about the cost of living in Denver, where I would soon move. At the end of the call, we argued about the location of a piece of paper. The fact of its existence established my citizenship. I wasn’t born in this country, and I needed it. I was angry he didn’t know where it was. He was angry I didn’t know where it was. He compared me unfavorably to my middle brother, who kept his important piece of paper locked away in a safe. Why wasn’t I more like my middle brother? Why didn’t I own a safe? How could I have allowed this important piece of paper, this flatness, to disappear into the void? Men always know where their important pieces of paper are. Men keep them in safes. Men memorize their combinations. Men own safes and vaults and crypts. It’s the women who lose everything. I suspected he knew where the paper was all along, he didn’t want me to have it, he didn’t want me to move forward in my life, he didn’t wish me to live as I wanted to live, but I knew that wasn’t right, I knew that a part of him, if it could be said that there are parts of people, could be loving, and even though in less than twenty-four hours he himself would go on to die, I knew he would prefer that I live as I wanted to live as opposed to not living at all.
"He wanted to paint the sea, the sky, the mountain, even while knowing it was impossible to do so without automatically painting the social meaning of the sea, the sky, the mountain. The blurred landscape — teasing us with the pleasures of the pastoral, and then letting it melt before our eyes — was nothing less than a moral argument for how to look and how to think when every route seemed barred. You had to do it ambivalently, self-critically, and while risking irrelevance or cliché. But it could be done."
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andulkaphoto