good things 02.26.26
mumford, dolly alderton, shell game
the best thing that happened to me last week was drinking a dukes martini at red hook tavern with my friends and later receiving this message:
1. new mumford & sons
i’m loving the new album even though every time i hear the lead single, the banjo song, i picture this life alert commercial:
“HEYYYY, DID YOU CALL DID YOU FALL DO YOU NEED SOMEONE?”
anyways my favorite song on the album is this one:
specifically because a line in it led me to this excerpt from a poem by w.h. auden:
We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
2. dolly alderton’s love/hate list
can you believe my incredibly original idea of a list of good things that i like and occasionally a list of bad things that i don’t like exists in many other places? Dream Baby Press often has cool people make these lists and dolly alderton’s is so perfect:
3. “Child’s Play” by Sam Kriss (Harper’s)
we are reaching yet another fever pitch in the AI discourse, brought on by an essay (?) on X (???)
what i will be reading, however, is every piece sam kriss writes henceforth. his latest for harper’s is a picture of how shockingly stupid everything in silicon valley is right now if you dig a little deeper. he profiles roy lee, a controversial young startup founder whose company’s premise is: lie, cheat, and steal with AI, and let it do all the thinking for you. if you’re as mystified as i am that these people are supposedly taking over the world and making superhuman artificial intelligence, this is a gratifying, albeit dark read about a few of them and their benefactors. if anything, i walk away more convinced than ever that it’s just a bubble about to burst.
“It did not seem like a good idea to me that some of the richest people in the world were no longer rewarding people for having any particular skills, but simply for having agency, when agency essentially meant whatever it was that was afflicting Roy Lee. Unlike Eric Zhu or Donald Boat, Roy didn’t really seem to have anything in his life except his own sense of agency. Everything was a means to an end, a way of fortifying his ability to do whatever he wanted in the world. But there was a great sucking void where the end ought to be. All he wanted, he’d said, was to hang out with his friends. I believed him. He wanted not to be alone, the way he’d been alone for a year after having his offer of admission rescinded by Harvard. For people to pay attention to him. To exist for other people. But instead of making friends the normal way, he’d walked up to strangers and asked whether they wanted to start a company with him, and then he built the most despised startup in San Francisco. He was probably right: he could count on making a few million dollars every year for the rest of his life, even after Cluely inevitably crashes and burns. He would never want for capital, but this did not seem like the most efficient way to achieve his goals.”
4. shell game season 2
i found the first season of shell game very slow, but the second season is fantastic and especially relevant to the above conversation. host evan ratliff sets out to start the world’s first company that is fully staffed by AI — something that all the silicon valley people warn is going to become commonplace in the next few years. judging from what unfolds over the course of these seven episodes, i am once again not putting my chips on that.
5. “it didn’t work out because you would’ve hated it”
screenshotted this a while ago from the academic scholarly journal of Tik Tok and i think about it often. it didn’t work out because i definitely would have hated it!
6. grown adults sledding
fort greene park turned into an X games venue on monday night after the blizzard and it was an amazing free for all. people were skiing and snowboarding and flying down every available incline on any flat surface they could find — including this guy with an air mattress that made me BOL.
exciting announcement coming next week! see you then.
xo
shell game! i love the vaguely positive spiritual vibes of this good things. can't wait for this announcement xo