tomorrow (october 14th) a solar eclipse will occur in libra. astrologically dense & action packed, eclipses will bring out the murky detritus that lurks beneath us all.
i actually don’t know that for a fact, i just made that up.
what i do know is that eclipse season is heavy, and on the eclipses it’s best to stay inside and chill and take stock of what you have and where you are versus rushing out into the world to do things and be seen and make things happen. it’s not the time to launch a new project, or declare your love via skywriting. you want to hunker down. you want to feel it all. you want — like a giant shit you’ve held in for nearly two days because you’ve been windswept into a lover’s apartment’s bed for the first time, and now the sun has came and went two times and you still haven’t left the house, let alone to a neutrally destined location in which for you to drop your deuce, too early on to accidentally perfume his entire bathroom with the smell of post white wine shit — to release. you want to release.
so.
have a reading list, maybe, for all that time you’re about to spend reflecting and inside?
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personal essays:
what witches learn on their family vacation by amanda yates garcia
love shouldn't feel bad by heather havrilesky
a good job for a poet by stacy szymazek
scorched by longing by lora mathis, from “fun times in a human body”
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interviews & profiles:
magic: a conversation with ariana reines by aisha sasha john
raphael bob-waksberg, in good faith by e. alex jung
the laureate's life song by david streitfeld
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short and storied:
MEN NOT ALLOWED BEYOND THIS POINT by molly pepper steemson
a literary history of fake texts in apple's marketing materials by max read
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cultural analysis:
what is it with david brooks and restaurants? by max read
mattel, malibu stacy, and the dialectics of the barbie polemic by charlie squire
i cannot believe the shit that morons are getting up to with chatgpt by max read
barbie has cellulite (but you don't have to) by jessica defino
using chatgpt and other ai writing tools makes you unhireable. here's why by doc burford
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reporting:
AI can endanger lives. we must enforce stronger safeguards by kate crawford
radical vegans are trying to change your diet by annie lowrey
call climate change what it is: violence by rebecca solnit
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art & art-related things:
why have there been no great women artists? by linda nochlin
the great chinese art heist by alex w. palmer
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science that doesn’t make you want to kill yourself:
do spiders dream? a new study suggests they do by elizabeth anne brown
liquid trees to combat air pollution in belgrade by benno krieger
the sound of a satellite that came back wrong
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science that might make you want to kill yourself:
the incredible disappearing doomsday: how the climate catastrophists learned to stop worrying and love the calm by kyle paoletta
astral codex ten: openAI's "planning for AGI and beyond" by scott alexander
revealed: the authors whose pirated books are powering generative AI by alex reisner
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Imagine ExxonMobil releases a statement on climate change. It’s a great statement! They talk about how preventing climate change is their core value. They say that they’ve talked to all the world’s top environmental activists at length, listened to what they had to say, and plan to follow exactly the path they recommend. So (they promise) in the future, when climate change starts to be a real threat, they’ll do everything environmentalists want, in the most careful and responsible way possible. They even put in firm commitments that people can hold them to.
An environmentalist, reading this statement, might have thoughts like:
Wow, this is so nice, they didn’t have to do this.
I feel really heard right now!
They clearly did their homework, talked to leading environmentalists, and absorbed a lot of what they had to say. What a nice gesture!
And they used all the right phrases and hit all the right beats!
The commitments seem well thought out, and make this extra trustworthy.
But what’s this part about “in the future, when climate change starts to be a real threat”?
Is there really a single, easily-noticed point where climate change “becomes a threat”?
If so, are we sure that point is still in the future?
Even if it is, shouldn’t we start being careful now?
Are they just going to keep doing normal oil company stuff until that point?
Do they feel bad about having done normal oil company stuff for decades? They don’t seem to be saying anything about that.
What possible world-model leads to not feeling bad about doing normal oil company stuff in the past, not planning to stop doing normal oil company stuff in the present, but also planning to do an amazing job getting everything right at some indefinite point in the future?
Are they maybe just lying?
Even if they’re trying to be honest, will their bottom line bias them towards waiting for some final apocalyptic proof that “now climate change is a crisis”, of a sort that will never happen, so they don’t have to stop pumping oil?
This is how I feel about OpenAI’s new statement, Planning For AGI And Beyond.
excerpt from scott alexander of astral codex ten in “OpenAI’s "planning for AGI and beyond"”
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and to combat the science that might make you want to kill yourself —
poetry.
power by audre lorde
[anyone lived in a pretty how town] by e.e. cummings
bite hard: three poems by justin chin (1969-2015) by justin chin
alone, i arrive in a looted city by josé luís peixoto (trans. by hugo dos santos)
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happy solstice, happy friday the thirteenth, happy reading.
jo
the manic pixie dream girl’s guide to existential angst is a free newsletter (and the occasional poem) from joelle schumacher. if you enjoy their work or would like to support it, you can become a paid subscriber, subscribe to or write in to their advice column, or buy them a coffee. they are also currently offering a limited-space online class for interested students who want to learn how to access their innate creativity and how to become (and actually embody) a real life artist.