FAVORITE QUOTES JULY 2023

Purgatory is sh#tsville. You’re stuck with the body you had on Earth when you died.

Author James Elroy in his novel Widespread Panic

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I was sick of memoirs and the swagger of survivors, the way they mounted the past above the mantel for all to ooh and aah over.

Author Dan Lepucki in her novel Woman No. 17

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“As in many places mistaken for heaven, the guy at the top mistook himself for God.”

Jessica Winter, New Yorker magazine, THE UPPER WEST SIDE CULT THAT HID IN PLAIN SIGHT

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There’s no perfection in art, only degrees of graceful failure.

Author Alex Pappademas from his book on Steely Dan, Quantum Criminals

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And re: the writers strike:

in the machinery of late stage capitalism, labor is not people. Labor is a box in a spreadsheet.

Anonymous, Strike Diary 5/27/23, The Hollywood Reporter

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(Lots of AI material in the news)

Imagine simplifying complex realities into something that is readable for a machine that is totally dumb.

Milagros Miceli, a researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute in Germany who studies data work.

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To reduce “intelligence” to an elaborate application of statistics sounds insightful but isn’t, no more than reducing “life” to a set of chemical equations.

The Imitation Game by Ken Liu, Slate 6/24/23

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Artificial intelligence is actually really stupid, considering it can only repackage ideas that already exist, and using it solely to create content is a hilariously bad idea.

Kevin Hurler, Gizmodo, 6/7/23

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& the last word from singer/songwriter John Mellencamp:

You only have so many f#cks to give in your body, so don’t give a f#ck about what’s not f#ckworthy.

John Mellencamp, What I’ve Learned, Esquire magazine