They didn’t teach writing in Europe for a very long time and maybe some countries still don’t. I know in Germany it was thought that if you read enough you’ll figure it out until Frankfort brought in an American writing center director in the late 90s.

The tear down and rebuild culture of LA is perhaps one of the saddest parts of that city.

A big difference between generative AI and all other application technologies: AI is labor replacing technology whereas Quark or Word or Adobe etc. were labor changing technologies. AI is not a tool to be used by humans, it is an imitation machine meant to replace the human.

I think I might fail this one…

Depends on if I’m copying text or composing new text. Copying text I’ve probably done a full page before looking at the screen and realizing.

We call ours Sally Greenlight (because it is a woman in a car waiting at a stoplight). Mella is a popular one (has a face that sleeps and wakes up and can also be a nightlight).

Dead Like Me? We were just beginning to understand Mandy Patinkin’s life before he died when they canceled the show.

From a Denis Johnson email (transcribed from the New Yorker Fiction Podcast)

No one will make a lot of money in the process. But it's fair and feels less extractive than more corporate models. Authors need to abandon the linear thinking of being "promoted" to big 5--do your big books with big publishers and give their weird, less sellable stuff to smaller places.

There’s also only one museum in the Smithsonian system dedicated to that story…I’m not sure what they’re going to find at the Air and Space museum or the National Zoo that’s ideologically odious (maybe the Amazon exhibit is too woke?) The Hope Diamond at natural history too colonialist?

The Skin I Live In (2011) Antonio Banderas. Saw this randomly at a $1 second run theater with a bunch of elderly people on a Thursday matinee, which only made the experience better.

Yes. One, as a teacher you can watch the illness not only roll through your class but the entire school; two, watching a kid too sick to pay attention or learn or even keep their head up is both heartbreaking and pointless. Also, no one wants to be around a kid pouring snot out of their nose.

Reagan worship for some, anti-establishment/anti-sellout for others (Dems are pro-institutionalist and seen as sellouts to the establishment for a lot of people).

When I went back to grad school in 2014 they made me get a booster because they added a shot to the sequence since I had gotten mine. I am in my late 40s FYI.

Arguing online is such a waste of time. Every time I allow myself to go there I regret it. I just want to mostly learn about writing and writers and small presses and work I wouldn’t otherwise know about.