Re: cartoon reviews--I was just thinking as I started reading this that I would love a quick review of the fiction/poetry in each issue.
Maybe just a rating system with a one line summary explaining the rating. Something like, for the short stories, a rating out of 5 “here for the game, not the name”s (many of the short stories over the last few years seem especially chosen based on the author’s prestige or relationship with the mag and not the quality of the piece), and for the poems, a rating out of 5 “actually made me feel something”s?
To be honest, fiction is the one thing I tend to save and binge during car rides and such - I'd have to modify my relationship to that section to fit it into the newsletter, which I might do in the future but probably not right away.
Per your request, though, I'll put poetry reviews in the Cartoon Supplement!
High Achievers - the book, being the topic of the non-review, is a sliver in time and history of drug use, which is fine. It's hard to tell if the writer tried to make is something broader of if the book makes that broader claim.
Drug use dates back beyond recorded time. Some animals and insects get high, for recreation, it's not even an exclusively human behavior.
I can't agree with your comments. There was no recontextualization to frame drug use as drug addiction. Ketamine therapy is not mainstream or even being touted as the next best thing, it's a dissociative drug, and an anesthetic, and not in mainstream use (except amongst prisoners trying to kill time); it's not a psychedelic.
Drug laws date back to the prohibition of smoking opium, which was directly associated with Chinese immigration. Drug laws are embedded in racism and fears of difference. This remains true today.
So, yeah, any allusions to the history of getting high or recontextualizing drug are a tad undercooked and wrong.
The history this piece is telling dates to around the same time, or a bit earlier, as British prohibition of Opium - so when I refer to the recontextualization, I'm referring to that time period, although I didn't think of the connection to that specific movement.
The concept of addiction wasn't even recognized formally until much, much later, and not medicalized until the late 1980s (yep, only within the last 40 years!). It had nothing to do with the change to laws that coincided with the wave of Chinese immigration and thus the importation of their culture practices.
Language Game - The subs clearly had no idea how to position the piece, so the headline and the blurb were both misnomers.
A fascinating man, he could have retired for life before creating Dualingo, but chose to do more good in the world. Let's not knock the clever people, we need them, especially when they're sincere. He's not the one who suggested that maths and English skills could rescue a whole country.
The large language diversion at the end was an afterthought, perhaps to make the article feel of the moment, when they were using the 'AI' long before now. It's getting stale and lame real fast whenever someone writes about how clever they are at testing / how dumb the "AI" is. Unless they were smart enough to build it, theyy should stick to fact-based commentary. .
Agree with that. We don't have Taco Bell, but I sure wish the local Mexican was made by people with some Mexican heritage, I'm sure the food would be better.
Cultural appropriation is one of those weird contemporary insults that ignore what a strange and poorer world it would be if there'd been no cultural sharing and cross-pollination for that last several hundred years, and the millenniums prior at least to the extent of trade.
I had a bit of deja vu in this week's issue as I've read longform pieces on both Taco Bell innovation and DuoLingo before (I think both in Businessweek but it's hard to search its archive). Carina Chocano's piece didn't offer too much new compared to BusinessWeek's recent examination of DuoLingo's changing business model. I thought the Taco Bell article was better, going all in on how dumb this all is and giving us the details on crunchwrap supreme engineering we all secretly want.
For me, Ed Caesar's investigation of secure phones was definitely the standout feature this issue. It was both an interesting subject and had a nice pivot in the middle of Caesar's run-in with the mobster who threatened his life. This paragraph was great: "What about cocaine? Was trade still brisk? The trafficker turned away from me and said, in so many words, that he was going to beat me up and leave me in a ditch somewhere. Then he turned to me again, and, since he threatened to break my bones, I feel no guilt about quoting him. 'You shouldn’t ask such fucking questions,” the trafficker said, in Serbian. “In Montenegro, it’s bad for your health.'"
I enjoyed Louis Menand's review of the creativity book. I hadn't realized how much creativity as a concept was a postwar invention. Agree that it didn't seem to add much more than the source material itself, but this is the type of book I'm unlikely to read and can appreciate an in-depth review of it.
Just read that Businessweek DuoLingo piece (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-12-05/how-duolingo-gamified-language) - it definitely explores much the same territory (minus the material on A.I.) & even has many of the same anecdotes & quotes. While I did prefer the structure of the NYker piece I can definitely see it feeling redundant.
Yes - the Caesar piece was really good. I maybe underrated it because I'm not super into that kind of spycrafty stuff; despite that, I enjoyed it.
Re: cartoon reviews--I was just thinking as I started reading this that I would love a quick review of the fiction/poetry in each issue.
Maybe just a rating system with a one line summary explaining the rating. Something like, for the short stories, a rating out of 5 “here for the game, not the name”s (many of the short stories over the last few years seem especially chosen based on the author’s prestige or relationship with the mag and not the quality of the piece), and for the poems, a rating out of 5 “actually made me feel something”s?
Just a thought!
To be honest, fiction is the one thing I tend to save and binge during car rides and such - I'd have to modify my relationship to that section to fit it into the newsletter, which I might do in the future but probably not right away.
Per your request, though, I'll put poetry reviews in the Cartoon Supplement!
Totally get it, and I’m very impressed you can read in the car without throwing up!
High Achievers - the book, being the topic of the non-review, is a sliver in time and history of drug use, which is fine. It's hard to tell if the writer tried to make is something broader of if the book makes that broader claim.
Drug use dates back beyond recorded time. Some animals and insects get high, for recreation, it's not even an exclusively human behavior.
I can't agree with your comments. There was no recontextualization to frame drug use as drug addiction. Ketamine therapy is not mainstream or even being touted as the next best thing, it's a dissociative drug, and an anesthetic, and not in mainstream use (except amongst prisoners trying to kill time); it's not a psychedelic.
Drug laws date back to the prohibition of smoking opium, which was directly associated with Chinese immigration. Drug laws are embedded in racism and fears of difference. This remains true today.
So, yeah, any allusions to the history of getting high or recontextualizing drug are a tad undercooked and wrong.
The history this piece is telling dates to around the same time, or a bit earlier, as British prohibition of Opium - so when I refer to the recontextualization, I'm referring to that time period, although I didn't think of the connection to that specific movement.
The concept of addiction wasn't even recognized formally until much, much later, and not medicalized until the late 1980s (yep, only within the last 40 years!). It had nothing to do with the change to laws that coincided with the wave of Chinese immigration and thus the importation of their culture practices.
Language Game - The subs clearly had no idea how to position the piece, so the headline and the blurb were both misnomers.
A fascinating man, he could have retired for life before creating Dualingo, but chose to do more good in the world. Let's not knock the clever people, we need them, especially when they're sincere. He's not the one who suggested that maths and English skills could rescue a whole country.
The large language diversion at the end was an afterthought, perhaps to make the article feel of the moment, when they were using the 'AI' long before now. It's getting stale and lame real fast whenever someone writes about how clever they are at testing / how dumb the "AI" is. Unless they were smart enough to build it, theyy should stick to fact-based commentary. .
Taco Bell - Christopher would still be a proud dad.
All food is cultural. appropriation.
Do I have to give up coffee, which was appropriated by everyone, as was tea, not to mention pizza?
Yes, probably "cultural appropriation" was too buzzwordy on my part - really, I just meant I.P. theft, by a white dude, from one specific Mexican restaurant. More on that: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210630-how-taco-bell-stole-the-taco
Agree with that. We don't have Taco Bell, but I sure wish the local Mexican was made by people with some Mexican heritage, I'm sure the food would be better.
Cultural appropriation is one of those weird contemporary insults that ignore what a strange and poorer world it would be if there'd been no cultural sharing and cross-pollination for that last several hundred years, and the millenniums prior at least to the extent of trade.
I had a bit of deja vu in this week's issue as I've read longform pieces on both Taco Bell innovation and DuoLingo before (I think both in Businessweek but it's hard to search its archive). Carina Chocano's piece didn't offer too much new compared to BusinessWeek's recent examination of DuoLingo's changing business model. I thought the Taco Bell article was better, going all in on how dumb this all is and giving us the details on crunchwrap supreme engineering we all secretly want.
For me, Ed Caesar's investigation of secure phones was definitely the standout feature this issue. It was both an interesting subject and had a nice pivot in the middle of Caesar's run-in with the mobster who threatened his life. This paragraph was great: "What about cocaine? Was trade still brisk? The trafficker turned away from me and said, in so many words, that he was going to beat me up and leave me in a ditch somewhere. Then he turned to me again, and, since he threatened to break my bones, I feel no guilt about quoting him. 'You shouldn’t ask such fucking questions,” the trafficker said, in Serbian. “In Montenegro, it’s bad for your health.'"
I enjoyed Louis Menand's review of the creativity book. I hadn't realized how much creativity as a concept was a postwar invention. Agree that it didn't seem to add much more than the source material itself, but this is the type of book I'm unlikely to read and can appreciate an in-depth review of it.
Just read that Businessweek DuoLingo piece (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-12-05/how-duolingo-gamified-language) - it definitely explores much the same territory (minus the material on A.I.) & even has many of the same anecdotes & quotes. While I did prefer the structure of the NYker piece I can definitely see it feeling redundant.
Yes - the Caesar piece was really good. I maybe underrated it because I'm not super into that kind of spycrafty stuff; despite that, I enjoyed it.