👔 Has yours or a loved one’s name been appropriated by an LLM? The team at Never Bored Inc. is here to help. Read the message from our CEO about our new department by clicking here.
📚Finished reading: Poems to Night by Rainer Maria Rilke
“With slow step, not light, his body ruminative,
but when stood, his wonderful bearing. Even now a
God
could furtively enter that figure and be no less.”
“I stood and suddenly
became aware, you approached me, played with me, I
understood,
grown-up night, and I gazed at you enraptured.”
“From face to face
what rising up.
From the guilty breaks out
sacrifice and forgiveness…
Suddenly the angels see the harvest.”
Gorgeous from start to finish.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Lothario: a man who behaves selfishly and irresponsible in his relationship with women; a man whose chief interest is seducing women
✍️ New blog post is now live! // Compared To What? // bradley-andrews.com
Weird to think I first drafted a version of this 3 years ago (see attached) Hopefully this encourages the writers out there to save your scraps!!
💬 Over 2 trillion dollars wiped from the stock market yesterday, a direct result of the midterm results. Gary Marcus has put this as succinctly as I think it can be put:
“It looks like the thing that held up the market was the idea that the tech companies could do whatever they liked, no matter how dangerous or immoral, without consequences. The (new!) thought that companies might actually be held accountable for what they have done has complete spooked the market.”
We’d be wise to really consider what this means for our culture.
📲 Google’s response to the request that AI be turned off in schools is pure monopoly. Should’ve done this before, but will be using a new search engine and web browser starting today. Email and other services will be moved by EOY.
2027 is going to be a very techno-intentional year for me!
🎵 Music lately:
- Drown by Mk.gee
- Peg by Steely Dan
- Kiss From A Rose by Seal
- Mad by Solange ft. Lil Wayne
- Chilombo Medley by Jhene Aiko
- Nasty by Janet Jackson
I’ll be real, the Seal song is silly. For a Batman movie?? It shouldn’t work, but it does, and it’s phenomenal.
🌇 I have never been to Baltimore, but being a fan of The Wire has given me an unearned confidence in my knowledge about the city. Goodwill Hunting does the same for the city of Boston, I think— or at least Southie. Does this resonate with anyone? Any other shows or movies that do this?
💬 Some GK Chesterton for today:
“This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. The second principle is this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common… In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves…it is an attempt to get at the opinion of those who would be too modest to offer it. It is a mystical adventure; it is specially trusting those who do not trust themselves.”
🎥 Watched: You Can See Everything
A lot to say about this film. It is as smart as people are saying and deserves its flowers. Yet, like most of Nathan Fielder’s work (and I realize I am in the vast minority here), this project fails to find a home with me. He is a master of his craft. I respect it. Yet, his work uses styles of subversion (and I normally love subversion) that don’t tickle me like it seems to tickle most. It is so meta-modern, like a person explaining the mechanics of Penn and Teller explaining magic tricks. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, it just buries the possibility of magic. It is pulling back the curtains to reveal… more curtains. I prefer to find the wizard— or at least the conman. The notion that this type of discovery is impossible is demonstrably false, and a bit too nihilistic for my palate.
The more I think about it, the more I am certain that my feelings about the movie, Fielder, and Elizabeth Holmes are almost entirely summed up by one line from Kendrick Lamar:
“Why believe you? You never gave us nothin' to believe in."
🎥 Watched: The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
A sweet, sweet film. Imperfect, sure, but simple and endearing. The ending is a 10/10. I left inspired and moved, which is well worth the price of admission. But be warned, I am biased. If there is anything I love, it’s a thief and a pro-analog message.
“I’ve spent my life in other people’s pockets. Everyone thinks their time was the one. What matters is what you did with it. But who’s to know? You don’t. You gotta chalk some things up to luck."
🏃 It’s marathon day in NYC (always a positive energy).
A friend of mine is running and introduced me to Rally, an app that lets friends and family record a voice message of encouragement that plays at mile markers. So sweet— has to be the coolest, most thoughtful app I’ve seen in a long time.
My favorite photo from this month ❤️
💬 From Julia Cameron:
“It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.”
✏️ New Word Learned:
Morganatic: of, relating to, or being a marriage between a member of a royal or noble family and a person of inferior rank in which the rank of the inferior partner remains unchanged and the children of the marriage do not succeed to the titles, fiefs, or entailed property of the parent of higher rank
✍️ How I Humanise My Writing To Keep From Being Flagged As AI // bradley-andrews.com
👀 Shhh! I just left the R&D dept. at Never Bored (a totally real and not fictitious company) with an early prototype of an upcoming product. The anti-phone case:
Made with the coarsest industrial-grade sandpaper, the anti-phone case is hostile design turned on the owner. Placing the phone on surfaces and next to other items of importance shows you irl what phones are already doing mentally and socially: wearing us down little by little. Repeated engagement will even sand off your fingerprints, erasing your personal identity.
Don’t call it an invention— it’s an intervention! Stay tuned.
🤸🏻♂️ Operation Hopscotch has been wildly successful. Just the beginning…
💬 A quote from Faulkner:
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Wish I had this one when I wrote my (909) piece.