“A thousand moderately pleasant one-night stands cannot equal one passionate love affair”
In this edition of the Weekender: AI and art, a night at the auction, and a real-life mind reader
This week, we’re training dogs in Mexico City, contextualizing the AI-Ghibli memes, building mind-reading tech, and bidding on a used toothbrush.
ART
Art in the time of AI
AI-generated Studio Ghibli memes took over the internet this week, the latest salvo in the ongoing skirmish between artists and AI. In this post, Astral Codex Ten considers AI art in the context of other tech advances that mass-produced transcendent experiences, and what we gain and lose in that process.
The Colors of Her Coat
—Scott Alexander in
It would be facile to say that, just because technology has threatened our sense of meaning before, we shouldn’t worry when technology threatens our sense of meaning today. Some of the past apocalypses were genuinely bad. The semantic satiation of the previous forms gave us modern art and architecture, hardly known for their broad-based appeal. Do we really want Studio Ghibli anime to go the way of paintings that look like stuff?
When I contemplate these questions, I encounter a paradox. I acknowledge that my inability to marvel at a live Caruso opera in Naples has cost me something deep and beautiful. But I cannot wish that the phonograph was never invented. Does the increased variety and quantity of music compensate for the decreased profundity of each musical experience? Surely this is part of it, but I would never accept this excuse in other areas that have not yet been cheapened. A thousand moderately pleasant one-night stands cannot equal one passionate love affair.
Maybe Progress repays us with interest for every medium it takes? Without mass-produced, mass-transmissible images, music, and bright colors, we couldn’t have Studio Ghibli. Dare we hope that, if anime becomes too cheap to appreciate, that very cheapness will open the door to new forms of art? But why should this always be true? If AI is better than all human artists, and you can run 100,000 inference copies at 10x serial speed in a data center, then why should anything be non-cheap ever again?
None of these sound fully convincing. Instead, maybe we must admit that we are relocating novelty and adventure from individual engagements with art, to the arc of history itself. Our generation will never know the once-in-a-life pleasure of hearing Caruso sing in Naples. But we will get the once-in-a-life pleasure of speaking to a generative AI for the first time. We could protect the magic of the Jerusalem pilgrimage by banning air travel, but it would be a fake and flimsy sort of magic, a sort of enforced perpetual civilizational childhood. What about the magic of seeing the clouds from above? Or the moon landing?
PAINTING
PETS
Well trained
As the subhead of Zoe Keziah Mendelson’s post notes, this is “one paragraph on a perfect thing.”
20 dogs sitting in a row with their leashes on the ground next to them
—
inI just wanted to tell you all that in various parks in Mexico City, you can find lines of dogs sitting next to each other with their leashes on the ground next to them. This is a form of doggy daycare/school. The people who train and care for these dogs are as skilled at this as anyone is skilled at anything. What you see in this picture is not a moment. This goes on and on for hours and hours. Sometimes one dog will start to get up, and mostly the dog whisperer just sort of lifts their chin in that dog’s direction, shoots them a look, and the dog sits back down. I have spent lots of time observing, and I can tell you, it rarely goes beyond that. When it does, they calmly walk over and wordlessly lift the dog’s leash and it sits back down. Once, I saw a dog run off and expected the person to run after it, but he did not. Three or four other dogs got up and went and got the runaway and brought it back. Then they all sat back down (!). I felt like I had just witnessed a miracle, but the person barely reacted. In Mexico, people have higher expectations of dogs. I think in the U.S., we set the dog bar too low and they trip over it. The order of best things in life is: love, art, food, sex, dogs, nature. OK bye.
MUSIC
Listening party
On Thursday night, Substack threw a listening party at Generation Records in New York.
hosted, and invited , , , , and to share a few songs and stories. Here are the weird, lovely songs they selected.It’s been a great week for music on Substack. In addition to the listening party, we’ve been hosting The Substack Sessions, a series of live performances and conversations with musicians and critics. And we welcomed some major new names to the platform: producer and author of The Creative Act
; electronic artist Moby; multi-instrumentalist ; of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre; James Mercer of ; producer and artist ; of Typhoon; pop and R&B artist ; and of Dry Cleaning. Subscribe to get notified when they go live.
PATTERNS
TECH
Intuitive tech
Ashlee Vance investigates Alljoined, a startup working on mind-reading technology in a surprisingly casual setting.
Inside the Mind-Reading Start-up House
—
in
PHOTOGRAPHY
POETRY
Until I Am Fog
—
inSome days life goes through me like a tomato slicer, my head tilts to the side and I die, slumped
in the corner like a pitted avocado, then my fragile god motions with his hand,
do it again, and of course, life will do it again, and of course, I will allow it. I am sinu-
soidal motion, waves returning to kiss the shore no matter how often they are sent
away, and I sit with a girl on the end of a pier, Ferris wheel like a silver dollar behind us, city gone dark and silent. She loses
her sandal, and I dive in choppy waters to find it. Fingers of wind toss her hair, a collection of calligraphy, and I use her finger to point
out a flock of birds ink-dotting the horizon where paint dribbles down the sky. We are real and true, and time slows with its infinite
brush, but no matter how many times the water kicks back, this painting is a portrait, with borders, there is nowhere to go but out to sea, rowing
until I am fog.
GOSSIP
A night at the auction
This week, fans of
and gathered together at a dim sum restaurant in Manhattan to bid on a strange assortment of items from the writers’ personal collections. In her inaugural dispatch, our gossip columnist Taffy Tidbits reports from the scene.
What would you pay for Ottessa Moshfegh’s gently used toothbrush?
—
inWhat would you pay for Ottessa Moshfegh’s gently used toothbrush? What about Eddie Huang’s pre-loved, Knicks-themed boxer briefs? No, this is not an April Fool’s prank. These are the hard-hitting questions New York’s literati faced on Tuesday night at the private auction of the century or, at the very least, the month. Ottessa and Eddie joined forces to offer readers a chance to bid on some of their finest pieces of junk, with all proceeds going directly to the two writers. The money would be used for “food, rent, and my therapist,” Ottessa clarified.
It was clear from the moment I stepped into the Golden Unicorn’s elevator that competition would be fierce. “I want Ottessa to prank call my nemesis,” one guest announced. “No one better outbid me. My friend and I are willing to throw a lot of money at it.” When asked if being pranked by this author would be particularly devastating to her enemy, she replied, “He’s so far up his own butt, it won’t mean anything to him.” Sounds like a very expensive and impotent form of revenge, but what do I know?
The no-nonsense attitude underpinning this affair struck me again upon entering the room, where I spotted a woman already seated, in the front row, staring at the stage, with shades on and paddle in hand. She did not come to play.
The dim sum restaurant serving as the auction hall had a bit of a wedding reception vibe, with friend groups clustered around tablecloth-covered tables and a buffet line filled with pork buns and spring rolls. The bartender doled out heavy pours all night; good for loosening wallets, but it proved to be an issue for one partygoer who nonchalantly toppled over twice mid-auction. Guests remained unfazed—just as they were when the fire alarm sounded, or by the constant, ominous tinkling of the chandelier overhead. Nothing would dissuade this crowd from acquiring their chosen lots.
THE WRITER’S LIFE
Substackers featured in this edition
Art & Photography:
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The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by Alex Posey out of Substack’s headquarters in San Francisco.
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And the happiness and social value of 10 passionate love affairs doesn’t equal one lasting marriage.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/serenity-self-indulgence
I agree making love to the woman/man you love is making passionate love. Anything less is a different gig. But a gig ain't that bad but again it's not making love. I'm speaking as a heterosexual male.