Pinboard (robertogreco)
https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/public/
recent bookmarks from robertogrecoA New Cultural Anchor - CAT Center2026-07-09T16:45:17+00:00
https://www.catranslation.org/sf-literary-hub/
robertogreco2026 centerfortheartoftranslation sanfrancisco writing howwewrite classideas education reading howweread 2027 citylights jazminabarrera oliviasears literature fiction translation paulyamazakihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9b6d6e94dce3/The End of Reading Is Here - The Atlantic2026-07-09T05:52:51+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/
robertogrecorosehorowitz reading howweread literacy attention highered highereducation books internet culture online web 2026 yafiction amandakordeliski brianbannon education colleges universities reddit email messaging instagram maryannewolf bejaminpowers roberttownsend margaretrennix anthonyburgess gutenberg writing howwewrite walterong orality alexanderluria illiteracy neilpostman history benjaminfranklin thomasjefferson johnadams johnmcwhorter lingusitics samuallougheed marshallmcluhan media tv television johncheever annemariecortez schools schooling children childhood socialmedia tiktok youtube jeantwenge psychology martinpuchner society postliteracy gutenbergparenthesis danwillingham cognition thinking howwethink knowledge comprehension readingcomprehension johnhutton gloriamark video information text benjaminpowers jonathanfine elizabethdworak plato socrates oraltradition donaldtrump roderickhart joshuameyrowitz ronaldreagan reihansalam manhattaninstitute nuance politics rigor complexity algorithms liberalism barahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:628e87c4afc9/Why Do I Keep Coming Back to Trains? - Electric Literature2026-07-08T07:04:06+00:00
https://electricliterature.com/why-do-i-keep-coming-back-to-trains/
robertogrecoweikewang trains writing howwewrite 2026 amtrak acelaus pennstattion travel rail railways germany asia europe greece chinahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d4638278c702/Instagram post by @anvietarchives and @kaitlanbui2026-07-05T21:26:40+00:00
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYo6C-NN3fm/
robertogrecopaulgéraldy poetry history memory archives hodgepodge dianakhoinguyen 2026 narrative narratives knowledge language collage bricolage oraltradition culture refugees writing howwewrite kaitlinbuihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:573bc2720ae0/Fakes of the Future | Los Angeles Review of Books2026-07-05T05:21:54+00:00
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fakes-future-artificial-intelligence-llms-larb-quarterly-traffic/
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence llms chatbots howwewrite writing humanness fakes authenticity doubt human humans humanism krzysztofpelc 2026 fraud uncertainty confidence history photography aihallucinations recursion authorship handmade petrarch erasmus renaissance falsehoods culture chronology literature creativity machinelearning generativeai genai fabrication samueljohnson ossian homer napoleonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9fbaccbd431c/Before the Fire Dogs Steal the Sun: An Elegy, by Crystal Mun-hye Baik (2026)2026-07-04T09:14:53+00:00
https://www.dukeupress.edu/before-the-fire-dogs-steal-the-sun
robertogrecocrystalmun-hyebaik 2026 colonialism war migration korea southkorea japan grief howwethink howwewrite writing precarity everday mourning violence memory history research storytellinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:54ff0a60a858/Writing Like There's No Tomorrow - Front Porch Republic2026-07-04T08:29:38+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/07/writing-like-theres-no-tomorrow/
robertogrecokenhada writing howwewrite literature poetry 2026 aldoleopold thoreau wendellberry garysnyder rachelcarson barrylopez anniedillard terrytempestwilliams wildness nature ecosystems robinsonjeffers planet environment poems williamstaffod consumerism maryoliver mscottmomaday experience livedexperience humanness wildernesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ecedf29a2f91/In Which I Make a Mighty Vow — ayjay2026-07-04T05:05:25+00:00
https://buymeacoffee.com/ayjay/in-which-i-make-mighty-vow
robertogrecoThe open web is something extraordinary: anybody can use whatever tools they have, to create content following publicly documented specifications, published using completely free and open platforms, and then share that work with anyone, anywhere in the world, without asking for permission from anyone. Think about how radical that is.
Now, from content to code, communities to culture, we can see example after example of that open web under attack. Every single aspect of the radical architecture I just described is threatened, by those who have profited most from that exact system.
Today, the good people who act as thoughtful stewards of the web infrastructure are still showing the same generosity of spirit that has created opportunity for billions of people and connected society in ways too vast to count while — not incidentally — also creating trillions of dollars of value and countless jobs around the world. But the increasingly-extremist tycoons of Big Tech have decided that that's not good enough.
Now, the hectobillionaires have begun their final assault on the last, best parts of what's still open, and likely won't rest until they've either brought all of the independent and noncommercial parts of the Internet under their control, or destroyed them.
There’s a lot of bad news in that post, but I recommend the whole thing.
I’ve written a good deal over the years about my love for and commitment to the open web, so I won’t re-hash all that here. I’ll just make two points. The first is that my affection for the open web has grown more passionate as I have become more interested in anarchism, that is, in bottom-up collaborative social practices, negotiated among equals — Acts 2 kinda stuff, for those who are into the whole Bible thing. Like Anil Dash, I think the open web is a miracle of unstructured collaboration; it’s a treasure we should work desperately to preserve.
The second point is a more uncomfortable one. Look: I really hate Substack. I especially loathe the way it has turned itself into a social network that essentially replicates the web within a paywalled platform. (Have you noticed that Substackers almost always just “restack” other writers on the platform and rarely show any awareness of what’s being published outside their Sub-walls? The platform’s architecture really promotes that, to the degree that I wonder if, like Elon’s X, they shadowban outbound links.) In short: Hate hate hate.
And yet …
… I have never quite brought myself to the point of saying I will never move to Substack. The reason? Because I know I could make a lot more money on Substack than I make by using Buy Me a Coffee. Indeed, people remind me of this! My friend Freddie deBoer wrote to me recently to say that a post of mine would have done gangbusters on Substack — which would have meant a lot of people impulse-buying subscriptions. That’s the thing about being in that platform ecosystem: thanks to network effects, you get the impulse buyers. That does not happen on Buy Me a Coffee. You all have had to be really intentional about supporting me, which is a great thing.
Why is it a great thing? Because by writing on the open web and merely asking for support, I have wholly escaped the pressures that come when people have paid money to see your writing and therefore have certain expectations for what you say and how you say it. Also escaped: that other kind of pressure that comes when people really like one particular post and show their liking with money — which plants the idea in the back of your head that you need to write more posts like that … whether you really want to or not. By contrast, y’all have supported me because you see what the whole package is, and know what you’re getting and are likely to continue to get. That’s really wonderful. So I have every reason to keep writing for the open web and merely requesting/hoping for your contributions.
Well, every reason but one, anyway. Why haven’t I forsworn Substack? Simple: I’m afraid that when I retire next year and take a big financial hit, I’ll be poor, or significantly poorer anyway, unless I hawk my wares on that platform. Which is pathetic. That attitude is unworthy of a mature Christian man.
So — taking a deep breath here — I solemnly affirm before God and my fellow humans that I will never write on Substack. There, I said it. If no one supports my writing I’ll work as a greeter at Walmart — but as for my personal online writing, I pledge my troth to the open web! You heard it here first."]]>alanjacobs substack anildash decentralization openweb newsletters subscriptions anarchism web internet online bigtech freddiedeboer buymeacoffee writing howwewrite independence christianity 2026https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:407a303ed790/The Dominance of Place | Commonweal Magazine2026-07-03T07:20:05+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/dominance-place
robertogrecoNearly six years ago, when I had written the last of my poems for the collection Green Shadows and Other Poems, I felt sure that I could write nothing more for publication. I went on writing, of course, but only for my archives.
But with Covid lockdowns and a bit of cajoling from his publisher, Murnane embarked upon Last Letter. The book comprises a series of short essays on his own published work, beginning with Tamarisk Row and ending with Last Letter itself. Last call, says the provincial bartender. And yet, as the reference to his archives suggests, he plans to continue serving himself.
***
Murnane readers will know of the famous archives, a detailed catalog of which was first published in 2013 in Music & Literature: three separate sets of large filing cabinets in the author’s home, each containing an aspect of Murnane’s life. The first is his “chronological archive,” containing records and memorabilia, including old photos and keepsakes, reflections with titles like “Letter of 8,000 words to the Canadians” and “I’m a vengeful bastard!”, and an extensive collection of Magyar flash cards (he is a great lover of all things Hungarian.) The second archive is his “literary archive,” which houses early drafts, unpublished novels and stories, and notes for future work. Finally, and most intriguingly, there is what Murnane calls his “Antipodean archive,” his entirely private exploration—including manuscripts, maps, and geographical surveys—of two fictional islands he has named New Arcady and New Eden, together called the Antipodes.
He has made reference to these islands in his fiction, notably in 1995’s “The Interior of Gaaldine,” which recounts in Murnane’s distinctive first-person voice the narrator’s travel by sea to Tasmania to meet other writers for a tour of the country. Averse to travel, like Murnane himself, the narrator drinks endless “stubbies” of beer and flasks of vodka, eats only some fruit he has brought with him, and goes without sleep for well over twenty-four hours, despite comfortable accommodations and scant obligations. When he is finally able to sleep for a few hours, he is awoken by a mysterious woman who knocks on his door, enters without invitation, and foists upon him a manuscript, which she claims was written by an unnamed friend of hers. The narrator then summarizes the manuscript: a typically Murnanian character—solitary, outwardly average, with an inner-life so rich it makes deep engagement with the outer world altogether unappealing—tells the story of his own life and his invention of an island named New Arcadia. Toward the end of this summary, Murnane interjects:
A different sort of writer than myself might have wondered why the author of the pages in the briefcase had gone to such trouble to invent a duplication of what was already available to him: why should he have invented the racecourses of New Arcadia when he could have bought a racehorse for himself and watched it of a Saturday at Mowbray or Elwick. I have always been interested in what is usually called the world but only insofar as it provides me with evidence for the existence of another world. I have never written any piece of fiction with the simple purpose of understanding what I might call the real world. I have always written fiction in order to suggest to myself that another world exists.
It is worth noting that “The Interior of Gaaldine” appears in Emerald Blue, the last fiction Murnane published for nearly fifteen years. The chapter in Last Letter to a Reader devoted to this collection focuses almost entirely on this story, which Murnane had intended to be his farewell to fiction. “I believe today,” he writes, “that I was driven to write ‘The Interior of Gaaldine’ partly to reassure myself that my Antipodean Archive, as I mostly call it nowadays, is as worthy a task as the planning and writing of any of my published works.”
The drunken delirium of Murnane’s narrator, like the ecstasy of a child, leads directly to his unanticipated entrance into a world not simply parallel with his own, nor born out of it, but somehow intertwined with the stuff of his everyday experience. For want of a better term, Murnane calls this other world “his mind,” or simply “the Mind.” I might suggest “Spirit.” Whatever you call it, it is difficult not to be torn by his devotion to it. On the one hand, Murnane’s reports are those of a genuine explorer: with a strange mixture of single-mindedness and openness to surprise, his work persistently follows the singular capacities of language for both the discovery and the creation of worlds. On the other hand, one begins to wonder where all of this leads. Murnane already abandoned his readers once, in 1995. And now, after the second half of a career increasingly marked by self-reference—the author endlessly reflecting on his own utterances, even from one sentence to the next—Murnane is again retreating from the world. Of course, that doesn’t mean he will stop writing. The archives will grow, and when we finally enter into them, perhaps that will reveal a deeper communion, one that had been ongoing, however invisible.
Last Letter to a Reader
Gerald Murnane
And Other Stories
144 pp. | $17.95"]]>jackhanson 2022 place geraldmurnane time experience landscape writing howwewritehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6032fd87ca22/My University Students Cheat. I Don’t Blame Them. - Macleans.ca2026-07-02T02:26:32+00:00
https://macleans.ca/society/my-university-students-cheat-i-dont-blame-them/
robertogrecojacobshelly highered highereducation academia education universities colleges grades grading assessment ethics cheating pedagogy ai artificialintelligence culture behavior ideas humanities gradeinflation memorization recall writing howwewrite howwelearn learning teaching howweteach economics motivation technology integrity academicintegrity societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c1abc1e9db1d/On Doing Nothing: Finding Inspiration in Idleness, by Roman Muradov (2018) | Chronicle Books2026-06-27T23:13:55+00:00
https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/on-doing-nothing
robertogrecoidleness romanmuradov slow productivity optimization philosophy art writing eccentrics creativity walkinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6e7d2455d8c7/On the Trail with an Arkansas Traveler - The American Scholar2026-06-27T07:38:26+00:00
https://theamericanscholar.org/on-the-trail-with-an-arkansas-traveler/
robertogrecocharlesportis richardtillinghast us writing howwewrite adventute travel novels literature fiction storytelling arkansas journalism reporting depiction narrative nationalidentity myths jackkerouac waltwhitman ontheroad fscottfitzgerald thegreatgatsby identity wildwest ernesthemingway cormacmccarthy west royblountjr gnomonism self-delusion belief mythologyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bcf2afaee523/Daring Fireball: Om2026-06-27T07:16:56+00:00
https://daringfireball.net/2026/06/om
robertogrecoommalik johngruber 2026 thewhy writing howwewrite journalism friendship serenity generosity baseball blogging technology apple watches cameras photography presencehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:55816ebf2de9/All Roads Lead to Om | Matt Mullenweg2026-06-27T07:16:32+00:00
https://ma.tt/2026/06/om-forever/
robertogrecoThey say that blood is thicker than water, and what we had was way thicker than blood. — Bob Weir
Om’s request was for a small family prayer ceremony. In mourning, that will be all there is. In celebration and tribute, I love that everyone is sharing their Om stories online, like the writing and photography Christopher Michel shared, which very much embody the OG spirit of blogging that Om pioneered.
***
A Renaissance Man
I knew Om contained multitudes, but sitting by his side these last few weeks, I’ve been amazed to learn how many deep and completely separate communities he was part of. He meant so much to so many, in so many different ways.
Om loved putting on a good conference, and I’d like to celebrate his life with an awesome event on September 29, 2026 (his 60th) in San Francisco, like an OmFest. I’ll find a space where every community from the many facets of Om can come together. In the spirit of Open Source and co-creation, we can have some booths, flash talks, a gallery of his photography, pen showcase, and whatever other fun ideas people want to contribute. I can’t wait for the beautiful collision of his tech / journalism / Indian party planner / pen / coffee / shoes / photography circles, and probably some niches I couldn’t even imagine.
***
A Few Vignettes
I have so much to say about Om, but right now I’m working on moderating comments and keeping his website tip-top, so here are a few snippets:
Fundamentally, Om was a lover of humanity. He became a fast “regular” everywhere he went. He wouldn’t just buy coffee, he would also learn the name and story of every barista, the dogs and people in South Park. His deep curiosity and respect weren’t just for the fine and famous. It extended to every soul that crossed his path. His encyclopedic knowledge and photographic memory created connections not just in San Francisco, but all around the world wherever we traveled. (I need to pull the stats, but we went to five continents together, including Antarctica.)
He loved people and their stories.
***
Om and I were an odd couple. We met online through forums and email because Om was one of the earliest adopters of WordPress. We finally met in person in 2004 when I was 20 and he was 38. He connected me to the first investors I ever spoke to, Phil Black, who formed True Ventures, and Tony Conrad, and introduced me to Toni Schneider, my business soul mate, who became like a co-founder as the CEO of Automattic in our first 8 years.
And of course on the internet. I don’t know how we would count, but I would guess Om read at least 1 or 2% of the whole thing.
**
Om was a voracious learner. I was there when he first used chopsticks, and only a few months later, he knew every sushi restaurant in San Francisco and exactly what he liked at each.
***
Om is probably in the top ten in the world for finding things incredibly early. That’s why he has the best usernames! How does one guy get the @om username on WordPress.com in 2005 (user ID 719), Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010? The first WordPress meetup was at Chaat Cafe (now Corner) in 2005, 8 people showed up, and Om was one of them.
***
One of the biggest lessons I learned from Om is the deep appreciation of craft. When he took an interest in photography or pens, he would somehow find his way to the most obscure, highest-quality expression of that form. “What Would Om Want?” is a question I will always ponder. I want to craft products that would make Om proud.
***
Om’s last word was “love.”"]]>ommalik grief friendship death life 2026 bobwier mattmullenweg christophermichel writing howwewrite storytelling blogs blogging humanity curiosity respect stories waysofliving craft lovehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:6fd042aa68b2/Om Malik taught Silicon Valley to read itself - RuntimeWire2026-06-27T07:09:28+00:00
https://runtimewire.com/article/om-malik-taught-silicon-valley-to-read-itself
robertogrecoommalik ryanmerket 2026 technology siliconvalley sanfrancisco journalism blogging media vc venturecapital internet web online telecommunication pace priorities hype feeds techcrunch gigaom trueventures investment writing howwewritehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:d583e209ff65/The Century of Eric Hobsbawm2026-06-26T07:08:12+00:00
https://www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-century-of-eric-hobsbawm/
robertogrecoenzotraverso 2026 erichobswam biography history writinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a419695da106/The Wounded Walker | Commonweal Magazine2026-06-25T21:14:53+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ward-graham-michel-de-certeau-wounded-walker
robertogrecomicheldecerteau 2026 theology religion everyday society spirituality myticism françoisdosse jesuits jeanjosephsurin jacqueslacan pierrebourdieu michelfoucault foucault popefrancis catholicchurch catholicism philosophy juliakristeva claudelevi-strauss structuralism poststructuralism jean-paulsartre sartre lucegirard walking culture politics nicholasofcusa luceirigaray urbaingrandier knowledge resistances meanderings control meaning meaningmaking chloézhao nomadland poetics secularism interdisciplinary lacan josefčapek henridulubac jeandaniélou culturalstudies dilexitnos 2024 stignatius meditations divine 1968 edwardschillebeeckx materialism life living howwelive sociology linguistics hitory ideology psychology psychogeography discernment belief signs existentialism citizenship billboards ads advertising cityplanning urban urbanism cooking anthropology literature analysis everydaylife waysofbeing waysofoperating apathy resistance friction ordinary truth freedom evasions deployments transgressions dehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:78761595a095/Jerry's Map2026-06-24T07:41:46+00:00
https://www.jerrysmap.com/
robertogrecomaps mapping fiction jerrygretzinger obliquestrategies art brianeno henrydarger making imagination creativity rules systems systemsthinking games play gaming worldbuilding arts accretion persistence peoplemakegames lore change random randomness uncertainty unrest future disorder order cards carddecks productivity surpise mortality death collage diaries howwewrite writing memory generativeart generativehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9099a592d543/A Proper Education | Commonweal Magazine2026-06-21T03:50:07+00:00
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/proper-education-aaron-robertson-black-catholic-writers
robertogreco2026 catholicism catholicchurch education religion writing howwewrite aaronrobertson parochialschools schools schooling history exclusion literature lawrencelucas erinsalius shirleyharris-slaughter edwardjones johnkeene blackcatholicism tonimorrison catholiceducation faith suffering guilt ritual authority jameshealy ceciliamoorehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cbcb1b0214f9/Autocinema | Cosmos Malick2026-06-17T10:29:10+00:00
https://cosmosmalick.net/2026/06/15/autocinema.html
robertogrecoEvery night I kept getting another phone call thinking it was my last day on set and just being happy with that one day, and then getting a phone call that one night saying Terry wants you to come back in tomorrow. You okay with that? I was like, yes! Yes I’m okay, that is so exciting. And then the next night, the same thing, the same thing, and I think I ended up shooting about eleven days and they took me to Vegas. I remember Christian [Bale] laughing, he was like, you’ll probably end up being the main character in this movie.
And that’s just one example of how completely the filming can diverge from the script. Imagine then, the transformations that can take place in the process of editing. The Criterion edition of The New World contains an interview with the films’s editors, and they talk extensively about how Malick encouraged them to experiment, to get beyond their usual practices. One of them said that his typical experience in editing was to be constrained by the director, but when working with Malick he often wanted to say, Whoa, Terry, let’s pull it back a little.
With such an improvisatory, open-ended approach, even the most strictly autobiographical script might turn into something very different by the time the story is filmed and edited. It’s safe, I think, to say that the three films I have mentioned have deep roots in Malick’s own experience, but it would be unwise to see any of those films as documenting his life. "]]>alanjacobs terrencemalick 2026 filmmaking direction writing howwewrite autobiography fiction autocinema editing improvisationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:abc7927188a7/Make Believe • Robin Rendle2026-06-14T09:14:44+00:00
https://robinrendle.com/notes/make-believe/
robertogreco...what are “childish enthusiasms” but the ability to see the world with the freshness and wonder that literature requires? The child who stares and marvels at the workings of a garbage truck sees the garbage truck better than adults do. The kid who breathlessly recounts horse facts, who finds it overwhelming that such an amazing creature actually exists, is correct.
Mac continues:
Since the invention of the printing press, children’s books have been a battleground between those who want to tell kids what to do and those who want to tell them stories. [...] adults often expect children’s books to reinforce the prerogative of parents or priests or school principals. Most often, we confuse writers with teachers.
I hate it when stories have treacly moral lessons as an adult, too. I like the complexity! The unknown bits of a story, the blurry edges that are impossible to put into words. So why should kids literature be any different?
Rather than pushing a moral, good fiction invites the reader to make meaning. A moral is an immutable lesson, intentionally encoded into a story by the author, meant to be inscribed on the child’s brain. Meaning, though, is created collaboratively...
I could do this all day, quoting big chunks and spoiling every page of Mac’s very charming, very funny little book. Thankfully, Mac has a newsletter too that I’m now utterly obsessed by. Take this fantastic piece about Where the Wild Things Are for example:
MAC: As Max is crowned “king of all wild things” the pictures get even bigger, and that white bar shrinks, until we come to maybe the most famous sentence in any picture book: “‘And now,’ cried Max, ‘let the wild rumpus start.’” The rumpus is three glorious full-bleed, two-page illustrations. The white space is gone. There are no words.
(These are called “wordless spreads.”)
JON: After all, what would you write? A bunch of sounds? It’s so much louder this way.
"]]>robinrendle childrensbooks literature storytelling 2026 macbarnett meaning meaninmaking collaboration wherethewildthingsare mauricesendak writing howwewrite picturebooks childrensliteraturehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f78c19773cc6/Ellul and Berry – International Jacques Ellul Society2026-06-13T21:03:44+00:00
https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-berry/
robertogrecowendellberry jacquesellul comparison technology pacifism waw violence local global society theology christianity language politics capitalism farming zoominginandout writing howwewrite jasonhudson 2016 modernity industrialism agriculture literacy faith optimismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c42cc25a435a/Localists Abroad: A Conversation with Joel Carillet - Front Porch Republic2026-06-12T01:23:11+00:00
https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/06/localists-abroad-a-conversation-with-joel-carillet/
robertogrecoadamsmith small local 2026 localism wendellberry joelcarillet slow chriscleave rorystewart memory writing howwewrite travel traveling simoneweil relationships lovehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:65d38dcb2e60/Xia Jia: The AI Story Is Not Done | The MIT Press Reader2026-06-11T23:04:08+00:00
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/xia-jia-the-ai-story-is-not-done/
robertogrecoxiajia 2026 writing howwewrite ai artificialintelligence listening confiding psychology counseling liucixin technologyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:48018ea3c6cf/How the AI age forgets to ask: "What for?" | Benjamín Labatut + Jasmine Sun - YouTube2026-06-06T04:39:34+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8rLRIhDS-Y
robertogrecobenjaminlabatut 2026 jasminesun ai artificialintelligence fiction literature literaryfiction quantumphysics quantummechanics johnvonneumann alphago alphazero leesedol abstraction life living messiness morality emotion superintelligence human humans humanism technooptimiism technology quantumtheory walterpitts warrenmcculloch shame fear history science claude claudcode unitree demishassabis tylercowen logic reason mutuallyassureddestruction optimism realism software purpose philosophy experience bodies waysofknowing robots humanoidrobots chatbots writing howwewrite allthesenses senses wisdom mortalityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b5d71052c560/How Austin Kleon Keeps it Fun and Weird2026-06-05T23:37:17+00:00
https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/how-austin-kleon-keeps-it-fun-and
robertogrecoaustinkleon jillianhess writing howwewrite notes notetaking notebooks logs diaries commonplacebooks logbooks collage logginghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:eb8d29db8cbc/At What Cost?2026-06-05T09:42:43+00:00
https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/at-what-cost/
robertogreco2026 audreywatters education edtech schools schooling lms ai artificialintelligence popeleoxiv randiweingarten screentime teaching howweteach persistence friction cognition children openai microsoft technology criticalthinking andrewcantarutti productivity efficiency optimization labor work learning howwelearn googleclassroom timothyburke addiction socialmedia attention attentioneconomy meta resistance offline edzitron lizkrieger meghano'gieblyn universities colleges highered highereducation noralacour csu californiastateuniversity writing howwewrite toddfeathers benwilliamson scientism neuroscience translation policy tedchiang kieranhealy lmsacasas care caring grading lessonplanning communicationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:b2995e194099/The Right Tool for the Right Hands - by Andrew Cantarutti2026-06-05T09:33:09+00:00
https://walledgardenedu.substack.com/p/the-right-tool-for-the-right-hands
robertogrecoandrewcantarutti education learning howwlearn teaching howweteach tools 20206 google clasroom edtech lms efficiency productivity administration gradebooks software communication lessonplanning ai artificialintelligence assessment grammarly quillbot writing howwewreite research audiobooks attention coding design productionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:82ebda45e0d2/The Slow Line: Art Through Train Travel and Public Transit Spaces2026-06-04T08:01:13+00:00
https://summer-university.udk-berlin.de/?id=653
robertogrecotrains rail railways via:javierarbona 2026 publictransit transit nataliairinaroman art berlin publicart trainstations movement fieldwork theory public experience travel brandenburg writing howwewrite space place fieldwalkshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fd2d62bc3695/Why Writing by Hand Beats Typing (in 6 Charts) | Edutopia2026-06-04T07:54:52+00:00
https://www.edutopia.org/visual-essay/why-writing-by-hand-beats-typing-in-6-charts
robertogrecowriting howwewrite handwriting youkiterada howwelearn learning literacy reading howweread education brain cognition memory slow friction process notes notetaking typing digital analoghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:030dec78177c/Detroit Music, Creativity, Capital, & the Working Class with Hanif Abdurraqib - YouTube2026-06-03T20:27:18+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vinqz2Fs0zA
robertogrecodetroit labor gentrification music 2026 hanifabdurraqib motown hiphop techno djs docuseries tv television documentary cities us art artiists musicians spaces infleunce culture culturemaking greatmigration curiosity creativity bluecollar work workers workingclass class midwest musichistory musicalhistory jaredware makc livemusic community performance venueloss musicvenues affordability urban urbanism olympia washingtonstate lineage legacy punk underground undergroundresistance place gatekeeping audience audiences radio collegeradio mentorship mentoring undergroundradio guerillaradio generations knowledge knowledgesharing intergenarational waajeed craft communalism mtv care caring bobseger atlanta sterlingtolles guiltysimpson nickspeed jdilla boldyjames maps mapmaking ethnography landscape soniclandscapes anthonybourdain memphis houston boston rap gregtate learning howwelearn solidarity politics radicalism radicalpolitics trust artmaking absurdity iloveboosters bootsriley thecoup tonimorrison dialecticalmateriahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:32e3861c6683/How global logistics got me over my fear of personal agents (Interconnected)2026-06-02T00:57:20+00:00
https://interconnected.org/home/2026/05/30/fedex
robertogrecoai aipsychosis artificialintelligence claude writing howwewrite notes notetaking integrity psychology 2026https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:7c7384d0c85b/LLMs Were Mostly (But Not Entirely) Useless at Extra-Textual Tasks Involved in the Composition of My Next Novel2026-06-01T22:34:09+00:00
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/llms-were-mostly-but-not-entirely
robertogrecofreddiedeboer 2026 llms ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite production productivity claude chatgpt howwethink thinkinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:fe5912c973f8/Wendell Berry’s Wisdom for Living in Time by Anne Ryan2026-05-29T22:37:59+00:00
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/poetry/wendell-berrys-wisdom-for-living-in-time
robertogrecowendellberry anneryan 2026 kentucky walking poetry writing howwewrite time nature slow small temporality charlestaylorhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:e5d1bcdbe639/“The most important point about rising AI use in the arts is simply this: Millions of people desperately want affirmation.” | Alan Jacobs2026-05-28T22:39:01+00:00
https://social.ayjay.org/2026/05/28/the-most-important-point-about.html
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence alanjacobs attention recognition writing genai generativeai 2026 affirmation painting howwewrite capitalism specialness basicnesshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:20fa296172c6/“We internalize so much by doing things slower and making mistakes.” – Unsung2026-05-28T07:18:07+00:00
https://unsung.aresluna.org/we-internalize-so-much-by-doing-things-slower-and-making-mistakes/
robertogrecoSo the AI group didn’t finish meaningfully faster, but they understood meaningfully less. And the biggest gap was in debugging—the ability to recognize when code is wrong and figure out why. That’s the exact skill you need most when your job is to oversee AI-generated output.
Inside it, a quote from the Anthropic post that resonated with me:
Cognitive effort—and even getting painfully stuck—is likely important for fostering mastery.
I wonder if part of the appeal of AI tools is the promise of “exercise without exercise,” like the vibrating belt machines of the 1950s.
Elsewhere, I found an essay about the craft of writing [https://kristiedegaris.substack.com/welcome ] by Kristie de Garis:
Writing at speed privileges what arrives first. The obvious phrasing, the familiar structure, a thought that you heard somewhere before.
Also this:
A book is not retrieved fully formed from memory, or pulled up in a full bucket from some deep creative well in your body.
The old saying goes “everyone dreams about having written a book, not about writing one.” Now we’re building software that allows people to “have written a book” and “have designed something.”
I am open (I think!) to the idea that the nature of the effort will change as tools change. But I can’t see mastery arriving without effort. And I’m worried people will start mistaking prompting mastery for material mastery."]]>slow rogerwong marcinwichary friction effort cognition ai artificialintelligence kristiedegaris writing howwewrite thinking howwethink process 2026https://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:275517ffc53f/👁️ The Professor and the Nazi (Part 1)2026-05-28T05:59:00+00:00
https://davidzmorris.substack.com/p/the-professor-and-the-nazi-part-1
robertogrecodavidmorris tescreal jamesmiller smithcollege llms ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite education highered highereducation citation colleges universities scholarship longtermism transhumanism singularitarianism singularity extropianism cosmism rationalism effectivealtruism cryonics citations academia eugenics incompetence voxday ianmilescheong nkjemisin authoritarianism popeleoxiv encyclicals magnificahumanitas catholicism catholicchurch humanism responsibility human humans 2026 technology automation work workers labor society humanityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:37376df900fb/Fritz Eichenberg’s Art of Human Connection - JSTOR Daily2026-05-27T21:52:40+00:00
https://daily.jstor.org/fritz-eichenbergs-art-of-human-connection/
robertogrecofrtitzeichenberg 2026 printmaking art howweread howwewrite reading writing dorothyday catholicworker quakers quakerism buddhism zenbuddhism pacifism pendlehill petermaurin humanism fordism illustration socialism personalism morality responsibility utopia utopianism moralorder spirituality modernity modernart modernism erinzavitz arteducation faith religion creativefreedom prattgraphicartcenter literature harryabrams visual fiction humanity freedomhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:339cd0756e1d/The Typo Vibe Shift - The Atlantic2026-05-27T08:14:04+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/05/typo-ai-trend-human/687237/
robertogrecoerrors mistakes typos writing howwewrite 2026 laziness humanism human michaelwaters nicoleellison perfection errata aliceleonard history jamesjoyce zaralarsson petercardon sloppiness humans ai artificialintelligence spelling punctuation care carelessness socialmedia communicationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:a766968b1552/The Copy and the Guru – On my Om2026-05-27T07:51:22+00:00
https://om.co/2026/05/26/the-copy-and-the-guru/
robertogreco“All that was once directly lived has become mere representation,” Guy Debord wrote in The Society of the Spectacle. “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”
The twin doesn’t just represent you. It restructures how others relate to you. The copy becomes the relationship. Send out the twin, and you have not freed yourself for deeper thinking. You have replaced the possibility of being surprised by another person with the certainty of your own archive.
None of this should really surprise us. As a society we have abstracted everything. Work itself is abstracted. We don’t make anything concrete around these parts. We find ways to make and remake money, which has itself been abstracted into the tap of a phone and a signature on a screen.
Look around and all you can see are gurus under their proverbial banyan trees, who make nothing but impart wisdom. They listen to the same podcast, and then regurgitate. They marvel at humanist manifestos. Some even read the Stoics. This is found wisdom, not earned wisdom. The twin is only possible once you have stopped being accountable to reality. The code either runs or it doesn’t. The piece either lands or it doesn’t. That accountability is what keeps thinking honest. Once you move from doing to narrating, you can be archived. Once archived, you can be distributed to the rest of the planet.
The question is not about AI and its tools. It is about the culture that created a market for this. What does it mean that we built enough of these people, finished, distributable, no longer becoming anything, to make the digital twin a product category?
It is a monument to a self that stopped growing."]]>ommalik ai artificialintelligence socialmedia twitter instagram performativity guydebord spectacle 2026 society thinking work labor growth siliconvalley writinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c72880e0dced/Hating AI is good, actually2026-05-27T07:38:54+00:00
https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/hating-ai-is-good-actually
robertogrecomarisakabas 2026 ai artificialintelligence resistance economics technology politics culture philosophy ethics programming buzzfeed jonahperetti ericschmidt stevenrosenbaum chatgpt claude writing howwewrite literature granta plagiarism olgatokarczuk aiskepticism skepticism aislop slop agency linkedin aibubble backlash generativeai genaihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f9203263dc7f/If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you2026-05-25T06:59:21+00:00
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writing-i-will
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence samkriss writing howwewrite 2026 llms genai generativeai chatgpt vsnaipaul jamirnazir commonwealthprize sharonaruparayil sharmataylor salmanrushdie virginiawoolf arundhariroy nknarayan saadathasanmanto jenniferames reading howweread steveturner kategilgan victorialinvingstone solapeadetutuadeyemi brayanarmengraham kevincohen glennloury nargesbajoghli clivelewis claude johnedwarddemicolihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1bce5e26e936/A Discussion on the New Novel 'Palaces of the Crow' (with Ray Nayler) | The Chris Hedges Report2026-05-23T05:19:01+00:00
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/a-discussion-on-the-new-novel-palaces
robertogrecoraynayler chrishedges war poland wwii ww2 crows corvids humannature humans human caring community fiction literature togetherness interconnected interconnectedness ussr nazigermany germany cooperation nonviolence mutualaid survival peterkropotkin totalitarianism williamgolding rootlessness evil trauma childhood human-animalrelations human-animalrelationships 2026 lordoftheflies danielberrigan faith birds siberia morethanhuman multispecies krasnovodsk resurrection manchuria turkmenistan leesandlin hitler adolfhitler society civilization children communication interspecies relationships thomasnagel experience perception pathology donaltrump hannaharendt karma poverty nourishment scarcity abundance socialism equality writing howwewrite reading howweread legacy death generations culture learning howwelearn inscription individualism extraction extractiveindividualism environment corporations corporatism disconnection history interdependence sesnes sensory waysofknowing blindness sound sensing senses modernity humahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:476a028d3fb1/The Commonwealth Prize controversy shows the literary world isn’t prepared for AI | The Verge2026-05-23T05:10:27+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/tech/936073/ai-writing-granta-commonwealth-prize
robertogrecopublishing llms writing howwewrite ai artificialintelligence gabydelvalle granta jamirnazir nabeelqureshi razmifarook sigridrausing claude kevinjaredhosein hachette miaballard literature olgatokarczuk literaryfiction fiction jamesdaunt pangram kevinnguyen commonwealthprizehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:992f5730a84d/The ‘Granta’ AI Fiction Scandal Changes Everything - The Atlantic2026-05-22T08:25:43+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/05/granta-ai-fiction-book-scandal-changes-everything/687243/
robertogreco2026 grant writing howwewrite fiction scandal ai artificialintelligence jamirnazir generativeai genai johnedwarddemicoli sharonaruparayil vauhinivara kategilgan razmifarook thomasmeaney sigridrausing claude anthropic llms panram plagiarism aidetection emilybenderhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ab8179a59fc8/There’s No Earthly Way of Knowing Which Direction We Are Going…2026-05-20T06:33:36+00:00
https://kottke.org/26/05/theres-no-earthly-way-of-knowing-which-direction-we-are-going
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence jasonkottke 2026 writing howwewrite google search internet online gemini resistance olgatokarczuk stevenrosenbaumhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c5bcf3d7e513/After OpenAI (Vandal Live at Wake Forest Humanities Institute)2026-05-14T04:33:50+00:00
https://theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/afteropenai?triedRedirect=true
robertogrecoopenai chatgpt anthropic mattseybold dereklee michaelaappeltova nisrinerahal barrytrachtenberg jeffbills-solomon deanfrnaco amandagengler 2026 emilybender timnitgebru tressiemcmillancottom micheldecerteau virginiadignum ronanfarrow andrewmarantz karenhao andyhines edhirsch tylerjohnston matthewkirschenbaum ritaraely christophernewfield brittparis annpettifor danielroher charlietyrell erichayot johnwarner jacobsilverman nichsrnicek bentarnoff mckenziewark media journalism reporting ipos opeanai samaltman spacex xai grok agiu artificialintelligence artificialgeneralintelligence suchirbalaji bigtech darioamodei microsoft alphabet oracle meta blackrock google liquidity finance wallstreet aibubble aihype speculation llms singularitarianism singularity humanextinction larryellison alexkarp china writing howwewrite text literature environment humanrights armsrace datacenters palantir us resources institutions anxiety anger futility nihilism highered highereducation colleges and universities reading howweread literachttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:69c20805dd99/McMansion Hell, Fandoms, Retinol and Modern Opera | Middlebrow Podcast - YouTube2026-05-13T06:55:58+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt15iNgvNsw
robertogrecomiddlebrowpodcast katewagner mcmansionhell 2026 architecture mcmansions criticism us 1980s 1990s postmodernism charlesjencks autodidactism autodidacts taste edgarwright politics inequality economics policy suburbia suburbs conspicuousconsumption fandoms fandom buildings fascism fascistarchitecture fascistaesthetics donaldtrump latefascistaesthetics opera runningman society vernaculararchitecture danrosen brianpark oil wealthinequality oman serbia construction realestate wealth luxury dubai dubaichocolate labubus power ideology magaface castledoctrine utah florida environment bjarkeingels thomasheatherwick autocad frankgehry technology robotics smartcities design adaptivereuse materials shippingcontainers césarpelli adaptation domination architects housing aoscott fans reading howweread writing film movies music tuckercarlson italianfuturists italianfuturism nazis ai artificialintelligence llms educationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:1f03111ec4f6/Cursive Club, Where Students Learn With a Flourish - The New York Times2026-05-13T06:01:50+00:00
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/us/cursive-clubs-students.html
robertogrecowriting schoolhouse howwewrite cursive via:javierarbona ryleekirk commoncore craft handwriting us curriculum schools schoolinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ebde54d2414c/Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain2026-05-12T04:10:39+00:00
https://www.404media.co/your-ai-use-is-breaking-my-brain/
robertogrecojasonkoebler writing howwewrite reading howweread ai artificialintelligence generativeai genai aipsychosis chatgpt geminihttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:43c23e128365/A Mystical Ornithology – by Jeremy Seifert and Benjamin James Roberts2026-05-09T16:06:52+00:00
https://emergencemagazine.org/film/a-mystical-ornithology/
robertogrecojdrewlanham birds nature ornithology animals time senses sound memory death grief grieving 2026 film jeremyseifert benjaminjamesroberts multispecies morethanhuman wildlife reverence seasons change southcarolina writing howwewrite imagination migration human-animalrelations human-animalrelationships aldoleopold stewardships land farms farming healing slow stillness place refuge safety rest sounds presence being hope anthropomorphization mysticism spirituality celebration rural kinshiphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:de2c0d002826/How Physics is Like Poetry with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein - YouTube2026-05-07T04:25:48+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sY2bvKrW_M
robertogrecochandaprescod-weinstein 2026 adamconover physics science cosmos poetry space time interdisciplinary transdisiplinary multidisciplinary truth universe quantumphsyics quantummechanics cosmology scale zoominginandout perspective curiosity bigquestions philosophy race racism patriarchy racescience isaacnewton newtonianphysics bellhooks margins storytelling faradabhoiwala freespeech freedomofspeech capitalism robertfrost margaretprescod nikkigiovanni kant natashatrethewey jerichobrown relativity alberteinstein theoryofrelativity humanity humanities spacetime politics neutrinos bananas nuclearphysics motion astrophysics education society knowledge manhattanproject darpa annfinkbeiner particlephysics nasa technology art arts stephenhawking gravity translation language communication colonialism slavery francisbacon data scientificmethod empiricism history intelligentdesign metaphor craft writing howwwrite wokeness wokestudies liberalarts missyelliot jackierobinson startrek authoritarianism queerness gender genderstudhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:9c00c7b5fd3e/Classroom Cope - by Anastasia Berg - The Point’s Substack2026-05-06T05:46:39+00:00
https://thepointmag.substack.com/p/classroom-cope
robertogrecoanastasiaberg howweread howwewrite ai artificialintelligence technology attention pedagogy learning howwelearn classrooms writing teaching howweteach educationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:38f307e22b2f/Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk on why museum are like novels - YouTube2026-05-05T20:25:08+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbXu9J970sE
robertogreco2026 orhanpamuk 2024 museums literature novels collections collecting istanbul storytelling museumofinnocence nationalism turkey türkiye howwewrite writing objects politicshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:76bbe5a94764/Sara Hendren: Who Is the Built World Actually Built For? - Art of Inquiry | Podcast on Spotify2026-05-05T14:11:09+00:00
https://open.spotify.com/episode/11zlpahmklfgr8YOUrtLnY
robertogrecosarahendren 2026 architecture design disabilities disability accessibility art bodies prosthetics sofiaodeh mayaeinhorn engineering making socialpracticeart science inquiry history conflictkitchen edibleestates socialpractice online internet covid-19 pandemic coronavirus offline social slow small audiencesofone socialjustice ai artificialintelligence technology time perception politics genai generativeai activism poetry human humanism humans howwewrite writing teaching pedagogy highered highereducation culturemaking culture life living howwelive socialmedia being waysofbeing modernity method patternrecognition krzysztofwodiczko downsyndrome interrogativedesign careers purpose meaning meaningmaking children parenting arts humanities friendship relationships leisure artleisure leisurearts identity passion expression objects affect emotions embodiment awe wonder buildings senses spirituality sacredness codeswitching artifacts translation language communication howwemake fabrication ramps risd olincollege builtwohttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:0a421ccc8594/Vicky Osterweil on Disney, Intellectual Property and Storytelling - YouTube2026-05-03T19:43:34+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StrpSp8anQM
robertogrecovickyosterweil ip intellectualproperty culture film disney 2026 entertainment technology medicine popularculture imagination howwewrite writing howweread reading anarchism storytelling looting law legal policestate police policing filmmaking characters marvel monopolies music books covid-19 coronavirus pandemic vaccines pharmaceuticals consolidation markets capitalism innovation constitution us pirating literature copyright productivity creativity suppression francises nintendo matel videogames sequels hegemony ideology nuclearfamily individualism politics propaganda china homogenization finance financialization franchises merchandising ows occupywallstreet fandom freddiegray 2000s 2018 2012 thailand 2014 censorship hungergames guyfawkes resistance revolution davidgraeber stuarthall art artworld commodification gamegate starwars fans fanculture johnboyega daisyridley labor work workers power control socialfabric fanfiction communities community mutualaid 2020 philadelphia losangeles waltdisney mccarthyism sonhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:5393b930b1ac/The role of literature as the key to personal freedom | Aeon Essays2026-04-26T06:57:44+00:00
https://aeon.co/essays/the-role-of-literature-as-the-key-to-personal-freedom
robertogrecoreading howweread literature 2026 freedom florachampy empathy proust johnruskin johnmilton books writing howwewrite rolandbarthes stanleyfish jacquesderrida newhistoricism newcriticism jonathanrose allanbloom haroldbloom emilyfinley janeausten patriciamatthew madamebovary gustaveflaubert percivaleverett kameldaoud marktwain elenaferrante paulbénichou victorhugo annelouisegermainedestël fiction rousseau readership christopherkelly charlesdickens émiledurkheim neigesinno hernandiaz values stories education marcelrpoust dostoevsky flaubert freudhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bf852a6b28fd/We Are (Still) Living in the Long Boring2026-04-24T03:38:52+00:00
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/we-are-still-living-in-the-long-boring
robertogrecoRay Kurzweil was prescient about many things, and one of them is this: the merger has started. He predicted the outer layers of our neocortex would be wired to the cloud by the 2030s, extending human thought the way the last round of neocortical expansion produced us. But think carefully about what consumer technology alone already does. (And that’s just CONSUMER technology.) We have built ourselves a second nervous system.
“We have built ourselves a second nervous system”! This is the kind of sentence that sounds like revelation and means, on inspection, that you can look things up very quickly on your phone. We have indeed built ourselves a very fast library. That library has caused a lot of unhappiness, but certainly it’s a remarkable technological achievement. That achievement did not, however, eliminate tuberculosis.
And while we’re talking about Kurzweil and nervous systems, we should take time to point out his fundamental misapprehension of that system. Kurzweil has always had one goal, above all others: to avoid death. As a means to achieve this ambitious project, he has repeatedly invoked the desire to “upload” his consciousness to a computer. But this is folly: there is no consciousness that is distinct from the brain that houses it. Consciousness is brain, is tissue, is cells, is wetware. There is no discrete program that is the self that can be extracted from the brain and deposited into a conveniently durable chassis. To imagine a consciousness that can be housed on a floppy disc is to participate in a dualist fantasy of the kind that should have died out hundreds of years ago. Kurzweil has had this pointed out to him many times, but his desire to live forever apparently overwhelms his more rational faculties. The fantasy wins.
Dee dismisses “techno-pessimists” as people trying to stop something that has already happened. (Jasmine Sun goes with “AI populists,” a term I find a little inscrutable.) Perhaps I am a techno-pessimist, but if so, it’s only because I’ve been alive for most of the dispiriting past 50 years. “We were promised flying cars,” goes the cliche. But flying cars are at least possible; it’s just that they’re hideously inefficient and offer no advantage over our current boring-but-effective combination of cars and airplanes. We also were told to dream of time travel and faster-than-light travel, both of which are forever forbidden by elementary physics, and of colonizing distant worlds, which is forever forbidden by more factors than I can list. As Kim Stanley Robinson and others have pointed out, that last bit is essential, because if we recognize that we only have one world to live in, we might become better stewards of it. And that’s why I’m a techno-pessimist in general. Though I’m frequently accused of hoeing this particular row because I like disillusioning other people, I am instead trying to make this reality clear: we cannot sit back and wait for technological progress to save us. The only solutions to our problems - the problems of hunger, of poverty, of injustice, of disillusionment, of alienation - are political solutions. I understand feeling totally defeated by that idea, given what politics is like on this planet. But it’s all we have. We start to build the political structures that can enable humanity to take care of all of us or we drown. There is no fate but what we make.
Whatever you think of my motives, I will not stop pointing out that we are still here, still in this boring muck, still circling the parking lot at Target looking for a space. And until and unless the usual suspects can produce actual evidence of something happening right now, the skeptic’s work is not over. They promise AI will cure all disease; AI has not cured a single disease. Ezra Klein routinely throws around 20% economic growth as a baseline for the AI age; these few years with LLMs have produced the same anemic ~2% growth as we’ve been used to in this, the digital century. And I still say, wake me up when that changes. My techno-pessimism is a pessimism grounded in a fact derived from the historical record: that civilizational-scale technological transformation is extraordinarily rare, that it happened once in a rapidly-receding extraordinary century, and that we have been living in its long shadow ever since. And now some mistake that shadow for the sun."]]>freddiedeboer ai aislop artificialintelligence llms chatgpt openai cluade anthropic 2026 howwewrite generativeai genai slop photography images code coding music technology scarcity abundance videogames applications video film writing imagery 2022 internet web online energy housing cnacer medicine masstransit transportation society civilization siliconvalley socialmedia raykurzweil consciousness singularitarianism singularity jasminesun aipopulists technooptionism technopessimism kimstanleyrobinson humanity ezraklein economy economics growth katherinedee history health healthcare aibubble aihype lifeexpectancy us aviation progress labor work gdp maintenance innovation culture samaltman darioamodei maryharrington industrialrevolution communicationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:ba413984e58c/trump.fm - @realDonaldTrump Social Media Archive: Trump Tweets & Truth Social Posts2026-04-22T03:25:29+00:00
https://trump.fm/
robertogrecodonaldtrump socialmedia ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite twitter truthsocial analysishttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:dc36057cb412/We’ll soon find out what is truly special about human writing | Psyche Ideas2026-04-21T06:25:34+00:00
https://psyche.co/ideas/well-soon-find-out-what-is-truly-special-about-human-writing
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/opinion/schools-edtech-laptops-games-learning.html
robertogrecoteaching howweteach gamification videogames gaming games 2026 schools schooling pedagogy mollyworthen digitalnatives learning. howwelearn reading howweread neuroscience jaredcooneyhorvath digital kahoot curriculum denisechampney emilycherkin technology edtech skylercarr commoncore reasoning criticalthinking algorithms ambiguity writing howwewritehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:47bbb8ea065d/Ten years of "Alaska": Maggie Rogers on going viral and singing for 200,000 protestors - YouTube2026-04-18T04:31:04+00:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK5y9N1kuNk
robertogrecomaggierogers 2026 music songwriting musicmaking pharrell charlieharding switchedonpop fame lyrics virality stephencolbert activism art fear protest rest creativity writing collaboration howwewrite howwework protestsongs hope artmaking courage well-being wellbeing oppression donaldtrump freespeech utopia resistance dancing community solidarity togetherness social meaning meaningmaking systems change adaptability innovation growth life living meditation slow time productivity stockandflow rejuvenation goals work divinityschool gradschool society education conviviality solitude process prince spirituality joanbaezhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:af8943c86286/“The Interdisciplinary Nature of Food Is Now Un-ignorable”: Alicia Kennedy on Food Writing, Food Security, and Food Justice - Public Books2026-04-15T06:31:44+00:00
https://www.publicbooks.org/the-interdisciplinary-nature-of-food-is-now-unignorable-alicia-kennedy-on-food-writing-food-security-and-food-justice/
robertogrecowriting howwewrite interdisciplinary food brcohen aliciakennedy justice foodjustice foodsecurity decolonization media geography foodsystems systems systemsthinking policy politics economics puertorico markets veganism vegetarianism us diversity class gender race environment foodwriting reform snap consumptionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:854f0e56c99a/I Will Never Respect A Website2026-04-14T22:14:43+00:00
https://www.wheresyoured.at/i-will-never-respect-a-website/
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https://naoise.substack.com/p/ai-and-being-a-writer
robertogreconaoisedolan 2026 ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite writers capitalism economics labor miaballard human humanism effort publishing foucault michelfoucault brendanbehan normanmailer tonimorrison shortcuts society motivation work howwework reading howweread identity creativewriting learning howwelearn morality art artmaking achievement individualism succss ambitionhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:93e6ce56f715/the most sensible book so far on AI - by Aidan Walker2026-04-11T21:02:06+00:00
https://howtodothingswithmemes.substack.com/p/the-most-sensible-book-so-far-on
robertogrecoai artificialintelligence language llms howwewrite leifweatherby aidanwalker 2026 writing literarytheory ferdinanddesaussure rolandbarthes jacquesderrida michelfoucault foucault chatgpt claude humanism noamchomsky wallacestevens rhetoric capitalism computation computing karlmarx poetry memes friedrichkittler nicksrnicekhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:c0b47892290e/gilest.org: AI and the human voice2026-04-11T06:32:31+00:00
https://gilest.org/notes/2026/human-ai/
robertogrecogilesturnbull ai artificialintelligence writing howwewrite poetry technology 2026 human humans humanism relationships process llmshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cc0efa4dcf18/Writing with AI is the same as writing by AI2026-04-11T06:20:22+00:00
https://jamescosullivan.substack.com/p/writing-with-ai
robertogrecowriting howwewrite ai artificialintelligence llms jameso'sullivan 2026 labor work publishing media language authorship accountability knowledgeworkhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:f84b88b478af/Content Machines: Reading and Writing in the Platform Era, by Sarah Brouillette (2026)2026-04-05T06:05:51+00:00
https://www.dukeupress.edu/content-machines
robertogreco2026 publishing howwewrite writing howweread reading kindle amazon sarahbrouillette wattpad platforms ebooks labor fiction self-publishing via:javierarbonahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:bb9f49ea52bf/It's open season for refusing AI - by Brian Merchant2026-04-05T05:44:24+00:00
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/its-open-season-for-refusing-ai
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