Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The rabbits here are built like 40-year-old toddlers.
Sometimes all I want to do is sit & pet them.

— Othuke Umukoro / “Passing”

Laws govern people; constitutions govern governments. Lately, American democracy has begun to wobble, leaning on a constitution that’s grown brittle. How far can a constitution bend before it breaks?

— Jill Lepore / “The United States’ Unamendable Constitution” / The New Yorker

There is too a way to die like this
Each day it comes and
puts us to sleep and
orders us to practice again
While hiding a heart so indecent
it mumbles words of blessing

— Kim Hyesoon / “Practice”

Some researchers are getting increasingly nervous about the possibility of doomsday scenarios brought about by ever more powerful and autonomous artificial intelligence systems. Others say that such warnings distract from well-documented risks of AI, such as spreading misinformation and enabling mass surveillance — or motivate leaders to join a dangerous AI arms race, lest they be left at a disadvantage. Studies suggest that some systems are already becoming misaligned with human goals, but evidence that AI could cause human extinction is hard to come by. “The companies are raking in funding, and letting society pick up the pieces,” says neuroscientist and AI researcher Gary Marcus.

— Flora Graham / “Should we worry about AI doomsday?“ / Nature Brief

And in the back seat
Childhood is normal but the scaffolding thrown up around
The road is built with an insane logic
Which is at once its interest and its uselessness
Save as torment

— Ron Padgett / “Mister Horse”

For most of history, people pondered the future in a practical sense—worrying about tangible things like planting, harvesting, the weather. But today, with prediction markets, climate change, and the threat of technocracy, forecasting what’s to come is woven into the fabric of our lives. Are we prophesying ourselves into hopelessness?

— Ian Crouch / “Do We Think Too Much About the Future” / The New Yorker Daily

. . . I’ve read
the dead in dreams are never dead,
and yes, it is their aliveness that is reassuring,
their going on even as they leave us here.

— Maxine Scates / “Flyaway”

What I’m Listening To:

I grew out of somebody else
She wore a wedding ring
And when I decompose I will be
Part of everything

— Robyn Hitchcock / “I Am This Thing”

in this (my) neighborhood pt. 134

Day 3:

Start: Ocracoke, NC
Finish: Hatteras – Avon, NC
Miles: 52.15