Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

Is my attention on loving,
or is my attention on
who isn’t loving me?

— Andrea Gibson / “Wellness Check”

There is a feeling I get in my mouth after reading writing produced by a large language model. It reminds me of the oily, filmy coating I used to get at Friday night dinner after eating parev ice-cream: the sense that I haven’t really eaten anything. I’m not left with a taste (AI writing doesn’t have a taste) but with a texture; or to be more precise, a lack of it. This texturelessness, and the filmy feeling it generates, is my synaesthetic reaction to something that, at the moment, remains uncanny: the knowledge that I am trying to parse meaning from something that, while grammatical, has no motivation to carry it.

The problem is not so much that AI has no intent, no feelings to communicate (to fall short of articulating), but that we have built a world in which language is depersonalised and so often uncoupled from meaning as to erode our expectation that the two exist in a relationship of symbiosis. We do not expect all the language we encounter to carry meaning. Most language is not poetry or a conversation with a friend, it is advertising.

— Matt Greene / “On the Rise of ChatGPT and the Industrialization of the Post-Meaning World” / Lithub

Nests fall like dry leaves.
Peeled eggs
are no window onto life.
A rainstorm of darts.
Migrant flocks
drag their defeathered bodies.

This is when I swallow my words.

— Elvira Hernández / “Cross-Armed”

Every day as a cyclist, I witness gobsmacking displays of lawlessness, road rage, and distracted driving on our streets. But you know the scariest part? All it takes is a few minutes behind the wheel for me to be the one cursing under my breath, cutting corners, and putting others in danger. Cars and traffic just have a habit of bringing out our absolute worst tendencies as humans.

— Rami Abou-Sabe / “My bicycle could save the world … if you’d all just stop trying to kill me” / Boston Globe

I had a calling

to be a nun. My forehead was
that criminal. For heaven,

I’d grind my knees into
pavement until they’d bleed,

stare unblinking at the sun.
Pain’s blaze simplified me,

gave me a bone to break.

— Amy Thatcher / “Unholy”

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent and many scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the intensity of heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, while also ​creating conditions for sudden, destructive storms.

The continent has endured three stifling almost back-to back heatwaves so far this year. Intense heat has also been blamed for thousands ​of excess deaths in the May to June period.

— Renee Maltezou and Michele Kambas / “Fires in Spain and France, hail in Balkans; Europe’s erratic weather persists” / Reuters

Live hidden
Without a sound

Not seen
Nor heard

Be not
From this earth
But from nothing.

— Cecilia Vicuña / “Ex Nothing”

What I’m Listening To: 

And I shouted out an apology
And then I felt like a twat
And then I hugged the track of naked stone
Where the glacier used to be
Her eyes filled with tears
The glacier feeds the river
As she said
The river feeds the lake
Which plants grow from ash?

— Dry Cleaning / “Grass”