The Deluge, The End of the English Major, ChatGPT stole your work

Notes on the things I've been into (March)

Josh Spilker

Mar 11, 2023

Reading:

The Deluge by Stephen Markley.

This is an 800-page novel about climate change. It came out in January, shortly after I read his book from a few years ago called Ohio. I loved that story, even though I wasn’t that fond of some of the details in it. With this one, he goes harder, faster, longer? and creates a really rich world, re-imagining the next 10 years or so and what our climate problems might be.
That sounds ominous (it is!) but it isn’t doom and gloom or even apocalyptic, no. In so many ways, it’s kind of boring. There are bad storms and fires, but no one is caught on a barren landscape they can’t escape (well, maybe one person).
Instead, it focuses on climate policy, ecoterrorism, the inner lives of misunderstood scientists? I can’t even believe I’m describing it this way, but that’s what happens and I’m 50% of the way through.
My hack for this is reading on my Kindle and syncing it up with the Audible version. That helps me get through it. I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel this long before, and I also can’t believe it’s this one.

Keep Going by
Austin Kleon

Austin’s little art books are very inspirational. Which is good. I just started a new job and I need inspiration. It’s about art, and making time for your art, and to keep it up even when you don’t know where it’s going.
I’ve been tracking some great quotes, you can find my notes in this Notion doc.

ChatGPT Stole Your Work. What Are You Going To Do? At Wired.

Good argument for how sites should block AI technologies from indexing their work to preserve knowledge. The people (or at least the big sites!) have data leverage, meaning as things change, we don’t have to give all the info to AI language learning models.

You can read more about my thoughts on AI here. I’ve been using it more in my day job recently, and it is great at giving quick feedback about writing and summarizing key points. Very helpful in that regard.

Josh Spilker 🏄‍♂️ @joshspilker

Really? Me? Please go on...

They Meet Up in Motels Across America…To Trade Beer Cans. At Narratively.

A good magazine story from a few years ago. Nice, quaint, collecting.

The End of the English Major. At The New Yorker.

Hey! I was an English major. I’m even a Master. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on this, and next week, I think I’ll do a close reading (wink!) and get back to you with more points. But here are initial thoughts:
1. Students are becoming English majors through “backdoors.” This could be media studies, communications, creative writing, even marketing. I think this is a good thing. Critical reading and thoughtful creation should be celebrated, especially when they incorporate things that English majors like!
2. It’s very apparent (from the article and personal experience) that so many of the professors are stuck in outmoded thinking of literature as books only. (Everything is text! I took literary theory!) And Shakespeare still seems to be the end-all-be-all for a lot of departments.
3. Case in point, finally at the end, one of the professors says essentially like “The Wire” is the new novel (a decade-plus old observation) and that maybe English departments should consider TV more often. You think?
4. I watched The Simpsons in my communications class back in 2003. English departments have ceded so much ground, especially to film and creative writing departments in the last 20–30 years because of such narrow thinking. Digital/media/culture studies are about to do the same thing. They’re so interlinked and the canon has to expand.
5. Kudos to the writer for not only talking to Harvard professors but also those at Arizona State. One interesting revelation was that immigrant students the reporter spoke to don’t feel like an English degree is honoring their communities who put them in place to get a college degree; on the other hand, it’s the work of humanities departments that helped make a place for them. That’s a conundrum.

Watching

Isn’t this the thing in “The Last of Us?” At The Ringer. I haven’t been following “The Last of Us,” those mushroom heads freaked me out, but more awaress of Cordyceps has impacted mushroom sellers.
The Oscars are on Sunday. I recently watched The Fabelmans (good!) and Banshees of Inisherin (better than I expected!).
One movie that won’t be celebrated: Babylon which is the Damien Chazelle master-mess that “celebrates the spirit of the movies” or something. It needed a heavier hand on the film, with a lot of disgusting. Like elephant excrement and Margot Robbie projectile vomiting.
I’m not sure how that celebrates moving from silent pictures to talkies, but they thought it did. Hidden beneath that are great outsider stories (the band leader and producer, especially) plus a solid Brad Pitt performance as a crumbling actor. There was something there, but the spectacle of the mess didn’t let the actual story succeed.