Things worth sharing this weekend (9/28/24)

Sep 28, 2024

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This morning, before breakfast, I played nineteen games of Scrabble on my phone. I won thirteen. It took less than an hour. Over the past twenty-five years, I’ve played Scrabble every day, predominantly on ISC.RO, a website hosted in Romania that allows for games that are no longer than three minutes. On my phone, I use the Scrabble app and play a bot set to “expert.” I had meant to play only two or three games today, but as has been happening since 1999, I found that impossible.
I’m not a huge phone game guy, but I loved this from Brad.

…slop: a term of art, akin to spam, for low-rent, scammy garbage generated by artificial intelligence and increasingly prevalent across the internet — and beyond.
I’m more bullish on AI content and generation than most people. I use ChatGPT almost everyday to help with writing and outlining.
Just like all things, there are good and bad elements to new technology
Max does a good job of setting the stage for how bad it can get though
I will spare you the photo of Shrimp Jesus

On a recent summer morning, I took the train there to meet Grant Petersen, the bicycle designer, writer, and founder of Rivendell Bicycle Works. Petersen has become famous for making beautiful bikes, using materials and components that his industry has mostly abandoned, and for promoting a vision of cycling that is low-key, functional, anti-car, and anti-corporate.

TBH, I hadn’t heard of Rivendell bikes before reading this, though the founder seems to be the type of quirky character that I usually am drawn to
I also like Weiner’s writing, so I always check out her profiles
This also prompted me to check out Petersen’s own blahg

Take a look at the facts and human progress is the best it has ever been.
Culture is the same really, despite all the complaints
I wrote about some aspects of modern entertainment culture that I appreciate right now

Start this last week, and am about halfway through its 700 pages.
He has that “big book” thing down, the ones that I’ve only experienced a few times with Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith, where you lose track of how long a book is, it doesn’t feel long at all, and he dives deep into characters and situations and then zooms out to another situation, connecting them nicely together, and you’re totally subsumed into those situations and narratives
This book came out in 2016 and I’d seen it around a lot, but I thought it was about President Nixon (it’s not, not yet) but yeah, I’m glad I’m giving it a go right now

Others: Recently checked out the Honor Levy book and I bought the new Tony Tulathimitte novel, but haven’t started those yet

Slow Horses on Apple TV is about MI5 misfits, not about horses that can’t move. So it’s British spies and intrigue. A group of spies can’t get fired (for whatever reason) so they’re demoted to a different office and of course they band together to fight corruption within the government itself! Not a groundbreaking premise, but it’s a bit more than caper of the week, they have a season-long arc that also focuses on the bad guys, too. I’m only in Season 1, though a new one recently dropped

Okay, see you next time. I’ll be in Birmingham, AL next weekend for this punk rock hardcore festival and am looking forward to it.

Keep going,

-Josh Spilker

Josh Spilker