Sunday Morning Reading

Revelate

Still on the road for summer travels, but this week offered a few moments to do some reading when not toodling along listening to the music of Glen Hansard. So time to share a few good pieces of writing and good reads in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Kick things off with a piece by Robert P. George called The Two Great Threats To Truth. He questions whether there really is a difference between moral relativism and fantacism, if in the end they yield the same result. The piece will make you think. If thinking is your thing.

Claire Stapelton rose through the ranks at Google. From reading The Voice Of Google, it sounds like she saw it all, and she’s telling quite a bit of it.

“Government Efficiency and Death by Indifference” is the subhead to Anton Shekhovtsov’s The Techno-Oligarchy’s First “Holocaust.” It’s quite a dire piece, but certainly worth your time.

Speaking of oligarchs, a trio of NY Times writers take a look at Larry Ellison and his bet on AI. Check out Jonathan Mahler, Jim Rutenberg and Kirsten Grind’s story, Larry Ellision Bet It All on the A.I. Boom. Will He Be The Face of the A.I. Bubble? At some point this bubble has to pop, right?

David Todd McCarthy says There Is A Crack In Everything. Truth and beauty lie in the imperfections, not in the perfect.

The world is certainly an imperfect place. Rachel Yoder’s short story, The Promise perfectly reveals that.

Alex Skopic flushes out some thoughts on the failed state in Diarrhea In Every Pot and A Gun In Every Mailbox. When you break things down to “shooting and shitting” you might be on to something.

There’s nothing obligatory about Jeff Johnson’s piece The Obligatory AI Post. Make it obligatory reading.

To close out this week, a sad one when we lost one of the good ones in Glen Hansard, give a read to Sophia Stewart’s tribute, The People’s Troubador. If you don’t know the music, you should.

Revelate.

(Image from Samuel Couto on Unsplash)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

Racking up the miles

It’s a travel weekend and we’re on the road. Again. ( I love travel. I hate travel.) So, Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week.

If you’re desperate for something to read check out past Sunday Morning Reading columns or any of this week’s posts on Life On The Wicked Stage Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Still milling milestones

It’s a Sunday. It’s a Sunday when I can say I’ve hung around for seven decades as the clock ticked past 70 yesterday. Spending the weekend celebrating with the grandkids, dodging in an out of pockets of time when the air is breathable, so there’s only a few links to share in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have spending it with two innocents watching them approach the world from that perspective. When they look to you for answers, it’s awesomely terrifying.

David Todd McCarty thinks We’re Teaching Our Kinds The Wrong Lessons. As someone who wonders why we spend so much time teaching them not to lie in a world that rewards liars, I often think the same.

NatashaMH writes about An Artist’s Search For Meaning. The quote below she included from Viktor E. Frankel, hit in a different way on this birthday weekend.

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly.”

It wouldn’t be a Sunday Morning Reading column without at least one nod to politics, Her’s the nod from Carlyn Beccia, wondering Has America Crossed The Asshole Threshold? I would argue yes, but wouldn’t limit it to just America.

Claire Stapleton worked at Google. She saw most of it. She tells what she saw in The Voice Of Google in a piece that is so much more than just about Google and the tech culture.

Sunday Morning Reading

Reading is a gateway drug. Get your buzz on.

Sunday Morning Reading is about…well, it’s about reading. In my personal opinion some don’t read nearly enough. Read. Read those you agree with. Just as important, read those you disagree with. Stretch those reading muscles and stretch your mind.

I linked to a Rose Horowitch piece earlier in the week entitled The End of Reading Is Here. It’s controversial. I don’t agree completely. But that’s the point of reading. If that’s still a thing.

Follow that piece up with Sonny Bunch’s R.I.P. Attention Span. Closing his essay he says “The end of reading may be here. But so too might be the end of watching anything that lasts longer than the time it took you to read this sentence.”

In an age where some are eager to ban books (surprised we haven’t seen any book burnings yet) Mendel Uminer chose to move rather than reduce his collection of books after his landlord complained. Check out Alex Vadukul’s story Too Many Books.

You know that reading can satisfy curiosity. It can also raise it to new levels. Neil Steinberg’s Etymological Field Notes tells such a tale. Do you flânuer?

And for those who tell you not to believe everything you read, here’s John Semley on The Fanfare Around The Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop.

In the wake of all of the seemingly unending horrible daily doping of bad political news, (some about wakes to be, some about wakes possibly delayed), James L. Bruno writes The “Last Best Hope On Earth” Crashes & Burns.

With the act and art of reading being in question, especially when it comes to the news, the click matters more than the content now that most of what we’re presented isn’t worth being displayed in a supermarket checkout line tabloid rack. Or does it? According to Pete Pachal when it comes to the news Speed Still Matters In News, But The Prize Is No Longer The Click. Maybe there never was a prize.

Speaking of prizes. Winning isn’t everything. Unless it is. JA Westenberg reminds us that A Battle Won Is A Terrible Thing.

Rob Urie tells us Why AI Doesn’t Think, Cannot Reason, Isn’t Intelligent and Will Never Achieve Consciousness. It’s not magic.

(image from the author)

Sunday Morning Reading

Words, words, words…

Meaning. It means so much. So do the words that deliver it to us. But remember, there was meaning before we constructed words into language. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading comes on the final day of a weird and wacky 4th of July weekend in the U.S when an often mean Mother Nature reminded us who is really in control no matter which words we choose or manipulate to pretend we are. It was kinda fun to watch. There’s also a few interesting pieces about America’s founding, and the myths and the meaning behind it all.

Kicking it off is a short piece from JA Westenberg asking Remember When Words Had Meaning? What comes first the distortion of language or the devaluing of the culture that employs them?

Speaking of meaning, Jack Loftus gives us The U.S. Constitution Is For Simple Folk Still Burdened By The Belief That Words Have Meaning. You can argue it was always thus, but we sure do spend an awful amount of time, energy and money arguing the opposite.

In this age of WTF, it has become an accelerating trend to see pieces disemboweling many of the myths we assign to the founding of America around the 4th of July. We used to share common myths more than we did a common history, but now even the myths get mangled. So it’s no surprise when the powers that currently be toil to rewrite both. Noah Berlatsky‘s The Constitution Sucks is a good example of how we can forever flip the coin looking for the right result, ignoring the edge.

T.H. Breen takes a look at some of the too often un-heralded folks and local movements during America’s revolutionary war period in It Wasn’t Just The Founders.

John Warner offers up For The Fourth, 9 Books For Your Sense Of Patriotism, saying “I’ve come to (personally) understand patriotism as a not a fan-like allegiance to a team, but a responsibility to understand the country’s history, warts and all as we pursue the illusive promise of life, liberty and happiness for all from the Declaration.” The key is knowing we all “come” to understanding.

Will Frivolous Charges Be Brought Against Future Ex-POTUSes? That’s Okay Too by Josh Marshall offers up an excellent piece on how we can twist and morph words in a legal context that shift the ground under most mythical mountains like “no man is above the law. “

Speaking of words and meaning, the bad guys seeking to survive a legal onslaught ahead of what they fear is a political tsunami coming for them are trying to rekindle old fears about communism and socialism as their latest talking points. Not sure those old saws will cut the same way they used to, but it demonstrates just how limited the dictionary is. David Todd McCarty takes a look behind the hooting and hollering in Democratic Socialism: Keeping The Great American Experiment Alive.

And in a quasi-hysterical look at shifting meanings and changing words, Rogé Karma is wondering Why Everyone Is Suddenly Talking About ‘Universal Basic Capital’. The quasi-hysterical part is that it’s coming from the AI market masters and a few politicians substituting the word “capital” for “income” following the words “universal basic.” Language is hard. When you can say anything to get what you want.

And in another word substitution, Doc Searls suggests we shift from an “attention economy” to an “intention economy.” Check out The First Source Of Personal Intent. I’m not sure the meaning changes with the substitution.

(Image from Alexandra on Unsplash)

Sunday Morning Reading

Comings and goings as life goes on.

It’s a Sunday, so it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. As usual, I’m sharing a collection of links and once again they somehow touch one upon another. Funny how that happens. Some point to big issues. Some about the comings and goings of life. Some about its shifts. Take a look. Take a read. Happiness is a choice.

a bronze statue depicting a young boy sitting on a stone ledge and reading a book. He sits cross-legged, leaning slightly forward, with a large open book resting on his lap. Perched on the open page of the book is a small, detailed bronze bird looking back toward him. The boy's right arm rests on a stack of four large bronze books piled beside him on the stone ledge.

David Todd McCarty’s On Being Good At Life talks about abandoning the quest of success, fame, fortune, and just being better at life. Deciding how one defines life is always the first obstacle.

If you read one piece among those shared this week, read Josh Marshall’s Google, AI, Oligarchy and the End of the ‘Open Web’. I’ve been writing about Google’s recent moves and how they will change the web as we know it. Josh nails it better than I ever did. Some think we’re ready for this. I’m not one of those.

We lost a one of the good ones this week when Om Malik died. By all accounts a great human being and a giant in tech for so many years in so many spheres. Om’s writing has been featured in this column many times. As a human he was so much more than just his achievements. Two great pieces about Om that you should take the time to read. John Gruber’s simply titled Om, and Mathew Ingram’s Om Malik 1966-2026. Sail on, good sir.

Tom Wellborn takes a look at The Art of the Fail. You can guess his target. You should read his piece.

JA Westenberg takes on the pursuit of optimization and the cult of the extreme in The Extreme Is The Easy Way Out. Choosing a middle path is also not necessarily easy.

Mike Masnick tells us How The Internet Became A Tool For Domination and Control Instead of Liberation. Joke’s on us. I’m not laughing.

Ken White’s not laughing either. Or maybe he is. There’s always some kind of fracas happening in social media, regardless of the platform. When you step back, it’s weird that we designed something to explode and exploit that kind of chaos. Weirder still that we think we can control what people say or social media or anywhere else by banning them. Ken White of PopeHat fame was recently suspended from Bluesky and writes about his thoughts in A Bit of Tedious Drama At Bluesky. The piece is much more than just about those circumstances and worth your time. You are what you think and say. Ken defines it well.

A tip of the hat to Dwight Silverman who’s retiring (again) after a terrfic career writing about tech. I have always enjoyed Dwight’s work because he kept the focus of his tech adventures on the user, while having a firm grasp of the bigger picture. Check out The Grand Finale (for real this time): My 30+ year column ends, It’s exit heralded by AI, and also his thoughts about his retiring on his personal blog. I’m guessing (and hoping) we haven’t seen the last of what Dwight has to say.

Sunday Morning Reading

Taking a breath

It’s been a crazy whirlwind of emotions lately. A death in the family. Keeping up with the grandkids. Celebrating my wife’s latest theatre gig. With that, Sunday Morning Reading is on hiatus this week.

Enjoy your Sunday, while I enjoy time with the grandkids. (If they don’t wear me out!)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

Searching for normal in abnormal places

Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. Sharing good writing is a normal thing to do. Maybe that’s abnormal. Don’t know. Don’t care. Defining normal is a tricky subjective thing. But then trying to define most things these days feels, well…almsot abnormal.

Just be normal. Is that a “new normal” or last week’s “old normal?” Do we crave normality? Does it matter? Normally, I’d have more to say, but instead check out JA Westenberg’s Just Be Normal About Things.

Mathew Ingram takes on the subject of consciousness, one of the latest discussions bopping around the bits and bytes surrounding AI, with his piece, Is Atlantic Writer Ted Chiang Conscious? How Do We Know? If you ask me, that fact that this is being discussed calls whatever the idea of consciousness is into question. Doesn’t feel normal. For that matter doesn’t feel abnormal either. Just weird.

Mike Masnick states the obvious in CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs.

David Todd McCarty calls his piece The Slow News Moment. I like his description better. “How we became terrorized by the 24-hour news cycle and what we might do to combat the charade of exigency.” Perhaps less is more normal.

“We are being robbed by the worst people in the world,” says Kelly Hayes in The Heist State. Spot on, given that blatant thievery is the new normal these days.

Everywhere you look life is a scam. That is indeed far too normal. Neil Steinberg takes on one that targeted him and other writers in We Love Your Book! Now Give Us Money. Funny stuff.

Protect The Weird, Slow and Inefficient. Natasha MH thinks AI might one day become as invisible a tool to the process of writing as the typewriter did in its day. But look again. The tools don’t matter as much as the desire.

(Image from Justin Simmonds on Unsplash.)

Sunday Morning Reading

The art of dancing on the line that separates and defines humanity

It was a good week for reading good writing. It’s a better week for sharing what popped up. A variety of topics, spanning art and the making and selling of it, technology — which these days is more about the selling than the tech — the humanity, or lack thereof, behind it all, and…well to continue a list would sell it all short. Here’s hoping you enjoy the links shared in today’s Sunday Morning Reading as much as I enjoy sharing them. Yia Mas!

An overhead, first-person perspective shows a person lying on their back on a teal couch, holding open a large book to read. The person's head is closest to the foreground, with long, blonde-streaked hair spilling downward. They are wearing a deep maroon, long-sleeved sweater and light grey sweatpants. Image from Matias north v8DSLoY80Xk unsplash.

Om Malik wrote one of the best things I’ve read in quite some time. We Are Living In Pinocchio’s World is about lying. It’s about AI. It’s about a pen. But it’s about so much more.

Cory Doctorow’s Refining Humanity takes on our propensity for explanation, personhood for machines, and that line we seem to want to dance with defining just what makes us human in the midst of it all.

Meanwhile Martyn Berlin of Martyn’s Random Musings finds himself an outcast in To Have A Moral Stance On AI Is To Be An Outcast, And It Sucks.

At what cost art? Natasha MH wonders and writes about it in Sold At A Premium. At what cost, anything?

Mike Masnick thinks it’s not about whether technology is inherently good or bad, liberating or oppressive. You could argue the same could be said about most aspects of human endeavor. But then that’s the point. Tech is just another in a long line. Check out Enshittification, Despotification, And The Open Internet.

“The only conviction worth having is the kind you could lose tomorrow and survive it.” JA Westenberg warns us not to take a pill, regardless of color in Be Thou Not Pilled.

Mathew Ingram wonders Have Investors In AI Companies Lost Their Minds? I’m not sure we can call them investors any more. As to their minds? No comment.

Two interesting takes on what’s going on the business of making movies in Hollywood that occasionally and almost accidentally is about making art. M.G. Siegler talks about how YouTube Beats AI To Disrupting Hollywood. Meanwhile Sonny Bunch takes a look at The Thoughtlessness of AI Filmmaking.

Word came down this week that a restaurant was finally going to fill one of the retail spaces in the Trump Tower in Chicago, after they had all sat empty for seventeen years. Neil Steinberg asks Will Chicago Happily Eat Dolmades And Drink Roditis In Trump Tower?

To close, click through the popover on John Gruber’s post This Is A Dickover, and give the post a read. You know what a Dickover is. Now you have a name for it.

(Image from Matias North on Unsplash)

Snookered

Time to do better

Damnit. I was snookered.

Photo on 5-14-14 at 3.05 PM.

Those who follow this blog have probably read a Sunday Morning Reading column or two. In that column I link to what I believe to be good writing on important topics that interest me. In the most recent Sunday Morning Reading column I got snookered and posted a link to a piece that is fake, as is the entire Internet publication that posted it.

Now let’s get this straight there’s plenty of blame to go around. I should have checked further into the story prior to linking to it. But as I said in an update to the post, it was a feel good story, and caught my eye at a time when I, and just about everyone else is desperate for any story that offers a ray of hope.

So that’s on me. Apologies to all those who come here.

But there’s also plenty of blame to be pointed at AllChronology.com, the owner of the site Chronology. I’m not linking to them here. The site is easy enough to find. I left the original link up in the original post as a reference, along with an update acknowledging my error.

That website is filled with stories, that I can only assume are AI generated. If you search for the authors of articles (most listed as distinguished) you won’t find the handful I searched for. That handful is enough to let me know that the guiding hand behind this site is connected to a body of rubbish.

So, yes. I’m pissed off. At myself, and at whoever the humans (one can only make the assumption that there is a human presence in their somewhere) are behind this publication. It would be one thing if there were ads on the site. I don’t see any, so I assume it’s just data harvesting in some way or the other. I don’t get the point. Frankly, I don’t think there is one. The logic behind this bastardized effort makes no sense.

The bottom line is we’re living in a world where you can’t trust anything, or anyone. That sucks. I care. I hope you do too. I would hope those who come here trust what I write about and link to and I’m sorry I led you astray on this one.

Time to do better.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.