Culture – Page 4 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Mixed feelings and mixed emotions on a Summer Sunday by the lake.

The 4th of July weekend is wrapping up in the U.S. and many are having mixed feelings this year. Today’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading will feature some excellent writing on some of those mixed feelings in addition to some interesting reads on familiar topics from familiar writers, and some not so familiar. Enjoy.

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First up, let’s take a look at Elizabeth Lopatto’s view on the state of things in the states in her post The American System of Democracy Has Crashed. Excellent. Should be required reading.

Neil Steinberg also has thoughts well worth your time in He’s baaaaaaack.

Jack Hopkins gives us The 4th of July: What We Were Meant to Celebrate — and How We’re Failing It. Again, worth a read as we close out the long holiday weekend and this section of today’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Now for some catching up on some links I’ve delayed too long in sharing.

First up is The Chosen Few and the Cost of Global Silence from NatashaMH. History repeats. All the damn time. As she also demonstrates in this piece The Cruelty of Indifference.

Relative youngster, David Todd McCarty writes about aging in When I Am Old.

Writers are having trouble finding the right fit when it comes to how to make a living. Matthew Ingram tells us Why Substack Shouldn’t Be The Future of Online Publishing. We

Chuck Wendig argues about and bemoans the loss of downtime in his writing process given all that’s happening around us in A Small But Vital Thing, Taken.

While writers search for new ways and new homes, Joshua Rothman wonders What’s Happening To Reading?

Never Forgive Them is a piece from Edward Zitron from December 2024 that seems relevant again in more ways than it was intended then.

Composer and poet Stan Stewart recently had his computer die on him. He writes about what he lost and found in Of Dead Computers and Really Living.

Matteo Wong says The Entire Internet Is Reverting to Beta. Sure everything is a janky work in progress, certainly in the janky days of AI. But I think that’s how those who think they run the joint like running the joint.

And to close out this week, take a good look at this wonderful long read from Eric Konigsberg from all the way back in 2001, entitled My Uncle The Hit Man.

Image from Giuseppe Argenziano on Unsplash.

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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Not as Self-Evident as Some Would Have You Believe

History twists and turns in often strange ways.

Some things are indeed self-evident. Some of that evidence gets white washed away.

This video was created as an ad by Ancestry.com to encourage folks to use that service to learn more about their ancestry. It feels particularly relevant again on this 4th of July, 2025.

I can’t vouch for the claim that all of those pictured are actual descendants of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. I can claim that I’d like that to be the case, because to my mind it would be a nice addition to the mythology surrounding this country’s founding and almost 250 years of existence, now that what those who did the signing actually stood for is under threat.

History may be written by the victors. But there’s always more than what the chapters convey.

You can 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.

Should We Teach Our Children To Lie Better?

The truth is everybody lies.

I remember my grandfather saying “Politicians always lie. That’s why they get elected. It’s a dirty business. Stay away from it.” Keep in mind, he was a good acquaintance if not a good friend with all the local elected politicians. It was always weird seeing him be friendly with them at church or other social gatherings. So, from my perspective there was always a disconnect that’s been a part of my view of politics and politicians for most of my life. I doubt I’m alone.

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Of course politicians aren’t the only ones who lie. Corporations do. Ordinary humans lie to other humans. Hell, these days, even AI chatbots lie. It’s all an expected part of the game of life, regardless of what the ninth of the Ten Commandments say.

Most legal systems are built on the premise that one side of the other is going to lie in some form or the other and it’s up to a judge or jury to determine where the truth my lie. But rarely does the losing side get punished for using lies as a defense.

What I do wonder though is why we waste so much time teaching our children not to lie. Given that we know full well they are going to grow up in a world where lying is not just the coin of the realm, but the realm itself, why bother? We do spend time teaching them to beware of the lies being told by salespeople, politicians, friends, etc… But I don’t think many parents spend time providing their progeny with better deceptive skills to be successful.

It’s a weird disconnect. Of course we want our kids to own up when they do something wrong. But eventually they figure it out anyway and everyone goes around living the lie about not lying. Rinse. Repeat.

Bad liars are easy to spot. So I guess arming youngsters with better skills wouldn’t’ necessarily be a bad thing. These days, even the bad liars seem to be rewarded for getting away with it, so a better skill set might unlock better achievements. But then again, choosing sides between Kant and Aristotle on the virtues of truth telling and situational ethics isn’t really good fodder for a dinner time conversation with the kids.

There are many old sayings that end with “_________makes liars of us all.” You can fill in the blank with “the world,” “fear,” “marriage,” “The Internet,” etc…. You can pick your target for blame. Just don’t pick yourself.

Perhaps hallucinating AI chatbots will one day level the playing field of liars by “reasoning” this down to the lowest common denominator. Regardless of what their makers say, they can only learn and spit back what humans have already learned and regurgitated back into the world. We’re all lousy liars, some lousier than others. We lie to the tune of our own rhyme or reason in the moment. And we certainly haven’t learned to pretend other as we endlessly recycle our inability to do different.

Image from Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash.

You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

Intelligence or compassion? They both caught my eye this week.

It’s interesting how topics surface throughout a week. I’m not sure if it’s follow-the-leader or hive mind thinking, but from the sources I follow this week it seemed like everyone was thinking and writing, in one way or another, about Artificial Intelligence. Or maybe just about intelligence.

Certainly there was plenty on other topics because there were certainly plenty of other big things happening. Some intelligent, some not so. Some showing the capacity for compassion right along side our capacity for cruelty. I’m sure there will be plenty written in the days ahead about all of those things. These are the posts that stuck with me for this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Kicking things off is a short post by Gene Weingarten called A Cat Named Grandpa. It’s about compassion.

Mathew Ingram wonders Is AI Smarter Than We Are or Stupider Than We Are? Read the piece. If you’ve read any of the things I’ve written on AI you’ll know I agree with Mathew’s conclusions.

David Todd McCarty thinks the lack of originality in human consciousness is both appalling and comforting in I Gotta Be Me.

Natasha MH was Seeking God In A Machine.

For those who need to think about end of life issues, this might be a timely, yet frightening from Ashley Belanger. Check out How To Draft A Will To Avoid Becoming an AI Ghost. Apparently, it’s not easy.

Matteo Wong writes about The Newspaper That Hired ChatGPT. It’s mostly an interview, but one worth reading.

Folks can become addicted to and troubled by just about anything, and AI is no different. We’re starting to hear more and more about this, which is somewhat surprising on a number of fronts given how short a time generative AI has been with us. Kashmir Hill writes about a young man whose reality became so distorted it almost killed him in They Asked ChatGPT Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.

While not about AI in specific, this tech story speaks volumes about the decisions tech bosses make that influence the technology we use to work and play with. Check out Phil McKinney’s I Convinced HP’s Board To Buy Palm for $1.2B. Then I Watched Them Kill It In 49 Days.

And Happy Father’s Day to all. Miss you Dad.

(Image from Rey Seven on Unsplash.)

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. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Sunday Morning Reading

So what is this future we’re heading into anyway?

If you’re observing Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. I hope you have had a pleasant one. Even if the weather isn’t cooperating, seemingly echoing the threats of seeing that tradition, like so many others, diminished. We’re on the road again for a dear friend’s memorial service, but there’s still time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. Mostly tech related this week, some politics, and of course some cultural happenings. If you’re paying attention, it’s all intertwining. Listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen. Enjoy.

Adding to what’s becoming a recurring theme in this column, Ian Dunt is looking for ways to get the most out of our digital lives while taking back a bit of control from the tech god wanna-be’s. Check out Taking Back Control of Our Digital Life.

Matthew Ingram wonders If AI Helps To Kill The Open Web What Will Replace It? Excellent piece and excellent topic, because like it or not, it’s the current and next movement we on the ground are going to have to contend with. Pay attention.

Neil Steinberg, one of my favorite of a dying breed of Chicago journalists, gives his take on the recent Chicago Sun-Times AI flap in The AI Genie Is Out of The Bottle, and the Granted Wish Often Brings Trouble.

Lucy Bannerman takes on the AI’s abuse of copyright and artists rights in Nick Clegg: Artists’ Demand Over Copyright Are Unworkable. They aren’t. Those demands just cost more than folks counting the beans want to pay.

Lynette Bye’s Misaligned AI Is No Longer Just Theory raises up that specter that haunts this entire episode of our life across all spectrums that seems easy to fall prey to or dismiss, depending on which side of the coin you’re on. Frankly, if you don’t think the future of this can be manipulated, you’re not paying attention.

Jason Snell’s take on the recent announcement that OpenAI has bought Jony Ive’s company to produce new hardware for AI I think is the correct one. Check out Sam and Jony and Skepticism.

Chloe Rabinowitz fills us in on the outgoing president of the Kennedy Center’s response to the bullshit coming out of the White House. in Deborah Rutter Releases Statement In Response to Trump Kennedy Center Allegations.

The real boss, Bruce Springsteen, continues to piss off the orange buffoon in the White House and I’m glad to see it. So is Eric Alterman in a guest essay in The New York Times proclaiming Bruce Springsteen Will Never Surrender to Donald Trump. We need more of this.

And to wrap up this week, here’s NatashaMH wondering Do We Really Need To Have This Discussion? No hints. No clues. Just good stuff for you to read.

Sunday Morning Reading

Paying attention for the next generation.

Good morning. Visiting the grandkids this weekend, so this will be a short stack of links to share. Fair warning ahead most are on the darker side of the ledger. The links. Not the grandchildren. They are the light. The grandchildren are why I pay attention.

First up is a piece on despair from Dean Pritchard titled Despair, What Is It Good For. He calls it a hopeless call to action. I’m not sure it’s hopeless at all. Just another step in finding what may or may not turn out to be answers. As long as we keep stepping.

NatashaMH says that social media addiction isn’t just about us, it’s about the people around us in Unread, Unavailable and Unbothered. I’ve never been one to buy into the social media addiction theory. It’s too damn easy to put down the damn phone. But I take her points because it’s too damn easy to keep hoping to find new ways to avoid despair.

Lauren Goode takes on Deepfakes, Scams, and the Age of Paranoia. Somebody needs to.

Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman say that Trump is betraying the voters who elected him in The White Rural Reckoning. They are correct. But we knew that would happen. Scum likes to remove itself from other scum once it’s done scumming around.

Joan Westenberg compares the comeuppance moment Apple is enduring to Martin Luther’s reformation moment in Apple’s Diet of Worms. Given the abundance of fanatics there’s more than a little truth here.

Playwright Sara Ruhl is one of my favorites. Charles McNulty takes a look at what she has to say in her new book In ‘Lessons From My Teachers,’ Playwright Sarah Ruhl Finds Wisdom In Art, Motherhood, Even Grief.

And as for weathering despair, check out Lost At Sea by Alec Frdyman. Excellent reading about a scary adventure.

And to close out this weekend I’ll leave you with this uncredited thought that pops up every now and then on social media.

And just remember who the tax breaks are targeted for.

Peace.

Sunday Morning Reading

Happy Mother’s Day reading.

Time for some Sunday Morning Reading on this Mother’s Day, with a short stack of culture, some tech, some politics, and the Ziegfeld Follies tossed in for good measure.

First up is a good long read from Spencer Kornhaber wondering if we’ve entered a cultural dark age. Provocative in parts, predictable in others, it’s worth your time for the journey it takes. Check out Is This The Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?

Kaitlyn Tiffany says We’re Back to the Actually Internet. It’s about fact checking, the need for fact checking, and actually about how fact checking doesn’t really matter.

We may have beat the term fascism to death long before the real beating actually begins, and it’s the Bible thumpers who seem far too eager for the end times with their wishes for some sort of Armageddon beat down. Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take a look at The Rise of End Times Fascism.

The Apple enthusiast world is still going through some things and will continue to for the foreseeable future. Denny Henke at Beardy Guy Musings is chronicling his thoughts about his move away from using Apple products. His latest, Are Apple Enthusiasts Miserable? takes a look at some of the angst and tensions he sees.

Indie app Developer Thomas Ricourad, the developer of the app Ice Cubes for Mastodon, among other apps, is searching. He’s not alone. Check out Having A Clear Vision In A Blurred World.

Matthew Gurewitsch takes a quick look The Story of a Rose, an upcoming look at an almost forgotten era in A Ziegfeld Girl Recalls The Forgotten War.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

(image from Aga Putra on Unsplash)

Time For The Shibboleth of Targeted Ads To Die

It’s always the data.

We all fell for it. We all thought it would be beneficial to us as users. I don’t want to say we were all suckers, so I’ll just say we were naive. But in the end we were all suckers. Targeted advertising was supposed to cater to our needs, desires, and wishes. Surfacing what we were interested in out of the clutter was a hope and a promise that died in colliding avalanches of greed and gluttony.

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To be fair some ad targeting actually works. To also be fair, even a broken clock is right twice a day. But the money came rolling in and the temptation to grab it all became far too much and made it far too easy to let slip those early promises.

Now the brains behind Artificial Intelligence are doing what many suspected from the get go and edging their way into the browser wars. TechCrunch has an interesting post talking about Perplexity’s plans to get to know us better by building a better browser.

Here’s the money quote:

“That’s kind of one of the other reasons we wanted to build a browser, is we want to get data even outside the app to better understand you,” Srinivas said. “Because some of the prompts that people do in these AIs is purely work-related. It’s not like that’s personal.”

Focus on the “personal” part.

Both Perplexity and OpenAI have made statements they would be interested in buying Google’s Chrome browser should Google be forced into a breakup for anti-trust reasons. But that’s years away. So why wait? Better to get in the game now before the regulators catch up. Or before all the data that’s good to grab gets grabbed and starts feeding on itself.

There’s irony in all of this that underlies and underlines the dissembling behind it that might just be seeping into the open. One of the promises of this new technology is that it will free us from drudgery, giving us all more time for creative pursuits and more balanced lifestyles. But the underlying goal is the same. Grab as much data as possible, especially “personal” data. That’s the currency. That will always be the currency.

Here’s the second money quote from Perplexity’s Aarvind Srinivasa:

“On the other hand, what are the things you’re buying; which hotels are you going [to]; which restaurants are you going to; what are you spending time browsing, tells us so much more about you.”

AI might continue its move into the enterprise, but that’s not enough. And if the corporate mindset of using AI to replace workers continues, that equation points to diminishing returns eventually, even if the advertisers never catch on.

We all know how this story plays out. Because it’s a rerun. And too often a plagiarized one as well.

You can 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.

All The World’s His Stage. Happy Birthday (We Think) to William Shakespeare

We’re merely players.

William Shakespeare is the playwright and poet that described us all. He did so with intelligence and wit. Today, April 23, is the day most mark as his birthday. The record of his baptism is April 26th, so it’s a decent bet the date is close enough.

There really is nothing new in human behavior under the sun. In his plays and poems I don’t think he missed much in describing every thing good, bad, noble, and foolish about how we operate with each other and within the world. In my view, it’s a shame more of us don’t pay enough attention to his cataloging of humanity. But then he predicted that as well.

Here’s an intriguing side note on this very intelligent man’s celebrated birth date. I asked several AI engines on what day was he born. Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and DeepSeek returned April 23rd as the likely date with the typical (and mostly accepted) disclaimers that we celebrate that day, but there’s no definitive proof it was the actual date. I asked Siri and Alexa, both returned April 23 as the definitive date. Intriguing that Siri didn’t try to pass that off to ChatGPT. I’m sure Amazon will now offer me all kind of suggestions to purchase anything Shakespeare.

So, I’ll amend slightly my statement about the Bard describing us all and there being nothing new under the sun. He’s correct in that we’re both smart and too often not smart enough to understand what we do and do not know, but he might have missed the mark when it comes to artificial intelligence. Or did he did he?

I’m reasonably certain his works have been fed into AI engines and Chatbot training given that they are long in the public domain. I’m also reasonably certain they ignore his nothing new under the sun descriptions of human interactions in the same way those of us still walking around do.

“Lord, what fools we mortals be!”

You can 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.

Sunday Morning Reading

More than the bare minimum

It’s another Sunday. At a bare minimum it’s time for a little Sunday Morning Reading. There’s more politics than I’d like to shake any sticks at dominating my reading these days, so apologies if that turns you off. I just don’t think we can turn off or tune out to what’s happening. Like it or not (I don’t) we’re living through an epochal moment in world history demonstrating how little we regard human history. I emphasize “living through” because while we’re bearing witness, it is happening to us and whatever it evolves or devolves into will affect all who come after.

I happen to be one who believes that Trump is the ugly face of the chaos descending around us, propped up by bigger, deeper and darker forces using him as the fool too many fools easily fall for. Jonathan Mahler has an excellent piece that delves a bit into this called How The G.O.P. Fell In Love With Putin’s Russia. Excellent context that should not be ignored.

We’re living in a world daily facing formalist delusions. Benjamin Wittes uses the Abrego Garcia case as one example of that in The Situation: Formalist Delusions Confront Lawless Realities.

Speaking of formalist delusions, who knew some tech bros could declare you dead and wipe you off the books, or at least the books that matter when it comes to navigating life in today’s world. Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein, and Meryl Kornfield take a look at how the Trump Administration Overrode Social Security Staff To List Immigrants As Dead.

Joan Westenberg calls us America, The Isolated. I can’t argue with her points. Though I will refer you back to Jonathan Mahler’s piece above for wider aperture. The deeper context is that the lens we’ve viewed the world, contained and restrained by borders, has never been the view for the forces now moving so rapidly.

In the growing category of erasing history, John Ismay takes a look at Who’s In and Who’s Out At The Naval Academy’s Library?

Mathew Ingram has penned two terrific posts that address what will certainly become a part of our digital lives as we move forward. Be Careful What You Post On Social Media. They Are Listening is the first post. He’s expanded that with Part 2 as the pace of social media monitoring is sure to be picking up.

Perhaps all of this feels too big or too overwhelming to contemplate in the helter-skelter of our daily lives. But it is beginning to have impacts, big and small. Take a look at Scott McNulty’s very funny run-in with a construction worker at his CVS. While CVS – Construction Versus Scott is about his adventures at his local pharmacy under renovation, there’s a comedy nugget in there that demonstrates how those paying attention are actually paying attention.

My initial reaction to any illness in our children is immediate quarantine and a call to the WHO (I deleted the CDC’s number from my address book because suddenly they just kept telling me to get more vitamin A).

To close out this week, take a look at My Open Letter to Gen Z from NatashaMH. At “a bare minimum,” it’s worth a read to remind us that what we remember and hang on to from “back in the day” is now in a daily collision with what comes tomorrow. Easier to avoid the damage from those collisions perhaps if you acknowledge the maps are constantly changing.

Image from Mega Stolberg on Unsplash.