Sunday Morning Reading

From James Joyce to finger painting, some Apple spoiling, some Peter Falk, some politics and what will the LLMs spit out next?

Every life is many days, day after day.” But Sundays are for reading. Here’s a mix of politics, tech, and culture into what I hope is a tasty smorgasbord of good writing and good reading. Also some good fun. Enjoy this edition of Sunday Morning Reading.

There aren’t many areas of interest I follow that don’t seem to be fraught with tension and turmoil these days. Apple, its technology and business practices, is certainly one of those. One of the best recent pieces I’ve read on how the tides of popular and populist opinion may be shifting against the folks in Cupertino is one written by Matt Birchler. Check out Is This The Slow Decline of Apple’s “Cult”?

This is a terrific read and a terrific piece of theatre and entertainment history. Wayne Lawson’s When Peter Falk Was My Roommate, and Theater Ruled NYC is a trip down a memory lane most of us probably never were aware of. 

Joan Westenberg takes a look look at The Bruised Egos of the Intellectual Narcissists that want to populate our thoughts. Joan also takes a good look at Truth Social, Twitter and the Loneliest Reich. 

David Todd McCarty thinks we should rekindle some of what we lost as we pass through the years and recommends borrowing a four-year-old to help us see the world through their eyes in Finger Painting Through Life.

On the politics front, Marc Elias is doing the work for us all in his legal efforts to secure voting rights and the all important counting and certifying of the vote. Best piece of political news I’ve heard this week is that Elias has joined the Harris campaign’s legal team. Check out The Fight To Certify Elections Has Already Begun. We can’t say we haven’t been warned. 

Perhaps you remember when the Nord Stream Pipeline exploded earlier in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Bojan Pancevski gives us one helluva story in A Drunken Evening, A Rented Yacht: The Real Story of the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage. 

It’s easy to think this tempest of a political moment we’re in is something that’s suddenly sprung upon us. Aaron Timms reminds us that it’s been brewing for awhile in The Decade That Mangled The American Right. 

Artificial Intelligence may be losing some of its luster as its purveyors continue to lust after our data. For those who enjoy seeing this play out, Aaron Drapkin gives us AI Gone Wrong: A List of AI Errors, Mistakes and Failures. I wonder how the LLMs will incorporate Drapkin’s work and spit it back out.

If you don’t recognize the quote that begins this week’s Sunday Morning Reading, perhaps Natasha MH gives us a clue in her piece Reading James Joyce Ulysses Will Be Fun, They Said. Tackling Joyce may or may not be worse than a trip to the dentist, but you can risk being “embalmed in spice of words.”

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. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.