Tears for Ai

The less said about the slop smeared across the new Tears for Fears album, the better. But the universe has a way of balancing these things and has promptly delivered the new Wilco album, designed by an actual real life THREE YEAR-OLD with UNICORN STICKERS and it is of course PURE and BEAUTIFUL so stick that up your big chair.

Empire State

I popped into Tate Modern for the first time in ages. Particularly loved seeing Joel Meyerowitz’s Empire State. The thinking behind the series:

In my first year working with the large-format camera I saw how it was too slow for street work. I thought if I had a subject against which I could pit street life, perhaps I could develop a strategy for working in the city. My goal was to have the Empire State Building ever-present, presiding over the scene like a Mount Fuji, while I would watch for the signs of daily life that would make a new kind of photographic sense when seen all together.

Tempted to try something similar in old York.

Blogging to exhale

This from Austin Kleon:

What I love most about newsletters is the letter part — the epistle, the missive, the bulletin, the dispatch! What’s going on — in the studio, in my life, in my mind — that’s worth sending out? Worth opening? Worth reading? Not only do I think newsletters should be letters, I’m starting to think that all writing gets better — and maybe even easier — when we simply try to sit down and write a letter.

And Nora Ephron writing about blogging in 2006, back when everyone was at it:

One of the most delicious things about the profoundly parasitical world of blogs is that you don't have to have anything much to say. Or you just have to have a little tiny thing to say. You just might want to say hello. I'm here. And by the way. On the other hand. Nevertheless. Did you see this? Whatever. A blog is sort of like an exhale. What you hope is that whatever you're saying is true for about as long as you're saying it. Even if it's not much.

Both sprung to mind when I stumbled upon Receipt from the Bookshop, a wonderful day-in-the-life newsletter from bookshop owner Katie Clapham. As anyone who has ever worked in retail knows, there’s an awful lot of sitting around and thumb-twiddling to be done between customers. Katie has found the perfect way to fill those gaps: 

Every week I send out my free post … live from my award-winning independent bookshop by the sea. I open the draft when I open the shop, detail the day’s customers and transactions, and then send it out to readers before I go home.

Katie could’ve blurted these moments onto X or Threads or elsewhere, but collating them into a newsletter gives them more meaning. What you end up with is a tapestry of the splendidly mundane, just people passing through the day, all adding up to something more; a vivid portrait of the bookshop. It’s not a long long read, but it does call for that extra bit of deliberate attention from the reader; a nice chunk of time dedicated to one voice. Give me this kind of blogging over social media’s torrent of microaggression any day. Exhaling letters rather than coughing up grawlixes.

D+W

Slate’s spot-on review of Deadpool and Wolverine, a film I begrudgingly went to see (because I don’t like to miss an issue) but was genuinely surprised by. Soooooo much better than the first two. It’s The Madagascar 3 of Deadpool films. I just wish they hadn’t spaffed quite so much of the casting in the marketing. People were going to show up, you didn’t need to reveal that BLANK and BLANK and BLANK were involved.

Type Archived

Type Archived – the definitive account of the legendary Type Archive, providing a stunning visual tour of traditional typefounding, tracing the origins of typography and the printed word – is now crowdfunding at Volume. Had the pleasure of visiting the Archive a few years back, and it was incredible, so this should be GOOD. 

Fry on Ai

One good thing about the current humans-vs-machines brouhaha is that a a lot of very smart people are throwing very smart words at it. Just one of many noteworthy passages from Stephen Fry’s recent talk at King’s College, AI: The means to an end or a means to the end?:

Just as the success of the automobile was enabled by enormous supplies of crude oil composed of microscopic bits of ancient life, rendered useful in the refineries of Rockefeller and others, so the success of Ai is enabled by enormous supplies of crude data — data composed of microscopic bits of human archive, interchange, writing, playing, communicating, broadcasting which we in our billions have freely dropped into the sediment, and which the eager Rockefellers of today’s big tech are only too happy to drill for, refine and sell on back to us.

It’s incredible, terrifying, thought-provoking (although I did have to correct him on one point: he confuses Dartford for Dartmouth! What a blithering idiot! This officially makes me smarter than Stephen Fry). The gist of it (and a handy metaphor to help keep grasp of this nebulous, abstract thing): Ai is a river that must be canalised, channeled, sluiced, dredged, dammed and overseen. 

Slight tangent (courtesy of A. R. Younce): engineers, fluvial geomorphologists and the unintended consequences of trying to change the course of a river. Anyway, fluviality aside, you really need to read Fry’s whole thing, but this postscript is particularly worth adopting:

You may have noticed that I render Artificial Intelligence as “Ai” not “AI” throughout this piece - this my (fruitless no doubt) attempt to make life easier for people called Albert, Alfred, Alexander et al (ho ho). In sans serif fonts AI with a majuscule “i” is ambiguous. How does the great Pacino feel when he reads that “Al is a threat to humanity?” So let’s all write as Ai not AI.

I’m sure Adobe wouldn’t be happy with that, but I much prefer it. I also like how it puts the emphasis on the artificial rather than the intelligence.

Jarmusch

Posteritati’s exclusive collection of 30 original posters from the official Jim Jarmusch archive, each signed by director himself. I’ll take them all thank you very much. Will come in handy for my regular trip to the barber, where I hold up a picture of Tom Waits and say “THIS, MAKE ME THIS”.

Fungai

Google serving Ai-generated images of mushrooms could have ‘devastating consequences’. There’s an enormous gap in the market right now for a reliable search engine, because let’s face it, Google have simply given up. In no time at all, Ai has spread across the internet and beyond like rot, contaminating everything, reducing it all to homogenous, unreliable slop. Any company that makes a concerted effort to distance themselves from it is in such a strong position.

Ripley

So I finally finished Ripley and now I’m a little obsessed with Caravaggio. Specifically, how his work appears in the show – in stark black and white. The result is quite stunning, accentuating the chiaroscuro contrasts in Caravaggio’s paintings while presenting them as something new. Would love it if Taschen put out a special Ripley edition of The Complete Works minus the colour. … Actually, while I’m making demands of publishers, why the heck haven’t Netflix produced a photobook to go with the show? It’s so very photographic; pretty much every shot a static composition, screaming to be printed.

Some more Riplinks: director Steven Zaillian and cinematographer Robert Elswit reveal the methods, ideas, and secrets of the show’s meticulous black-and-white visuals; visual effects magazine befores & afters looks at the impressive array of seamless VFX shots in Ripley; Richard Weston and family follow in the footsteps of Mr Ripley along the Amalfi Coast.

Burton

The World of Tim Burton is opening next month at the Design Museum. I’m very much “love the early stuff, and then … ehh” on Burton, but heck I’ll still lap this up. Can’t wait to see the range of gift shop merch. I love gift shop merch.

All tomorrow’s pencils

Loving Spencer Tweedy’s new post, in which he reviews the stationery stores he visited on tour. My favourite bit is the comment from his dad (Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy):

Remembering one of the only real complaints I ever heard from your teachers growing up, I’d say ‘drummers’ love writing utensils because pencils double as tappity tap tap tapping drum mallets and pens can clicky click click like maracas. In fact they’re probably the first ‘drum sticks’ a future drummer ever holds. Which comes first? The drummer or the innocent child with a maddening urge to tap out a paradiddle with a pencil on a trapper keeper?

As a relentless desk-drummer and stationery fetishist myself, yep, this all adds up.

Jane Plüer

The latest Pentagram Paper is designed by Jane Plüer and features some of her extensive collection of modernist poster stamps – “these mini masterpieces originated in nineteenth-century Europe and are now highly valued as an important part of the history of graphic design, popular art and social tradition”.

Gen X&H&M

It’s fascinating to see Nirvana’s second life as ubiquitous line of t-shirts is now pulling other Gen X staples onto the high street. A quick scroll through H&M’s current selection and you’ve got The Jesus and Mary Chain, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Chemical Brothers, Alice in Chains, The Smashing Pumpkins. Do the kids even know these bands? Does it matter?

Sinéad

Sinéad O'Connor by Jane Bown, 1992. Incredible. Captures so much about her with so little. From this collection of Bown’s work on The Guardian, covering the pop culture gamut from Beatlemania to Björk.