by Rachel Robison-Greene

Earlier this month, “No Kings” protests set records for being among the most well attended political protests in recorded American history.  The protests were overwhelmingly peaceful.  On the same day, a politically motivated killer shot two Democratic politicians and their spouses in Minnesota, killing two and critically wounding the others.  Despite the facts being presented regarding all of these events, conspiracy theories quickly spread.  Reports circulated that cities in which protests were held were on fire.  Politicians took to Twitter to spread conspiracy theories about the shootings.  Before all the details were known, Utah’s senior senator Mike Lee took to Twitter to blame the violence on “Marxists.”

The tendency to believe what one hopes is true rather than what is supported by the evidence is far from a new trend in American politics.  One might even think it has become its most distinguishing feature.  In recent years, conspiracy theories have emerged about the pandemic, vaccines, climate change, and the security of the 2020 election, to name just a few.  All of this flies in the face of our ordinary, idealistic attitudes about how people form beliefs.  The idea that humans form beliefs and come to know truths through reviewing evidence and applying reliable reasoning practices is an enduring post-Enlightenment concept.  Recent events demonstrate that it’s not that helpful for understanding how human beings actually think.  Our everyday reasoning may be more grounded in social connectedness and personal insecurity than we ordinarily like to believe. Read more »

“The best evidence we have suggests that early Earth was completely
covered by oceans… (but) to link two amino acids together to make a
protein, you have to remove water. And that would have been impossible
if the amino acids were immersed in an ocean. Life needed some land—
literally a beachhead—to get started.” —geobiologist, Joseph Kirschvink 

Beachhead

Though landbound we were once tiny ships,
submarines, we understand the sea, it undulates
within-around us. Minds bob on timeswells,
are swept by winds that tear and grind us.

Not flawlessly designed, we have weak
moments in our hulls.

Tempted, we run perilously close to rocky spits,
each of us adrift looking for a beachhead,
longing for a place that’s still while everything
around us shifts.

As with Noah’s searching dove
we scan for an isle of earth

where sea is parted
.  ..where past is dead
….  ..where present sits
……  …where life and love
…..  …….can be restarted

by Jim Culleny
6/19/15-Rev,-6/14/25

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by William Benzon

I have been thinking about artificial intelligence and its implications for most of my adult life. In the mid-1970s I conducted research in computational semantics which I used in analyzing Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 129, “Th’ Expense of Spirit.” In the summer of 1981 I participated in a NASA study investigating ways to incorporate AI in NASA operations and missions. There I learned about an earlier NASA study that had looked into creating self-replicating factories on the moon.

“Wow,” thought I to myself, “does that mean potentially infinite ROI?” How so? “Well, it’s going to cost a lot to develop the initial equipment drop and transport it to the moon, but once that’s been done, and those self-replicating factories and amortized the initial investment, it’s all profit from that point on.” That is, since the factories can replicate themselves without further investment from earth, we can reap the profits from whatever it is that these factories produce, other than more factories.

Now, whether or not that’s actually possible, that’s another question. But it was an interesting fantasy. That’s how AI is, it breeds giddy fantasies in those who catch the bug.

Somewhat later, and in a more sober mood, David Hays and I argued, “Sooner or later we will create a technology capable of doing what, heretofore, only we could.” We also pointed out that “We still do, and forever will, put souls into things we cannot understand, and project onto them our own hostility and sexuality, and so forth.”

There’s plenty of that going around these days. There’s a raft of AI hype that’s been floating around since ChatGPT’s release in late November of 2022. One prominent strain is telling us that we are doomed to be eradicated by an over-ambitious AI. I’m quite sure that that is projective fantasy.

Alas, the threat of massive economic displacement seems far more real to me, and more worrying. Jobs will be lost to AI – it’s already happening, no? – and, while new jobs will be created, it does seem to me that in the long run, job loss will inevitably outpace job creation. That should be a good thing, no? To live among material abundance without the drudgery of soul-destroying work, isn’t that something to be welcomed? In the long run, yes, but in the short and mid-term, no, it is not. We are not ready. We have become addicted to work, at least in the advanced world, and will have trouble adjusting to life without it.

That’s my topic for this column. Read more »

by Eric Feigenbaum

At about 6:30 am, we pulled up to the Labor Ready office in the Central District. My friend – who for the sake of this column will be called Rick – and I were responding to a trespassing call: a woman who was asked to leave the day-labor agency office was refusing.

Now to be clear, I wasn’t a cop – but Rick was and when I would return to Seattle on a break from working in Singapore – the best way to spend time with him was to go on a “ride along”. To make it work better, Rick told people I was a plain clothes officer. To mitigate risk, I spoke little and appeared stoic.

We entered the Labor Ready office, prepared to find an altercation in progress, only to discover a 30ish, short, heavy-set Filipina lady standing in the waiting area talking to herself. The staff told us they had asked her to leave, but she didn’t really seem to understand them.

Rick asked the woman if she could follow him outside and she complied. Through the din of voices in her head, she was able to answer most of Rick’s questions – although not always accurately. We were able to ascertain the woman thought she was Princess Diana, but also had some sense she was reporting for a day-labor assignment. She was aware she wasn’t quite right and articulated that she needed medication – only she had run out and couldn’t afford more.

Protocol said Rick should have issued the woman a Trespassing Card and sent her on her way. That didn’t feel like the right thing to do for this very nice woman clearly struggling with her mental health and trying to make a living. Alternatively, he could have gone heavy and decided to arrest her for trespassing – another path to medication, only through the jail’s healthcare system. But then she would have an arrest on her record and been imprisoned for doing nothing more than talking to herself. Read more »

by Jeroen Bouterse

I have been re-reading Paradise Lost, prompted by the battle between Immortals and demons in the movie Ne Zha 2. The film, if you have not seen it, depicts a ruling party turned into a vehicle for the personal ambitions of its leader. If you ask me, that is; consider yourself warned that I am rather strongly disposed these days to connect everything to contemporary politics.

Paradise Lost provides a temptation in that regard, however you read it. Whether the poem explores forms of resistance after the battle to depose a ruthless dictator has been lost, or whether Satan is an opportunistic agitator, campaigning on draining the swamp but in fact only out to be worshipped himself – or both – modern analogies easily suggest themselves. William Empson compared Milton’s God to Joseph Stalin.[1] If I don’t name names, it is out of respect both for you the reader and for the heroes in Milton’s poem, which are more eloquent, less petty, and show more depth than their present-day authoritarian counterparts.

Still, Milton’s account of the Fall allows us to psychologize. We can indulge in the belief that if people had chosen better, we wouldn’t have been in such a mess right now. I think that should be fun for both of us, or cathartic for me at least. In any case, I am telling you in advance, so that if you continue reading, you don’t “pretend / Surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned”.[2] Read more »

by Akim Reinhardt

Donald Trump is a con man. He was that for a very long time before he entered politics. Because he is a con man, it is tempting for critics to describe his presidential victories as successful cons. However, I think that interpretation does not hold up. Because while Trump at his essence may be little more than a sociopathic con man lacking a sophisticated and flexible inferiority, voters and citizens are not simply “marks.” The electorate, especially one as large as the United States’ (over 73 million registered voters), is maddeningly complex. It reflects a stunning amount of views, ideals, fears, and nuance. And the catch is that while the elected government can never hope to fully reflect this complexity, it can unduly influence it.

We become what we set out to destroy. It’s an old chestnut. Oh, the irony of becoming the thing we hate as we dedicate ourselves to its destruction. But for now I am more concerned with a different irony: we become what sets out to destroy us. That we sometimes are buffaloed into thinking our enemy is our friend, mistaking their sneer for a smile, emulating them, falling into their arms, and ultimately doing their bidding. Something like Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps, but even darker, manifested though through thorny seduction instead of hostage taking, and offering little chance for redemption. At best there will be regret, and at worst a permanent transformation.

Why do you end up loving someone who hates you? Because you already hated someone. Read more »

by Angela Starita

Teddy lives in two houses. They’re equally bereft of taste–good or bad. Teddy’s a dog and his nominal doghouse is inside the house of his owner, Jonathan. It’s built inside the closet under a stairway, with its entrance, the side facing Jonathan’s living room, covered in pale rusticated stone.

Jonathan calls it “the world’s most famous doghouse.” In interviews on feel-good segments of news shows, he refers to Teddy as “the world’s most famous dog” and explains that he himself is “blessed with a creative mind.” This last is in reference to the scenarios he dreams up for TikTok videos that feature Teddy as a Rabelaisian prankster interested only in buying toys and treats with Jonathan’s credit card, watching movies, and playing video games. He spends an inordinate amount of time on a couch. 

It’s Teddy’s house that launched him to fame. Jonathan had been making DIY construction videos, and the one that garnered the most views was the closet-to-doghouse conversion. It had hit some collective nerve, the one that delights in miniatures and accounts for the popularity of dollhouses and children’s beauty pageants. Its fitted with a couch, shelves for photos a copy of PlayDog, and a television over a faux fireplace. My favorite of the videos has Jonathan crawling inside for Teddy-hosted sleepovers.

In the two years I’ve been watching Teddy videos, the mise en scene has moved from the doghouse to what I presume is Jonathan’s actual house, a place as scared of distinction as the model home developers “stage” for potential buyers—sparsely furnished in off-whites with names like Chantilly Lace and White Dove. Predictably, the first floor is an open-plan centered around a beige sectional sofa facing a high-definition television. Occasionally there are shots of a dining “area” and, in a behind-the-scenes video, Jonathan shows off his home gym, a room with a treadmill and other equipment. He and Teddy sometimes watch movies in the “home theater” a room with swollen, black recliners presumably facing an even larger screen. Read more »

On a sunny and cloudless day last week, the smoke from Canadian wildfires arrived in the South Tyrolean Alps in the form of this unusual haze. Photo taken from my balcony.

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by Brooks Riley

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by Charles Siegel

Oh the streets of Rome
are filled with rubble
Ancient footprints are everywhere
You can almost think
that you’re seeing double
On a cold, dark night
on the Spanish Stairs

Those are the first lines of “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” a song written by Bob Dylan in 1971. I remember that the first time I heard the tune, I thought it was by The Band, because they actually released it first in September of 1971. Two months later, Dylan’s version came out, oddly enough on the album “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. II.”

Many artists have covered the song, most notably the Grateful Dead. They played it 144 times, according to gratefulsets.net. This sounds like a lot, but it means the song doesn’t even make the top 85 in terms of number of live performances by the band. This is because they only began performing it in 1987, and the band stopped playing entirely in 1995 upon the death of their lead guitarist and talisman, Jerry Garcia.

The Grateful Dead ended in 1995, but the band has lived on since then in a series of groups. These groups have contained various original members, gradually decreasing in number. The first was The Other Ones, followed by The Dead. But the longest-lived and most successful has been Dead & Company, which today includes two members of the Grateful Dead: Bob Weir, the rhythm guitarist and vocalist, and Mickey Hart, the drummer. It also includes another drummer, Jay Lane, and the bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboard player Jeff Chimenti. Finally, there’s John Mayer on lead guitar and vocals.

On a fortunately-timed business trip to Las Vegas last month, I saw Dead & Company on a Thursday night and Friday night. This was the last weekend of their second two-month “residency” at the Sphere, the futuristic new music venue that looks as if it simply fell from outer space and landed a block from the Strip, and now blinks out strange messages all day and night.

If they were tired and happy to be nearing the end of this run, they sure didn’t sound like it.  Read more »

Nirmal Raja. Entangled / The Weight of Our Past, 2022.

More here, here, and here.

Thanks to Sahitya Raja for the introduction.

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by Rafaël Newman

Zurich was James Joyce’s home on several occasions. The writer’s first sojourn there, in 1904, was brief: when the prospect of a job teaching English in Switzerland didn’t pan out, he and his partner, Nora Barnacle, freshly arrived from Dublin, soon moved on to Trieste, then still the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s only seaport. Joyce and Nora returned to Zurich in 1915 and spent most of the Great War there, renting apartments in various districts as Joyce worked on Ulysses and took part in the intellectual life of a city teeming with refugees. Finally, having spent the interwar period for the most part in Paris, by 1940 the couple were back in Zurich, where Joyce died the following year. He remains in the city to this day, in Fluntern Cemetery, where his seated memorial gazes out wryly, if myopically, at Lake Zurich and the Alps beyond.

That the Swiss metropolis boasts the Zürich James Joyce Foundation, however, an internationally renowned center for Joyce research and scholarship, is due less to the Irish writer’s tenancy in the city, in life as in death, than it is to the achievements of another man, a Swiss native and Zurich local named Fritz Senn, who has devoted much of his long life to the study and promotion of Joyce’s work. Among Senn’s many publications are Joyce’s dislocutions: Essays on reading as translation (1984); Nicht nur Nichts gegen Joyce. Aufsätze über Joyce und die Welt (1999); Joycean Murmoirs (2007); and, most recently, Ulysses Polytropos (2022). Senn has founded and edited international journals, initiated Joyce symposia, and, together with Klaus Reichert, compiled the Frankfurt James Joyce Edition, in seven volumes.

The Zürich James Joyce Foundation (ZJJF), which celebrates its 40th birthday this year, was established in 1985 with financial assistance from the Schweizerischer Bankverein (today’s UBS) to house Fritz Senn’s collection of first editions, secondary literature, and Joycean memorabilia, and to allow visiting scholars to profit from Senn’s personal expertise along with the library and archive. The ZJJF holds open reading groups, typically led by Senn himself, in which participants read Ulysses and Finnegans Wake together over the course of many months, and organizes a series of talks, known as the Strauhof Lectures, by noted Joyce specialists. It hosts a translators’ roundtable and regularly stages convivial celebrations of Joyce’s work, with readings and music at Christmas and, of course, a yearly Bloomsday event every June 16, commemorating Joyce and Nora’s first assignation and the date on which Ulysses is set. Read more »

……………. All the world’s a stage,
                   And all the men and women merely players;
                  They have their exits and their entrances,
                  And one man in his time plays many parts,
                  His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
                  Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arm
                                   — Shakespeare, As You Like it, Act II

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by Ed Simon

Alternating with my close reading column, every even numbered month will feature some of the novels that I’ve most recently read, including upcoming titles.

A novel, like a symphony, must be conveyed through a particular artistry of time. Unlike a painting, or even a short lyric poem which gestures towards narrative, a novel must dwell in it. Even a novel where “nothing happens” must by the nature of the form make its art happen through the progression of a past into the future, but it in the complexities of that transition – the roundabouts, the flashbacks, the shifting, the slip-streaming, the ruminations, and the foreshadowing – which makes extended prose so adept at conveying the ambiguous feeling of time itself. Within a novel, time can be treated as anything but simple, so that the past can find itself perennial; the future can be a matter of precognition; the present an eternity (or, conversely, nothing at all). “Where there is no passage of time there is also no moment of time, in the full and most essential meaning of the word,” writes the Russian Formalist critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. “If taken outside its relationship to past and future, the present loses its integrity, breaks down into isolated phenomena and objects, making of them a mere abstract conglomeration.” The abstraction of the present is what some mediums exult at – whether lyric or painting – but a novel can’t help but exist amidst the texture of time, its warp and warble, its nicks and snares.

The Spoiled Heart by British novelist Sunjeev Sahota masterfully interrogates time, in particular time’s daughter of memory and its cruel son trauma. Published in April, Sohata’s novel is set in industrial Chesterfield, a small hamlet in Derbyshire. Focalized around the local union leader Nayan Olak, though narrated by his occasional childhood friend Sajjan Dhanoa who is equal parts roman a clef and Nick Carraway, The Spoiled Heart is set in a realistic England distant from many Americans’ country house fantasies. Working-class and multicultural, tough and often despairing, this is the England not necessarily of Blenheim and Wentworth Woodhouse, or even of red phone-booths, double-decker buses, and fish and chips, but rather of kebab houses and labor politics, strikes and stark class divisions. Nayan, the son of Indian Sikh immigrants, suffered hideous trauma twenty years before, when as a young man barely into his 20s a seemingly accidental fire in his parent’s High Street shop killed his mother and young son. The tragedy destroys Nayan’s marriage so that in between caring for his bitter and demented father, he ultimately dedicates his life to Unify, a union representing laborers across a variety of industries. Having decided to run for the presidency of Unify, Nayan is challenged by his colleague and former friend Megha Sharma. Where Nayan is a class-essentialist leftist of the Corbynite variety, Sharma – also the daughter of Indian immigrants, albeit from a well-heeled class – is an adherent to an identity-focused liberalism. Much of the drama from The Spoiled Heart derives from the ideological and personal friction between these two.

But were Sahota’s novel only a means of allegorizing post-Brexit and post-covid fissures in the British left it wouldn’t be nearly as fascinating, and moving, as it is. Read more »