FYI #50

• A Nice Hobby, Like Knitting: On Barbara Pym, by Victoria Patterson, via the Los Angeles Review of Books. I came to Pym’s books recently after Marina Hyde spoke about them on The Rest is Entertainment podcast.

• I finished reading Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI by James Muldoon, Mark Graham and Callum Cant. Muldoon shared this post in July, Seven Theses from Feeding the Machine.

• Could Steampunk Save Us?, by Joshua Rothman, via the New Yorker… This steampunkish vision of the technological world as an aging contraption hurtling into the future might be especially vital now, when the newest technologies often encourage us to turn our attention away from their inner workings.

• Rebecca Solnit: We, the People, Can Make a Better Future, via LitHub

I used the word care, but let me clarify: what we care about is what we love. And we love so much more than the narrow version of who we are acknowledges: we love justice, love truth, love freedom, love equality, love the confidence that comes with secure human rights; we love places, love rivers and valleys and forests, love seasons and the pattern and order they imply, love wildlife from hummingbirds to great blue herons, butterflies to bears. This always was a love story.

• Musicians and Boyer lecturers Anna Goldsworthy and Aaron Wyatt on why we need music more than ever, via ABC News.

• Trailer for the television adaptation of Patrick Radden-Keefe's excellent book, Say Nothing, via boing boing

• Rachel Maddow talks with David Remnick at the 2024 New Yorker Festival (video)

• A sustainable sailing trip in Norfolk's wildest waterways, via House & Garden. As a reader of Arthur Ransome’s 'Swallows and Amazons’ as a child, I enjoyed daydreaming about the trips run by the Coastal Exploration Co.

• On challenging received narratives, interview with poupeh missaghi, via the Creative Independent.. I don’t see a separation between the creative and the critical, or between the theoretical and the fictional. For me, they’re just different tools for trying to make meaning and make sense of the world. So whatever tool I need, I’ll just use it.

• Podcast listening highlights:

  • AI and the novel, with Elizabeth Day and Johny Pitts, via Open Book (BBC)

  • Reintroducing species to Britain with The Beaver King, Derek Gow, on Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith

  • Sophia Jansson on Tove Jansson, via The Great Women Artists, with Katy Hessel

  • Is BookTok Actually About Reading?, on the Culture Study podcast.

  •  Annie Atkins on Design Matters with Debbie Millman

  • The Threat of Data Colonialism with Ulises Mejias & Nick Couldry, on Tech Won’t Save Us.

  • The Fight to Unionize Amazon, via the LARB Radio Hour. Speaking with filmmakers Stephen Maing and Brett Story and union organiser Chris Smalls about a new documentary, Union.

  • Book Club Meets: Desire, hormones, and tampons, with Miranda July, on Happy Place with Fearne Cotton