media relationship news heavy today
It's not a life for the vengeance prone
Caught a random morning showing of Casper (yes the 1995 movie about the friendly ghost) over the weekend and cried twice. I feel strongly that everyone in the film fully skates over the sacrifice that Casper (a 12-year-old!!) makes so that Kat can have her dad back. As a reward, Casper gets to be human only until 10p.m.?? That is NOT a good deal.
The more I read about Claude Cowork, the new normie-facing AI agent soft-launched last week that some evangelists are raving about as representative of the end cometh for white collar jobs (or just slopified consulting, which might be worse), the more I just find it confusing how big of a problem “organizing your desktop files” and “organizing your email inbox” seems to be for the Sweetgreen demographic, at least in the tech bro’s imagination. Wired’s Reece Rogers gave it a spin and it seems like the most useful thing he could say about it was, yup, it sure can sort files, which okay? So this thing is going to save me the one caffeine-fueled morning per quarter when I get a little crazy in the eyes and try to make my Google Drive folders look nice, and then what? I find the whole thing mostly revealing of what tech people seem to think other jobs do all day.
Really, the only utility that Claude has added to my life is knowledge that Casey Newton is still dating his boyfriend who works there, as Casey’s charmingly dogged disclosures in his newsletter remind us all. ←That was me making a solid Day 2 quip after Today in Tabs already did it, but on a more earnest note, I am enjoying Casey’s dispatches on how he’s using Claude Code (the non-normie facing one that everyone in tech actually uses) as a writer in non-soul killing ways. What caught my eye was the “journal companion” Casey built to search through exported passages from his note-taking app and synthesize answers to questions he might have for his old self, such as “What was going on for me this time last year?” or “What’s everything I’ve tried so far to address burnout” (Casey r u ok??).
While it does give me a bit of Luddite disdain to think about feeding my personal thoughts through some corporate tool, I can’t deny that it would be pretty much a writer’s dream to search around in your own thoughts like that. Soon, it seems, any of us can make like Sheila Heti and do an Alphabetical Diaries of our own — assuming you’re typing your journals out. (I do not; Moleskine soft cover 4ever until Claude gets in on the digitization game I guess.) Until then, it’s my business and my business alone how and why I always get murderously despondent for the exact same 3 reasons for the rest of my life.
Speaking of partnered-up media folks, congrats to Max Tani for what sounds like a very happy domestic life with his gf in South Slope, as prominently featured in his recent Grub Street Diet. Fellas, this is what the gfs really want, not some Bryan Johnson fanfic. The shared avocado half was a sweet detail. It seems to me one can really have it all if you’re able to coordinate such precious perishable resources that successfully.
Can true sociality ever exist on an asynchronous timeline? That was the thought that zinged around in my head as I was reading Helen Coffey’s piece for The Independent on “Generation Monologue,” or how the voice note killed the art of conversation, which contained this soon-to-be overly parrotted Gen Z statistic: “Nearly half (49 per cent) of respondents said they had sometimes spent an entire evening sending voice notes to a friend instead of meeting up.” Wild, of course, but it made me think about how asynchronous modern life has become even when you’re a young person — geographically so, hence the immediate need for these digital forms of communication, which then enforce the asynchrony further with voice notes, messaging, posting, etc. as forms of socializing that are most convenient for such disparate lives. I would hope we all know well enough that it’s not that young people aren’t trying to go outside; it’s that going outside is often expensive, terrifying, or straight up impossible in the case of everyone doomed to live off the G train!!!!
Life hasn’t been the same since The New Yorker down-sized its “Goings On” section a few years ago, which was such a perfect cheat sheet for gallery-hopping. But the exhibits in new york newsletter has done a pretty decent job of filling the void; I do like See Saw but never remember to really look at it. Meanwhile, this Substack (started by Sarah Hassan and Alexandra Tilden) has figured out a very smart publishing strategy around sending out issues on Saturday mornings. The art reviews they publish are also perfectly snack-sized — and paid, so if you’re trying to get in on the diminishing but noble art critic game, you should pitch them!).
A very media relationship news-heavy edition, but we do need to close the loop on Joanna Goddard’s paywall strategy re: her relationship, which has now sadly but fittingly concluded with a paywalled update that the pair broke up. Details as gleaned from a friend with a generous forwarding policy were still pretty sparse; the resulting effect of reading it was mostly just a kind of gloomy pessimism that anyone would ever have to mull over the question of So how are we going to frame this breakup for the Substack. C’est une lifestyle not intended for the weak or vengeance-prone! Always better to leave it to the professionals.
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"I find the whole thing mostly revealing of what tech people seem to think other jobs do all day." I agree! Someone wrote somewhere (I can't remember) that people who evangelize for AI reveal their biases in what they magically got AI to do for them -- people who don't value good writing praise ChatGPT's writing ability, people who don't make art can't believe how "good" midjourney is, etc.
At least until it starts doing my job. There's no way AI could replace me. All these poor slobs with easy jobs, though? look out!
"Until then, it’s my business and my business alone how and why I always get murderously despondent for the exact same 3 reasons for the rest of my life" like ooooooff Delia when did you start reading MY Moleskine journals >_<