Mellow yellow

Industrialised agriculture in technicolor.

Quote of the Day

“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”

• Groucho Marx

I’ve got a list of people in British politics at the moment who fit that bill.

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Domenico Scarlatti | Sonata in D major K96 |Christian Zacharias

Link

Long Read of the Day

Submission

Blistering essay by Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books. It opens with Trump’s attack on Columbia University and the institution’s surrender, and goes on from there.

That Columbia was first on the list was predictable, not just because of the scale of the protests there but because of Trump’s personal animus against the university. More than 25 years ago, Columbia’s then president, Lee Bollinger, turned down a Trump development project, the price of which would have been – by coincidence – $400 million. ‘Destroy Columbia University’ was among the proposals advanced by Max Eden of the American Enterprise Institute last December, in an article headlined ‘A Comprehensive Guide to Overhauling Higher Education’. Eden advocated arresting Bollinger: ‘Perhaps the college presidents could learn a valuable lesson from the sight of him in an orange jumpsuit.’ Trump is also aligned with right-wing Zionists in the United States who loath Columbia for having been the home of Edward Said (the ‘professor of terror’) and for its Middle East Studies programme, which they called ‘Birzeit on the Hudson’.

There’s nothing surprising about Trump’s attack on the universities, or on the liberal law firms that he also despises. What is shocking is the ease with which his attack has so far succeeded. Like the academics and politicians in Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, American college administrators and lawyers are responding to Trump’s bullying as if it were an opportunity to carry out ‘reforms’ – and as if they were secretly relieved that their hand has been forced by the Leader. This is a tale not so much of capitulation to an authoritarian leader as of collusion with him.

It’s a great piece — which has also made me think that I should read Houellebecq’s book.

So many books, so little time

I went to an interesting talk yesterday by the author (and a subsequent discussion) and came away intrigued by some of the ideas that came up. One in particular was the shrewdness of focussing on the automobile as the core of her inquiry, because (a) we’ve been grappling with that technology for a century, and (b) so-called ‘AI’ as embedded in self-driving cars poses similar challenges above and beyond the wheeled vehicle involved.

It’s a very generative idea, not least because we knowthe extraordinary lengths industrialised societies had to go to accommodate the needs of automobile technology (just think of the physical architecture of cities, or motorway networks). And if AI pans out as its evangelists hope, then societies will have to go to a new set of extraordinary lengths to accommodate it.

Also, she made me think about the significance of the different terms used to describe this new variant on the car: self-driving (but who’s the ‘self’ here?); driverless (less what?); autonomous vehicle (same thing as autonomous weapons?). And so on.

Conclusion: worth a read.

My commonplace booklet

From Dave Winer (Whom God Preserve)

Ads used to be this great

Look at this, for an idea of what a product says to the prospect.

It makes you laugh. When you laugh inside an idea forms.

”Ain’t it the truth.”

That gets you ready to read the pitch, which is stuff you wouldn’t have read or even considered if they hadn’t said something so true right up front.

He’s right. The Beetle was not a beautiful car. I had two of them and they were the only cars I really loved. And we drove all over Europe in them for years without a single breakdown.

This Blog is also available as an email three days a week. If you think that might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays delivered to your inbox at 5am UK time. It’s free, and you can always unsubscribe if you conclude your inbox is full enough already!