Content
Why Open AI ChatGPT Will Not Ruin Writing, But We Will
This is my least favorite topic at the moment because, well, outrage is profoundly boring to me. But enough people have asked me to comment on ChatGPT so here we are. Am I worried about it. What are my thoughts. What will happen to writing and writers and original thought! I’ll start with the punchline: (…)
Clear is Kind: Why You Should Endure The Discomfort of Being Direct
There is no such thing as a friendly reminder. “Friendly reminders” are passive-aggressive roundabout ways of avoiding direct communication and clarifying your position. There are fascinating reasons why we do this, which Dr. Harriett Lerner, Patron Saint Of All Things Anger, talks about in detail here. The gist is that many of us avoid conflict (…)
Be Wary of Anyone Selling You Certainty
About a decade ago I went down the rabbit hole of learning about food. I started with the woo-woo stuff (Kris Carr’s book isn’t bad), did a stint with the conspiracy theorists (Forks Over Knives, Anything about gluten and your brain), and then graduated to the promised land of Michael Pollan. If you haven’t read The Omnivore’s (…)
A Grammar Crisis
A friend pulled me into a marital dispute which is a precarious place to be and in ordinary circumstances I recommend avoiding this at all costs, but this dispute was a grammar one and so I had no choice. I had to weigh in. The dispute was over whether or not it was kosher to begin a (…)
Going On a Newsletter Sabbatical
Over the last 5 years, few things have brought me more joy than these Thursdays with you. Our debates about what is or isn’t true, the safe container to think in public, the testing of ideas. I love being in the public sphere and you have given me the space to do what I love: (…)
Hold The Vision
There are two parallel universes emerging right now. One living in and with a pandemic and one merely annoyed by it. Day after day I get messages from friends and readers whose lives have been turned upside-down, while their newsfeeds boast of an unaffected population, still going to clubs and birthday parties and vacations to (…)
Pretension is Optional: What Wine and Writing Have In Common
We were in a cave. They call it a wine cellar, but it was a cave. Parts of it were charming and other parts were super creepy and you could tell that if the walls could talk they’d have had stories because they looked like they’d seen some shit since 1422. The thing I remember (…)
Fine, I’ll Get Back On LinkedIn
At the urging of my friend Louis, I have returned to LinkedIn. I’d avoided it for years because I’m not in the market for a “job,” and find the dialogue on there to be vapid, performative, and – I cannot emphasize this point enough – emphatically boring. Forced hot takes, feigned “excitement” over things (…)