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It’s a terrible thing when someone loses their job through no fault of their own. But when I read that 4,000 people have already been fired due to AI technology, my first thought is: “Man, they must have had really, really crappy jobs.” I mean, honestly. ChatGTP is just another kind of robot. It’s about…
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Even though I live in Florida, I am guardedly optimistic about our chances of surviving (I almost typed weathering–HA!) the global warming crisis. New green technologies are being created everyday, and the ones we’ve already got have to the potential to completely transform the world. Here is a recent, positive article from one my favorite…
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I have a confession to make: I love concrete architecture. I know, I know. Concrete Architecture (CA, for short) is not fashionable. It’s not renewable (not yet, anyway). It’s not touchy-feely. It’s not cool. Part of the bad-rap CA has is due to its association with brutalism, the quasi-Soviet style that was popular in the…
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Ah, New Wave music. I remember you well. Post-disco. Post-punk. Post-modern. Post-everything. Synthesizers. Spandex. Dry ice fog in the videos. Bizarro special effects. What a lot of people fail to remember is how flat-out danceable a lot of New Wave music was, even in its most cerebral and soaring example, Gary Numan’s Cars. Yes, that’s…
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I recently got a BritBox subscription, and I’ve been nerding-out. Mainly, I’m rewatching the original Inspector Morse series that aired on Mystery! back in the 80s and 90s. I’ve loved the show since I first saw it back in college. Morse is a genuinely interesting and conflicted character, and John Thaw played him brilliantly. Morse…
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Of all the novels I have read in my life, only two ever disturbed me on a deep, lasting level. One was The Constant Gardener by John le Carré. The other was Money by Martin Amis. Money is, by any reasonable definition, a brilliant novel. Full of symbolism and thematic complexity, Money is a phantasmagoric…
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The only time I ever got in trouble with my parents over a book was when I was thirteen. The book was Nova by Samuel R. Delany, and was reading while nested in the back of the family car on a long trip. My stepmom read the back-jacket copy, which made the book sound a…
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All this spring, my son Connor and I have been watching of the original Star Trek on Netflix. Connor likes the original shows almost as much as The Next Generation, and even I find myself getting caught up in some of the more classic episodes like Space Seed (the one with Khan). I also really like the pilot, The Cage.…
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This Thursday will mark the six-year anniversary of Chris Cornell’s death, and I am still pretty messed up about it. Apparently, his friend Alice Cooper referred to him as “The Voice,” a moniker that, as some students of pop culture might recall, was also given to Frank Sinatra, back in his day. It makes sense.…
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I am continually amazed at how, even in my advanced middle-age, I still encounter perfectly reasonable words that I have never seen before. The latest is panentheism, which I ran into while reading an article on my favorite theological scholar, David Bentley Hart. When I first saw the word, I read it out loud to…
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Ash Clifton, Writer 