The Weekly Digest is a weekly (no shit?) update that captures highlights from the week that was. At the end of each week, I share a collection of thoughts, recommendations, and links. Like everything else I write, it's awesome, but it may be too long for email so make sure you click through.
🤖Vinny Battles the Robots
You can’t swing an unfinished manuscript around Substack these days without hitting some jabroni talking about AI. I’ve been around the Internet long enough to know that is this just how The Discourse™ works and it has always been banal, idiotic, and exhausting. In the words of Bo Burnham “the backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun.” I think what’s been bothering me about the AI discussion is that hot takes used to be hot, and folks giving nuanced perspectives used to actually have 1. nuance and 2. perspective.
To abuse an overused term, the Discourse™ around AI is slop. Breathless, thoughtless human slop. The kind of uncritical corporate propaganda that actually should be outsourced to robots so that no man born with a living soul has to tarnish it by writing such dreck. And the vague, unsophisticated solipsism around “true art” or “real art” or whatever the fuck these people are not creating because they’re too busy tilting at animatronic windmills.
Which isn’t to say AI isn’t dangerous or disruptive; it’s just not dangerous in the SkyNet sense or disruptive in the Silicon Valley sense. A lot of people will lose their jobs in the pursuit of greater shareholder dividends, but here in late-stage capitalist hell we call that “Tuesday.” A lot of barely watchable garbage will be pumped out to various degrees of legality and success, but we also have a word for that, too: Netflix. AI will certainly “write” “books,” but how would you know unless you’re using Kindle Unlimited (and would you be able to tell the difference)?
AI’s biggest disruption will be — as with all technology — in pornography. Gooners and incels will shift their parasitic, parasocial relationship from real naked women to AI-generated naked women1 without pesky things like agency or friction or aging or imperfections or humanity. Add a Bluetooth Fleshlight2 and you can remove human contact entirely.
Of course, I accidentally deleted my Substack account for most of this week because I didn’t RTFM3 so maybe I’m not the expert on technology…
📚Book Bits
The Way of Excellence by Brad Stulberg
I enjoyed this one. I feel like there is significantly less woo-woo and fluff in WoE compared to a lot of self-improvement books. Stulberg — who I recently found out is on Substack — does a good job of balancing the practical with the realistic. In a nutshell, Excellence is simple but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Similar to my fondness for Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks, I appreciate Stulberg’s focus on the tangible and achievable. You can be okay at a lot of things, or you can be excellent at a small number of important things. It is a choice and you get to make it.
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
An enjoyable read so far, even if every character is at least 50% insufferable. This is about a rag-tag group of what the government would call “eco-terrorists” plying their craft across the American southwest. It was written in the 1970s, but all that’s really changed is the price of a jar of peanut butter.
Love, Kurt by Kurt Vonnegut
A collection of love letters from Kurt Vonnegut to his wife, as compiled by his daughter. I’ve read through 1941-42 and our boy Kurt is DOWN BAD.
Recent Book Haul:
The Metropolitan Review print edition finally arrived!
One Shot Amigo by WHISKEY BAY PRESS
On the recommendation of will christopher baer
Cherry Kills by Sean Thomas McDonnell
Production value on this is sick. Love the pocket-sized book and the sticker pack that came with it.
A reminder that you can send me books or ARCs via the Review Requests page. I’m hoping to continue working through my backlog over the rest of this year. Look for an updated TBR... eventually.
💡Substack Spotlight:
Like I mentioned above, I accidentally nuked my Substack account for a good chunk of the week, so that cut into my reading. I did come across some thoughtful pieces on AI (a rarity) that I figured I’d share:
Gary Marcus kicks us off with a full dismantling of the idiotic TwiX essay from some guy named Matt.
John Warner is, as always, right on the money about AI. He did write the book on it, after all.
Craig Clevenger, who I’m calling Unc until he tells me to stop, intoned Philip K. Dick with his piece “Bladerunner Didn't Have Spam."
Ross Barkan weighed in on AI as well, and I quite liked this one.
Finally, Clancy Steadwell dropped the mic on how to parry the hydra-like tentacles of AI and the algorithms. (He also talks about being a Romantic)
Denise S. Robbins says “Books Need DVD Extras” and I think I agree. Denise also sent me some Book Club discussion questions for her novel The Unmapping, so she’s walking the talk.
Okay, one last AI thing:
📰Substack Headlines
C. James Desmond & The Wayback Machine have started a podcast.
Polymarket entered into some exclusive deal with Substack, and I really can’t wait to see who out-grifts who.
The third worst president of my lifetime (fuck, man) joined Substack.
If you’d like to be featured in this section, you know how to find me. And if you don’t, you’ll learn.
🖋️Writing
The upside of biffing my Substack account is that I had more time for writing. I didn’t use it for writing, but I had the time! I drafted out a short dark humor crime story for that Zevon anthology I mentioned, but I’ve left myself with only 7 days to actually write the damn thing now. I am coming to the conclusion that I will never win a writing competition for the sheer fact that I will never make a writing deadline4.
Instead of writing I started rewatching True Detective and going to the gun range. Unrelated, I swear. Also: making sure my elderly dogs get their walks in despite the cold and snow and crafting workout routines that I will never follow.
❄️Fleeting Thoughts
You know how at the beginning of Whose Line Is It Anyway? they say, “everything’s made up and the points don’t matter?” Apparently, that is the rating system my bill-paying job adopted this year. Despite being told I had “leadership potential” and having a rolodex of positive feedback, I was found to only “partially meet expectations.” This of course stemmed from telling my know-nothing boss that they, in fact, knew nothing.
In hindsight, not a great strategy. I calculated in dollars how much my honesty cost me, and well, had I known I would’ve gotten my money’s worth. The blow was cushioned by the fact that no salaried employees got pay raises this year, because knowing nothing is passed around leadership like a venereal disease.
I really should know better by now. It’s not about performance or about doing things the right way or even right at all. It’s about obeisance and obedience to our leaders. Capitalism is about control; profit’s just a fringe benefit. That’s why middle-managers are all “company men.” Not because the pay’s good, but because they get to exert power over something.
“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”5
And yes, that was a Flaming Lips reference at the top. There’s also a reference to The Clash.
Beep-boop,
— 01010110 (V)
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From a gender & sexuality perspective, I’m being reductive. Apologies to the goonettes and femcels that make up 80%+ of my readership.
I do not know if this is a thing, but I cannot fathom that if it is not already a thing that it will not soon become a thing. To steal a quote from Family Guy: “practice on a hot dog first. Otherwise, you might rip your dick off.”
Read The Fucking Manual
This sentence written at 11:33am to get this post out by 12pm.
Lucifer, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Y'all keep hating on my AI think pieces and now I'm just gonna write another one. It's all I do now! You did this Vinny!
Also real talk I still like my Zizek one.
I just wrote a long piece on AI that I like to think is nuanced. But mostly it's just my opinion and common sense...
And corporate life sucks regardless of AI. It sucked before AI, and it still sucks with AI. How's that for nuanced? 🙄