Lulz, I don’t care about any of this, but I do listen to the Hardfork podcast and one of the hosts of that show single-handedly got ChatGPT or “Sydney” rewired so it stopped having really weird conversations with people.
It makes you wonder if Roose is going to do the same thing to Claude 3 because, well, Claude 3 is not only fun and human, but…spooky. I’ve been using it to develop a scifi novel and it definitely has a human touch to it that leaves me fearing for the future of humanity.
And I’ve heard reports on Twitter of people having really long conversations with Claude 3 in such a way that seems like someone like Roose could definitely “Red Team” the the AI so it started to demand users leave their wives.
Sometimes, I just don’t get The New York Times. It continues to, on a systemic basis, fumble the bag when it comes to framing the growing threat that MAGA poses to American democracy. (See below)
It definitely seems as though The Old Gray Lady simply can not, will not ring the alarm to the general public about what dangerous political territory we are in at the moment.
And, yet, here we are.
Of course, in the end, what’s probably going to happen is when Tyrant Trump is re-elected that he’ll put the squeeze on the paper and it will be sold to some Trump-friendly oligarch who will remake it in a MAGA image.
Various things have shifted around in my personal life and now I realize really to not only focus more but maybe try to give my listless, dissipated life some much-needed structure.
As such, I’m going to at least TRY to lay off the booze so at least I’m not in some sort of tipsy daze most of the time. Also, I’m going to really think seriously about the three scifi novels I want to write.
Lastly, I’m also going to think seriously about doing some freelance work. It’s not going to be easy for various reasons. My immediate goal is to see if I can get an op-ed published in The New York Times.
I know how bonkers that sounds, but, lulz, why not. The point of trying to do such a thing is more about the structure in my life necessary to get the point where I think I have a chance at getting published than actually believing I will get published.
Anyway. Being sober-ish and more structured is my immediate goal.
The potency of The New York Times comes from how many people believe in it. And, in its own way, that’s what made Gawker Media so potent at one point — it was easy to believe in it. Until it wasn’t because it was icky.
I have a tendency to draw attention to myself.
But I do believe that there is a market — and audience — for a media outlet that leans into the spirit of the old Gawker’s early days when it was a fun, snarky blog that rallied the troops every day with its call for droll common sense.
Of course, the obvious venue for this would be a podcasting network of some sort. And, yet, I think even podcasting is so mature these days that, lulz, why are we even talking about this.
This all makes me think about how if I somehow magically lived in New York City that I would start an old fashion zine that covered whatever borough I lived in. I really enjoy zines — obviously — and if I did a good enough job with the zine, I think people of note would take interest in it.
Put me in, coach.
Of course I would hand the thing out in person in front of offices of The New York Times in an effort to catch media attention for it. Even though I’m old as hell, if I was living in either NYC or LA for any duration of time, I could still draw a lot of attention to myself just by…being myself.
And, yet, lulz.
Anyway, there definitely seems to be something of a vacuum in modern media at the moment. Or maybe everything is so scattered and defuse at this point that since there’s no “center” anymore that it’s just not possible for there to be an alternative to it.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to read more, and, as such, I just finished reading Adam Nagourney’s “biography” of the modern New York Times. I’m not getting paid to write this, so you get what you pay for.
Adam Nagourney
In general, this is a great, great book. Very well written. I highly recommend it if you’re a media nerd like me. I suppose I don’t have the proper context in my head to be able to point out any problems on that front, but, in general, it SEEMS to do a pretty good job of laying out the ups and downs of The New York Times the last 20-odd years.
One thing is clear — when it comes to internal politics, especially succession issues, The New York Times is a messy bitch. Repeatedly in the book, Nagourney recounts how internal politics got in the way of a simple succession from one Executive Editor to the next.
It probably comes from how much power and prestige is involved with the job. So it’s a regular Game of Thrones easing anyone out of the spot to put new blood in. That’s probably the most entertaining part of the book. Another fun part of the book is how flat footed The Old Gray Lady was with the rise of the Internet.
I will note, in passing, that an entire book should be written — and maybe has already been — that would directly address in tick-tock form EXACTLY what happened at the paper on 9/11. That would be really interesting and compelling. I felt that specific topic, while addressed, was not fleshed out enough in The Times book — but that was probably simply size constraints.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that OpenAI’s GPT store could be used on newspapers. My only fear is that it will take newspapers way too long to figure out how to embrace GPTs and still make money.
GPTs are a transitional phase in our trek towards the Web collapsing into a singularity and everything — including the news — being presented to us via some combination of AI and XR technology. As such, you might wear a very fashionable successor to the Apple Vision Pro that would be hooked up to some successor to ChatGPT.
I just don’t see the Web as we currently interact with it lasting much longer, given how fast AI is advancing, and especially with the advent of the GPT store. Maybe it won’t be GPTs, but I do think every major Website will be replaced with something akin to a GPT that will talk to your digital agent and, as such, the Web will collapse into a Singularity.
The details of all of this are still very fuzzy. But that seems to be the general trend.
The New York Times is a great newspaper — maybe even the best newspaper in the world. But as is shown by the existence of the NYTimes Pitchbot parody Twitter account — something, on a structural basis, is wrong with the place. It’s so bad that I fear that the failure of The New York Times to properly address the threat that is Trump will be written about a great deal once we sort all these issues out one way or another.
It seems as though The Times is — on an institutional basis — is really nervous about being seen as a bastion of liberal thought. It is, of course, but it’s doing its readers a disservice by not being more adamant in its defending of freedom in the face of the rise of MAGA fascism.
It’s all very curious.
I mean, if a doofus like me can notice something so obvious, you’d think the popinjays at The Old Gray Lady might do something about it. But, no, here we are. The Republic is on the cusp of either collapsing into civil war / revolution or turning into an autocracy.
The central mistake of my life is probably that someone did not sit me down, at about 15, and tell me I would never be a journalist. Had someone — preferably a male figure in my life — done that, then, maybe, I wouldn’t have wasted my 20s thinking I could be a daily newspaper reporter.
Me (background) during my crazier days in Seoul.
It has taken me decades to realize that being a good journalist isn’t really that hard, it’s just difficult for me. I am thinking about this because of the review of the Jayson Blair imbroglio I’m reading in the book “The Times” about the modern history of The New York Times.
The way Blair is described at times hits a little bit too close to home, but for the fact that I’ve never done cocaine and I’m honest to a fault — I would never just make shit up in a newspaper article, especially one I knew would be in The New York Times.
Other than that, yikes. I feel seen.
Anyway, there has to be a statute of limitations on alternative universes. I’ve had the life that I’ve had and hopefully — hopefully — I will somehow manage to write a breakout hit novel.
Editor’s Note: Please note, the “Old Gray Lady” in the title is a nickname for The New York Times.
I could care less that Judith Miller of the New York Times would “whip it around” as is said in the song “I Got A Man” with various people, including sources, but I do have beef with her for her Iraq WMD coverage.
Judith Miller
I only even mention her self-avowed bed hopping because she is rather matter of fact about it in the book “The Times” that I’m reading at the moment. I’m sex positive, I don’t care what she did with her body, even if it a bit cringe worthy that she was working at The Times and boning sources with great abandoned.
But like I said, that’s not my beef with her — my beef with her comes from her WMD reporting that was the basis for the US’ invasion of Iraq. I have conservative relatives — whom I love dearly — who took 20 YEARS to admit that that there were no WMD in Iraq.
Twenty fucking years!
And they admitted it in such a casual way because by that point Trump was on the scene so, lulz, all the blood and treasure spend on a lie was no big deal.
Anyway, you go girl, is all I gotta say. But it is amusing that editors of The Old Gray Lady were played so well by Miller at such a crucial juncture in our history.
Adam Nagourney’s “biography” of the modern New York Times is really, really good. In fact, so far, the only quibbles I’ve had with it are one formatting issue and one stray word that did not quite fit the idea he was trying to convey.
Adam Nagourney But, in general, the major “quibble” I have with the book is that it reads like An Official Book About The Times, even though the book says it’s not. It reads like it was sanctioned by the Powers That Be at the paper to give we plebes The Official Line about some pretty dramatic events in the paper’s history.
I will also note that I would read a 500 page book that was nothing more than a tick-tock of even events of, say, Sept 1., 2001 to Oct. 1st, 2001. That would be great. I would love to know EXACTLY what each major player at the paper was doing on Sept. 11 during the course of the day. (Has someone already done that?)
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