A roundup of the most engaging recent pieces on the web read by the Pittsburgh Review of Books this week.
“AI: a very human tragedy” from UnHerd
“Diffident creatures that we are, it never struck us that we might pull off the end of the world all by ourselves… In accumulating the power to destroy itself altogether, humanity has finally come of age”
Chosen by Jamari Bass
“Now Entering: The Era Of Bleh” from NOEMA
“It’s a funny predicament: all day, humans across the same industry — ostensibly hired for their unique critical thinking and experience — collectively pump every thought, business challenge, idea and solution through the same set of AI tools. Almost as if all these companies have simultaneously hired the same single employee: Mr. Claude (or one of his contemporaries).”
Chosen by Allison Blair
“What Is Human Energy?” from Lapham’s Quarterly
“It is energy—the central element of which is will—that produces the miracles of enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is the mainspring of what is called force of character, and the sustaining power of all great action.”
Chosen by Saty Mukherjee
“Dinner Part at the End of the World” from The Rumpus
“I often worry I’ve saturated myself in doom for so long that I’ve become doom embodied. Who would I be without the feeling of the end of the world looming?”
Chosen by Isabel Weaver
“How Intelligence Agencies Bend Universities to Their Will” from Jacobin
“Developing education that examines rather than endorses intelligence is a form of democratic accountability. This matters because intelligence agencies are anything but innocuous.”
Chosen by Riona Duncan
“The Freedom of the Weasel” from N+1
“For fifty years, every freshman writer, every personal essay, every New Yorker annal, every work of, ugh, ‘creative nonfiction,’ has been forged in the crucible of Annie Dillard, poured into a mold in the shape of Annie Dillard. She redefined writing as a thing you could do to commune with your nondenominational Maker in public; she redefined nature as a place you could go to be alive, alone.”
Chosen by Alexander Johnson
“The Rise and Fall of the Tech Worker” from the Boston Review
“We could never have anticipated how quickly the tech elite would dig up the ground from underneath us.”
Chosen by Eliot Polikowski
“YOUNG: Charge and punish the Cornell 7” from The Vanderbilt Hustler
“Being part of an elite university should not provide protection from accountability. And a university’s reputation should never be more important than the safety of its students.”
Chosen by Hailey Price
