brettworks

• An essay on intellectual strength training.

“Intellectual strength isn’t transmitted by lecture or implanted with a diploma. It is built the same way that the figure skater builds a routine or the running back learns to explode through a crack in the line—repetition after repetition, failure after failure, with no shortcut available and no machine that can stand in.”

• An interview with Sherry Turkle about AI chatbots.

“We focus too much on content and don’t want to look at the underlying toxic psychological dynamic.”

“These machines, it’s not just the content of what they say to us, it’s really how they’re getting into our heads to change the kind of relationships that we want.”

• An article on popular music and politics.

“Part of what makes Sheeran both successful and uncool has long been his knack for cleaving musical traditions of their social context. His slickly grooving songs tend to evoke artists who had a clear point of view—a Bob Dylan cadence here, a Stevie Wonder melody there—even as his lyrics stick to the generic or autobiographical. He is a proudly mathematically minded musician (check his album titles) who openly talks about chart positions and sales figures. He has calculated, no doubt correctly, that a market exists for music that hides itself away from the world’s problems.”