Friday Flurry #2: Timelessness, accents, AI and medical mistrust

There is no time, no space, and possibly no way to escape the forward march of technology-augmented capitalism. Duck!

Welcome to Friday Flurry, my weekly round-up. This edition is going to all subscribers. In the future, these posts will only be available to paid subscribers. If you’re on the fence about joining the paid tier, this gives you an indication of what your Friday content will look like.

Books I read this week

Remember last week, when I said I hadn’t travelled with any hard-copy books? Well. I really messed up, in my five-hour tearful marathon at Powells Books in Portland, I was restrained, really. Pictured above is a wee stack of what I bought. (I’m serious about the restraint. You have no idea how many I put back.)

I’ve been so busy writing - no wait, trying to write my novel this week, I haven’t been able to get stuck into as many as I’d like. Here’s what I’ve read, and what I thought.

The Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk

Holy MOLY! These books are phenomenal. So far, I’ve worked my way through the first two - Outline and Transit. Reviewers raved about Outline when it came out, with The New Yorker claiming Cusk ‘reinvented the novel.’ They’re short, but shockingly poignant books, where nothing really happens. Instead, we follow the protagonist, Faye, about her life, while people seem to… tell her things? In the interconnected vignettes, I found myself having multiple ‘oof’ moments as Cusk casually, cleverly summed up emotional journeys I’ve been on. Astonishing.

The underlines are many, but here’s one I particularly liked, from Outline:

“What Ryan had learned from this is that your failures keep returning to you, while your successes are something you always have to convince yourself of.”

See? Oof.

Bunny by Mona Awad

I’ve gotta warn you… this book is weird. Good weird. Dark weird. The kind of weird that had Margaret Atwood frothing, which for some of you may be the only encouragement you need. I was immediately drawn to the ascerbic yet insecure narrator. Here’s a biting piece from the first part of the book that made me laugh, loudly, late at night, alone, in bed, as the narrator internally and viciously attacks literary snobbery in a writing workshop.

“What do you think, Samantha?” Fosco asks me.

That it’s a piece of pretentious shit. That it says nothing, gives nothing. That I don’t understand it, that probably no one does and no one ever will. That not being understood is a privilege I can’t afford. That I can’t believe this woman got paid to come here. That I think she should apologize to trees. Spend a whole day on her knees in the forest, looking up at the trembling aspens and oaks and whatever other trees paper is made of with tears in her languid eyes and say, I’m fucking sorry. I’m sorry that I think I’m so goddamned interesting when it is clear that I am not interesting. Here’s what I am: I’m a boring tree murderess.

But I look at Vignette, at Creepy Doll, at Cupcake, the Duchess. All of them staring at me now with shy smiles. “I think I’d like to see more of the soup too,” I hear myself say.”

Sensational.

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Substacks I’m into

Here’s two of my all-time favourite Substacks:

Invisible Women

Cristina Criado Perez, author of the book of the same name, was on Substack before Substack was cool. She writes up a storm on the gender data gap, she’s very funny and readable, and she has a cute dog.

Exponential View

I’ve bounced around with Exponential View for years, and adore the podcast too. Azeem Azhar is the most credible, insightful voice on technology, economy and society - and he does it in a digestible way, which is quite a feat. Plus: lots of good graphs, if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Things I’ve stopped doing

Staying connected to the time-space continuum

After a couple of weeks in Australia, I spent a breathless 12 hours in Wellington last week before heading straight over to the US. I thought I’d beaten jet lag, to start with, by timing my sleep well, but a night of rampant anxiety over my upcoming workshop put that to bed. For an uncertain period of time, I drifted in an untethered state through days and nights, lying awake until 5am. I’ve had webinars and phone calls with New Zealand, where it’s a different day as well as a different time, and tried to schedule content like Consultants of Choice emails and enrolment openings, Wednesday Wisdom posts and upcoming events.

I’ve basically lost the plot. That said, I’ve been so tired the last couple of days from being in writing workshops, I seem to be finally getting back on track. I look forward to being completely munted again upon my return to Aotearoa.

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Things I’ve started doing

Speaking more slowly

Not only do I have what an Australian client once called “the thickest New Zealand accent I’ve heard, it’s quite remarkable” I also speak a million miles an hour when I’m excited, peppered with profanity. (Another quote, from a writing workshop buddy this week: “It’s been really interesting talking to you. You say the word fuck more than any woman I’ve ever met.”) … Thanks, I guess?

I said the phrase “call centre” to someone from Tennessee five times in a row yesterday, before I eventually had to write it down. I’m trying really hard to be more conscious of my accent, and slow the pace down. Wish me luck.

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Things I’m writing

This week on Substack, I wrote this Wednesday Wisdom on why it’s never too late to change, and refreshed this article on women’s workplace burnout, to bring over to Substack.

I also published a couple of jazzy posts to wide-spread LinkedIn applause, including:

• How I f**ked up my life in 2022 and what I’m doing differently this year

• Stats on later-life career changes to inspire you to follow your dreams

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Things I’m worrying about

The unmitigated pace and acceptance of artificial intelligence

AI developments are marching forward at dizzying pace. Azeem Azhar from Exponential View summed up a recent research trip to Silicon Valley thus:

“the pace of technological innovation is—even for me—mind-boggling. Much of Silicon Valley is operating at that pace. I am equally convinced that this is the start, not the end”

Time and pace is on everyone’s mind, with the Future Of Life Institute calling for a 6-month ‘pause’ on AI development. Elon Musk weighed in early on, warning of the impacts of the ‘out-of-control-race’. Will Macaskill, author of What We Owe the Future (a terrific book) is one of my favourite voices on this topic as he, and other philosophers in this space, have been warning of the risk of ‘values lock’ by AI for years.

The basic idea is: we’re at a pivotal moment where, if we’re not careful, we’re going to lock in our current value system. This lock could last for potentially hundreds, if not thousands of years. Unless we’re confident our current values and ways of doing things are fair and fine (which seems unlikely, when we think about how recently we thought things like slavery and domestic violence were acceptable), we’re opening ourselves up to some interesting long-term risk.

For a very accessible chat on this, check out Will Macaskill’s interview with Tim Ferriss.

I’m not qualified to talk about technology. But I am curious about the way we’re being sucked in by ChatGPT and other LLM models - so fun, so funny, so cool! - and what the impact is of us large-scale filing those as ‘good.’ A productivity hack, a harmless work tool, something fun to talk to. It’s worth wondering why OpenAI has gone ahead and released this as a free thing - remember the infamous Derek Powazek line, quoted in the Social Network?

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” - Derek Powazek

It’s a bit like how we happily gave all our privacy and data away for free, and let our phones listen into our conversations, because it was amusing to have Siri tell us a knock-knock joke or we liked asking Alexa what the weather was doing.

I’m thinking about it, I’m worried about it, and I’m still using AI. So it goes.

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Musings that might convert to articles

Medical mistrust

The vaccine/mandate controversy seems an age ago now, doesn’t it? But at the time, it tore apart families, made Christmas weird, saw people turned away from bars and ultimately, in New Zealand, led to a 23-day occupation of Parliament grounds. I was, and remain, staunchly pro-vaccine. But I have a lot of empathy for people who are hesitant about placing their trust in medical science.

Medical researchers have done some weird shit over the years - some of it downright abusive. From the Tuskegee Syphilis study and the Thalidomide debacle, through to refusing to believe women’s experiences of PID, infertility, infection and death could be linked to their dodgy contraceptive device, there’s plenty of good reasons why people would be mistrustful of modern medicine. I’m fascinated by the sources of this mistrust, and what the way forward is for when we need mass public health mobilisation (for, I don’t know, tackling a pandemic or something.)

Spoiler alert: this is a topic I’m covering in my novel. Eep! Stay tuned.

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Well, that sums up this week’s Friday Flurry! It was a flurry, alright. If you’ve made it to the end, well done. Also, that’s a pretty clear sign you like this content - so why not sign up to paid? I love writing and sharing the inside of my brain with you, and I like it even more when I don’t do it for free. If you like my brain, and can afford to support it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. You’ll get Wednesday Wisdom, Friday Flurry, and regular in-depth articles on the musings that make it through.