Author: Marc Weidenbaum

▰ WRONG TRACK:

“I just equated it to this phantom noise, and maybe we’re all in a mass hysteria moment: we hear the bell, but we ignore it because we’re New Yorkers.”

That’s an employee at a coffee shop adjacent to a Manhattan subway stop where a bell rang for weeks straight, per Alaina Demopoulos in the Guardian.

. . .

▰ HEDGE FUN:

“of quince, or damson, strafed into the grass
and bruised to softness by a week of rain,
the wasps grown quick and blind
around that feast, the pigeons
fattened in the hedges, blind with song.”

That’s a stanza from “Notes towards a Devotio Moderna,” a poem by John Burnside in the July 4, 2024, issue of The London Review of Books.

. . .

▰ GIRL TALK:

“Part mommy, part secretary, part girlfriend, Samantha was an all-purpose comfort object who purred directly into her users’ ears. Even as A.I. technology advances, these stereotypes are re-encoded again and again.”

That’s Amanda Hess on the voices of AI in the New York Times.