The government and its ideological bedfellows in the media are unanimous in the assertion that “woke” is a bad thing, while cleverly sidestepping any obligation to explain what woke actually means. Until now, when one of the leading witchfinders of woke accidentally reveals that it means you eat cornflakes and may even read books. So, now we know.
I suddenly half-remembered this story a few months ago (What was the time frame? Was it in the New Yorker?) and started to wonder whether I’d imagined it. So this isn’t really a post, more a placeholder, something that in a few years’ time may assure me that it was real.
I saw you on the Manhattan-bound Brooklyn Q train. I was wearing a blue-striped t-shirt and a pair of maroon pants.
You were wearing a vintage red skirt and a smart white blouse. We both wore glasses. I guess we still do...
(Note: Small Boo had these thoughts, not me. But she hasn’t got a blog, at least not that I know of.)
There’s an idea knocking about in the tech world called the singularity. Essentially, it’s the point at which artificial intelligence transcends human cognition, where machines become cleverer than brains. It’s long been assumed that the singularity, if it happens, will be a case of machines playing catch-up, of AI’s thinking power developing faster than that of homo sapiens.
But then a news story broke a few days ago, about the budget airline RyanAir seeking to identify people travelling with fake South African passports by setting them a general knowledge test in Afrikaans. This has inevitably caused great offence as Afrikaans is still seen by many South Africans as the hated language of apartheid; but aside from the PR blooper, it’s a pretty pointless exercise, since only 13% of citizens speak the language – Zulu and Xhosa are more widespread. Add the fact that the questions on the test are littered with grammatical errors and it really looks as if some junior RyanAir apparatchik ran them through Google translate, operating on a vague memory that it’s one of the languages that they speak down there.
And the thought presents itself – could the singularity arrive as a result of AI standing still, while humanity’s intelligence declines to meet it?
No, I will not be indulging in bunting-related shenanigans over this inordinately extended weekend, and not just because even Radio 4 has taken to calling the whole thing “PLATTY JUBES”. Instead, here are two things that have amused me recently. First, Jacques Derrida playing cricket.
Niche film twitter question: is the French title of Emmanuelle 2, Emmanuelle: L'antivierge (1975), a pun on Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus (1972)?
— Matthew Sweet (@DrMatthewSweet) June 1, 2022
Meanwhile, the good folk in charge of Stonehenge have projected images of the Queen onto the sarsens, annoying a few pagans and prompting derision from much of Twitter.
Question: which act was the more worthwhile (aesthetically or otherwise)?
On the day it was revealed BBC4 is to be shifted into the online-only nowhere land, as BBC3 is welcomed back to the family of proper telly, this seemed horribly apposite.
But did they have to broadcast it on my birthday?
PS: If anyone’s interested, the French Radiohead documentary I appeared in a few years back has resurfaced, and is available on YouTube for a limited period.
But what’s this? Sight and Sound lobs from its archives an article by the revered avant-garde film-maker Chris Marker, in which he just lists his favourite bits of films. The only difference is, no cocktails. And of course, the apparently-random-gobbets-of-stuff-I-like approach is pretty much what Georges Perec was about, so it must be OK, mustn't it?
