Talking about burnout with OpenAI tool GPT-3.
In July 2020, OpenAI released Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) for beta testing – a natural language processing system (colloquially, an “AI”) that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.1 …
In Parts I and II, we traced a line from Kid Cudi to Machine Gun Kelly (MGK)—via SNL—to the revival of pop punk in the US musical mainstream. We ended with the co-conspiracy between MGK and Yungblud to “bring back rock’n’roll.” To round off this cultural commentary on what’s brewing in pop music today, this third part ties up their collaboration and makes a link with Miley Cyrus via the mysterious indications provided by SNL’s selection of musical guests. …
In Part I, we looked at Kid Cudi’s internet-breaking dress moment on Saturday Night Live (SNL) earlier this month. In Part II, we go further with the SNL musical guests, having noticed something brewing in (American) pop music that hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s strange that the common link here is SNL. Why would a long-running (maybe outdated) comedy sketch and variety show potentially be a present signal, a radar, of what is manifesting within pop music? Though perhaps the question is rather, why not?
Kid Cudi showed up on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in a dress, and the internet exploded. Presumably this was exciting because it was a man, in a dress. There is a long history of American popular culture misrepresenting trans people with harmful stereotypes, tropes, and appropriating ballroom culture, etc. This appearance by Cudi (or Cudder as he is fondly called by fans) felt like a re-run of a tonne of problems seen before (for an intro to the missteps of American film and TV in portrayals of trans lives see Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, a documentary by Sam Feder that premiered at Sundance in 2020 before being purchased by Netflix.)
This post continues on from the last dispatch from inside of the institution, ‘Disturbing Moment of the Day (DMOTD): Letter from the University’ to map yet another coordinate onto the University’s strange dealings during, with, and of the context of the digitisation of studying during the pandemic. …
For over a year now, life inside of the University has been weird – and it seems to only be getting weirder. Today the entire student and faculty cohort received a letter from the ‘President’ of the university that has inspired a new series over here at INC’s corner of No Fun that will here forth be called Disturbing Moment of the Day (DMOTD). Feel free to make that acronym a thing. …
Late into the pandemic, the University announced a new area on the top floor titled ‘Work&Relax.’ Made up of a set of interconnected rooms, the space is at the far end of the building and appears to have materialised out of nowhere. This area was unknown to students before. Apparently, it is a former daycare. …
The following is an excerpt from my new book Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work, which can also be found in the current print issue of Amsterdam Alternative newspaper.
Who knew living ‘a creative life’ would feel so arid? Where is the joy, the excitement, the risk, or the shock? Nothing is shocking besides the diminishing sense of possibility – and the working conditions. The work is safe, predictable, and supposedly ‘predicted’. All conforming to predetermined directives.
It’s not a matter of standing out, it’s a matter of fitting in and doing that very well. Future Shock. Present Shock. The Shock of the New. Do we even know how to feel shock anymore? We’re talking real shock – confused, challenging, discomfort-at-oddity shock. Not the shock one is ‘supposed’ to feel. Not the play shock that follows looking around and see others acting shocked, then following along accordingly – hazarding a guess that it’s simply the correct reaction to be done.
Except, nothing is being done. What are we really doing here? What are we even creating now? More ‘engaging content’ to exasperate the masses, complicit in the contemporary zombie condition? More riffs on past styles, never-ending re-runs of previous cultural moments? More distractions and ever-cooler ways to say ‘spend, spend, spend!’ without quite saying it? Boring. …
“I hate work.”
“I love working.”
“I love work but it’s killing me.”
“I hate work but it’s saving me.”
My friend is 30 and being awarded her ‘Ten Years of Servitude’ new year from the bread company she works for. “I don’t know what it means”, she said.
servitude /ˈsəːvɪtjuːd/ Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: servitude1. the state of being a slave or completely subject to someone more powerful.
“you’ve got thousands of years of peasant servitude to make up for”
The Freelancer is receiving ‘Ten Years of Serfdom!’ from Fiverr. A special badge, shaped like a gold star and bursting with shards, that they can put on their platform portfolio to make it “really stand out”. For ten days it will appear as the top search result. After that, it’s back to the whim of the algorithm.
Last week I received two emails, which felt like obtaining the two pieces missing from a 2000 piece puzzle sitting before you. The first was an issue of the bliss of the spam, a casual newsletter from radical curator Dalia Maini, and the second a shared article by economist Niko Paech.
