Tag: Kirn Quibbles
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Kirn quibble
Haven’t done one of these quibbles in a LONG time. This one is a real clanger. Kirn was responding to a twitterite who said (somewhat more accurately) that communists hate private property but love copyrights, which are only fictional. = = = = = START KIRN: Copywrights, along with patents, are the LEAST fictional form…
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Probably right
Earlier I noticed that the Trump cult’s email spam resembled the incessant calls from a moody menopausal ex-wife. Do you still love me? Why haven’t you responded? I would never expect this from YOU! Kirn has noticed the same thing, describing it from a different angle: A lot of the political $$$ solicitations I’m getting…
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Kirn quibble
Kirn: We are never at peace anymore. Wartime restrictions are being instituted across every segment of society & culture. Even at the height of the Cold War there were mainstream, popular, & ruthless satires of the great bureaucratic, military, & corporate powers. Yup. This situation isn’t new; the same total control happened during Wilson. There’s…
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Kirn reaches the same
I stopped following Kirn regularly after he seemed to be drifting toward the convergence that comes with fame. He’s always an astute observer when his paycheck doesn’t interfere. He’s been reading up on UFOs lately and reached the same conclusion that I did: = = = = = START KIRN: I’ve reached a tentative but…
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Good question, better answer
Good question from Kirn: How do gerontocracies take hold? Because it’s hard to get those in power to negotiate their own extinction early. Why should they make any bargains at all? They have nothing to lose, as they are about to lose everything anyway. You have to remove the very ground they stand on. =…
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Kirn vs Hart
Still annoyed at the lost opportunity of Kirn’s “newspaper”. When you take the trouble to print something on paper, and boast that the material is uncensored and unrepetitive, you should BE uncensored and unrepetitive. You should be DAMN SURE that everything you print is entirely new, representing original viewpoints that aren’t available in any of…
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Not worth the price.
Kirn and associates have started up a printed newspaper. Since I’ve been mouthing off about real printing and real newspapers for a long time, decided to put my moneying where my mouthing is. Got the first issue. It’s nicely wrapped and nicely printed, but it doesn’t have ANYTHING I couldn’t find on the web. No…
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Metaground
Kirn is getting credit for a brand new idea: In @palladiummag, a fascinating idea from @walterkirn that the spectacle of news, social media, changing mores, etc. is designed to prevent memory formation. Not new at all. This was the POINT of 1984. Room 101 was not about lies and propaganda, it was explicitly and obviously…
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Kirn loses it
Katharine Boyle said: The decline in liberal arts degrees bodes well for society on almost every dimension. College students now know that majoring in Book Club won’t get you a great job. This is progress. Kirn snotted back: “On almost every dimension” isn’t English, brainiac. Close, but not quite. And what would know about dimensions…
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Kirn vs Cervantes
Latest from Kirn: Privacy, censorship, surveillance, and freedom of expression must be explicit, top-tier issues in the upcoming presidential contest. All candidates must be pressed to take clear stands. First, there’s never any point in saying must. Government does what it wants. Government doesn’t care what peasants think it must do. Writers who put must…
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Dove stops the itch
Latest from Kirn: None of the myriad products being boycotted now are products I buy anyway. It’s as though I knew something, but I wonder what it was. Avoid all goods that are heavily advertised? I suppose it was this. Yup. I feel the same itch. Living a simple life means (1) I don’t buy…
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Who’s the bedbug 2
Latest pithy point from Kirn: It takes only moments for AI to “write” a book, but it will still take hours, even days, for a person to read one. It used to be the other way around; the writer labored far longer than the reader. It made reading books feel worthwhile, to know that. Now?…
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Snobascope
Kirn retweeted this item from a film snob who saw only the lens in Carlson’s “I’ll be baaaaack” clip. Shoutout to my bro @justingum (we worked together on Hoaxed w/ @scooter_downey) He shot this clip using anamorphic lenses to give it that beautiful epic feel. I’ve seen several film snobs triggered that Tucker would dare…
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Not strange at all.
Kirn: The double-exponential unpredictability of AI and its potential to amplify evil may have only one workable antidote, logic suggests: moral absolutism. Wouldn’t it be strange indeed if the outcome of our wild tech experiments is a thunderous comeback for the 10 Commandments? Historically it wouldn’t be strange. After the 1789 Terror, France emphatically returned…
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Ovens
Interesting experiential note from Kirn: Years ago while teaching creative writing to grad students I noticed a new kind of short story that was not about deep conflicts but differences of opinion. One character would have the right opinions on some issue, another the wrong ones. Bad things would happen to the person with the…
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