[Closeup of one of the plants filling our landscape.]

I spent some time over the past week updating the AI Notebook page. I looked specifically for articles comparing corporations to AI (a la Charles Stross‘s idea that corporations are “slow AI”), and instead discovered articles about AI incorporating itself, which was disturbingly familiar, as in one of Stross’s earlier books, Accelerando, AIs incorporating themselves is one of the early stages of the singularity.

Reading

I just finished Jason McBride’s biography of Kathy Acker, Eat Your Mind. It was a hell of a good read. I was aware of Acker when I worked at the bookstore in the mid to late 1990s, but only by the titles of her books, not Acker qua Acker.

Writing

Came up with a few more story ideas based on previous writing prompts. Also did some worldbuilding for one of the previous half-finished novels, which might go somewhere at some point this summer. And I knocked out a draft of a poem about ageing, which makes me the first middle-aged  dude to ever write a poem about getting old. And not one word in it about how I wear the bottoms of my trousers. Take that, Elliot, you hack!

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Empire, Cryptids
Setting: Urban
Genre: War

Listening

I listened to a LOT of Moby at the start of my career as a web developer. Play had just been released and every song on it was, by the standards of the time, a banger. “South Side”, in particular, struck a chord with me. This version, featuring Gwen Stefani, is particularly good.

Interesting Links

• US supreme court unanimously upholds access to abortion pill mifepristone (PDF of decision here) in the case of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Given that the court decision rested on the plaintiff’s standing, not the merits of the case, there is every possibility that the Christofascists will try, yet again, to reduce child-bearing people to the role of expendable incubators, which is the sole purpose behind every attempt to limit access to, or outlaw, abortion.