Friday Rundown 05.23.2025
Things to read, watch, or listen to this weekend
BOOK
Orbital, a novel by Samantha Harvey
This Booker Prize winning novel tracks 24 hours in the journey of six astronauts circling the earth aboard the International Space Station. As we see earth through their eyes, it reads like an expansive meditation on the overview effect.
PODCAST
Lights On: How Understanding Consciousness Helps Us Understand the Universe
Over the course of ten episodes, Annaka Harris talks to physicists, neuroscientists, mindfulness teachers, and others to explore the the question, “what if consciousness is fundamental?” By this she means, what if consciousness is the real fabric of the universe, as fundamental as spacetime or even more fundamental? It’s my kind of question, and it’s a pleasure to listen to the collection of people she has gathered here. When she muses on her own speculations, she comes across as a bit out of her depth, but who wouldn’t?
SUBSTACK
What is The White Lotus for?
“Saying that the message about elites being hollow is smuggled into this show is a bit like saying American Airlines Flight 11 was smuggled into the World Trade Center. I would argue it is the entire point of the operation. But what exactly is this message, and how is it delivered?”
The Bezos Cannes-tastrophe
“So let’s just take stock: a $500 million megayacht, burning diesel and lined with possibly illicit teak, floating into the Riviera so its passenger can be honored for protecting the environment.”
[John Ganz in conversation] with Steven Klein for Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy
“…it's a very serious problem. If they say, ‘we're not obeying a federal judge's ruling.’ What happens then? You would see a breakdown of the rule of law in the country. But the paradox there is that they also weaken the legitimacy of the state. Why should anyone obey them if they don’t obey the law? Here’s the other thing. If elections are fake, or they start to mess around with elections – which I think is hard to do in the US context – they're watering down the power-conferring function of elections. If you fake an election, it looks good on paper. But you have no test of the legitimacy or depth of your position of power in the country. You'll discover overnight that actually people didn't want this. The regime can collapse quickly…”
Red AI. Or, how ChatGPT went from helping me translate the Little Red Book to generating a revolutionary program for the USA today.
“At the AI’s suggestion we went down a path that decoded the structure of Maoist revolutionary language in general, offered templates for generating new phrases and then, with a little prompting from me, used the AI-generated Mao formulae to generate a revolutionary program for contemporary China and the USA, including slogans, a manifesto and posters to match.”
Fascinating.