“ironic points of light”

On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Rights aren’t rights if they can be taken away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country: A bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news, even badly, you know that the list gets shorter and shorter” —George Carlin

“GenAI sits at the intersection of fascism, capitalism, labor, climate change, and environmental degradation. It is the quintessential technology of our time, the epitome of our current struggles. Defeating it is the key to defeating capital.” —Ben Lockwood

American society is dominated by wealthy mountebanks and literally demented politicians who are happy to take on all the risks of AI because it promises to create workers who cannot even conceptualize quitting, much less striking. The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought; with the unemployed illiterate and addicted to screens, they are unlikely to be politicized and join a socialist campaign. —We Used to Read Things in This Country

“As AI makes communication free, the only credible signals will be the ones that remain expensive. Human judgment. Personal risk. Time that can’t be recovered. The paradox of this moment is that efficiency has become the enemy of trust. The things that can’t scale are the things that still mean something.” —Jay Van Bavel on LinkedIn

Retirement is commonly treated as an ending. A closing ceremony for a working life, followed by a quieter, narrower existence. This framing misunderstands what is taking place. Retirement is not the loss of purpose. It is the removal of a structure that once organised identity, time, and legitimacy … Seen this way, retirement is not withdrawal. It is reorientation. The release is not from work alone. It is from the need to explain oneself through past achievement.

The real work of retirement is learning to speak in the present tense. —Shaun Coffey

September 1, 1939
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
—W.H. Auden