Rollins's Review, January 6
My dad refers to John Carter as “Nietzsche with a keyboard.” Personally, I think he’s more of a Gonzo William Gibson. In either case, the Poet of Barsoom has returned to grace us with a full-on nuclear banger, as if to remind everybody that no one, but no one writes like he does.
Good to have you back, John.
Daniel D. of A Ghost in the Machine has a theory about the Beatles, and it’s pretty fucking good. In two sentences: there weren’t any rules to the game, so John, Ringo, George, and Paul were able to make them up. This led to an explosion of musical innovation, which lasted until the suits got control of the artists and autotuned music into the ground
.Read this article.
Mark Bisone of The Cat Was Never Found is doing something both subtle and interesting with language and method that will have significant practical utility down the line for anyone who wants to not have A.I. running their life. He’s breaking down how ML Engines work linguistically and where the flaws in their process are so everyone can see. This is deceptively heavy shit, and well worth your time.
It feels strange to be boosting Mary Harrington of Reactionary Feminist, because I consider myself anti-feminist, and her philosophy is…well…
The bedfellows these days, they are fucking strange. I can’t find much in this article to disagree with, and there is a ton of valuable insight in it.
Schwab of Schwabstack is one of the most dangerous men alive. As a journalist of the dark underbelly of society, he is criminally underrated. Subscribe to him if you want to understand how all the pieces fit.
Full disclosure: I’m less pessimistic than Daniel is about the future of music, and my perspective on the production process is somewhat different than his.
Thanks for the kind words.
I, too, would like to hear more about this "anti-feminism" of which you speak. I sometimes think of myself as one of those, but only because my own feminism probably reached its limits three generations ago.
I didn't realize you are a literary editor by trade. Do you freelance?