Everyone once in a while on Read Max [when there’s nothing else going on in the world that I have anything to write about] we like to solicit questions and recommendations from readers in a mailbag column. It’s been much too long since we’ve run a mailbag, so let’s open up the floor. What’s on your mind?
Discussion topics are up to you: I’m looking for burning questions, incisive comments, great recommendations, and truly worthwhile shitposts. In the past we’ve discussed Facebook, fatherhood, Gene Wolfe, cyberpunk, among other things. Please leave your queries and complaints below, or respond directly to this email, and I’ll respond or reply in a column later this week.
And thank you, as always, for your continued support of my worst instincts and stupidest ideas.
Ronan Farrow's latest on Musk (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule) featured an interesting paragraph about how Musk loves anticapitalist texts/authors like Douglas Adams and Deus Ex (and Musk has previously named his rockets after technocommunist AI characters from Iain M. Banks's The Culture series). Bezos even tried optioning a TV show about the Culture series, but fortunately, it never transpired.
What do you think is going on here with these billionaires who love science fiction that clearly places them as the arch villains?
I'm really interested in any musings you have about raising kid(s) with tech. Not just like O Noes Screen Time pearl-clutching but like, endless choice in music and streaming services ... what's that doing to their little brains? My son is too young for me to need a porn talk but he just got obsessed with a video of Super Mario Odyssey where it's been hacked so Mario has like huge muscles?? That's basically like porn (as in a heightened version of reality which may leave the viewer disappointed with actual reality??)!!!
I've been thinking a lot about some of the points you've made about AI as it relates to writing and am wondering if there's some unresolved tension in a couple areas.
I really liked the point about AI not being so threatening despite the recent breakthroughs because writing and reading are social experiences, but that seems to be a very different angle than how you talked about the TV industry. There, the lens was much more material (tradespeople develop skill and create value through their labor, AI is a fulcrum that capital is trying to use to extract more rent). How do those two pictures mesh for you? Do we need to worry about AI destroying the well-honed craft of writing, or is the buoyancy of human connection going to see us through?
You and I have similar tastes in crime fiction and I owe you a big Thanks for introducing me to David Peace’s Tokyo Trilogy. I had mixed feelings on the Red Riding Quartet so I had never tried it but I think the Occupied Tokyo setting just adds an incredible layer of tension and angst to the circumstances. I seem to have a taste for multigenerational crime epics: Peace, James Ellroy, Jake Arnott. Are there others in this vein you recommend?
can you explore the world of cannibalism films from the 70s plus the world of adult films from the same period that were art films... especially the career of Joe D’Amato who brought art to adult erotica? what happened to all this?
I know that the Dad thriller lists include lots of Cold War-adjacent stuff but I am curious about movies that would pair especially well with Oppenheimer.
Who is doing work around AI and digital equity? With already biased data going in is there work being done to understand or counter the resulting bias?
1.- What do you make of Brandon Sanderson's fiction, if you've read it? He seems to have become the new king of fantasy (a genre I abandoned in favor of Sci Fi and have slowly been getting myself back into), and is unnaturally prolific, but reading his first Mistborn novel, with very low expectations, I'm finding it predictably lackluster (though still much better than I expected)
2.- What do you think are the odds the US will see domestic armed conflict within the next decade? Including everything from full on civil war down to guerilla warfare style insurgence.
3.- If you had to become a single issue voter, what would the issue be?
It’s my birthday so I’m going to indulge myself here. I can’t escape the feeling that the internet of 2000 to now is well and truly dead. Social networks built to share links are dead, almost every streaming service (music and television/movies) is built so that it’s impossible to find anything in order to paper over the cracks of what’s missing, Google is broken, Reddit is breaking... how are we supposed to find out what’s going on?
Loved your piece on MrBeast and heard you on both the daily & the culture journalist. I was so impressed with how even-handed you were in all of those. Selfishly (because I'm interested in this exact area), I'd love to hear about the preconceptions and received wisdom you came upon in exploring the subject and how that relates to the world of art, entertainment and content where those things come into contact with money or "scale".
Submarine movies or train movies? Are there any other modes of conveyance that are even in the running for the most cinematic?
Also, should space travel be fundamentally thought of as analagous to seafaring, (with captains, admirals, etc) or is this a hangover from sci-fi driectors and writers who were enamored with boy's own adventure stories about the british navy/the legacy of world war ii, especially in the pacific (looking at you George Lucas).
What’s an appropriate amount of screen time for a 40 year old man?
Ronan Farrow's latest on Musk (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule) featured an interesting paragraph about how Musk loves anticapitalist texts/authors like Douglas Adams and Deus Ex (and Musk has previously named his rockets after technocommunist AI characters from Iain M. Banks's The Culture series). Bezos even tried optioning a TV show about the Culture series, but fortunately, it never transpired.
What do you think is going on here with these billionaires who love science fiction that clearly places them as the arch villains?
I'm really interested in any musings you have about raising kid(s) with tech. Not just like O Noes Screen Time pearl-clutching but like, endless choice in music and streaming services ... what's that doing to their little brains? My son is too young for me to need a porn talk but he just got obsessed with a video of Super Mario Odyssey where it's been hacked so Mario has like huge muscles?? That's basically like porn (as in a heightened version of reality which may leave the viewer disappointed with actual reality??)!!!
These are some of my neuroses, what are yours?
What’s the genre boundary between sci-fi and fantasy? You seek to have a preference for sci-fi, but is there fantasy you also enjoy? If so why not?
If you had unlimited resources to build an amusement park based on a single intellectual property, which IP would you choose and why?
I've been thinking a lot about some of the points you've made about AI as it relates to writing and am wondering if there's some unresolved tension in a couple areas.
I really liked the point about AI not being so threatening despite the recent breakthroughs because writing and reading are social experiences, but that seems to be a very different angle than how you talked about the TV industry. There, the lens was much more material (tradespeople develop skill and create value through their labor, AI is a fulcrum that capital is trying to use to extract more rent). How do those two pictures mesh for you? Do we need to worry about AI destroying the well-honed craft of writing, or is the buoyancy of human connection going to see us through?
Something about the rise of the so called professional managerial class
Write a similar hit piece (like the one you wrote about Vivek Rasamswamy) but about Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s insufferably smug Twitter
Why in the last few months am I now seeing personal photos of famous musicians showing up on Facebook?
A few examples:
Annie Lennox: https://www.facebook.com/poprockwil/posts/pfbid0yBbsF5JQkan2HLo8amrVbnQeT3fwTXMfn8GE9UuDPwwf4sr7BXYfENQJs5pJiC6kl
Daft Punk: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dpaone010101/posts/6990233327676843
Apex Twin: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=aphex%20twin
With fawning tokamak coverage getting torus more exposure, are we due for a realignment in the geometric solids power rankings?
What should the acronym for the newly expanded BRICS alliance be?
You and I have similar tastes in crime fiction and I owe you a big Thanks for introducing me to David Peace’s Tokyo Trilogy. I had mixed feelings on the Red Riding Quartet so I had never tried it but I think the Occupied Tokyo setting just adds an incredible layer of tension and angst to the circumstances. I seem to have a taste for multigenerational crime epics: Peace, James Ellroy, Jake Arnott. Are there others in this vein you recommend?
How 'bout them Spurs?! What do you think of Angeball?
can you explore the world of cannibalism films from the 70s plus the world of adult films from the same period that were art films... especially the career of Joe D’Amato who brought art to adult erotica? what happened to all this?
I know that the Dad thriller lists include lots of Cold War-adjacent stuff but I am curious about movies that would pair especially well with Oppenheimer.
Who is doing work around AI and digital equity? With already biased data going in is there work being done to understand or counter the resulting bias?
Off the top of my head:
1.- What do you make of Brandon Sanderson's fiction, if you've read it? He seems to have become the new king of fantasy (a genre I abandoned in favor of Sci Fi and have slowly been getting myself back into), and is unnaturally prolific, but reading his first Mistborn novel, with very low expectations, I'm finding it predictably lackluster (though still much better than I expected)
2.- What do you think are the odds the US will see domestic armed conflict within the next decade? Including everything from full on civil war down to guerilla warfare style insurgence.
3.- If you had to become a single issue voter, what would the issue be?
It’s my birthday so I’m going to indulge myself here. I can’t escape the feeling that the internet of 2000 to now is well and truly dead. Social networks built to share links are dead, almost every streaming service (music and television/movies) is built so that it’s impossible to find anything in order to paper over the cracks of what’s missing, Google is broken, Reddit is breaking... how are we supposed to find out what’s going on?
What's a technology from the past you wish you would have been around for the creation of?
Loved your piece on MrBeast and heard you on both the daily & the culture journalist. I was so impressed with how even-handed you were in all of those. Selfishly (because I'm interested in this exact area), I'd love to hear about the preconceptions and received wisdom you came upon in exploring the subject and how that relates to the world of art, entertainment and content where those things come into contact with money or "scale".
Submarine movies or train movies? Are there any other modes of conveyance that are even in the running for the most cinematic?
Also, should space travel be fundamentally thought of as analagous to seafaring, (with captains, admirals, etc) or is this a hangover from sci-fi driectors and writers who were enamored with boy's own adventure stories about the british navy/the legacy of world war ii, especially in the pacific (looking at you George Lucas).