Mitch's Blog

Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic:

As has been the case since the Industrial Revolution, the project of automation isn’t just about increasing productivity, it’s about weakening labor power as a prelude to lowering quality.

Also:

The point of using automation to weaken labor isn’t just cheaper products – it’s cheaper, defective products, inflicted on the unsuspecting and defenseless public who are no longer protected by workers’ professionalism and pride in their jobs.

And:

When techies describe their experience of AI, it sometimes sounds like they’re describing two completely different realities – and that’s because they are. For workers with power and control, automation turns them into centaurs, who get to use AI tools to improve their work-lives. For workers whose power is waning, AI is a tool for reverse-centaurism, an electronic whip that pushes them to work at superhuman speeds. And when they fail, these workers become “moral crumple zones,” absorbing the blame for the defective products their bosses pushed out in order to goose profits.

Cory connects:

• The 19th Century Luddite movement — the Luddites get an unfair bum rap in this one. The Luddites were right and they were not anti-technology.
• The recent incident where the Chicago Sun-Times included AI hallucinations in its list of recommended books for summer. The writer unfairly gets the blame.
• And how AI is enabling Amazon to start treating tech workers as badly as warehouse workers.

Writers for The Guardian list their favorite rewatchable comfort movies: Guardian writers on their ultimate feelgood movies: ‘ Pure sugar-rush’

A few of my favorites are on this list: “You’ve Got Mail,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “The Paper,” and “Defending Your Life.” There are a few more that are new to me, and that I’ve bookmarked for watching.

“Pink Flamingoes” is an interesting choice for a favorite comfort movie.

More of my choices:

“Almost Famous” (2000) is a fictionalized memoir by Cameron Crowe about how he became a Rolling Stone correspondent as a teenager in the 1970s and toured with an up-and-coming Southern Rock band. The movie stars Kate Hudson as the leader of a band of groupies, Billy Crudup as the band’s stardom-drunk lead singer, and Patrick Fugit as the teen journalist.

“My Favorite Year” (1982) is another fictionalized, nostalgic coming-of-age showbiz memoir, about a young, New York Jewish writer on a hit 1950s comedy-variety show, hired to watchdog one of his heroes, a swashbuckling movie star who’s now a charming, reckless drunk. Peter O’Toole plays the drunken swashbucker, based on Errol Flynn. Mark Linn-Baker plays the young writer, Benjy Stone, based on Mel Brooks. Hell of an ensemble cast: Joseph Bologna is the neurotic star of the comedy-variety show, based on Sid Caesar. Lainie Kazan is Benjy’s embarrassing New York Jewish mother, and Lou Jacobi steals his scene as Benjy’s embarrassing uncle (“Did you shtup her? " he asks Peter O’Toole’s character, about a rumored dalliance with a starlet. “Did you go all the way?!”)

“Wonder Boys” is another 2000 coming-of-age story, this with a coming-of-age figure who is a middle-aged man. Michael Douglas plays an English professor at a small college who had a critically acclaimed novel as a young man, and is now struggling to follow that up. He is an aging ex-wonder boy, wandering Pittsburgh during a cold weekend in a ratty women’s bathrobe, hair uncombed, unshaven, making bad choices, accompanied by his equally reckless agent, played by pre-Iron Man, pre-recovery Robert Downey Jr., and a talented student, played by Tobey Maguire. The three have great buddy chemistry, and the movie has a strong supporting cast beyond those three, including Frances McDormand, Rip Torn and Richard Thomas. “Wonder Boys” is based on a novel by Michael Chabon. I love Chabon’s work, but this is not his best novel; the movie is better.

“Nobody’s Fool” is a 1994 coming-of-age story with a coming-of-age figure who is 60 years old, an aging handyman played by Paul Newman, who wanders around making bad choices one cold weekend in a declining small town in upstate New York. Newman was 70 when he made this movie; his performance is great despite his appearance — he looked too young to play a 60-year-old man. The movie features great characters, played by an outstanding ensemble cast, including Bruce Willis, Jessica Tandy, Melanie Griffith, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Margot Martindale. The movie is based on the first of a trilogy of novels by Richard Russo; the novels are each set about ten years apart. I love the novels and the movie.

“That Thing You Do” (1996) is a coming-of-age story about a fictional garage band in a small town in Pennsylvania in the mid 1960s that records a song that becomes a nationwide hit. The song is fizzy pop fun, and so is the movie. Tom Everett Scott stars as the jazz-loving drummer for the band, in a role that would have been played by Tom Hanks a decade earlier; Scott even looks and acts like young Tom Hanks. Hanks himself has a significant supporting role as the band manager, Mr. White, and he directed and wrote the movie. Liv Tyler is the lead singer’s girlfriend. I can imagine ways she could have had a meatier role without changing the movie much, but nobody asked me. She isn’t given much to work with but carries her scenes on sheer charisma. Steve Zahn steals every scene he’s in, as Steve Zahn does.

“The Mummy,” starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah and Oded Fehr. Everybody loves “The Mummy.” For a change, this is not a coming-of-age story, unless returning from the dead to seek vengeance counts as coming of age.

And two more comfort favorites: “Home for the Holidays” and “Tombstone,” which I wrote about here

Ian Bogost:

In the idle time we now spend on our phones, people used to read anything and everything they saw—junk mail, subway ads, the backs of cereal boxes, the story on the restaurant placemat, the labels on the condiments.

I used to carry a book or magazines with me when I went out. Now I still do — they’re on my phone.

Also:

I cannot overemphasize how little there was to do before we all had smartphones. A barren expanse of empty time would stretch out before you: waiting for the bus, or for someone to come home, or for the next scheduled event to start. Someone might be late or take longer than expected, but no notice of such delay would arrive, so you’d stare out the window, hoping to see some sign of activity down the block.