PicoBlog

If you’re not awestruck and a little bit frightened by Artificial Intelligence right now, I’d suggest you’re not paying attention. While we’ve been taking advantage of various AI tools for years in voice command apps and content recommendation engines, new “generative AI” tools like ChatGPT (for text) and Midjourney (for graphic art) have sent us reeling into an uncertain and unsettling future. We should all be burning with questions about how these applications - which can seemingly produce original, quality content in seconds using simple voice prompts - will change how we work, learn and create.

Sarah Jane Baker has been cleared of inciting violence against women. Sarah Jane (formerly Alan) Baker is a trans-identified male with a violent criminal past. As a young man he spent time inside for crimes such as drug dealing and armed robbery. He then served 30 years for the kidnap and torture of his stepmother’s brother and the attempted murder of a fellow prisoner whom he tried to strangle after breaking into his cell.

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You likely know the scene in Saltburn that is so over-discussed it has inspired a candle, but if you don’t, here’s Wikipedia’s hilarious summary: “One night, [Oliver] watches Felix masturbating in a bathtub and lustfully drinks the semen-laced bathwater.” Indeed. What surprises me about the Saltburn discourse is how doggedly critics are fixated on the sleaze element of the film. I take this word straight from director Emerald Fennell, who described the movie as, “Barry Lyndon meets indie sleaze” to the Hollywood Reporter.

Naturally, when discussing a film as edgy and as introspectively counter-cultural as Taxi Driver, the idea of there being a scene people are too afraid to talk about does carry a sense of redundancy to it given the already controversial nature aspect of the film. At the same time though, it’s very biased of people to think that there won’t always be something in a film we are afraid to discuss.

Continuing an annual ritual of long standing, ahead of starting my spring teaching at NYU starting in a couple of weeks, I would like to invite you, if you are interested, to come along for the ride. I know! I know! Most of you are not enrolled at NYU, paying nosebleed prices, and that is prerequisite to be in the classroom, but thanks to technology and a loose reading of the rules that constrain me, you can get a close approximation of the classroom experience, wherever you are in the world, with broadband being your only constraint.

In past posts, I’ve mentioned Peter Attia, MD. And I’ll state it again that I am so glad that I finally tuned into his podcast The Drive about 6 months ago. Despite being a guest on several podcasts myself, I actually never listen to them…. until one of my inner circle friends kept urging me to give this one a listen. He knows me well - curious, evidence-based and interested in the science and art of health, fitness, functional capacity and wellness ….

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about using curiosity to tune out clickbait, remember what really matters, and just occasionally, be the very best carrot you can be. There are also…rather more of you here than I was expecting. The reason is that when psychologist and bestselling author Mary Trump started her own Substack last week on the subject of kindness, she demonstrated her own in a very specific way by linking to my newsletter in her first post (!

I hope all of you had a lovely Thanksgiving. It was just the four of us this year, and we didn’t go anywhere. We ate fried chicken instead of turkey because three out of four of us don’t like turkey and we care more about enjoying ourselves than abiding by Thanksgiving rules. But even though our celebration was small, casual and relatively easy, there were moments yesterday when things certainly didn’t feel easy.