(via A la recherche de Conchita Lopez, l’inconnue des lettres du métro parisien)

To make something count, you are going to have to do more than just rearrange precedent images and words, like any old robot. You are going to have to put your back into it, your back and maybe also your soul.

A.I. Can Make Art That Feels Human. Whose Fault Is That? - The New York Times

(via Best Arts Photos of 2023 - The New York Times)

Internal Resonance: How did it feel to write and publish this? Did it make me feel alive, both intellectually and somatically? Did it feel like something no one else but me could have created? Did it feel true to who I am, and who I'm becoming? Did the content of this writing matter to the deepest parts of me, beneath all of the cultural stories about who I think I should be and what I should do?

External Resonance: How did people respond? Did I strike an emotional nerve? This goes beyond easy, legible metrics like pageviews or social media likes, or even comments, which are at best hazy approximations of external resonance. It's about looking for signals that something genuinely MATTERED to one or more humans, and elicited a response that's out of proportion with the average digital interaction. Lots of likes is an okay-ish signal. Lots of comments is a clearer signal. A small handful of comments or private replies from people saying they've never felt so seen or understood by a piece of writing—that's the kind of thing I'm trying to discern and quantify here.

We, the internet users, also need to learn to recalibrate our expectations and our behavior online. We need to learn to appreciate areas of the internet that are small, like a new Mastodon server or Discord or blog. We need to trust in the power of “1,000 true fans” over cheaply amassed millions.

How to fix the internet | MIT Technology Review

“Sometimes, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.”

When the Money's Just Too Damn Good

This device cures heartache.

(via Photographing teenage girlhood in the late 90s)

Objectification is inescapable, Jeanette Spicer (because)

“Driving home, I felt the palpable anxiety that there was no way to hear the as-yet-unrecorded song still ringing in my ears. That was an exciting aspect of live music in the pre-internet age —  having to replicate a song in my own head; trying to learn it on guitar with no reference; verbally explaining the song to my friends; truly longing to hear it again. The more I thought about “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the more it felt as if the three everyday people I hadn’t even intended to see that night had just rendered my entire previous musical life useless. Nothing I’d heard or seen was as meaningful as what I’d seen that night. Nothing ever would be again.”

(via When Nirvana Played ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ for the First Time – Rolling Stone)

The internet is a superhighway. Step off and you might be safer, but you will also be quickly left behind.

I Don’t Want to Be an Internet Person

Tout m'avale. Quand j'ai les yeux fermés, c'est par mon ventre que je suis avalée, c'est dans mon ventre que j'étouffe. Quand j'ai les yeux ouverts, c'est par ce que je vois que je suis avalée, c'est dans le ventre de ce que je vois que je suffoque. Je suis avalée par le fleuve trop grand, par le ciel trop haut, par les fleurs trop fragiles, par les papillons trop craintifs, par le visage trop beau de ma mère. Le visage de ma mère est beau pour rien. S'il était laid, il serait laid pour rien. Les visages, beaux ou laids, ne servent à rien. On regarde un visage, un papillon, une fleur, et ça nous travaille, puis ça nous irrite. Si on se laisse faire, ça nous désespère. Il ne devrait pas y avoir de visages, de papillons, de fleurs. Que j'aie les yeux ouverts ou fermés, je suis englobée : il n'y a plus assez d'air tout à coup, mon coeur se serre, la peur me saisit.

Romans par Réjean Ducharme | Littérature | Roman québécois | Leslibraires.ca

En politique comme dans la vie, j’ai toujours aimé les perdants, les outsiders. Cette odeur de succès, je ne l’aimais pas.

Alice Neel | Centre Pompidou (Musée national d'Art moderne) | Art à Paris

« There you are, a 25-year-old woman sitting at an outdoor table at the Hungarian Pastry Shop with a spiral-bound notebook, a Mona Simpson novel, and a cappuccino in a heavy white diner mug. Across the street, peacocks wander the grounds of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. You sit upright with your pen in hand, notebook open. You’re waiting for inspiration. You’re waiting for your life to start. »

Another thing I hate about the word “abuser” is the terming of “my abuser.” […] By calling them “my abuser” I had an ownership of them, a permanent relationship between us, of abuser and abusee, even after years of never speaking to each other or even living in the same place. […] When you are living separately, no longer fleeing them, no longer having to defend yourself, then “my abuser” only grips the blade into your flesh. I know that immediately removing the blade from your chest may kill you, but so will leaving it in forever. Eventually, you have to carefully, surgically, strategically, remove the blade and allow the doctors to give you stitches. You have to allow the stitches to dissolve in the hot water. You have to allow the scar to fade as decades come and go and the cells of your skin die and replace themselves. No, it may never fade completely, but gripping the hilt of the knife in your chest and saying “this is my knife” does not give you power over the knife.

cailloux n°106 : sticks and spears and swords - by alexia

I think charisma comes out of the sense you have that not only is somebody different but they’re also confident about it, committed to it, obsessed by it even. We don’t find uncertainty charismatic. Uncertainty doesn’t work for anybody very well, because in general the media don’t appreciate people like that. I would like to cultivate a charisma of uncertainty, a charisma of admitting that you’re making it up as you go along.

Brian Eno Reveals the Hidden Purpose of All Art - The New York Times