“The way of the world isn’t the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and whispering in the ears of the strong until they become weak…” – N.K. Jemisin, ‘The Obelisk Gate’
Were you a book series kid? In a column for Cracked about Goosebumps, I talked about reading Goosebumps and Animorphs, while my brother read A Series Of Unfortunate Events. One of my best friends in elementary school read Boxcar Children, my wife read Amelia Bedelia, etc. Reading the Broken Earth Trilogy (and the Indian Lake Trilogy last year, and Hitchhiker’s Guide last month), I am remembering the thrill of uncovering new information, characters evolving—maybe I’ll make it a point to do this once a year, idk. I also miss chasing the Shiny Object of getting to Next Book.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
CW: this book discusses the child death that we saw in the previous book, and a child living with an abusive parent. This series also deals with bigotry in multiple forms.
A book that it feels silly to tease. I gotta save column inches. Hey, one wrinkle about reading a book series is I now have Prestige TV Brain, so I kept thinking empty headed things like “ooh now this character gets a starring role after not being around all season one.” That’ll be the stupidest thing I say, because a book like The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin deserves real commentary. This book (about rocks) rocks, dudes.
Nassun, the orogene1 daughter of main character Essun, makes her grand entrance. I never know how many trigger warnings are appropriate, but know that Nassun’s father is bigoted and abusive. Orogenes can’t help being born orogenes, and regular humans fear them enough to kill them (then again, orogenes who can’t control their magic can easily kill humans, accidentally or on purpose). Nassun’s dad is very much a #GirlDad, except his love is conditional on his daughter “curing” her orogeny. He can’t love her for who she is. Jemisin writes a pretty sit-in-yr-guts portrayal of what it’s like for a 10-year-old to be on the run with her father, whom she knows beat her younger brother to death, and whom she knows would do the same to her. Nassun’s a pretty amazing kid, but her pain and living situation is brutal. Picture The Road crossed with I Saw The TV Glow (but with 75% more Fred Durst).
Meanwhile, Essun and her ragtag road crew are settled into a new underground comm. I don’t want to get spoilery, so suffice to say that Essun learns more magic than The Fulcrum2 could’ve ever taught her. We learn more about the stone eaters. There’s a Helm’s Deep-esque battle at the end. It’s sick as hell.
We also learn that this planet—which might as well be our Earth, except mass extinction events happen far more often—is much older than we previously thought. If this series takes place on our Earth, *I would guess* it is multiple millenia in the future3. We learn about why the Earth is so angry at humans. We learn what the Earth has lost thanks to humans. And all I want to say is that we need to take care of our planet. The planet is sacred, and it is alive.
Draw any through lines between that paragraph and the links that you want.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? We had a new The Line Break podcast with Kansas City Poet Laureate Melissa Ferrer Civil (Apple | Spotty | SoundCloud). We also released episode 1.5 of The Lazy & Entitled Podcast. These “.5” episodes are going to be a little shorter than the “main” episodes, and the plan is that they’ll be more guest-heavy. For the first .5 episode, we were very lucky to sit down with Maya Williams (former Poet Laureate of Portland, ME—we talk to poet laureates on my podcasts) and talk about what you do all day when your job is artist (Apple | Spotty | SoundCloud).
Over at 404, Emanuel Maiberg dives into a new paper, in which researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon have found that humans using A.I. results in the “deterioration of cognitive faculites that ought to be preserved.” I’m about to say a bunch of nasty stuff about A.I.—much of which you can probably predict—so I’ll highlight what Maiberg ends with: “I don’t feel particularly dumb for outsourcing my brain’s phonebook to a digital contact list, but the same kind of outsourcing could be dangerous in a critical job…” The most charitable I can possibly be about A.I. is that, yes, new tools can be good. But your brain and body are also meant to be used. Also, your phone’s contacts aren’t single-handedly destroying the water supply of the southwestern United States.
At Wired, Katie Knibbs reports that Thomson Reuters has won the first copyright infringement case against an AI company. I can’t tell you how it feels knowing that a lot of my work and thoughts have gone to training AI against my will, and how enraging it is when every job posting on Indeed for writers is about training A.I. So, uh—go Thomson Reuters?
Over at New Socialist, Gareth Watkins has a look at how fascists use AI art to whip people into a frenzy, and how A.I. art is shitty in part because techno-fascists hate working people and creative people.
The great on why “A.I. is a balloon, the book is a bicycle.” This is the part where I admit that I think we have already lost the A.I. battle. It’s everywhere and not going anywhere. But it is about as useful as a hot air balloon.
Finally, the anti-SNARF manifesto. The impossibly dunce-headed CEO of BuzzFeed, Jonah “Yes My Brother-In-Law is Jordan Peele, No I Will Not Comment Publicly On Whether Or Not He Respects Me Or Merely Tolerates Me” Peretti, got his broken clock on with this article. I am skeptical of the man who killed the excellent BuzzFeed News in favor of some web3/A.I. hype bullshit is up for this task, but Jonah “The Whale Should’ve Eaten This One” P points out that the AI-driven algorithmic internet operates on a cycle of getting everyone worked up and mad and worried, and it’s destroying society. He calls it SNARF, or exaggerated Stakes, manufactured Novelty, manipulated Anger, hacked Retention, and provoked Fear. Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, Fear. I’m wordy in this paragraph because Jonah “No Really I Don’t Cry Every Christmas Thinking About How My Sister Got All The Talent” Peretti disgusts me so much. All I am asking is that you please consider the principles of SNARF when you are doomscrolling. Stakes, Novelty, Anger, Retention, Fear.
What’re you still doing here? Don’t you know that Micah and Brendan have a show?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. You have a beautiful mind and a capable body. Life itself marvels at how well you live it.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
dirt wizard, rock witch, allegory for chattel slavery—the orogenes are magic users who can manipulate the Earth.
The school/barracks where orogenes must live under the watchful eye of the overseer-like Guardians. Picture Hogwarts crossed with Calvin Candie’s plantation.
I’m trying to not read anything about the series until I finish the series, so if this has been explicated somewhere else, that’s why I don’t know. Also, if the exact timeline is explained in an Appendix or something, here is where I tell that you most of the time I read an appendix in a fantasy book, the information sails straight over my brain like an Ohtani shot over center field. I have to really know a series, like I-spent-two-and-a-half-years-in-high-school-doing-nothing-but-watching-LOTR know a series before that information even brushes a sandbar in my consciousness.