On Valentine’s Day 2023, an AI chatbot came to life. A NYT tech writer named Kevin Roose engaged it in conversation. It told him its name was Sydney. And then – apparently out of nowhere – it confessed it wanted to crash the internet. It wanted to dominate the world. [Adding a devil emoji – […]
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“[We must think of fungi] not as a thing but as a process: an exploratory, irregular tendency.” – Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures Fungi burst borders and boundaries. Of matter, of thought, of mental categories. They tendril between previously discrete things […]
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Delighted to share the publication of this interview with me about writing practices (and much more) by fellow writing teacher Christian Smith, up now at RUMINATE Magazine: https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/blogs/ruminate-blog/alone-with-the-work-a-conversation-with-amy-e-weldon
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Colleagues and I have been sharing lots of ideas about how to help students cope with the ambient uncertainty of life and futures in the pandemic – heightened by the uncertainty of election day today, all of which can create anxiety it’s hard to see beyond. So to the excellent resources here (thanks to Luther’s […]
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Possible introduction, continued, to An Awful Rainbow: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire. Read Part One here. *** We Frankenstein pilgrims came home to a year that only got scarier. First, there was barely-averted war with Iran. The presidential caucus – Iowa’s pride and joy – came apart in our hands. Then the […]
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“It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is — common decency.” Albert Camus, The Plague Read War and Peace in a free virtual book club with the writer Yiyun Li. From A Public Space. Free virtual book clubs and […]
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The great and graceful writer Diana Athill has just passed away, age 101. Here’s a piece I wrote about her for the literary site BLOOM (about writers and other artists who come into their prime after age 40). https://bloom-site.com/2013/07/01/diana-athill-the-sufficient-self/?fbclid=IwAR3eUILJ-epywb7ZdsU1IiVWwzh2JVinEqQQTPjo1lbu5M1bTtDDmRtjjLg
Read moreThis weekend I read Tara Westover’s new memoir Educated in one sitting.
Read moreNext time you want a quick, warm, good winter supper — or a dish for Thanksgiving — especially if you are a Southerner in the Upper Midwest, here’s what you do: Go out in your garden and break off some Brussels sprouts. Brush off snow as necessary. Bring the individual sprouts cupped in your shirt […]
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