#40 Good Books, Geeky Nostalgia, Trashy TV

Right now I am all about escapes, distractions, and staying warm and dry

New York, January, 2018

This week, I felt like that atmospheric river might never end. Curling up with something to watch or read really helped.

Books: Some great reads to share

Anne Patchett, Tom Lake, Harper Collins, August 2023: This novel is a testament to Patchett’s immense storytelling prowess, but it's not without flaws. Former actor and current orchard owner Lara has the chance to tell her adult daughters a more actual story of her life when all three young women return home to their parents’ rural Michigan cherry farm during the pandemic.  The multi-day storytelling session Lara embarks on with her daughters is both a great coming into your own story and an exploration of truth versus perception.

But, here’s what bugged me: The characters, while deeply drawn, bask in a glow of self-satisfaction that's hard to ignore. Their insulated world, loaded with middle-class comforts, sometimes borders on the smug, making me itch to draw parallels with the privileged family in Rumaan Alam's "Leave the World Behind." Patchett's skill as a writer is undeniable, but so is the bubble of entitlement that encases some of these characters.

Family Meal by Bryan Washington, Penguin Publishing Group, October 2023: Bryan Washington's "Family Meal" is a wonderful coming of age about queerness, family, and food. Set in Houston, Los Angeles, and Osaka, the novel explores the lives of Cam, Kai, and TJ—three queer men of color—each trying to cope with questions of belonging, loyalty, and loss. There is so much emotional truth in this novel, it undid me.  Washington crafts characters that stay with you and that feel emotionally authentic, and real. 

Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines, by Dr.  Joy Buolamwini, Penguin Random House. October 2023: Dr. Joy Buolamwini's book, "Unmasking AI," zeroes in on the biases in visual recognition tech. In this book, Buolamwini describes how,  as a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, she recognized a significant flaw in facial recognition tech—it couldn't "see" her because of her dark skin–but it could see her if she wore a white mask.

 That realization led to her work around the "coded gaze," –the ingrained biases in visual AI that actively harm women and people of color. Buolamwini's journey from a budding student at the intersection of tech and art to a crusader against biased AI is inspiring. 

Media

Jo Poon, Bell Labs, Attribution-NoDerivs

Saying goodbye to innovation at Bell Labs: When I became fascinated by the internet and tech innovation in the early 90s, Bell Labs, Xerox Park, and Bolt, Benerak and Newman were magical places to me.  I knew a little bit about each one. I had met research scientists from each who impressed the hell out of me, even as I struggled to figure out what everyday applications could come from their research (this was pre-World Wide Web and even before easy access to the Internet.) 

So, for me, this recent story from NJ.Com (where I was the founding editor back in the day, and Jeff Jarvis was my boss),  about the wind-down of Bell Labs, the research facility where both C++ and the UNIX computer operating system were first developed, caught my interest. 

The follow-up blog post from Om Malik, lamenting the demise of the lab and what that means about creativity, is also a good read.

“Whether it’s Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, or IBM Research Labs, the story is always the same: corporate overlords are so married to the staid predictability of their cash cows that they fail to make bold decisions.”--Om Malik

And saying hello to Gnomedex, 2006

I’ve been following Richard MacManus’s memoir, Bubble Blog: From Outsider to Insider in Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 Revolution, with interest, especially since around I was there for much of this. In some chapters, it feels like I am flipping through an old photo album where, surprise, I'm in some of the pictures.

Richard’s post about Gnomedex 2006 in Seattle, for example, took me way back. I knew I had a great time at the conference, but I’d kind of forgotten (maybe blocked out) the talk about blogging and anonymous sex bloggers I gave at Gnomedex–and I had no idea what kind of impression it made on other people because most of the men in the audience were so disconcerted that they were silent during the Q&A (but came up to talk one on one later). Fun to revisit again through his perspective.

Watching

True Detective, Night Country (Season 4): Well, I started watching this because of Jodie Foster, but now it’s Kali Reis and I am hooked.  Yeah, the horror gets laid on a little thick, and I know that the ultimate reveal of what is going on will be a letdown, but  I am so into it. Jodie Foster is a prize bitch and all the other actors are great as well.  (And if you have seen this but have not seen Taboo, with Tom Hardy (2017), you might love it.)

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All best,

Susan