Although he left no comprehensive statement about his passion for collecting, I think that, like most students of art, Morgan collected as a way of dreaming through the dreams of others—the artists and artisans who produced the powerful works he bought, including Byzantine enamels, Italian Renaissance paintings, three Gutenberg Bibles, and an autographed manuscript of Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” purchased directly from the author. Like the legendary collectors William Randolph Hearst and Andy Warhol, Morgan was self-conscious about some of his physical qualities: he suffered from rosacea, which got worse as he aged. The beauty of art was something to hide behind. And it could be nourishing to his countrymen, too. Morgan was the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1904 until his death, and he knew that the works he acquired on his trips to Europe and North Africa could expand America’s understanding of art and history, and thus enrich its aesthetic future.
On a blazing morning in October, I paddled my surfboard into a caramel-colored sea off a beach in Brazil, hoping to catch a wave with its own individual rights. The wave rose up against the wind as if in greeting, its perfect peak of foam resembling the enigmatic smile of a new friend.
Under a local ordinance signed in August 2024, the wave is now considered a person in the eyes of the law. It has the intrinsic right to existence, regeneration, and restoration and to the natural flow of the river that feeds it. With the help of human advocates, it can bring cases against those who harm it. It’s a small victory for the growing rights-of-nature movement around the world.
To gain insight into this important dimension of computing, here are three very early examples of text generation that are particularly striking: Two arising from academic research, one by a well-known Fluxus artist. Keep in mind that even if the outputs presented here seem primitive, they suggested new ways that computers could work on language and each of them had a use, whether that was the better understanding of minority languages, determining how seemingly simple writing is rich with grammatical potential, or demonstrating how poetry can be extended into a process without end.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a burger that didn’t have a lacy edge. I know they still exist out there, half-pound bistro burgers oozing with juice, but these are not the burgers that trend, the burgers that beckon obsession on TikTok. No, the burgers I am told I want are meaty doilies, pressed nearly paper thin, ground beef fried to a crisp.
Over the past five years or so, smash burgers have grown in national popularity. But 2024 was the year they officially peaked — and maybe jumped the shark. A genuine creativity around incorporating new flavors into smash burgers has made the inevitable turn into a mandatory menu addition for every place that is trying to be the next big thing. It’s pretty obvious why. Smash burgers are cheap to make and satisfying to eat, as close to a guaranteed win as you can get on a menu. With diners ever stingier with their money, and restaurant margins ever thinner, that’s increasingly the only thing there’s room for.
Dicky’s daddy’s hand was shoved somewhere near Dicky’s brain stem. My throat was in my stomach. Their hearts were in vaudeville. But we were all in Kentucky. Side by side by side, we stood near the entrance of the Vent Haven Ventriloquist ConVENTion — the annual international hajj for ventriloquists — where dummies condomed nearly every right arm. Dummies were rising from zippered suitcases, lifted from velvet-lined trunks, coffined on banquettes with protective canvas bags on their heads, like prisoners expecting execution. Dummies congested every visible cranny of the Erlanger Holiday Inn in a huge interspecies fiesta of dwarves, worms, baboons, children, et cetera.
The human delegation was only slightly less mixed.
At its best, Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet really is a series of powerful meditations on love, death, queerness, and ambition—not to mention Hollywood and Mormonism and other repressive systems. And all of it more or less smuggled into a sweet, clear Hallmark love story, if Hallmark love stories featured ghostly Mr. Darcys who haunt anal vibrators for their partner’s pleasure.
The humour is light, and the story compels you through each turn of disaster and thrilling plot to escape. Why not sail the Aegean Sea as a hero from the comfort of home?
With the freshness of Pek’s staging of online love and death, a third entry in the series will be welcome.
Patrick Hutchinson’s journey in Cabin: Off Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsmans delivers a modern reworking of the long-standing self-exploration story. The book reminds us that living alone in a cabin in the woods is never about the romantic idea of solitude, but the discovery of who we are as people.