If and when the machines take over, it won’t be as we dreamt it. It won’t be a cold, homicidal smart speaker, or an albino android, or living tissue over a metal endoskeleton, shaped like an Austrian bodybuilder. We could’ve guessed they’d eventually beat us at stuff like chess. And Go. And competitive video games. But those are cold and calculating tasks, fit for machines. We told ourselves that they’d only ever be, well, computers: rigid, rational, unfeeling. The truly human features would always be ours. The warm gooey heart, which no algorithm could ever copy.
But in reality, the robots will be much more lifelike—and because of that, even more unsettling. They won’t sound robotic, because they’ll sound just like us. They might look just like us, too. They might have psychoses, and trippy, surrealist dreams. And someday soon, they might even write some decent verse.
The laid-off employees are entering a job market that has been brutal to online comedy. In recent years, digital outlets Funny or Die, NBC’s Seeso, and Turner’s Super Deluxe all shut down; the Onion has suffered corporate mismanagement and a disastrous redesign; and Elon Musk’s satire startup Thud tanked. It’s not all dire. The rise in subscription streaming services has resulted in a corresponding surge in television opportunities, boutique outlets like Reductress and McSweeney’s are surviving and growing, and, it must be said, there is some good stuff on TikTok. But CollegeHumor is joining a swath of medium-sized outlets focusing on shorter-form comedy and general-audience satire that have also been gutted.
If this sounds like a groaner you’ve heard before, it is. The challenges faced by the online comedy ecosystem in the past decade are intertwined with the rise of social media, which fueled many outlets’ mainstream popularity but also ultimately complicated their existence. “How the hell can you plan for the future when the platforms where your money comes from are completely opaque?” says Adam Frucci, the former director of development for Dropout. “That’s not exclusive to comedy or video. It applies to all online media.”
Japan is the world’s second-biggest producer of plastic waste per capita behind the United States, and goes through around 9 million tons of plastic waste each year. Of that, more than 40 percent is disposable plastic such as packaging and food containers.
“Whether you go to a convenience store or a supermarket, you basically have no option but to use disposable plastic,” says Hiroaki Odachi, project leader of Greenpeace Japan’s plastic campaign. “Whatever you buy, it comes wrapped in packaging.”
You don’t need to spend long in Japan to notice how much single-use plastic there is, but is it really impossible to avoid it? I decide to find out, and set myself a goal of not using any plastic that is designed to be thrown away after a single use for a whole week.
To speak of a cockroach’s personality or a marmot’s mood is no longer scientifically irresponsible; in fact, many behaviorists consider it imprecise and behind the times not to do so. Anthropomorphism — projecting human traits onto other animals — is of course to be avoided, but thanks to an expanded understanding of shared neurobiology, advances in comparative genomics and a better grasp of behavioral ecology, the very meaning of the word is under reconsideration. Decrying someone’s research for being anthropomorphic may have more to do with a critic’s unexamined assumptions about human exceptionalism than inaccuracy on the scholar’s part.
There’s never been a better time to explore, scientifically and philosophically, conditions formerly considered uniquely human. In “Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond,” Lydia Denworth seeks to “deepen our understanding” of how friendship “affects the course of a life,” by drawing on research from both the human and animal kingdom. What makes us connect with some individuals but not others? And, more metaphysically: What are friends for?
By the epilogue, when the narrative returns to DiGregorio’s personal story, readers will appreciate how medicine lurches forward with leaps and mishaps along with the inevitably tense discussions about which path to take and when. All doctors wrestle with these issues, yet they seem particularly poignant when we are dealing with tiny babies. That’s because, as DiGregorio puts it, the field of neonatology has “changed the way we understand what it means to be alive, what it means to be human, and what constitutes a life worth living.”
For the past century or so, American movies and television have relegated Asian characters and actors to the margins, with few exceptions. Generic Asian Man — he has a name, Willis Wu — is stuck playing Background Oriental Male. If he’s lucky, he might get to speak a few words as Delivery Guy.
Willis is trapped in these roles — not just as an aspiring actor but as a character on a page. That’s because this novel is written in the form of a Hollywood screenplay.
You’re history, said the tree to the wall;
the last crumbling remains of empire.
You are the invader, replied the wall.