“HAPPY BIRTHDAY EDWIN”
Time passing, as in the movies.
Orange Crate Art
Shelves, books off the, books on the
Finding Steven Millhauser books.
Lorem ipsum
From Jack Shepherd, a close look at the history of Lorem ipsum.
The Oteris and Marty
Arthur Avenue: a baccalà store, and two butcher shops, one where the opening scene of Marty was filmed.
Recently updated
The F.H. Knapp backstory, a possible future, and crowds watching an automaton at work.
Knives for sale, 70% off
Every pane in the Overton window is broken, and the window’s casing has been ripped from the wall and thrown in a dumpster. The dumpster is burning.
Domestic comedy
“Don’t you mean ‘vandelayzed’?”
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“About a third of 1/2.”
“That bright August morning”
From Steven Millhauser’s Edwin Mullhouse.
Domestic comedy
“Unfortunately, this guy is a total bore.”
David Crosby (1941–2023)
A Tiny Desk concert.
F.H. Knapp
A NYC stationery store window, 1914.
Footnoting Zippy
Today’s Zippy, “Hearing Things,” looks at and listens to giant roadside attractions: a duck, a rooster, a shoe house.
Finding Your Roots
With Gary Larson.
More ChatGPT fails
More 500-word analyses of well-known poems, from John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Philip Larkin, and William Butler Yeats. In each case, ChatGPT produces phrases and lines nowhere to be found in the poem.
Time is money
A Mac menu bar timer costing $79.99.
Recently updated
Further developments in the story of an art-history instructor fired after showing a class a fourteenth-century image of Muhammad.
ChatGPT fail
I asked ChatGPT to write a 500-word analysis of Ted Berrigan’s poem “Red Shift.” It produced text with fake quotations that had nothing to do with the poem.
“Yeats is always sincere”
John Shade opines. Like James Boswell before him, Charles Kinbote records.
Phish identification
Adam Engst’s “An Annotated Field Guide to Identifying Phish.” Worth reading carefully — just as with sketchy e-mails.
Spot the bot
The New York Times has a challenge: read ten short pieces of writing and figure out which ones were generated by a chatbot and which ones were written by children.
Teachers and chatbots
If I were still teaching, I’d adopt five strategies to counter the chatbots.
Education and freedom
MLK on education as the key to freedom. Helen Moore on reading as the key to freedom.
MLK
From “Give Us the Ballot,” addressed to the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, at the Lincoln Memorial, May 17, 1957, three years after Brown v. Board of Education.
On Arthur Avenue
Arthur Avenue Noodle & Macaroni Manufacturing.
“Fritzi Ritz is my co-pilot!”
Zippy loves Nancy.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Flat surfaces.”
“What emperor?”
Alfin the Vague (1873-1918), king of Zembla, Charles Kinbote’s father, “a kind, gentle, absent-minded monarch.”
Editing after sending
With iOS 16.2.
“Insert before a professional”
Charles Kinbote, editor and commentator, thanks his publisher, “good old Frank.”