Glad you enjoyed it! Drawings of the poem by former students are here: https://cassandramarianelson.com/teaching/ It was a wonderful way to remind students that poems aren't word salads; if all goes well, they ought to be able to see a poem unfold in their mind like a movie
> "When a bulb is made orders of magnitude cheaper and faster than the one that preceded it, it becomes a fundamentally different product"
I actually find this, conveniently enough, to be the case for using AI as a therapist. I've had a real-person therapist, who was wonderful, and definitely gave me things that AI couldn't. But for when I need smaller-scale therapy-style interactions and rudimentary life-coaching, something one step up from rubber ducking, having that available 24/7, for no marginal cost, with no judgement, that can be picked up again at anytime, is a completely different "product" to traditional therapy.
Favorite work about maintenance: the fact that God makes the sun rise, every single day. I actually taped this to my washing machine because I wanted the reminder. If we aren't Deists, then we believe that God does all this work; he doesn't just wind up the watch. And often - with the movement of the sun and the the changing seasons and everything else that he maintains in motion - he often makes it unnecessarily beautiful.
Somewhat ironically, AI is the only way to get an audio version of your book; the Kindle EBook can be read using an Alexa device, although it took a few prompts to get it to work. I do see that as very much different from building a relationship with an AI or overusing it for research and writing.
A love letter to maintenance, of many kinds, is Elizabeth Bishop's "Filling Station": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52193/filling-station (I have written about teaching this poem at West Point for Commonweal)
This is delightful! Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! Drawings of the poem by former students are here: https://cassandramarianelson.com/teaching/ It was a wonderful way to remind students that poems aren't word salads; if all goes well, they ought to be able to see a poem unfold in their mind like a movie
I WISH PURE HELL TO ANY MALE WHO USE FEMALE BODY AS 'THING'
> "When a bulb is made orders of magnitude cheaper and faster than the one that preceded it, it becomes a fundamentally different product"
I actually find this, conveniently enough, to be the case for using AI as a therapist. I've had a real-person therapist, who was wonderful, and definitely gave me things that AI couldn't. But for when I need smaller-scale therapy-style interactions and rudimentary life-coaching, something one step up from rubber ducking, having that available 24/7, for no marginal cost, with no judgement, that can be picked up again at anytime, is a completely different "product" to traditional therapy.
Favorite work about maintenance: the fact that God makes the sun rise, every single day. I actually taped this to my washing machine because I wanted the reminder. If we aren't Deists, then we believe that God does all this work; he doesn't just wind up the watch. And often - with the movement of the sun and the the changing seasons and everything else that he maintains in motion - he often makes it unnecessarily beautiful.
Somewhat ironically, AI is the only way to get an audio version of your book; the Kindle EBook can be read using an Alexa device, although it took a few prompts to get it to work. I do see that as very much different from building a relationship with an AI or overusing it for research and writing.
Knowing you, I’d guess you have a well-thought-out reason for saying “please” to the unensouled plagiarism machines. What is it?
I also say "sorry" to chairs when I bump into them. I'd rather err in the direction of reflexively polite for *my* sake, not theirs.