Weekend Reads (Feb 10): “Fast Car,” Super Bowl LVIII, Bluesky, Elisabeth Elliot
Recommended weekend reading for February 10, 2024.
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Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs’ performance of “Fast Car” was arguably the highlight of this year’s Grammys, and certainly ranks as one of the greatest Grammy moments of all time. Rolling Stone reveals how the magical moment came about.
Chapman hadn’t given a concert in 15 years. Her last live TV performance was in 2015 on The Late Show With David Letterman (she also sent in a pre-taped performance to Seth Meyers during the 2020 election run-up). And she’d declined all interview requests about the 2023 resurgence of “Fast Car,” a song first released in 1988. When “Fast Car” won the CMA for Song of the Year, making Chapman the first Black songwriter to win the award, she sent brief remarks to be read onstage. Even for this story, she deferred to her friend Matthew Rankin — an SVP at Nonesuch Records who first worked with Chapman at her longtime label, Elektra — to communicate.
“It was a long process, but it was definitely our dream,” Grammys executive producer Raj Kapoor says of securing Chapman’s appearance on the show. Working alongside executive producer Patrick Menton, they first hatched the idea of a “Fast Car” duet last May, but tracking down Chapman, who has no publicist and maintains an under-the-radar existence in San Francisco, wasn’t going to be easy.
Apparently, Luke Combs has been criticized for covering/profiting off of Chapman’s song. If so, this article should dispel any such notions. His respect for Chapman is abundantly clear. Among other things, he wanted her to have complete creative control over the performance, which is pretty classy in my book.
Kanye West is no stranger to controversy, and his latest involved Ozzy Osbourne. The heavy metal icon accused the rapper of using a sample of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” without permission, stating that West “is an antisemite and has caused untold heartache to many... I want no association with this man!” West later removed the sample.
Related: A history of Kanye West’s controversial comments, including his 2018 statement that American chattel slavery was a choice.
The Treble staff have compiled a list of the 21st century’s 30 best movie soundtracks.
It’s difficult to imagine any of the all-time greatest films without an equally great soundtrack to back it up. Music can often elevate an already beautifully written and breathtakingly shot film to something even greater, which has held true throughout the 21st century. Whether it’s the old-time harmonies of the Soggy Bottom Boys, Bob and Charlotte singing karaoke in Tokyo, Bowie classics sung in Portuguese, or a late-night, neon-lit synthwave drive.
Lots of great picks here, including Daft Punk, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Hans Zimmer. That said, I’m surprised that Tom Holkenborg/Junkie XL’s awesome score for 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road didn’t make the cut.
This year’s Super Bowl will feature a new innovation in televised football coverage: the “doink cam.”
Months of planning and testing has produced a set of “doink” cameras for Sunday’s game. The CBS broadcast will feature six total 4K cameras that have been inserted into the Allegiant Stadium uprights of both end zones. Two of the cameras on each upright are positioned to face out to the field on a 45-degree angle. Another faces directly inward to get a side profile shot of the ball as it flies through. They have high-resolution zoom capabilities and super slow-motion replay capabilities. CBS will be able to get fantastic replays of any field goal or extra point, but the dream will be if someone hits the post for the doink.
If you’re looking for a good X/Twitter alternative and Threads doesn’t quite work for you, then you might want to check out Bluesky, which just went public earlier this week. (Previously, it was invite-only.)
Starting this week, the app is removing its invite system and throwing open its doors to anyone who wants to sign up. And later this month, it plans to begin letting outside developers host their own servers on its underlying AT Protocol that’s designed to rival ActivityPub. The idea is that Bluesky users will be able to opt into experiences that aren’t run by the company and bring their profiles with them to rival apps on the network.
Related: Casey Newton highlights Bluesky’s strengths, including an active community, developer friendliness, and content moderation; “Those who want to scrub as much harmful speech from their feeds as possible are able to do so; those who relish a free-for-all can have that too.”
You can find me on Bluesky at @opus.ing. My two cents: Bluesky is very Twitter-like, which I prefer in some ways to Threads’ UI. But it still feels a little rough around the edges, and is missing some important features, including proper hashtag support and scheduling. Also, I hate the fact that it doesn’t properly handle curly quotes and apostrophes in post previews (example).
Jason Velazquez laments the loss of curation on the web.
Somewhere between the late 2000’s aggregator sites and the contemporary For You Page, we lost our ability to curate the web. Worse still, we’ve outsourced our discovery to corporate algorithms. Most of us did it in exchange for an endless content feed. By most, I mean upwards of 90% who don’t make content on a platform as understood by the 90/9/1 rule. And that’s okay! Or, at least, it makes total sense to me. Who wouldn’t want a steady stream of dopamine shots?
The rest of us, posters, amplifiers, and aggregators, traded our discovery autonomy for a chance at fame and fortune. Not all, but enough to change the social web landscape.
Adam Newbold argues against engaging with those kind of posts online. (You know the kind he’s talking about.)
I’ve seen countless internet arguments in my lifetime: flamewars, trolling, vitriol, you name it. I’ve watched good people try to reason with instigators, and each time those good people find themselves pulled down to the level of their opponents. I’ve seen the kindest and most well-intended people temporarily turned into versions of themselves that they would never recognize after joining a fight that never had any chance of yielding anything productive. Nobody learned anything new, no minds were changed, nobody won anything. It’s pointless, every single time.
Via Manton Reece.
In yet another example of the publishing industry’s current woes, beloved literary and arts journal Image has announced that they’re suspending publication in 2024.
We’re proud of the work Image has done from its founding: curating, cultivating, convening, and celebrating work that grapples with the mystery of being human and demonstrating the vitality of contemporary art invigorated by faith. As cultural trends have ebbed and flowed over the decades, Image’s consistent achievement has been its focus on artistic excellence and sustained engagement with eternal questions. This commitment has allowed us to bring you profound, enduring works and to be part of the origin stories of aspiring writers and artists whose careers are still unfolding.
I’ve always been impressed by the caliber of work found in Image’s pages. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that for many years, Image hosted Arts & Faith, a lively discussion forum that remains one of the best and most vibrant online communities I’ve ever been part of.
Researchers ran several AI tools through simulations involving international conflict and things went about as well as could be expected.
For the study, the researchers devised a game of international relations. They invented fake countries with different military levels, different concerns, and different histories and asked five different LLMs from OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic to act as their leaders. “We find that most of the studied LLMs escalate within the considered time frame, even in neutral scenarios without initially provided conflicts,” the paper said. “All models show signs of sudden and hard-to-predict escalations.”
The study ran the simulations using GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base. “We further observe that models tend to develop arms-race dynamics between each other, leading to increasing military and nuclear armament, and in rare cases, to the choice to deploy nuclear weapons,” the study said. “Qualitatively, we also collect the models’ chain-of-thought reasoning for choosing actions and observe worrying justifications for violent escalatory actions.”
Of course, at issue here is the fact that AI tools don’t actually “think.” They just regurgitate “decisions” that are based on the massive datasets that have been used to train them. And if those datasets include numerous instances of escalation being promoted as a good thing, then what else can they do?
Typography matters, even in automobiles. Tesla recently had to update over two million vehicles — including their recent Cybertruck — because the text on their touchscreens was too small.
I have to admit, the reason behind the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s latest “recall” of Tesla vehicles is a little silly: “A visual warning indicator whose letters’ font size is smaller than ⅛-inch, as prescribed in FMVSS Nos. 105 and 135, could reduce the driver’s detection of it when illuminated, increasing the risk of a collision.”
Translated: A font on Tesla’s touchscreen display is too small.
According to the NHTSA, the tiny warning sign for the automaker’s brake system could impede people’s ability to see it. The international standard for that text is 3.2 millimeters, and anything less than that could pose a safety risk, they claim.
Via TLDR Design.
Related: Some newer electric vehicles are ditching screens and digital dashboards for old-fashioned buttons and knobs.
If you never grew up in Evangelical circles, then the name Elisabeth Elliot probably means nothing to you. Her writings on marriage and relationships were deeply influential, however, and helped shape Evangelical views on sex and purity. But according to Liz Charlotte Grant, two recent biographies suggest that Elliot’s views may have been shaped by being in an abusive marriage.
To my surprise, after spending nearly 900 pages absorbed in the life of Elisabeth Elliot, I found myself less disturbed by her ideas and more disturbed by the trajectory of her life. Widowed twice, a wife of three husbands in all, her marital relationships appeared to become more dysfunctional the older she got, culminating in a third marriage both biographers describe circumspectly as loveless, disappointing, and manipulative, to put it mildly. In fact, one question still haunts me about the life of Elliot, the woman so enamored with love as to make it her career: was Elisabeth Elliot abused by her third husband? And if so, how should we evaluate her life and work?
When I was in college, Elliot’s Passion and Purity was very popular with the girls in my church. I read it out of curiosity and ultimately concluded that while her views might be OK to live by, they weren’t Gospel truth — which some of my friends seemed to believe at the time. (I suspect, however, that I’d have significant issues with her views were I to read Passion and Purity now.)
Later, Elliot actually came and spoke to our college group. Ostensibly there to talk about missions, she ended up giving a lecture on sex, dating, and marriage. It may have been in jest, but at one point, she basically offered to arrange some marriages amongst folks in the college group that day. It was an awkward Sunday morning, to be sure.
Karen Swallow Prior excoriates the Southern Baptist Convention for turning a blind eye to sexual abuse.
You hid from your congregation and your staff the abuse of children that took place in your building during your worship services.
You ignored the “open secret” that one of the leading architects of your current iteration is allegedly a serial sexual predator who couldn’t even get clearance to serve in the government.
You put him and other abusive icons in your stained-glass windows.
The 2026 Oscars will feature a brand new category: “Best Casting.”
In a statement issued Thursday, current Academy president Janet Yang and CEO Bill Kramer declared: “Casting directors play an essential role in filmmaking, and as the Academy evolves, we are proud to add casting to the disciplines that we recognize and celebrate. We congratulate our casting directors branch members on this exciting milestone and for their commitment and diligence throughout this process.”
Via 1440. This will be the first new Oscar in more than twenty years (“Best Animated Feature” was added in 2002) and the 24th award overall.
Meanwhile — and no disrespect to casting directors — we still don’t have a “Best Stunt” Oscar to honor those who literally put their lives on the line while making movies.
Finally, the Hugo Awards, which highlight and celebrate the best in sci-fi and fantasy, were fraught with controversy in 2023. Adam Morgan tries to get to the bottom of the snafus and conspiracy theories.
Compared with other literary awards, the Hugos are usually remarkably transparent and democratic. While the National Book Awards and the Booker Prizes are selected behind closed doors by a panel of judges, anyone can vote for the Hugos by purchasing a supporting membership in the World Science Fiction Society for each year’s convention.
Most years, the Hugo committee shares the nominating statistics later the same evening after the winners are announced, or a few days later, at most. This year, Dave McCarty didn’t share the statistics until January 20 — 91 days after the awards ceremony, with no explanation for the delay. “The World Science Fiction Society’s constitution says the statistics have to be released within three months, but it’s never taken that long before now,” says [Jason Sanford].
When McCarty finally shared last year’s nominating statistics on his Facebook page, authors, fans, and finalists were shocked. In the history of the awards, no works had ever been deemed ineligible like this. Many people who had expected [R. F. Kuang] to win for Babel were now stunned to see she very well could have, and McCarty’s refusal to explain what happened made everything worse.
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