It’s June? It’s June. Does anyone remember what it was like when every turn of the calendar didn’t come as a peculiar shock? I guess that was maybe how we lived, once. But here we are in June—the month, the internet advertisers will have you believe, of dads and grads—and there are such things to look forward to. Sam Reid as The Vampire Lestat. Colin Farrell in Sugar. The season finale of Widow’s Bay, which seems to be the thing bringing together the oddest corners of my personal internet. Book discourse! The wary excitement of Knicks fans! A lot of things are very, very bad, but there’s a little hint of hopefulness in the air. Or maybe that’s just pollen. Remember your Claritin, hug your friends, worship your vampire rock gods, call your reps—you know the drill.
Love Bites: The Vampire Lestat
There’s one loud thought in my head this week, and it’s just LESTAT. Jealously, I have been reading every account I can find of the one-night-only The Vampire Lestat screening and concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Ravenously, I have been reading interviews with the cast from previous seasons. My Instagram feed is on to me; the usual cat videos are interrupted with the cast in increasingly lush outfits. I spent two days rereading the novel on which this season is based. I rediscovered my love for this ridiculous dramatic child of a vampire. I am ready. To France! To the past! To a whole-ass tour, which is way more rocking than Lestat gets to do in the novel with his name on it! I cannot wait to see where this goes.
The Vampire Lestat takes the stage Sunday night on AMC+.
RIP Marjane Satrapi
I keep trying to come up with something succinct to say about Marjane Satrapi, who died this week at the far-too-young age of 56, and failing. But you don’t need me to talk about her; what you need is her art. Did you read Persepolis? No? Pick it up now. And watch the movie, too.
In 2023, the graphic novel turned 20 and got a fancy new edition; writing about it for NPR, Tahneer Oksman said:
As a memoir told in comics that are both comical and also deeply serious, sometimes at the same time, what might potentially bewilder certain audiences is the unorthodox packaging of this complex and deeply moving story. Told through the eyes of a heroine whose moral compass is better defined than many of the adults around her, even as her naiveté is a source of endearment as well as amusement, Persepolis reminds its readers that children and teens are more often tuned in to the ways of the world than the adults around them are willing to admit. It’s exceptional — and perhaps for that reason a bit unsettling — when a piece of art, or literature, can so thoroughly capture that basic, but easily forgotten, reality.
Ted Chiang: “No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious”
I keep reading this new Ted Chiang piece on AI in little pieces, both because I need to stop and scream occasionally, and because there are just so many brilliant, biting, necessary bits that I need to take a little pause after each of them. He is clear and sharp and simply not messing around: He asks, “Should we seriously consider the possibility that Claude, or any large language model, might be conscious? And if it has feelings, is it capable of receiving moral instruction?”
And answers:
No. Absolutely not. Generative AI is harmful enough when we understand it as a conventional technology, but if we confuse fluency at generating text with consciousness or moral agency, we’re at risk of assigning responsibility to entirely the wrong parties whenever anyone uses a chatbot.
And then goes on to outline the careful reasoning and thought process behind this statement. Sometimes he’s funny even while making important points:
Being open to the possibility that LLMs are conscious is the same as being open to the possibility that Microsoft Word is conscious, or, more precisely, that multiple distinct consciousnesses are dormant in every Word document containing a conversational transcript, and that they are awakened every time the document is loaded.
I’m not going to tell you everything good in this piece. I think you should just go read it.
Is Mads Mikkelsen a Genre Unto Himself?
No one is going to argue that the Danish film Another Round is genre. However, it stars Mads Mikkelsen, who feels, at this point, like the embodiment of some kind of mashed-up, unquestionably brilliant genre of his own: stone-faced, emotive, dramatic, swooping in as sad space dads and hit men and, you know, Hannibal. And also Le Chiffre! And I could go on. But the point is, the Danish film Another Round is now on Netflix, and I’ve been meaning to watch it for ages. It has a wild premise: a group of schoolteachers (all men, I feel compelled to note) decide to see what happens if they try to maintain a consistent blood alcohol level of 0.05%, which may perhaps make them more creative. This gives me a headache as a concept. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. And yet: I must know how it all plays out. It won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film! I mean, if you need a reason other than Mads to watch it.
