Brandon Marcus
@brandonjmarc
Brandon Marcus
Of course, it’s long seemed obvious to me (and, I presume, basically everyone I care about or respect ) that the use of AI in most humanistic endeavors is beyond the pale. Even if it were good at writing prose or doing philosophy—and thus far it isn’t —to use AI to write or philosophize would be to render those activities futile. In some of the... See more
You don't have to use AI
In a recent Harper’s reportage, Sam Kriss describes the ascendant culture as follows:
An AI might be able to code faster than you, but there is one advantage that humans still have. It’s called agency, or being highly agentic. The highly agentic are people who just do things. They don’t timidly wait for permission or consensus; they drive like... See more
Critique of ‘Agentic’ Reason
- Old capitalism valued productive capacity, the ability to make things.
- Financial capitalism valued cash flow rights, claims on future earnings.
- What we might call belief capitalism values narrative adhesion, the ability to keep enough people inside a story long enough that the story stays load-bearing.
The Ozempicization of Everything
What ultimately matters is not an abstract notion of Zionism as a totalizing spiritual contaminant upon the Jewish people, but the ways in which American Jews, alongside all other Americans , hold multiple kinds of material relationships to Israel. To escape Zionist realism means prioritizing a material understanding of both American complicity... See more
Jon Danforth-Appell • Against Zionist Realism
In other words, the rise of social media created a revolution in political discourse. The old-school monopoly of big newspapers and TV stations — already under strain from the Web and from increased entry and competition — was overthrown by a giant mob of wannabe influencers, using divisiveness, partisanship, ideology, tribalism and negative... See more
Save us, Digital Cronkite!
Robert Gessner and Alexander Bittelman also referred to Zionism as “fascism” and “reactionary and undemocratic.” Jewish progressives denounced Zionism not only in solidarity with Palestinians but in their democratic and working-class self-interest.
How October 7 Remade Jewish Politics in America
The ideological underpinnings of this assault on progressive Jewish organizations were not formed overnight. They are the product of the “new antisemitism thesis,” which rose to prominence in the early 1970s. Conservatives and Christians, it argued, have finally embraced American Jews and, more important, the Jewish state of Israel. Jews’ new... See more