251–260 of 360 posts
> The Betty Crocker Corporation could put just egg powder into their cake mix, but they don’t, because cracking an egg into a bowl allows people to pretend that they’re baking. Those who use ChatGPT for research should be advised that it will add `?utm_source=chatgpt.com` to the URLs it provides you. Make sure to edit that away if you don't want people to know. And also, you know, make sure you verify the source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, Shakespeare is not going to land if iambic pentameter doesn't sound like anything special to you. It's a big part of why many Shakespearean quotes stick so hard in people's brains, like 'To be or not to be', 'But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?' and 'If music be the food of love, play on'. If all of these have to carry their weight with only their literal words on the page, and not how they're ac…
Thank you for recognizing the situation I was in! (Nit: "to be or not to be" is probably a bad example of something that depends on iambic for memorability.) Also, when I tried rewriting that soliloquy for modern ears, it didn't even occur to me to keep the meter; that never registered as a noteworthy aspect of it. One other thing: keep in mind what it's like to be in high school. For the vast majority of your life,…
> I was presented with art and literature as if it was self-explanatory, and that everything wonderful about it was plainly visible from the outside. But those works were much more like dark, winding caves with treasure stashed inside of them. My teachers were like, “Right, well, into the cave you go!” and I was like “But there’s nothing in there” and they were like “Entering the cave is 30% of your grade” and so I t…
I’ve long held the opinion that humans ‘over’-value complexity . It’s why we can spend so much time tasting, analyzing, and enjoying fancy coffee or whisky - despite the fact that almost everyone is repulsed by them the first time they try them. Literature might be the same? To be clear, I enjoy all three!
But when I see something incomprehensible, is it thick, or is it just stupid? Surely the literary field has its cranks that believe they have made something deep, but have just made something nonsensical? What's the literary equivalent of TimeCube or chemtrails?
Often things are genuinely hard, and take a lot of time to get into. (You can read the same paper repeatedly for weeks!) Sometimes, it takes about 5-10 minutes, and it finally clicks, and I go "why the hell didn't they just say it like that?"
Do you not think those teachers all failed Lockhart's Lament? Sure you were too young to appreciate great literature natively. That is simply a function of the human condition. You were not failing at anything, no matter how great the great things actually were that you did not appreciate. There should be like one of the responsibilities of adults is to show kids what's actually so great about greatness. There can ev…
One of my favorite thing about getting older is finally learning answers to questions I was asking high school teachers. (e.g. applications in math class... though to be fair, I had the same problem in undergrad too!)
I really like this, in the world burning, slaughter of the young all around and the economy unbalanced and tettering on the brink... Art. I have a quibble, that does not detract: This is about consuming art, and the appreciation of great art. Part of the pleasure of art, is making art. In a community we appreciate each other's art in an altogether different way. We cheer on our comrades and they cheer on us, and we m…
Yes! I'll have to write a response to this article... an ode to crap art!
A while back I started consciously making low effort art. It was part of a exercise where I was intentionally desensitizing myself to shame, embarrassment and fear of judgment, because I noticed them severely holding me back in life.
So I thought, I am going to make something crap, that people will judge me for, and I am going to share it with them.
I wrote about gay werewolves.
A lot of people responded quite poorly (overall even worse than expected!), but a few were inspired to write their own short stories, and share them with me, and this was the most satisfying feeling in the world!
When you make something crap, and put it out there, you make others feel comfortable sharing their own crap with you.
As an old man I now think the art and humanities classes in school landed at the wrong time. You need context to really understand a book or a work of art. You want to know what kind of environment produced it, what it's talking to. But when you're in school, there isn't time for that. You aren't going to know a bunch of things about history to put things into context, because there simply isn't enough time for it. S…
I remember when I was a senior in (public) high school they created a two period class for one of the earlier grades that was a combined history and literature class, with one history teacher and one english teacher co-teaching it. The idea was that you'd learn the historical context and then in the same class also be reading the literature that came out of the period. Seemed like a great idea and I wonder what ever came of it.
I think teachers did tell us exactly this. But we were 15 and we didn't believe them or didn't listen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for recognizing the situation I was in! (Nit: "to be or not to be" is probably a bad example of something that depends on iambic for memorability.) Also, when I tried rewriting that soliloquy for modern ears, it didn't even occur to me to keep the meter; that never registered as a noteworthy aspect of it. One other thing: keep in mind what it's like to be in high school. For the vast majority of your life,…
I'm curious: does any poetic metre stick out to you as 'nice' or making texts easier to remember? Or is this just some part of the human condition that's completely alien to you? I've heard similar things from some people about music in general ('it's just noise; I don't see why you think it sounds nice'), so it wouldn't really surprise me if that were the case.
In the lightning talk, I contrast IP with ska music, which I like, and which is characterized by stressed off-beats (which resonate with me) and mis-stressing the syllables to fit the meter (which also resonates with me).
Edit: Another thing about the high school experience: Shakepeare kind of fit a pattern of "stuff everyone professes to like but whose enjoyment seems to be fake/performative" (along with pop music, sports, and the taste of alcoholic drinks). I joke that if I were gay, I'd include everyone else's apparent heterosexuality in that pattern.