How to make it

Ed Zitron on AI's six-fingered discount:

So far — and this is napkin math — I’d estimate that a total of $200 billion has been spent to get generative AI to this point, in infrastructure, in funding, in energy, in so many different meaningless ways, all to get us to the point that we have a tool that’s really good at generating things that aren’t as good as what a human could make. 

Palm Springs eternal for Desire AKA Megan Louise and recording for Italians Do It Better:

That's my office – my hot tub. I'm just hanging out, and might as well work out there. I do my e-mails, and tend to do a good two hours of work in my hot tub. Why not? My computer is a MacBook Air – what's the worst that can happen?

We don't record on computer. I don't even know what programs we would record with on the computer. Everything is done analog: recording on tape, mixing on ADAT, burn that to CD, and that's it. We still burn CDs, and have a CD player in the car. Glüme came over to record and asked, "Where's the computer?" Johnny said, "We don't need a computer."

It's the way Johnny's always done it since the 90's. It's not that he doesn't want to use a computer – because we talk all the time about how it might be more efficient – but the learning curve for him to know what to do with a computer versus knowing how to manipulate the stuff in his way … he's the team genius.

Michael Callahan on the pulp art of Robert McGinnis:

Much of the public doesn't know Robert McGinnis. But he is one of the most prolific and influential midcentury commercial artists, and his imprimatur on American illustration literally speaks volumes. During the swinging heyday of graphic design, his 1,400-plus paperback covers, along with his movie posters and magazine work, embodied and influenced pop culture's loose, liberated visual style.

In Manhattan in the late 50s a friend introduced McGinnis to an art director at Dell who eventually hired him to do covers (at $200 apiece) for four paperbacks, which had begun to dominate the market. The rest, as they say, is art history. Softcover books, McGinnis explains, "were intended to be read at home or on the train and then thrown away." He had found his calling. "My illustration work went through the roof. I raised three kids on it. A lot of illustrators wouldn't do them—they were considered cheap and low-grade. But I enjoyed doing them. I didn't see anything demeaning about it."