The Weekend in Foolish Attention

Bits and bytes of the week

ON THE ROAD. As you’re reading this I’m in my red Prius, cascading down a highway on my way to Wichita. I missed Thanksgiving because of the new job but I’m headed home for a week of love, stories, food, and the Christmas Spirit all wrapped up in my family’s embrace. This year, instead of being the Chicago or Vegas son who pops in twice a year, I’ve been the Chicago son/brother/uncle who swings down every couple of months and it has been a grand choice.

2024 seems to have been a ‘getting my sea legs back’ year. I got back to town, I set myself up. Coupla cool gigs, a new solid one that looks like a long-term proposition. Met a girl, had a fling, moved on (which proved, at least to myself, that the third ex-wife hadn’t irreparably damaged me). Made a few new friends, saw my family, did some podcasts, wrote some stuff.

2025 is looking good. The new job includes free college classes so I’m going to do some culinary and maybe some history. I’ve become a bit too comfortable in my apartment and the badge of misanthrope has been my costume of choice so it’s probably time to get out of the Fortress of Solitude and spend a bit more time out in the world. After all, if I’m not going to enjoy the city, what was the point again? I’ve been surviving. Time to get to thriving.

In the meantime I’m jazzed to spend Christmas with the fam.

THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE COME TO. Granted, I have a unique perspective on prostitution. Call it being on the cusp of all the big trends, I was a trailblazer in the being a dude in an increasingly transactional sexual world.

Despite the tearful aftermath, OnlyFans model Lily Phillips says she has no regrets about sleeping with 100 men in one day. In fact, she’s planning to repeat the stunt times 10.

Earlier this month, the 23-year-old British model made headlines for her shocking feat, drawing concerns from viewers when a documentary shared by YouTuber Josh Pieters showed Phillips tearing up after completing the sex marathon.

“To kind of set the scene, I had finished a 14-hour slog of a very hard and stressful day,” Phillips told TMZ. “It was then extremely overwhelming because as soon as I finished I didn’t really think I even got time to shower or eat or anything. There was a camera crew there filming me and kind of prodding me with questions about the day.”

“It was just very intense,” she added. — Vice

CHUCK was getting a banquet room set up in the hotel. He had three of his threadbare staff putting up tables and chairs and one, Chad, assigned to place signs around the hotel to indicate where guests should go for the reception. Each sign, emblazoned in red, told anyone in range that “THE ANNUAL PSEUDOSCIENCE AND PARANORMAL THEORIST MEETING IS IN BANQUET HALL B.”

Thirty minutes later, he checked the room. Perfect. He checked the signs and despite Chad being slightly dim witted, he managed to get them mostly correct. As guests began arriving, Chad sloped over to Chuck.

“Boss, can I ask a question?”

“Sure, Chad.”

“Which banquet room do I direct these guys to?”

“For the meeting? You mean the meeting you put all of those signs up for?”

“Yeah.”

“Chad? Did you read the signs?”

“Yeah.”

“So… ?”

“So where’s the meeting being held at?”

It took Chuck thirty-two seconds to close his mouth.

SKYNET IS COMING. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that when a computer system reaches a point where it can self-improve, "we seriously need to think about unplugging it."

Schmidt told Axios last year that computers making their own decisions may be only two to four years away, according to some experts.

There's a consensus among fans and foes of generative AI that the most powerful models could operate with the intelligence of a Ph.D. student as soon as next year, Axios' Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report.

Within a year or two, Schmidt told ABC, systems may be able to do their own research.

We won’t unplug it. As so many things in our attention starved culture, we will be the frog in the pot of slowly boiling water and as soon as we start to really feel the heat, simmering our blood, it’ll be too late. Like the algorithms that control the flattening of culture and like magic have us all listening to the same songs on Spotify and the same movies on Prime and the same furniture from bespoke shops made in China but looking like it was constructed in Vermont, by the time we realize we’ve become homogenized by the polymaths in our back pockets, we’ll think it was always our choice.

Maybe the only thing that can snap humanity out of it is an existential threat in the form of machines taking the whole place over.

CHUCK had to admit that he was surprised. He shouldn’t have been because he knew that most stereotypes, while often true to form, rarely applied across the board.

Yes, there were definitely a few of his young staff that fit the GenZ avatars of overly sensitive, unwilling to really work at things, and socially unable to fully interact with anyone not on the other end of a screen but his discovery was that most of them were more than willing to work when given a sense of value, affable and smart when engaged, and self aware of their sensitivities with a slight sense of humor about it.

He realized one afternoon that it wasn’t some generational defect but a specific sort of cultural nurturing that had overcome the cohort—he had grown up without the internet, without social media, without the humiliation of being broadcast on video infinitely—they hadn’t. This was the world they knew. Like children of drug addicts born with heroin in their blood, the addiction to the online society was hardwired into them. Of course they had less skill in dealing with live humans than he did.

On the other hand…

“Chuck? This is Emma. I can’t come into work today.”

“Oh? Is everything alright?”

“I’m just having a traumatic morning so I’m taking the day to relax.”

“Traumatic? What happened?”

“You know how I’m on the spectrum?”

“Spectrum?”

“I have asymptomatic Prader-Willi Syndrome. I told you that before.”

“Asymptomatic Prader - what?”

“I have all the hardships of someone with Prader-Willi Syndrome but no noticeable symptoms.”

“And this was diagnosed by… ?”

“It’s only self-diagnosable. Seriously, Chuck. That’s very disrespectful to even ask.”

“Ok. Ok. Sorry. What was traumatic about your morning?”

“My roommate has finals and she needs some emotional support.”

Chuck hung up the phone and stared at the wall for seven minutes before he blinked.

THE DEMOCRATS ARE LOSING IT. I get it. They lost big. We’re now approaching a place where the president has almost unchecked power, SCOTUS approved near complete immunity for crimes and a massive course correction is necessary. That said, they block AOC from an influential position on a committee for a 70-year old esophageal cancer patient? Oof.

On the other side of things, Trump’s rhetoric combined with suing newspapers and pollsters has become the very avatar of a schoolyard bully (except this specific Biff Tannen has his hand on the nuclear football). Methinks 2025, politically speaking, is going to the middle sequel of this generation’s Star Wars.

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Have a spectacular holiday because I know I will!