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Who's Afraid of NotebookLM's Capacity to Analyze Texts by Virginia Woolf and Other Authors?
- 2024/10/31
- 再生時間： 29 分
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あらすじ・解説
I almost hit SEND on this thing before I realized it’s Halloween. Two Halloweens ago, the magazine hex published my 1,000-word short story “Spider.” It’s about a spider that follows a woman out of the dream she is having and into her life, making it more complicated. Read it now, or hear me read it at the start of the audio recording of this newsletter.I dreamed I lived in a neighborhood where residents of four households near my house were angry with me. Why four? I don’t know. I had gone to their lawns, dug rectangles out of their grass with a shovel, and replaced the grass with bronze plaques I had made. They featured some of my original writing. I don’t recall what the writing was, but everyone was upset. These people didn’t want bronze plaques, they wanted grass. I had to apologize to the homeowners, telling them I have these borderline-manic episodes where I feel so inspired, and so full of things I want to tell everyone, that I have to do something to get it all out. What I did this time was make bronze plaques and embed them in lawns. I had to atone for what I had done. I had to remove the plaques and spread grass seed on the rectangles I had dug. Much of the dream consisted of planning these corrective measures. I thought I should wake up in the middle of the night and undo what I had done under cover of darkness. That way, no one would see me out there working. I might not feel so ashamed. This dream was plainly inspired by two things. One is that not long ago some workers from Google Fiber went through our neighborhood, digging rectangular holes in the lawns of all of the people who live here. They didn’t tell anyone they were going to do it. The only communication we got from Google were signs sticking out of our lawns that read, “Thank you for your patience.” Patience with what? The little signs didn’t say. Later, someone came and spray-painted the parts of the lawns where they would dig. I didn’t know what the spray paint was for. A few days after that, the crews arrived and they started digging. It didn’t take them long. They dug the holes, they ran cable through the ground, I guess, and most of the holes they covered again, while others, like the one on the edge of my lawn, now has a box of some kind embedded inside.The other thing that I don’t doubt inspired the dream is that I once again have that cyclical misgiving—it may be a seasonal misgiving—that the creative work I do is an imposition on anyone it’s presented to. Writing something and making it available to other people is equivalent to tearing up someone’s property and shoving the thing I have made where the nice grass used to be. They didn’t ask for this thing to be there. Why is it there? Why haven’t I done something more useful with my time than this? Come on, man.D.A.R.E.I wanted to share something I saw in the news about a substitute teacher.This guy in Minnesota apparently subbed for an English class where he—in order to help the students understand literature, I guess?—reenacted the murder of George Floyd. In the reenactment, he was the murdering officer, and the role of George Floyd was played by a high school student.But that’s not all. He did a series of other things:“According to the school’s statement, the substitute also:* Twisted a student’s arm behind the student’s back and showed pressure points on the chin* Fake punched a student with his fist “really close” to the student’s face* Mimicked holding up a gun and pointing it at students* Repeatedly made racially-harmful comments and told sexist jokes* Spoke in disturbing detail about dead bodies he had seen and shared explicit details about two sexual assault cases he investigated* Stated cops would be the best criminals because they know how to get away with stuff, adding that he once received an “A” grade on a paper about how to get away with murder* Stated police brutality isn’t real”Apparently, he told the students he is a police officer. The story says that status of his has not been verified by the school district. One thing I find really frustrating about the story is that it isn’t funny. Maybe I would laugh, if I heard these details in the right context, but it would be the way I laugh out of surprise. It would be mirthless. Having been a substitute teacher on occasion for the last year or so, I know from on-the-ground experience that there is a great deal of potential humor in the concept of a substitute teacher entering a classroom, ignoring whatever lesson plans they’re given, and instead doing a bizarre series of things that make no sense. If done properly, this person could be like Mr. G, the high school teacher in the film Bottoms, played by NFL running back Marshawn Lynch:Alas, what happened at the school in Minnesota isn’t funny. If his classroom performance had been caught on video, I don’t doubt it would be horrifying. If we could hear the “jokes” he told the students...