Mid-Week Links: 11 Dec 2024

surprising moments of joy

Photography Ahmed Hussein Younis - Originally published in Dazed MENA issue 00

Why hello there! Time for our mid-week links 🥳

The week began with the news of Assad’s downfall. I cannot speak to the implications of the fall of the regime, but the jubilation on the streets and around the world has been something to behold. May Allah protect the Syrian people always, inshallah.

Thank you all for your kind messages about my last piece. It was an emotional one, but sometimes you just have to say it like it is.

On Being Seen

As a reminder, this round-up will go behind a paywall in the new year (inshallah). Upgrade below, and if not, fear not - the Sunday newsletter will remain available for all.

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Read:

• A heartwarming feature in the inaugural issue of DAZED MENA: Parkour in Gaza: Radical imagination in practice.

  • “In Gaza, parkourists live a shared reality: family members murdered, homes destroyed, lives shattered under siege. Yet somehow, they find the spirit to do more than simply survive the deadliest assault on Palestinian life—they affirm the fullness of living, proving its worth beyond erasure.”

• A wild IVF story: Two couples in California discovered they were raising each other’s genetic children. Should they switch their girls?

• I love pieces that are honest about money and income. This author breaks down ‘How I Make A Living As A Full-Time Writer’ and the answer is… she kinda doesn’t? Indeed, making enough to live on from writing books in this day and age feels like a fool’s errand. Most of my income comes from speaking, consulting, facilitating and other types of writing work.

• On the Crisis of Men: a thoughtful meditation. No answers, but some juicy intellectual avenues to explore. What is a man, but a son, or a father?

  • “Looking at other men is a somewhat novel experience for me. In my former life as a non-father, if I took any notice of another man in the same room, it was probably to appraise him physically, on the off chance that we were to become locked in some form of primitive combat. (Would I be able to beat him in a race? How easy would it be for him to strangle me?) As a father, however, I find myself looking at other men—at other fathers—all the time, and not at all as competition. Often they look back, just as quizzically, at me. I think we are trying to figure out how we should look, how we should act, how we should deal with the perennial awkwardness of being a father in public.”

• Who knows?
  - Rachel Connolly making a case against the so-called ‘gender wars’

  • “There was a great piece by Jia Tolentino which opened with the line: The two big genders are said to be at war. A great first line. Provocative and arresting, and the piece was far more nuanced than that line of course. But I read that line and thought: Oh no, I don’t want to be at war with men. I don’t want to have an angry, hostile and combative relationship with men. I want us to have friendships and to have good sex and fall in love and all the rest of it. The thing is, if women and men literally are at war then women lose. I think we all know that.”

• The ‘phony comforts of AI skepticism’. Casey Newton once again writing something I think has a lot of merit but I’m not sure I entirely agree with. I tend to think all the stories and narratives we currently read and absorb about AI (i.e. LLMs and generative AI) are binary and based in aspirational wishful thinking rather than what is actually going on. Hard to figure that out though when there is so much fear and hype!

  • “Ultimately, both the “fake and sucks” and “real and dangerous” crowds agree that AI could go really, really badly. To stop that from happening though, the “fake and sucks” crowd needs to accept that AI is already more capable and more embedded in our systems than they currently admit. And while it’s fine to wish that the scaling laws do break, and give us all more time to adapt to what AI will bring, all of us would do well to spend some time planning for a world where they don’t.”

• One last thing on tech related stuff - this series of tweets (on bluesky? is that a tweet?) stressed me tf out. Everyone thinking ChatGPT is a search engine when it is absolutely not is a problem. LLMs (Large Language Models) are useful at some things, telling you facts is not one of its strengths. As an example, ask ChatGPT for the titles of the five books I have written. It gets the answer wrong, every single time.

Watch:

Seeing the World Through Sudan

The conference I was attending a few weeks ago at Brown University has uploaded the videos of the panels! My recommendation is to treat them like podcasts - the video isn’t amazing, so put them on audio and listen while you go about your day. We had some brilliant conversations and I’m so glad to be able to share them.

TV Pick of the Week

My most recent fun-watch - Netflix’s Black Doves. I’ve only seen a few episodes, but it’s giving pulpy, noir-y, Slow Horses meets something Guy Ritchie? Not as serious as the Jackal, but a fun ride. Enjoy!

Listen or Explore: The Imaginary Institution of India

If you’re in London, it’s worth heading to the Barbican for the fantastic show, The Imaginary Institution of India (on until Jan 5th). Featuring art created between Indira Gandhi’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1975 and the Pokhran nuclear tests in 1998, these pieces - many of which have never been exhibited in the UK - explore a fraught period ‘marked by social upheaval, economic collapse, and rapid urbanisation.’

If you can’t get to the actual exhibition, you can listen to an audio guide here, allowing you to experience much of the show from the comfort of your home :)

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That’s all for this week. Please do let me know if you particularly enjoyed any of the links, and see you next week (for the last free edition of this round up!)

See you on Sunday inshallah,

Yassmin