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A recap of the music, books and other stuff that made it to the blog this week. Too much? Not enough? Let me know what you think.

Hi! You’re here! Thank you.

Starting now, every Friday, setup your weekend with good music and reading. Two posts:

The Setlist, the same Friday playlist as before, but with a fancier new name and better design, and

The Shortlist, a handful of short story links, along with links to the book reviews from the week. This post used to be on Monday, now it’s on Friday.

Anyway, Here are some things that didn’t get to the blog this week, and further down are the things that did:

This is a wild story about potential plagiarism in ‘romantasy’ books in The New Yorker. As always, the only winners in this story are the lawyers. I was blown away by the process of publishing these books. It sounds like no fun at all, and certainly not a creative exercise.

Lincoln Michel has a good take on it, comparing the books themselves to AI-generated slop. If the New Yorker thing feels too long, he’s got a good summary of the piece in here as well.

Hearing Things profiles Emory:

I have a post about Emory in the queue, but this piece makes me second-guess it. It’s a good read about a promising artist

Neko Case’s book sounds great:

This piece in the NYT (gift link) sounds like her story is every bit as impactful as her voice:

“her father picked her up from school one day, burst into tears and told her that her mother had died of cancer. She was stunned.

An emotionally somnambulant year and a half later, her father just as suddenly announced that her mother was alive and, actually, they were on their way to see her just then.”

GM is in Trouble

Months ago I read (and posted) a shocking story by Kashmir Hill (author of the essential Your Face Belongs to Us) about General Motors selling driving data to insurance companies. Actions have consequences.

Fifty Shades of AI

Speaking of Kashmir Hill, this story in NYT about a woman who has a sexual relationship with ChatGPT has one jaw-dropping sentence after another.

TikTok Doesn’t Need America

In Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick outlines why the TikTok ban probably doesn’t matter to the site’s owner. I found this piece eye-opening, about how TikTok functions outside North America.

Something you think I should hear or read? Reply or click here.

Reading:

I posted book reviews of State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg (didn’t love it), Rental House by Wieke Wang (didn’t finish it), and Mood Machine, the essential book about Spotify by Liz Pelly.

On Monday, I linked seven shorts, and you should start with this horror story by Amber Baird.

Yesterday, I posted about Derek Fisher, who has a short story collection out. There are a bunch of horror story links there too, but read Rash first. It’s incredible.

Today The (inaugural) Shortlist has five more stories in it, but the one you need to read is Man Enough, a coming out memoir by Christian Escalona.

Listening:

The Setlist has links to the features on WILDES, Acopia, The Umlauts, Camille Schmidt and Kaput.

Plus standout singles from Lip Filler, Bellzzz and Envyes.

The whole playlist

19 songs, 64 mintues. Hear it all on Apple Music or Spotify

Get the playlists

Next Week:

…no idea. Some horror books I think, and a bunch of music. See you Monday.

Thanks for being here.

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