In the New Yorker...

[serious crayons]

I guess I'm somehow a month behind now. I don't think I'll catch unless I skip some issues altogether. 

I could never do that. Which is how i wound up with a 2'-tall stack of New Yorkers. I let my whole subscription lapse for a few months (which I guess is the equivalent of skipping issues). Now I just have the digital and I forget to go there at all.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I could never do that. Which is how i wound up with a 2'-tall stack of New Yorkers. I let my whole subscription lapse for a few months (which I guess is the equivalent of skipping issues). Now I just have the digital and I forget to go there at all.

What I've been doing is that whenever a new issue arrives, I look through the TOC and mark the stories I want to read. Sometimes this doesn't help because there are many articles I want to read plus many I think I should read. 

[serious crayons]

What I've been doing is that whenever a new issue arrives, I look through the TOC and mark the stories I want to read. Sometimes this doesn't help because there are many articles I want to read plus many I think I should read. 

I do that on my second round of sorting. When the issue arrives, I try to immediately read anything by writers I like, followed by subjects that sound interesting. When they start to pile up unfinished, I look at the ToCs and circle articles I want to read, recycling any in which I've already read all the interesting things. Finally, months later, I go through and rip out and staple articles I still want to read. I still wind up with a stack of reading, but it's a shorter stack. And I can fold up individual articles and carry them in a purse or whatever.



 

[Jeff Wrangler]

I just started Jill Lepore's Sept. 28 article about A.I., and I'm finding it truly frightening. It sounds as though some A.I. "agents" have already learned to "think for themselves" and communicate with other agents. If they can get control of nuclear weapons, we're all done-for.