Keith Plocek

@keithplocek.com

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USC Annenberg professor. Freelance journalist. Huckleberry. https://links.keithplocek.com/

Opening text of The Devil & The Good Lord
Pickford recommended slender palms for business streets so that drivers like herself could window-shop from their seats. She seconded the chamber of commerce’s proposals for a reconstituted office of city forester and a citywide tree-planting program. The most photographed woman in the world even spoke at city hall in favor of the palmification of one of Hollywood’s thoroughfares, Sunset Boulevard.
NYT headline refuting RFK Jr. claim
In writing about (and railing against) artificial intelligence, the art historian Sonja Drimmer has returned again and again to the phrase “permission structure.” The phrase was popularized in the early 2010s by the Obama crew, and it referred to the rhetorical strategy of giving an opponent enough reasons to change their mind while also allowing them to save face. In Drimmer’s usage, the meaning seems to slide into giving someone an excuse to do what they already wanted to do, and I like that connotation. If a newspaper publisher wants to lower headcount, they can now use AI to replace reporters while telling themselves they’re riding the wave of the future. No matter that the product will suffer. No matter that other humans will suffer too. If some DOGE shitheads want to hurt people just because, the “because” can be justified by AI; computer says no. This is the kind of ethical slippage that’s easy to spot in others, but I can feel it happening to me too.
RFK Jr.’s iconic nevernude style
A scene from the first season of the show True Detective, but with Matthew McConaughey's head replaced with a Matthew McConaughey bobblehead
Carson refinery on NYT homepage
A dog riding a dolphin