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In this week’s edition:
• How Israel uses AI for assassination in the Gaza War.
• A father reflects on his son’s development.
• The rise of the term, “gaslighting.”
• Toni Morrison’s expansive rejection letters.
• The history of PostSecret.
1. ‘Lavender’: The AI Machine Directing Israel’s Bombing Spree in Gaza
Yuval Abraham | +972 and Local Call | April 3, 2024 | 8,066 words
The biggest news out of Gaza this week was the deaths of seven aid workers affiliated with the non-profit organization World Central Kitchen. The incident was nothing short of perverse: Israel targeted and killed people trying to make a dent in the imminent famine that Israel itself has engineered as part of its strategy to demoralize and destroy, in whole or in part*, the Palestinian population. (*Yes, this is a reference to the international community’s codified definition of genocide.) Perverse was the word that again came to mind when, shortly after the attack on WCK, +972 and Local Call published a blockbuster investigation revealing the extent of Israel’s reliance on artificial intelligence to select targets in Gaza for assassination. Except select and assassination make it sound like the AI systems are precise, which they decidedly are not. Lavender, as the main program is called, “clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants” in the early weeks of the siege, and “the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based.” Israel is also using AI—including a system named, I kid you not, “Where’s Daddy?”—to track targets into their homes and then drop bombs, no matter the risk of collateral damage. Which is to say, no matter the risk of killing other people who happen to be in the home, including children. As technology journalist Sam Biddle wisely put it on social media, this essential investigation, one of the finest published since the war began, shows that “the value of military ‘AI’ systems … doesn’t lie in decision-making, but in the ability to use the sheen of computerized ‘intelligence’ to justify the actions you already wanted.” —SD
2. The Foreign Language That Changed My Teenage Son’s Life
Paul Tough | The New York Times Magazine | March 17, 2024 | 4,987 words
Lured by the headline, I dove into Paul Tough’s essay out of curiosity, not sure what to expect. He writes about his son learning to speak Russian, but the larger journey he shares, as a parent full of worry and wonder and emotion, surprised me. By the end, I was in tears. He recalls his son as young child, and how he completely lost himself in his interests, from toys to games to entertainment: “Max would go deep, finding satisfaction not just in the playing but also in the experience of plunging himself into a new and unfamiliar world and mastering all of its contours.” He was shy, and as he got older, these explorations made him more solitary than social. But Max emerges from his shell, first during the pandemic, when he takes up birding as a hobby. To Tough’s surprise, Max interacts with the adult birders around him, finding his way into conversations. When Max turns 12, he decides to learn Russian, a seemingly random choice, but grows more confident and comfortable after he enrolls at a Russian-language school. When they embark on a father-son trip to Uzbekistan so Max can immerse himself in the language, Tough watches as Max navigates his new surroundings with ease. He recounts this beautifully, and it’s a delight to witness a parent learning to sit back as their grown child takes the wheel and engages with the world on their own: “As I watched Max walk off with a group of foreign strangers into an unknown land, it felt like a glimpse of my future, and his. I was slowing down, and he was speeding up.” I’m early in my journey as a mother—challenging and uncertain as it is, with a 5-year-old daughter who is beginning to blossom and discover her own interests. Who will she become? This piece doesn’t have that answer, but Tough’s perspective is comforting and exactly what I needed to read this week. —CLR
3. So You Think You’ve Been Gaslit?
Leslie Jamison | The New Yorker | April 1, 2023 | 6,157 words
In recent years, the term “gaslighting” has become increasingly popular in everyday conversation. (Leslie Jamison notes that in 2022, there was a staggering 1,740% increase in people searching for the term.) While language is continually shifting and evolving, we’ve adopted this phrase with particular enthusiasm. Why does a word for someone causing us to question our reality resonate so heavily? Jamison’s exploration into our love for this diagnosis goes deep—from the first use of the word to current case studies to questioning whether she herself is a gaslighter. (She is, to some extent. Most of us are.) As Jamison notes, gaslighting is a spectrum that “happens on many scales, from extremely toxic to undeniably commonplace.” While I came to this piece to read about the development of language, Jamison’s look at the human psyche is what gripped me. A mix of linguistics and psychoanalysis? Count me in. —CW
4. There Is No Point in My Being Other Than Honest with You: On Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters
Melina Moe | Los Angeles Review of Books | March 26, 2024 | 2,493 words
For many younger readers, the fact that Toni Morrison was a book editor before (and during) her legendary fiction career is one of literature’s great “today I learned” moments. This fascinating piece from Melina Moe digs past Morrison’s trailblazer status and glittering roster to focus on that crucial but underconsidered aspect of an editor’s life: rejection. Letting writers down is never easy, or fun, but it’s something editors have to do. A lot. And what Moe found in Morrison’s correspondence—”an asymmetrical archive,” as she calls it, housed in Columbia’s Rare Books & Manuscript Library—illuminates how gifted Morrison was in unfortunate art. Any writer or editor will appreciate her warmth and empathy, her grasp of craft, and her willingness to help writers get a foothold even when not accepting their manuscript. But Morrison also gave submitting writers precious insight into the industry itself. “Often,” Moe writes, “she supplements her rejections with diagnoses of an ailing publishing business, growing frustrations with unimaginative taste, the industry’s aversion to risk-taking, and her own sense of creative constraint working at a commercial press.” Editing is often imagined as a singular art; your talent lies in honing a given work into its best, shining self. That can be as frustrating as it is gratifying, but it’s also just one element of many. Moe’s portrait stands as a rare accounting of editing in all its fullness. No notes. —PR
5. Dark Matter
Meg Bernhard | Hazlitt | April 3, 2024 | 5,908 words
Meet Frank Warren, the creator and curator of PostSecret.com, a site that displays the most private thoughts of anonymous contributors in postcard form. As Meg Bernhard reports for Hazlitt, the project emerged out of deep pain: not long after college a close friend took his own life, Warren began volunteering at a suicide prevention hotline. There, he learned how to listen carefully to callers as they recounted their despair. “Frank realized that people needed a way to talk about the messy topics often off limits in everyday conversation,” writes Bernhard. PostSecret became an in-person art exhibit and a website devoted to the cultural taboos that keep us silent, a way for us to unburden ourselves of what’s unspeakable in public and within our closest relationships. Bernhard’s piece is part profile, part delightfully nerdy deep dive into what secrets mean and why we keep them. “What is a secret?” she asks. “Knowledge kept hidden from others, etymologically linked to the words seduction and excrement. To entice someone to look closer; to force them to look away.” In revealing some of her own secrets, she invites us as readers to look closer, at the risk of us turning away. Since beginning the project in 2004 by distributing 3,000 self-addressed postcards at metro stations in Washington, D.C., Warren has collected and curated over 1 million fears, desires, and quirky notions for public display. Over time, he’s expanded the project into books and public events where attendees share their secrets with the audience, breaking that all-important fourth wall of the project’s anonymity. PostSecret arose out of a life lost tragically to inner turmoil; for those who crave judgement-free emotional release, it’s a lifeline. —KS
Audience Award
Here’s the story our audience loved most this week.
A Chronicle Reporter Went Undercover in High School. Everyone is Still Weighing the Fallout
Peter Hartlaub | San Francisco Chronicle | March 26, 2024 | 4,597 words
In 1992, mirroring the plot of the romantic comedy “Never Been Kissed,” San Francisco Chronicle reporter Shann Nix went undercover at a high school. Peter Hartlaub looks back at her reporting and the ethics of this scheme. Imposing our current values on previous work can be fraught, but Hartlaub comes at this with important questions, not judgment. —CW
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