The Digestif, February 19th
The Digestif, February 19th
Boris on Ukraine, Rihanna on stage, and a rant about ChatGPT
Back again with The Digestif! If you enjoy reading, send me a message saying so!
Recommended Reads
‘‘Ukraine Must Win’: A Q&A With Boris Johnson’ by David Samuels (Tablet). As I tweeted, the introduction to this interview is truly (and typically) spectacular writing from David Samuels, and the following interview is just great. Samuels writes, “Boris Johnson, will go down in history for getting the big questions right, from Brexit to Ukraine. By comparison, his faults will continue to look small.”
I completely agree with this, and imagine he would have had a relatively smooth, highly praised time as Prime Minister were it not for COVID, which threw a wrench into everything. I similarly bet that this won’t be the last time Johnson is near the centre of power; and wouldn’t be shocked if he has a second run at Prime Minister in the years to come.
‘Ron DeSantis Is Not Scott Walker’ by Nate Cohn (NYT). The New York Times’ resident poll-interpreter puts a wrinkle in an argument I’ve made for some time, and I still find persuasive, but perhaps shouldn’t given the important differences presented here. I continue to believe it though as I think the Giuliani comparison is more apt than Cohn gives it credit. Namely, DeSantis supporters have been overwhelmingly whipped up by very-online, culture war hysteria that doesn’t necessarily correlate to anything meaningful. This support was built on DeSantis opposing COVID measures; which is also apocryphal, given that Florida also locked down and only worked because of Trump’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’, which DeSantis now opposes. None of this acknowledges that Trump is correct that DeSantis only got to his current position by following Trump’s lead; to, frankly, a pathetic degree. Trump will slam these weak points; and I think they will quickly break. However, this could be motivated reasoning - I am strongly opposed to DeSantis becoming the candidate (less so than I am for a Trump re-election but still) - and would find it satisfying to see his campaign deflate, so I remain open to contrary evidence like this.
‘Nikki Haley Will Not Be the Next President': Our Columnists Weigh In. Really fun piece from New York Times columnists. Per usual, Douthat, Coaston, French, Brooks, and Stephens provide the most thoughtful and witty responses.
‘First baby receives life-saving gene therapy on NHS’ (NHS). Britain’s National Health Service is one of the most loathed and loved institutions in the world, by the same people. I, for instance, think it’s only right that civilised, wealthy countries don’t penalize the sick for being poor; however, its extremely poor management and insane wait-times are infuriating. The greatest problem with the NHS is that it’s so beloved, and thus nobody can ever risk instituting the radical changes it needs, lest they be accused of trying to privatise healthcare, which nobody wants. However; occasionally they do great things, and the use of gene therapy on a child who otherwise would have died is incredible. I can’t wait for the price of these drugs to go down, but the use of them within a public system is one of the fastest ways to make that happen.
‘The Law is Closing in on Trump’ by David French (NYT). A really good summary of Trump’s legal vulnerability, particularly in Georgia, from someone with a stellar record in these things. (There’s an odd clique of people who absolutely loath French, but I’ve enjoyed his analysis for years - in text, but also on the Advisory Opinions podcast - and he’s one of the most well-regarded people in my profession.)
‘In Defense of J.K. Rowling’ by Pamela Paul’ (NYT). Nothing Rowling says should be particularly controversial or important, but it’s good to see that being said in the ‘paper of record.’ Paul does a good job underlining how unacceptable it became to agree with Rowling if you worked in the left wing press (particularly in Britain). I would happily return to the days when Rowling controversies were that she had named a new Irish wizard Paddy O’Guinness, or something similarly comic.
‘The Man Behind India’s Controversial Global Blockbuster “RRR”’ by Simon Abrams (The New Yorker). A really interesting interview with a great filmmaker.
‘What Does It Mean to Dress Rich?’ by Vanessa Friedman (NYT). A typically fantastic piece by Friedman, and the perfect blend of runway-review and thoughtful consideration of an interesting fashion question. This is the kind of runway piece I would love to write.
‘The Death of the Smart Shopper’ by Amanda Mull (The Atlantic). Great piece on the problems with consumer knowledge and e-commerce.
‘Fox News Hates Its Viewers’ by Nick Catoggio (The Dispatch). Typically great piece from Catoggio, this time handling the problem with the media, weakening libel laws, and Dominion exposing Fox hosts as two-faced liars.
Wider Culture
Cars: the rather dull, production version of the electric Ram 1500 pickup truck was unveiled; Ford paused production on their electric pickup, the F150 Lightning, due to a battery overheating issue; and Ferris Bueller’s replica Ferrari is up for auction, and expected to sell for more than the real thing.
Entertainment: Some big football game happened, and a pregnant Rihanna returned to music in the mid-game show, sporting a candy red Loewe-Alaïa-Salomon-Margiela puffer outfit that was both striking and uninspired. Also: trailers for Guardians of the Guardian 3 and The Flash released, reminding us that superhero films can be exciting, so long as James Gunn is involved; the Tetris movie (yes, really) looks good; and King of the North, Bugzy Malone, dropped his fantastic, third Fire in the Booth 3, which oddly had a Jordan Peterson bar.
Fashion: After endless speculation, Pharrell was appointed as head of menswear at Louis Vuitton, succeeding the late Virgil Abloh, once again demonstrating LVMH’s willingness to try well-thought curveballs with their most prestigious brand. Pharrell is renowned for his taste, and has done great work in prior fashion collaborations so - though I would have preferred someone like Colm Dillane of Kid Super in the role (who just did an utterly incredible guest collection with the brand) - I'm excited to see what he brings to the brand. Also: MSCGF flooded social media feeds with their ‘Big Red Boots’; Adidas floated bringing Kanye back (a truly insane, stupid idea; and one I wouldn’t believe is happening were it not for Brendan Dunne confirming the chatter); and Fashion Month continued. If you’re interested in my writing a fashion month runway review, message me telling as much!
Technology: TikTok’s US growth slowed (yes!); Bigscreen announced their very slim, extremely high-fidelity VR headset, which I’m dying to have a try in; and Elon continued to do insanely stupid things at Twitter.
And: thoughts with the Willis family. Tragic news, and an utter legend.
My Articles
‘They’re Not Fake, They’re Better’ (The Spectator). A really fun piece on an interesting fashion niche, and has attracted a pretty large readership!
Most Important Story You Missed
ChatGPT is not a search tool. It’s a conversation simulator.
The broader public, and investing class, does not give much thought to search engines. They use Google, don’t explore alternatives, and gradually get annoyed by the lack of change and Alphabet gradually making Google worse. Then, ChatGPT comes out and they think “THIS IS THE PARADIGM SHIFT WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR,” because they don’t understand search.
Microsoft merging Bing with ChatGPT is not a sign that Microsoft is ahead of the curve. Rather, it’s an example of a large institution’s very expensive, very bad product - Bing - introducing a novelty feature to try and make it sexy again. And, as a marketing tool, it worked! But it doesn’t change the fundamental problem: that ChatGPT is not a search tool. It’s a conversation simulator.
Now, why is adding conversational features to a search engine good? Well… no, I don’t know. People keep telling me it’s better but it’s really not. A traditional search engine interprets the meaning within your search term, and then presents various links, with descriptions, ranked by seeming relevance. More advanced, better search engines like Neeva and Brave Search, improve this by adding more sources of information, and providing more detail in ‘snippets’ - like answers from blogs or Reddit, copyable code snippets, and curated ‘recommended’ answers, like for “best new TV” - but they aren’t changing the recipe, because the recipe is fundamentally good.
A long, conversational explanation gives you less variety, fewer sources, and less efficiency to find the same information: and may just give you complete garbage. As Reed Hoffman noted in Semafor:
ChatGPT has said in different responses that the world record holder for racing across the English channel on foot is George Reiff, Yannick Bourseaux, Chris Bonnington or Piotr Kurylo. None of those people are real and, as you might already know, nobody has ever walked across the English channel.
Microsoft has tried to solve this by pairing a second AI chatbot to ChatGPT, meaning that when you search through the ‘Prometheus’ chatbot in Bing, you are getting generated answers from ChatGPT which are simultaneously fact-checked, then sometimes edited or deleted, by the second AI.
This is still a bad, stupid, inefficient system that is slower and worse than normal search. Kevin Roose has a new article to this effect.
Best Tweet
Recommendations
App: Raindrop (Android/iOS/MacOS/Windows/web). An essential tool for my writing: it’s both the best bookmark tool available, and the best website annotator you can find. If you want to save, highlight, and note websites, in a systemised manner, to search back to later, you’ll find nothing better.
Film: Sharper (Apple TV+). OK, this isn’t great. Despite my usual soft-spot for con-man films, the plot is just too stupid, generic, and convenient, particularly in the third-act, but —— the cinematography is utterly stunning, and (most of) the cast do a good job. If you are a sucker for great lighting, you’ll enjoy that.
Music: ‘Bluebird Days’ by Jordan Davis. Davis put out one of my favourite songs last year, Buy Dirt, and his new album doesn’t have anything as good as that; but it’s still a solid, catchy, easy-listening country record.
TV: Hello Tomorrow! (Apple TV+). New, retro-futurist show, with an odd tone, great world, and compelling lead. Compared with Apple’s other sci-fi offerings: I don’t expect it to be as good as Severance, on par with Dr Brain, and better than Foundation.
Video: VFX Artists React to Avatar 2 CGi (ft. Weta FX). Utterly fascinating
That’s all folks! I don’t think I’ll have an article out next week, but there are a few in the works. Enjoy your week!