Workin’ for the Weekend #37: Kmele’s Race Debate, Reason Roundtable Live, and Happy 7th Birthday to Us!

Also: Something-something baseball, sorry!

Let the Seven Year Itch commence! It was April Fool’s Day of 2016 when the three of us roustabouts turned on a mic to see what would happen, only to immediately begin arguing about Donald Trump and the O.J. Simpson trial. Some 481 episodes later (do not peer too closely at our numbering convention) we are … well, we are here. Thank you all for listening, for reading, for sharing, for subscribing; for Zooming, commenting, bingo-gaming, Second Sundaying, list-tending, bootleg merch-making, sending us hilarious emails, coming out to live shows, and bum-rushing other in-person events (on which see more below). It’s pretty weird and great to be taking the subway like a regular slob only to be hi-fived by a recent subscriber visiting from Texas.

* Moving onward and upward with the arts, here’s an audio edit of that Intelligence Squared debate on race between Kmele and Nsé Ufot, as moderated by Nick Gillespie (SD 72, #379), and discussed at length on #399:

* And speaking of live NYC events at The Village Underground featuring Nick Gillespie, my dayjob pod The Reason Roundtable, which is us two old farts plus Fifth Column namer Katherine Mangu-Ward (#75, #395) and Peter Suderman, is doing one of those on the early evening of April 25. Tickets are running out fast, so act now if so inclined. Here is KMW advertising the Roundtable’s spankin’ new YouTube channel:

* Reminder that there’s a bunch of other upcoming April events featuring members of the Fif’ family; check last weekend’s listings for more details.

* Moynihan, while scratching obsessively at his neck, mentioned on #400 the man-made Adderall shortage, and Reason’s good coverage thereof. Here are some relevant links: “Short on Adderall? Blame DEA Production Caps,” by Joe Lancaster; “Need an Adderall Prescription? Good Luck Getting It Over Telehealth.” by Emma Camp; and “Drug Shortages? Ham-Handed Pandemic Interventions Deserve Much of the Blame,” by J.D. Tuccille.

* This week I wrote a ranty piece headlined “Feds Want to Penalize Overly Complicated Subscription Cancellations at $50,000 a Pop,” and then on Saturday Reason posted my looooong magazine essay “The Expensive, Seductive Nostalgia of Field of Dreams.” Some backstory behind that long-gestated piece over at The View Level.

* Comment of the Week comes from Joe Morse:

I’m an Illustrator. When A.I. comes for you it’s hard to be chill. My work was scraped up by Stable Diffusion in the 12 million images used to train the model set that now has 2.3 billion images. My work was pulled from Pinterest, which a fan had posted to without my consent. I get to compete against the thieves that ripped off my work and they don’t charge a penny. Fuck yeah! I think Jaron Lanier has the best take on this, A.I. is regurgitative nostalgia that scrapes the value from humans and then pretends humans don’t exist. It would be great if we actually had a technology that ‘serves humankind’ and it isn’t a recipe book.

Closing track is the new video of an old pop/punk band called Popsicko, whose singer/songwriter Keith Brown died 29 years ago. He’d been a friendly acquaintance of mine, with many shared ex-bandmates. It’s … a long story.