The 20 In-Flight Crime Movie Options on This Airplane, Ranked
This article amused me because, by the time you read this, I will have spent some huge number of hours flying from the West Coast of the U.S. to Amsterdam to embark on a 6-week cruise. As much as I enjoy traveling, I hate these long flights. I can’t even imagine doing the kind of analysis Olivia Rutigliano offers here (although I suspect she simply wrote down all the films on offer and did the research and composing afterwards). My process for enduring such a flight is to start reading a book on my Kindle, then try (and, inevitably, fail) to sleep during the hours when the cabin lights are dimmed.
Should you start a new chat with ChatGPT every time you use it? Here’s your guide for when to keep the conversation going
Ever since I realized, many years ago, that I have more years behind me than ahead of me, I’ve been quite choosy about the projects I spend my time on. The emergence of AI (artificial intelligence) is an area that interests me intellectually, but not enough for me to focus on digging into it. As a writer, I’m firmly against generative AI, that branch of helpful digital programs that offer to write my blog posts for me. However, when someone talks about using the ability of AI to streamline the minutiae of daily life, such as keeping one’s calendar up to date and filing away various bits of information, I perk right up.
That’s why I still look at articles like this one, addressed toward people who are willing to get up close and personal with a program like ChatGPT. Since AI is only as good as the source material it scrapes, this piece offers advice on how to structure your chats with it, because:
Understanding this stuff (and understanding that it’s always changing and evolving) doesn’t just help you make the most of your ChatGPT subscription, it helps you use it more like a creative, collaborative tool that actually gets what you’re trying to get done.
What Happens When People Don’t Understand How AI Works
“Despite what tech CEOs might say, large language models are not smart in any recognizably human sense of the word.”
Tyler Austin Harper, a staff writer for The Atlantic, is even less kind toward AI than I am. Here he discusses two recent books about the emergence of this new technology:
[tech journalist Karen Hao’s] new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, is part Silicon Valley exposé, part globe-trotting investigative journalism about the labor that goes into building and training large language models such as ChatGPT. It joins another recently released book—The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, by the linguist Emily M. Bender and the sociologist Alex Hanna—in revealing the puffery that fuels much of the artificial-intelligence business. Both works, the former implicitly and the latter explicitly, suggest that the foundation of the AI industry is a scam.
AI Signals The Death Of The Author
“The meaning of a piece of writing does not depend on the identity of the author, even if the author is not human.”
“In response to any written document, like the one you are reading right now, it is reasonable to ask who wrote it and can therefore authorize its content,” writes David J. Gunkel, the Presidential Research, Scholarship and Artistry Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University and associate professor of applied ethics at Łazarski University in Warsaw, Poland. He says that, after reading his bio, we’re probably inclined to acknowledge him, the author, as someone whom we can trust.
“But when a text is written or generated by a large language model like ChatGPT, Claude or DeepSeek, the view of the author becomes clouded,” he continues. “So who or what is the author? . . . Why does it even matter?”
While many people lament that AI means the death of the author, he holds a contrary view: “these machines can be liberating: They free both writers and readers from the authoritarian control and influence of this thing we call the ‘author.’”
What AI Can’t Steal from You
Jane Friedman, who has worked for many years in the writing and publishing industry, advises us not to rush to judgment about the emergence of AI: “The technology can be put to work for low purposes and high purposes. It can push work to be better, it can cheapen work.”
The Best Speculative Fiction Books To Read Right Now
Although speculative fiction is hard to define, it can be quite rewarding to read. Erika Hardison has some recommendations for entering the world of speculative fiction. You might even be surprised to realize you’ve already read at least one of the books on her list.
The best way to get your toes wet in speculative fiction is to start with the genres you already love to read. Historical, literary, sci-fi, and even horror have a range of titles that include speculative influences throughout.
How Netflix’s Dept. Q Brought a Book Series—And the Author’s Real Experiences—To Life
“The gritty detective show was even influenced by the author’s shocking childhood experiences.”
Netflix’s newest thriller series, Dept. Q, follows Carl Morck . . ., a detective who has recently returned to work after being shot by an unknown assailant. While struggling with the aftermath of being the victim of a crime, Morck is put in charge of a newly formed cold case unit.
This television series is based on a series of books by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. Although the books are set in Copenhagen, the TV production has been relocated to Edinburgh. The article explains some of the changes and challenges producers and actors faced in developing the book series for television.
I haven’t read the books, but I found the series fascinating. I was a bit confused during the first two episodes because the show plunges the viewer directly into the action. But slow exposition of the backstory, which mimics the way we learn about people and their lives in everyday experience, builds interest in the characters and their situations.
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
