Good Morning,
Today’s stories ask the question: when machines can make something, what’s left that only people can make? Start with the flop. A commissioned AI attempt to turn Dakota Johnson into Marilyn Monroe didn’t work, and Maggie Gyllenhaal isn’t sorry it failed (Vulture). Meanwhile the Anthropic settlement, sold as a win for authors, has become a fight among publishers, authors, and third parties over who actually gets paid (The New York Times). Money is easier to extract than to distribute.
Bigger picture: The Atlantic asks whether the internet is already dead, with bots texting bots all the way down (The Atlantic). Readers seem to have noticed. CD sales are booming alongside vinyl and cassettes, not as a revolt against streaming but as a market for objects you can hold (The Verge). And in a North Carolina town hollowed out after Helene, a new center is teaching fiber arts and clay as survival skills, not nostalgia (The New York Times).
Which makes the Boston Globe‘s case against Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey more pointed: Homer’s poem is about waiting, and the movie refuses to do it (Boston Globe).
Europe’s empty churches, it turns out, make fine concert halls. Also pickleball courts (The New York Times).
All of our stories below.
