David Dark Talk(s)

That note up top means what’s inscribed upon it. I’m talking (and mostly hopefully participating in a conversation with other people) at St. Paul’s Cambridge (UK) this Sunday at 11:45 AM.

When I shared the image on Instagram which means it was also shared on Threads and the Book of Faces, the amazing Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma had this to say: “Nice AI poster…” That got me feeling less alone in this world and also pretty great about my lifestyle decisions. It also gave me this possibly winning phrase: Be the not-generated-by-AI content you want to see in the world.

In August of 2017, I took the same notepad on which I would later inscribe the Cambridge David Dark Talk notification and inscribed something different:

It wasn’t a doodle. I was bored in a meeting and also setting down the kind of language I imagine I might want set down in front of me were I to discover that my public legacy was slowly and surely bound to a demonstrably corrupt, white supremacist terror movement. I shared the image on social media. Don Cheadle retweeted it. I shared it with a number of folks who sometimes let me know they’re in contact with people like Ben Sasse and Bill Haslam and Lamar Alexander and David French and other high rollers within the Republican party. I got blocked. I like the phrase, “suppressing my own conscience.” It names a game. Or a move often made within catastrophically finite games.

Lamar Alexander’s book touring lately. An algorithm placed before me the fact that he wants us to know he’s “retired from politics” (his phrase). It is possible to step in and out of public office, but I wish to assert that it isn’t possible to retire from politics. It certainly isn’t possible to retire from (or erase) a voting record or the fact of what occurred through me. Under oath.

Anyway, that’s me and my notepad. And me talking.

If you know someone in or around Cambridge who wants to talk….People, tell your people.

Also, be the not-generated-by-AI content you want to see in the world.