The Biggest Book News of the Week

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

The Most Interesting AI-Generated Story Yet

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, touted a story “written” by their LLM is response to the prompt: “Please write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief.” The resulting story is, I think it is fair to say, the most interesting “creative writing” product I have seen, and not because it is necessarily good, but because it is interestingly messy, plausible, and not without some virtues. Lincoln Michel goes sentence-level deep here,and I found myself nodding along to most of his analysis. For my part, it fall into a literary uncanny valley, neither bad enough to be laughable nor good enough to be “lifelike.” The strangeness of it is then all the more compelling and disturbing.

How to Oppose Abolishing the Department of Education

Donald Trump is expected to issue an executive order today aimed at shuttering the Department of Education. Here’s what you need to know:

• Executive orders carry no legal weight by themselves and do not override federal laws. 
• The Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, has already begun taking action to shrink and weaken the department, including a 50% reduction in staff, but actually closing a cabinet-level department requires an act of Congress.
• Republicans have introduced a bill (H.R. 899) to terminate the Department of Education. It’s been stuck in committee since January 31. (Need a refresher on how a bill becomes a law?)
• Even if they can get it passed in the House—which is an open question given the GOP’s effective 1-seat majority—approval by the Senate would require a supermajority (60 votes). This means that 7 Democrats would have to sign on. Highly unlikely. 
• The best thing you can do is call your representatives in Congress and urge them to protect the Department of Education. 5 Calls has a terrific script. I know you’d rather send an email, but calls matter more. They just do.
• Go to town hall meetings, especially if you have Republican representatives. Remind them that they work for all of their constituents, not just the ones that agree with them.
• Find protests and activism opportunities near you.
• Remember that the best antidotes to political anxiety are information and action. Stop scrolling and go do something.

What We Love and Hate About Talking About Books Online

Traci Thomas, host of the beloved podcast The Stacks, joined me and Jeff O’Neal for a conversation about what we love and hate about talking about books online. Discourse! Algorithms! Community! Discovery!

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