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Selected writing by Mark DeLong

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Marc Ribot leans over his guitar in his performance at INNtöne Jazzfestival 2024. His white hair os frizzy and he looks at a fellow musician over his glasses.
Posted inCommentary Poetry Technology

Noise, art, and AI. A musician considers the function of art

Marc Ribot responds to a question on whether AI can create. So,…
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May 18, 2026
Posted inTechnology

Two kinds of beauty. Brief excerpt from The Score

"Object beauty" and "process beauty": brief excerpt from C. Thi Nguyen's The Score
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February 23, 2026
Posted inLiving Poetry Technology

Fiat ars, pereat mundus

Can one use art in times when it feels so useless? Should one do art at all?
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January 30, 2026
Slips of yellow paper with typewritten words. Austin Kleon poses interview questions to interviewees on paper in this manner, and the person being interviewed takes the paper and responds to the question using his or her own typewriter. The image shows two such interactions on two slips of yellow paper, side-by-side.
Posted inHistory Living Technology

Today, typewriters are for art

Your grandfather's typewriter is coming back as a tool for creating art.
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December 30, 2025
Jame Mustich sits behind a microphone in a blue Oxford shirt. A water bottle sits in front of him. He has his hands folded as he talks, probably at a conference or a meeting.
Posted inCommentary Technology

Sense and GPT-ability

"It’s the lack of this tactile sensation, this palpability, that seems to me an awful prospect in the automatic summoning of sentences, rather than the elimination of effort per se."
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November 16, 2025
On a grey mass in the shape of the Southeastern US, orange colored blobs and slight orange strings connecting them appear. The image was created by a computer model, but it looks like a view from space of urban lights against a dark background of undeveloped land.
Posted inAutomobiles History Living

Deep influence of the asphalt below us

Four meditations on roads, highways, and ancient paths
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November 11, 2025
Orion and stars for the season
Posted inCommentary Living

Orion and stars for the season

A different Christmas message to my friends in a world that maybe already has too many difficult stories.
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December 22, 2023
Does 1950s “mechanization” provide a roadmap for today’s AI influence on skill?
Posted inHistory Living Technology

Does 1950s “mechanization” provide a roadmap for today’s AI influence on skill?

Will AI behave like earlier automation? What affect will AI have on skill requirements? They're open questions.
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September 8, 2023
Book review: Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time
Posted inBook Review Living

Book review: Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time

A timely, well wrought book. I dive pretty deeply in jam, which can be sticky.
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July 28, 2023
Going underground to get aboveground
Posted inCommentary History Living

Going underground to get aboveground

"I've confined my quest to the underground that is not the domain of the vice squad. (No time.)"
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June 1, 2023
Hanging out with artists in The Ark
Posted inCommentary Living

Hanging out with artists in The Ark

The Ark was the birthplace of Duke basketball. Maybe conversations started there can ignite creative indolence and a truer excellence, too.
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May 4, 2023
Through our window
Posted inCommentary Living Technology

Through our window

When a choice of teeny Gorilla Glass or a picture window makes a difference. Thinking about which reality you want to live in.
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March 30, 2023
I make a numerical mistake. Then I think about two rivers
Posted inLiving

I make a numerical mistake. Then I think about two rivers

How do you gauge progress in a writing project? I really should have been writing something else this week....
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February 16, 2023
Out to pasture
Posted inAutomobiles History Technology

Out to pasture

The passing of the horse ... and into the clean world of the car!
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January 26, 2023
Boston bakers, more or less
Posted inHistory Living Technology

Boston bakers, more or less

In 1998, Microsoft Windows was a Boston baker. If bread is the product, does the process matter to the people who bake? Plus, observations about WFH from the 1990s.
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July 21, 2022
Dave Grohl stands in an elevator with a bag of groceries. The light in the picture is monochrome light blue-black. He is looking up slightly, and the light is illuminating his face.
Posted inHistory Technology

Muzak. Like the air, only sweeter

You might hate it. You might find it useful. The pleasant history and on-going conundrum of "background music."
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April 7, 2022

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You May Have Missed
Marc Ribot leans over his guitar in his performance at INNtöne Jazzfestival 2024. His white hair os frizzy and he looks at a fellow musician over his glasses.

Noise, art, and AI. A musician considers the function of art

Jame Mustich sits behind a microphone in a blue Oxford shirt. A water bottle sits in front of him. He has his hands folded as he talks, probably at a conference or a meeting.

Sense and GPT-ability

A distant mirror

The Substack logo on an orange background. The logo has been jittered in vertical stripes so that it appears as though it is melting.

Why I’m Quitting Substack

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