159. It's a good cry, man

I.

Chuck Wirschem made countless film recordings of his adventures in Alaska in the 1970s. He always meant to turn them into a proper film, but became exhausted during the editing process. And so the footage sat on a shelf for fifty years.

Until his grandson Max Sauerbrey — who had just graduated from film school — got his hands on the 16mm footage. With his help, his grandfather’s film might finally be made after all.

The result is on YouTube. The footage of grandfather Chuck alone is beautiful (— those colours!). But Sauerbrey makes more of it than just an account of his grandfather’s adventures. He shot new footage, of himself, his grandfather and other family members. In doing so he wrapped the old films in a charming document about family bonds, getting the most out of life and what it means to grow old.

I found it deeply moving. Wirschem speaks lovingly about his cabin in Alaska as he shows the viewer around. “This is the sauna my son and I built in 1979”, he says. “There is probably no place on earth where more drinks have been consumed and more laughter shared per square metre than here.”

With old friends, Chuck Wirschem once set out to trudge kilometres through the snow, throw frisbees on mountain summits and hunt Dall sheep. When Wirschem phones one of those friends for his grandson’s camera, it takes a moment for the memories to come back into focus. But when the penny drops, the friend too speaks joyfully about the good old days. Go and dig out those old recordings in your basement, Wirschem urges him. “It’s a good cry, man.”

II.

“Once we trusted our common sense, but now we let ChatGPT write our emails and tell us how long it takes to roast a chicken”, says Frankie McNamara in his new (and out-stand-ing) video on the much-underrated YouTube channel Meditations for the anxious mind. “We have become prisoners of convenience.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the impact of generative AI on our society. The idea that AI chatbots don’t actually know anything by definition simply doesn’t compute for many people. We consumers are supposed to see the probability-calculating babble of AI chatbots as something genuinely intelligent. This is how our brains are being gradually retrained. The tech bosses in Silicon Valley increasingly talk only about ‘intelligence’ and leave out ‘artificial’, Juurd Eijsvoogel noticed¹.

McNamara is right. People generally take the path of least resistance. If we can’t quite remember an actor’s name in conversation, we google it. And if you can’t be bothered to wade through a woolly report, you ask AI for a summary. We underestimate our own intelligence.

In The New Yorker I read an article citing so-called humanizers. These are AI tools you feed ChatGPT output into, to make the answers sound more human. Students apparently make enthusiastic use of them. But come on…? What are we doing?

I can well understand why teachers are pulling their hair out. If we start outsourcing basic skills to artificial intelligence, we keep ourselves stupid. “The biggest deception is the idea that competence could only exist outside ourselves”, says McNamara. “And that it’s only accessible through an expensive monthly subscription.”

In NRC there is an opinion piece by writer and teacher Merel Kamp. She writes about her students’ work. “Where work of poor quality would once have made me mildly despondent, or worried, or irritated, lately it releases a mild joy and relief in me: It at least doesn’t come from Chat, I increasingly think with pleasure reading texts that aren’t worth a damn.”

Artificial intelligence itself is not the problem, in my view. Like any other technology, it is simply a tool. The problem is the idea with which the technology is sold to us, McNamara argues (seriously, watch that video). “It’s the ideology that tells us we’re broken and that we need a new tool to get back on track. We don’t have to give in to convenience. Think your own thoughts. Pet a dog in the park and not in the metaverse. Embrace the struggle. Be a mess. You can’t appreciate greatness if it costs nothing to achieve it.”

PS.

I’ll stay with Terry Godier just a moment longer, so you’re aware of this. “Somewhere in the last twenty years, our possessions came to life”, he writes on his blog. “Not all at once. Not with great fanfare. One by one, the products in our lives have opened their eyes, found our faces and started needing us.”

This is a delightful video explaining how Japanese notebooks are made.

Robert Redford visited the Outlaw Trail fifty years ago for National Geographic. The Outlaw Trail is a path that runs straight through the United States, from Canada to Mexico. Wild West outlaws such as Butch Cassidy and Jesse James used the route to find their freedom. On YouTube there is a grainy recording of the 40-minute documentary, in which Redford delightfully recounts his adventures.

If you haven’t done so already, read the farewell essay of Lamyae Aharouay, who is stepping down as political correspondent at NRC.

You just read blog №159, written in the week of 23 to 29 March 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter and receive it in your inbox every Sunday for free.