Greetings from Read Max HQ in rain-soaked Brooklyn, N.Y.! Today, an emergency experiment: a solo podcast. I was prepared to offer a column today on the A.I. provisions of the Writers Guild of America contract, but our downstairs neighbors’ apartment flooded, my son’s after-school has been canceled, and my wife is trapped in Yonkers (??), which means that my ability to gather my notes together and produce the kind of finely wrought, sparklingly witty, fully error-free newsletter to which you have all become so accustomed is limited. So instead, I sat in my closet and recorded myself talking through the notes I already had, producing what I hope is an at least vaguely coherent riff on the subject, since I know many readers (or, in this case, listeners) will RIOT if they don’t get their weekly dose of b******t from me. I’m sorry for the messiness of production and the various trailing lines of thought; there are already a bunch of things I wish I hadn’t said or had said differently, but that’s the charm of the exciting world of audio podcasts! Anyway, if you’re not really a podcast person there should be an automatically produced transcript, which I will try to clean up at some point. Stay dry out there!

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