457. A Notable Night @ Substack NYC, A New Perspective on AI & a Guest Lecture at Stanford
#451: Plus! Heck's Kitchen, Eavesdrawing the Literati, My Roat Kit, Richard Thompson, How to make a living as an artist, New Yorker at 100 Teaser, & Morris gets a new mug
In this week’s edition:
• Guest lecture at FIT on surviving freelance life in the digital age.
• Announcement of my upcoming Fall Liu Lecture at Stanford.
• Inside Substack’s “Notes Night” event at their NYC HQ.
• Eavesdrawing at a NYC book launch for two New York authors.
• Reaction to the new “HELL’S KITCHEN, HECK YEAH” mural.
• An AI researcher dismantles utopian tech bro optimism
• New drawings, dog portraits, and a tribute to Richard Thompson.
and more!
Hey again, friend.
Welcome to Issue #457 of New York Cartoons. You might have leaned back in your chair and scratched your chin this week, thinking, “Am I going nuts, or have I heard a LOT from Jason this week?” No, you’re not imagining it. I really have been posting more often than usual. This is in part because I have slowly grown this newsletter to the point where I can justify spending more and more time doing this thing I love. I really do appreciate all of you who allow me to do this.
If you’ve enjoyed reading my work this week, consider becoming a paid subscriber to New York Cartoons—it’s the best way to keep the ink (and the caffeine) flowing. Or, if commitment issues run deep, you can always buy me a coffee—which, if we’re being honest, is just printer ink in liquid form.
1. My Guest Lecture at FIT in New York this week:
A few weeks back, an email landed: would I come to FIT and talk to illustration students about how to make a living drawing pictures in a world that keeps updating its software while you’re still installing the last update? I said yes before the imposter syndrome woke up and asked for coffee.
The brief was simple: come in, share the messy truth of freelance life, and do a short drawing activity with the class. No slides required, but I brought some anyway, because nothing says “seasoned professional” like a Keynote that refuses to mirror to the projector.
You can read the full presentation with advice here:
How to make a living drawing pictures in a world that keeps updating its software while you’re still installing the last update?
“Innovate inside the constraints. The constraints are changing faster than ever—budgets, tools, timelines, expectations—but the job hasn’t. The job is still to see clearly, make choices, and put a line down that could only have come from your hand.”
1.5 Speaking of Guest Lectures…
…I’ve been invited to deliver the Fall Liu Lecture at Stanford. The one where they bring together people working in design, art, technology, architecture, science and let them loose on an unsuspecting audience. Read more below.
I've Been Invited to Guest Lecture at Stanford this Fall. (Yikes!)
The David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design is a Stanford institution. They invite thinkers, makers, doers -people who bridge disciplines- to speak about what in God’s name inspires them to keep doing what they do. Past speakers have included some of the biggest names in art and design. It’s very humbling to be asked. I’m still waiting for them to email me telling me they meant to invite Chason Jatfield.
2. Notes on Substack’s Notes Night at NYC HQ
It’s not every night you find yourself in a Flatiron loft hanging out with the people who built the platform you publish on, especially one that hasn’t (yet) sold its soul for ad revenue and chaos.
Tonight’s Substack event felt less like a tech presentation and more like a support group for people who still believe words matter. There was even free booze, which always helps the optimism flow.
Hamish McKenzie, Substack’s co-founder -and, conveniently, a fellow Southern Hemisphere exile -opened the night with a quiet, clear sermon: “Most platforms don’t really care about writers and creators,” he said. “They keep you trapped in a big, closed garden where you don’t own your audience, your relationships, or even your content.”
Keep reading here:
Notes on Notes (and Why I’m Cautiously Optimistic about Substack)
This is the kind of talk that hits differently when you’ve spent a decade being emotionally gaslit by algorithms. “We only make money when you make money,” he continued, “and you have the freedom to leave whenever you want.” I underlined that twice in my notebook, partly out of hope, partly out of habit. It’s been a long time since I trusted anyone holding the keys to a social network.
Related Reading:
3. Eavesdrawing the New York Literati
This week I found myself at a beautiful, big home across from the Met- the kind of place where the light fixtures look like they’ve won awards. The occasion was a double book launch for Kimberly Warner’s Unfixed and Kirsten Miller’s The Women of Wild Hill, hosted by my favourite Upper East-siders, David and Deborah Roberts. I was there to Eavesdraw.
Continue Reading below:
Eavesdrawing the New York Literati
When I say “Eavesdraw,” I mean: sit quietly in the corner with a clipboard and the posture of a Victorian ghost while strangers nervously pretended not to look at me. My friend, Lou Bahet, Executive Editor of The Metropolitan Review, sat beside me as I sketched the room, stifling laughs whenever she glanced over.
4. Heck’s Kitchen?
I was wobbling up Eighth Avenue earlier today when I saw it: four storeys high, bright as a tourist’s fanny pack, screaming across the side of a building:
“HELL’S KITCHEN, HECK YEAH.”
I froze. A chill ran down my spine. Was this… official?
Did we, as a neighbourhood, workshop this in a town hall I missed? Was there a community vote? A branding committee? A single human with taste?
I looked around to see if anyone else was reacting. Nothing. A woman walked by sipping a lavender oat milk latte like it wasn’t the end of linguistic dignity in Manhattan. A man in a “Fuggedaboutit” hoodie squinted at the mural like it owed him money, then continued taking photos of a passing police horse.
Read more here:
Heck's Kitchen
Maybe it’s just some marketing campaign from the local bodega. Maybe there’s a free hat involved. Maybe the mural’s ironic (God, I hope it’s ironic). It certainly isn’t iconic.
AI Researcher corrects AI Booster
I liked this tidbit from my friend (I won’t share his name as it was not an entirely public post) about his recent experience at a conference about AI:
They had a great debate about AI. After the first speaker barfed up the typical dipshit utopian nonsense about how AI is going to make all the drudge work go away so we can focus on being so human and creative and fulfilled, the second speaker -who has been an AI researcher for 20 years- stepped in and said that’s simply not how it works, either in theory or in practice.
She said AI *could* make the grunt work efficient, but so far AI companies have instead preferred to enter the creative sphere and flood it with garbage. And then she said the evidence finds that AI is only successful as a tool used by hard-working people with high cognitive and executive functioning, but that when people have lost the ability to do that - ironically, because of AI - then the technology is useless.
She gave maybe the best sound bite I’ve heard about ChatGPT when she said she only uses it to make her life harder - to upload a draft chapter of her book and ask it to unmercilessly shred it and criticise it so that she can rewrite it to be even better than it was before.
As always, be sure to leave a comment, say hi, and ask a question. I love hearing from you every week.
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The Sketchbook I’m sharing with you this week is a selection of the sketches I’ve blorped out at the drawing board, and a few that I drew of people’s dogs as gifts this past week. If you have a friend with a dog, send me a photo and I’ll draw them into the book for you.
3374 days since we lost one of the best cartoonists who ever lived. I scribbled a tribute to his beautiful line. Go look up his work and get ready to make noises. Read more about Richard Thompson here.
Via
:Here’s a fast paced promo for the documentary, The New Yorker At 100. The film which premieres at The New Yorker Festival, will be on Netflix, December 5, 2025/
If you’re new here, or you haven’t had a moment to wander back through the archives of profound genius I’ve shared up to this point, take a peek at the following scribblings:
On the Road Again…
As I write this, we’re driving past Amelia’s Sandwiches, Massage & Pawn Shop just outside of Tacoma. We caught up with my ol’ cartooning pals, Ann Telnaes and Michael Jantze for lunch at Ray’s Boathouse after our first day stomping around Seattle. The remainder of the trip sees us hurtling south through Washington and Oregon, and on to the Highway 1 down the California coast, screeching to a halt in San Francisco.
Morris loves his new mug. Want one or two in your kitchen? Order a few here.
That woman talking about AI was spot on.
I love Column 457. Greatly entertaining while I’m recuperating from surgery. Sorry but I cannot subscribe right now.
Nancy