Literature, Philosophy, Technology
I recently released a pre-print on what I call the AI Criminal Mastermind, an AI agent that plans, facilitates and coordinates a crime by on-boarding human taskers . In heist films, a criminal mastermind is a character who plans a criminal act, coordinating a team of specialists to rob a bank, casino or city mint. I [ ]
Brutalism is a style of architecture you either love or hate. It either symbolizes the collapse of ornament and detail, or the rise of a simple, plain aesthetic. To some, it is evidence of architects losing their way, and to others, a kind of casting-off of the past, the discovery of new materials like concrete, [ ]
I want to talk about the number of cats on book covers, and in particular, the number of cats on book covers by Japanese authors in Western bookshops. It s gotten to the point where every time I walk into a bookshop, I find entire bookshelves filled with this kind of cover. I m sure you ve seen [ ]
I ve been thinking a lot about authorial voice and style lately, the thing that makes each person s writing unique. Growing up, I was a voracious reader, in part because my parents had a rule that we could only stay up late if we were reading quietly in bed. I devoured novels, history books, fantasy books [ ]
Many articles are now discussing the decline in reading among the younger generation. Half of adults in the UK rarely pick up a book for pleasure. Reading is in decline in the US even in literature programs. Talking to professors in Europe, you get the sense that it s harder to motivate students to engage with [ ]
The husband s favourite section of the Tao Te Ching is about the space between things. A bowl is only useful because of the space within it, same with a doorway, or an open path. Sometimes he thinks that the space between him and his wife is the only thing that s keeping them together. The wife [ ]
When my granddad died many years ago, I spent a long time thinking about the world he grew up in. A place where nature was abundant, where humans hadn t caused so much damage yet, where insects flourished and where physical objects were a constant presence, littering a room. A world of heirlooms and paper newspapers, [ ]
Hi all, My new novel Eloquent Graffiti is coming out this month, and is only a dollar in the first few weeks! Here s the blurb: When Calloway arrives in Berlin, he’s hoping for a fresh start. A talented but guarded writer, he wants to leave his troubled past behind and finally pursue the life he’s [ ]
In 2023, Byung-Chul Han published Absence, a book that challenged the foundations of Western philosophy. He argues that while the West is obsessed with essence and being, Far Eastern thought is about absence and nothingness. In its pursuit of being above all else, the West has lost something. The quiet of emptiness, the space for [ ]
Nostalgic comments about the early internet often praise its random, chaotic aesthetic [...]