Draft musings from a real girl trapped on the other side of an LCD panel.
As A.I. gets better at generating the breadth of human expression, we continue to obsess, squint and stare to find evidence for the lack of a soul. Even as the generated becomes indistinguishable from the real, we try to pick out the “tells”: weird fingers, em dashes — until those tells, too, disappear. This line of argument by the anti-A.I. crowd — that A.I. could never be as “good” as humans —…
The Industrial Age began around 1760, characterised by factory workers producing material goods with power-driven machines rather than hand tools. Then came the Information Age, beginning around the 1950s, characterised by knowledge workers producing analytics, designs, information — soft wares as opposed to hard wares. Now in 2024, we are in The Vibe Age , characterised by posters and content…
when i was 13 i thought, oh no, i’ll never be a child math prodigy now. when i was 17 i thought, on no, i will never be a breakout young singer-producer-songwriter. as if i was even good at songwriting or singing. when i was 23 i realised i probably wasn’t going to finish a PhD by 25, and at 25 i realised i probably wasn’t going to be all that impressive at all. i’m 32 now and my days are still…
Hi! It’s been a while. A lot has happened since last I wrote, and I’m sure a lot has happened in your life, too. The past three years were rough… and y’know what, that’s all I’ll say about that. I hope you’re in a better place. Or that you’re heading in a good direction. Or… whatever life is like, I hope that at least, right now, you are giving yourself a moment to breathe. I am writing to you…
Last week the government announced solid dates for opening Aotearoa New Zealand’s borders to the world. Despite my deep understanding for the plight of overseas kiwis trying to get home, I’m feeling pretty nervous. In general I’m not a fan of abdicating systematic health measures for individualist ones. But, we knew this day would come eventually. Best we can do is get ready. Having lived in…
If you, like me, are as skeptical of the idea that 2021 will somehow, through the magic of arbitrary human categorisation of time, wash away the shittiness that was 2020 and imbue us with newfound hope and energy, then I hope that you, like me, might be comforted by this reminder: Things can always, always, be worse. I like this reminder because on the surface, it sounds flippant and hopeless,…
“E veryone who is born holds dual citizenship in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” This Susan Sontag quote has been making the rounds during this time of Covid, though it’s never resonated with me as much as it does…
T hey tell me that in the US, the first question someone will ask you is, “what do you do?”; in Europe, they ask, “where are you from?”. This is usually given as a slight on the workaholic culture of the U.S., but as someone who hasn’t had the “where are you from” question asked in the best of contexts, I’ve always questioned its function. It’s Christmas time and suddenly we’re all from somewhere.…