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Recently I visited China and spent a while in the north-eastern city of Anshan. Anshan is famous for Anshan Steel, once the largest industry in China (during the early period of industrialisation of the People’s Republic of China). It also has some nice tourist attractions that we visited, such as a zoo with two lovely pandas, a giant Buddha carved from a single block of jade, and the…
Related to my previous blog post , here are some of the interesting things I heard for the first time on the radio over the past couple of months.
The Taoist idea of Wu Wei (無為) has always seemed very ambiguous to me. In my own life, I often recall this principle, along with whatever interpretation of it suits best at the time, when making decisions. Here, I wanted to try think through some of the potential meanings of it.
Westworld is a science-fiction film (1973) and TV series (2016-2022) that is based on the premise of a theme-park populated by AI robots role-playing the setting of the American “West”.
The term AI Alignment , like many new concepts associated with AI, is very broad and fuzzy. It means something like the techniques and processes to ensure that a LLM is aligned with human interests. It is usually discussed within the context of AI Safety , which can mean anything ranging from “content moderating LLM outputs” to “let’s not develop an AGI that takes over the…
And now, here’s this year’s final (optional) prompt. In his poem, “Angels,” Russell Edson speaks of these spiritual warrior-messenger-guardians as if they were a type of endangered animal. Brief as it is, the poem is disorienting in its use of flattened diction, odd similes, and elliptical statements. Today, try writing your own poem that discusses a real or mythical being or profession (demons,…
Finally, here’s today’s prompt (optional, as always). In “After Turning the Clocks Back,” Jennifer Moxley links present with past, using a few well-placed details to invoke both a sense of the daily “now” and a nostalgic sense of the speaker’s long-ago life. In your poem today, similarly compare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past…
Victoria Chang’s poem, “The Lovers,” is short and somewhat shocking, bringing us quickly from a near-hallucinatory descriptive statement to a strange sort of question, before ending on the very direct statement of a “truth.” Six lines, three sentences, and to top it off, a title that I think works for the poem but is only obliquely related to its text. Today, try writing a poem that follows the…
Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. Start by reading Robert Fillman’s poem, “There should always be two.” Now, write your own poem in which all the verses contain the same number of lines (whether couplets, triplets, quatrains, etc.) and in which you give the reader instructions of some kind.
Relays in networks. Choke points or the grease on the wheel? Not so much a store as a funnel. The slow machinery of Cobol, churns through the messages, compiling a ledger. A piece of a puzzle. Combine all the ledgers from all the banks And you get something Escher-like Is a bank something from Mary Poppins? The Matrix? I can see the building on my street (though there are far less of them now) I…
And now for our (optional) daily prompt! In her poem, “The Apple Tree in Blossom,” Melissa Kwasny strings together several fantastical metaphors for the apple tree, before shifting into exclamations, definitions, and a series of nimble, tonal shifts – and seeming changes in topic – before circling around back to the apple tree. Today’s challenge asks you to write your own poem in which you use at…
In her poem, “The Flying Nightdress,” Mandakranta Sen describes something fantastical and strange that occurs while the rest of the world is asleep. The imagery of the poem is dreamlike, but the situation it describes is otherwise presented quite straightforwardly. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but…
And speaking of forms, today’s (optional) prompt takes its inspiration from Kiki Petrosino’s loose villanelle, “Nursery.” Try your hand today at your own take on a villanelle, and have the poem end on a question.
Jaswinder Bolina’s poem “Mood Ring” imagines the speaker as both himself and an interior being (who happens to take the form of a small donkey). It’s quite silly . . . and not silly at the same time. A sort of “serious fun.” Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which the speaker is in dialogue with him or herself.
Leaf fall down, or more like jump Fox on footpath, while Bulbous baby laughs with joy
For today, try writing your own poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase.
The morning sun, the midday rain The afternoon wind spins weather vane A spot of snow, a hurricane Some buds appear, some hidden stay Plans are scrapped, new plans are made Four seasons, at once, in a day
A rugged field, a crossing made From bough to place of lovely shade That cooling spot, where water breaks The limestone rock, the shore of lake Where once he came, in hooded gown With stick made from old branch pared down A sacrifice, the drops of blood A secret prayer, a roaring flood Times move on, preoccupied The druid tends to other skies Down here on earth, with no ill will The cooling spot,…
For today’s challenge, write a poem in which you respond to a favourite poem by another poet.
In “Ocean,” Robinson Jeffers delivers an almost oracular, scriptural description of the sea not just as a geographical phenomenon, but a sort of being – old, wise, profound, and able to teach those who want to learn. Today, try writing a poem in which you describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told you.
Today, we’d like you to write your own poem that muses on love, but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners.
And now for our (optional!) prompt. Poetry is an ancient art, and one that revisits themes that existed thousands of years ago – love, nature, jealousy. But that doesn’t mean that poets live in a sort of pre-history unaffected by technological advances. Emily Dickinson wrote about trains, and I’m rather charmed by this 1981 poem about the “incredible hair” of actors on television. In a more recent…
Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.
Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today.
And now for today’s (optional) prompt! Erasure poetry — also known as blackout poetry — is written by taking an existing text and erasing or blacking out individual words. Here’s a great explainer with examples, and you’ll find another here. Some folks have written whole books of erasures/blackouts, including Chase Berggrun’s R E D (which is based on Dracula), Jen Bervin’s Nets (which is based on…
And now, our (optional) daily prompt. In his poem, “Goodbye,” Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Today, write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.
I didn’t go with the ‘prompt’ for today. Ireland is currently in a difficult situation where protests led by farmers in response to rising fuel costs are bringing the country to a halt.
When I was younger, I used to love following music developments. I went to a lot of gigs and festivals, mostly indie music, but also a lot of house/techno.
And now, here’s our optional prompt for the day! In his poem, “Poet, No Thanks,” Jean D’Amérique repeats the phrase “I wasn’t a poet” multiple times, while describing other things that he instead claims to have been. In your poem for today, use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase.
Sandy soil, some strewn branches From recent high winds Tall red tree-pillars, evenly spread A space for formal matters A clearing Round bee, and small finch, Unseen mites in sandy crevasses Convening, on sunny afternoon, A quorum
Picture from Powerscourt “river walk” in Wicklow, 6th April 2026.
Today, your challenge is to take a page from Catullus and Darwin, and write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.
Finally, here’s today’s optional prompt. In his poem, “Spring Thunder,” Mark van Doren brings us a short, haunting evocation of weather and the change in seasons. Today, we’d like to challenge you to craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.
And now, last but not least, here is today’s optional prompt. In his poem, “Treasure Hunt,” Prabodh Parikh brings us a refreshingly different view of what being a poet is like – that is, if you grew up on the cultural notion of poets being wan and ethereal, or ill and doomed. Parikh’s boisterous pirate of a poet might be an “unreliable” character, but seems like he’d be the life of any party, and…
Speaking of things that are unsettling, it’s now time for our daily prompt — optional, as always! In her poem, “Pittsylvania County,” Ellen Bryant Voigt recounts watching her father and brother play catch with sensory detail and a strangely foreboding sense of inevitability. The speaker watches the scene, but is outside of it – cut off. She’s not so much jealous of the interaction between her…
And now, here is our (optional) prompt for the day! The tanka is an ancient Japanese poetic form. In contemporary English versions, it often takes the shape of a five-line poem with a 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7 syllable-count – kind of like a haiku that decided to keep going.
I have a confession to make, I still haven’t used Claude Code. I have, at times, used LLM Chatbots to help answer questions and even generate some code for me, in a similar way that I would have copy/pasted from stack exchange before LLMs. But I haven’t set up Claude yet.
tags #internet The Domain Name System, or DNS, is a system for establishing globally unique , human-readable names that correspond to various types of network resources, most commonly IP addresses.
I came across the 512kb club a long time ago, and it was very influential in helping me understand how websites work and the impact different kinds of assets or design choices can have on how pages load. As a fan of gemini, it makes sense to me that websites should be as minimal as possible.
These are the tools that I frequently use. I set up this page after discovering this useful blog which interviews people about what they use to get the job done.
I’m calling the protocols discussed below “smallnet protocols”, but actually I don’t know the right name for them…
These are from the Rich Hickey talk on “Design in Practice” at Clojure Conj 2023.
A quick look at some stats about gemini capsules. For those that aren’t aware, gemini is a largely text-based, minimal internet protocol. It is part of what is sometimes called the “smolnet”, an alternative to the mainstream web.
Some notes on the year. Movies/TV Lots of TV shows this year. These are some of the ones that stood out.
One of the nice things about the clojure programming language is how flexible built-in functions are. Like python, clojure is not typed, so you can spend less time worrying about how your functions/methods handle types, and more thinking about the actual data that is being worked on. In this way, it is more of a ‘data-first’ kind of language.
tags #internet Currently, there is a working group at the IETF studying decentralisation in the internet - Decentralisation of the Internet Research Group (DINRG).
Clojure’s core async library recently added a namespace called ‘flow’.
tags #internet In guarding against thieves who ransack coffers, search through bags, and break open cupboards, people are sure to bind them with ropes and cords, secure them with clasps and hasps. This is what common opinion calls being wise.
I dreamed that it is night and I am lying in my bed (the foot of my bed was under the window, and outside the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know that it was winter in my dream, and night-time). Suddenly the window opens of its own accord and terrified, I see that there are a number of white wolves sitting in the big walnut tree outside the window. There were six or seven of them.…