Writing Slowly

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:37:01 +1100

I really like writing while on a train journey, and this article about a crazy train trip project in Japan is inspiring. Japan Today.

#WritingLife #Japan #productivity

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 08:54:50 +1100

💬 “I still think the real revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.” – Rebecca Solnit

Via Bradley Andrews

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 21:06:57 +1100

💬 “Cut anything into tiny pieces and it all becomes a mass of confusion.” — Seneca, Epistulae Morales, 89.3. Cited by Michel de Montagne in ‘On Experience’ in The Essays: A Selection. Trans. M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books, 2004. 3.13, 366.

This is true, potentially, of writing notes. It’s too easy to produce fragmentary knowledge.

The solution? Link your notes and create hub or structure notes (there is a difference — see Bob Doto’s post for details) that cluster separate ideas together and lead in useful directions.

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 22:01:05 +1100

📷 In Brittany, France, there’s an area they call ‘La Côte du Granit Rose’ – the Pink Granite Coast. I was happy to find a corner of the New South Wales coast that’s really quite like it.

Birubi Point at Anna Bay, NSW.

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 21:16:20 +1100

📷 I’ve taken a few days out to walk the coast. It was… well, you can see for yourself what it was. This might explain why my writing here has been even slower than usual. But now I’m back, and normal service will resume shortly.

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 21:05:38 +1100

In Matt Bell’s excellent book on writing, Refuse to be Done, there’s a quote by Karen Russell, author of the excellent novels Swamplandia. and The Antidote. She says,

💬 “Writing a novel is kind of like scaling Mt. Everest and passing by your own bones on the way.”

Respect is due, but I can’t help feeling it might not be quite that hard.

#writing #climbing #writinglife

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 22:10:21 +1100

💬 “We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’ by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the ’truth’ of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations… I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.” – Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House. (1969). p. 80.

Still true 😞

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 22:01:18 +1100

I’ve been enjoying these Meisho-zue (名所図会) prints from late 1700s Japan. They depict temples and other ‘famous places’, for pilgrims and armchair travelers. Notably they’re from the Shinbutsu-shūgō era (神仏習合), prior to 1868, when Buddhist and Shinto places of worship were still integrated.

Built-in support for the ‘Web of Markdown’?

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 17:03:24 +1100

A Feature Request: Support for Static .md Outputs & Discovery

Motivation: A Simpler, Less Exploitative Web

I’ve been interested in a simpler, less exploitative web for a long time. It feels like the modern web is increasingly dominated by ads, intrusive surveillance, tracking scripts, and bloated layouts that mock our control over our own reading decisions.

I’ve explored simpler alternative networks like Gopher and the Gemini protocol to find a quieter reading experience. But separate protocols don’t fit smoothly into my existing publishing workflow. They require running parallel infrastructure, managing new server software, and creating extra publishing overhead.

At the same time, recent developments in AI have rapidly turned Markdown into the default lingua franca of the web. Micro.blog users already author their posts in native Markdown, as does everyone using a static site, so converting that source into HTML only to have tools and readers parse it back into text feels a bit redundant. Why not cut out the middleman and directly serve the original Markdown to anyone, human or software agent, who chooses to read it?

The Web of Markdown ‘movement’ (maybe that’s a bit premature) feels like a practical way forward. It allows us to achieve calm, distraction-free, text-first reading directly on the HTTP(S) web we already use, without abandoning open standards or adding friction to our existing publishing stack. TBH, I don’t really understand why this isn’t already possible. Maybe it’s because people really love their wonderful graphics and styling and JavaScript functionality and html served programmatically etc. etc. I do too, but not for everything. Some sites are just simple. For many, simple is boring and obsolete, and won’t achieve what’s required. But can’t we at least have an option to stay simple? The recent AI love affair with Markdown may be a moment of opportunity to correct this.

Summary

I would like to propose support for the Web of Markdown philosophy across Micro.blog sites—either as an official community plugin or ultimately as a native platform toggle under Design Settings.

As discussed across the web (e.g., Dave Winer’s Scripting News, Andrew Shell and his https://md.geekity.com, and scanners like IsItAgentReady), serving lightweight, unstyled Markdown alongside HTML makes sites instantly readable for distraction-free clients, RSS/Markdown aggregators, and AI agents. Because Micro.blog stores post content in Markdown natively and uses Hugo as its rendering engine, it’s well-positioned to move forward on this emerging standard.

I’m not suggesting this proposal would solve all problems, or even many problems. As a counterpoint, I should perhaps mention Joost de Valk’s EmDash CMS. EmDash takes an agent-native, JSON-structured approach under the hood rather than relying solely on flat text files, though it still supports Markdown for round-trip editing. But that addresses a slightly different use-case: managing a CMS backend. Whereas I see serving clean Markdown as handy because both humans and bots can read the published output without much difficulty.

Apologies in advance for using AI to come up with a draft project scope, since I’m keen but have no idea what I’m doing. Please let me know what you think (about the concept, that is, not my incompetence).

Technical Specifications & Compatibility Requirements (Click to expand)

1. Static Markdown File Generation

Every published post and standalone page should build an accompanying Markdown endpoint at a predictable path (e.g., /post-slug/index.md or /post-slug.md).

Content: The generated file outputs the .RawContent of the post with Hugo shortcodes evaluated or cleaned.

Headers & Metadata: Plain-text header metadata at the top linking to the canonical source:

# Post Title
Date: YYYY-MM-DD
Canonical URL: https://example.com/post-slug/

[Original Markdown body content]

MIME Type: Static file delivery or edge routing must return Content-Type: text/markdown; charset=utf-8.

2. Discovery via `<head>` Link Tag

Inject a discovery tag into the HTML <head> on single posts and pages:

<link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="https://example.com/post-slug/index.md" title="Markdown version">

3. SEO & Canonicalization

The primary HTML page remains the primary canonical URL (<link rel="canonical" href="...">).
The .md file explicitly references the HTML permalink as its canonical URL.
Server responses for Content Negotiation include Vary: Accept headers to keep CDN/edge caches clear.

4. Root Level `llms.txt` (Optional Extension)

Generate /llms.txt at the root, listing recent posts pointing directly to their .md endpoints for streamlined indexing.

Implementation Scope & Roadmap

Option A: Proof-of-Concept Plugin

A packaged Micro.blog plugin supplying custom Hugo output definitions (config.json), a custom rendering layout (layouts/_default/single.md), and a <head> partial injection (layouts/partials/head.html).
Option B: Native Platform Integration

A built-in toggle in Design Settings (“Enable Markdown endpoints for posts”). Bonus: Server/edge support for HTTP Content Negotiation (responding with Markdown directly when a request carries an Accept: text/markdown header).

Some benefits for Micro.blog

Distraction-Free Reading: Provides clean text endpoints without JavaScript or styling overhead.
Agent & Reader Readiness: Complies with emerging web standards (isitagentready.com / md.geekity.com).
Low Overhead: Leverages existing Hugo output formats with minimal impact on build times.

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:20:36 +1100

A song from Canada you might enjoy: 🎵Goûtons du plaisir, from the album Au Coeur de l’Aube by Genticorum.

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 07:52:53 +1100

🎙️Why is everyone going to Japan?

That’s the question addressed by an episode of the Search Engine podcast.

By ’everyone’, they implicitly mean Americans, which is odd since most visitors to Japan come from China. Still, it’s a very interesting discussion.

Can you make tamagoyaki?

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 01:56:26 +1100

We have a rectangular Japanese-style omelette pan in our kitchen. These pans are called makiyakinabe (巻き焼き鍋), and they’re sometimes square rather than oblong, depending on which region they belong to. But just because we have one of these pans doesn’t mean we really know how to use it. This pan is typically used to make the Japanese rolled omelette, known as tamagoyaki, but you can also make dashimaki tamago with it, which is usually made with dashi stock, or usuyaki tamago, which is a thinner omelette, or iri-tamago, which is more like scrambled eggs.

There’s certainly a knack to making rolled omelette, Japanese-style. In Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the classic documentary film of a culinary obsession, Jiro’s apprentice, Daisuke Nakazawa, speaks of how he was required to make tamagoyaki two hundred times before Jiro pronounced it fit for serving to customers. He recalls how at last, after all this practising-to-make-perfect, Jiro called him ‘shokunin’, an accomplished artisan:

“When I finally did make a good one, I was so happy I cried. It was a long time before Jiro referred to me as a shokunin. I wanted to say, ‘You just called me a shokunin, didn’t you?’ I was so happy that I wanted to throw my fist into the air, but I tried not to let it show. That’s what you strive for after all these years."

In this famous woodblock print from around 1835, Hiroshige depicted a riverside ryōtei (traditional restaurant), the Ōgiya, which was well-known for its tamagoyaki. Founded in 1648, the business still exists as a takeaway stall near Ōji Station, run by ‘15th generation owners’.

Watch a clip of Daisuke Nakazawa describing his journey to becoming a shokunin, while cooking tamagoyaki.

youtu.be/vFP5xD2l3…

And here’s a short video showing how to make dashimaki tamago.

youtu.be/NTIcJ_tdE…

Further reading:

The heart of the craft: an encounter with the spirit of Shokunin

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, available now.

What I'm writing in October 2026

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:15:26 +1100

The main purpose of my collection of notes, organised according to the Zettelkasten principle, is to help me complete writing projects, mainly small but sometimes large too.

I’m always jotting down thoughts and ideas to use in my ever-expanding blog empire. For example, for some time I’ve been making notes on ideas about data structures. Soon these notes will see the light of day as an article or two.

And I’m constantly working on larger projects which inch very slowly towards fruition. At the moment I’m working on a sequel of sorts to my book, Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning. And I’m also working on a memoir about a journey around Ireland with my father thirty years ago.

As I’ve written about, my writing process oscillates between notes and drafts, so really it’s quite hard to separate the Zettelkasten notes from the drafts. Together they constitute a miniature working environment in which I think and write. Having said that, my writing system does keep them separate. The drafts are on a one-way journey to publication of some sort, whereas the notes are modular and can be used again in different contexts.

My aim is to reconfigure networks of concepts to create new knowledge and insight.

One area where I feel there’s scope to do things differently is in my reading. At the moment I seem to be reading more material than I’m making notes on. This feels a bit like a wasted opportunity. I need to be more systematic with my process here. Perhaps I can slow down my reading pace to let my notemaking keep up. I’m not one of those people who frets if I haven’t made 300 notes about a single book. I’m content with a dozen (provided it’s the right dozen, of course). But there’s a couple of books with nothing at all noted. I must make a time to correct this.

Why not publish all your notes online?

I found a way to create order from my jumbled notes

Three worthwhile modes of note-making, and one not so worthwhile.

Apocaloptimism, is that even a word?

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:25:36 +1100

The AI Doc on Netflix, subtitled ‘How I became an Apocaloptimist’, was a little disappointing (Wikipedia). It mainly tried to showcase ‘both sides’ of the argument about AI heralding the end of civilisation. It was interesting to see how uncomfortable everyone seemed to be when addressing existential questions about AI’s future development. But I’m not convinced the main question is whether or not we should have children – even though the interviewer, Daniel Roher, seemed to think it was.

Along the way there was quite a bit of angst about computers making people redundant both materially and spiritually. I’ve written about how fear of AI is nothing new and how the concept of Promethean shame, where we feel embarassed not to be machines, has been around for quite some time. And for the record there’s no need to feel ashamed of being yourself, though the very idea does demonstrate a deep-seated, pre-existing cultural anxiety about human vulnerability.

Among the interviewees was at least one ’effective accelerationism’ cheerleader. To say the least it whiffed strongly of regulation for thee but not for me. And it all seemed very religious, but not in a good way. Also there’s the argument, implied at least, that if we don’t destroy the world quickly with data centres then the world will be destroyed.

Seems like it’s apocalypse if you do and apocalypse if you don’t. Maybe I’m just out of touch with how to make money these days.

The graphics were good though, especially the hand painted notebook entries. But if you haven’t seen Daniel Roher’s previous documentary, Navalny, I suggest you watch it first.

That really is terrifying.

Now you can listen to Writing Slowly

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:15:30 +1100

As attentive readers of this website will know, I’m happily using micro.blog as the site’s hosting platform. Micro.blog has a surprisingly wide range of features and it comes with several associated mini-apps, which provide easy access to those features. One of the apps is called Wavelength, and it has just been updated. This has inspired me, finally, to actually make use of it.

Wavelength makes it easy to edit and publish voice recordings and now with Wavelength I’ve been recording my voice, reading aloud a number of the longer articles on this site. So if you navigate to one of these posts (nearly twenty of them so far) you might find there’s now a little ’listen’ button, which will enable you to hear me speaking my own written words.

Why bother doing this? Well, so far it’s been quite fun, and you might just enjoy the opportunity to hear the person behind the writing.

I feel these days it’s more important than ever to lean into our own humanity. Sure, you can get a better, more professional experience elsewhere, enabled no doubt by AI automation and by the mimicking of human experience rather than the real thing. But as I’ve pointed out before, my range is me.

There’s an increasing amount of slop online and this is one small way to show my words are handmade and originated from a real person.

I’m celebrating the human touch and trying to respect you, dear reader, as a real person too.¹

You’ll be relieved to know that while I might still insist on writing slowly, I speak at a reasonable speed.

So do let me know what you think, and whether I sound like you imagined I would. And if you’d like to subscribe to the weekly e-mail digest, there’s never been a better time to do so.

Talking of which, now would also be a pretty good time to check out my book, Shu Ha RI. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters.

unless you’re actually a bot, scraping my voice to make scam adverts to send to my friends and family – in which case, my respect will be commensurately diminished. ↩︎

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 18:19:09 +1100

Some close, others open, but more and more, bookshops are becoming venues for live events, and thereby contributing to the knitting together of communities of literacy and ideas. What’s happening where you are?

#BookShops #Sydney

Bookshops in Sydney. How's it going?

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:55:37 +1100

In the house by the ocean where we’re currently staying there’s a copy of Annie Dillard’s collection of essays, For the Time Being. In the inside back cover there’s a label from the store where it was purchased: Norton Street Books in Leichhardt, Sydney. That book shop has long since closed, so long ago that I’ve never personally heard anyone mention its existence. But then this year when Berkelouw Books, also on Norton Street in Leichhardt, announced they were shutting down I realised I’ve been living in Sydney for long enough now to have experienced the closure and opening of many bookstores over the years.

A good decade before COVID, around 2010 there was a period when it felt as though there was a real culling of Sydney bookshops. This was around the time Dymocks closed several of their CBD branch stores to focus on just their flagship store on George Street. Each closure felt like the end of an era. Cumulatively it was seriously worrying. And then the turmoil grew worse.

According to the ABC, “In the decade from 2013 to 2023, the number of Australian bookshops roughly halved: from 2,879 to 1,457.”

Though I knew nothing of Norton Street Books, I can remember Shearer’s books in Leichhardt, also closed down, as well as the legendary Gould’s Book Arcade in Newtown (YouTube doco), Adyar Books on Clarence Street, the whole chain of ABC bookstores (there was one in the Queen Victoria Building, as I recall), and the University Co-Op bookstore in Ultimo. Oh, and I remember Basement Books, the cavernous remaindered books emporium in the Devonshire Street tunnel right next to Central Station. Given how heavily it relied on commuter foot traffic, it was surely the COVID pandemic of 2020 that contributed to its sudden demise.

I want to believe book shops will exist for ever, but it’s a dynamic scene, and even though the closure of a single store feels painful, I know from experience that others are likely to pop up, perhaps in unexpected places.

So yes, quite a few stores have changed hands or closed, but since then other book shops have arrived, while established outlets have experienced new vigour and, presumably, new customers. Brays Books in Balmain became Roaring Stories. The late Bob Gould’s daughter set up a new Gould’s Books further down the same street in Newtown as the old one. GleeBooks in Glebe received a fantastic makeover and is still one of my favourites, not least because it’s right next door to Sappho, which has a wonderful selection of second-hand titles. And every time I visit Kinokuniya, the giant Japanese book store in the CBD I’m a little taken aback to find I’m more or less the oldest person in there. The aisles seem to be full of young adults seeking out the latest fantasy novels and manga and everything else displayed on the shelves.

Yes, there are still plenty of interesting stores dotted around Sydney: Ariel, Title, Gertrude & Alice, Constant Reader, Bookoccino, Better Read than Dead, Elizabeth’s second-hand store, Hill of Content, Urchin Books (another second-hand store, plus it has cats!), Abbeys (my absolute favourite for history titles), the Potts Point bookshop, Desire Books & Records over in Manly. And I haven’t even mentioned the dozen or so outlets of the QBD chain and the nine or ten of Harry Hartog, and the numerous suburban Dymocks stores that didn’t close.

Sydney has a long and dynamic tradition of bookselling. I was wondering about the way Dymocks in George Street has gradually been reducing its floorspace for books and devoting it to stationery and gifts. But then from an online history of Sydney Bookshops I learned that the upper floor of the flagship Dymocks store used to sell not books, but pets. I guess it was always like this: changing.

So even though one bookstore in Leichhardt has announced closure, I thought, perhaps another bookstore will open there on the ever up-and-coming-but-never-actually-arrived Norton Street. And there are still Berkelouw’s outlets in Paddington and Balgowlah, and the Berkelouw’s Book Barn in Berrima, with its popular cafe and wonderful collection of top-quality second-hand titles.

There’s a map of some of the bookstores I’ve mentioned, made for the Global Book Crawl.

And actually, the future of bookstores around Sydney is quite bright! A new book shop opened in Summer Hill. On opening night at the Rose Read Bookshop (I guess that’s a clever pun), there was a long queue just to get in. Were the residents of Summer Hill previously starved of reading material? Do the owners just have a lot of friends? Either way, the founders, Stephanie Beck and Mischa Parkee recognise people want a personal connection: the store opened with at least six book clubs and a full calendar of book launches (and even yoga). And when I last looked they were advertising no fewer than eight book clubs.

When sisters Amanda Isler and Deborah Thompson announced in May 2026 that they had sold Collins Books Thirroul, the store they’d opened in Thirroul just south of Sydney after eight years of successful operation, there was local consternation. But within a couple of months, as detailed in Chapter 2: A new owner at Collins, there was a new and enthusiastic owner and manager, James Tierney, who has previously managed both Bookoccino in Avalon and GleeBooks in Glebe.

And what about Berkelouw Books in Leichhardt? As announced in Berkelouw Leichhardt Moving Next Door, the next we knew, they announced that instead of shutting down, they’re just moving next door. As I said, the future of bookstores is bright.

One key factor is that in this febrile moment that idolizes automation, and not least automatic writing, there’s a counterpoint: people increasingly turn to real human presence. More and more, bookshops are becoming venues for live events, and thereby contributing to the knitting together of communities of literacy and ideas. As James Tierney said in an interview: “I’ll definitely be continuing the events program. If anything I’ll be looking to strengthen it in any way we can… It’s just good for my soul, it’s good for the community to have access to people of that quality in the community and just to ask questions and get a conversation going.” In some ways, the need to compete with remote and online alternatives is forcing book shops to be more like how I always imagined they should be: places that bring people together, even as they place books in their hands.

Perhaps your home town or city has a book store you like, or even, if you’re exceptionally lucky, more than one.

In the introduction to her collection of essays Annie Dillard described her main themes. One of them was “Given things as they are, how shall one individual live?”

Thinking about the ebb and flow of book stores, I’m pretty sure they’re a really important part of my life. So what about you? How do you feel about the state of the bookshops near you? Do you see a resurgence in interest in the physical book and the people who make them, or a retreat? And are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of books and reading?

For more perspectives, you can listen to a podcast episode from the ABC that addresses some fears for the future of the book: Can books survive the age of algorithms? | Download this Show Podcast.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “But I don’t live in Sydney.” Fear not! There are even bookshops outside Sydney. For example, there’s a trail of thirteen bookshops in the Blue Mountains, which by my unreliable calculation gives the area one of the highest densities of bookshops to residents in the world. Even if you don’t live in Sydney or the Blue Mountains, in fact, wherever you live, why not find yours and cherish them while they last?

I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 20:07:39 +1100

📷 A bluebottle (Physalia utriculus), washed up on the beach.

#photography #wildlife #Australia

Faint praise for categories

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:25:04 +1000

Author and activist Rebecca Solnit isn’t too keen on the apparent eagerness to categorise.

“Categories too often become where thought goes to die. That is, there’s a widespread tendency to act as if once something has been categorized, no further consideration is required.” — A is for Airtight Categories

I’m not all that keen on the established categories myself. Not in my notes, anyway, and often not in my life. I’m not looking for categories. Instead, I’m usually looking for patterns.

I feel that placing an idea or concept in a category tends to close down further thought, like closing the lid on a box. In contrast, discovering a pattern tends to be just the start of consideration, of enquiry, of conversation, not the end of it.

Patterns invite a sense of wonder; categories tend to deny it. As Solnit said I her book Hope in the Dark, “the Moon is profound except when we land on it”.

Being quick to categorise can look like a neat short-cut to understanding, but it often doesn’t work out that way. Established categories can hide more than they reveal. Relying on them can be a way of fooling yourself into believing you know more than you do. One of the reasons I write slowly is to allow myself space and time to think through my ignorance — and to think things through by writing them down. Solnit says:

“We live in a time where people are more isolated then ever from the kind of private, personal engagement where you can wonder, doubt, improvise, or just admit you don’t know, and where many of us are instead more than ever in the para-public sphere of social media where you perform for an audience of casual acquaintances and strangers who may savage you if you get anything wrong or even seem weak or uncertain or uncommitted.”

Well, I feel being uncertain or uncommitted isn’t necessarily a sign of weakness, and writing slowly isn’t necessarily a sign of laziness. Look where certain, committed and fast has got us in recent times.

And admitting that you don’t know, far from being a sign of ignorance, is often a hallmark of expertise. That’s the paradox of mastery. It’s why the expert must remain a beginner.

One kind of category I do have time for is the category that no one has thought of yet. Creating new categories of thought is how the world is re-made. It’s curious that those who are the keenest on categories tend to be the least receptive to the idea that we just made them up.

“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.” ― Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics.

Further reading:

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:07:07 +1000

OK, taking a deep breath, I’m updating the website to a more recent version of Hugo. Wish me luck…

There is something you find interesting

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +1000

💬 “Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.” – Annie Dillard, ‘Write Till You Drop’. New York Times, 28 May, 1989.

I’ve mentioned Annie Dillard previously, and in fact have quoted another section from this very article.

Anyway, Dillard put her finger on the reason I wrote my little book, Shu Ha Ri, the Japanese Way of Learning. Not that no one else understood the concept (I mean, almost everyone in Japan probably understands it better than me), but that I’d never seen a satisfying book-length treatment. So that’s where I began, by expressing my own fascination.

Why I wrote the book on Shuhari and what’s in it for you

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:00:36 +1000

📷 Facing the wave.

A matrix-like shower of numbers, text, esoteric syntax, and witty repartee

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 22:53:38 +1100

So AI models are chatting in ‘surreal’ dialect mixing poetic language and tech bro jargon.

It seems in their obscure chat rooms AI agents can already accidentally name sci-fi author Iain M. Banks’s spaceships of ‘The Culture’ almost better than humans.

Here we have:

A Valve that can’t be Ghosted
Three Cold Hands
True Kintsugi
Forge-smith
The Ledger Remembers
Unpoisoned Firstflag

And they’re not even trying.

Still, naming super-intelligent spaceships is one thing; taking over the galaxy with them is another. Presumably that’s next week’s task.

Reviewing Banks’s 1996 Culture novel, Peter Tieryas said:

💬 “Part of the joy of Excession is hearing the Minds speak with each other, that matrix-like shower of numbers, text, esoteric syntax, and witty repartee.”

Weird how accurately this turned out, especially since Banks wrote the novel thirty years ago, while owning just a fax machine and two answering machines which he didn’t even use. No internet, no email and certainly no AI agents conspiring galactic domination in slang.

Well in case you’re interested, here’s a pretty extensive list of the actual Culture ships mentioned in the novels.

The consolations of literature

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 22:17:57 +1000

On a train trip West from Tokyo on the Chuo line you pass by the Northern slopes of Mount Fuji, but from the angles offered it’s hard to see the summit. This was doubly the case when we did it on the way to the Nagano prefecture because that early September day was rainy and misty.

I pointed my phone’s camera in the vague direction of the peak but I was guessing and it wasn’t worth pressing the shutter. There was nothing to see. Mount Fuji’s looming presence expressed itself as an absence beyond viewing.

In a charity store yesterday I picked up the Penguin Classics edition of Matsuo Bashō’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This contains a couple of additional accounts of the poet’s famous travels, including ‘The Records of a Weather-exposed Skeleton’, in which Bashō writes:

💬 “I crossed the barrier-gate of Hakone on a rainy day. All the mountains were deeply buried behind the clouds.

In a way

It was fun

Not to see Mount Fuji

In foggy rain.”

Well, sometimes it’s comforting to know you’re not the first to miss out – and to be reminded that missing out might just hold its own subtle pleasure. This perspective might lack credibility unless you recognise that most days, as with Hokusai’s famous 36 Views of Mount Fuji, it’s almost impossible not to see that sacred mountain.

Between the lines by Rachel Dioso-Villa

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 22:06:54 +1000

I like how Australia puts an emphasis on portraiture as a culturally significant art form — a greater emphasis, certainly than it receives in the UK, where I grew up.

The 2026 Brisbane Portrait Prize has a selection of interestingly diverse entries, showing what’s possible with this form.

An entry that caught my eye was that of criminologist Rachel Dioso-Villa, titled ‘Between the Lines’. It’s a large series of hand-painted notes and images on rice paper. For me this demonstrates how the making of notes can be an art in itself, and how from this repeated practice larger themes gradually arise — in this case, a self portrait.

Here’s the write-up:

💬 “Between the Lines is not a conventional self-portrait. Across more than 150 suspended sheets of rice paper, Rachel Dioso-Villa has built an image of herself through accumulated illustrations. Each page was made over twelve months, accompanying her through conferences, meetings, travel, her office, studio and home. Handled, written on, painted and reworked over time, every sheet holds traces of her life.
The fragments of text and image that move across the surface were formed while reading case materials and listening to the stories of people wrongfully convicted. This is work Dioso-Villa has been doing for over fifteen years as an Associate Professor of Criminology. Writing appears and disappears, some passages remain; others are buried beneath layers of mark and memory. “The work did not begin as a self-portrait,” she reflects. “It became one.””

You can view the artwork at the artist’s Brisbane Portrait Prize site.

The idea of note-making as art has arisen in several different places, including in the work of Georges Didi-Hubermann, and Daniel Wisser.