• So-Called AI

    Having been doing a lot of thinking about the technology the press insists on calling “AI,” I decided to compare the today’s three major players in the space l: Google Bard, Microsoft Bing, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. I made the same request of all three platforms (worded in exactly the same way. It was a topic…

  • Fuzzy Slippers

    In which the author opts for comfort and inadvertently creates some discomfort.

  • Love Story

    Barry swung the rubber mallet with surprising force, hitting Devon’s upper arm with a crushing impact. There was an audible crack; Devon bit his lower lip, but didn’t make a sound. His eyes glistened with tears — both his good eye, and the one nearly closed by huge, puffy, purple contusions — as he reached…

  • Treatment

    First, a warning. I am writing this under the influence of drugs. Well, one drug, really. And under medical supervision. Any typos, grammatical error-free, or digressions into hallucinatory nonsense will be blamed on the drugs. Don’t start with me. I’ve suffered from serious depression for my entire life. I’m not going to bore you with…

  • Division and Unity

    For the past few years I’ve seen a lot of people – primarily white conservatives – wailing and hand-wringing about this or that call for justice “trying to divide us”. I have also seen quite a few people – again, mostly white conservatives – saying that the leaked Supreme Court draft intended to eliminate Roe…

  • Wolfe, Delany, and VanderMeer

    Notice: This will mean relatively little to most of you. If you wish, think of it as a bit of insight into how my mind allegedly works, or of the things that fascinate me. Far back in the reaches of my childhood I stumbled across a book by Gene Wolfe titled The Shadow of the…

  • Last Call

    This was our first date. We’d met online through a relationship service, one of those companies specializing in “sophisticated computer matching algorithms.” We’d been identified as “highly compatible,” and after a few email exchanges and phone calls had decided to take a chance on a real-world meeting.

  • Art and Context

    I found this graphic essay on the experience of viewing art in a museum to be fascinating in a number of areas. The setting in which we view visual art imposes its own context on what we are seeing, and on what we feel. It links together in some ways with the concept of historical…

  • the right time

    The Beat literary movement came at exactly the right time and said something that millions of people of all nationalities all over the world were waiting to hear. You can’t tell anybody anything he doesn’t know already. The alienation, the restlessness, the dissatisfaction were already there waiting when Kerouac pointed out the road. ― William…

  • A Specter of Peace

    With tomorrow’s twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, we will be subjected to endless displays of jingoism and rah-rah “kill ’em all” speeches, but precious little reflection on how the US laid the foundations for the attack, and how its response has ensured that we will never again live with…

  • Nudge

    “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” – Tom Stoppard I try, Tom. I’ve been trying my damnedest ever since I was a child. I’m not seeing much success, but perhaps I am merely too close to the world…

  • Metaphors

    Personally, I need to see the world through metaphors, symbols and images. It is through images that I can engage meaningfully with the world. The personalising of this invisible notion of the spirit is necessary for me to fully understand it. Nick Cave via his newsletter, The Red Hand Files #136

Want to get In touch ?