Claire Keegan’s novella Small things like these is very sweet and the ending is so triumphant and satisfying and punk rock that it’s going to stay with me for a very long time. I leave this rare book recommendation without a quote or much of a description simply because I don’t want to ruin anything. But what I will...

In November 1967 Italo Calvino gave a lecture called Cybernetics and Ghosts where he talked about writing machines and the future of literature: ...will we have a machine capable of replacing the poet and the author? Just as we already have machines that can read [...] will we also have machines capable of...

I spotted this quote by Shirley Hibberd on the side of an enormous glass case, just outside the departures gate at SFO: Let us not despise the day of small things. A windowsill garden is better than no garden, and the dark area where cats quarrel and damp makes patches of unsightly mould, may be made bright with...

Mandy Brown: ...reading isn’t about reaching empathic dead ends, or recruiting platitudes about how we must understand each other [...] To reduce reading to the practice of empathy is to divorce it of its real power and pleasure: to enjoy the fruits of another person’s creative effort, to think with the writer and...

Whenever someone tries to impress me with a job title I feel sorry for them. Like when a child tries to impress me by explaining that “Wolverine is cool.” Look, kid: I basically invented Wolverine. I’ve been thinking about Wolverine since before you were born. Wolverine and me are best buds how dare you come to me...

There’s a line from Rutherford Craze’s latest note that hit me like a piano tumbling out of a six story building: When we ask Midjourney to draw an ox, it does not think of home. ChatGPT will never invent a new calligraphy technique, because it has no wrists to feel uncomfortable. That link points to Phaedra...

Last week I picked up the EP-1320 Medieval and I’ve been tinkering with it all weekend. Besides it’s buck-wild look, it comes with a bunch of expertly recorded medieval samples: flutes, bowed harps, gitterns, reeds, trumpets, bells, battle toms, rowdy peasants, and coconut horse hooves. This makes it sound like a...

This is the sort of book I usually hate. By law books about writing are so desperate to explain the world to me that I struggle to keep my eyes open. I don’t have much patience when I feel someone’s talking down to me, with them having figured the universe out already. Isn’t it always more exciting when a writer is...

This is the sort of book I usually hate. By law books about writing are so desperate to explain the world to me that I struggle to keep my eyes open. I don’t have much patience when I feel someone’s talking down to me, with them having figured the universe out already. Isn’t it always more exciting when a writer is...

This morning was a total stinker. I woke up with a dull headache, teeth grinding, fists clenched. Sometimes my body becomes haunted, a vessel for a thing; total and all consuming. It could be a conversation the day before or a problem I’m trying to solve, it doesn’t really matter what that the thing is. These...

I have a terrible admission to make and you may never forgive me. It’s taken far too long, so please don’t be mean about this. Look, I’m already on my knees apologizing and you don’t have to make this weird, okay? But this weekend I finally got my copy of Indian Street Lettering by Pooja Saxena. I know! I’m sorry! I...

Huh: FragCoord is a real-time GLSL fragment shader editor. Write shader code on the left, see the result rendered instantly on the right. No setup required — just start typing. That’s from the docs that explains how this website is Codepen but for shaders. Each example is hypnotic and fun but from a totally...