Writing

Within five minutes of leaving the station, smoothly reaching 280kmh, the scenery has already gone from glossy urban, small children watching the trains from the footbridge between department store blocks, through industrial factories, acres of intricate steelwork and plumes of steam, to the greenery of Taiwan between its cities. In the middle distance are the ubiquitous mountains, wearing clouds gathered close. The ground nearer is very flat, squares of rice growing, trees, blocky buildings....

This, here, is a good exercise and analysis for any of us who write online (or write at all, I suppose, but for most of us that’s online). Blink if you’re human If you haven’t read it before reading this – and you should read it at some point, at least – it teases apart what could count as “writing with AI”, and argues that rather than either getting all ban-heavy, or requiring labelling of AI-written material, better simply for those of us who write for ourselves to be transparent about how we do what we do....

I had a light-bulb moment the other day. George Michael’s music is a garden, not a journey. That may make a kind of intuitive sense to you. More likely you’re wondering if I’m mad. For all I know you’re not in my age-group and have no idea who I’m talking about or why. For now, hold the thought, at least, that music can be like a garden, or like a journey, and that these can be contrasted....