Writing Slowly

5 Oct 2026

A song from Canada you might enjoy: 🎵[Goûtons du plaisir](https://youtu.be/zYj-R2AXzVs), from the album [Au Coeur de l’Aube](https://genticorum.bandcamp.com/album/au-coeur-de-laube) by

5 Oct 2026

Why is everyone going to Japan? That’s the question addressed by an episode of the [Search Engine](https://www.searchengine.show/whys-everybody-going-to-japan/) podcast. By ’everyone’, they

5 Oct 2026

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

5 Oct 2026

The main purpose of my collection of notes, organised according to [the Zettelkasten principle](https://writingslowly.com/2025/08/10/is-there-a-zettelkasten-method.html), is to help me complete

5 Oct 2026

*The AI Doc* on Netflix, subtitled ‘How I became an Apocaloptimist’, was a little disappointing [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_AI_Doc:_Or_How_I_Became_an_Apocaloptimist). It mainly

2 Oct 2026

As attentive readers of this website will know, I’m happily using [micro.blog](https://micro.blog) as the site’s hosting platform. Micro.blog has a surprisingly wide range of features and it

28 Sep 2026

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

27 Sep 2026

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

27 Sep 2026

 📷 *A bluebottle (Physalia utriculus), washed up on the beach.* #photography #wildlife #Australia

27 Sep 2026

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

22 Sep 2026

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

21 Sep 2026

> 💬 “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

21 Sep 2026

 📷 Facing the wave.

21 Sep 2026

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

20 Sep 2026

On a train trip West from Tokyo on the Chuo line you pass by the Northern slopes 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

20 Sep 2026

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

19 Sep 2026

Before the freak-out about em-dashes in AI-generated text I didn’t even know how to produce one. I’d just copy and paste them as needed. But since the Great Em-dash Emergency, I learned it’s

19 Sep 2026

> “What do they do, > > the singers, tale-writers, dancers, painters, shapers, makers? > > They go there with empty hands, > > into the gap between. > > They come back with things in their

17 Sep 2026

![A rocky shoreline extends into a foamy sea under a cloudy sky, with distant city lights and a few illuminated houses perched on a

15 Sep 2026

> 💬 “Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.” > ― E.M. Forster, A Room with a

15 Sep 2026

I’m intrigued about the opening of a new library wing at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). It has a world-first, tech enabled cataloguing system, called [The

15 Sep 2026

The book selection for the month was 📚 *The Mulai*, by Munir Hachemi, and I posted [my thoughts](https://writingslowly.com/2026/08/26/thoughts-on-the-mulai-a.html) online. To sum up, it was a

14 Sep 2026

Compliment this with: [Jules Verne could have told us AI is not a person](https://writingslowly.com/2023/05/23/jules-verne-could.html) > 💬 Sadly, not just tech. > >

14 Sep 2026

 📷 Lounge lizard

14 Sep 2026

 📚Currently reading: [My year in paris with gertrude stein](https://micro.blog/books/9780241457801) by Deborah Levy.

7 Sep 2026

📷 Late afternoon at the ocean baths. 

5 Sep 2026

“He’s like Jesus with a plow, and we’ve gotta walk beside him with our hands on that plow if we’re going to learn anything from him.”. An apprenticeship in writing, with Wendell Berry. |

1 Sep 2026

‘Renaming Lake Ontario’ has the form of a classic mafia loyalty test. The Don sets an absurd, demeaning small task, to learn who’ll accept the subsequent steps. Google keeps passing. They

31 Aug 2026

The consistently inspiring online writer Brennan Brown ‘confesses’ to being a compulsive writer. > “Twenty sheets a day, or 2,000 words, or one essay every single day for eleven straight

27 Aug 2026

Thinking about the late [Yayoi Kusama](https://yayoi-kusama.jp/en/news4518/) today. We remembered our visit to the art gallery in her home town of

26 Aug 2026

> **The Mulai**, Munir Hachemi, tr. Julia Sanches ([Fitzcarraldo Editions](https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/the-mulai/) 978-1804272732, June 2026; [Coach House

25 Aug 2026

 Finished reading: [The Mulai](https://micro.blog/books/9781552455197) by Munir Hachemi 📚 — recommended by

23 Aug 2026

As Jim Mitchell says, [Indieweb is punk](https://indiewebispunk.net/), and clearly I like spinning my own threads, but I do have a question: Since you still need to *rent* a domain name to get on the

21 Aug 2026

Watched: [The Invite](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/950028) 🍿very funny and quite poignant, with some great performances. I’m now keen to see the Spanish original.

19 Aug 2026

Is your note collection making or unmaking the world? A reflection on institutional collecting, personal note archives, and why output matters more than input.

18 Aug 2026

> “The British Museum is not a good thing in and of itself. It is good only to the extent that its influence in the world is for the good. The collection is a starting point, an opportunity, an

13 Aug 2026

Dave Winer has said WordPress really needs a simple, normal writing interface and I couldn’t agree more. We’re hardly alone and it turns out they’ve been listening.

11 Aug 2026

Author David Kadavy made a fantastic podcast a while back about the contrast between Leonardo and Raphael: [Leonardo mind, Raphael world](https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/leonard-mind-raphael-world/).

10 Aug 2026

![A rocky cliffside at North Head, Sydney, overlooks the ocean with waves gently crashing against the shore and some greenery in the

10 Aug 2026

Do you ever feel there’s too many ready-made answers that don’t fit your needs? Me too. That’s why I’m exploring an alternative: ’living questions’. Not quite Rilke, but also not *not*

10 Aug 2026

Instead of chasing after easy answers, the poet Rilke urged a young artist to “live the questions”. Sound advice maybe, but which questions really matter, and how can we go about living them?

3 Aug 2026

From time to time I venture opinionated answers to questions people have about making notes — and right now is one of those times. *NB: A Zettelkasten is a simply the German term for a box with

3 Aug 2026

The idea of reading *continuous* narrative may be relatively recent. For example, the Bible is arranged in many places with a long sequential narrative, and some have seen it as ‘the greatest story

3 Aug 2026

A question I asked on Hyde’s [under/over](https://lazybea.rs/ovr-076/): > Before we find our own voice, we usually copy our mentors or heroes. Who was the teacher or model that inspired you when

2 Aug 2026

📷 🍳Sunday morning is time for shakshuka. ![A dish of shakshuka - baked eggs topped with herbs, crumbled cheese, and a tomato-based sauce is served in an oval ceramic bowl on a wooden

2 Aug 2026

 Currently reading: [Wise Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life](https://micro.blog/books/9780349146225) by Frank

28 Jul 2026

I’m delighted to be featured in Hyde’s intriguing series *Under/Over*, where bloggers are asked for their thoughts on what they find under-rated and over-rated. I have opinions on Zettelkasten,

27 Jul 2026

 Currently reading: [Wise. Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life](https://micro.blog/books/9780349146225) by Frank

27 Jul 2026

> I made the twenty photographs that accompany the text of [Shu Ha Ri](https://writingslowly.com/shuhari-book) as part of a personal learning process, inspired by David Ulrich’s *Zen Camera*. I was

20 Jul 2026

📷 A pair of cockatoos, feeding each other while scavenging. #BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends ![Two white cockatoos are perched near a street corner, with one eating a