Give us smaller tips I like what you write on Medium. Honestly, it’s nice. But I’m not gonna tip you three or four dollars for it. Sorry. If I did it for you, I’d have to do it for the next article I enjoyed as well. …

AI could finally force us to step away from the drivel and finally start creating works that are original and, above all, beautifully weird. Bring on the human creative spirit.

Apple, Google and who knows who else are readying themselves to release AR headsets that promise to change the way we do computing forever. It’s going to be awful. The problem is human connection. We all know that connecting with others is one of the most reliable ways to improve…

I’m moving my tech posts to a new publication. — The history of humanity has been shaped by the technology it uses. The plough, the loom, the printing press, computers, smartphones and AI: they have all had a profound affect on the history of our species. Not always a good one. Or, at least, not an easy one. Transition is…

Substack has been making waves with its Notes feature in recent weeks. Yes it has some real vulnerabilities around moderation, exposed in Chris Best’s disastrous interview with Nilay Patel of The Verge, but it is already getting traction with writers on the platform. The very fact that those using the…

In his 1984 essay collection, the writer of Lord of the Flies says: it would seem that the act of creation is as strange to the writer as to his reader. For William Golding, there is a mystery to the writing process that evades even the writer themselves. The ‘act…

The right opening line can make or break a work of fiction. It’s the hook that draws us in and presents the narrative question the rest of the text promises to answer. It is a vital element of worldbuilding in the way it sets the tone of the story. The…

I want to write faster. I want to. But I’m slow as hell. But you know what? Slow is better than nothing. Slow still means it exists. That’s kinda all that matters. Here’s the latest episode of Kingdom. In my mind, this is an important one. …

Sometimes the earth has to shift to make us pay attention. Someone invents something revolutionary; a person we know passes away; one country is invaded by another. These are keystone moments and we latch onto them to navigate our way through each day, mapping them onto the moments of our…