"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

#Spooktober 22: The Spectre Barber

Today’s reading on my Patreon is “The Spectre Barber” by Johann Karl August Musäus translated and collected by Helen Smith in The Decameron of the West (1839).
books and literature

Lolly Willowes

Sylvia Townsend Warner is one of the most interesting literary figures of the 21st century, and Lolly Willowes is one of her finest works, even more stunning if you think it was her debut novel. Self-supporting, intellectually independent, and consistently sceptical of social and religious

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April 26, 2026 9:00 am
books and literature

Fugitive Telemetry

This is book #6 in the Murderbot series (yes, I accidentally skipped #5, I’m circling back to that), and I’m afraid I didn’t like this as much as the others. The whole investigation felt a bit rushed and, though the final twist is interesting in

Read More »
April 24, 2026 8:00 am
architecture, engineering and construction

The Discipline of Inspiration: Valéry and the Algorithmic Mind

Paul Valéry rejected inspiration as miracle, seeing creativity as the discipline of thought in motion. This week, we parallel his notion of mental “operations” with computational procedures in design: iteration, optimisation, constraint, and recombination, and challenge the dichotomy between intuition and automation. Drawing on contemporary

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April 22, 2026 9:00 am
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Lolly Willowes

April 26, 2026

Sylvia Townsend Warner is one of the most interesting literary figures of the 21st century, and Lolly Willowes is one of her finest works, even more stunning if you think it was her debut novel. Self-supporting, intellectually independent, and consistently sceptical of social and religious

Read More

Fugitive Telemetry

April 24, 2026

This is book #6 in the Murderbot series (yes, I accidentally skipped #5, I’m circling back to that), and I’m afraid I didn’t like this as much as the others. The whole investigation felt a bit rushed and, though the final twist is interesting in

Read More

The Discipline of Inspiration: Valéry and the Algorithmic Mind

April 22, 2026

Paul Valéry rejected inspiration as miracle, seeing creativity as the discipline of thought in motion. This week, we parallel his notion of mental “operations” with computational procedures in design: iteration, optimisation, constraint, and recombination, and challenge the dichotomy between intuition and automation. Drawing on contemporary

Read More