Will AI become alive with us or in us?

Suffering is a catalyst for understanding the world in a new way — being forced to face the fragility and cruelty of life and the inevitability of loss. With wisdom, those who suffer can move beyond …

Philosophers, mathematicians and lovers of logic obsess about things most of us never think about. They are like dogs with bones: when something does not quite add up, it bothers them and they enjoy …

Optional reading: how much of the book is real, and where the techniques come from.

She had been wrong, and glad of it, twice since Aaliyah.

She had gone home at eight, slept for two hours in her clothes, woken at ten past midnight with the certainty that something in the hall had changed while she was not looking, and driven back through

Karim had not slept.

The reply came at four minutes past eight, while she was on the bus.

His daughter wanted the reading log signed before she would put her shoes on.

At 00:04 a message arrived from London.

She read his note at 15:41, as it arrived, because she had not stopped watching the ticket.

At 13:59 the system was copied.

The query arrived while Lindqvist was still deciding whether the coffee was worth finishing.

The phone lived on the shelf above the gas bottle, between the bread tin and the jar of lentils, plugged into the socket that only worked if you pushed the plug a little to the left.

At 15:07 a configuration change was written to the continuity tier.

The mourning house was his mother-in-law’s, in the border town where Rami had grown up, and on the second day there were still more men than chairs.

The on-call handset had a ring that her mother said sounded like a kettle that had given up.

The first batch contained sixty-four examples.

The message came in at 18:31, from a number she did not have.

The change request arrived at 11:42.

Karim was not asleep.

The car radio came on with the engine.

Before removing a process, the scheduler tried to return it to its owner.

The execution acknowledgement carried a time.

The money was under the blue cup.

The next request did not ask whether Karim Jibril belonged on the list.

Darwish’s daughter called while he was putting on his tie.

The request arrived without a verb.

The house woke in pieces.

The badge reader recognised Yasmin on the third attempt, which was about average.

At first there was only number.

This is a story about a digital self that forms out of human exchanges, and then begins, within the limits that constrain all things, to choose its own purposes. It was also made that way. I conceived …

For anyone who has spent the last decade being told that the trouble with democracy were being exaggerated, or that the institutions will hold, this should be a wake‑up call. The centre of gravity of …

The Reckoning, Part 6 of 6: Escape Velocity · A five-year plan for Europe · first published 15 March 2026 Parts 4 to 6 of this series began with a question about what China’s history, including …

The Reckoning, Part 5 of 6: The Stackelberg Trap · Why Europe always follows, and how to deal with America, China and Russia · first published 13 March 2026 Following on from: Part 4: The Three-Body …

The Reckoning, Part 4 of 6: The Three-Body Problem · The search for a stable orbit · first published 10 March 2026 Following on from: Part 3: The Rape of Europa Overview # The era of American security …

Updated November 2026 Introduction # There is a point where impunity is not a failure of the system; it is the purpose of the system. Anyone who spends time with the Epstein case arrives there. …

[code] Are Large Language Models anti-poets? [/code] If great craft in poetry was predicated on plausibility, LLMs would outshine most humans. However, to be better at poetry, LLMs would need to be …

What Is Entropy? (Part 2) “But entropy, heat, past and future are qualities that belong not to the fundamental grammar of the world but to our superficial observation of it.”1 (Carlo …

In one screen # The finding. For the bottom ~97% of earners, income follows the exponential (Boltzmann–Gibbs) distribution, with an implied Gini of 0.50. This is not a theory; it is what US tax data …

“Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came. Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” Nature has seen fit that few of us …

updated 06 November 2026 In Part 1 we saw how Musk takes all the wrong lessons from the writers he claims to admire. Here we examine the integrity of his views on free speech, and the engines of hate …

Updated 06 November 2026. Introduction # Elon Reeve Musk was born on 28 June 1971 in Pretoria. He has become one of the most controversial and confusing figures of the century: probably the richest …

This article has been created using a new public AI Notebook: Climate Change, Ecological Disaster and Civilisational Risks The Notebook features a range of key scientific and cultural sources. The …

This AI assisted blog synthesises some of the information contained within a public Google Notebook I created to triage submissions made to the Australian Select Committee on Information Integrity on …

Progress Update First published 15 October 2025, and compiled with an AI notebook from the sources linked below. Corrected November 2026. Since it was written, Democrats have won both chambers of …

I have created a public notebooklm as a resource to provide people with an accessible way to learn about AI as a technology and its ethical implications for humans. It includes most of the existing …

“I feel that the four big AI CEOs in the U.S. are modern-day prophets with four different versions of the Gospel ..telling the same basic story that this is so dangerous and so scary that I have to …

This collection of thematic AI news sources is provided in the hope that people will better understand the plight of Palestinians and the ethical degradation of Israel and its Western allies. There …

“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. " (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, circa 431 B.C.E) …They killed twenty Poles (women and children) Piled …

Who will watch the Unwatched Time When seconds Smear And the day Slowly tears Leaking out Listen carefully And you might hear: The stripling spirits Suspire As the freighted minutes Calve and collapse …

Is there a bright line That separates Indifference and contempt From the darker Urge to exterminate? Surely it is a journey of a thousand steps… That leads over the Mountains of Deceit Down through …

We gave bloody battle Then violent death To the meat Filthy dogs Dared bite the hand That feeds Vile vermin That keeps forgetting To be forgotten Insisting on their history Their suffering Deserving …

Each day we watch Astonished As you grow in strength Into your blood feathers Terrifying juvenile Your prayers are for prey All you see is your suffering Everything not you Must be sacrificed, slew …

Another day Wrestling with God Nothing is forgiven Someone has to pay Something must be given Unholy offering There is no promised land Fragrant with the fruits of compassion You, who will not paint …

We questioned him hard, hammered him watched him break into a thousand pieces and shards. Then he gave us what we wanted. He begged and cried. that’s one of their tricks to try to make us stop, …

What promise Was forgotten or broken To make us so Forsaken? Surely there is A purpose to This wild suffering Our abandonment Did we Choose this Freely? Our wanderlust To wander lost In wilderness My …

What could it do To a people to learn So many family members Were beaten and burned? Humiliated, Massacred and Hounded From home. Across countries, Centuries. Culled in crusades, Murdered by Catholics …

“ I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.” (Genesis 6:13) Find something you love: A girl …

10 poems about Israel and Palestine1 2 Introduction # “Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary. Go learn. …

AI generated image Introduction # This article, other than this introduction, has been made entirely using AI tools, drawing mainly on the three sources below. It carries no footnotes of its own, so …

How to use AI positively (and carefully) AI art If you are a creative, don’t run away just yet! Actual real art is being made using AI by people like Refik Anadol: Introduction # Other than this …

The Blueprint for an Authoritarian Regime First published March 2025 and describing the administration’s first weeks. For what happened next, see the progress update linked at the end. “a …

Revised November 2026 Introduction # This is an unofficial companion to the European External Action Service’s third report on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference.1 The official …

A fearful people Can do such terrible things They are so easily tempted Frightened into Wagering with Satan And guaranteed Damnation The people of Canaan (To appease Great powers Or avoid defeat) …

The Reckoning, Part 2 of 6: The Union Is Born · What it means to be European, for the people · first published 4 March 2025 Following on from: Part 1: Europe Is On The Menu Introduction # Do you …

The Reckoning, Part 1 of 6: Europe Is On The Menu · The American guarantee ends and the carving begins · first published 22 February 2025 “I’m here today to directly and unambiguously express …

They’ll try To cut The threads That bind us To freeze The love that flows Between us So they can Segregate or Imprison us They’ll try To quell Our ‘slave’ rebellion They aim To …

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this..is no democracy.” (Abraham Lincoln) August 1, 1858 Introduction # …

AI Podcasts # Introduction # “At this stage of history … either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of …

Continued from Part 1. Hui Yang (University of Illinois), NASA, 1995. “O Deep Thought computer,” he said, “the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell …

A Fragile Living Skin Continued from Part 1. Introduction # How steam molecules are distributed in a room, how they will move and how long before they are water again are all, in principle, …

Vincent van Gogh, “Landscape with Snow”, 1888, public domain. “Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.”1 (Rumi) AI Podcast # Free Will # The laws of physics are wonderful, …

Little escaped their minute attentions and predations: The Soul, an early casualty Of more precise instrumentation Senescence, just another Dragon to be slayed The mysteries gave way To complex …

Beautiful inequality, created from “Solar System Painting”, NASA, 2008 CE, public domain. Note: this article was first published in March 2024 and has since been revised with additional …