Tag Archives: George Orwell

Artificial Language

TL;DR: AI writing is like human writing. Of course it is, since its model is human writing. But then what AI produces is like bad human writing.

My sources include Plato, Wendell Berry, George Orwell, E. B. White, William Deresiewicz, Hadley Freeman, Andrew Kay, Kenneth G. Crawford, Hollis Robbins, Yuval Noah Harari, William Egginton, Megan Fritts, and Vi Hart.


About preparing certain seeds for human consumption in an infusion:

For sensory attributes, I’m admittedly Platonic and believe that since coffee is a fruit, it should taste something like a fruit. (And it’s not just any fruit – it’s a cherry!) My roasting philosophy comes from the same conviction. Generally, I’m after bright, juicy, fruity, syrupy goodness.

Thus Caleb Bilgen, founder of Ánimo Coffee Roasters in Asheville, North Carolina.

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From a terrace beneath an awning, a low wall obscured by ivy, oleander, and quince; on the other side, a lawn with a jungle gym; beyond this, a weeping willow and a small white house beneath umbrella pines

What I see as the sun rises
Altınova, Ayvalik, Balıkesir
September 5, 2025

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The Miraculous

The miracles recounted in the Gospels are not violations of the laws of nature, because the Evangelists had no conception of those laws in the first place. So I argued in a post of June, 2022. Having encountered resistance to the argument, I return to it now.

Man wrapped in towel stands under bare trees near a ladder down to the sea; other people walk past in their winter coats
One person did swim in the Bosphorus
here at Kireçburnu on New Year’s Day, 2024

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Miracles

This is inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s Villette. After reading this 1853 novel a second time in the summer of 2018, I put some passages I liked into a LaTeX file. I added some commentary and came up with a document more than 90 A5 pages long. I recently reread it and was reminded how much I had enjoyed the novel. I thought some of my commentary could be adapted to stand alone as a blog post – this one.

Man in a field, sack over left shoulder, casts seeds with his right hand
The Sower,” 1850
Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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