Show a child a Russian doll “Babushka” and watch their delight as they open up one by one getting smaller and smaller. Each doll is more specific, more concentrated as the outer shell gives way to the inner details, and you can’t reach that detail without passing through the shell first. They’re also very cute.
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There is a particular kind of anxiety that doesn’t announce itself as fear. It arrives as a vague sense that everyone else has sorted something out and you haven’t. I’ve seen it when the subject of using AI comes up in discussions with colleagues like researchers, educators, actors. These are all people with decades of
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There are two conversations happening about artificial intelligence and creative work, and I find both of them exhausting. The first is the anxiety spiral: AI is going to replace writers, researchers, educators, artists. The work we’ve spent careers developing is being automated out of existence. The second is the dismissive shrug: it’s just autocomplete, serious
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The high pampas of southern Patagonia reminded me, immediately and unexpectedly, of home. Not the lush, subtropical home of southeast Queensland, but the older, drier home of the Darling Downs: flat country, big sky, occasional hills rising without particular justification from the plain. The grasses are a different gold. The animals are different animals. But
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There’s a moment, somewhere in the roaring 40s, when you look out over the water and realise you are genuinely far from anywhere. The Chilean archipelago extends for hundreds of kilometres south of Puerto Montt — islands upon islands, most of them uninhabited, unsuitable for human habitation, apparently indifferent to human existence. It is exhilarating
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