The Atlantic suggests that the end of reading is here. It used to be easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But now its easier to imagine the end of literacy than the end of YouTube. At the End of the World (1921) with Betty Compson and Milton Sills. Public domain.

"Only in silence the word, Only in dark the light, Only in dying life: Bright the hawk’s flight On the empty sky. – Ursula K. LeGuin" You might care to check out the shortlist for the 2026 Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction.

Cockatoos? Five sulphur-crested cockatoos, foraging beneath the Norfolk Island pines of Botany Bay? Well, all right, if you insist. #BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends

Learning to tell a bright cow from a dull one: https://writingslowly.com/2026/07/12/learning-to-tell-a-bright.html

News just in from 2009: "“It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter.” – Techcrunch." Well that didn’t exactly age well. And now there’s an RSS resurgence in the air – from Dave Winer, of course, who made RSS immortal by giving it an audio payload and thereby inventing podcasting.

We’ve been having our regular family disagreement about thinning our bookshelves, which made this article timely: How and why to cull your book collection [via Kottke.org]. On reflection, our bookshelves are very much a working library, more about flow than about stock. Most books pass through.

After live shows & studio recording last month, we're back to work on film preservation. We've posted about Sarutobi Satsuke before on our Insta account. We just finished the Edo Episode, part 2 which features Satsuke in some serious shapeshifting battles! #anime #Japan #cinema #filmpreservation

Odysseus: A name that spells trouble: https://writingslowly.com/2026/07/07/odysseus-a-name-that-spells.html

Watched: The Return 🍿 Odysseus brings the war home with him. As Simone Weil said of The Iliad, the true hero is force itself.

Happy 250th birthday, USA. The defining image in my lifetime of American culture is the hooded man at Abu Ghraib prison. Well, you’re still young and “finding a place to be/ in the early days of a better civilization,” as Dennis Lee’s poem put it. Here’s to the next 250. It’ll improve; it has to.

The ascended Christ of this mural at St. Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague seems so happy I couldn’t help but think of the song by The Postal Service: "They will see us waving from such great heights Come down now, they’ll say But everything looks perfect from far away Come down now, but we’ll stay."

The heart of the craft: an encounter with the spirit of Shokunin: https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/30/the-heart-of-the-craft.html

📚 Spotted in a charity store, the most ambitious book title I can remember. Can anyone beat it?

Samuel Johnson, writing on hope. (More)

Here’s Dr. Johnson on the dangers of quoting others in a commonplace book: "“the pleasure of wantoning in common topicks is so tempting to a writer, that he cannot easily resign it; a train of sentiments generally received enables... https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/23/heres-dr-johnson-on-the.html

Loud and agitated shouting had me alarmed this morning. Sounded like a real bust-up. Then I understood. It’s the World Cup. Messi has scored. Our neighbours are Argentinian and this is only the start. ❤️🇦🇷

"”A student’s understanding of particular subjects forms in collaboration with teachers, peers and the daily friction of being one mind among many.” – W. Ian O’Byrne" A thoughtful article on the messy process that helps kids learn.

How to learn deliberate practice: https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/15/how-to-learn-deliberate-practice.html

Pelicans? Well if you insist. #BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends

Why must sci-fi author Ted Chiang state in The Atlantic that AI is not conscious? I call this La Stilla Syndrome: my Jules Verne-inspired name for the delusion our technology is alive. Chiang doesn’t buy it and nor should we. #SciFi #ArtificialIntelligence #TedChiang #JulesVerne #TechPhilosophy

Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang has words of wisdom about so-called AI consciousness: "💬 “it is fundamentally dishonest to have a machine emit many categories of sentences, including any sentences using first-person pronouns." I sai... https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/07/scifi-writer-ted-chiang-has.html

"💬 ”Roughly speaking, the world is divided into two classes: those who use the Card Index System and those who do not.” Byles, R. B, 1911. The card index system; its principles, uses, operation, and component parts (London: ... https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/07/roughly-speaking-the-world-is.html

"“There’s a great strength in me showing you a chord or a riff or something, and it’s just going from mind to mind, there’s no paper involved. All of what we did in this very studio would be that. It was really an immediate tran... https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/06/theres-a-great-strength-in.html

Currently reading: Eight Million Ways to Happiness by Hiroko Yoda 📚 Japan is a deeply secular country full of shrines, temples, festivals and ceremonies. This book unpacks the paradox by exploring spiritual life in Japan as it’s actually lived, not the rather warped Western fantasy version.

Atomic notes have a long history: https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/31/atomic-notes-have-a-long.html

Bluesky isn't a bubble or an echo chamber, it's a garden. You plant some seeds and pull some weeds, you tend to it with care, and you make it into a space that pleases you when you come to sit in it a while. Other people can plant and tend to their own gardens, if they like. This garden is yours.

I’m very interested in Brett Terpstra’s Mac app, Marked3, launched today on Product Hunt. It’s a utility that gives markdown documents superpowers. I’m testing this out for a week but already expect to be buying it. Anyone else using it? #Markdown #MacApps #WritingTools

"We are very close to a prompt to fan fiction model of publishing." I heard this on the Author Update Podcast and it’s a shift I predicted at the start of 2024: Soon we’ll all be writing the books we want to read.

Two fascinating articles show quite different sides to Japan: Why Japanese companies do so many different things. The internal logic of the world’s strangest corporations Deciphering the Hashihara Castle Town Map: The... https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/25/two-fascinating-articles-show-quite.html

Watched: Resurrection 🍿 An amazing experience. More fragmented than Bi Gan’s previous movies, but easily as engaging. There were many nods to cinema history, and an article by Xinyuan Wang helped. Essential viewing, and not just for the virtuoso 30-minute-long single shot near the end.

Some books on writing: Hidalgo, César A. 2025. Infinite Alphabet: and The Laws Of Knowledge. Allen lane. Fletcher, Angus. 2022. WonderWorks: Literary Invention and the Science of Stories. London: Swift Press. Smith, Emma. 2023. Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers. Penguin Books.

"The expert’s trap is where you start thinking of yourself as having gone beyond the need to learn anything new." What did the legendary Zen maverick Ikkyū Sōjun teach about overcoming the expert’s trap? Find out in The Paradox of Mastery. #ShuHaRi #Learning #Buddhism #ContinuousLearning #Japan

The Paradox of Mastery: Why the Expert Must Remain a Beginner: https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/18/the-paradox-of-mastery-why.html

On Friday we learned our cat, who has visited Writing Slowly several times, has a terminal illness, with just weeks to live. I’m deeply sad. He has been my close companion through years of working from home. To discover I could feel this way about a cat is a harsh gift, but a gift all the same.

"💬 “Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burgl... https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/16/our-conventional-response-to-all.html

Memory isn’t a static recording but a constant act of reconstruction. Every time we revisit a note or a book, we are weaving together the original content with our current environment and past self. "“We construct and recon... https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/16/memory-isnt-a-static-recording.html

Is note-making an “aide memoire” or a replacement for the source? To distill a book into notes on it, is to change our relationship with the original text. Beyond just storing facts we are building a library of our own interp... https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/16/is-notemaking-an-aide-memoire.html

There’s a unique magic in the physical bookshelf. It acts as a spatial memory palace where a spine or a colour can trigger a flood of recollection. ‘Remembering What you Read’ looks at why reorganising a library feels like reorgan... https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/15/theres-a-unique-magic-in.html

ADHD: not straightforwardly a dysfunction. 💬 “It’s best understood as an impulsive motivational drive for novel information”. – Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Aeon.

"💬 “We need to build digital worlds worth protecting.”" — Dr Krista Fisher, on the real manosphere. Womens Agenda

Tsundoku status alert.

My current mood is: Let me sleep, and only wake up after AI is done destroying everything worthwhile, so I can skip to whatever’s left without having to live through the intervening period of pointless turmoil. What’s the future of creative work without human intent?

What's the future of creative work without human intent?: https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/10/whats-the-future-of-creative.html

‘Beginner's mind’ keeps you young — even in your 80s: https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/04/beginners-mind-keeps-you-young.html

Notes about notebooks? Ulkar Aghayeva writes about the history of laboratory notebooks. Aghayeva, U. “A Brief History of Lab Notebooks.” Asimov Press (2026). DOI: 10.62211/52wg-76ye Source: Scott Nesbitt’s The Monday Kickoff - well worth subscribing to. #notetaking #notebooks #historyofscience

I find writing on the train works well. It helps that there’s a good view. Anyone else do this? #writing #notetaking #writingcommunity #photography

Every Zen garden is unique, but recognizable patterns recur too. Perhaps it’s the patterns that enable the diversity. I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters, available now.

Holy mother of cheeses, the Internet is not made out of content: https://writingslowly.com/2026/04/27/holy-mother-of-cheeses-the.html

💬 “For good or ill, a new generation, though raised in the lap of AI, will not be speaking or writing anything like the ‘intelligence’ that raised it.” - Notes on the artificial style of writing. #Zettelkasten #LLM #AIPhilosophy #Writing #Notemaking #AIWriting

Notes on the artificial style of writing: https://writingslowly.com/2026/04/21/notes-on-the-artificial-style.html