WARREN ELLIS LTD Posts

I have two “AI” devices in a drawer. I’ve tried various different forms of AI. AI tops every Google search now. I still have Perplexity, which I use for a particular kind of deep research – it speeds up sourcing, like a good search engine was supposed to. It doesn’t get used often. I’m sure I could use AI to make myself various kinds of digital tools, but I personally would much rather buy them from the people who made them. I could use coupons to obtain polyester clothes from Temu if I didn’t give a shit about anything, and I tend to put “vibe coding” in the same bucket. I’m done.

There was a time where I had a window on the world. And then the platforms and tools that provided it ceased interoperability, became locked rooms, and were given to robots to run. By 2018, the joy and utility of these new tools were gone. And the people who achieved that are the same people who want to shove “AI” into our lives. I am tired of people somehow thinking this time will be different: that this time we will all be gifted the magical tool that will change our lives and neither it nor we will be fucked over next week by its actual owners.

Every few weeks I write a note saying “this will be the last note I write about AI for a while” and literally the next day someone pisses me off with their rented-robot-mule bullshit and I have to rant it out of my system again.

After 49 years in flight, NASA just had to switch off part of Voyager 1. Chatbots are about to serve you a lot more ads. Physicist David Gross says the chances of us being around in fifty years “are very small.” White House directs expedited review of ibogaine among other psychedelics for medical purposes, which would amuse the shit out of anyone who read FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL.

(Artist uncredited, link here)

OPERATIONS: Need to get ten pages out the door today
STATUS: 7hrs 15 mins sleep – didn’t work enough yesterday, too much screen time in the evening, hence poor sleep, apparently.
READING: THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli (UK) (US+)

—When you think of it, he continued, the first half of the twentieth century was just that: a titanic confrontation between artists. Stalin, Hitler, Churchill. After them came the bureaucrats, because the world needed a rest. But today the artists are back. Look around you. Wherever you look, there is nothing but avant-garde artists who, instead of depicting reality, are busy creating it. Their style is the only thing that has changed. Today, instead of the artists of yesteryear, we have reality-show personalities. But the principle is the same.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

I should be pissed off that I’ve been sleeping so poorly this week. As of this morning, the only thing I’m really irritated by is having to use reading glasses. The worst thing about the reading glasses is that I’m practically blind for a couple of minutes after I take them off. Actually, no. The worst thing is having to fucking wear them. I’ve been undergoing standard age-related eyesight degradation for years – reading under strong light and using my phone to read ingredient lists and refusing to wear glasses because I always had excellent eyesight and my face has never suited glasses. I remember going to Harrods to try and find a pair of shades that fit my face well, and after trying six pairs, the assistant hummed and said “…Yes. Sir is difficult.”

OPERATIONS: Yesterday was 500 words and moving a complete episode of something out, today is newsletter and getting into a prose project and then probably sowing some more seeds that won’t germinate
STATUS: worst insomnia jag in years: third night in a row, 6hrs sleep.
READING: THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

On Saturday I went into London to see Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore play at EARtH, and it was as marvellous as I hoped.

On the way, I stopped off in Spitalfields for dinner, and read some more of HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY, Molly Crabapple (UK) (US+), which is entering its fourth printing despite only having been out for a few days. It is her best book, and clearly going to make the bestseller lists. I texted her a bit while I was standing in line at EARtH. It’s not lost on me that probably fifteen years ago we were having a similar conversation in similar circumstances about my book GUN MACHINE.

Not gonna lie: I have a nice life.

New watch from Sputnik1957.

Back to normal tomorrow.

I have sowed 120 seed modules, planted 15 raspberry canes, repotted a bunch of other plants, planted bulbs in giant pots, lost some of said bulbs to squirrels and some giant invisible monster that could overturn a 30-liter heavy rubber pot full of soil, and threw my back out lifting a bucket of soaked coir compost out of the sink, so now I can hardly move and barely half of the spring prep has been done. It’s been great.

I haven’t been keeping up with making notes here, which I need to fix next week.

HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY, Molly Crabapple (UK) (US+) was released here on Kindle last night. I dearly hope the pre-orders were enough to get it on to the NYT list.

OPERATIONS: moving around 20pp out of the house this week and getting started on some new projects, but:
STATUS: the sun is out and I am stuck indoors waiting on half a dozen deliveries. I’m out this weekend, and right now it looks like the weather is going to be pretty good all week, so once I can move properly, I’m going to be combining work bursts with being as outside and offline as I can.
READING: THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+) – my reading has REALLY slowed down over the last month

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

Alexander Kluge died. Just a couple of weeks after his friend Jurgen Habermas.

• KONG’S FINEST HOUR, Alexander Kluge

THE FACE magazine died, again.

Didn’t get as much done outside as I had hoped for – the weather kept turning, from sun to rain to gales to hailstones the size of Smarties. But with the clock springing forward, I have extra light at the end of the day, so I’ll be starting seeds later, as I cleaned out the mini-greenhouses yesterday. ALL the seeds. Also hoping to clear a patch of ground to start some of the red onions.

That said, my body is doing its usual spring “WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT HOUR GO” routine and my brain wants to crawl into a shallow grave.

I have all the writing to do today, and I have at least half a dozen deliveries coming in, some of which are plants, which means tomorrow the garden watch is going on and I’m going offline for two days, and today I am going to have pretty much every minute spoken for. I am very much looking forward to two days of cleaning and planting, and all I have to do is remember to batch some meals today for the weekend. How much do you want to bet that I totally forget to do that?

Saw PROJECT HAIL MARY yesterday and am writing up my notes on it today for Sunday’s newsletter, which you can subscribe to here if you arrived on this page by accident.