I was thinking more about The Fountain and why I like it so much. I suspect it is the multiple time periods. Specifically, the 1500s, the present, and the far future. It’s just cool. It’s why I like Cloud Atlas (book and movie), and Highlander. The former is very clever, the latter is just plain fun. Both are underrated. I guess I will forgive bad in other areas for some time-hopping in the story telling. ...

I love Darren Aronofsky’s film The Fountain. I remember anticipating it for years before it was finally released, and then it was impossible to find and watch. I found it. Watched it. Then rewatched it all the time for years. The plot, via grok3: “The Fountain” (2006), directed by Darren Aronofsky, is a visually stunning and emotionally complex film that weaves together three interconnected narratives spanning different time periods. The central story follows Tomas (Hugh Jackman), a modern-day neuroscientist desperately searching for a cure to save his dying wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz), who is battling a terminal illness. Izzi, a writer, is working on a book called “The Fountain,” which forms the second narrative: a 16th-century Spanish conquistador named Tomás, sent by Queen Isabella to find the Tree of Life in the New World to secure immortality and protect her kingdom. The third storyline takes place in a surreal, futuristic setting where Tom, a space traveler, journeys through the cosmos with a dying tree inside a biosphere, seeking to reach a distant nebula tied to Izzi’s story and Mayan mythology. ...

I LOVE Scavengers Reign. Love. What I love about it was also in the short on which the series is based: Scavengers. Specifically: We’re thrown in. Nothing is explained. The marooned characters already “know” how to do all the things. It as though they are not marooned, that they have always been there and the knowledge has been passed down for millennia. But they are marooned, they’re scavenging, motivated to survive and get back to the Demeter. ...

I build my books using Pandoc these days. I used to use LaTeX directly, but Pandoc is better because I can write in markdown (clean+easy) then compile to epub and pdf for ebooks and paperbacks (pipeline). Even though I’m writing in markdown, I can still use an include for custom LaTeX packages and configuration. This is very cool, because I can customize the paperback PDF to look really great. The problem is, I forget all the cool LaTeX I’m supposed to use. ...

I saw this tweet go by a few weeks back: For aspiring writers: Your ultimate goal isn't building a writing habit. It's falling so in love with interesting ideas that you can’t help but tell the world about them. Writing is the medium—not the objective. — Julian Shapiro (@Julian) February 23, 2025 Specifically the line: It’s falling so in love with interesting ideas that you can’t help but tell the world about them. ...

My wife and I were talking to our eldest son about plagiarism, e.g. copy-paste from chatgpt. Not that he does it, but he was arguing that “no one can tell”. We talked about how it is an easy thing to do right now but it will hurt you in the long term. I blurted out: “easy now, hard later” Very nice, I thought to myself. So self-satisfied :| I then linked it to many things in his life: ...

I am playing around with LLMs as beta readers for my novella. It’s really fun. But they are way too nice. I upload the entire text, give them a detailed persona and books they like that are like my story and then ask for good/bad/etc feedback on each part/act/chapter/etc. The personas are coarse-grained. More “people who like these books and movies…” rather than a specific personal history. I used thinking models, specifically I tried grok3+thinking and gpto1. ...

I’m a big fan of British TV show Utopia (2013). I’ve seen it 3-4 times by now. I can’t say why. I think it’s the color, the music, the earnestness. It’s probably the opening scene of the first episode that really hooked me. The two killers (Arby and Lee) let themselves into a closed comic book shop. One (Arby) asks the clerk questions, the other (Lee) calmly walks from person to person, killing them. ...

I’m editing something right now. My mantra is: “Remove the boring.” I read the piece again and again and again. As soon as my attention starts to drift: “Boring!” I start skipping over lines: “Boring!” I detect any repetition in the immediate vicinity: “Boring!” I then come back and cut. Hack. Slash. Trim. Nothing is deleted. Instead content is moved to a scratch document. It may be resurrected in the future. Who knows? ...

I’m a fan of Solaris by Stanisław Lem. I’ve probably read the book a dozen times. Here’s a terse synopsis from Grok3: Solaris by Stanisław Lem is a science fiction novel published in 1961. Set in the distant future, it follows psychologist Kris Kelvin, who arrives at a space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris. The planet’s vast, sentient ocean possesses the ability to probe the minds of the station’s crew and materialize physical manifestations of their memories and subconscious desires. For Kelvin, this takes the form of his deceased wife, Rheya, forcing him to confront unresolved guilt and grief. ...