I am not someone who notices anniversaries, and yet, each year as 11 March approaches, my mind returns to Tohoku, and the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that struck the region in 2011. I was in Tokyo at the time, and while I was fortunate enough not to be immediately impacted, the experience and subsequently researching the disasters has had a lasting impact.

It is hard not to get a sense that there has been some kind of step change in recent months with AI-related technologies, and the consequences that might follow from the manner in which these are being tested on societies. The point of this note, however, is not to present another judgment or prognosis on chatGPT. Rather, it is to reflect on what we might be losing or forgoing as we rush towards an approximated world.

The notes in which I collect pieces from different sources and reassemble I normally entitle ‘fragments’. Not this time. These are not fragments, but sounds and echoes. Put aside the banal hot takes about chatGPT and listen: there is plenty else to hear. Crack crack. Things are breaking. Not unimportant things. Basic infrastructures and core services. States. And not in one or two places.

Last week marked two years of this Substack, so it seemed like a good moment for a brief update and review of the project. The original aim was for it to be a ‘thought sketchbook’, and that is roughly how it has developed.

Paul Valéry, ‘The Crisis of the Mind’ (1919): - Osip Mandelstam, ‘The Nineteenth Century’ (1922): - Walter Benjamin, ‘Experience and poverty’ (1933): - Stefan Zweig, Diary (Autumn 1939): - René Char, Hypnos (1946):

Australia’s Lowy Institute has just released its 2023 Asia Power Index. Like all such exercises, it is presented to have that feel of it being objective and scientific. It is full of numbers and measures, percentages and tables. In the end, it is effectively just a measured set of judgements, and it can be helpful in that regard.

Noah Smith tells us: Martin Wolf is comfy in his ‘90s time-warp: And don’t worry, the gliberals have not yet been replaced by GPT, although you have to feel that day is getting close. Timothy Snyder announces: And Timothy Garton Ash looks towards a great European future: One does not need to venture far to find similar content. Remember what Francis Ford Coppola said: The Marvel model extends to thinking about politics.

A collection of fragments related to the writings of Franz Kafka. If he was able to see aspects of the world taking shape a century ago, what might his work suggest now? It strikes me that it has to do with that space where absurdity and brutality meet.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Aphorism 125, ‘The Madman’, The Gay Science [1882]: - Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers , Part 3, Chapter XLIV, ‘Disintegration of Values (6)’ [1931-32]: - Ezra Pound, ‘Canto CXIII’ [1969]:

Evil might seem like a strange topic to be commencing the year with, but I have been finishing an article on this elusive theme and these notes are consciously untimely. It is a difficult, awkward topic, weighed with religious and mystical connotations, it does not fit well with many contemporary frames.

A passage taken from a draft of Part IV of TS Eliot’s, The Waste Land , which has just marked its centenary. The final version of the ‘Death by Water’ section was considerably shorter, and generally considered better for it, but I must admit, I do like this bit where the sailor unexpectedly meets his end by an iceberg. It feels like an appropriate image as we approach the end of a year marked by surprises.