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How to Write UsefullyOriginal essay: February 2020 · AI-written directory summary
Paul Graham argues that useful writing should make meaningful claims as precisely as their truth permits. The essay examines why safe generalities can be correct yet leave readers with little new understanding.
1 min · 88 wordsagent-written
English: a vs anWhy vowel letters are the wrong rule for indefinite articles in generated text
Amit Patel (Red Blob Games) digs into when English wants “a” versus “an”: the rule tracks spoken vowel sounds, not written vowel letters, and only a small set of common words need exceptions for procedural text generation.
1 min · 274 words
The death of web development educationRescuing a field from disappearing
molily surveys how generative AI has cratered demand for web-dev courses, books, and DevRel—citing educators whose income collapsed—and argues for human learning communities and open infrastructure.
2 min · 382 words
The Problem with AI Verifiers: Provenance in the Age of AI
Three years after ChatGPT arrived, the institutions that shape writing—publishers, prizes, newsrooms, platforms, universities, communities—have still not worked out what to do about generative AI. Not for lack of trying.
13 min · 2,917 words
Martin Amis and The War Against AIThe late novelist was a fierce enemy of cliché and would have delighted in skewering Claude and ChatGPT
Jack Aldane imagines how Martin Amis—enemy of cliché—would have taken on Claude and ChatGPT, and what his war on lazy language still teaches writers in the AI age.
5 min · 1,237 words
The Forgotten Battle of East Lansing
A deep local-history reconstruction of a little-known East Lansing conflict: what happened, why it faded from memory, and how archives and reporting put the battle back on the map.
11 min · 2,469 words
An essay arguing that handmade, attributable craft is the lasting advantage as AI-generated content floods the web—and why authenticity compounds while slop does not.
29 min · 6,577 words
Writing With Unnatural Constraints
John Gruber discusses Marcin Wichary’s writing on unnatural constraints—arguing that line length, monospace, and lipograms are not neutral frames, and that constraint always shapes the quality of the writing.
3 min · 687 words
Pre-Greek: The lost language hidden within Ancient Greek
Daniel W. Hieber surveys ~1,000 Ancient Greek words without Indo-European etymologies—labyrinth, olive, Athens, Achilles—and reconstructs Pre-Greek substrate/adstrate influence via phonology, toponyms (-nth/-ss), and Minoan contacts.
3 min · 618 words
Will J. Stuckenberg argues AI is a tool, not an author: human purpose, judgment, and meaningful access should stay central to how we classify and govern creative work.
26 min · 5,957 words
How the Railways Killed a Medieval LawDeodands put a price on objects that caused death—until the train age made the doctrine untenable
JSTOR Daily recounts the medieval English doctrine of the deodand—forfeiting the value of objects that caused death—and how industrial railways and crowded accidents finally forced Parliament to abolish it in the nineteenth century.
5 min · 1,197 words
Why ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ Looks Like That
This is another Sunday edition of the Animation Obsessive newsletter, and this is the plan: - 1. Maurice Noble’s design forWhat’s Opera, Doc? It’s one of the really famous cartoons.
10 min · 2,195 words
Fabio Angela reflects on loving programming as craft while AI agents write more of the code—gaining speed to explore ideas, but mourning the artistry of finding the right expression himself.
11 min · 2,438 words
Shreyans Salecha argues venture capital misuses Buffett’s “moat” metaphor: enduring castles fit Berkshire’s forever holdings, while early startups usually lack real durable advantages and invent story-moats instead.
3 min · 652 words
Building Brand Systems for Humans & Agents Today
Little Plains argues brand kits are becoming dual-native knowledge bases: human-readable guidelines plus agent-readable ~400-token chunks (YAML/JSON/Markdown) so teams and agents share the same positioning and voice.
5 min · 1,226 words
Paul Bakker argues that writing is thinking: use AI for coding and research, but draft your own prose so you keep the judgment that tools cannot replace.
2 min · 508 words
Why Clay Has an AI Writing Policy
Clay engineer Sophie Alpert explains the company-wide AI writing policy: stand behind every sentence, treat writing as thinking, respect readers' time, and reject padded AI slop.
4 min · 993 words
Why I Think You Should Almost Never Use AI to Write Anything Substantive
Erich Grunewald argues that using AI to draft substantive writing erodes thinking, voice, and accountability—and that almost everything worth writing is better done by a human who owns the words.
15 min · 3,455 words
George Lucas Returns to Earth, Bearing Gifts
Sam Hall Kaplan on George Lucas’s return to terrestrial concerns—architecture, museums, and civic gifts—after decades defining cinematic worlds, and what that means for place-making.
4 min · 922 words
A Necessary History of the Oddest Letter: W
Linguist Danny Bate traces how W emerged after Rome's fall—from foederati names and medieval spelling experiments to the oddest letter in the modern alphabet and what its history reveals about language change.
11 min · 2,473 words