Yeah, I knowā€¦ It's almost like I've abandoned these missives from my desk, my dispatches to my private list. That's not true, however. What happened was that I went to Brazil, had a lovely two weeks off, followed by one week of being completely and utterly smashed to smithereens from the return jetlag and a cold I picked up somewhere along the way. Those three weeks compounded intoā€¦ well, a complete break in my routines and schedules and whatnots, and when it came time to take up these missives again, Iā€¦ couldn't. It had gone too long, I had nothing to say to make up for that, yadda, yadda. That's a fancy-ish way of saying I got into a bit of a hole, with many things, and it took me some time to dig myself out. Now it's almost Christmas, but guess what? I'm digging myself out.
So this is going to be a different kind of letter. It's going to have some images about stuff I've been working on whilst you've not heard of me. Things likeā€¦
Remember the little comment on artpreneurship I sent out a few issues ago? Well, not only did I finish it, I also got it accepted in an arts journal ā€“ if with some minor alterations. The same goes for the paper on pro wrestling and leadership I sent out in March this year. Not only did I rewrite it (quite a lot), it has now been published. Here's the Gemini-created image for it:
And no, I've not just been working on stuff you've already seen parts or wholes of, thank you very much! I've also been working on new stuff, such as the rewrite of this paper, which got rejected but which I'm now reworking as a much more aggressive paper (and yes, I've gotten quite fond of the way in which I can illustrate an entire paper by having AI doing whiteboard illustrations of it!):
I find that not only does this make academic journal articles more fun to share, I get a far better conceptualization of my own work! Sometimes you need another pair of eyes, and AI eyes can be quite good at boring down to the core of the matter. Such as the fact that the paper wasn't remotely as clear as that whiteboard is, so now I gotta fix that! I've also been digging in my archives, and came across this old thing:
The whiteboard isn't quite as clear here, for the paper was quite a draft ā€“ but hey, it was only ever published as a working paper (I doubt many people remember those, entire series published by unis of draft papers and such ephemeraā€¦). Still, the core idea stands (I think), and I might get back to it. Not least because it'd be fun to do something on Schopenhauer! Oh, and again, I've not just gone through old stuff. I promise! In fact, I sorta kinda wrote a new book. Or booklet, at least. It's together with an old acquaintance, and it is also an experiment in AI writing (the acquaintance had a system he wanted to try out), and it's very much of the here and now. This is the outline:
Not sure exactly what we're doing with this yet, but I hope I can share the whole book with you soon. For free, natch.
So, to reiterate: I'm not dead yet. Just a little slower than I used to be, but getting back on track a little again. Hope you're staying classy out there.