Aneesh Sathe

41 years ago, Samuel Lipman wrote that an artist’s life is a “constant—and constantly losing—battle” against one’s own limits. That image has lasted because print culture taught us to imagine the artist as a solitary figure whose worth is measured by the perfection of a single, final work. Print fixed texts in place, elevated the individual author, and made loneliness part of the creative job description. That world is slipping away. And with it, the tortured artist.

This is a partial synthesis of the books read through 2025 in the Contraptions Book Club. We live in a moment when the whole of human culture has become strangely available, no longer just an archive but something that behaves like a responding presence. A sentence typed into a search bar or messaging window returns citations and, more strikingly, continuations: pastiche, commentary, new variations of ideas that never existed until the instant we requested them. The canon now behaves more like a voice than a library. It is easy to treat this as convenience, yet summoning culture alters our …

xkcd published this wonderful piece: https://xkcd.com/3172/ want to feel old?

Friend asked if Constantine was my favourite movie… I mean Neo and the librarian in one movie?? Yes please! but… Not my favorite though… that would be between Notting Hill, The Mummy, and The Matrix. None of them are good movies — in the way that Perfect Days and sooo many others are — but they are my movies.

Rhyme Managed memory leaks. Everything Neatly tucked away. The poets freed By print. Hackers Tamed themselves. Linting, Hinting, diff-printing Bolt cutters: vibe- image: Rain, Steam and Speed