Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, AI, art, artists, creativity, persistence, Thoughts on November 30, 2025| 1 Comment »
The flood of AI art has led to a lot of commentary, some thoughtful, some otherwise, by pundits, tech gurus, and artists themselves.
Here’s cartoonist Matthew Inman sharing his perspective on why he finds AI art problematic.
A cartoonist’s review of AI art – The Oatmeal
…I need you to know from one artist to another, that every mark you make on a page even a squiggly, imperfect one is still beautiful.
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts, writing on November 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up they will change the world.”
— Jack Ma
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2024, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on November 25, 2025| 1 Comment »
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, and more complex. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
― E.F. Schumacher
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, reading, Thoughts, writing on November 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
— George R.R. Martin
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, fresh perspectives, Thoughts on November 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »
For whatever reason, today I’m walking around seeing everything as component parts.
For example: instead of seeing the comfy red chair in my office, I’m seeing that chair (so comfy!) with all of the materials that went into it lined up in a row. The tree that provided the wooden legs, the cotton growing in a field before being harvested, carded, spun, dyed and woven, the metal ore that needed to be mined, processed and extruded to make the wire frame, the stuffing made of… you know, I don’t know what it’s made of so let’s insert “amorphous, fluffy cloud of probably polyester fill” here.
It’s weird but also fun, like looking at a room upside down. Suddenly, everything is interesting and new.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, AI, creativity, knitting on November 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »
As a sometime knitter and pattern designer, I thought this story about a neural network learning to knit (or not!) both funny and telling.
SkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting Community
Prodded by a knitter on the knitting forum Ravelry, Shane trained a type of neural network on a series of over 500 sets of knitting instructions. Then, she generated new instructions, which members of the Ravelry community have actually attempted to knit.
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Shane nicknamed the whole effort “Project Hilarious Disaster.” The community called it SkyKnit.
It’s been a few years since this project started (the article is from 2018) and I’m sure AI has progressed since then. Still funny!
Full disclosure: I have been known to visit Ravelry. It’s an excellent resource, most of the time!
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, think positive, Thoughts, Writers, writing on November 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.”
— Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on November 8, 2025| 1 Comment »
“The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.”
— Henry James
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, Thoughts, Writers on November 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“The gifts you possess can lift you up or pull you down; it all depends on how you use them.”
— Arthur C. Brooks
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, #WhereDoIdeasComeFrom, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts on November 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »
My office is filled with random yet interesting items. Maybe a color caught my eye, or a puzzle, or a map (or a bit of pottery, a magic wand, a decoder ring, a set of travel watercolors, or or or). All things that spark my creativity or capture an experience I want to remember.
For example: Mr Man and I had a special dinner a while back.
Appetizer: mussels steamed with a great deal of garlic and a perfectly reasonable amount of white wine.
Flavor: excellent.
Bonus: an unexpected gift, the tiniest pearl I have ever seen.
Taking a picture of it was a challenge, it’s that small.
I keep it in memory of that night. It’s worth nothing, and everything.
“But the pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods both.”
– John Steinbeck
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