Peter Guillam and his daughter have used the Claude LLM to create a tool for mapping characters’ journeys in novels, PlotLines. He writes about the process here. His other tools include a Hansard search and a map of redundant churches.

“You’d see massive glacier calvings, and you’d just want to cry. But all the guests would be cheering. And you’d be like … ‘can you not put two and two together?’”

Those are the words of a former Antarctic tour guide we interviewed. For anyone interested in nature, few jobs sound more enviable. You spend months among penguins, orcas and glaciers, helping visitors experience one of the world’s most extraordinary and unspoiled places.

But for some guides, like those we quote in this article, that privilege slowly became impossible to reconcile with their beliefs. Watching climate change unfold while helping thousands more visitors reach the continent eventually led them to leave the jobs they’d once dreamed of. (read the rest of the sad article HERE )

Castle Map A free interactive night map of the world’s great castles, fortresses and palaces: 3,708 landmarks across 131 countries, each with its photo, founding century and story. No ads, no accounts.

If you are also a fan of Neal Stephenson, you may be as surprised as I was to discover that writes his novels the way people did in the 19th century. The science-fiction author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, and the thousand-page Baroque Cycle has composed nearly every book since about 2001 with a fountain pen on paper. On his Substack, Graphomane, he says the handwritten manuscript for The Baroque Cycle stood 42 inches high and was displayed at the Science Fiction museum in Seattle.

I won’t bore you with my critique of this odd, but interesting list from the Brooklyn Public Library in NYC: a list of “the 250 most influential books in United States history”. Incl. Neuromancer, The Fire Next Time, Nickel and Dimed, The Power Broker, and The Snowy Day.