Latest writing

Building a Rule-Based Generative Design System in WordPress

Abstract

This article examines how redesigning my personal WordPress website developed into a generative visual identity. Its central question is how typography, colour and composition can vary while recognition, readability and maintainability remain dependable. Drawing on the conversation, screenshots, reversals, original source and recorded checks, I reconstruct how that question emerged. Missing tags first required distinguishing content from display logic; oversized photographs challenged my association between importance and scale; and excessive colour variation led me to propose coherent palettes for…

Are We Publishing Knowledge or Certifying Human Authorship? On AI-Assisted Theology and the Authority to Decide What Counts

Abstract. This essay examines how theological journals distinguish legitimate AI assistance from the substitution of human authorship, especially when argument and prose develop through sustained human–AI dialogue. Beginning with a practical comparison of submission policies, I reconstruct the objections, documentary checks, mistaken readings, and exchanges that transformed the inquiry into a question about scholarly authority. The analysis distinguishes the value of a contribution, the justification of its claims, the allocation of credit, and eligibility under a journal’s rules. It argues…

The Life I Imagine in Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), or Falling in Love with a World I Cannot Enter

Abstract

This essay examines how my repeated viewing of Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle developed from an attraction to its architecture and visual balance into a question about romantic attachment to Sophie and the life imaginable around her. Reconstructing an extended conversation with AI, I follow several revisions: the limits of stylistic labels, a detour towards exhaustive visual analysis, the shift from comfort to imagined companionship, and the distinction between genuine feeling and reciprocal relationship. Close readings of selected images…

On Gattaca (1997): Deception and Forgiveness, or When Moral Certainty Gives Way…

Abstract

Beginning with the romantic aesthetics of Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca (1997), this essay follows an inquiry into deception that gradually becomes a question about the authority, limits and revision of moral judgment. It reconstructs a dialogue with AI through the objections that changed its direction: genuine achievement does not settle the morality of its means; a life shaped by deception cannot simply discard its history; and forgiveness can presume a guilt that has never been established. Close reading of the…

Wright’s Fallingwater, the question of privilege and the conditions of a good life

I have remembered Fallingwater since I was very young. Long before I could explain its plans or structure, Frank Lloyd Wright’s house above a Pennsylvania waterfall had become an image of what architecture might make possible. I admired its forms, its setting and the elegance of its photographs. I also imagined a life inside it. There would be friends who appreciated the house, an evening worth remembering, and time to read and think. I pictured sitting by the fireplace with…

What Human Effort Means When We Think (Alone or With AI): A Historian’s Question About AI, Originality and Creativity

A recent conversation with two people who have backgrounds in history turned to AI, creativity, and research. One of them told me that they had never used AI for writing. In explaining their position, they attached importance to human effort. I asked why that effort mattered so much. They said that they needed to think about it further. I do not want to turn that unfinished exchange into a settled philosophy on their behalf. What stayed with me was the…

Social Media, Fragmented Attention (and My Distraction), and Thinking With AI

I began with a small and frustrating experience. When my phone was beside me, I repeatedly wanted to check Instagram, Zhihu, or WeChat. I could know perfectly well that I had more important work to do and that much of what I would encounter would contribute little to it. That knowledge did not reliably prevent the next check. Sometimes a brief inspection became a much longer session, and I emerged tired, dissatisfied, and aware that the time I had intended…

Before We Decide How Science and Religion Relate: From Classifying Relationships to Following Their Transformation

I began preparing for my first Oxford seminar on science and religion with a fairly ordinary task. Dr Shaun Henson’s reading list asked us to assess typological approaches, compare their strengths and weaknesses, and consider alternatives of our own. Ian Barbour’s familiar categories—conflict, independence, dialogue and integration—provided the starting point. I expected to read the arguments, decide which framework seemed most convincing, and arrive ready to discuss it.

Instead, I kept interrupting the preparation with a question that seemed more…