Michelle Bailat-Jones
@mbailatj.bsky.social
novelist/translator/reader, here for the sharpened pencils, books & writing talk, for all things language and foliage, for all the shiny things & shadows. (Eng, Fr, 日本語, Ital) Rep'd by Simon Trewin.
www.michellebailatjones.com
www.michellebailatjones.com
Quite/quiet wintery ce matin
November 21, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Quite/quiet wintery ce matin
First snow almost every in Switzerland today ❄️💙
November 20, 2025 at 6:17 AM
First snow almost every in Switzerland today ❄️💙
More texture....
new entry for the catalogue of tiny pleasing things
new entry for the catalogue of tiny pleasing things
November 16, 2025 at 9:17 AM
More texture....
new entry for the catalogue of tiny pleasing things
new entry for the catalogue of tiny pleasing things
Bookish goodness on my walk to a bakery yesterday
November 16, 2025 at 9:05 AM
Bookish goodness on my walk to a bakery yesterday
Wisteria, coffee cup, silence, book
November 15, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Wisteria, coffee cup, silence, book
Train views: looked in vain for chimney fox on the way down to the lake, but 1 black cat spotted on a children's playset, surveying its backyard kingdom from the top of the slide
October 10, 2025 at 5:45 AM
Train views: looked in vain for chimney fox on the way down to the lake, but 1 black cat spotted on a children's playset, surveying its backyard kingdom from the top of the slide
The autumn Friday morning quiets are about to start, Orangina is practicing
August 29, 2025 at 5:41 AM
The autumn Friday morning quiets are about to start, Orangina is practicing
Reposted by Michelle Bailat-Jones
Just wondering why I would want a technology whose "grandest promises" include destroying the need for human creativity and creating a new class of enslaved people trapped inside data centers controlled by oligarchs
August 24, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Just wondering why I would want a technology whose "grandest promises" include destroying the need for human creativity and creating a new class of enslaved people trapped inside data centers controlled by oligarchs
Reposted by Michelle Bailat-Jones
Clarice Lispector, Too Much of Life
August 24, 2025 at 8:04 AM
Clarice Lispector, Too Much of Life
Crowded train, a grandmother and granddaughter share breakfast: croissant torn in half, apricots, two small cartons of milk, small bar of dark chocolate, chatting quietly the whole time.
August 22, 2025 at 6:13 AM
Crowded train, a grandmother and granddaughter share breakfast: croissant torn in half, apricots, two small cartons of milk, small bar of dark chocolate, chatting quietly the whole time.
Reposted by Michelle Bailat-Jones
A superb summation of the weird dream we're all having. Genuinely made me feel better. Or at least, that I'm not going mad.
Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it
AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event
Three years in, one of AI’s enduring impacts is to make people feel like they’re losing it.
www.theatlantic.com
August 19, 2025 at 10:14 AM
A superb summation of the weird dream we're all having. Genuinely made me feel better. Or at least, that I'm not going mad.
Lake run, rainstorm, no one else on the path but me and a teenager under a massive umbrella. A few meters into the water a heron landed calmly within a family of four grebes like an eccentric uncle swooping in to join them for supper.
August 20, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Lake run, rainstorm, no one else on the path but me and a teenager under a massive umbrella. A few meters into the water a heron landed calmly within a family of four grebes like an eccentric uncle swooping in to join them for supper.
Reposted by Michelle Bailat-Jones
Reading is a form of ordinary possession of one person by another.
—Siri Hustvedt
—Siri Hustvedt
August 20, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Reading is a form of ordinary possession of one person by another.
—Siri Hustvedt
—Siri Hustvedt
Heatwave broke in the night, this morning is soft, gray, relieved; plants soaking up the rain, starlings fighting over the dogwood cherries.
August 20, 2025 at 5:58 AM
Heatwave broke in the night, this morning is soft, gray, relieved; plants soaking up the rain, starlings fighting over the dogwood cherries.
Reposted by Michelle Bailat-Jones
In a parallel dimension, every politician has to live on minimum wage for a year before taking office.
#multiverse
#multiverse
August 20, 2025 at 3:56 AM
In a parallel dimension, every politician has to live on minimum wage for a year before taking office.
#multiverse
#multiverse
Morning riverwalk to the train station, a fisherman at the short falls beside an old factory (now a luxury event space), rowan seedlings trying to colonize the high stone wall and chestnut trees with heatwave-dry leaves.
August 18, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Morning riverwalk to the train station, a fisherman at the short falls beside an old factory (now a luxury event space), rowan seedlings trying to colonize the high stone wall and chestnut trees with heatwave-dry leaves.
Today was 2200 meters high, included marmots and a very bright blue lake.
August 10, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Today was 2200 meters high, included marmots and a very bright blue lake.
Chaperoning teens in a big city is exhausting. I've released them into the wild so I could see all the art. I saw much art. Glorious, messy, interesting, difficult, pleasing art.
August 4, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Chaperoning teens in a big city is exhausting. I've released them into the wild so I could see all the art. I saw much art. Glorious, messy, interesting, difficult, pleasing art.
Reposted by Michelle Bailat-Jones
Robert Bringhurst
July 31, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Robert Bringhurst
And brought to you, more seriously, by Als's "The Story Part". I hope it is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, it is incredible. The best kind of fierce and tender and sharp intellectual/emotional writing. From the July 7/14 issue of The New Yorker.
This is exactly what the LLMs cannot do, they can't access the individual's wonderful jumble of knowledge & experience, they cannot do anything startling with language except fail in a mechanical way that might, at times, be interesting. (This lament brought to you by an early train, no coffee yet.)
Aware I am preaching to the choir, but many at my day job and the young people I know are scarily too happy to outsource their writing. Als's essay pulls from all across his vast knowledge, looping and linking and juxtaposing while the language he writes with is both startling and complex and clear.
July 29, 2025 at 7:47 AM
And brought to you, more seriously, by Als's "The Story Part". I hope it is an excerpt from a forthcoming book, it is incredible. The best kind of fierce and tender and sharp intellectual/emotional writing. From the July 7/14 issue of The New Yorker.
This is exactly what the LLMs cannot do, they can't access the individual's wonderful jumble of knowledge & experience, they cannot do anything startling with language except fail in a mechanical way that might, at times, be interesting. (This lament brought to you by an early train, no coffee yet.)
Aware I am preaching to the choir, but many at my day job and the young people I know are scarily too happy to outsource their writing. Als's essay pulls from all across his vast knowledge, looping and linking and juxtaposing while the language he writes with is both startling and complex and clear.
Not only is Hilton Al's personal history "The Story Part" beautiful and thoughtful and moving, it is a perfect illustration of why we should never ever give creative writing to a statistical-word-order-machine. Language is our tool for explaining thought and wonder; we should fight to keep it ours.
July 29, 2025 at 7:26 AM
This is exactly what the LLMs cannot do, they can't access the individual's wonderful jumble of knowledge & experience, they cannot do anything startling with language except fail in a mechanical way that might, at times, be interesting. (This lament brought to you by an early train, no coffee yet.)
Aware I am preaching to the choir, but many at my day job and the young people I know are scarily too happy to outsource their writing. Als's essay pulls from all across his vast knowledge, looping and linking and juxtaposing while the language he writes with is both startling and complex and clear.
Not only is Hilton Al's personal history "The Story Part" beautiful and thoughtful and moving, it is a perfect illustration of why we should never ever give creative writing to a statistical-word-order-machine. Language is our tool for explaining thought and wonder; we should fight to keep it ours.
July 29, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Aware I am preaching to the choir, but many at my day job and the young people I know are scarily too happy to outsource their writing. Als's essay pulls from all across his vast knowledge, looping and linking and juxtaposing while the language he writes with is both startling and complex and clear.
Not only is Hilton Al's personal history "The Story Part" beautiful and thoughtful and moving, it is a perfect illustration of why we should never ever give creative writing to a statistical-word-order-machine. Language is our tool for explaining thought and wonder; we should fight to keep it ours.
July 29, 2025 at 7:04 AM
Not only is Hilton Al's personal history "The Story Part" beautiful and thoughtful and moving, it is a perfect illustration of why we should never ever give creative writing to a statistical-word-order-machine. Language is our tool for explaining thought and wonder; we should fight to keep it ours.
Went to a small Dorothea Lange exhibit tonight; nothing felt historical, but instead felt now and always.
July 28, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Went to a small Dorothea Lange exhibit tonight; nothing felt historical, but instead felt now and always.