Nick Harkaway

@nickharkaway

Author. Also husband, dad, clothing-repairer, dog-walker. Decreasingly rigorous on social media. Taking a break for the summer. Contact Patrick Walsh @ PEW Literary in London or email me. www.linktr.ee/harkaway He/him

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Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· 6d

Heh. Eheheh. Oooooooh, man :)

Text: The human-created stories were sourced from a literary journal, while the AI-generated ones
were created using ChatGPT 4.0.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· 7d

Not loving this.

Text quote: Razmi Farook, director-general of the Commonwealth Foundation, whose prize the Commonwealth Short Story prize was plagued this year by AI speculation, recently told the Times that authors are increasingly going to be expected to provide such "receipts... I think writers should be prepared to share a reasonable oversight or view of their writing process to
date"

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· 23d

Unidentified skull found on beach. Daughter: “I‘m trying to identify how many temporal fenestrae it has.” Species? Any other info welcome.

Long narrow unidentified skull on wooden table. ~5cm long. Parallel holes in rows at an angle to some kind of central ridge line.

Same skull from the side. Two holes, presumably eye and temporal fenestra.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jul 8

Ngram search for "God's noble experiment" gets nothing. There's a peak for "noble experiment" in the early 1930s. Does anyone know where this phrase actually comes from? I can't find it anywhere.

Google Ngram graph for "noble experiment". Some low level use from 1800, then a peak in 1932 for some reason. There's nothing at all for "God's noble experiment" - I could append a screenshot of the no result page but it seems unexciting.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 30

I feel seen and I don‘t like it

4.4 User and Password
Create your user account. Don't use "admin" -
that's so 1999.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 26

I take my digital security very seriously and I do serious things.

My hand holding a Legami Miilano keyring USB drive, rainbow colours with a smiling fluffy thing in white rubber at one end which I think is supposed to be a cloud, but could be an appallingly cutesy cat. Blurred background: a red rug with a Middle Eastern design. My hand needs moisturising STAT.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 20

I’m in agony

Side of a van: the most HORRIBLE kerning ever - “we come highly re commended” but it’s so much worse than I can explain through the migraine it has caused

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 12

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 10

My copy has been on quite the journey

Title page:

KHRUSHCHEV REMEMBERS
With an Introduction, Commentary and Notes by
EDWARD CRANKSHAW
Translated and Edited by
STROBE TALBOTT
Illustrated with Photographs
Andrews Barracks
Special Services Library
Ha. Berlin Brigade
APO 09742
ANDRE DEUTSCH
Property of US Army

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 9

For some reason this link doesn’t preview, so here’s a random doodle I did over lunch. Please click the link. www.instagram.com/reel/DZUlUSB...

Pencil doodle on rough paper: a man with bushy eyebrows and shaggy hair. Torso and head only, wearing a shirt or jacket. Pensive. Could be me, could be a young version of my dad. Could be a face in the crowd.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 5

This is a nonsense poem I wrote years ago for my kids. I found myself reciting it this morning. Maybe it’ll brighten your Friday :)

Copper Feet
(Nick Harkaway)

As I went boldly down the street
I met a man with copper feet.
He said: “I beg to disagree!”
I said: “But surely not with me?”
“Why, yes!” averred the cupric bloke;
“But sir,” I said, “I have not spoke!”
“Indeed,” said he, and then reflected:
“It was your silence I rejected.”

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Jun 2

YOU look up “schnauzer“, you digital imbecile.

A wet lurcher who is very much not a schnauzer and is offended at the very idea. You can see it in her infinitely limpid, sorrowful eyes as she lies on the sofa under a blue blanket from a boat trip we went on on the Thames. She is consumed with the futility of her own path because some dismal nitwit in Apple’s HQ thinks it acceptable to conflate her noble, suffering self with some schnauzer. I mean, what’s the point?

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 31

Literally in front of me right now

My glasses plus a pack of Ricola honey & lemon with echinacea lozenges

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 24

Camilla Cavendish in the FT, somewhat surprisingly paraphrasing early Karl Marx. If that was on your bingo card for today, felicitations. AI makes curious patterns in the world.

Text: Yes, the west must try to win the AI race with China on national security. But if that contest simply enriches a few, at the expense of the many, voters could conclude that we might as
well embrace communism.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 20

Chris Bryant, via the Guardian, pasted here because the breaking news updates disappear over time. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Text: I want to make it absolutely clear that our sanctions regime today is tougher than it was
yesterday or last week. In fact, thanks to the Russia (sanctions) (EU exit) (amendment) regulations 2026 statutory instrument we will for the first time from today, for the first time, ban the import not only of uranium but also the import of Russian
oil products processed in a third country.
We are not lifting any existing sanctions at all. We are, like other countries, phasing in these sanctions, which is why, in the light of the situation in the Middle East, we have issued a targeted temporary licence to allow the continued import of diesel and jet fuel. These
licences are temporary and targeted. We will review them regularly and repeatedly and will suspend them as soon as we possibly
can. As a result of all of the measures that we have taken, and there will be less Russian oil on the
market, not more. Russia will be poorer.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 15

Every so often there comes a statistic that reminds you that about a quarter of the population is at any time wandering around with a lampshade on its head singing the Marseillaise to an invisible duck. In this case, 23%. bsky.app/profile/ther...

Text: Only 23 percent of the G-P respondents said they have total confidence in Al accuracy. Those concerns mean 69 percent said they spend more time monitoring and reviewing Al, while 61 percent expressed concerns about using Al to craft sensitive documents because they doubt the output is legally accurate.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 15

First and most important remedy:

Vegan cinnamon bun. A swirl of carbohydrate sin liberally doused in icing and full of a heady mix of sugars and cinnamaldehyde.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 13

As Wilde might have it: the incapable in pursuit of the inert.

FT HEADLINE: Starmer prepares to fight
leadership bid by Streeting

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 10

This went exactly how you’re thinking it did.

My dog, furry little face intense, contemplating sniffing a cactus.

Reader, good sense did not preclude, and there was much sorrow.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 10

Just started @mollycrabapple.bsky.social’s remarkable book. So far: amazing.

Molly Crabapple’s book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country - matte cream background, variegated title text, figures, red banner.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 7

Ah, yes…

The iconic climate change cartoon: “what if we create a better world for nothing?”

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· May 1

My quest to own all the @mxfrankduffy.bsky.social T-shirt designs continues…

Me: shabby and whimsical. The shirt I am modelling (if you want to be generous): Carpe Diem shirt in aqua blue with the three crows above a skeleton. Love it :)

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Apr 21

This looks very cool. Is it a thing that you did or is my browser imploding?

Botched bsky text - code or something layered over text. Beautiful but weird.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Mar 25

Authentically alarming moment reading the book on Kobo :) cc @qntm.org @mtamblyn.bsky.social

Kobo screen (framed by a red cloth case) showing a page from There Is No Anti-Mimetics Division, a book about predatory and undetectable memetic threats which, in the course of the action, frequently consume memories abd information.

A system pop-up box explains that there are “missing letters or numbers” for this section.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Mar 22

And then you have this, which is if anything even more infuriating. This is like if the Streisand Effect and Chalmers Johnson had identical twins and moved to a house in FFS City.

Text: While Iran had previously threatened to close the strait, the western official said, "they never knew [they could] until they tried it"
"Now they know, and it's pretty effective," the official said. "The risk is they will keep holding the world

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Mar 22

So - astonishingly - Iran has been paying attention to history, notably the Millennium Challenge exercise, which was originally an Iran war game, and in which US Marine Col. Paul van Riper, playing the baddies, handed an invading US force its hat with both its ears in it BY DOING THIS.

Text: The Iranian close to the regime said the Revolutionary Guards were behaving more like a militant group in their effort to take on the world's most sophisticated and powerful armies
- abandoning their bases and scattering in order to reduce the risk of being hit while launching retaliatory attacks.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Mar 19

Is there no way you can link to the time-stamped entry you’re talking about? Khan’s statement is AWOL and replaced by an endless stream of twaddle from Farage.

Guardian live listing. Endless Farage entries. Top line: Farage backs Tory attack on Muslim iftar event, saying public prayer 'was a shock'.

Nick Harkaway@nickharkaway· Mar 12

Properly dressed for the day.