Cynthia Ozick, on a career that spanned writing (with a pen!) then the typewriter, then the computer: The ink-bottle years had a longhand intent of their own: the inescapably physical. A fountain pen induces the most acutely felt source of writing: out of the three fingers gripping its neck, close to the nib, it mainly seeps, but can also gallop. It is conscious of the outermost reach of somatic self-knowledge, even as it denies the nature of body.

I say [to the farmer], Thank you, sir… and ask if the town is to the right or to the left at the fork. To the left, he says. The way the words come out of his mouth strikes me: They are said with a remarkable purity and kindness, contain no malice or judgment. It is almost as if he is speaking to a tree. I am happy to be a tree.

‘College is just how well I can use ChatGPT at this point,’ a student in Utah recently captioned a video of herself copy-and-pasting a chapter from her Genocide and Mass Atrocity textbook into ChatGPT.” – NY Magazine (paywalled) via Daily Dispatch.