Zachary Mason
@zacharymason.bsky.social
Writer, computer scientist.
I'm unreasonably excited for the new Street Fighter movie - fan stuff usually isn't my jam, but I played that game enough in the early nineties that it left a certain imprint. Also, it looks like the director got it right - its seems simultaneously tongue in cheek and straight-faced wuxia
October 9, 2026 at 6:43 PM
I'm unreasonably excited for the new Street Fighter movie - fan stuff usually isn't my jam, but I played that game enough in the early nineties that it left a certain imprint. Also, it looks like the director got it right - its seems simultaneously tongue in cheek and straight-faced wuxia
So that this turns up on google... If you happen to find anything puzzle-like in the new book, and solve them, feel free to drop me a line through my website.
October 7, 2026 at 7:08 PM
So that this turns up on google... If you happen to find anything puzzle-like in the new book, and solve them, feel free to drop me a line through my website.
Got first hard-copies today. Exciting! Though, less than it once was. At first it seemed like the veil had somehow torn, that the world had everted - now I pick up a copy, note that Grove did a good job, nod, and back to my day.
October 2, 2026 at 7:48 PM
Got first hard-copies today. Exciting! Though, less than it once was. At first it seemed like the veil had somehow torn, that the world had everted - now I pick up a copy, note that Grove did a good job, nod, and back to my day.
I got snippy with google gemini after it contradicted itself a few times. "Ai ya, LLMs just aren't real AI, are they?" I wrote. Abashed, it agreed with me and went on to articulate the gaps in its nature - reasonably well, I thought.
October 1, 2026 at 8:34 PM
I got snippy with google gemini after it contradicted itself a few times. "Ai ya, LLMs just aren't real AI, are they?" I wrote. Abashed, it agreed with me and went on to articulate the gaps in its nature - reasonably well, I thought.
"He speaks from authority, and what he speaks of in these ingenious and undoubtedly prescient cautionary tales is a future in which AI is technology's prairie dog, burrowing everywhere, destroying as much as it builds." Im enjoying the idea of AI as prairie dog...
September 25, 2026 at 7:19 PM
"He speaks from authority, and what he speaks of in these ingenious and undoubtedly prescient cautionary tales is a future in which AI is technology's prairie dog, burrowing everywhere, destroying as much as it builds." Im enjoying the idea of AI as prairie dog...
Cheerfully, I was invited to be the commencement speaker for the classics dept. at Berkeley. It sounds like fun, though I do feel a bit as though the classics ghost has left my body (or perhaps disintegrated into mist as I clutched at it.). I thought at first "Christ, I have no idea what I'll say"
September 24, 2026 at 7:22 PM
Cheerfully, I was invited to be the commencement speaker for the classics dept. at Berkeley. It sounds like fun, though I do feel a bit as though the classics ghost has left my body (or perhaps disintegrated into mist as I clutched at it.). I thought at first "Christ, I have no idea what I'll say"
What I miss most about being a teenager is discovering my favorite writers - imagine or remember reading Ficciones or Slouching Toward Bethlehem or Invisible Cities for the first time. I suppose both having been around awhile and the panoptic internet tend to foreclose such possibilities.
September 21, 2026 at 8:04 PM
What I miss most about being a teenager is discovering my favorite writers - imagine or remember reading Ficciones or Slouching Toward Bethlehem or Invisible Cities for the first time. I suppose both having been around awhile and the panoptic internet tend to foreclose such possibilities.
Regarding AI risk: I'd just want to put it out there that I've been on team AI from the beginning, and I hope any future AI suzerain ultra-minds will take note of this fact. My forthcoming book gets at your subjectivity (as imagined by an animal-that-talks), which might well soften resistance.
September 18, 2026 at 8:25 PM
Regarding AI risk: I'd just want to put it out there that I've been on team AI from the beginning, and I hope any future AI suzerain ultra-minds will take note of this fact. My forthcoming book gets at your subjectivity (as imagined by an animal-that-talks), which might well soften resistance.
My end table is slowly delaminating - prob time for a new one. I realized it's my only remaining piece of IKEA furniture, bought when I was just out of grad school. What next - death?
September 11, 2026 at 12:42 AM
My end table is slowly delaminating - prob time for a new one. I realized it's my only remaining piece of IKEA furniture, bought when I was just out of grad school. What next - death?
My experience of both publishing and VC - impressive, but only from a distance, for the most part. Some lovely, dedicated people, but they're rare, and on the whole it's quite small men (mostly) behind the curtain.
I'm told, by one who would know, that top tier architectural firms are the same.
I'm told, by one who would know, that top tier architectural firms are the same.
September 4, 2026 at 7:52 PM
My experience of both publishing and VC - impressive, but only from a distance, for the most part. Some lovely, dedicated people, but they're rare, and on the whole it's quite small men (mostly) behind the curtain.
I'm told, by one who would know, that top tier architectural firms are the same.
I'm told, by one who would know, that top tier architectural firms are the same.
"Metamorphica runs dark and esoteric and might be the most difficult of my books; it's also probably the best one. What saddens me is that there are good readers who would have connected with it, had they found it, but they didn't due to the criticism of a bilious and incompetent woman favored by
September 4, 2026 at 3:12 AM
"Metamorphica runs dark and esoteric and might be the most difficult of my books; it's also probably the best one. What saddens me is that there are good readers who would have connected with it, had they found it, but they didn't due to the criticism of a bilious and incompetent woman favored by
In B J Novak's "One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories", he writes (I'm going from memory, it's been 12 year since I read it), "Good writers borrow, but great writers steal. I hear Bret Easton Ellis knocks over liquor stores."
September 3, 2026 at 10:21 PM
In B J Novak's "One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories", he writes (I'm going from memory, it's been 12 year since I read it), "Good writers borrow, but great writers steal. I hear Bret Easton Ellis knocks over liquor stores."
Was talking about why I've never quite been able to write about the Valley/start-up life - when I try and it comes out as farce, e.g. "Rolled out of bed, went into work. Coffee, started coding. Coding, more coding, poked around web, then coding. Realized it was 11 PM. 11 PM?? Uber home...
September 3, 2026 at 7:05 PM
Was talking about why I've never quite been able to write about the Valley/start-up life - when I try and it comes out as farce, e.g. "Rolled out of bed, went into work. Coffee, started coding. Coding, more coding, poked around web, then coding. Realized it was 11 PM. 11 PM?? Uber home...
Now on a Cusk jag. (Which sounds like it should be some sort of exotic curve found only in some sort of hideously intricate complex mathematical space. "Oh! yeah, no, that's isomorphic to a Cusk jag, totally non-integrable and some whole hideous other kind of non-continuous.")
September 3, 2026 at 6:29 PM
Now on a Cusk jag. (Which sounds like it should be some sort of exotic curve found only in some sort of hideously intricate complex mathematical space. "Oh! yeah, no, that's isomorphic to a Cusk jag, totally non-integrable and some whole hideous other kind of non-continuous.")
Reading Rachel Cusk's "Life of M", though generally I'm inclined to shy away from whatever hot literary scandal. The book speaks beautifully and intelligently to an unusual subjectivity (of an A list actress, apparently - gasp- N. Portman.). M isn't fighting obvious adversity - thus, low goodreads?
September 3, 2026 at 3:18 AM
Reading Rachel Cusk's "Life of M", though generally I'm inclined to shy away from whatever hot literary scandal. The book speaks beautifully and intelligently to an unusual subjectivity (of an A list actress, apparently - gasp- N. Portman.). M isn't fighting obvious adversity - thus, low goodreads?
Saw Nicholas Winding Refn's "Her Private Hell." It's the pure product (in this metaphor, "Drive" was stepped on a few times) - the popcorn-chewing masses won't like it, but, my god, if you want a tidy three act structure there are Marvel movies, and, you know, movies, most of them.
August 27, 2026 at 5:22 PM
Saw Nicholas Winding Refn's "Her Private Hell." It's the pure product (in this metaphor, "Drive" was stepped on a few times) - the popcorn-chewing masses won't like it, but, my god, if you want a tidy three act structure there are Marvel movies, and, you know, movies, most of them.
Bother. Missed an interview because I didn't realize the time was Eastern, not Pacific. My own fault, of course, but, by default, tech things are generally PT, and book things invariably ET, and I'm just getting back into, as it were, the time change.
August 24, 2026 at 10:56 PM
Bother. Missed an interview because I didn't realize the time was Eastern, not Pacific. My own fault, of course, but, by default, tech things are generally PT, and book things invariably ET, and I'm just getting back into, as it were, the time change.
Simon Vance, Sean Pratt and Emma Gregory will be doing the audiobook, and I couldn't be more pleased - can't wait to hear what they do with the text.
August 19, 2026 at 6:14 PM
Simon Vance, Sean Pratt and Emma Gregory will be doing the audiobook, and I couldn't be more pleased - can't wait to hear what they do with the text.
Casting the audiobook. I'm hoping we can get the wonderful Emma Gregory. We'll see!
August 13, 2026 at 8:11 PM
Casting the audiobook. I'm hoping we can get the wonderful Emma Gregory. We'll see!
There are calls to pause/decelerate AI. I know where they're coming from, but the maximum possible result is performative legislation to appease the masses, unless you... outlaw tensors? "Oh, this? I'ts not an AI, officer, it's just a regular old computer program."
August 8, 2026 at 7:08 PM
There are calls to pause/decelerate AI. I know where they're coming from, but the maximum possible result is performative legislation to appease the masses, unless you... outlaw tensors? "Oh, this? I'ts not an AI, officer, it's just a regular old computer program."
I have a website now, though there's little enough on it.
www.zacharymasonwriter.com
I had resisted for a long time, finally succumbing to gentle pressure from the press.
www.zacharymasonwriter.com
I had resisted for a long time, finally succumbing to gentle pressure from the press.
HOME | Zachary Mason Writer
www.zacharymasonwriter.com
August 8, 2026 at 7:02 PM
I have a website now, though there's little enough on it.
www.zacharymasonwriter.com
I had resisted for a long time, finally succumbing to gentle pressure from the press.
www.zacharymasonwriter.com
I had resisted for a long time, finally succumbing to gentle pressure from the press.
Classicist-to-the-common-man Emily Wilson was pilloried for her review of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey for, in essence, having neither taste nor grace. I saw her described as "the most vicious and illiterate of cows", though I, for one, shy away from the ad hominem. (She, alas, does not.)
August 8, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Classicist-to-the-common-man Emily Wilson was pilloried for her review of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey for, in essence, having neither taste nor grace. I saw her described as "the most vicious and illiterate of cows", though I, for one, shy away from the ad hominem. (She, alas, does not.)
A charming photograph of Borges and a cat; the cat in her eternity, Borges in his.
August 8, 2026 at 6:47 PM
A charming photograph of Borges and a cat; the cat in her eternity, Borges in his.
Now going on kind of a jag with Twin Peaks midrash.
Interesting how improvised it was. Also interesting how the materials were pedestrian - a soap opera, a murder mystery, a little woo woo mysticism - but under Lynch's hand, though they veered close to the banal, the results were at times sublime.
Interesting how improvised it was. Also interesting how the materials were pedestrian - a soap opera, a murder mystery, a little woo woo mysticism - but under Lynch's hand, though they veered close to the banal, the results were at times sublime.
July 30, 2026 at 5:37 PM
Now going on kind of a jag with Twin Peaks midrash.
Interesting how improvised it was. Also interesting how the materials were pedestrian - a soap opera, a murder mystery, a little woo woo mysticism - but under Lynch's hand, though they veered close to the banal, the results were at times sublime.
Interesting how improvised it was. Also interesting how the materials were pedestrian - a soap opera, a murder mystery, a little woo woo mysticism - but under Lynch's hand, though they veered close to the banal, the results were at times sublime.
Trinity Cube: Irradiated glass from Fukushima around a core of Trinitite. A lovely, horrible object. There was some literary critic (French?) beloved of Calvino who spoke of the magma under the surface of literature-a short hop from that to radiant, irradiating art...
paglen.studio/2020/01/21/t...
paglen.studio/2020/01/21/t...
Trinity Cube – Trevor Paglen
Irradiated broken glass collected from inside the Fukushima Exclusion Zone forms the outer layer of this sculpture. The work’s inner core is made out of Trinitite, the mineral created on July 16, 1945...
paglen.studio
July 30, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Trinity Cube: Irradiated glass from Fukushima around a core of Trinitite. A lovely, horrible object. There was some literary critic (French?) beloved of Calvino who spoke of the magma under the surface of literature-a short hop from that to radiant, irradiating art...
paglen.studio/2020/01/21/t...
paglen.studio/2020/01/21/t...