Now
A sporadically updated log of what I'm reading, exploring, and thinking about in digital form.
(This is a now page, and if you have your own site, you can make one, too.)
Updated June 7th, 2026, from a public library near my home in Melbourne, where it’s fully winter, dark and cold.
Health Rehabilitation
Now that I am officially through the advised cancer treatment, restoring my health has become a true priority. Over the course of a week (barring ill health or disrupted sleep) I do the following~ 2x weightlifting sessions focussing on strength and skillwork, 1x upper body strength session and 1x handstand calisthenics class, 1x mobility and conditioning class. 1x squash session and 1x surfing session at Urbn surf https://urbnsurf.com/ to elevate the heart rate. I usually start the day each day with a round of rebounding on the mini trampoline to kick start the lymphatic system. Each week, I sit in the sauna at Inner Studio for 21 minutes at 82°C and have 1x acupuncture session a week.
To rehabilitate my gutbiome I’m on one of the most restrictive nutrition protocols I've ever seen. You can read about it here (if that's your type of thing): https://mfm.au/wp-content/uploads/documents/eat-sibo-bi-phasic-diet.pdf. Then I bring in a mix of supplements, steamed veggies, protein, psylium husk and other fiber. I stop eating around six pm. I’m glad the rest of my life is so interesting, because my food intake is definitely not. ☺
Daydreaming
I’m ready for another big life chapter, so I spend many hours a week daydreaming of emergent truths that can be come tangible.
Boy thriving at Kindergarten
Our son is in his first year of Kindergarten (Pre-School), and is so wonderfully insightful, funny, curious, and imaginative. He's presently obsessed with Spiderman, after we found a t-shirt at an Opportunity Shop (Be careful what you wish for as a parent).
Creating
For a long while, I stopped creating. It's not that I lost the ability to create, but I was in process and unsure what mattered now. It’s been hard to know what to say with a landscape changing this fast. It’s hard to gather my thoughts in a resource depleted state. It’s hard to believe my opinions have any legitimacy compared to the people who are still in the upperworld, while I scrabble together information in between periods of rest and rehabilitation. I’ve lost a little of my confidence as a contributor to The Discourse. My intention for this year is to take my own advice and pick some low hanging fruit.
AI Training
The ground has been shifting around me. Large language models (LLMs) and related systems have moved from curiosity to constant presence. Every day there is another piece of noise that crosses over into the adjacent possible: this prompt is the best, this is the future, look at all the things this replaces. The zeitgeist seems to be obsessed with these new tools, which are moving so fast we can barely keep up (if we do at all). Part of returning to the world has found me fascinated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what is can currently do and where it hits up against the margins.
Edward Eigen gave a talk where he compared LLMs to the Talmud—not because they are sacred, but because they are dense, generative, and endlessly interpretable. You do not read them once; you return to them, argue with them, annotate them, build traditions around them.
That framing stuck with me because most of what I hear about artificial intelligence (AI) still sounds like management consulting. Efficiency. Acceleration. Staff reduction. Faster pipelines. Better throughput. That is not how AI behaves in the studio. There, AI is much closer to ink. We treat it, and the data it shuffles, as material. If you treat AI as a tool, you ask: how do I get the right answer? If you treat it as a medium, you ask: what happens if I push this?
I believe that at best you are your own enemy if you go around constantly complaining about AI, even though there are some genuine complaints you might levy. It is best to complain from a position of love and dedication. So I'm learning how to use agents, how to prompt effectively, and discovered what happens happens if I push this button?
Books
I love books and have relished coming back to the analogue form, writing in the margin, hosting book clubs and generally embracing the page. At some stage I'll bring together this bounty into a living library with notes that arose for me whilst reading them.
This is the latest dispatch of books that are on the bedside table:
Famesick by Lena Dunham (100% complete)
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/52545816-famesick
Sovereign Love by Dené Logan (50% complete)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195391692-sovereign-love
In the Absence of the Ordinary by Francis Weller (100% complete and recommended)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55779859-in-the-absence-of-the-ordinary
The Precipice by Toby Ord (5% complete)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50485582-the-precipice
80,000 hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good by Benjamin Todd
(5% complete)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33229792-80-000-hours
Under Saturn's Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men by James Hollis (5% complete)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204773.Under_Saturn_s_Shadow
Thank you for taking a walk in the woods.
SAMUEL HAYWOOD
WHACKED TOGETHER BY SAM HAYWOOD SINCE 2026