“... the scaling laws that predict this are accurate over many orders of magnitude.’ The ‘laws’ may of course break down – they are empirical generalisations, not laws of physics – but they are worth taking seriously because ‘arbitrary amounts of money’ are indeed being shelled out on the infrastructure of AI. In August, researchers for Morgan ...”

“... and cathedral cloisters, but in 1685, when Philadelphia died, it was still common. Her husband may have wished to record his terrible loss in the dignity of an ancient language, but there was little point in listing the merits of Lady Mary if few other ladies, very few of her servants and fewer still among the poor could read about them. Two centuries ...”

“... joyful woman driver Insouciant at the wheel of a Detroit-built Hudson, her glance Thrown devil-may-caringly through its rear window, Male passenger watching her high heel pushing eagerly Up away into the ...”

“... of a present spume spattered up the sands? Mind where you pick your mussels and kina, these tides may secrete indigenous toxins. Deadly to the text. Shall I copy it ...”

“... In New York City I wasn’t told That mid-May nights in Vermont can be cold. Outside, our brook, short of sun And wind, barely keeps up a run, Just jogs and limps so as not to freeze; Flexing her black tender knees, The mare between the moon and the gate Crops fiercely as if she couldn’t wait For the calories to turn to heating, And is blindly warming herself by eating; Overhead, chipmunks shiver in rows, Or heaps, or whatever racial pose Chipmunks adopt; if there were lights, The woods would be circus-crammed with sights – Hedgehogs on inchmeal expeditions, Toads in cool conjugal positions, Somewhere the bug that bit me lying Jubilant with my blood and dying, Jays, if you can imagine it, keeping Quiet, drops from bathers creeping Back to huddle inside the lake, And in the corridors where the snake Exerts his snakiness unmolested The hiss and wriggle being rested ...”

“... don’t even know the date of your birthday.Instead of cycling, we could take a stroll:The clouds may look threatening but any boomsWill be fighter jets on training runsAnd if it rains we’ll take shelter in the woods.First let me take you round the orchard.See where the bark has been stripped from the pear?You thought I was teasing about the muntjacBut I ...”

“... for the larger world of things it won’t be easy to love. Helen I think will master it, though I may not. She has practised a long time learning to see. I have devoted myself to affirmation, when I should have kept my eyes on the ...”

“... good does it do you To complain, Charles? The fates shuffling your cards Are old and blind. You may as well look for them In every nursing home in Tennessee. One day your car breaks down Outside some dead mill town With a couple smokestacks in the rain, And you trudge past the home With your gasoline can in hand Almost brushing against the grey bricks Just ...”

“... a bloody deed. Oh yes, the hither-thither razor zips from crown to culet! Quite so. But what may be said of the bullet, which has struck the windowframe, just here? What of the extra glass, and the shorn-off fire iron? The facts, now, just the facts. We have a body, and a murderer. Who, then, was our third drinker? Who is our guest, who smokes ...”

“... C60. This is a measure of activity rather than importance, but no matter how original a paper may be, it cannot change the shape of science unless it is well-connected. The active surface of science is thin, like the layer of living tissue below the bark of a tree. It is supported by the wood of old ideas (all wood is, strictly speaking, dead). As time ...”

“... salient novels, sprinkling these accounts with sharp comments as to the thought or motive that may have lain behind such and such a device of plotting or characterisation. He then essays some broader judgments about the novelist’s attitudes towards humanity as a whole and homosexual humanity in particular. He points out, for example, that Capote’s ...”

“... wise, urbane, deeply reflective, spaciously well-informed and independent in judgment. It may be that his independence of judgment is sometimes carried too far: I thought it strange to read an entry headed ‘Anomie’ that made no mention of Emile Durkheim or of Robert Merton. ‘Anomy’ is declared obs. by the OED but the French variant anomie ...”

“... by her husband, and he shoots her. The girl hides, and for a moment it looks as though the man may not realise she’s there. Then he glimpses her under a bed, and she jumps out with a gun and shoots him.He seems to be dead, and she drags the corpse towards the lake. Then he sits up, and she runs for it, out onto the ice. The further she goes, the thinner ...”

“... long been the site of Great Patriotic War commemorations, attended by many Russian speakers on 9 May every year. But this spring the Saeima banned all rallies celebrating the Soviet victory and the monument was fenced off. Thousands of Russian speakers defied the ban and laid flowers in front of it. The flowers were cleared with a bulldozer; more were ...”

“... for them to produce their own platform instead of letting Zarqawi take all the limelight.’ It may no longer be so obviously in American interests to demonise the Sunni insurgents. Ever since Zilmay Khalilzad arrived in Baghdad as the US ambassador at the end of last summer, he has been cultivating the Sunni Arabs and limiting Shia control of the ...”