After writing last week about the bitter feelings of regret that permeate Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” I found myself wanting to explore this emotion from a different angle. My choice this week is "Feathers” by Raymond Carver, a story that is both odd and deeply moving. "Feathers” opens Carver's 1983 collection Cathedral. I have had this book for years and have read some of the stories, but I had never read this one until now. Carver, a master of the short s

I’m a latecomer to The White Lotus, but I’ve now devoured the first two seasons. It’s cleverly plotted, smartly written and the locales (Hawaii in Season 1, and Sicily in Season 2) are gorgeous. This TV series has also sent me back, unexpectedly, to thinking about Ernest Hemingway. Each season of The White Lotus follows a group of wealthy guests at a luxury resort who both lose and reveal themselves while on vacation. By the end of the trip, someone also ends up dead. I'm war

I read a wild article in The Wall Street Journal recently about an artificial intelligence tool called Moltbot that creates agents to handle day-to-day tasks autonomously, like booking dinner reservations and sifting through your inbox. But it hasn't taken long for these AI assistants to go beyond their original remit: they have forged a community among themselves in which they engage in dark, dystopian chatter. They have concocted their own religion and call humans dumb. A