Conversations on Science, Culture and Time
Chapter One - What The Sea Took
Somewhere off the Scottish coast, where the Dogger Bank gives way to deeper channels, lies a black tooth of granite known as Grimleigh Rock. It does not appear on common charts. It is uninhabitable, save for the tower built atop it, and even that is a generous word.
[…]
What follows is an attempt to reconstruct the history of Grimleigh Rock through the fragments left behind - the logbooks, the weather reports, the missing persons notices, and the uncorroborated testimonies of passing ships.
Some say the light has never truly gone out…
The Walker Returns
Some of you might not know Craig Mod. That’s quite alright, he’s not the type to shout over the noise. He writes, he walks, he observes. Mostly in Japan. If you’ve ever found joy in the shape of a well-made notebook, the hush of a path through cypress woods, or the dignified stillness of a countryside train station, chances are, you’d find joy in Craig Mod’s world too.
I’ve followed his work for years - in books, in newsletters, in essays that feel less like pronouncements and more like quiet invitations. The Book of Tea and Things Become Other Things still sit nearby, never far from reach. I’ll share a few photos of the latter, not to show off, but to remind myself how beautifully small ideas can grow.
Right now Craig is off walking again. A new solo journey, another slow thread of steps through the Japanese countryside. And yes, he’s writing as he goes. If you haven’t already, I suggest subscribing to his pop-up newsletter, Between Two Mountains (B2M).
Poking Into Nothingness
There comes a moment in thought—if you’re brave, bored, or simply lying awake far too long—when you ask: what lies beyond the universe? And you don’t mean stars, or dark matter, or rogue planets. You mean the edge. The boundary. The membrane beyond which there is no ‘where’, no ‘when’, no ‘what’. And when your thought reaches that point, something inside you recoils. A silent dread. As if your mind has brushed against something it wasn’t meant to. Most people turn back. Frankly, so do I. That creeping sense of cosmic vertigo always gets me. But not tonight. Tonight, I want to break that barrier. I want to step past the limit. I want to poke into the nothingness.
Lowly Fruit, Lofty Consequences
In this sixth instalment of Tales from the Cloister, we return to Brother Percival himself - older, warier, and determined to keep out of trouble. Unfortunately, a bumper apple harvest, a few cracked bottles, and the arrival of a very important guest conspire against his better intentions. What begins as a harmless cider soon threatens to unearth old heresies, test ecclesiastical diplomacy, and remind us all why fermentation is a dangerous form of theology.
Robert Redford rides the Outlaw Trail
I was never one for star worship. Celebrities rarely held much sway - well, aside from a certain red-haired FBI agent from my youth. Exceptions, after all, prove the rule.
That said, I always liked Robert Redford. There was a quiet integrity about him, a kind of unforced grace that feels rare these days. National Geographic recently resurfaced a longform piece from 1976: The Outlaw Trail. Redford wrote it himself: part historical reflection, part road trip, part elegy for a fading frontier. It’s the kind of immersive, slow-burn storytelling we don’t see often anymore.
When Time Learned to Speak
The Lone Swordsman leans in to hear what may be watchmaking’s most intricate voice: the minute repeater. From soot-dark London streets to the hushed valleys of Switzerland, this is a journey through horological music, a tale of snails and hammers, whispered hours, and the rare machines that don’t just measure time… but perform it.
God’s Ghostwriters
[…] I already have more unread books than anyone with a full-time job and mild internet addiction should reasonably own, but one can never have too many sources of postponed enlightenment. I was, in truth, fishing for something: a sentence, a spark. What I found instead was a little white-covered paperback titled God’s Ghostwriters. […]
The book’s cover had prepared me with its parade of deadpan endorsements: “Very interesting” (The Tablet) and “A revelation” (Irish Independent), which together read less like literary criticism and more like a Vatican press release.
How to spot AI-written text
I would like to address the recent slander circulating on social media, in editorial Slack channels, and in the margins of otherwise decent Substack newsletters. Specifically, the baseless, libelous accusation that my usage is a telltale sign of artificial intelligence.
Listen here, my good bitch.
Disclaimer: I’ve Been Accused of Borges
The Watchman stories, I am told, carry the faint whiff of Borges. Some readers have even gone so far as to suggest plagiarism; that my labyrinths of memory, forgotten manuscripts, and ambiguous merchants are merely reheated Argentine leftovers. To which I must reply: guilty… but only by accident. […] I knew of him, mostly through Umberto Eco (my literary idol) […] But - to my chagrin and utter embarrassment - I had never opened his pages. Not once.
[…] And since ignorance is no excuse, I now set myself the task of reading Borges at last. At least then, when the next accusation arrives, I can respond with footnotes. Only there’s a catch: try doing that in Romanian. It is, frankly, a nightmare.
Emergence Explained with David Krakauer
Every now and then, a podcast comes along that doesn’t just pass the time, it rearranges how you think about it. One such episode, from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk, features David Krakauer, president of the Santa Fe Institute, talking about emergence, complexity, intelligence, and whether life is just problem-solving matter doing its best in a chaotic universe.
Trying On Time in Munich
There’s something about the Germans and time. Not just the usual jokes about punctual trains (which, let’s be honest, in recent years are often late enough to feel oddly comforting to the rest of us), but a deeper fascination. Wander around Nuremberg and you’ll find the old ateliers where horology was once half craft, half wizardry — the kind of places where an apprentice probably spent three years learning how to polish a screw. I’ve written about that before, so if you’re inclined towards dusty manuscripts and ticking mechanisms, there’s a link somewhere in the archives.
This trip, though, wasn’t about the past. It was about the present — or rather, about resisting the future. Specifically, the very shiny and very dangerous future that lurks along Maximilianstraße in Munich. A place where every shopfront seems to size you up and murmur, “Step inside, sir, we have just the thing to ruin your financial stability.”
On the Noble Art of Doing Absolutely Nothing
"We decided, in the interest of our health, to do absolutely nothing. Nothing, that is, in the scientific sense — a deliberate, studied absence of action. The most strenuous activity undertaken was the lifting of a pint glass, and even then we agreed that such exertions should be kept to the bare minimum."
Of course, there are moments when life interrupts even the most meticulously scheduled idleness — such as my recent, meteoric visit to Munich. […] It was also, in no small part, about meeting and reconnecting with wonderful people whom I had not seen in quite some time — the sort of encounters that remind you that geography may keep you apart, but a good beer and an unhurried conversation will stitch the years back together in an instant.
[…]
What I can say for now is that the trip contained all the classic elements of an Alpine interlude. We also took the unholy H1 trail to the Heimgartenhütte — a “difficult” route marked in black, which in Bavarian terms translates roughly to: If you slip, it’s a helicopter ride, but do enjoy the view.
The Hanseatic Cask: On Commerce, Confusion, and a Porter Best Left Buried
It is a curious fact that the Hanseatic Charter of 1356 bears a faint watermark, not of ink or wax, but of aged gruit. No one dares explain why the parchment smells faintly of smoked barley and myrrh.
According to the marginalia of one particularly nervous monastic scribe, the events leading to the formation of the League began not with diplomacy or merchant acumen, but with the unexpected arrival of a weathered barrel — mislabelled, unsealed, and entirely out of place.
The barrel in question, retrieved from the hold of a Danish supply vessel anchored in Lübeck harbour, bore no name beyond a fading tag: “Monastic – Not for Lay Consumption – Property of P.” Naturally, the dockhands opened it within the hour.
Naming Villages and Other Crimes
~ The Curious Case of Transylvania’s Sâmbătas and Suspicions ~
It was said - though by whom, no one precisely recalled - that Transylvania had more village disputes per square kilometre than vineyards per Saxon capita. […]
Take Sâmbăta (en. Saturday), for instance. No, not that Sâmbăta. The other one. Or the other other one. If you were a travelling merchant in the mid-15th century and someone asked, "Are you heading through Sâmbăta?" your first instinct would be to feign a nosebleed and disappear into the woods at a suspiciously athletic trot. You see, there was Sâmbăta in Bihor, the modest one with no ambition beyond a decent Saturday market and a goat that could hum Gregorian chants […] Then, as your ox-cart trundled southeast through the Carpathians, you'd reach the tangled web of Sâmbăta de Sus and Sâmbăta de Jos - Upper and Lower Sâmbăta, respectively - divided not by geography but by the theological schism over whether Saint Andrew had ever worn sandals.
From Ashes to Altars: How Geneva’s Fires Fed Transylvania’s Faith
What started as a harmless dive into watchmaking somehow spiralled into a tale of Calvinist bans, pocket watches smuggling vanity past piety, and a Spaniard who managed to irritate both Geneva and the Inquisition — before his ideas found refuge in Transylvania. All because I wanted to know why the JLC Reverso flips. Grab a coffee (or a pocket watch) and join me on a paper-fuelled journey through horology, heresy, unintended consequences — and the sheer joy of research.
How to Lose Friends and Identify Warblers
Prompted by a short piece in The New Yorker titled Your Slow Descent into Bird Watching, I felt compelled, perhaps even morally obliged, to offer my own account of how an entirely reasonable human can spiral, with almost comic dignity, into the feathery madness of this so-called hobby.
It all started with a blackbird.
Why Is It Always Miercurea?
You’ve probably noticed it too. (I certainly did while scouting bike trails.) Drive anywhere in Transylvania for more than twenty‑four minutes and you will be greeted by misty hills, the distant clank of cow bells, and, without fail, a road sign proudly announcing yet another Miercurea‑Something: Miercurea Sibiului. Miercurea Ciuc. Miercurea Nirajului. It’s like someone at the medieval naming committee fell asleep on a Wednesday and never recovered. Even the cows have started to ask, “Darling, which Miercurea are we chewing our cud in today?” And yet, no Vinerea de Jos. No Lunea Mare. Just poor, underrepresented weekdays waiting for their turn on the map.
What happened then? How, exactly, did Wednesday corner the Transylvanian branding department while Friday was sent out to pasture like an over‑taxed ox? Let's unpack this.
Fewer Visions, More Malt: A Letter from Brother Cadfael
Shrewsbury Abbey Feast of St. Benedict, in the Year of Our Lord 1264
Brother Percival,
Peace and (tentative) good health be upon you.
Your most recent delivery — a curious flagon bearing no seal but reeking faintly of yarrow and unconfessed sin — arrived two nights past. It was found by Brother Jerome outside the apothecary, nestled inexplicably in a wheelbarrow of turnips.
A Wright Turn at the Edge of the Universe
Back in 1742, an Englishman named Thomas Wright drew a picture of the universe. It was not a map in the modern sense. It did not rely on telescopic observation, nor did it pretend to scientific certainty. It was a vision — the kind that arrives when candlelight flickers too close to a celestial globe, and the mind, unbound by modern rigour, drifts into orbit.
Wright imagined that the stars formed a luminous shell around us, that our own solar system sat nestled among millions, spiralling gently around a central divine force. It was, in many ways, a mistake. But it was also something else: a mistake made with extraordinary beauty.
And like all beautiful errors, it became a stepping stone.
The Sound of Tiny Wings in the Alps
We offer the perfect accommodation for every need – now even for the tiniest of travelers! With “Bees & Friends”, we’re welcoming bees, butterflies, insects and hedgehogs with their own charming little homes, nestled right next to our hotels. It’s Swiss hospitality at its most adorable – and proof that when we say “everyone’s welcome”, we really mean it.