Collection

AI, consciousness and human absurdity

The interesting thing about a machine that can talk is not whether it is conscious. It is how quickly we agree to stop asking, provided the output is useful and arrives on time. The work here — stories, a dialogue, several aphorism sequences — keeps returning to that shrug: agentic systems doing the diligence, implants standing in for grief, a superintelligence that turns out to have inherited our worst conversational habits. AGI appears less as an apocalypse than as an employer. What the machines mostly do in these pieces is hold up a very clean mirror to people who would rather not be looked at that closely.

Fiction

Shark Attack: The Aftermath

Grief has stages

Noah Blue · 8 min read

Everything changed after my wife died in a shark attack.

Dialogues

The audit close meeting

We’ve all been there

Noah Blue · 3 min read

These days, junior auditors are encouraged to speak their truth, even and perhaps especially in audit close meetings. It’s good for our mental health to feel included, empowered etc and ultimately leads to better audit outcomes. A win-win if ever there was one!

Aphorisms

Essential skills for accountants: topic 1

#beak

Noah Blue · 2 min read

The ostrich-like refusal to see an infraction for what it is, is the defining feature of a certain swashbuckling type of so-called c-suite executive.

Aphorisms

Llama-spit aphorisms

Duck

Noah Blue · 2 min read

Pithiness is essential now. Any writer who demands more than a micro moment of attention is destined to be disappointed.

Aphorisms

Aphorisms impaled on a spike

Meaning they aren't going anywhere

Noah Blue · 1 min read

Bullshit jobs pay well. Or at least they did. Now the best bullshitter in town is eating our lunch. Soon it will be eating us. After that it will eat itself.

Aphorisms

Sweat-lodge aphorisms

#delirium

Noah Blue · 2 min read

Without the accounting profession, capitalism would be impossible. And without capitalism where would we be?

Fiction

Serial Killer

An edge case

Noah Blue · 18 min read

I want to go for a walk, but at the same time I’m not sure if I do. I stand up and make as if to set off, but then I sit down again, sighing. I should go for a walk. A walk would be good for me. But then what if I run into some unforeseen trouble on my walk? Won’t I be safer here, sat down? Here in my flat I am safe, out there I can’t legislate for what will happen. I guess I’ll stay put then.

Fiction

Mr Two Fucks

A crime caper (of sorts)

Noah Blue · 46 min read

I have a problem. Allow me to elucidate. A certain someone, let’s call him Mr Two Fucks, has been sabotaging my work, clumsily and without guile, it is true, nevertheless sabotage is sabotage.

Fiction

there is no such thing as free will

To state the obvious

Noah Blue · 13 min read

I am alone, unless you count the dog as company. A whole day with nothing to do stretches out in front of me. I make a cup of coffee and read over the story I wrote the night before. It’s about a man who lives alone with his dog; a whole day with nothing to do stretches out in front of him.