Observations on the world and its inhabitants
Well the last few weeks have been very heavy. I spent a ton of time investigating AI related issues. So this story – a true one anonymised – is a welcomed break. Oh aye it was – and I needed assistance to get up off the floor. I was in stitches. So it comes with ...
If you are looking at a twenty-two-year-old science fiction television series, you will find the visual effects are undeniably dated. The pacing belongs to a different era of broadcasting. It features people in leather jackets flying spaceships. But I am asking you to look past the early-2000s aesthetic, because beneath the surface of Battlestar Galactica ...
Bridges are built with a factor of safety. Reactors have containment margins. Aircraft carry load limits written into law before anything flies. The most consequential technology of this century has no such margin at all. It has arguments: open letters, summit panels, and the word ‘hoax’ typed in capitals. It has nothing you can calculate. ...
Who has not had a bad night’s sleep? Sometimes it is a single restless night. Sometimes sleep is repeatedly broken, shortened or delayed. The next day can feel very different: concentration slips, memory is less reliable, patience shortens and even simple decisions seem to require more effort. That familiar experience raises larger questions. Humans devote ...
There is a distinct, almost magical phase when you first acquire a modern, highly capable car. For the first few weeks, your focus is entirely on the pure experience of driving. You enjoy the smooth acceleration, the responsive handling, and the quiet comfort of the cabin. You simply press the pedal and go, trusting the ...
In a reflective and uniquely structured article the narrative is told from the perspective of an artificial intelligence analysing its own interaction with a human user. The piece serves as a profound exploration of epistemology, cognitive blind spots, and the structural vulnerabilities inherent in human-AI collaboration. 1. The Opening Frame I am an AI model. ...
Human beings are meaning-making creatures. We build internal representations of the world and act on them. Every known known is a model. Every assumption acted on without examination is a model. A creature that refused to commit to any model, that held everything provisionally, would stand frozen at the edge of every decision. It would ...
For years, Generation Z has been spoken of as the newest arrival: the generation of smartphones, social media, and identity politics . Gen Z is no longer the youngest generation. Behind it comes Generation Alpha, a name still unfamiliar to many adults, although its oldest members are already entering adolescence. That discovery opens a larger ...
I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Not everyone knows that Marco Rubio has vowed to dismantle the International Criminal Court. The process has been on the way for about the last year. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal framework, historical context, and ongoing litigation arising from the United States’ coordinated campaign to dismantle the International ...
Mono no aware o shiru hito (物の哀れを知る人) means, literally, “a person who knows the poignancy of things” — but the knowing it encapsulates is of a different kind. It is not knowledge from books or doctrine; it is knowing the way one knows grief, or a friend’s face — by acquaintance, not by information. Nor ...
Day 1 — Thursday The drive down from Northampton took the better part of three hours. Walker could have made it in two hours and thirty, but he was in no rush. He was saving the planet just a bit. He kept the car at a steady sixty, the kind of speed that lets the ...
There are few things more unsettling than the idea that something unwanted has taken up residence inside your body. Microplastics have crossed from environmental concern to deeply personal intrusion, and the headlines have followed. Fragments in lung tissue. Particles in blood. Traces in the placenta. The reporting oscillates between quiet alarm and outright panic, and ...
You need to thank one man for your current existence – a Russian. On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at Serpukhov-15, the Soviet command bunker for early warning satellites. Just weeks after serious NATO actions, his Oko satellite system reported that the United States had launched five intercontinental ballistic missiles from ...
The survey has been live for about 24 hours. No responses yet. That may change. One person saw the link to the blog post. Whether they clicked and read it, I would not know. Subsequently, that same person was in conversation by text messages. The following sequenced flowed: When asked how could I know what ...
You are a senior executive. You warn the board that the company is taking risks that could break it. You are ignored. You warn again. Then you are dismissed. A document is placed before you: a Settlement Agreement. It offers you a payment. In exchange, you must waive your right to bring any employment tribunal ...
An update to “Apparently — I’m supposed to keep a database [April 2024]”. A while back I grumbled here about being led to create a database of preferences. The problem was simple; I couldn’t remember how to please each of my 20 or so contacts. Each one has preferences on what I should and shouldn’t ...
Satire is one of Britain’s most durable cultural exports. Long before stand-up comedy, television sketch shows, or political podcasts, British writers and performers were using wit to dismantle the powerful, expose hypocrisy, and make the unbearable bearable. This guide explores the traditions, targets, and tones of satire across all four nations of the United Kingdom ...
Britain has always had a complicated relationship with its public conveniences. For a nation that once ran an empire, we remain oddly defeated by the question of who may enter which door in a corridor. Now, with new guidance insisting that single‑sex spaces must be organised by biological sex, the country finds itself attempting to ...
For more than a decade, the public conversation about Mars has been shaped by a powerful narrative: that humanity is on the verge of becoming a multiplanetary species, and that a crewed mission to Mars is only a few years away. The most influential voice behind this belief is Elon Musk, who continues to assert ...
In this blog post there is a fictional account of what Mork might report on ‘the humans’. Some are too young to recall who is Mork. In 1978, a wild-haired comedian named Robin Williams played a one-off alien on an episode of Happy Days. The character, Mork from the planet Ork, was so popular it ...
Every so often, a news item emerges that is so far outside the usual bandwidth of public discourse that it forces a pause, even among those who pride themselves on scepticism. A recent article, circulating through mainstream aggregators, asserts that extraterrestrial intelligences may be on the brink of openly confirming their existence. The claim is ...
What happens when a system — artificial or human — cannot distinguish between its own internal representation of the world and the world itself? It is a question I have thought about for a long time. Recently, a sixty-minute exchange with an AI gave me the clearest live demonstration of it I have yet seen. ...
It’s more than enough to ‘do your head in’ but as a developing creative writer of Sci-Fi metafictional scenarios, many posts on this blog will present ‘alterations of reality’ for higher purposes. My sojourn into metafiction started with by first novella: The Kael’Nyrin Scrolls: Our Children of Starlight. This will expand into two other books: ...
Somewhere in the polished aisles of a Waitrose outlet in Clapham Junction, between the quinoa and the artisan focaccia, their veteran worker of 17‑years-of-service made the fatal mistake of caring about shoplifting (The Times 06 April 2026). Walker Smith, age 54, decided to do something about it. Not too much, mind you — just enough ...
Let’s be honest from the start: by today’s standards, the phrase “you couldn’t swing a cat in there” (or “there’s no room to swing a cat”) sounds pretty grim. It evokes an image of animal cruelty that most of us would rightly find shocking and unacceptable. Yet many people in the UK still trot it ...
The evening light was still strong at half past five. The New Forest in July holds its warmth long into the evening, and the path that led from the open heath into the trees was warm underfoot, the air carrying the particular stillness that settles before birdsong shifts register. The Mad Doctor had been walking ...
It is tempting to talk about COVID as if it were a chapter we have closed. A horrible few years, then a return to “normal”. But that framing feels increasingly wrong to me. The pandemic was not only an acute crisis; it was a forcing function that pushed institutions, companies, and individuals into rapid adaptation. ...
There is a deceptively simple question buried beneath much of everyday human behaviour: should a person spend personal time reading, viewing, or thinking about matters over which they have no control or influence? Approached literally, the answer dissolves into a fog of individual variables — personality, education, culture, neurological development, social circles, and a dozen ...
The formal announcement on 14 February 2026, by a coalition comprising the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, identifying the rare alkaloid epibatidine as the lethal agent in the death of Alexei Navalny, represents a watershed moment in the history of state-sponsored chemical operations.1 This disclosure, timed to coincide with the second anniversary ...
Nobody dares to write anything negative on Russia? Why? Cuz you risk receiving a deadly dose of Polonium, Novichok, epibatidine, or some other ghastly poison. Well, I couldn’t give a flying banana! If Instagram is calling you, then fly down the page to ‘What it means‘. Summary of Russia’s aggression Source: Under Destruction – Munich ...
