You will not get the grantsIf you are too “doomy”You must dance the danceAnd make the future ‘roomy’ If you talk of limitsEyebrows will be raised.Do not be so dim! - it’sTech that must be praised! Take the secret oathAnd join the “smarty” gang;NEVER question growthAnd let the future hang
Somebody just posted a link to a new report on Bluesky. This one Call me glib, unhelpful and a whole lot of other adjectives, but I bashed out this below in little more than the time it takes to read. I coulda been a contender... The die is cast, the goose is cookedThe warnings were... Continue Reading →
Oh god, what a waste it was. There's a bunch of stuff I wish I had known at the outset. Some of it I was probably told, by many people, on many occasions. I probably ignored those people because I was "smarter" than them, and they were just old, or poor or women or whatever.... Continue Reading →
Nothing organised or refined here - just a quote dump because I am supposed to be doing other things (I am always supposed to be doing other things!). tl;dr - timing matters, there are deeper tides than we realise (just read about Camatte's idea of speciosis-ontosis - not sure it adds much, but it's intriguing... Continue Reading →
Yesterday I came across a new reason(as if I needed more!) not to make long term plans. It's "Model Autophagy Disorder" - basically, the AI slop vacuum cleaners/generators might start to feed on what they've already spat out. As I put on Bluesky - "I'm old enough to remember when "MAD" meant Yanks and Russians... Continue Reading →
I think I will do three submissions per issue until the end of the year, then call it a day.
I've been fascinated by Private Eye since late 1995, when my late friend Dev Cropper introduced me to it (or explained it better than I was currently understanding). Yes, it is not perfect, but - other than me of course - what is? Anyway, I've started pitching satire to them. Yet to be successful. You... Continue Reading →
There are Things I Have to Do. I went for a yomp to feed moorhens and swans (and shed lard - I go out with a weighted jacket - ten kilos of 1 and 2 pence coins and also, latterly, a backpack with a few bricks) to map out some of these TIHD, and avoid... Continue Reading →
This, from a chapter in "The Cambridge History of Violence" (2020) is rather good. The chapter is by Professor Peter H Wilson. The key advantage of regular troops was that their tighter discipline allowed them to fight in close-order formations designed to maximise the potential of the available weaponry. Discipline had several roots and its... Continue Reading →
The set-up in The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, is that the Bad People have managed to end women’s economic independence at the tap of a few keys on a keyboard. You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most... Continue Reading →
