The title is a reference to this typically-cheerful Leonard Cohen number from 1992. Basically, humans have always (1) struggled to make sense of a cruel and complicated world. Religion did okay for us - especially when it was the (Greek) gods - a bunch of powerful petulant teenagers (at best), toying with the humans: a... Continue Reading →
LLMs will lead to heart-ache, confusion and worse.
I was reading John Michael Greer on “cognitive collapse” and this leapt out at me. “Since they’re not intelligent—LLMs, that is—they lack the capacity to check their output against the real world, which leaves them vulnerable to model collapse: the process by which the internal model of reality programmed into them drifts disastrously away from... Continue Reading →
We are terrible at meetings – all kinds
Over the last month I've collected yet more examples of just how terrible "we" are at meetings (online, in meatspace, hybrid, whatever). I did not need these, or go looking for them. But there they were.... By "we" I do not just mean social movement "activists" looking to create momentum behind a campaign - my... Continue Reading →
October 31st, 1930 – “Bulb Planting” (Harold Nicholson 3/37)
Date of transmission:October 31st 1930TitleBulb PlantingContext/descriptionIt's October, and "Winter is Coming" - back when the UK had proper winters (snow and stuff)Words I didn’t know or ya don’t see much anymore:Stuff I looked up:Boticelli's PrimaveraBest sentences:"All too well do we know that those bulbs will come up the next year garish as the foreground of... Continue Reading →
Mobile phones as id portals – affordances affording fascism…
I was, to my wife's exasperation, a (very) late adopter of mobile phone technology; I have luddite tendencies, after all. Anyway, this isn't about me (it turns out some things aren't! Who knew). This is about how we think about mobiles. They are sold as wonderboxes that have the world's knowledge at our fingertips. As... Continue Reading →
October 24, 1930 – “Palestine” (Harold Nicholson 2/37)
For a quid I bought a collection of broadcasts Harold Nicholson (see below) gave on the BBC in 1930 and 1931. They are short and dated (in every sense) so I thought I could read and blog them on the anniversary of their first (and presumably last transmission). For the lulz, and to build my... Continue Reading →
Why we kept losing – the smugosphere, the smugotariat and the Fafocene.
This is the same blog post I have written dozens (?) of times. I am doing it now as a howl of despair (1) It will change nothing, except providing a fleeting spasm of catharsis. That’s all we have left, after the world historical defeat of the “left” (always a label that hid at least... Continue Reading →
Review “Not a through street” by Ernest Larsen – #13books
I bought thirteen books last time I was in London. The rule (already broken (1)) is not to buy or borrow (2) any more until I have read and reviewed all thirteen. Here's reviews of the first, second and third. The fourth book was one that I read back in the 1990s or so -... Continue Reading →
October 17th, 1930 – “Oxford” (Harold Nicholson 01/37)
For a quid I bought a collection of broadcasts Harold Nicholson gave in 1930 and 1931, on BBC Radio. They are short and dated (in every sense) so I thought I could read and blog them on the anniversary of their first (and presumably last transmission). For the lulz, and to build my writing muscles.... Continue Reading →
Asimov’s Hell-Fire – a must read (3 mins or so!)
I read 27 "Great British Short Stories" in 27 days (Daphne du Maurier's The Birds was a stand out, in a crowded field). I wanted to keep the short-story-a-day thing going and planned to do it with Isaac Asimov's 1956 collection "Earth is Room Enough" and George Saunder's "Tenth of December." The latter has escaped... Continue Reading →
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