What we see now the eye can scarcely believe I’ve been giving this some thought and as far as I can tell there is no other way to put it, Boris Johnson is exactly who we ALL think he is; a self-important, self-serving, entitled cunt. I make no secret that I was lucky enough to have a fantastically
Prologue - Occam The rain is sliding off the roofs above me like sheets. I suppose that it comes as no surprise to me that this back alley on the lower east side is not blessed with well maintained guttering. The light from the part broken neon sign above the dive bar’s
Traitors are as traitors do... I want to forgive Leave voters. Truly I want to forgive them, even though I am so filled with rage and sorrow all at the same time. Even though I fear for myself, my family, my friends and indeed all my country folk and all my fellow Europeans, I wish
brexit We have barely 3 months left... I want you to imagine that it's just before Christmas, 2022...Brexit is still under regular discussion, at family tables, in pubs the length and breadth of the land, in offices and in school playgrounds and indeed everywhere that people gather...
Mr. Weinstein Will See You Now... I have posted about this on Facebook, but I needed to do something more... I have followed Amanda Palmer for years, since before she was a solo artist in most of our minds, when she was one half of the fantastic Dresden Dolls. Her brand of leftfield, strong, dark, joyful
Rational thinking in an irrational World... The notion that we, in the United Kingdom, must pursue the process of leaving the European Union at all costs, regardless of the new information that seems to arrive on a daily basis across the press and the social media, continues to persuade me that there is nothing but insanity
Prologue There is something that no one has ever told you, but that you know all the same. Deep down, inside yourself, you have always known that you are not special, even though the World appears to be set up to inculcate the idea within you that you are. That is
Institutional Idiocy This week the British Home Secretary made some particularly foolish statements about services that leverage end-to-end encryption in order to make communications secure. Since these sorts of services have started to experience wide levels of adoption, authoritarian politicians have been talking about how the companies that provide these services need
Art speaks to Life... "These violent delights have violent ends." (Delores) So I have completed the re-watch of Westworld that I was intending to do last year... I am confronted with something stark - I am going to need to watch it again. In fact I think that I am going to
And the scales fell from my eyes... ...and I wished for the ignorance that I had enjoyed before. Today, on the internet, I discovered something that made my skin itch and shortly thereafter actually made me nauseous. I discovered that there is a "thing", that one could perhaps describe as a sub subculture, the demon
Book Review - Split A couple of people asked me why I was reading a book about divorce, when they saw me reading Split [https://fictionandfeeling.com/products/split-true-stories-about-the-end-of-marriage-and-what-happens-next] , a book edited and contributed to by Katie West [https://www.therealkatiewest.com]. The simple answer, the one that does not require a longer conversation,
RESIST! I would love to believe that "a Brexit that works for Britain" were an achievable goal, but it's fantasy, and nothing more. The 98% are going to spend a generation being totally screwed. The lie of English exceptionalism, and it is not UK exceptionalism at all,
Time spent reading... It is a long time since I read a whole book, from start to finish, in one day. The last time I did it was in Palawan, last May. Since then while I have read four technical books, I have not finished a work of fiction. I am still reading
"Daddy, will you tell us about the BBC?" Full Disclosure — I worked at the BBC, I love the BBC, I don’t see the BBC as more important than the NHS, or Schools, or the Social Care Services or various other things people might pick on as “more important” that have all suffered and are all suffering at
Another day in Paradise? Have you heard the parable about the man who was offered a chance to see what it is like in Hell and then in Heaven so that he can understand why he ought to live a good life? He is taken first to Hell, wherein he sees all of the
Business Advice from the Geek Side - Issue #2 How to create a productive culture in your business## or### How to avoid destroying your business## Last week I posted my first “issue” of this series of posts, here, wherein I offered some advice about management styles to be avoided, mostly because of their tendency to drive away talent and
Business Advice, from the Geek-Side - Issue #1 How to destroy a good idea## or### Management techniques designed to kill your business## Over the years of my career as a software engineer I have worked for a nice, wide variety of organisations, and to be honest with you there is a lot to be said for the learning
clojure Why I Love Clojure... I have been a software engineer, professionally, for about fifteen years. Like a lot of people who write code as a part or pretty much all of their job I did not come to Software from a predictable angle; my degree is a BA in English and American Literature, but
Learning About Sexism I do not understand sexism and misogyny. I am heading towards the wrong side of forty and I am still trying to make sense of it, but one thing is for sure I am quite certain that it is real. I was raised in a comfortable middle-class bubble by two
On Terrorism... Okay, so here it is... "We should be willing to call a terrorist a terrorist, no matter the colour of their skin or the (religious) beliefs that they espouse. Killing and / or injuring innocent people to make a point is an unacceptable approach to affecting change, and we should
politics Complexity is a good thing... > "You know I've noticed a certain anti-intellectualism going around this country ever since around 1980, coincidentally enough. > I was in Nashville, Tennessee last weekend and after the show I went to a waffle house and I'm sitting there and I'm eating