This was very interesting to write. It does feel like some models of society and lifepaths have reached their natural end — and are now running on human inertia.
Opportunity lies in spotting what’s dead, and figuring out what should replace it.
These cactus leather iPhone cases look nice. Still a natural material, but without the environmental costs of cow skin.
Quite tempted to get one in a few months.
Oh, marvellous. The UK government is now making policies based on easily disprovable conspiracy theories.
They’re either idiots, or they think pandering to idiots is the only way they’ll stay in power.
My companion didn’t stay long…
Frosty but beautiful beach walk after school drop off this morning. Starting to feel like I’m finally shaking off the Christmas lurgy.
On the intrigue side, Fieldwork can be relied on to provide the spectacularly weird. Downstream from Richmond we once spotted a polystyrene takeaway tray on which somebody had placed - for no adequately explicable reason - some poo. They had adorned this with a small Union flag, fixed at a jaunty angle, and set the whole thing sailing off down the river. We watched it until it was gone from view.
— From Elegy For a River by Tom Moorhouse 📚
This, and the piece it’s based on, are well worth a read: Dorothy Thompson On Who Goes Nazi
Sad that it feels as relevant today as it did when it was written.
Man shocked to discover that two-edged sword does, in fact, have two edges.
OK, now the snow is getting serious and settling. My daughters are going to be very excited.
After a storm and flash flooding knocked out the power in south-east Queensland, Australia, a local woman used her electric car to power her son’s life-saving dialysis machine.
Sometimes having a giant mobile battery is incredibly useful.
I think I may have over-bought Christmas coffee. It’s past twelfth night, and I still have two bags of beans to go.
A brief flurry of snow. We don’t get a lot of this down on the south coast.
Sunset on Old Fort Road.
Started reading: Saltwater in the Blood by Easkey Britton 📚
This is spectacular even by crypto scam standards:Chief executive of collapsed crypto fund HyperVerse does not appear to exist.
The Festive Silence — or how exhaustion, burn-out and COVID conspired to give me an offline Christmas.
Started reading: A Countryman’s Winter Notebook by Adrian Bell 📚
Took a New Year’s Day beach walk with my eldest, and found somebody’s lost glasses on the strand line. The lenses have been ground into mistiness by the pebbles, and the string tied to one arm suggested a doomed attempt to keep them safe.
Beach life, December 22nd 2023
Term finished yesterday. Today, I have a cold.
Obviously.
The single biggest thing that would improve my AI prompt writing skills: not making typos.
Oh, shit. The dolphins have had enough and are coming for us.
Fog on the Adur.
What if the real X/Twitter replacement isn’t a Twitter clone at all?
When the problem contains the obvious solution:
Residential areas are increasingly unaffordable even for the middle classes, while the office districts are being hollowed out by working from home.
So, refurb the redundant office space as living accommodation, make city centre living affordable again, and rejuvenate city centres as love/work places not commuting destinations. Move forwards, not backwards.