They Are Teachable
One of History's lessons is that once a group is deemed unteachable they will be placed in the category of an ever present threat to the preferred social order.
Read MoreCategory Social Comment
My Copy of The Times
When we cut each other off from access to knowledge, we may preserve our copyright, but we run the risk of endangering our copy's posterity.
Read MoreLife is Long, Access is Short
If not accidentally lost, your data can vanish in other ways: the community project shutters, a company goes under, or the subset of services you use are axed.
Read MoreA Peer’s Tube
Winter Ink PeerTube will allow for the documenting and preservation of videos to which I can link in my ongoing speculations about life and art. Links, and the content they reference, which are permanent and will always work. A necessity to promote the adoption of individually-owned and controlled sovereign spaces which enable an open and healthy web.
Read MoreThe New Cathedral Door
Does it truly safeguard that which is dangerous and true while restricting that which is dangerous and false, and does it arrive at this determination through a process of deliberation; or, does it merely replace one arbitrary determination for another about that which is dangerous.
Read MoreJotting – Protect Duty
While I am not keen on the idea of self-policing, lest we go the way of some American states, I do wonder if society may not be better able to protect its citizens if its citizens were more involved in that self-same protection. Be it physical, intellectual or cyber.
Read MoreHail, Lobster!
The moment when left leaning popular culture overreached itself and instead of fascist shaming a once obscure academic into silence, brought back into popular use what had long been taboo and empowered the very thing they thought they were destroying.
Read MoreBitcoin’s Dirty Little Secrets – Environmental
I have long been concerned with the negative human impact on our environment and while I am some way off from thinking the world is on fire, it is clear that business as usual is going to leave a decidedly lessened planet for our children. Thus my spotlight on the ecological effects of our choices is slowly widening and most recently has taken in cryptocurrency.
Read MoreA Mastodon To Call My Own
Mastodon allows you to run your own server which means you have "absolute control over your own voice on the web, not subject to anyone else's rules or whims. Your server is your property, with your rules."
Read MoreVirus From Below
The history of the world, for a long time, was the history of great people. Mostly great men. It focused…
The Ability To Ignore
Since the earliest days of our evolution on the savanna, our visual and aural senses have been attuned to ignore content.
Read MoreLate Abroad Again
As the contagion bit hard, Pepys chronicled the flight from the city, mostly of doctors, lawyers and merchants. Then as now, only those with the financial means to do so can seek refuge in seclusion.
Read MoreWedding Feast
In the tradition of my family, and the civilised everywhere, I will be planning the meal starting with dessert, working through the main to the entree.
Read MoreThe Shape Of Things That Are
Though conclusions drawn from data may be offensive, we should be slow to take offence at data. Even if it contradicts our deeply held beliefs.
Read MoreShape of Things to Come
A striking feature of Wells' book is the way in which he prefigured 'cancel culture' in the thinking of his fictional social scientist.
Read MoreSkepticism and Wonder
In the vast ignorance of a society absent of sceptical enquiry, evil festers and spreads, like the coming of night, and all foul things come forth.
Read MoreThe Power of the Snub
Declines in sexual activity seem to owe more to 'the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the global recession of 2008' than fear of contracting Aids.
Read MoreMedia Archipelago
Pushing back on unorthodox views has given rise to 'wrongspeak,' 'the things we believe to be true but cannot say,' creating a Media Archipelago.
Read MoreProportionality in Pursuit of Justice
Specifically put, proportionality isn't a one way street in which the power of the state is neutered to the benefit of an individual.
Read MoreSo I Could See Further
In the main, scholars, developers and researchers cite those who have gone before, without whose work their own product would be much reduced.
Read MoreSo this is how privacy dies…
To be a part of a society which doesn't take these choices means the most meaningful solution is to look at ambient as well as personal privacy.
Read MoreEndurance Through Renewal
I came across a stone bench that appeared to be very old. Carved into an ancient looking wall, dappled in moss, thick creepers wound across its surface.
Read MoreThe City of Love
One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. Stephen Hawking There…
‘God is Dead’
I know I know… you don’t need to shout it I am not so superannuated that I am deaf to…
Age, Evil And A Better World
Age hit me the other day. To be precise it hit my right hamstring. It was cold and I got…
Is this what Warhol meant?
In 1968 the doyen of pop art, Andy Warhol, said: ‘In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.’…
The Minnow, The Whale And The Deep Blue Sea
Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.
Read MoreTruth and Beauty
Never before in the history of the world has so much information been so easily accessible. Name virtually any topic…
Old Soldiers Never Die
Peter de Noronha wrote ‘Old Soldiers never die, they only fade away, which has now been commuted to, they never…
Life of a Whirlwind
This oft quoted phrase has gone from the everyday, through the forests of cliche and emerged in the sun lit uplands of meaningless twaddle.
Read MoreWhat’s so interesting…
If the good Lord was not disposed to prevent this scene in the first instance, he was unlikely to extricate me in the second.
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