Recently updated blogs

I wrote here, critically, about the recent IMF report on the impact of AI and jobs. I was doing some research for a report I was writing recently which required me to go back into the same area, and found an article by David Autor that has a different view. Not more cheerful, necessarily, but maybe more honest about the radical uncertainty that pervades this whole area. Autor is a …

Hi everyone! Hope you’re having a lovely weekend! I’m not sure where I heard it first, but someone once said that in the first two weeks after releasing an anticipated game, it gets played more often than during all of the months and years of playtesting combined. It’s shocking to hear at first but makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Maybe that’s one of the reasons …

The Owd Tatts, Chadderton, Lancashire A white-painted pub with an unusual name on a back road on the south-west side of Oldham. There are now plans to demolish it and build a convenience store on the site.

In celebration of this weekend’s Bookworm Retreat and my birthday this week, I am offering Victorian Fancy Work In Detail. This compilation will be available all week in my Etsy shop for $20, a monumental savings over buying seven separate In Details. I will decide at the end of the week whether to continue to […]

One of the blue roundels came loose on our dalek, and we had to dismantle it to repair it.not so tough now, are you?Once all the spider webs had been cleaned out, the roundel could be reattached, and the dalek re-mantled.

On 13 February 1989, at least if Amazon is to be believed, The Utterly, Utterly Amusing and Pretty Damn Definitive Comic Relief Revue Book was released into the world, collecting sketches and songs from the last 30 years of comedy. Song lyrics from Spitting Image rub shoulders with transcripts from At Last the 1948 Show and Fry and Laurie's days in the Footlights. Grant Naylor, the Goodies, Bob Newhart, Victoria …

The World OpenAI releases a new tool to generate "realistic"-looking video from text prompts. Russian opposition figure Navalny has died in prison. Donald Trump ordered to pay almost half a billion dollars in his NY fraud trial. Madame Web is terrible and nobody is surprised. I still have no idea what Sony was thinking with this entire slate of films. Maybe I'll wait til Kraven comes out then marathon all …

Welly, welly, well. Another jam-packed week! Writing this one on trains to and from Nottingham. Where to start? Where we left off… Things that happened When Airbnbs attack! We defied death by carbon monoxide poisoning last Sunday evening. The alarm went off in our Airbnb (in Lancs) and we got the heck out fast. ☠️ Luckily the landlord had another one around the corner. Even luckier, it was way nicer. …

Public Health etc in Witham, in the 19th century Summary by Janet Gyford, adapted from one first written for Dated Buildings Survey in 1992, re Faragon Terrace, 59-67 Bridge Street. Retyped October 2002. See also notes on PRO MH 13/209, read since this was written. Edward Cresy made a report to the General Board of Health in 1850 about Witham. About Bridge Street he said that ‘the stagnant open drains, …

Label: DeccaYear of Release: 1971Say hello to the only group (to the best of my knowledge) ever to emerge from the Ford manufacturing line - unless, of course, we're counting Ford Timelord of The Timelords. Back in the sixties, Ford were seemingly keen to make their cars seem sexy, zingy and a little bit more rock and roll; less "any colour you want, so long as it's black", and more …

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I am participating in the Japanese Literature Challenge 17 hosted by Dolce Bellezza. It runs from January through February, 2024. The goal is to read and review one or more books which were originally written in Japanese. There is a post at Dolce Bellezza for links to reviews.Tokyo Express is my first book read for the challenge. It was Seichō Matsumoto's first novel, published in 1958.In this novel, two detectives …

Sunday morning looks like it’s going to be a stormy one as Farmer George and Rufus hound watch the works train take the rough track in its stride. Meanwhile Harry the Hammer who is almost at the end of his shift is ready with his hammer should the track need fixing after the train passes. This usually the case, a quick whack here and there sorting it out. The weeds …

I definitely chose a good week to jet off to sunnier climes where Playa Blanca in Lanzarote would be nice and hot and dry not cold and damp. The local rivers too, for at least the weekend anyway, and in to the following week most likely would be over the banks yet again and would put a kibosh on ones fishing !!I've fished plenty of times now in the canaries …

Really old ones, in this case Ben Cohen writes the “Science of Success” column for The Wall Street Journal. It is about what makes people, teams and ideas work out in business, culture, and beyond. His recent one was about Luke Farritor, who was a college student majoring in computer science and interning at SpaceX, and who began working on a problem that captivated many of the world’s top geeks. …