Recently updated blogs

I was driving to Birmingham - that’s Birmingham in the middle of England, not in Alabama. I stopped for a rest, got some bad coffee, clicked up Facebook on my phone. A post from Lindsay Hutton: RIP Scott Cornish. My first thought was that this was not possible, but that was wrong, because with Scott anything was possible. I was swept up in a jumble of thoughts and emotions. One …

All I’m doing is waiting for the sky to fallThat’s all I gotThe only reason at allAll I’m doing is waiting for the highest tideI know what’s waiting for meOn the other sideIf I remember it right we kissed Before you said goodbye If I remember it wrong, wellWho’s gonna call me a liar?Do you remember the night We passed out on the basement floor?Do you remember the hell We …

[Taken From Tunwéya‘s notebooks:] The time we spent in the Modron outpost has proven extremely valuable, and – while I still need to review some of the information provided by The Historian in order to bring it up to something like publication standard, I think it is fair to say that the expedition was ultimately a success. (Memo: rather pleasant to be able to say something has been a success …

This zine is for anyone interested in 'love tokens', both historic and contemporary, and capital as theoretical subjects. The author uses key cultural studies critique from political and psychoanalytical theories in order to analyse and compare the two subjects.Both these theories cover, amongst many other things, the way objects are fetishised and hence how they are removed from their ‘true’ origins. Here the author looks at desire (sex/romance) and capitalism …

I had a teacher in high school who’s biggest pet peeve was the phrase ‘first annual’, because, she said, if it was the first, then there was no way for it to be annual. An annual event, in her mind, was something that happened over and over again, every year. So first annual was something of an oxymoron. That said, I’m not sure she was right. It’s not wrong to …

As leadership, Q+A serves several important functions. The first, obviously, is to answer questions people have. No matter how well we communicate (and let’s be honest, how well do we really communicate?) there will always be questions that haven’t been addressed. Often there are questions you never even imagined. Q+A is an escape hatch as a leader for not being perfect. The second is to cultivate a culture of engagement. …

In my last post, I debunked the myth of the "reserve pool" of British workers. In this post, I discuss three more labour force myths that refuse to die: the myth of the "tide of unskilled immigration"the myth of the falling participation rate, and the myth of the "workless yoof". There's also an update about my charity walk in the Lake District last Saturday, and a couple of pics. Read …

For the reading enthusiasts and father figures in your life.

I noticed recently that I was having trouble moving around in less. I could arrow up and down, but that took a lot of work. I could hit space to go a whole screen down, but unlike in a web browser, shift-space also scrolls down. How could I scroll up a screen? On some terminals, Page Up and Page Down work, but not in others. It's a confusing mess. So, …

Disclaimer: I am a full-time employee of Bristol Myers Squibb. When I practiced clinical rheumatology, I would often see patients with autoimmune conditions like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), systemic sclerosis (scleroderma), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), or myositis. A typical patient journey included an initial sense of relief when a diagnosis was established and a medicine was started. Inevitably, however, there was a sense of dread when a patient would ask: “When …

Photographing a total solar eclipse is a special experience. On April 8, 2024, my friend Kevin and I set out to capture the eclipse from Perryville Regional Airport in Missouri. This was my second time seeing a total solar eclipse, and it was even better than I expected. Previously I had been in North Carolina and only saw a sliver of the sky from the woods. For this experience since …

Read / Listened: Taming Big Techification? The European Digital Markets Act Digital Markets Act The EU has no homegrown Big Tech companies of its own

Several major technology companies provide cloud AI services, offering a range of tools and platforms for developing, deploying, and managing AI applications. Here are some of the most popular vendors of cloud AI.

Adding Google Web search to FirefoxRecently I read this blog post which highlights some bad practices by Google and also provides a way to make the new web search results tab the default search provider for Vivaldi browser.In that post, the author lists some fixes for other browsers. In this post I'm gonna show another way to fix it for Firefox, a solution that doesn't rely on external websites or …

I spent the best 5 weeks of my life solo traveling across Ghana to learn about Ghanaian food, culture and history. In this post, I will give a detailed breakdown of my trip to Ghana, focusing on northern Ghana (Northern Region, Savannah Region, Upper East Region). I will be including transport, accommodation and activities at each location with details about guides and everything I did to have a fantastic time …