Successful people say things like ‘never give up’, and most people never do but they still never get very far. Another thing they say is ‘you have to be lucky’ but people sleep with each other for success and many are related to someone who helps them. ‘You should go bankrupt once’ and many do…
Author: Daniel
AI is us
Humanity has created things throughout its history and all those things have had a good and bad outcome. Knives can be useful or deadly, books can contain wisdom or filth, cities can be rewarding or hiding places for murder; nothing we make is benign. So it is interesting that the models for AI in the…
The Sea and the Skylark
On ear and ear two noises too old to end Trench—right, the tide that ramps against the shore; With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar, Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend. Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend, His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score In crisps of curl…
Journalism
I am reading the much to be respected Douglas Murray’s new book ‘On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization’. His writing style reminds me of Upton Sinclair who charted the rise and fall of fascism in Europe from just before 1914 to 1956, though Sinclair couched his observations in fiction. I…
Glues
The licence plate on the back of my car slipped and was hanging on by one small piece of tape, for which I was grateful. I took it all off and spent a good hour getting the old tape off and the looked on line for what was best tp use t reattach it. To…
Changing Perspectives
Is the world really changing? Do we now believe and accept that all war no matter how carried on, is not mass murder but legal genocide? So the wars of Turkey on the Kurds, Russia on the Ukrainians, in Congo and Sudan are all genocides? Are we now in a space where any war carried…
It’s a little bit funny
how easy it is for phrases to cover the vast distance between one person and another. I hear everyone invited into a news show saying ‘thank you for having me’ when they mean ‘thank you for inviting me’. Thank you for having me is something a staying guest might say or as slang a lover. …
Sonnet
As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, Or any of these all, or all, or more, Entitled in thy parts do crownèd sit, I make my love engrafted to this store. So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give That I in thy abundance am sufficed 12And by a part of all thy glory live. Look what is best, that best I wish in thee. This wish I have, then ten times happy me. William Shakespeare Praeterea, puto arma nuclearia Persiae delenda esse
Devolution
I actually wonder why the essence of culture has to bend the knee to money – and I know that, of course, it does not but the artists do. Why would you begin an examination of the human condition, which is the essence of all art, and limit yourself immediately to the diktats of a…
Let’s Talk Genocide
We know that the Arabs believe that Israel exists because of the holocaust and European guilt. Perversely ever since 1948 they have attempted to dress is the clothes of Jewish suffering claiming Israelis are racist, apartheid loving nazis. Most recently they claim genocide – a wartime crime codified because of the plans of the nazis….