Working in the M&S Café while my wife and daughter do some final school shopping. I am getting the evil eye from pensioners, whose regular spot I have probably accidentally occupied.
The slow erosion of the democratic norm
Rachel Sylvester makes an important point in The Times:
Democracy is about persuasion rather than obliteration and there are rules underpinning political conflict that don’t apply in military combat. The prime minister seems to have forgotten that, far from being the nation’s commander-in-chief, he is only “first among equals” in the cabinet and depends for his power on the House of Commons. The scorched-earth approach being pursued by No 10 will make it almost impossible to unite the Tory party, let alone the country, when the skirmishes are over.
There is an autocratic streak in a lot of current politics that should concern anyone who values democracy.
It’s been a long time since these two shared a spot in my dock together.
Spending a lot of time in spreadsheets today. Not something that happens a lot in my work, but weirdly satisfying when it does.
Don’t look now folks, but I think autumn might be here…
A nice reminder that blogging was always a complicated and often unpleasant community. Shakesville’s unravelling and the not-so-golden age of blogging - The Outline.
On the other hand, it wasn’t a vast multinational company harnessing all the value, either…
Does anyone else use FeedBin? Considering trialing a switch from Feedly - but would like some informed experience before I make the jump.
This is a fascinating theory (based on a source) on why Apple’s sudden change in beta releases happened: iOS 13’s beta split is down to Trump’s threatened tariffs, not missed features
Well the good news is that a lot of people have a much deeper understanding of how our parliamentary democracy functions than they did yesterday.
Serfing USA
Jeremiah Owyang : Chances are, you’re probably a serf.:
To modernize the last word of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin’s famed quote; “In antiquity, slaves were, in all honesty, called slaves. In the middle ages, they took the name of serfs. Nowadays they are called users.”
I’m taking a new approach to link posts on One Man & His Blog. What do you think?
Feedback gratefully received.
This is a massive dose of nostalgia - I was on a lot of these networks. But, thankfully, not all:
This is a lovely story, beautifully drawn.
The art of pseudo-science in politics
This sums up how many articles and books cloak nonsense claims in a thin skin of scientific respectability:
Inconvenient Facts claims, over and over, to be based in science and emphasizes the importance of the scientific method; however, the author does not, himself, use the scientific method in his own analysis. There are no references to any peer-reviewed journal articles by Wrightstone himself. Many of his “inconvenient facts” are non-controversial statements. In fact, most of them are actually true. It’s the conclusions that he draws from the “facts” that are not supported by peer-reviewed journal papers — they’re just his own misleading opinions.
Opinion is not expertise. And opinion can be wrong.
A wee update on life, work and blog.
Nothing alarming, just trying to figure out how to avoid burning out again.
Shades weather, innit.
A day when I find a new pretentious coffee shop is always a good day.
So, the reason for my silence here over the last couple of weeks was that I was holidaying in a nearly bandwidth-free place.
And it was lovely. Just taking a first pass through the photos now.
A fruitful garden
Possibly the most manly thing I’ve done all year…
Garden harvest.
Back from holiday to a dull, rainy Sussex. Ho-hum.
Well, this is depressing - but painfully resonant. Bullshit jobs and the yoke of managerial feudalism