The Snakes and The Machine

Imagine a scenario...

On Depression

What follows is not a clinical review. There are plenty of those, and I am not a clinician. This is a dissenting account from someone who has lived inside depression for six decades and who has watched with growing unease the way it is discussed, treated, and misunderstood in contemporary Britain.

𝗤𝘂𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿-𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲

Quoted from a Facebook post by Stephen Whittle, September 6th

Where did Socialism go?

Marx and Engels opened their Manifesto with a spectre haunting Europe (Marx and Engels 1848). The spectre never left; it went to ground. It sits in food banks and hospital waiting rooms, in the queues it was once blamed for, wearing the faces of people the settlement no longer holds.

How I write

Ever wondered how I manage to churn out so much text so quickly at my Blog?

The AI Quandary

I love these machines; I have spent my professional life helping other people make their peace with them. But I look at the current excitement, at the race to fill these islands with warehouses of humming silicon, and I distrust what is being built and who it is being built for.

The Alienated UK

Orwell's imaginary theorist got the long run right: hierarchy is possible only on a basis of poverty and ignorance. He drew the conspiratorial conclusion, but the plainer truth is that these foundations are not fate to be awaited; they are arrangements that can be unwound by choice.

Life and Work

So, consequently, can you plainly understand the writing of Joanne K Rowling without knowing she is a horrifying transphobe?

Alienation 2026

So when you ask (demand!) that a poor or disabled person sell their hours as cheaply as possible in labour that has no outcome, you're deliberately condoning their alienation.

Shostakovitch at Leningrad

Shostakovitch heard of the German invasion on his radio and immediately (so it is said) trekked down to the army recruiting office. He was denied service, and probably not just because he was very short-sighted.

Transgender

Being transgender -- a personal tale.

As the World Burns

We're not talking about common sense here. Common sense is more superstructural. It is the myth that arises from hegemonic thinking. It is 'delivered' by the hegemony that lurks in the back of one's mind.

Online Cruelty... Why?

It is ordinary. It is daily. And understanding why ordinary people — people with jobs, families, and responsibilities — expend real energy to seek out and torment the most vulnerable people they can find online is one of the most urgent questions of our time.

On Korea

In the summer of 1953, when the guns fell silent on the Korean peninsula, the land that is now South Korea was one of the poorest places on earth. Its capital, Seoul, lay in ruins. Its population was malnourished, its infrastructure shattered, its economy barely functioning.

2026: On Feminism

To speak of feminism is to enter a battlefield of definitions, histories, and deeply held convictions. It is also to enter one of the most consequential intellectual and political traditions of the modern era.

Time and Tide

This essay argues that the relationship between quantum mechanics and free will is considerably more complicated than such appeals acknowledge and that the foundations of that complication lie in the nature of quantum time itself.

1984 - A Plot Summary

For those who never read Orwell's most important book, '1984', this post gives a full overview of the novel's plot... chapter by chapter.

Why Is ADHD Under Attack?

Somewhere in the last decade, it became fashionable to doubt that ADHD is real. Not merely to debate its causes – but to deny outright that it is a genuine neurodevelopmental condition.

Two Cheers for the Human Race

If the Great Replacement is the far right's most explosive fantasy, "suicidal empathy" is its most insidious rhetorical achievement.

The AI Paradox

If we ask whether an AI system understands a text, we must first confront the question: what would understanding look like from the outside? The very word 'understanding' smuggles in a reference to a kind of phenomenological texture.

Orwell's Long Shadow

But there's that other issue plastered on top of this. It's that deliberate 1984-ish 'crimestop' technique (𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲) that prevents a harassing antagonist from going further with their logic than their hatred allows.

Lully: the Man with the Dodgy Foot

Jean-Baptiste Lully may have been one of the most personally successful composers in history, if not necessarily in musical terms.

The Modern Ghosts

There's a particular kind of violence that leaves no bruise. No raised voice, no slammed door, no letter of explanation. Just — nothing.

Learning Map

A promo for my new educational software.

Nielsen: Symphony No. 5

Out of the despair and chaos, a new horizon expands as the opening tune of this section returns. This time with elemental confidence. All doubts are defeated. All anxiety cast aside. A bright dawn arrives.