I missed week 48 as I decided to take the time to do something else that needed to be done at home and take some other work that had slipped by during my trip away.

I finally completed all episodes of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC Radio 4 series I downloaded from Dimsdale. I have to say that it holds up really well still. Despite having some of the sensibilities of a past era, the humour is still funny, and the self-reflection on society is as relevant today as it was then. In fact, there are some things that you hear and think about things happening today. I recommend it.

I’ve been listening to the BBC Reith Lectures, as I do every year, and this year’s have not disappointed me. The main topic has been about Violence.

This topic piqued my interest as I have been thinking about the levels of violence in societies I frequent and know about. From my isolated and anecdotal point of view, it does feel like there is more gratuitous violence than I remember. Is it objectively true, though?

The first lecture is entitled “Is violence normal?” and Dr Gwen Adshead —this year’s lecturer— touches on some cold, hard facts about the human condition and about how we, as essentially animals, use violence to express emotions and control our surroundings, both physically and interactively with our peers. Does that mean it is normal? That is the question she tries to answer. She notes that even primates, of which we share 98% of our DNA, have rules about the use of violence. But that 2% difference accounts for major differences in how we interact in relationships and our actions.

I don’t write reviews, so I’ll leave you to listen to the four episodes—all available now if you live in the U.K. If you don’t, the first two have been released. As a bonus, the BBC provides transcripts of the lectures and the conversation before and after. These are very useful for reference and further reading.

I don’t know if my mind is telling me something, but I’ve been listening to another podcast on a similar topic for the last several weeks. It is called Kill List. It charts the story of a journalist and an ethical hacker who broke into a dark web “hitman for hire” website that was a scam and ripped off its customers to the tune of many tens of thousands in Bitcoin.

What is most interesting about this podcast is what they do with that list of targets, how they contact them, how they try to warn them, and the potential victims’ reactions and surprising responses. It is such a well-told series, and I’m enjoying every episode.

We’re getting to the end of the year, and this year has been more frustrating than I had anticipated. I will need to come to terms with this and work on it for the next year.

I try to write a self-review and then work on next year’s priorities, but this year, I haven’t given myself the time to do so yet.

I would hope to do that in the coming weeks and have something structured before the end of the year.

I live and work in a French territory, and the way Bank Holidays work in France is a little strange for an ex-pat. If the day in question falls on a weekend, it isn’t moved to the following Monday like in the U.K. It falls on that day, so if it is a Sunday, so be it, and it is lost.

Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday this year, and France doesn’t have a Boxing Day, so the week will be split into two parts unless I plan to take time off.

I haven’t decided yet.

9 December 2024 — French West Indies

Many say regulation stifles innovation.

I call bullshit.

Look at Formula 1. It is one of the most regulated sports in the world and also one of the most innovative.

It’s almost like regulation promotes innovation.

4 December 2024 — French West Indies

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes the fraternity of Tech Bros as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”

Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Tech Bros as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”

With apologies to Douglas Adams (RIP). (Please buy the books and read them.)

I’m a couple of days late writing this, but I did say that it might not be as regular as my other writing. I have an excuse: I’ve been travelling. Moving around time zones plays havoc with writing and thinking about writing.

But the worst for me, and what exacerbates the discombobulation, is that I’m not a great sleeper on planes, and long-haul flights generally mean that I lose a whole night’s sleep as I sit (usually uncomfortably) in a metal tube transporting me over an ocean. I’ll nod off for a couple of minutes, maybe even fifteen, but I never get to sleep for a few hours. I’m so jealous of those who have that ability. On this flight, we were two in a 3-seat row. This makes quite a difference to the feeling of not being trapped. My companion on this flight who was a total stranger to me. He sat down, wolfed down his dinner in a couple of minutes as soon as it was served (whilst starting a movie on the in-flight screen), lay back, and then proceeded to sleep for pretty much the entire flight. He didn’t get past the first 30 minutes of the film before snoozing off. That’s a superpower that I don’t possess, but I’d like to have. Sadly, I do not, so I’m constrained to find entertainment and diversion for upwards of eight hours. It’s not an easy task when you have ADHD.

My strategy this time, as pretty much every time, is to load up on a good couple of podcasts —the more narrative, the better— and to read books/papers.

I recently found out about the Dimsdale website, which has links to archived episodes from BBC Radio (only BBC? I need to check), and one particular series stood out to me. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I knew the TV series and had read all five books in the series —“a trilogy in five parts”— and thoroughly enjoyed them. I’d heard snippets of the original radio series broadcast in 1978 but never the entire series. Thirty-three downloads later, I had enough to listen to for several hours. I listened to seven of them.

To fully benefit from the entertainment and not get distracted by the surroundings, I have a pair of AirPods Pro 2. They have decent noise cancellation technology and sound reasonable, so I tend to use them for podcasts and general listening. To listen to music, I have a pair of Focal Bathys over-ear headphones with decent noise cancellation technology, too, and they are an order of magnitude better for music than the AirPods.

Lastly, I tend to read a lot during a flight, even marking up a couple of papers on AI that I wanted to finish and take some notes from. The engagement of reading and writing a couple of notes prevents me from getting too bored and helps the time pass well. I finished two papers and have many notes I want to explore and turn into a couple of posts about the subject.

I’ve tried all the digital note-taking wonkery, but I’ve not had anything stick for reasons I can’t explain. To help me, I’ve gone back to pen and paper, which, for some reason, is just much better for me to get notes written about what I’m reading. I’ve started printing documents and articles for that express purpose. Mindful of the environmental impact, I print double-sided and in booklet form. I get four pages on one A4 sheet which cuts down on paper used. It’s a bit small, but not uncomfortable to read a long article, and it leaves just enough space to write some notes in the margins. My notes are short and direct, which works out great for me.

After over eight hours on the direct flight, I arrive at my destination and then try to get a full day’s work/reading/relaxing to set my internal clock to the new timezone. It’s the best way I’ve found to help me adjust quickly, but I’m not particularly productive for the first few hours.

10 November 2024 — French West Indies

I finally bought a decent coffee grinder after months of unsuccessfully trying to find one on the island.

People will hype them as “game-changing,” and while they make a noticeable difference, “game-changing” is more hyperbole than reality.

28 September 2024 — French West Indies

BBC: Met Police launch plans to be “truly anti-racist and inclusive”.

Yeah sure. We believe you this time.

28 September 2024 — French West Indies

I’m trying to figure out where I was when the memo was passed around asking everyone to use the word “obligated” rather than the existing, perfectly fit-for-purpose word “obliged.”

While I’m on the topic, WTF does the word “colorway” add over and above the word colour/color?

16 September 2024 — French West Indies

Facebook continues insisting on being an awful Internet citizen.

Surreptitiously scraping data to train its AI models since 2017unless legislation existed to prevent this.

This company’s moral compass is not even misaligned; it isn’t working at all.

11 September 2024 — French West Indies

What a wonderful sunset we had tonight.

I was tempted to get the camera out and take a picture postcard photo.

But something told me to sit, relax, and just enjoy it.

Not everything needs to be photographed and shared.

5 September 2024 — French West Indies

Please stop using the word content, as in “content creator”, “creative content”, or “content”.

You are commoditising your work, your time, and your skill. You are being exploited by devaluing its worth.

You don’t make “content”. You make art. You make music. You make films. You make blogs, articles, reports, and other beautiful things that enhance this existence.

You make value. Don’t let anyone steal it.

6 August 2024 — French West Indies

I’m currently reading Number Go Up by Zeke Faux.

Anyone who is deep into, holds, uses or otherwise is connected to the running of this “industry” is complicit in murder, slavery, torture, and organised crime, not to mention the destruction of the climate.

You rotten people.

5 August 2024 — French West Indies

Despite the discussion about LLM training data and the rights to train this data, a fundamental question about consent is often ignored. Much of the tech industry has flipped over into a non-consensual model: Take, then defend/contest later.

They are coming up against resistance in the form of regulation, particularly in the EU. But they have no idea just how bad it will get for them if the general public gets on board with resistance.

It is going to be, at the very least, interesting to see how this plays out. I don’t give much of a chance to the tech firms in the long term.

15 July 2024 — French West Indies

With news that Threads has reached 175 MAUs, this is an interesting waypoint in its life worth keeping an eye on.

Currently, Thread is an ad-free and watered-down attempt at building a Twitter replacement, but that is about change when Meta decides to turn on ads, as they have alluded to in recent interviews with the tech press.

This will only incentivise the worst behaviour from both Meta and its real customers, the advertisers. The enshitiffication cycle has started.

Watch carefully and you will see it unfold in clarity.

The long-term outcomes and the impacts on the economy, society, and politics clearly show that neoliberalism has failed. It has been a disaster and a complete abdication of responsibility by the political class and the wealthy.

From the point of view of the rich, everything is fine. They’re even more well off. From the point of view of the rest of us, times are as hard as they’ve ever been with no respite in sight.

This is the calm before the storm unless things change fundamentally.

And no, “giving them a go” (referring to the right, extreme right and ultra-right) is not the answer. The violence and suffering that that would cause will be of a magnitude not seen since the last world wars.

In other words, Threads likely wants to be a monetization center for online creators and eventually compete with Patreon.

Human Generated Content: Patreon Belongs in the Fediverse

Embrace, extend and extinguish. This will not turn out to the benefit of artists.

Heads up. Here’s the real reason the Caribbean cannot dig itself out of the hole that it has been forced into for over 400 years:

SIDS drowning in debt and ‘running on empty’, warns Guterres in Antigua

We can talk all we like about innovation, technology, SDGs, entrepreneurship. It’s all bullshit until the region can live without the shackles of debt that is destroying generation after generation of potential.

Never forget.

Cory Doctrow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr), writing on pluralistic.net:

Together, they represent a multi-front war on the very idea that four billion people should have their digital lives controlled by an unaccountable billionaire man-child whose major technological achievement was making a website where he and his creepy friends could nonconsensually rate the fuckability of their fellow Harvard undergrads.

3 May 2024 — French West Indies