Category: Longform
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The goat singer
In the echoes of the goat singer’s song,
where Dionysus whispers through the vines,
we find ourselves entwined in ancient rites -
fertility rituals of death and rebirth,
of new life and new wine.
Here, survival is the meaning of everything:
the stars beyond our reach, the earth beneath our feet.
Good versus evil, truth versus lies,
blame and luck, conspiracies and fate.
Destiny waits like a vulture on the tiles,
and bad choices remind us,
Of the arrogance leading us down paths we can’t retrace.
We are always wanting more -
more wine, more power, more love, more life.
But injustice follows us like a shadow,
inescapable, irretrievable, inevitable.
“You paid a price to come this far,”
As if suffering were currency,
as if pain could buy redemption.
Euripides knew it well:
the gods are not just.
They play with mortals like toys,
throwing dice with our fates,
laughing at our despair.
Moral ambiguity reigns supreme,
and protest is futile,
a scream into the void that answers only with silence.
Cynicism grows like weeds in the cracks of our souls,
but still, there is hope -
a flicker, a spark,
a stubborn refusal to give in to the darkness.
Diatribe becomes spectacle,
entertainment for the masses,
as we watch our own downfall unfold
like actors in a play we didn’t write.
Insanity creeps in,
whispering in our ears,
telling us we’re not good enough,
that we’ll never be good enough.
And maybe that’s true.
Maybe we are all doomed to fail,
to fall,
to lose everything.
Desertion, rejection, loss -
the Fall of Man,
the absence of God.
We cry out, but no one answers.
We reach out, but no one takes our hand.
Tragedy guaranteed,
but still, we’re alive.
Apart from the ones who aren’t.
Now there’s the real tragedy -
the ones who didn’t make it,
who didn’t survive the journey,
who didn’t pay the price,
or who paid too much.
Suffering is knowledge,
the bitter fruit of humanity.
We taste it every day,
in every breath,
in every tear.
But even in the darkest moments,
there is light -
a glimmer of something beyond the suffering,
beyond the pain.
A hope that refuses to die,
a faith that clings to the edge of reason,
a belief that maybe, just maybe,
we are more than the sum of our broken hearts.
And so we keep moving,
through the desert,
through the wasteland,
through the ruins of our shattered dreams.
Because even though the road is long—
or there is no road and we have to find our own way -
we are still here.
We are still alive.
And that, in itself, is enough.
Roadblock
I live in a cul-de-sac.
My life is a dead end.
It’s a no-through road.
With nowhere to go.
Stop signs.
Barricades.
Danger!
Keep Out!
No way in.
No way out.
What are you waiting for?
What are you waiting for?
It’s a waiting game.
Can’t wait forever.
The waiting’s over.
Something’s wrong.
Sitting in God’s waiting room.
Waiting for death.
Waiting for life.
Waiting for something.
Anything.
And nothing.
An appointment with the doctor, or the dentist.
To diagnose, to clean, or to remove the decay.
Come back if things don’t get better.
Come back in six months, or a year.
Or not at all.
Waiting for the train.
It never arrives.
It doesn’t stop.
It leaves without you.
Waiting for love.
If only someone loved me, everything would be all right.
And they do.
And it is.
But still, I’m waiting.
So it’s not that.
Waiting for the right moment.
Billions of moments, and none of them the right one.
Talk about bad luck.
Waiting in line.
Billions before and after me.
BBC says IDF murdered children and lied about it
‘The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says the building was targeted because it was a Hezbollah “terrorist command centre” and it “eliminated” a Hezbollah commander. It added that “the overwhelming majority” of those killed in the strike were “confirmed to be terror operatives”.
‘But a BBC Eye investigation verified the identity of 68 of the 73 people killed in the attack and uncovered evidence suggesting just six were linked to Hezbollah’s military wing. None of those we identified appeared to hold a senior rank. The BBC’s World Service also found that the other 62 were civilians - 23 of them children.’
IDF said bombed apartments were Hezbollah base - but most of dead were civilians bbc.com
Life lessons
On Sunday I was listening to Lianne La Havas’ COLORS rendition of “Bittersweet” on YouTube.
We’re picking that fight everyday
This shit’s going nowhere
The Algorithm did its job well and showed me the latest KEXP concert by a new to me band called English Teacher. I was blown away.
Even though I’ve seen more COLORS Shows than KEXPs
A bit prog at times, and a lot music studenty, but they can really play so that’s all forgiven, especially if you listen to the interview with the band at the end of the full concert.
“Albert Road” is possibly my favourite, although I think the recorded version is even better and more poignant with the video (especially in light of the drama of the last couple of days):
(Steve’s mate’s son used to play in The Fall…)
So don’t take our prejudice to heart
We hate everyone
The world around us never showed
How loving can be fun
More than The Fall, they somehow remind me of The Sugarcubes, who I loved back in the late 80s, but who I haven’t listened to properly for a long time. I listened to the album “Life’s Too Good” this afternoon while working, and it was better than I remember it. “Deus”:
He put me in a bath tub
Made me squeaky clean
Apparently Bjork’s producer produced English Teacher’s album.
More reminiscent of The Fall (and Frank Sidebottom), perhaps, is their song (and video) about the singer’s smalltown hometown of Colne in Lancashire and its inflated egos, “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab”.
I am the world’s biggest paving slab
So watch your fucking feet
What's out there?
What’s out there?
My space-obsessed four and three quarter year old might ask me that soon, so I better have an answer.
At the moment he’s happy to copy his ten and a half year old brother and stick with “What’s in Uranus?” for laughs. (Although he does actually want to know what’s in Uranus, too.)
Recently, I have been replaced by Professor Brian Cox on bedtime story reading duties.
Instead of me reading simple kids’ books on space until he falls asleep, Prof. Cox narrates stories on YouTube about black holes, space-time elasticity and Fermi’s Paradox. It’s fascinating, and sends the little one off to sleep at least as efficiently as me reading to him.
I admit that while I was aware of Fermi’s Paradox, I hadn’t quite cottoned on to its significance.
That, in answer the the question “What’s out there?” there’s an unimaginably vast number of planets, stars, galaxies, etc., in an even more unimaginably vast and mostly empty space. And in spite of this vastness, there’s absolutely zero evidence (so far) of any kind of life at all other than here on our tiny, tiny speck of Earth. We’re alone.
Echoing Carl Sagan, Prof. Cox was quite poetic about it and described it as the Universe taking millions of years to come up with just the right conditions for an unbroken chain of evolutionary life to emerge that has an awareness of itself.
And that the Universe is a frighteningly violent place so it’s quite miraculous that we haven’t (yet) been smashed or fried in some astronomical event. In fact, we look odds-on to smash or fry ourselves first right here, right now.
Our evolutionarily advantageous over-confidence will inevitably lead us to self-destruction, as surely as boom leads to bust, as we ignore climate warnings from our wise elders, wage war on our brothers and our sisters, and repeatedly fail to think of the children.
We’re wedded to screens and technology as life passes us by. Doom-scribing, scrolling and trolling, when we should be out there talking to our neighbours, being the change we want to see in the ‘hood, and showing some fucking solidarity with each other. We’re not all perfect, we can all say and do the wrong things, even hold the wrong beliefs.
Identity politics has much to answer for, but the answer isn’t to dismiss people’s lived experiences. Each to their own, and everyone must be able to live their lives as they want to while not harming others. But when someone expresses themselves in ways that cause hurt or offense, piling on and ostracising them often just deepens divisions.
Instead, we need to find ways to acknowledge everyone’s feelings and guide each other toward mutual understanding. This isn’t easy, especially online, but it’s essential if we want to build real solidarity.
Because the point is that the people who want to colonize Mars, or make “their” country great again, or spend billions on war when our elders are dying in hospital corridors, are not on our side. If we could find ways to stick together, however we identify as individuals, we could challenge these concentrations of power and wealth.
I feel certain that if everyone had a decent home with enough food, meaningful and/or well paid work, and enough free time to pursue leisure interests with friends and family, then very few people would give a flying fuck about what pronouns people prefer, or if someone moved from one “country” to “another”.
Maybe then we can leave a planet that’s still inhabitable for our children.
Of course, it’s also possible that we are not alone. It’s possible that aliens are among us, badly disguised as awkward, orange humans, or owls, or neutrinos.
Who knows?
AI, ethics and democracy
I keep reading that AI is dumb, dangerous and demented. And I’ve no doubt it’s all true. Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence, describes ChatGPT as “a very elaborate auto complete like you have on your phone”
AI slop is contaminating our lives with worthless junk, and while I’ve played with and been briefly amazed and entertained by Google NotebookLM’s auto-generated podcast creations, they can get repetitive, boring and stupid very quickly.
We can rail against AI all we want, but it’s not going away. I expect AI to get smarter and to have fewer hallucinations even if the danger level remains high.
What is Al good for?
Micro.blog uses Al to generate Alt-Text descriptions of images and that seems to work well enough for its intended purpose. What it can’t do, of course, is generate descriptions that are personal to the uploader or post context, e.g., if I have a picture of my son the description will be a generic “boy with curly hair” or such like.
I’ve used Google’s Gemini on blog posts I’ve written and it’s given me some very positive feedback about my writing, enough to make me feel good about myself (certainly much more so than any human reader). Although it also got into the habit of creating its own alternative versions, which often were funnier and more interesting (to me) than my own writing. (It will also roast you if that’s your thing.)
Similarly, Google NotebookLM has fed back on my entire year of posts in 2024, and was very nice about it, too. It is quite therapeutic to hear that, as long as you take it for what it is - an elaborate auto-complete that ultimately will rot your brain, take your job and ruin your life.
I’ve also used both for work in some limited ways - drafting a job description, drafting cases for support for funding applications, and summarising or analysing documents. Both require some degree of human intervention, but the process and product was useful in helping me get started, and complete the tasks.
One area where I found Al to be most interesting was in commenting on and forming an ethical response to a local democracy issue where I live. I found the response to be in line with what community campaigners (including me) had been asking for, and in total contrast to the response from our elected representatives, authorities and business leaders. That must be the auto-complete.
While I don’t think I would yet call for all politicians to be replaced by AI, I do wonder if there is a potential use case here for analysing policy implications, or at least highlighting ethical considerations?
I ran these thoughts past Claude.ai and this is a summary of what it had to say:
- democratic processes need human judgment, accountability, and the ability to balance competing interests the ways that AI currently cannot
- core ethical principles that should guide public service:
- transparency about conflicts of interest
- accountability to the people
- clear acknowledgment of problems rather than minimisation
- practical solutions for reporting complaints and response
- the fundamental duty of public officials to serve their constituents
Human decision-makers can, of course, choose to prioritise other interests over ethical imperatives
I suggested to it that the AI response to the Southall Gasworks issue demonstrated more “empathy” than the human political response:
- The AI’s response prioritised human wellbeing and acknowledged suffering, in contrast to the actual political response, which was bureaucratic and dismissive, treating hundreds of complaints as isolated incidents and prioritising procedural responses over human impact
- A truly empathetic human response to such serious health impacts should have been immediate and decisive action to protect public health
Of course, the AI response wasn’t actually empathetic. It applied logical ethical principles that prioritise human wellbeing. What looks like empathy is actually systematic ethical reasoning unclouded by personal interests, political considerations, or institutional self-protection.
I suggested that it might not be uncommon for political leaders to lack empathy, and that it’s therefore so much easier for them to allow personal, and powerful political and institutional interests to take precedence over what most ordinary people would see quite clearly as the interests of human wellbeing:
This connects to research on the prevalence of psychopathic traits in leadership positions. In the Southall Gasworks case, a leader with normal empathetic capacity might find it psychologically difficult to:
- dismiss hundreds of health complaints from suffering residents
- accept substantial gifts while community members develop serious illnesses
- continue business as usual while learning of deaths potentially linked to their decision
Of course, even someone with empathy might not be able to resist powerful institutional or financial pressures.
Back to work
The last time I worked full-time, in 2015, I got fired for taking too much time off sick.
The last time I worked full time before that, in 2011, I got fried for taking too much time off sick.
So I was quite happy to work part-time since 2016, fifteen hours a week to begin with, increasing to twenty two and a half hours in 2017. It felt like something I could cope with.
And it allowed me to spend a lot of time with big kid when he was little, and then little kid, too. Although that was often tiring ‘work’ I feel very fortunate to have had that much time with them when they were so young and fun.
Working two or three days a week and really being in charge of my own hours and schedule also allowed me lots of flexibility. I could almost work when I liked and didn’t worry about how many hours I’d done. If I needed to I could easily make up time or catch up on another day.
Going back full-time today, I was very conscious of how much time I spent working, and not working. I’ve got much less flexibility now to make up my hours.
Then again, I know that at work, it’s possible to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, and the office not actually doing much work. I won’t be too hard on myself for making a cup of tea, powdering my nose, connecting the wife to the internet or checking my online socials every now and then.
All in all it wasn’t a bad day. Nothing urgent to do and I ended up going down a fundraising rabbit-hole. Found a couple of new-to-me funders and shared them with the relevant people, one of whom has already said they will apply.
Job done.
This year
This year I’m returning to full-time work for the first time in almost a decade. I’m looking forward to it, though, and my main focus is going to be on researching and writing grant funding applications for local community youth work.
Last term I joined my sons’ school’s parent teacher association specifically to help find grant funding they can apply for. I need to get on with that.
I also hope to be able to get more involved (again) in local democracy and activism in person. I’d like to see if we can get some kind of organised mutual aid and self-help community going.
I want to get fitter and lose some weight, so I’m intend to walk every morning (flat feet permitting) and I’m no longer taking sugar in tea and coffee.
I want to sleep better (which is partly dependent on little kid staying in his own bed all night), breathe better, and get my psoriasis under control.
And I want a new hat.