What's out there?

What’s out there?

Auto-generated description: A colorful depiction of a solar system with various planets and celestial objects set against an abstract background.

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Recently, I have been replaced by Professor Brian Cox on bedtime story reading duties.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.

Arsenal match report

For some reason this match report is in four acts:

Maguire nutmegged himself…

Sterling looked on with impressive sideburns.

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.

The Old Hag

The old house was long and thin, with dark corridors that ran from one end to the other, beside narrow rooms and cold passages, a front room, a dining room, a living room and a kitchen. Upstairs were four bedrooms with a bathroom in the middle, the wooden floorboards boomed and creaked with every step. I lay in the back room above the garden that grew wild, so cold and lonely, but sleep took me away as she did every night.

The screaming woke me.

The voice was sobbing, weeping, crying out for help, filling me with its fear, its sobs and cries, as footsteps urgently pounded the way to my sanctuary, beating on the door, “Help me! Help me! Please!”

I tried to move, I wanted to help, to say something, anything, but my hands were tied, I was strapped to the bed and gagged, I couldn’t move or speak.

Christ I could barely breathe as the door opened, the screaming stopped and the small dark figure entered and came over to me. It’s breath was loud, shallow and hoarse.

Now I started to make a sound. A pathetic, frightened, cowardly whimper, as the figure climbed on top of me and sat on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I looked at its face…

I woke with my heart beating its way out of my chest as the footsteps pounded away down the hallway, taking the sobbing voice with them, as I dried the tears from my cheeks, my mouth dry, and tried to unsee the face that woke me, that saved me.

How I listen to music

I love music. Who doesn’t? I guess there must be some people. I was one of them.

I stopped loving music when I was too busy feeling miserable to love music or anything else. I stopped loving music when I converted from the warmth and intimacy of vinyl and mix-tapes to the colder and harder to get close to CDs, and later mp3s. The difference between analogue and digital. I do miss my old records.

I started loving music again when I started feeling better. I started loving music again when I started investing in better listening gear and lossless digital recordings. I’m no audiophile, but it makes a big difference, even (or perhaps especially) to my untrained and unbalanced partially deaf ears. And I honestly don’t miss my old CDs.

How do I listen to music now?

I’ve got a massive pair of old Jamo Gale Force 25 (or 35?) speakers, which I must have bought nearly thirty years ago. Back then they were used as mini-PA speakers in my old band’s rehearsal room.

Since then they’ve provided a heavy bass and mid-range sound for music and TV connected through my Sony amplifier (much, much better sound than my previous Marantz and Cambridge Audio amps). I added a pair of smaller QAcoustics top speakers to these a few years ago, which noticeably (and unsurprisingly) improved the top end and overall sound.

Although I could stream from my phone via the Bluetooth link on the amp, this year I acquired a Tempotec Serenade X music streaming device, which does the same, but with a built-in DAC (digital to analogue converter). It makes a massive sound difference, even at a relatively low cost (these things can cost hundreds if not thousands).

Plus it can connect via ethernet cable to hi-res streaming services Tidal or Qobuz, and play my entire lossless digital music collection via a connected micro-SD card.

All of that said, it’s not often I get to listen to my music without using headphones. My little kid used to love watching the psychedelic videos of The Beatles and The Stones on YouTube, as well as some Tiny Desk concerts, but that all stopped when he quit daytime naps when he turned four and discovered YouTube Kids and how to operate the TV remote control.

For years I had a pair of cheap Sennheiser headphones, which were decent enough for listening to mp3s via my laptop. In 2018 I got a Dragonfly Black DAC that plugs into my laptop via USB. The difference in sound quality was astonishing.

Later that year I bought a Fiio M7 DAC music player, and again the transformation of sound was literally music to my ears.

This year I got a Tempotec V3 (cheapish, but still an upgrade), and been through wireless Iris Flow ListenWell and wired Bayerdynamic DT 770 Pro Studio headphones, before this year treating myself to a pair of massively discounted wired Focal Elegia ‘phones. Each one offers a different sound. The key being that they make listening to music an aural pleasure again.

I’ve also got some cheapish EarFun in-ear buds (a big upgrade on Pixel buds) for a quick wireless listen and an EarFun dongle DAC to plugin to my headphones and phone or laptop as an upgrade on my Dragonfly.

Big kid now has my Fiio M7 and Iris Flow headphones and loves listening to The Beatles, as well as my old band Hovercraft.

The art of a good sandwich

Let’s get something out of the way before we get into the meat, or the filling, of this post. A sandwich is two slices of bread. Buttered.

I don’t want to hear anything about OPEN sandwiches. Open sandwiches are like open marriages. Great if you want someone else to have your other half.

The art of a good sandwich:

  1. Use multiple fillings. Four is a good number.

  2. Less is more. Don’t over egg it.

For example, tonight I cleared out some leftovers and turned them into a great sandwich: two slices of ham, half an avocado (sliced), three cherry tomatoes (quartered), a squirt of mayonnaise, chopped dried chives and three or four spoons of sweet and hot jalapenos out of a jar.

Many times I’ve got halfway through a “classic” cheese and tomato sandwich and thought “it’s too cheesy.” A squirt of mayo and a sprinkling of chives world have saved it. Some of that jalapeno magic would have made it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against sandwiches with fewer than four fillings. When I was recovering from Covid, all I could eat was cheese and pickle sandwiches. I like a jam sandwich occasionally. And if it’s a crust, I’ll even eat it in an “open” jam sandwich (or bread and jam as we call it).

Which brings me on to toast. Toast and marmalade is not a sandwich. Cheese on toast is not a sandwich. Avocado toast is not a sandwich. But two rounds of toast with a filling inside IS a toasted sandwich. (See how simple this is?)

Now, with toasted sandwiches I would advocate sticking to one or two fillings. (Melted) cheese is always a winner with the kids. Grown-ups might like to add some chopped ham, onions or mushrooms. My little kid’s current favourite is “honey toast”.

Developers: if you really want to help the community

This was survey feedback given to developers proposing to build a massive data centre on the site of the industrial estate down the road from me, but it applies more broadly to all big developers, especially those with annual profits of half a billion pounds.

I’m concerned about noise from the site causing a nuisance and health problems in an area that is already susceptible to multiple environmental health stressors, and exacerbated by deep-rooted poverty, deprivation, low pay and systemic racism and power imbalances embedded in the local authority planning system.

I’m also concerned about the local power grid. Only a couple of years ago it was reported that Ealing doesn’t have enough capacity to power more new homes that are so badly needed, particularly in Southall which suffers from chronic overcrowding. A data centre requires a lot of power. How will this work?

If you really want to do something for the local community how about you plant thousands of trees to compensate for the fact that Southall has the lowest tree canopy cover in the whole of Ealing?

How about building homes for the street homeless and providing ongoing support they will need to live in them sustainably?

How about building a drug and alcohol rehab unit to treat the ever growing numbers of addicts roaming our streets and parks?

How about using all that information processing power to work out how to provide more frequent, more reliable, free public transport in Southall and to reduce the congestion caused by all the traffic?

How about building a secular community centre, a library, a youth club, a health centre, a school? Southall is so overdeveloped now, and Ealing Labour Council sold off all our community assets to developers.

Wolves match report

We watched Wallace and Gromit this afternoon, which everyone enjoyed, little kid was particularly excited.

After that, despite protests from the kids, I watched United at lowly Wolves. I’d been convinced beforehand that this was a game the new Portuguese manager must surely win. At half-time it was 0-0 and I thought it was hard to see either team scoring (or not conceding).

Within a couple of minutes of the restart Bruno stupidly got himself sent off for fouling the Wolves right back in the Wolves’ half. Needless, and it left the ten men looking bereft without their leader, talisman, only creative outlet and most likely goal threat.

Wolves soon capitalised and deservedly went ahead. I thought United looked a little better when Casemiro and Eriksen replaced the ineffectual Mainoo and Ugarte in central midfield late on, but even then United looked like they did under Ten Hag - lost.

Yes, we can see what the new manager is trying to do. 3-4-2-1. But it doesn’t work, for whatever reasons. And like Ten Hag, he has no Plan B. Can he have lost the dressing room already? He seems to have alienated Rashford and Casemiro, and while both have their faults, both could be important players, too. Their replacements are worse.

Wolves scored a second with virtually the last kick of the game, and their new Portuguese manager recorded his second win in two games playing 3-4-2-1.

In my opinion, United should be playing a counter-attacking 4-3-3 and playing to our strengths (fast wingers), which would secure our perennial weakness (central midfield), and protect our defence. Instead we’re playing a new system, which no one seems to understand and that seems to play to no one’s strengths.

Of course, maybe we just need more patience and in another ten games it will all look different. Or we could be looking over our shoulders at the bottom three.