I joined in the collective global snigger when Steve Bannon was arrested for fraud whilst on an absconding Chinese billionaire’s superyacht. I then joined in the global raised eyebrow that the arrest was conducted by the US Postal Service’s police force. I mean… how militarised is that country that the post office has an armed […]
Bean counters
Taiwan appears to have a surprisingly large number of people for whom a major part of their job description is to sift dust out of coffee beans, pick through them (in extreme cases with chopsticks), roast them in batches of about a half cup each, empty them into a little jug covered with a loose […]
Slip of the tongue
This evening, over dinner, the GF observed that I was less grumpy than usual, less prone to become annoyed at my usual bugbears perhaps (leadership was today’s). Without thinking, I said “maybe I’m happy” and then he blushed and I blushed and we both avoided each other’s eyes. Did make me wonder, though, as I […]
Monkey say, monkey do
There is something destabilising about the playacting in politics these days, so much of it seems to take place in a no man’s land. On one hand, there is a dismissal of norms that normalises new ones, and on the other hand there is this peculiar monkey-say-monkey-do business, a robot or an alien creature pretending […]
Supply chains
I listened to a podcast this morning about supply chain management was disappointed to find I learned almost nothing new, despite knowing littie or nothing about supply chain management. However, I did notice this jar of salt, which came with our flat, and wasn’t purchased by us. I am quite sniffy about Himalayan pink salt […]
Least, most, best, worst
A curiosity of Americans is that they much always be the most or least. The best, but if not the best, they are the absolute worst. This strikes me quite often on Metafilter, but most recently during a discussion of the caste system in India which, for a while, became a discussion of how the […]
A new star
It was not turning 40 that has brought home to me how old I am but the fact that is the third time in my lifetime that the revelation of Ophiuchus as a constellation displacing Sagittarius has rocked the world. Truly there is nothing new under the sun. Speaking of which – this was a […]
End of a ritual
We watched the penultimate episode of The Wire last night. Magnificent, despite the problems with the final season more generally, this is unambiguously one of the best episodes in the entire show. Marlo saying “My name is my name” – brilliant. Tonight, the end.
Twist in the tale
If humanity comes to an end because two nuclear-armed adversaries started hitting each other on the head with rocks on the roof of the world, well, it only seems fitting. I was being educated, somewhat unwillingly on my side, the other day, about meta-modernism, but these absurd times seem rather hyper-postmodernist to me.
Ultras
The article for today is this short piece about Moroccan ultras. Football fans are hardly the most inspiring of people, but I do wonder why there is not more effort in modern societies to create such spaces for solidarity, carefully overseen, except by armies and fascists. And Scouts, I suppose, though it is hard to […]