All done with Christmas lunch.

In process…

Happy Christmas from sunny Stroud

Annual White Christmas watch - Choreography is my favourite as it’s USA shifting uncomfortably to Modernism

Efficiency before morality, it’s Wannsee

Cats and humans may see the kitchen stack differently? Hierarchy of Needs or Pyramid of Privilege?

New vet-approved cat food regime started today, Nya is not impressed

How you take apart cybernetics and systems thinking is with powerful people saying they're powerless, responsible people saying they're not to blame, people with access to information refusing to look at it, evil people saying they're godly.

No way I’m going to Plopsaland (a Belgian theme park I’d never heard of) #Coulrophobia

The family’s slightly disturbing Victorian doll for auction next month.

When the Manchester Guardian calls, the people of the North heed the call. And if those people are me, we inject Manchester Liberalism, even from across the Pennines, right back in to the paper of Northern record. Get your fill. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The American Dream of a factory job for your kid and maybe a subsistence farming job for their kid

Player Of Games could have been first Culture book (per podcast with Ken MacLeod) as Iain Banks had written 3 or 4 of them before any of them were published.

Lego is also different in that it is designed to be built as one model, an object to display. Do kids play with them? It seems trapped by realism. Playmobil seems to be a play toy still.

Hitler was convinced he knew more about tank design than generals and engineers. Coupled with the existing over-engineering bias, Nazi Germany ends up with too few tanks and they’re too big.

Shifting cards/stickers from #PostNormal Design and #GoodDissent work to AI Same issues: • be sceptical when you don’t know subject • be persistent when you do #AI is Common Knowledge bias with techbros money

Arresting Greta Thunberg and Labour government, led by a lawyer, seems incapable of remembering the adage ‘Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_bre... What does all this protest-crushing achieve apart from ridicule?

Boundaries enable action (people move towards boundary lines) but they are also there to be broken thru. Discovering the Outside of known ideas, people and cultures.

Trump could combine his battleships and his East Wing ballroom and build Nemi barges en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemi_sh... like Caligula

Keanu Reeves data couriering the 60 Minutes video file overloading his memory implant

Alchemists believed that only those who did not covet gold would be capable of transforming base metal into gold

Trod, in socked foot, on the small wet pile of Christmas cake and raisins that explains why cat has been feeling sorry for herself all day.

Magic and AI seem closely aligned in terms of how it’s their side-effects that matter more than their direct capabilities (which they fail at)

The statistical averageness of AI is the problem. It requires higher levels of education and professional scepticism to spot when it is going wrong.

Confused argument about making zines as Woodcraft Folk group is using resources made by Al, which is me, Alastair, not AI. Sometimes Sans Serif does not aid readability.

On Magic and on #AI The same human hope and intent? The prompt as magical rite.

I feel AI has some of this early modern sense of Magic (from Keith Thomas) Magic declined as people found agency and trust in tools and science #AI is popular now because people have lost agency and trust in tools and science

Presence as theme for 2026 Academics and students being present with research quoted Politicians and voters being present with each other Digital spaces have lost verifiable trust and truth

Given landowners will use chemical and biological warfare on vermin, their use of horses and dogs for hunting isn’t about their fear of modern technology or change in the countryside.

Still staring at that thing humans cannot perceive

The Internet should go back to being a physical place in the house

This would be a Carnegie level of philanthropic move. Be a complete bastard for all your working life and then do an explicit and huge act of charity that is visible in the lives of millions.

Meritocracy is part of #Eugenics That those who are accredited are better than those who are not. The merit is demonstrated in exams and certificates. This goes to Thorndike and the purpose of education as the proving of Better people (not necessarily improving people)

Reading Religion and the Decline of Magic and how Astrology was the main form of professional magic. A specific tool for fixing practical problems. Service either in person or by artefact. It did not directly interfere with religion as it was a tool not a competing belief system.

AI’s statistical averageness is dangerous because its errors becomes much harder to spot unless you have experts on hand

Broke into a conversation about immigration last night as it was so ill informed. How it was unfair that UK did so much but EU did so little. I had to say it’s the reverse. Fairness not figures as rhetorical heart.

Seeing as it's Bod night, have the long lost 2000ad Special youtu.be/CFVq7vPtWno?...

Short post acuity.design/clear-mix-at... on bits of community workshop materials for 2026.

Dead Apple Watch means new battery for this old watch

Charity shop LP’s today: Genesis Invisible Touch* Saturday Night Fever OST Incantation Pan Pipes of Th he e Andes* * I did own this in the 80’s

From Solstice Spiral walk in Stroud, this year’s word for me is:

Aggravated enough to break into conversation about mainland European countries not taking enough asylum seekers compared to UK to point how many Germany alone has taken

Wolverhampton Panto used to alternate Lenny Henry and Jim Davidson as Buttons. One of them has remained in UK doing good work for decades.

That the Venn Diagram of US political society appears to be a simple circle of White, Privileged, Men seems bad for democracy. The Epstein redactions seem to show politics is just those rich men.

Don’t watch much sport but it is generally good for being anti-eugenics in that talent, capacity and power can come from individuals from anywhere. It goes against all the dreary hopes of eugenicists that it’s an evolved elite who are best.

Ken MacLeod discusses his friend, Iain M. Banks, and the book The Player of Games www.newscientist.com/video/250912... It’s my favourite of the series. The sadistically abusive elite hiding its perversion and power still relevant after Epstein and Andrew Mountbatten

Reread Forever War: human from 70’s passes thru centuries (due to time dilation) and encounters: • Earth society with new pronouns and different sexual choices • far future where all all humans are a gestalt intelligence which is kind, pacifist and unnervingly bland to the few individuals left

1964 - weekend in Leeds youtu.be/IYIdAxfmbss?... on BBC Archive Going to Leeds next weekend, perhaps it’ll have changed

Here to cheer you all up for the New Year. (Actually it might.) www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...