2025
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Criticising the Machine Algorithm Game While Feeding It
There’s a pattern I can’t unsee anymore. It’s so flipping common. Plenty of tech commentators on YouTube and podcasts love to rant about algorithms. About AI. About attention. About how recommendation engines are rewiring us, shortening our focus, spoon-feeding us ideas instead of forcing us to think. They’ll ask the big questions. All valid questions.…
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The YouTube Audiobook Circle of Slop
If you feel like YouTube has quietly filled your recommendations with soulless “audiobooks” read by lifeless robot voices, you’re not imagining it. You’re watching a new content racket evolve in real time, and it runs on low effort, AI tools, and platforms that pretend to care about “authenticity” while cashing the ad cheques. This is…
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Why I Don’t Trust Freemium Security Plugins
Freemium broke my trust long before AI ever had the chance. A client messages me in a panic. Their WordPress site is apparently under “security risk”. Red badge, urgent tone, classic drama. The culprit? A freemium security plugin they’d installed themselves. It fires off an instant alert… then refuses to show what it’s actually found…
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Streaming Platform Rearranged Itself Again (It’s Not an Accident)
Remember browsing a shop, spotting something interesting, nipping out to fetch a mate, and returning to find the entire aisle rearranged? Course not – because shops don’t work that way. But streaming platforms and social media do exactly that, and they’ve convinced everyone it’s normal. Tap back to where content was moments ago, and it’s…
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Facebook’s Hostile Interface Harms Neurodivergent Users
Try typing a bloody comment on Facebook these days. Your cursor hovers near a word, and boom: a pop-up suggesting pages you don’t care about. You’re mid-sentence, and Facebook’s autocomplete hijacks your keyboard to shove names and suggestions down your throat. You can’t move, type, or think without being interrupted by something trying to “help”…
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What Happens When You Exceed Your Food Carbon Score?
In Summary: Carbon scoring on UK food isn’t coming, it’s here. Oatly started publishing carbon footprints on products in the UK back in 2019, but the system has accelerated significantly since September 2021 when Foundation Earth launched its pilot eco-labelling scheme backed by M&S, Costa Coffee, Sainsbury’s, Co-op, and Nestlé. Sandwiches in British supermarkets now…
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The Internet Is Getting Bigger… and Somehow Worse
Today I tried to solve a tiny, a rather technical and boring problem: a cryptic Facebook “About this content” panel nagging that it “could not find a Facebook Page” for my own domain. It was bollocks really because the domain has existed for more than a decade (almost 16 years in fact) and is 100%…
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Your Brain Can’t Multitask & Modern Work Is Killing Focus
I was typing this article when I decided to take a shower. Before I’d even dried off properly, I was back at the keyboard, fingers tapping away. If that’s multitasking, then I’m the bloody Queen of England. In Summary: Attention Deficit Trait isn’t something you’re born with. It’s what happens when your work environment overwhelms…
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ADHD Time Struggles Are Real but The Advice You’re Getting Isn’t.
You’ve seen the posts. Green thoughtful creature pondering past, present, and future. Relatable meme, thousands of likes, comments full of “this is so me.” Then comes the advice: Feels helpful for about five seconds. Then you’re late again. Then you’re replaying yesterday’s cock-up whilst simultaneously catastrophising about tomorrow’s 2pm meeting, and you realise you’ve just…
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£532k for Moving a Dot. The Broken Procurement Exposed
In Brief: The UK government spent £532,000 moving a dot halfway up the GOV.UK logo and changing its colour. Taxpayers got a turquoise full stop and 150 pages of brand guidelines explaining how “the dot” serves as a “guiding hand for life” whilst the NHS maintenance backlog hit £16 billion and people struggle to heat…