Modern Life
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The Outrage Machine Never Wants The Story To End
The modern internet doesn’t want resolution. It wants seasons. Pick any headline that has dominated the UK over the last few years. Lucy Letby. Jeffrey Epstein. Keir Starmer. Lucy Connolly. Search YouTube. Or don’t, if you value your sanity. What you’ll see isn’t reporting. It’s manufacturing. “Bombshell update.” “Everything changes today.” “Starmer is FINISHED.” “They…
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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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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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Memes Won’t Save Men from Suicide. Real Connection Might.
We’re drowning in mental health content while men are quietly dying. Something isn’t adding up. Every day, millions of people scroll past a graphic that says “check on your friend.” They might tap it, feel a brief warm glow, and keep scrolling. Meanwhile, in the UK, multiple men die by suicide every single day. We’ve…
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AI Slop is Not New, Just Industrialised
The behaviour came first, the label arrived later. For many years, lazy and shady people have been building “channels” by scraping other people’s clips, Reddit posts, pet videos, podcast moments and news footage, then stitching them into compilations with a new title, thumbnail and maybe a watermark. AI simply took that lazy mentality and put…
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Why Social Media Feels Draining and Addictive
There’s a quiet shift that’s happened over the last couple of decades. Most people feel it, but struggle to explain it without sounding like they’re just “moaning about Facebook”. What Roy Baumeister has done, whether people agree with every word or not, is give it a bit of backbone. Not opinions. Not vibes. Actual psychological framing. And…
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The Quiet Mess Behind “Smart” Doorbell Cameras
The tech companies want you to believe your fifty quid door camera makes you safer. In reality, you might be installing a 24/7 surveillance device for other people’s benefit, handing out free intelligence to burglars, and feeding a data machine that knows more about your life than your neighbours do. This isn’t tinfoil hat stuff.…
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The Great AI Pivot: Everyone’s an Expert Now
We’re closing in on the end of 2024 and the AI grift is in full swing. Anyone with a few followers, or a few million, has gradually pivoted into talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) as if they are seasoned experts. But let’s be honest, most of them haven’t a bloody clue what they’re talking about.…
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Stop Calling AI Tools Cheating, You’re Missing the Point
The question comes up now and then. “Do you use ChatGPT?” It’s asked with this peculiar mixture of curiosity and judgement, as though admitting to using AI tools is some sort of confession. The implication hangs there: using ChatGPT means you’re cheating, taking shortcuts, or somehow diminishing the value of your work. That attitude is…