The problem with witches - and I say this as someone deeply in their thrall - is that once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. In a sharp-tongued woman at the checkout, in your aunt’s herb garden, in your dog’s knowing eyes. It begins as a curious fascination and ends with you … Continue reading “Laughter Contorts the Face and Makes Monkeys of Men”: Witch-Hunting for the Bewitched and Bewildered
The Day That Betrayed Me
Birthdays and the Memory that Won’t Leave There’s a certain performance expected of you on your birthday. Even if you don’t care for cake or crowds, even if you prefer solitude to ceremony, there’s a social contract - unspoken but ironclad - that on this one day, you’re to be grateful. Festive. Present. Pleased. It … Continue reading The Day That Betrayed Me
Mastro Titta: Pope’s Little Helper with a Big Sword
Giovanni Battista Bugatti - what a name, eh? It sounds like the kind of bloke you’d expect to sell you a fine bottle of chianti or offer unsolicited advice about your olive oil. But no - our man Bugatti wasn’t swirling wine or chasing goats in the hills. He was the official executioner for the … Continue reading Mastro Titta: Pope’s Little Helper with a Big Sword
The Idiot Boy and the Machine: On Ned Ludd’s Kids in the Age of AI
For Context The Luddites weren’t technophobes. Let’s get that out the way. They weren’t afraid of machines in the abstract - they were afraid of being replaced, discarded, and starved by them. And frankly, I think that’s fair. The story begins in the early 1800s, in the smoky belly of England’s Industrial Revolution. Skilled textile … Continue reading The Idiot Boy and the Machine: On Ned Ludd’s Kids in the Age of AI
In Absentia: A Theology of Objects
I've touched on a similar theme in an earlier post, but as per my obsession with objects, I thought there's be no harm indulging again. There’s a sentence in Julian Barnes’ Metroland that hits with the sort of quiet, subcutaneous sting I’ve come to associate with him: Objects contain absent people. On the face of it, it's a throwaway … Continue reading In Absentia: A Theology of Objects
