It's as if technology exists in an endless present. None of the new machines innovate; they just do what we do, sometimes better, sometimes not.
I fired up my laptop to write this, and while I was waiting, wrote it on a scrap of waste paper.

...platforms. I've deleted Twitter (currently X) and either deleted or suspended Facebook, can't remember which. I like the simple interface at Medium dot com, which is pretty much a white space with an invitation to write (type? No, not a useful distinction), and I'm finding that Substack's Notes feature is actually an improvement on Twitter for short thoughts.
But ... both Substack and Medium are infested with people whose primary relationship seems to be with the platform. They write about writing, and/or about getting liked/followed, and/or about how much/little they're being paid for their writing by the platform.
As though - that last one - writing-for-the-platform has replaced writing. Which is fair enough, I suppose; we're all writing for a reason, and getting paid to do it seems like a good deal. But.
But. But just to write about that? Too much of that for me.
I think I'm beginning to remember that being subject to the vagaries of a platform is not quite the same as being master of my own destiny. Perhaps the time has come to return to my own website.

...podcasting. Reading stories and posting them as podcasting edisodes. No particular urgency, and I'm only writing this because I happened to open up my website and noticed how long ago since my last post, but ... yeah. Podcasting. I have the skills and I have the sound-booth, although not the mixing desk, so maybe.
Enough. It's sunny outside and it's Easter Monday. I hear the call of the - not the wild exactly, but the outside.

I have teenage children. When they’re staying in for the evening, sooner or later one of them will come to me and say: “Dad! We’re going to make a mess in the kitchen.”

“Great!” I will reply, picking up on the tone of voice. “What are you going to do?”

“We thought we’d slice up some peppers and onion and bits of chicken and leave them glued to the bottom of the frying pan. Burn something in one of the saucepans and leave it floating in the sink.”

“Anything else?”

“Make some sugary gluey stuff and use it to fix a few spatulas to the worktop. Leave all the chicken we didn’t use by the window, on a plate smeared with tomato ketchup. Empty out the sugar and leave the container and its lid at opposite ends of the kitchen.”

“No crockery in the living room?”

“Duh. Glasses of course. We’ve got some really gloppy drink residue to stick them down.”

“Okay, so-”

“Oh wait! We thought we’d put three empty Lucozade bottles and an empty Hula Hoops packet in the food-recycling bin.”

“That’s a new one. You will finish up the milk, won’t you, so I don’t have to put it on my breakfast cereal?”

“Dad, about that breakfast cereal…”

“You’ve saved me the trouble already? Are you going to do any cooking before you start?”

“We’re going to make popcorn and chicken fajita wraps and then we’re going to watch a movie.”

“Sounds like you guys are going to have fun. Be sure and leave all the mess so I can find it in the morning.”

“We will, Dad.”

“Leave all the lights on, TV plugged in…”

“Good night, Dad. We’ll turn the sound up so you can hear the movie while you’re trying to get to sleep.”

“Thanks guys.”

We were talking, the other day, about consquences, unintended and otherwise. That led, by the magic of conversation, to an idea for a book. Satire, really. Humour, however you spell it.
The idea was: how about the whole of human history, as seen From Above?
I came away, and thought about it while I was walking, and stopped at a bus stop to scribble these first ideas in my notebook. Rule one: scribble things down when they come to you.

They’ve eaten the apple.
They’ve what?
The one you told them not to eat. They’ve–
But – I gave them all that other fruit.
I wonder if free will was such a good–
Wait. Let me think. I’ve got to be angry about this, haven’t I?
Angry?
Whoops. I’ve just created anger.
He's blaming her and she's blaming the snake.
The snake? This was supposed to be a simple love-match, not some creation-myth psychodrama.
Psychodrama?
Forget I said that.
You could start again.
No, I don’t think… Oh, this is interesting. I think I’ve just created unintended consequences as well.
Consequences?
Yes, unintended – never mind, I’ll explain later. They arise from free will. But I think I can beat that.
*
There. That should do it. Two brothers. Cain and Abel. They can’t screw that up, surely?
*
Now what?
Don't tell me.
Okay, do tell me. I can't bear it. What have they left off the ark?
Not the unicorns? Oh no...
I was really pleased with unicorns.
*
He wants me to part the Red Sea? Can't he go round?
Oh, they’re catching up. Well, I suppose I could.
But I tell you, I'm going to write his commandments on stone if he isn't careful. See him carry those down the mountain.
*
What is it now?
They’ve KILLED HIM?
*
Finally. They just needed leadership, that’s all. The problem was the relationships, all along. So I’ve just made it simple. They get a king. One person to keep order, no argument. Backed up by – get this – The Divine Right Of Kings. I’m pleased with that.
Their monarch – yes, it can be a queen – runs things, and that sets the rest of them free.
The humble ones can set up a church – you know, no frills, just a gathering-place, really – and they can all get together and think about their souls. Sit quietly and listen. No argument. It’s foolproof. At last.
Yes? What is it? I said we weren’t to be disturbed.
They’ve CUT HIS HEAD OFF? Who are these people?
*
Yes, they do. Yes, I know. Yes, it’s not very pleasant, but – well, frankly, fertiliser. All the animals do it, and the plants–
Yes, it kind of melts into the earth, and the plants get the nutrients. What goes around - you know.
Yes, yes, I know, but it was towards the end of the Sixth Day, and I was tired, and I thought: they’re problem-solvers, and they’re good at figuring out what to do with-
What? They mix it with what?
They’ve made it into WHAT?
GUNPOWDER?
*
What is he wearing? I get the fish symbol - that goes back to the loaves and fishes thing my boy did - but that outfit! The tailoring! And what's with all the incense? All those boys in white?

The story continues...

What if the next place is a surprise?

In the film Meet Joe Black (1998), Death (played by Brad Pitt) decides that he’d like to take a holiday (and be shown around by Anthony Hopkins).
The transition out of life is described at one point as moving on to “the next place”. That’s in a conversation between Brad Pitt’s character and an elderly hospital patient (played by — enough with the brackets!) played by Lois Kelly-Miller.
I enjoyed watching Meet Joe Black years ago, and the DVD’s on my shelf somewhere. Might watch it again.
[Aside: interesting where the pauses come in writing. I’ve just hovered between “my” shelf, “a” shelf, “my bookshelf” and “one of my bookshelves” when in fact I know that DVD’s on the shelf half-way up the stairs.]
But what was front-and-centre in my mind when --
[Sorry to interrupt; just gone and counted them — on one of the four shelves half-way up the stairs.]
— what was front-and-centre in my mind when I woke up this morning was the phrase “the next place”. I can’t tell you very much about the dream that put it there, but I lay --
[Had to check. Middle of the bottom shelf. Sorry!]
— I lay in bed thinking: wouldn’t it be a funny story if the next place wasn’t the one we were expecting?
[Only half-awake, and I’m already telling myself a story. I feel good about that. I did have to grab my phone because I couldn’t remember the name of that film with Brad Pitt — but that doesn’t mean anything.]
I wasn’t thinking “the next place” in --
[At my age, memory lapses are to be expected. I’m holding up five fingers as I type this and the president’s name is Ronald Reagan. I’m fine I tell you!]
I wasn’t thinking “the next place” in an Up or Down sense — no, that wouldn’t be funny — but what if the next place was actually Valhalla and not, I don’t know, one of those New Yorker cartoons in which two people stand on a cloud holding harps?
Or maybe there’s a ferryboat and I can either produce a coin to pay for my crossing or go back and haunt people?
Now, there’s a story.
What does the ghost want? The ghost wants your spare change.
Never mind the dream; I’m enjoying being awake.

These are desperate moves.

Rishi Sunak wants us to have oil, so he’s granting hundreds of new oil licences for the North Sea. He’s still on target to reach net zero, he tells us, by a target date set so far into the future that he can’t be proved wrong.

He’s on the side of motorists, he says, so he’s ordered a review of traffic-management schemes with a view to letting cars go faster through residential areas. Sorry – to limit councils’ ability to impose 20mph speed limits. Letting cars maintain their speed…

He’s taking control of immigration, which means targeting refugees desperate enough to risk crossing the Channel in small boats. He actually listed “small boats” as one of his priorities for 2023.

With a General Election coming up, he’s doing what he thinks we want. But who does he think we are?

Today's my day for coming back and posting on my dear old legacy blog. I write at medium.com now, but I do sometimes come back and revisit themes here.
    But - find me there.
    Medium.com has an easy GUI - it's a white sheet of 'paper' with a cursor and the words 'Tell your story' in a percentage of black. And there's an autosave that hasn't let me down so far.
    So here's another example of what you'll find if you look for me there.
    And here are some pictures of book covers.
    Because it seems silly not to, I've searched each title and put a link on each of the pictures.
    But that's just a formality, really - a nod to the e-world we live in.
    If you're interested in any of my books (thank you), you'll find them wherever you look for books.

Ignore the date on this post. You've found me at William Essex dot com, and here's a book cover to celebrate. Find Ten Steps to a Bedtime Story wherever you look for books. Scroll down for more.

What's it like, being kissed by a frog? Why can't little princesses do their own laundry?
     The essential guide to DIY bedtime storytelling answers all your questions and several you didn't ask about getting young children to sleep.

Sunday’s Facebook post.

“I'm beginning to think climate change might be a problem. After all, every media outlet I know has been banging on about it incessantly for as long as I can remember (given the state of my attention span), and the message is always the same: climate change is a problem. I think they might be trying to tell me something. But what to do about it? I know! Let's burn off some aviation fuel by flying the usual politicians to a city in Scotland and asking them to agree that climate change is a problem. That should fix it!”

Heard the news at 11am this morning. Apparently, there are long queues to get into COP26 for the first day’s business. Reminded me of Sibos back in the day: never plan anything for the first hour of the first day of a big conference.

Just ever so slightly interesting (to me, anyway) that Laura Kuennsberg was telling Woman’s Hour (actually, at 10.55-ish) that COP26 would be significant even if it failed, and that agreements already reached would not be invalidated by a failure at COP26. I had been wondering how they (the ministerial ‘they’, not the BBC ‘they’) would spin it as a success despite the absence of Russia and China – but hey, I’m not any more.
Here’s what I think will happen.

Today’s media-political complex will continue as before. We will save the world every few years, by making speeches at conferences and setting climate-change targets, and the weather will go on getting weirder. We will be lulled into a new normal incrementally, televised catastrophe by televised catastrophe, and behind the scenes, the lobbying will continue. Fossil-fuel burning will be banned, but there will be exemptions for influential countries that want to burn fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, the world will change.

The pandemic will continue (we’ve been educated, entertained, trained to a story arc whereby it’s over, but it isn’t), birth rates will continue to fall, the ice caps will melt, cities will burn…

…and all of a sudden we’ll wake up to realise that the decision-makers are looking younger; they’re sounding more assertive; they don’t seem to take seriously the inertia-inducing processes, procedures and speech patterns of today’s – but suddenly, they’re of yesterday’s – politics.

Possibly the most pointless exchange in the history of modern broadcasting came last week, in a radio discussion of cuts to Universal Credit.
 
Interviewer: “Your cuts to Universal Credit are reducing people’s income by £20 per month.”
 
Minister: “We’ve already spent £6 billion on benefits.”
 
Curious how often the answer to “You’re cutting spending” is “We’ve already spent”. And come to think of it, curious how often the number is six billion.

We have a decision to make. To be optimistic or to be pessimistic about the Covid unlocking on Monday.

I know people who tell me that we'll all be fine because so many of us have been double-vaccinated. I even know one person who tells me Covid isn't a threat any more - the Delta variant ("Which Originated In India," as everybody adds) may be more contagious, but it just gives you a bad flu-equivalent.

And any future variants will just be plain-vanilla snuffles, she insists. Like that creaking upstairs in the haunted house is just air bubbles in the pipes. Or rats. The wind. Okay. No wind. So: heat on a still day, warping the window-frames. Something. Anything. Obviously.

I'm a pessimist. There's a lot of Covid around, and Covid mutates. The government's replacing "restrictions" with "guidelines", but that just makes it our fault if we disregard the "guidelines". [As in: the government's no longer taking responsibility for telling us what to do.]

Seems to me that the government has caved in to pressure from corporate lobbies - tourism, hospitality ("hospitality industry" reminds me of "military intelligence"; isn't it an oxymoron?), airlines - to open up. Future historians, if there are any, will add this detail to their histories of our static economy. [Static as in: all our legacy pre-covid industries are too big to fail and must be held up, even if they do block the new.]

It's a kind of almost pleasing irony that the NHS test and trace app is telling people to stay at home. We've built a piece of tech that has the legal clout to keep people safe. Less pleasing that employers are pushing for front-line most-vulnerable workers to be made exempt from mandatory self-isolation, but - yeah, right. What's a snuffle between co-workers, eh?

Optimism is dangerous. Optimists rush into crowded bars, restaurants, etc, and celebrate.

But pessimists - pessimists wonder how long it's going to take before all the tables are free.

Beatrix Potter followed Peter Rabbit with Squirrel Nutkin, Benjamin Bunny and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.

My local cinema is following Peter Rabbit with Peter Rabbit 2.

Peter "wisecracks like Bugs Bunny," says a review in The NY Times. I think that's a comment on one of the films, not the original story.

Original. Now there's a word.

This is what the breakdown of law and order feels like.

Man attacks woman. Woman reports crime. System fails to do anything - but does want details of the woman's sexual history.

We legislate for equality; we have feminism; there's #MeToo among other lessons of history.

The breakdown of law and order isn't a sudden riot, any more than a global pandemic is suddenly zombies on the streets.

Seems to me that no matter what we do, we can't stop the system failing. The legal system isn't capable of handling rape cases effectively, even in today's climate of opinion. The overall system isn't saving us from anything.

Re: the pandemic. We've switched to the word "variant" from "mutation" because it's softer. We don't want to offend India, so it's the "Delta" variant we're facing now.

Re: climate change. "The G7 nations have agreed to step up action on climate change" (BBC News, 4 days ago), thereby adding an "agreement" to all the "targets" of - wait, how long ago?

Re: Rape. In two years, some courts in England and Wales will be allowed to switch on the evidence-recording equipment that all courts already have installed.

Oh, and courts will be encouraged to focus on the suspect's behaviour rather than the victim's. "Ah, but she was wearing a short skirt" will cease to be the issue; "He's been attacking women for years" will matter more. I can remember that being an issue a century ago.

What happens next? My guess is, more of the same but with added media releases to say that lessons have been learned. Then more of the same.

Then, eventually, not the collapse of the system but the decline into irrelevance of the system. They're all useless. We have to look after ourselves.

Any worthwhile social movement has to start from the understanding that people can't be led. Nor consistently inspired. Neither conviction nor idealism can be shared from one head to the next, let alone from one head to a crowd.

You can lead some of the people to the barricades, for some of their time. But you can't keep them there, nor direct where they go next. Leaders fall; regimes collapse; bills fall due; milk boils over; babies cry; dogs bark; caravans move on; all the while, ideals are eroded by the day-to-day pragmatism of living.

Abstract agreements are no basis for action. Yes, things "should" be different, and more importantly, could be different. But there is no automatic right to have them made different, nor to impose difference.

There is no mind so closed as a mind that believes itself open. And liberal. And benign.

Rejoice! Hooray!
 
Here are the first two paragraphs of the media release at
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-host-g7-summit-in-cornwall
announcing the G7 Summit in Cornwall this year.
 
[Spoiler: We are indulging my inner grumpy old so-and-so today. By reading this you agree to all manner of terms & conditions. In return, you have my permission to buy yourself a cookie or small bar of chocolate later and eat it in defiance of your diet.
 
Here goes.]
 
“Prime Ministers and Presidents from the world’s leading democracies will come together in Cornwall in June to address shared challenges, from beating coronavirus and tackling climate change, to ensuring that people everywhere can benefit from open trade, technological change and scientific discovery.”
 
Isn’t that great? Doesn’t that make you feel good? They’re coming to Cornwall to– Oh. Sorry. Here’s the second paragraph.
.
“The Prime Minister will use the first in-person G7 summit in almost two years to ask leaders to seize the opportunity to build back better from coronavirus, uniting to make the future fairer, greener and more prosperous.”
 
Won’t that be great? He’s going to stand up and ask them to seize the opportunity.

And they’re going to react like the idea had never occurred to them, reaching out with both hands – imagine them all pushing back from the conference table, raising their arms, swiping at the air as though they’ve been asked to do something real.

I like that bit from the first paragraph. They’re coming together “to address shared challenges, from beating coronavirus and tackling climate change…”

Such feelgood rhetoric. Unfair, really, to point out that they’re not coming together to beat coronavirus, nor indeed to tackle climate change.

But if “addressing” can do even a fraction of the good of “beating” or “tackling” – they’ll address. No problem.

Why am I reacting so strongly to a piece of flannel about an over-promoted talkfest of a photo-op between elderly politicians who - most of them - can’t organise a vaccine roll-out in a single market?

I don’t know, actually.

Because somehow it encapsulates the modern condition? Yes, perhaps that.

What is the modern condition? Oh, thank you for asking.

We talk so well because we don’t do. We talk so well because we know we don’t do. We shy away from the specific – tackling climate change – and console ourselves with the abstract – addressing the challenge. Faced with difficulty, or impossibility, we retreat into words.

We’ve honed the skill of talking to the point where it gives us the same feeling as if we’d taken action. We can almost convince ourselves that we’re tackling climate change when in fact what we’re doing – sorry, what we’re announcing, not doing, is that we’ve agreed to set targets for tackling climate change.

Which isn’t the same as doing anything. Of course. The action evaporates into the words. We cheer the target-setting and meet the failure to keep to those targets without surprise.
 
For another example. I pick up on this flower-arrangement of words from the opening paragraph: “...to ensuring that people everywhere can benefit...”
 
They’re coming to Cornwall to “ensure” that people “can”. Isn’t that state-of-the-art content-free speech?
 
They’re not “doing”; they’re “ensuring”. And they’re not ensuring that people “will” benefit; they’re ensuring that people “can” benefit.
 
I “can” benefit from a lot of things. Whether I “will” benefit from them depends on whether anybody gets their act together and does the work needed to provide them. No, wait. I “can” benefit. I’m already perfectly capable of benefiting. Oh, never mind.
 
At least the closing communique will tell us that they’ve all agreed to seize the opportunity. I’m hoping for at least a moment’s emotional boost from the rousing verbiage of the closing communique. I bet the main points of that have already been drafted. 
 
I’m also hoping for a photo-op on the beach, Boris and his chums in front of a sandcastle, ideally, a good, big sandcastle, as well as the whole inevitable salad of further-back advertising hoardings for the conference centre and the tourist board.
 
Ask not what the politicians have agreed.
 
Ask instead who built the sandcastle.
 
Or place your faith in the younger generation and go look for a child with a spade.

Struck me just now that "surveillance capitalism" operates by obsessing over the second-best answer to an obvious question.

"What do you people want?"

Imagine a restaurant which studied Big Data to work out what its customers wanted.

None of that old-fashioned inefficient handing out menus and taking down orders. These people are all meeting for lunch. They all drank coffee and 68% ate cornflakes last time they sat down to eat. Scrap the menu. Bring out coffee and cornflakes.

Recently, I bought a chair from a certain well-known online store. If I had bought every chair I've been offered, by email, since buying the chair I wanted - I would have enough now to fill an auditorium.

Surveillance capitalism fails at answering the obvious question. What do I want? I have a chair. It's a chair that I might use to sit down and eat.

What else do you think I might need in my dining space?

"I know! Another chair!" says the algorithm.