Another one. 10th January Leek and potato Soup maker, do your smooth thing But leave some roughage . 18th February Jill Whiteley's gone Rotored off to sunny shores And a glass city . 7th April Daffodils spring up Bold yellow trumpets tooting The fresh season's song . 20th April Vauxhall bibimbap A Gordon Ramsay beerContinue reading "Haikus / 2023"
Haikus / 2022
We go again. 15th January We bagged the tree for The bins outside Sainsbury’s A frail skeleton . 18th February Planes like plastic bags Watch live on BIG JET TV The Dome, torn apart . 22nd March Sunshine on Tuesday Bare skin and vitamin D Antarctic horror . 21st April Fourth plumber’s a charm PipeContinue reading "Haikus / 2022"
“THERE IS NO FUEL SHORTAGE!”: How to tackle false information in a crisis
“THERE IS NO FUEL SHORTAGE!” These words, accompanied by an emoji of a tiny car, were shared by Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Nadine Dorries in response to the apparent lack of gas in petrol stations across the UK. Comments of similar substance were shared by a number of herContinue reading "“THERE IS NO FUEL SHORTAGE!”: How to tackle false information in a crisis"
Another Year of Haikus
Because I began writing haikus in August a couple of years ago, I'm now stuck with an annual retrospective that falls at an odd time. It's a strange time capsule, spat out at the end of summer.
Reading Ayn Rand in the 21st century
I’m not a big fan of Ayn Rand. Her rejection of altruism, collectivism, and statism in favour of “rational egoism”, coupled with her propensity to justify colonial genocide by labelling colonised peoples as “savages”, is all round unsavoury. But the last month has seen various stories relating to Rand bubble up: Sajid Javid, a card-carryingContinue reading "Reading Ayn Rand in the 21st century"
Upland: A Llama-themed Lesson in Game Design
To Upland’s credit, it does have a certain unsettling realism to it, in part enabled by its blockchain functionality. However, this realism is used for all the wrong reasons — to rationalise mechanics that line the developers pockets, rather than empower players or encourage them to reevaluate the world around them.
Consider The Blobfish
The most important thing we can learn from the blobfish is that we shouldn’t default to making judgements based on our personal or societal preconceptions of what “good” looks like.
A Year of Haikus
I was planning to do a long-form piece about my experience writing a haiku every day for a year (well, almost every day… Sometimes I had to play catch-up after missing a few). I would have taken the time to explain how they have been a fantastic way of sharing things with my girlfriend, whoContinue reading "A Year of Haikus"
Want to cut down on screen time? Buy a shit phone
Three years ago I wrote a blog post entitled “Smart usage: Two productivity application trends to get you thinking”. The post reviewed a few standout apps that help people either cut down on their smartphone usage or incentivise daily tasks through the use of gamification. During the process of writing it I tried my fairContinue reading "Want to cut down on screen time? Buy a shit phone"
Post-publication: the nips, the tucks, and the cut-ups
Publishing your creations is a funny thing. It means sending them out into the big bad world and inviting both praise and criticism. It also normally means calling time on any final nips and tucks and declaring it a “finished product”, but this isn’t always the case. A host of filmmakers, musicians and authors haveContinue reading "Post-publication: the nips, the tucks, and the cut-ups"
gabriel burrow 