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Within five minutes of leaving the station, smoothly reaching 280kmh, the scenery has already gone from glossy urban, small children watching the trains from the footbridge between department store blocks, through industrial factories, acres of intricate steelwork and plumes of steam, to the greenery of Taiwan between its cities. In the middle distance are the ubiquitous mountains, wearing clouds gathered close. The ground nearer is very flat, squares of rice growing, trees, blocky buildings....

I am sitting writing in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Kaohsiung is not somewhere people go for holidays, or as tourists. It’s not a city most people have heard of, particularly, unless they’re in shipping. If you’ve ordered goods from Taiwan, they were probably sent from Kaohsiung. Taiwan, these days, is known for high-tech chip-making, and being a potential trouble-spot. Older generations mention “made in Taiwan”, remembering cheap and cheerful items with that label from before China grew up, ate the manufacturing world, and loomed over Taiwan itself....

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the old curse, and it looks like we are. Whoever we are, whatever role we’re in, it feels harder than it’s ever been to know what to do for the best. Conventional advice that’s always applied feels as though it probably doesn’t any more, and who’s to know what the new wisdom is? Whatever I write here will probably look laughably outdated before too long, but I was thinking this as I looked at the stock market, for one thing....

One day, I am pretty sure historians will look back at 2007-2008 as a key turning point, when the world changed in a significant way that we still don’t seem to have grasped. It should have taught us something we didn’t learn, and consequently the effects are still playing out. Anyway, a tangent … We are currently looking at secondary schools for our son. There are two obvious choices within walking distance, and the ethos contrast is quite stark....

This, here, is a good exercise and analysis for any of us who write online (or write at all, I suppose, but for most of us that’s online). Blink if you’re human If you haven’t read it before reading this – and you should read it at some point, at least – it teases apart what could count as “writing with AI”, and argues that rather than either getting all ban-heavy, or requiring labelling of AI-written material, better simply for those of us who write for ourselves to be transparent about how we do what we do....

Across the street, a cat is sitting on a doorstep. It’s raining. Yesterday, the neighbours were clustered together, talking, but I was taking an urgent call, and it was school pick-up time. Later we found out why. Not having seen the lady opposite for a couple of days, another neighbour went to see her and there was no answer. Worried, she called the police, and they forced entry from the garden, and found she had died....

When things aren’t going well, and people are dissatisfied, the most popular calls are usually for things to be stopped. “This is bad, and it should be banned.” “This is unfair, and it shouldn’t be allowed.” “That is dangerous, and people should be stopped from doing it.” The odd thing is that much the same happens when people are very comfortable. It becomes very important to stop anything that disturbs that comfort....

My day-to-day work is all about processes. Processes are a good thing. They mean repeatability, predictability, they can be honed until good outcomes are guaranteed. I work with computers, and software that enables business to run efficiently. If you can’t define a really good tight process, that software can’t help you, usually. Computers are great at process because they don’t make mistakes. If there is a problem, it’s because of the process, not the computer....

Sometimes I’ll see a LinkedIn post of the kind that everybody mocks. It’ll be along the lines of “this massive cost is actually a good thing because it’s making me hustle harder.” And yes, I laugh along, because these people are either deluded or grifters, no exceptions. Nobody should pour huge sums into pointless influencemaxxing or publicised secret masterminds, thinking a big-spender mindset is going to grow them rich, and if anyone claims to, they probably have an eye on what you might be willing to pay them....

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a photographer. At times I’ve wanted to be professional, but any time I simply wanted to take photographs. When I finally got a camera in my teens, I didn’t change my mind. There’s something about framing an image that has a very deep appeal. I got a good camera, and by that time cameras were already getting clever, with autofocus and auto exposure....