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Ada
A short story originally written in 2020. I have decided to publish it now due to the recent excitement surrounding Artificial Intelligence, and particularly the ethical and existential issues that have been brought to the forefront by the rapid pace of advancement of this technology. A motif, crescendo, trombone, piccolo, a cacophony of their works
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Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Farenheit 451 is a very interesting dystopian novel. It reminds me of 1984 in the way it looks critically at society. Given that this novel was published in 1953, it is eerily accurate in its identification of society’s movement towards a world where there is just too much information to process, and people never stop
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A Perfect Spy by John le Carré
This is my third John le Carré novel, but perhaps it should have been the first I read. This is the most autobiographical of le Carré’s works, in which he describes the life of the spy Magnus Pym. Pym stuggles with a tension between loyalty towards his friends and loyalty towards his country, something I
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The Breach
Hampstead theatre is cosy; its stage slanting downwards towards the audience, grey and completely empty. The lights go out and darkness descends. Suddenly, the stage is illuminated, and we jump into The Breach, a new play by Naomi Wallace. 4 stars Hampstead theatre is cosy; its stage slanting downwards towards the audience, grey and completely
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Ode to Tube
Through a sea of people you swim and wriggle,All waiting for the same vessel,To carry you far from the place that you are,So through the crowd you wrestle, And hop on board,Over a bottomless void,To the safety of a cramped metal box,And onwards and upwards as the doors clamp shut,And a slow rumble starts to
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Reflection
I look at the sky and see you,staring back at me.Watery eyes and wavering mouth,Everywhere and nowhere.Why aren’t you who I wanted you to be? A lazy wind makes your image dance in the fickle waters,and I wrench my head up to the clouds,hoping to glimpse reality.Yet still I see the reflection,Rosy hues rippling in
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Agent Running in the Field by John Le Carré
Really good book, yeah. That’s probably how Ed would describe it. Mirroring the structure of its plot, on the surface this book appears to be one thing (a spy novel), underneath it is something very different – namely a critique of Britain’s departure from Europe, and its departure from decency and the Western world in
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The Pavlovian mind: why and when to tame our bias
Bias: can’t live with it, couldn’t survive without it. Bias is a word that has different connotations depending on who you are. In the common world, when we hear the word “bias”, it might conjure up negative images of stereotyping and discrimination. It might be used to describe teachers favouring students on a course, or
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Authentic Matters
Recently, while perusing LinkedIn, I came across a post by a researcher celebrating their recent achievement. They claimed to have had a number of papers accepted into a conference. They had simply posted that fact, with no context about what the papers were on, or what their interest was in them. Without making any assumptions
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Activation Energy
Sometimes things need to get worse before they get better. Sometimes things need to get messier before they become clear. Sometimes you need an initial push to get the car out of the ditch. There’s a strange concept that appears throughout our little worldly universe. It seems that in order to understand something new, or



