writing
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Soundtrack to this post. As we enter 2026, many of us are making the usual resolutions to spend less time on our screens or eat more healthily. My resolution is different. I am not trying to spend less time on the internet; I am trying to change how I inhabit it. I am moving “Big Data” out of my life and moving my digital existence onto my own Virtual…
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The news filtered through this morning not with a bang, but with the quiet finality of a ballot count. Reform UK has won its first contested election in Scotland. David McLennan took a council seat in Whitburn and Blackburn, beating out both Labour and the SNP. It was not a defection this time. It was not a politician changing jerseys mid-match because the wind changed direction. It was a…
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I have been doing some renovations. Not on the house, but here on the site. For a long time, this blog lived in a rented room. I used EasyWP from Namecheap. It was functional. It worked. But it felt like living in a hotel. You can sleep there, but you are not allowed to drill holes in the walls or change the locks. I decided it was time to…
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I have a page on this site called library. It is a curated collection of the media that matters most to me. The books I re-read, the films that fundamentally shifted my perspective, and the tracks that sound like home. I decided early on that I wanted ten of each. It seemed like a good, round number to aim for. A limit that would force me to be picky.…
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It is raining in Paisley again. A grey, steady drizzle that seems to have set in for the winter. I checked the time a moment ago. 7:34 pm. I didn’t check it on a screen. I didn’t have to wake a device up, or swipe past a notification about a breaking news story, or see an email I didn’t want to deal with. I just looked at my wrist.…
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Most of us wake up and immediately doomscroll. We check the mental weather report against the global one. We see the ice shelves melting, the inequality gap widening, and the sheer inertia of the systems we are trying to dismantle. It is easy to feel small. It is easy to let the “climate grief” dictate the day before your feet even hit the floor. But if I have learned…