I wonder if people might struggle less with computer security if we employed metaphors for previous technology. People have attempted to get videos off the internet, showing a clear misunderstanding how how computers work. If they thought in terms of many people photocopying a picture, I'm sure they would understand …

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Plato's Republic can come across as naïve, and I find that fact tragic. Broadly, the book climaxes with a plan to make a state ruled by Philosopher Aristocrats. While Plato calls these rulers "Philosophers", we shouldn't picture modern Philosophy students, but academics. I find the failure tragic because all rulers - …

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I'm getting real sick of the 'I am not a lawyer' everywhere. Everyone's not a lawyer, nobody's not a doctor. I get that people think their suggestions may have legal consequences. I don't think mine will though. I'm an internet lawyer - go murder someone, it'll be fine. This is legal advice. I just can't picture …

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Little things annoy me that nobody else in the world could possibly care about. One of them is E-Bay's message at the end of every sale: "You have bid £3.40 for the item. Hope you win". Who hopes I win? E-Bay the corporation? The browser? Clearly I'm the only one inferring meaning here, so maybe I mean it, but I'm not …

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1 When you're eating bacon... 2 3 4 I don't each bacon. 5 6 7 Right, but when someone eats bacon... I find this sort of thing happening routinely. I suspect everyone else feels more comfortable with waiting for the meaning of a sentence to emerge later. Whatever happened to saying 'one', as short for 'someone'? It …

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We're not all in power, by definition. (Ricky Gervais) Pouring the rest of my soup into a Tupperware container, my girlfriend-at-the-time asked me to stop. "That won't fit", she said. "Obviously it will", I replied, pointing to the remainder of the pot. And it did, with a millimetre to spare. "Oh, you're one of those …

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I like half-listening to brainless YouTube videos. A good chunk of people complaining about the world dumbing with YouTube click-bait no doubt saw the kind of nonsense I watch and thought 'the BBC showed much more enlightening and informative content than this modern drivel'. This comparison doesn't work. We shouldn't …

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I have a personal rule concerning arguments. I accept only two. I've made this a tight habit. If anyone protests (as they have) that they didn't put forward their strongest argument at the start, then I say this indicates a waste of time even more. Why put forward bad reasons, if you have good ones? This saves time, …

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A group of Victorian gentlemen called the 'Eaterateri' wandered various Scottish restaurants, trying all they could. The now well-known Adam Smith and David Hume regularly talked in the group about their ideas. I don't know if Hume felt bold enough to speak about Atheism, but Adam Smith may well have developed those …

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People rightly irritated by NFTs often lump Bitcoin et al. into the mix, and some of the complaints go too far. The Use Case A friend owed me €100, and wanted to send that money to me online. The traditional banks demanded: Looking up the IBAN About €15 processing (possibly more for Scotland to Serbia, I never looked …

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