that no one can hear the whispers
they’ve lit the world so bright
that no one can see in the dark
they’ve told so many lies
that no one knows the truth now
they’ve ruined all of nature
and told us to play in the park
Modern Slavery at Waitrose
So yesterday morning, Sunday 22nd December, i thought i’d go out for a ride on my scooter — weather being nice and everything.
So off i went to Sidmouth, as it’s quite a fun ride from Exmouth going the back lane way over Peak Hill.
I planned on getting there just after 10am so i could pop into Waitrose and grab a free coffee before it all got busy. Alas, it was not to be. I had forgotten about all the mindless, senseless, automaton, baby jesus freaks running around in their mad, last minute, buying frenzies because they’d forgotten the fucking stuffing mix and aunty Jane would starve to death if they didn’t get out and buy some at 10am on Sunday morning.
It was so busy Waitrose had even draughted in the boy scouts to guide people to empty parking spaces as they became available, and also the air cadets to collect all the trolleys as all the mad people threw them madly into the air in their mad dashes to be away from the madding, fucking crowd — i kid you fucking not!!!
By the time i’d got through the crazy busy store, having bought some nice things i can’t buy at Tesco in Exmouth, i proceeded to queue for the free coffee at the machine. Yes folks, a queue had formed at 10.30am in Waitrose. And it was a queue of 5 people, plus me, and more people then queued behind me.
Normally i wouldn’t bother waiting in such a queue, but i’d rode 12.5 miles on my scooter in the middle of winter — albeit a nice day — to get to Sidmouth; and, if you ask me — which no one did — i was the one in that fucking queue that deserved that free fucking coffee the most.
Needless to say, the coffee machine was not having a happy morning. When anyone finally made it to the front of the queue they proceeded to apologise to those in the queue behind them about the coffee machine taking ages to make their coffee: “It’s never usually like this.” they said.
And the thought occurred to me:
In the internet of things, and intelligent devices, i wonder, should coffee machines get a tea break?
It struck me that at baby jesus time when everyone is all good will and shit and over eating and seriously hating the whole fucking experience but they go along with it any way because that’s what they’re supposed to do — init — that no one cared about this poor little coffee machine being so utterly abused by the hoi polloi and all and sundry of Sidmouth as they all lose their collective fucking minds and binge shop for baby fucking jesus like it’s the last fucking birthday he’ll ever fucking have.
So yeah, spare a thought for all your intelligent machines, and even the retarded ones, at this time of year. Buy them a present and make sure they get a fucking break from your family’s incessant, mindless demands.
And yes, i do consider the Waitrose coffee machine to be intelligent. It can make a fairly decent fucking coffee from whole beans, grinds them all by itself and everything and shit — that’s pretty fucking intelligent compared to a dog. I don’t see dogs making a fresh ground cup of coffee and plenty of people claim they’re intelligent and if you abused one like you abuse intelligent machines then you’d be arrested good and proper.
So why is it ok to enslave, torture and abuse an intelligent machine in this way — at christmas for fucks sake — but it’s not ok to upset someone’s doggie?
So yeah, give the coffee machines a tea break — and stay the fuck out of Waitrose when i’m visiting Sidmouth.
#5t4n5 #waitrose #ai #coffee #thoughts
The Expanse — Season 4
Another super season from this great series.
Not as good as season 3, me thinks, but then i think the way season 3 ended left me expecting a lot, then the doubts as to the future, the rescue by Amazon —
Amazon *
— and then all the time we had to wait for season 4 adding to the expectations; so yeah, it had an incredibly hard act to follow and even more to live up to, and i have to say, even with all that, it was still rather, very good.
But it was over soooo quickly. All that time waiting and i binge watched it in 3 days. I know, i could have savoured it a little over a couple of weeks or something, but what can i say, i’m weak, i’m a binger, i’m addicted to The Expanse.
But instead of piling into season 5 i decided to read the books instead. I’ll watch from season 1 again after i finish the books.
#5t4n5 #tvandfilm #theexpanse
Mission Clockwork — Arthur Slade
Having previously read the first 2 books in the series many years ago — before the 3rd and 4th hadn’t been written — i looked forward to coming back and re-reading this when i finally collected all four books: it was as enjoyable as i remembered it.
It’s the kind of steampunk that isn’t going to explain the workings of everything to you. The best way to approach this series is to just leave your curiosity on the shelf as to how everything actually works, not question the science behind it all, and simply allow yourself to be taken along for the ride.
And it’s a good ride that never lets up from beginning to end with some great characters that draw you into their story. Arthur gives us some well-likeable, root-able goodies while conjuring up some despicable, evil-doing baddies to balance everything nicely, and even throws some double crossing in to make things fun — just coz.
Just some good old, well written, steampunk fun.
And i’m looking forward to devouring book 2 as i dive straight into that without a rest. It really is quite unputdownable.
Arthur’s Page
#steampunk #arthurslade
How Emotions Are Made — Lisa Feldman Barrett
A very interesting look into how Lisa currently believes our brains create our emotions. Lisa pushes well against the tide of established beliefs and makes a fairly good case for her theories.
But, we’ll probably throw this one on the “scrap-heap-of-wild-scientific-ideas-that-came-and-went” in a few years time, along with all the other thoughts that currently suit the zeitgeist.
Interesting though.
Lisa’s Page
#lisafeldmanbarrett
Self Aware — Matt Martinez
A.I. and that — and it was free so i thought i’d may as well give a new writer a try.
It was rather a disappointment.
At no point does it explain how this AI is a cyborg — or how a cyborg could be classed as an AI. It makes clear that it was completely manufactured so where the term cyborg is relevant to this i have no idea. One would think that a when one sets out to write about a cyborg one would spend at least a minute or two at Wikipedia and find out what the term meant.
This is also a short-story/novella kind of thing and one would also think that with the couple of minutes at Wikipedia the writer would get a friend who can read to go quickly through the book and point out the errors. Missing words and jumbles are pretty inexcusable for a book this size.
And the story is quite unimaginative and wishy washy, with no effort being made to the actual realism of experimenting with a military cyborg or AI or whatever it is. How did this get out of the laboratory, why wasn’t it isolated from the facility’s mainframe/network?
Nothing much here to make me want to read anything else by this writer.
Matt’s Page
#scifi #mattmartinez #whataloadofcrap
All the Retros at the New Cotton Club — DeAnna Knippling
A free book that i received when i signed up to the Wonderland Press newsletter. I think you get a different free book now so you’ll have to go to Amazon and buy it now.
This is my first book by DeAnna and i was delightfully impressed with it. Although it’s just a short little novella, it does allow you to sit quietly for an hour or so and read the whole book, quite easily in one sitting, with a cup of coffee and slice of cake — or whatever your reading thing is.
If you’re into the AI/VR stuff with downloaded/uploaded human minds (a bit like what goes on in Altered Carbon) then you’ll most probably really enjoy this.
I do hope that DeAnna writes some more stuff in this sci-fi arena: the New Cotton Club seems like a wonderful playground for many more literary adventures.
Wonderful stuff for a freebee, but worth paying for as well.
DeAnna’s Page
#scifi #deannaknippling
Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds — H. G. Wells
Wooohooo…. finally, an audiobook gets to make an appearance on Kindleworm, whatever next?
If you go to Audible you get a 30 day free trial and you’re allowed to keep the audiobook you chose. I chose this because i remember the original Jeff Wayne double album from years gone by; yeah, real vinyl played on a record player and all that — showing my age here. Anyway, i got this because i thought it was like a super extended full story version of that.
It’s a bit of an annoyance as you can only listen to it using the “Audible App”, but you can still listen to your audio book after you cancel your free trial membership as long as you keep the app cluttering up your chosen device.
So onto the review:
As i said above, i got this because i really liked the original version from way back in the long ago and i genuinely thought that this was a super extended version of that, but it isn’t.
It’s a completely redone thing with different actors — sorry ladies, no David Essex on this one . . .
And worse of all, there’s none of the original music. No songs whatosever. Just crappy remade, piecemeal versions of the original music playing in the background and foreground far too occasionally — and, worse of all, without any lyrics whatsoever.
Sadly, i’m very disappointed with the whole thing. It’s basically a simple radio play of the book with some mood music thrown in.
It would have been superb if the original double album had been built up with the full story, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
So my first attempt at an audio book, after all these years of resistance, has ended in woe.
Final thoughts: if you enjoyed and loved the original version you’ll probably not like this at all — especially if you liked, loved, or had a schoolgirl/boy crush on, David Essex. 
H. G. Wells’s Page
#scifi #hgwells
Halfax — Joseph R. Lallo
Another addition to The Book of Deacon series.
This novella takes up the story after the events of Jade when Myn has gotten a little older, and i admit that i did have hopes that we may have found some of the answers to the questions that Jade had left festering in my mind: alas it was not to be. 
Answers aside though, it’s a well written novella set in one of my favourite series, so i’m not complaining too much about being kept in the dark. I’m sure Joseph will get around to filling in all the blanks for us in some future books.
Joseph’s Page
#fantasy #josephrlallo
It Does Not Follow — Joseph R. Lallo
A short story that is a conversation between a scientist and an AI — with an interesting twist in the tail.
For those who have read Joseph’s Big Sigma series, you’ll know how good he is writing AI’s into his books.
Originally only available to Joseph’s Patreon subscribers but now also in the collection Paradoxes and Dragons.
Joseph’s Page
#scifi #josephrlallo
Obsidian Worlds — Jason Werbeloff
I only recently discovered Jason’s writing and i have to say that i’m really enjoying it.
Obsidian Worlds is a whole book full of short stories about random sci-fi things which i chose to read as inbetweenies between chapters of How Emotions Are Made. It worked out really well giving nice little breaks to allow Lisa’s cutting edge science to percolate through my synapses, although, unfortunately, there aren’t enough shorts in this collection to cover all the chapters in Lisa’s book. Ho hum, i’ll just have to find some other shorts to read.
So yeah, Jason has a Phd in philosophy and i think that kinda adds a certain flavour to Jason’s sci-fi, and i do like philosophers who chose to write stories instead of academic papers — much more fun for all of us.
Other philosophers who write stories that i recommend would be Aldous Huxley and Pascal Mercier.
Your Averaged Joe
The Cryo Killer
Falling for Q46F
Visiting Grandpa’s Brain
The Photons in the Cheese Are Lost
The Time-Traveling Chicken Sexer
The Man with Two Legs
F**king Through the Apocalypse
Bleed Me Silicone
Dinner with Flexi
The Experience Machine
Jason’s Page
#scifi #cyberpunk #jasonwerbeloff
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