I knew the rocks east of Dalkey Island as The Muglins for years long before I knew that executed pirates were put on display there. Somehow it came as no surprise that a word as ugly as Muglins was describing a place of death.
Muglins Friday
fabhappy
Influences
0600 Benedict’s Newsletter: No. 335 arrived yesterday and I scanned it on my phone. 15% of global internet traffic is Youtube and 11% is Netflix – more than a quarter of the traffic. Then I read his essay Covid and cascading collapses. You should too. Ever seen a soufflé collapse when the oven door opens? Technology collapses don’t happen the way you think or remember. And that makes them hard to predict. But what does seem useful is to know is Lenin’s astute observation that you can get a decade of inevitable in a week.
Fence Texture.
© Simon Robinson 2014
Mourne Sunset
Yesterday, the mystery was the wind. Today, it may well be teaspoons.
That AA Milne poem came back to me as I photographed a landscape of the Mourne Mountains in the light of last night’s setting sun. I knew I wouldn’t get a sharp image of anything because the air was moving as thermals, returning the day-borrowed heat into the atmosphere. Locally becalmed in our isolation, yes, but the Mournes are 100 km distant. All of that radiating heat becomes a cooling and distorting visible haze over that distance of an evening.
[Read more…] about Mourne SunsetEarly Detection, Early Response
My friend Peter from FabHappy recently posted to Life in the Right Direction about the TED talk from 2006 by Larry Brilliant. Here at home, we watched the talk earlier and were surprised by much of what we saw. If you’ve not see it and don’t work in the field of global medicine, you will be amazed by the simple message: early detection, early response.
I commented on his post. ‘Cheap air travel may be a thing of the past. Imagine how Europe would cope if just 1% of the people living in China and India decided to take a European package holiday in 2021. Tourism may be the biggest class of business casualty.’ Maybe. Maybe not. It’s a possible consequence we’ve been discussing here at home, on sundowner social video calls with friends and family we’ve not otherwise seen for last the 29 days of curfew. Changes to global tourism was something Peter Frankopan mentioned in The New Silk Road (2018), the arrival of newly wealthy middle class tourists from Asia – that was before Covid.
[Read more…] about Early Detection, Early ResponseStrange Day
27 March 2020 – 21:28 GMT – 7°C Mostly Clear – Co. Dublin, Ireland
Chemo for our daughter started today. We’re the drivers because everyone else has children whose awareness of contamination has yet to develop. Only the patient can go into the hospital. The same hospital in which our neighbour is in palliative care with widely metastasised cancer. A cruel situation for her, separated from family. And cruel for her kids and grandkids. Less cruel for our daughter in absolute terms but it’s hard to consider absolutes when you’re sick