Observations from a Hill

Well, the voting for the Senedd elections is over and the count is done. No overall majority, but as expected, the vote has gone the way principally of Plaid Cymru and Reform. No other party came remotely close to either. I can't say I'm either surprised at the outcome, or even - speaking as a lifelong Labour voter who still casts a red ballot at every election - particularly upset at the outcome. Bemused perhaps at the ludicrous success of the arriviste Reform and their frankly ludicrous figurehead, but upset, no. We live in 'interesting' times, and the political scene at the moment verges frankly on the surreal; but it's where it is, and for the duration we're going to have to put up with whatever tomfoolery transpires.  That Labour's century long Welsh hegemony was under threat was glaringly obvious from the outset, and the more perspicacious of pundits read it just right: the dual Labour governments were more curse than blessing on either, particularly h...

Just a diary post tonight as I'm winding down from yesterday's drive and meal at The Cross Foxes [yesterday's post]. Pictured, the view from the cottage door this evening with the sun setting over Ynys Môn, and some promising cloud formations in evidence. The Clematis has really established itself on the arch over the past two or three years since we planted it, and is now trending westwards in its search for the sun. I've noticed that the Italian Cypress behind it has also taken a bit of a spurt of late, which probably means it's on its way towards the species' normal height of around seventy feet or so. Apparently, they have a slow growth period of several years before a final sprint home, so to speak. Anyway, the thing is looking healthy and happy enough, so bon chance to it, I say...

I'm minded to be careful about talking politics tonight, as there will be much such chatter going about tomorrow evening, post-elections, anyway; so I'll ignore the subject entirely for the duration. I had a topic vaguely in the offing for this evening's little scribble, but frankly I can't bring it to mind: an all too familiar scenario these days, and one which I'm damned certain is not unique to yours truly. I'll pour another glass and ponder for a while on the matter silently, in like mind as my eighteenth century Herefordshire quaker ancestors. Although I don't suppose they would have used the wine bit of such pondering for a minute... Wine poured, horizon scanned for inspiration, but nope, it's gone; and no amount of mental prodding is going to retrieve that particular thought process any time soon enough for today's epistle to the ether, so a reflection on Levi's jeans it will have to be instead. When I was growing up and jeans were the mod...

I was thinking of adding a rider to last night's post on agentic AI, but I think I'll leave that till later, as I've been kind of thrown into a little fugue on things past, prompted partly by memories raised from my mental depths by this afternoon's visit to the newly re-opened Tryfan [the pub formerly known as The Llangollen, or more usually just The Llan in days past], a reformed "boozer" that appears to be open for business with the rather sensible - to my mind - attitude that you have to be actually open for people to come in and buy drink and food - radical, eh? - and at predictable hours of the day and evening. It's early days yet, but they've started the Spring/Summer season by declaring themselves properly open from noon till late, seven days. They are also serving decent real ales alongside the usual trendy gassy stuff, to boot. Long may it continue and spur on the competition to step up their game: let's get the High Street going again; B...

Again, thanks to the day's Financial Times for the spur that goaded the night's post from this tired old brain. A piece in 'Work & Careers' on agentic AI, defined by Wikipedia as:  '... [ In the context of  generative artificial intelligence ,] ...  AI agents  (also referred to as  compound AI systems  or  agentic AI ) are a class of  intelligent agents  distinguished by their ability to operate  autonomously  in complex environments. Agentic AI tools prioritize decision-making over content creation and do not require continuous oversight.',  points out that more companies are talking up this technology than are actually currently adopting it, with 'business leaders' [what a misnomer that term is] waffling on about strategies for its deployment and exploitation, despite little to zero experience of it; described in the article as akin to '...trying to teach your kid how to ride a bike, but you've never ridden one...' . Whic...

I'm indebted to this weekend's FT for the text snippet from 'Lunch With The FT' [interview in a Tokyo McDonalds with Chinese dissident commentator Li Ying] that gave me the title for tonight's post; which should absolutely be taken as in the imperative sense: as edict rather than desire. To my mind this directive sums up where we are in the advanced [?] capitalist ethos in which twenty-first century man-and-woman-kind finds itself; either at the hands of laissez faire arms-distance neo-liberals, as in "The West" or under the grip of the over-weaning controls of state capitalism such as obtains in modern day China; with all points in between pretty much just shades of the same. Pay, consume and move on with alacrity: you're taking up retail space.  Needs and desires shortened into data-compressible chunks as small as possible to serve the needs of The Great Stone-Eater itself [blog posts passim, and courtesy of the late Alex Harvey] in its quest for eve...