Bez Lightyear

Last week I found myself browsing a lot more social media than usual. Mostly I keep to Mastodon, which seems mostly a pleasant place to be. Last week I discovered I still had a Threads account that was tied to an Instagram account I never post to. So I started browsing Threads. Then I started browsing BlueSky. Pretty soon I found I was craving and ingesting massive amounts of Threads, BlueSky and Instagram posts. A lot of these posts were of a political nature and I found myself getting in…

If you ever wondered how the UK is leaning politically, then the events of this weekend would give you a pretty good idea of where it is. On Saturday, an army of black clad, balaclava wearing men assembled from all over the country and blockaded the port of Dover - one of the UK's largest and busiest ports. They stopped traffic leaving and entering for a couple of hours. Chaos ensued. Some were chanting "stop the boats" - referring to the people who cross the channel on makeshift dinghys from…

Last night I had the most vivid dream. I had travelled to a large house with my son with the express purpose of him purchasing a Smart ForTwo car off the occupier. We looked around the car and it seemed okay, so my son went inside to pay the guy the £350 asking price. I sat in the driver's seat and checked out the instrument panel, which was a cardboard box with a piece of paper that had been laser printed with a rev counter and speedometer stuck on the front. I was about to flag it up to my…

We had a partial solar eclipse in the UK yesterday, about 80% of the sun was obscured by the moon at about 7pm. It was really cool. My youngest kid - now in his mid 20s - was with me in front of the house as I held up two pieces of card in the dying light to see the eclipse projected through pinholes in one card onto the other. All this time he was filming on his phone as we chatted. It weighed heavy on me that I will definitely never see another eclipse like this. I hoped that when the next…

The Guardian newspaper website has run an article about how a pop single has been at the top of the UK pop charts for a record breaking 19 weeks, yet a large contingent of people in the UK claim not to have heard it. The single in question is called "Rein Me In" by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean. Its lack of impact on the UK public conbsciousness was noted in the Guardian article which reported how a "swathe" of social media commenters were expressing ignorance of both the track and artists'…

The Guardian newspaper website has run an article about how a pop single has been at the top of the UK pop charts for a record breaking 19 weeks, yet a large contingent of people in the UK claim not to have heard it. The single in question is by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean and is called Rein Me In. I'm one of those people who have not heard this song, so I just fired up YouTube and gave it a listen. It's a pleasant enough, guitar-driven, mid-paced song with impassioned vocals about a breakup or…

This week the UK got a new Prime Minister called Andy Burnham. He took over from Keir Starmer who had to stand down because of reasons. Weeks before this happened, the media - especially the TV news and BBC News in particular - were running countless stories about how 'sources' within the Labour government were working to oust Starmer and how Burnham was top of the list to replace him. When Burnham was in a position to challenge for the PM's job, News went into overdrive with speculation as to…

So last night England were knocked out of the World Cup at the semi-final stage by an Argentine side that believed kicking Englishmen, pushing them over and sometimes punching them in the back of the head was all part of the rules. After England scored the first goal, the Argentines remembered it was the ball they were supposed to kick and subsequently scored two goals to go through to the final. Ultimately the English players looked like they were actually trying in this tournament - which…

I don't follow football (soccer) but I do enjoy watching football (soccer) matches. The tribalism of the whole football (soccer) scene just leaves me cold. I hear people at work talking about how "we" did at the weekend and it just puzzles me. Why tie your whole personality to a sports business? Also treating your opponents as your life sworn enemy who deserves nothing but death is kind of weird. I'm not a regular guy, I suppose. Tonight England play Dr Congo (whoever he is) in the football…

It's been very hot in the UK* for the last week, so much so that the weather agency issued a warning, suggesting people should not travel unless they really need to. The last few days have been challenging, sleep-wise. Our bedroom is like a furnace even with an oscillating fan roaring away and three nights of broken sleep have left me feeling a bit rough. On the way into work I stopped off at the shops and bought a chocolate bar and a can of "Viking Berry" Monster Juiced energy drink, which I…

I bought a new car yesterday. Technically it's 6 years old, but it is new to me. I went to one of those car supermarkets that seem to have sprung up on the country's industrial estates over the last few years. The deal with a car supermarket is that there's no price haggling. The price on the website/windscreen is the price you pay. It takes the hassle out of car buying, which is good. So I had the money for a full purchase and the will to buy. I was determined to drive away with a new car,…

The UK government announced yesterday that it would follow Australia and enact a social media ban for under 16s by the end of the year. It's pretty infuriating for me that nobody is calling it what it actually is: Mandatory Age Verification. It won't be just 16 year olds that will be asked to verify their age - IT WILL BE ALL OF US. What then? What happens next? If Australia is anything to go by, all the tech-savvy kids will still be on TikTok and Instagram by using VPNs. What happens then? As…

When Adobe folded their AI image generation stuff into Photoshop a few years ago, I had a bit of a tinker with it at work. I found a picture of some colleagues and, with some prompts, turned one into a Viking, another into a medieval minstrel and a third into a bass player in a wetsuit standing on a surfboard. I showed this to my boss and remarked that pretty soon, people like me - who have spent years learning to use photo manipulation tools - will be surplus to requirements. He laughed but…

Inferno, the new Boards of Canada album, is released this week; coming thirteen years after their last album Tomorrow's Harvest. After a 13 year wait, the fanbase is sufficiently excited to hear it. It has, however, already received a lukewarm review from The Guardian, basically calling it boring and that we've heard it all before. This is a particular problem for a band like BoC - and Portishead before them. They have a signature sound, a specific aesthetic that is unique to them. If they…

So, true to form, a song I thought was a pretty strong entry for the UK comes last in the ESC*. Inevitably UK social media's post-contest dissection takes place; "Why does the UK always come last? Why does Europe hate us so?" they ask. Previously, for a couple of years at least, the general concensus of opinion was that the UK was involved with an unpopular US president and his illegal war in Iraq - which a lot of Europeans disagreed with; thus voicing their disagreement by regularly awarding…

This weekend sees the Eurovision Song Contest Finals that are being held this year in Vienna. For non-Europeans, the Eurovision Song Contest (henceforth known as ESC) is the musical and televisual alternative to all-out land war between European nations. Countries choose an original song and enter the contest to battle with other Euro nations' songs to see who has the best techniques for influencing the voting system. This is broadcast across Europe on a Saturday night. The winning country gets…

The company I work for has gone all in on AI (artificial intelligence). We're meant to be using AI all the time in our workflows, creating emails, summarising emails, summarising meetings, summarising chat messages etc. etc. The company I work for is also massively invested in acronym usage. KPI (key performance indicators) ROI (return on investment) B2B (business to business) WTFAYBOAYUA (what the fuck are you banging on about, you useless arsehole?); y'know, all the internationally recognised…