Pandemic lockdown bright sides? No.

So has my Muse fled the scene forever, or is she merely suffering pandemic burnout?

Psychologists are reporting a rise in “pandemic burnout” as many people find the current phase of lockdowns harder, with an increasing number feeling worn out and unable to cope.

The Guardian

So here I’ve parked, this past year, largely confined to home with computers and ideas for books on all sides, shielded from such distractions as a social life. Liberally supplied with food, water, tea … Read more

TAKING CHARGE

Last week Mu did what she could to bulletproof Jack, given his tendency to annoy the wrong people. This week Jack hears from yet someone else he’s just a babe in the woods.

DK Books 2nd ed. Current edition here


Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner

  • THAT’LL TEACH HER. After all this time the oil-shares chit-fund scandal has resurfaced in the popular media. Mae Chamoy has been sentenced to 143,965 years in prison and fined four billion baht.
Read more

Global panacea: Shift into virtual realities?

As predicted, the worlds described in MOM and Genesis 2.0 lie just down the road. I wrote this “science fiction” in full knowledge it might soon be better described as history. And I was right. Consider the exponential advances of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nanotech; see what transformations they have already wrought. 

Read the MAGIC CIRCLES novels for a preview of how the human condition might soon be further shaped, for example, by a global pandemic — one far … Read more

A trip to the market

This week Jack tries to undo some of the damage he has done to himself. Meanwhile, Mu does what she can to bulletproof him against any and all of life’s slings and arrows.

Kicking Dogs available now

Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner

  • NO PROBLEM. According to reliable reports, more than 40% of Bangkok’s citizenry is now on tranquillizers of one sort or another. 
  • NO MORE LAND OF SMILES? What happens if officialdom ever decides to enforce the
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A la mode du jour

Aphorism du jour (hot off the press)

One good thing about blogging: you can present nearly any proposition you like, and nowhere is it written you must provide hard evidence to support it. 

So I’ll let the following rip just because I’m in the mood and because I don’t have to please academic supervisors or my mother or anybody.

A few weeks ago we saw how our preferred books, movies, music and choices of underwear, rather than being determined by … Read more

A GENTLE WARNING

Last week, Hippolyte Lafleur advised Jack to stop doing the Funky Chicken in the middle of everyone else’s nice waltz. This week Jack gets another warning.

Some previous editions


Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner

THE BETTER PART OF VALOR. Too often tourists take exception to the admittedly obnoxious touts on Patpong Road, and find themselves involved in fisticuffs. Be advised that anybody in these parts you asked would probably guess the Marquis de Queensbury was a new … Read more

Altered states, alternate realities

This week’s post follows on from last Thursday’s look at the selfie culture found within coffee shops of a certain standard. 

Trying to account for what I witnessed, I was stuck by the notion that many of my fellow citizens seek refuge in new and improved realities. And these realities are socially and digitally engineered according to criteria that remain opaque to mere humans – including, arguably, the IT whiz kids responsible for the tech underlying these new cognitive dimensions. … Read more

HIPPOLYTE

Last week Jack got some much-needed exercise while negotiating Bangkok traffic en route to a rendezvous with Hippolyte Lafleur, a.k.a. Izzy Scoop.

Selections from Arno Petty’s Intelligencer and Weekly Gleaner

  • FORGE ON. Could it be that the girls at Lots O’ Hots are buying their VD certificates from the same place Big Sammy Soo was getting his money printed? That would be nothing but a vicious rumor, were it not for the epidemic proportion of the complaints
Read more