Blue

We found our way to the villa, using my iPhone sat nav, which I audio blue toothed to the car's radio. I know my way around this area in any case, so the majority of the route was on familiar roads, although late evening in a new car on the wrong side of the road still requires extra concentration. We arrived and didn't even check out the swimming pool, although by the next morning it was all fine, even as the sun was rising.

I'll be heading to WalMart for a couple of lilos tomorrow, then everything will be peachy. Water temperature is about mid 20s and the air temp is 25+, so we are pretty well set. Skies are as Blue as the House of Blues.

I get around

Back to ICE automobiles for the next few weeks. I'm in the land of the gas guzzler and they gave me a shed on wheels. Compared with many vehicles, this one is probably a compact model. it's the third car because of the usual car rental scams that everyone except Hertz appears to operate at airports. 

I booked the car and full insurance online before we travelled, via a reputable company. Arriving at the airport they were out of stock of the car I'd ordered and suggested an 'upgrade'. I said no, yet they were so insistent to give me the car (a BMW shed) that they removed the surcharge of $600 from it. 

I could see why when we got to the car pickup and realised it was a smoker and not entirely clean inside. We refused it and they came up with vehicle number three (pictured). I noticed it had New York plates so they were still trying to give us a car that the office didn't want. Anyway, we took it, but I'm still suspicious that they have tried to charge more for it. Ironically, parked next to it was a car like the one we'd ordered, but it was pre-allocated to someone else.

When I use Hertz, I get great service and a car that I order, waiting to go. I was foolish enough to believe the offer for a car at a too-good-to-be-true price this time. When I've used any other firm they are set up as hustlers, attempting to rob me and foist me with something I didn't ask for. Exactly what happened this time.

Anyway, this car works, although the Hold function is erratic, CarPlay won't display anything and there are so many fewer of the creature comforts than I get with our EVs from home.

Still, we are getting around.

Dancing with the moonlit knight

I still send stuff by Royal Mail, but note that the latest improvement opportunities comprise de-rating both of the primary services. 

The second-class service will shift to alternate days, and the delivery targets for first class are being reduced. 

As it is now set to be acquired by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský for a mere £5.3bn, perhaps they should also consider dropping the word 'Royal'?

So much for Ofcom protecting the public? As it says,  “(The) world has changed...with people in the UK...sending a third of the letters we were 20 years ago. " (ie 20bn letters ->7.6bn) "We need to reform the postal service to protect its future and ensure it delivers for the whole of the UK,” 

Another example of selling Britain by the pound. Like these few examples.

• P&O: In 2006, the historic British shipping and logistics company P&O was acquired by Dubai Ports World, ending over a century of British ownership.  
• The Body Shop: In 2006, French cosmetics giant L’Oréal purchased The Body Shop, a British ethical beauty retailer.  
• Pilkington: 2006, Pilkington was acquired by Japan’s Nippon Sheet Glass in 2006.  
• O2: 2005, Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica acquired O2, a major UK mobile network operator.  
• Harrods: 2010, Qatar Holding, the investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, purchased the luxury department store Harrods.
• Cadbury: 2010 The iconic British confectionery company Cadbury was taken over by American firm Kraft Foods (now Mondelēz International) in 2010.
• Jaguar Land Rover: 2008, India’s Tata Motors acquired the British automotive brands Jaguar and Land Rover.  
• British Steel: 2020 After facing financial difficulties, British Steel was acquired by China’s Jingye Group in 2020.
• Royal Mail: This one, in 2024, the UK government approved the acquisition of Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services, by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group, marking the first time in its 500-year history that Royal Mail came under foreign ownership. 
• Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern (TSGN): Operated by Govia Thameslink Railway, a joint venture between the UK’s Go-Ahead Group and France’s Keolis, which is majority-owned by the French state railway company SNCF.
• Greater Anglia: Like many UK buses, operated by Abellio, a subsidiary of Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the Dutch state railway company.
• Arriva UK Trains: A subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway company, operating services such as Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, and Northern.
• c2c: Operated by Trenitalia, the Italian state railway company.
• DHL: owned by Deutsch Post AG - the German Post service. 
• (etc.)

No wonder we need another LHR runway so the foreign execs can commute. Rachel, I'm reminded of the old consulting credo that 'Everything works in PowerPoint'.

"Can you tell me where my country lies?"
Said the uni faun to his true love's eyes
"It lies with me!" cried the Queen of Maybe
For her merchandise, he traded in his prize" 

- Dancing with the Moonlit Knight - Genesis.

Alien Clay - An idea driven penal colony tale

 

From the very first page, I was hooked, hurtling toward a penal colony aboard a one-way spacecraft—a vessel starkly designed for a single trip, with every component rated to wear out by the time it reached its destination.

For me, the opening evoked echoes of Satanic Verses (i.e. the falling), but the deep sci-fi elements quickly took over. The opinionated narrator, Professor Anton Daghdev, awakens from a cold sleep and is reprimed for life as this landing pod of convicts descends toward Kiln, a penal outpost on a habitable world. The premise blends high-concept science fiction with intellectual depth.

Professor Daghdev, condemned by the Mandate—an authoritarian regime suppressing political and cultural dissent—reflects with dry wit and academic precision. As an ecologist fascinated by alien biology, he provides compelling insights into the rare planets capable of supporting life, including Kiln - which also has another complicated name and bizarre lifeforms.

Daghdev's urbane, detached tone perfectly fits his character. While this voice might challenge some readers, I found it inspiring, especially for its exploration of xenobiology, divergent evolution, and symbiosis—all layered with themes of revolution and uprising. Tchaikovsky handles Daghdev’s voice masterfully, and the cracks in his emotional detachment make these moments all the more poignant. His occasional direct address to the reader, kinda like "You won’t believe this next part...", add a quirky touch.

The intertwining of political intrigue and speculative science enriches the story’s world-building. I’ve always appreciated narratives where subtext and parallel events deepen the plot, and this book delivers that well.

As my first venture into Adrian Tchaikovsky’s refreshing work, and a good one!

snake oil

The snake oil man has done it again. Using a trumped up memecoin to raise around $7 billion. It's an interesting situation, when a Solana blockchain is worth so much.

I guess it's a way for a huckster to seem as if he is in the same category as the techno broligarchy, yet everyone knows its just a meaningless bubble. 

As of January 21, 2025, the $TRUMP cryptocurrency, launched by President Donald Trump, has primarily functioned as a speculative digital asset rather than a medium of exchange for goods and services. The coin’s value has experienced significant volatility, with its market capitalization reaching approximately $72 billion shortly after its introduction now the MCap is $7 billion.

Currently, there is no widespread adoption of $TRUMP coins among merchants or service providers, and no official announcements have been made regarding their acceptance for purchasing goods or services. The primary utility of $TRUMP coins appears to be as a digital collectible or a means for supporters to express their affiliation. Given the speculative nature of meme coins, it’s advisable to stay informed through official channels for any updates on the coin’s utility and acceptance.

Or not. It reminds me of this:

Written in 2020, about using blockchains to subvert currency and interfere with state functions. I had to change the tag-line to get it past the Amazon and Meta validation system  (it used to say 'Get rich quick with cybercash - just don't tell GCHQ'). 

Now it is open season.

Buy the book 

Rachel Kuschner - Creation Lake

It took me a while to revisit Creation Lake, by Rachel Kuschner. [Contains spoilers, but not many] 

In it, she describes Sadie, a jaded agent-provocateur who has been sent to embed with some eco-warriors called the Moulinards, in France. They specialise in the somewhat niche sabotage of large scale agricultural equipment. 

We join Sadie in Guyenne, south-west France, where she’s now being paid to track the founders of a radical farming co-op, Le Moulin, suspected of disrupting a government-approved scheme to turn local fields into a corn-based monoculture. I don't think we really find out who is running her, nor why she needs such a comprehensive armoury of weapons. 

I surmise that Kuschner is painting an elaborate picture of an unlikeable heroine. Sadie is smart, savvy and with a caustic sense of observation, skilled in espionage, yet has a wide blind-side related to some kinds of self-awareness. It makes her all the more fascinating as she dismantles other characters in her thoughts.

A faint plot runs alongside countless character studies of often displaced people living in a French village commune. Sadie has borrowed a convenient lodging from Lucien Dubois, a French film producer, who she seduced. He's gone away to make a film. Then she has to cosy up to Pascal Balmy, a protest leader, and then to Platon, a local state politician. And the plot is about French mega-basins, where land is flooded or rectangles dug to provision more water into parts of France (a real life thing).

There is a whole plot about Bruno Lacombe, a cave dweller (bear-who lives in a valley- geddit?) and his investigations of the Thals (Neanderthals) who were rumoured to live in the area before homo-sapiens and from whom around 2% of the gene pool survives. And he may live in caves, but he has a great wi-fi signal to send copious emails, which Sadie intercepts and which form an additional narrative, upon which she collects later in the novel.

Kuscher's humour is subtle but pervasive so that even some of her more incisive jibes have an edge of jest. It adds a light touch to the writing, although I did find some of her descriptive sections were quite lengthy. My friend who reads extensively advises to 'skip to the next dialogue'. 

And then the question of pacing. It's the last quarter of the book where things really get rolling. And it has multiple endings to tidy away some of the plot-lines (but not all). 

I'm wondering if the endings were written first and then the backstories and other scenes added into the front to provide 'thickening? The last Kuschner I read was 'The Hard Crowd', which is a set of essays and extremely engaging, about life on the west and east coasts of USA, stylistically similar to Joan Didion's 'Slouching towards Bethlehem', albeit more recent. Creation Lake embeds similar characterful stories into a novel format.

The novel blends elements of espionage and philosophical discourse, exploring themes of identity, ideology, and the ethical complexities of surveillance. Kushner’s narrative delves into the interplay between history and modernity, examining the social and environmental impacts of industrialised farming. Food (corn-based monoculture?) for thought.

JASMOWI - Just a Small Matter of Writing It

I've decided to create a three-book series about writing as an experiment in nonfiction. 

The titles will be Novel, Plot, and Characters, and the new compendium will be called Writing It. I'm repurposing an old graphic for the cover.

JASMOWI

Just a Small Matter of Writing It.

Ed Adams : Writing It Series

 

This is my next book - still a work in progress. It's another reference book that follows on the heels of 'how to write a novel', this time about Plots. 

I think I'll call the set 'Writing it' - after my sketchy podcasts. I'm still working through the notes from my Moleskine notebooks and converting them into a structured format. 

I'm not the only one writing these kinds of books, but I hope I can contribute something new. If nothing else, it's a handy desktop reference for me!

Watch this space as they say - my third one will be about 'Character'. 

 Then, I think, I'm done.

And this first one hit Number 88 in the best sellers list for Books and Publishing! 

And now I've announced book 3 - Character, I guess I'd better write it.

 I've already designed a test cover.

Adopt the brace position.

Notebooks

(Generic illustration)

I thought most of my Moleskines were basic black, but as I've corralled them into a single drawer, I can see that I've also used other makes in different colours and even a few of the digital ones and a whole heap of the smaller Cahier journals in that fetching Kraft Paper brown (They were the least expensive).

Curiously enough, the place I've filed them almost makes them disappear, yet I realised there's some good content within.

Yes, I downsized from the ancient, fondly remembered Time Managers to Moleskine when I was still working in an office and found it so much better than carting around a Black-and-Red notebook like everyone else.

I can't tell now whether people are still using them as much because most Londoners seem to be using A5 notebooks, although I suspect they are really props to reserve space in coffee shops.

But the interesting thing is the material I've accumulated. Aside from projects and assignments, there are notes from meetings and notes of personal projects which I've been re-purposing, like the ones I found, which can be made into a set of mini reference books about novel writing.

For example, this black Moleskine had a built-in text recognition system that meant notes could be transferred directly to electronic.

And then there is the treasure trove of comments, like this set of notes from a fire evacuation.

Nowadays, there's improved scanning software (Text Sniper) that can read even my scruffy handwriting. and convert flip charts into PowerPoints.

1) William Gibson Spook County 

2) Coupland - latest paperback 

(after JPOD)

Hotel evacuation - chefs - hairspray 1 engine

drinkers x 2 slow suited

the band 5 people convex sneakers → black hat emo.

stairs back; lifts open empty

roll call

But what's all this about? I'm looking through some of the notes to help me write a couple more textbooks. 

There are three in my mind: 

Writing a novel, writing plots, and writing characters. Let's see how I do!

danger danger high voltage

Ethan Swope's AP photo of the dreadful fire in California. 

The last time I was in the Pacific Palisades area, I can remember fire trucks parked all along the California 1 and low-flying planes bombing the ground with water. 

It was terrifying, and there wasn't any obvious route except staying on the 1.

Earlier, we stopped off in Carmel and could see the clouds of smoke billowing. Right back in LA, on Hollywood Boulevard there were signs of the smoke hanging in the usually deep blue filmic sky.

It was a few years ago, when we travelled from Seattle to Santa Barbara, following the route of the mission bells and pausing to clamber into the Fault Line. Even then, there were signs of the fire challenges, yet one of the areas we passed through was the Salinas Valley, referred to as the Salad Bowl of America. 

Now that driller-killer is planning more fossil fuel extraction, I'm struck by his counter-intuitive buddying with the electric car man who wants to stop using fossils, yet the gangsta has his hand in most of the techno-brotherhood's pockets. 

Maybe the fault line is destined to go through the White House? I guess the photo could be a metaphor.

Bond - Ed Adams

 

I swapped things around, based upon feedback.

It's here:

Snow Crash happens in real life

Snow Crash 30-year-old cover art by Bruce Jensen - Hiro Protagonist waves a katana.

Guess what? Google and Microsoft are the latest names making some waves with a sizable donation to the group organizing President-elect Donald Trump’s slushy inauguration. 

Google, based in Mountain View, California, is stepping up with $1 million for the inaugural fund. Karan Bhatia, who used to be a senior official in the Bush administration and now heads policy at Google, shared the news. It turns out Google has a history of contributing to inaugural events, as confirmed by a spokesperson. CNBC was quick to report on this donation.  Bhatia said, “We’re excited to support the 2025 inauguration with a livestream on YouTube and a direct link on our homepage. Plus, we’re chipping in to the inaugural committee.”  Google: 'Don't be evil' (deprecated)

Then, we have Microsoft from Redmond, Washington, who also confirmed they’re donating $1 million to the inauguration. Interestingly, they’ve got a bit of a track record too—they donated $500,000 to Trump’s first inauguration back in 2017, as well as to President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.  

These donations are part of a larger tech-bro trend, echoing similar contributions from other heavyweights like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, and even an AI startup called Perplexity AI. And let’s not forget that Sam Altman from OpenAI and Tim Cook from Apple also put in their own personal donations of $1 million each. Fascinating times, right?  

It’s hard not to think about how all these developments resonate with themes from Neal Stephenson’s "Snow Crash." I discovered the book when I was on a trip to Silicon Graphics in Mountain View, California, just after Stephenson's book was been published. The presenter of the SGI machine was so excited and told us as much about the novel. In the book, the intertwining of technology, media, and society creates a digital world teeming with complexity and corporate influence. The massive donations and engagement by these tech giants reflect a tangible version of that fictional landscape, where Hiro Protaganist faces corporations playing influential roles in national events.  

It's like Alanis channelling Great Expectations with her lyric: 

I'm like Estella

I like to reel it in and then spit it out 

I'm frustrated by your apathy

And I am frightened by the corrupted ways of this land

If only I could meet the maker

And I am fascinated by the spiritual man

I am humbled by his humble nature, yeah

I don't think the new leader passes the test?

And that's not all - Amazon also announced it’s contributing $1 million by streaming the inauguration event on Amazon Video. 

While it’s pretty common for big companies to donate to inaugural committees, Trump is breaking records this time around. Biden’s inaugural committee raised $61.8 million back in 2021, and Trump’s in 2017 brought in $106.8 million according to the filings. But now, the Trump-Vance inaugural committee has outdone them all with a whopping $170 million, as reported by the Associated Press.

The amount of money raised is so massive that some donors who gave seven figures won’t get VIP tickets or special perks for the inauguration, thanks to the high demand, according to the New York Times. This shows how major companies view these opportunities as a way to gain favour with the new president, especially those who struggled to stay in his good graces during his first term.

Dmitry Shevelenko, an executive at Perplexity AI, stated last month, "Unlike other tech companies that have recently tossed cash into Trump’s inaugural fund, we weren't around during his first term, so this is a chance for us to team up on common goals rather than trying to fix a rocky relationship."

Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, seemed pretty excited to discuss a big idea for artificial intelligence, likening it to a “Manhattan Project” before a December meeting with Trump. And let’s not forget Bezos, who sat down for dinner with Trump and Tesla’s Elon Musk that same month.

Just this week, Zuckerberg made some moves to win over Trump and his supporters—he added UFC CEO Dana White to Meta’s board and ended the company’s long-standing practice of using independent fact-checkers.

Awash with the dosh. No gain without gravy train.