It’s a fair question. When I speak, people laugh. When I appear, they wink at one another.
Is it my voice, my face, my eyes? What is it? I wish I knew, for it has always been so.
From years ago in my youth to just yesterday, presenting to two separate groups of leaders and heads of.
One group openly laughed in my face, stopping me in my tracks. The second cut me off mid-thought, silencing my presentation.
The latter eventually earned me an apology from an exec, who emailed later to say sorry.
But private sorries after in-room mockery don’t mean a lot to me. I know I am a joke. That’s why I occupy this lowly position.
Impactful from behind my keyboard. A silent doer. The quiet man who just gets on with it. Generous but unseen. Yes, I can be effective this way.
But to emerge and make myself heard? Impossible! For yes, I know, I am a joke to you.
In my latest adventure of trying to do expensive things on the cheap, I’m wrestling with a classic dilemma: should I splash out on fancy hardware or just rent some computing power when I need it? Between my attempts at video editing in DaVinci Resolve and toying with AI image generation in Stability Matrix, I know I’m pushing the boundaries of the possible with my current tech.
I currently use a Dell Latitude 7400 for writing and a 2017 MacBook Pro for video editing (the separation, because that latter has a dud keyboard). While adequate for basic tasks, these machines struggle with newer graphics-intensive applications. This has led me to exploring two paths: investing in new Apple Silicon hardware or utilising cloud GPU services.
While I have a high-end laptop for professional work, this comparison focuses purely on personal creative projects and AI experimentation. Though, who knows, with budget constraints reaching new all-time highs, perhaps the same considerations will one day hit the workplace too.
As a hobbyist user with a capable work machine, my personal usage would be limited to about 6 hours per week — perhaps a longer session on the weekend and a couple of shorter evening sessions. This changes the cost calculations significantly.
For realistic hobby use, cloud services become quite attractive, especially with providers like Paperspace or RunPod. At roughly £48-96 per month, it would take 8-12 months of cloud costs to equal the price of a new Mac Mini. Plus, I maintain the flexibility to scale up or down based on my available time and project needs.
The cloud approach also aligns better with the natural ebb and flow of hobby projects — some weeks I might use it more, others barely at all. With local hardware, I’d be paying for the equipment whether I use it or not.
On the other hand, a refurbished MacBook Pro would be more cost-effective long-term and provide better flexibility for mobile work. Though having only recently purchased a refurbished laptop — albeit at a much lower price — that would be difficult to justify against the rising costs of everything else.
For now, I may start out experimenting with the likes of Paperspace and Vagon to better understand my usage patterns before committing to expensive hardware. This would allow me to access high-end GPU power while I evaluate whether the investment in local hardware would be justified by my workflow.
But, then again, I might not, making do with what I have instead. Who’s to say whether this latest hobby will last anyway? Only time will tell.
Edit next morning…
I’ve just realised I bought each of our kids a fancy Mac not long ago, so I could always commandeer one of those if I really need to. Stand down.
You must trek into the centre of a regional city for a meeting because… it improves productivity. Honestly, I find this a spurious argument.
Firstly because our organisation covers a vast geographic area, and yet daily I collaborate successfully with teams based at sites across four large counties.
Secondly because the travel time required to reach that city centre office means I’m not being productive doing actual work.
Thirdly because you have a £12K Surface Hub sitting in the corner of nearly every significant meeting room across the organisation, which enables us to join meetings as if we were there.
And lastly — dare I say it — most meetings are not actually productive, and remove people from their productive work.
If people wish to hold a negative opinion of you, they will, and there is nothing you can do about it.
Even if you do nothing but good for them, freely spending your wealth for them whenever asked… if they wish to see none of it, they will see none of it.
If people wish to make up tales about you, they will believe their own tales, and there is nothing you can do to counter them.
In the end, hand your affairs over to the One who witnesses all things. Not an atom in the heavens and earth goes unnoticed, neither your good deeds nor your bad.
If you gave freely in times of hardship to those that begged, unappreciated, be content that it was witnessed by the One in whose hand is your soul.
These are just the tests of this earthly realm. Tarry on.
Alas, we must acknowledge that regularly having your heart broken comes with the territory of being a parent.
I first met my mother-in-law twenty-four years ago, in the late autumn of 2001, during my first trip to Turkey.
I’d just been made redundant from my only recently secured job in Maidenhead — last in, first out — but had been retained as a freelancer.
The visit wasn’t long-planned. It was an urgent, spontaneous journey to visit my mother-in-law’s mother on her deathbed.
But the visit was probably overdue anyway. We’d married in London in August, our union too swift for either of our families. That would be rectified the following summer in Istanbul.
My mother-in-law was never a happy woman. She had been widowed early, and suffered a life of great hardship. But we had good times now and then. She visited us in England thrice.
On her first visit, she got on with our next-door neighbour like a house on fire through a love of knitting, despite no shared language. So too with my grandmother who lived nearby.
She also joined us for the formalisation of our adoption of two tiny souls all those years ago, sharing in that joyful moment.
However, in recent years, her health deteriorated rapidly, her heart broken by conflict within the family. We cared for her the past two summers at our place in Turkey, and through last winter here in England.
She was a shadow of her former self, lost to dementia. She was treated unjustly by her eldest children and grandchildren, and died estranged from some of them. As vehement atheists, they don’t fear their accounting, but they should.
My mother-in-law died yesterday morning (Sunday), still heartbroken, bringing to an end a long life of hardship. She was buried this morning (Monday) in her village in that deep forested valley, her final resting place close to the home she had missed for so many years.
May Allah have mercy on her soul, and compensate her for all the wrong done to her by those who should have cherished and honoured her. From Allah we come and to Him is our return.
I didn’t see it then, but I see it now.
It was a blessing that I was so shy and hormone deficient in my youth.
It bestowed the patience to await my turn.
Nobody knows in which land they will die, nor in what circumstance. When it is decreed, there is no changing it. From God we come and to Him is our return.
For years, it bothered me that others had such negative opinions of my intentions.
But now I know that honourable young men are so few and far between that those assumptions may well have been justified.
Why expect anything different when most are motivated by one thought alone?
Naturally, you would protect yourself. Safety first.
Save us from trite journalism. The Guardian reports on a study survey by a market research company of 1,000 primary school teachers in England and Wales, highlighting concerns about children’s school readiness.
The reported findings suggest that many children are starting school with delayed motor skills and other developmental challenges. However, several statistical issues raise questions about how these findings are framed and whether the article does enough to challenge the conclusions.
As well as children arriving at school in nappies – one in four who began reception last September were – teachers reported children with poor basic motor skills and underdeveloped muscles, which they linked with excessive screen use.
“I’ve got two children [in my class] who physically cannot sit on the carpet. They don’t have core strength,” a reception teacher in the north-west told researchers.
A deputy head in the north-west reported an increase in “delayed walkers” with “clumsy movements, dropping things, unable to climb a staircase”
The article jumps out at me because children with underdeveloped muscles, poor motor movement, delayed walking, and clumsy movements sounds a lot like me starting school. Only, that was around 1981.
In my case, it was due to a relatively common chromosome disorder, then undiagnosed. Nothing to do with excessive screen time. Who knows, perhaps these children suffer from one of numerous such conditions impacting child development.
A quarter of children starting reception? Really? According to? Oh, just 0.4% of the UK’s 250,000 primary school teachers questioned. Show us the data then.
Sample representation is clearly a key issue here. The article does not clarify whether the surveyed teachers form a representative cross-section of those working across different regions and school types. Response bias is also a concern, as the findings are based on teachers’ perceptions, which can vary significantly and may not provide an objective measure of school readiness.
The reported decline in school readiness is also difficult to assess without baseline data. Without previous measurements for comparison, it is unclear whether this is a new trend or part of a longer-term pattern. Furthermore, while the article suggests links between delayed development and factors such as increased screen time and pandemic-related disruptions, these are correlations rather than proven causes, a distinction that is not fully explored.
Another limitation is the lack of precise quantitative data. For example, the claim that “one in four” children were not toilet trained could be more rigorously presented with exact percentages and historical comparisons. Additionally, a separate survey of 1,000 parents found that 90% believed their child was ready for school, highlighting a stark contrast between parental perceptions and teachers’ reported experiences — something that could have been examined in greater depth.
Finally, the article does not appear to account for broader influences such as socioeconomic disparities and access to early childhood education, both of which can significantly impact development. While the reported findings raise important concerns, the article’s lack of scrutiny over the survey’s limitations leaves key questions unanswered and risks reinforcing conclusions that may not be fully supported by robust data. Not exactly the standard of journalism expected of The Guardian.
Allah rahmet eylesin.
Mekânı cennet olsun.
Coincidentally, our daughter started a conversation this evening about her not believing in coincidences on the basis there are just too many of them.
Which led us to trading stories. She had to admit that my own collection was pretty awesome. Maybe I should compile them and publish them in a book.
Some research suggests that people with a particular chromosomal aneuploidy are susceptible to magical thinking and seeing patterns where others perceive none. How appropriate, you might think, considering all that I write about. Not least for seeing a personal rebuke in a randomly generated string assigned to a file by a web server. Admittedly, that one was pretty far out! But I do wonder: might this framing miss something important about how different minds perceive reality?
Three years ago, I stumbled upon a mind-blowing coincidence in my life — a precise spatial alignment between significant locations and events, separated by decades and hundreds of miles. Naturally, a researcher might dismiss my fascination with this coincidence as an example of magical thinking or excessive pattern recognition. They might say I’m reading meaning into random chance, or even dismiss my findings outright as nothing but curious happenstance.
I am open to that possibility too. But I am also open to the possibility that some of us simply perceive patterns that others miss. What if our heightened sensitivity to connections isn’t a flaw, but rather a different way of engaging with reality? For sure, the phenomenon I noticed isn’t imaginary — it’s tangibly precise and geometrically verifiable. It exists whether anyone else sees it or not.
For me, this raises questions about who gets to decide what level of pattern recognition is “normal” versus “excessive.” The medical establishment tends to pathologize perceptions that differ from the statistical norm. But perhaps this reflects a bias in our understanding rather than a problem with divergent ways of seeing. Might I be incorrectly labelled as having disordered thinking simply because I’m attuned to noticing what is actually there — patterns and connections my neurotypical peers might dismiss as mere coincidence.
This isn’t to deny that magical thinking and pattern recognition can become problematic. However, I do wonder if we need a more nuanced framework for understanding different modes of perception — one that doesn’t automatically pathologize ways of seeing that differ from the majority experience. After all, throughout history, individuals have been labelled as having mental illness for perceiving phenomena that weren’t yet understood or accepted by the medical establishment of their time. How many insights might we be missing by dismissing unusual patterns of perception as necessarily disordered?
In noticing those precise geometric alignments or meaningful coincidences in my life, I’m not imagining them — I’m perceiving real patterns that exist independently of my observation. The question isn’t whether these patterns are real, but rather what meaning we assign to them, and how we validate different ways of experiencing and interpreting the world. Might it be necessary to consider that what some would call magical thinking could sometimes be a more finely-tuned awareness of connections that others simply haven’t noticed yet?
My hypotheses?
- That I am a participant in an incredibly intricate simulation embedded with patterns we occasionally glimpse.
- That the universe has properties beyond the physical, with threads of meaning or connection we don’t yet understand.
- Purely random coincidence, of no significance whatsoever.
I am open to all three possibilities, and others beside. Is it really not possible to explore questions about coincidence, meaning, and perception in a way that holds space for multiple interpretations — from the neurological to the spiritual — without forcing a single conclusion? For my part, whether we ultimately view them through a lens of simulation theory, expanded consciousness, enhanced pattern recognition or merely faulty perception, such experiences cannot but challenge conventional understandings of reality. At least, that is my reality.
