Two weeks ago today I wasn’t feeling quite right, and thought I’d better do a lateral flow test from the kit we’d recently been given, just in case. Within moments I was confronted with this:

My positive lateral flow test result, 7 September 2021

Damn.

10 REM RIP

Sir Clive Sinclair, who launched countless programming careers, has died at the age of (ZX) 81.

No one in Australia would remember him for his failed C5 electric trike (we never saw them, except on news reports), but a mate in high school had a ZX81, and I still remember pressing my fingertips firmly on its flat plastic keyboard. Even though it couldn’t do much, it looked great, with its sharp black corners and red lettered logo, like KITT from Knight Rider. In rural Tasmania in the early 1980s, it was pretty cutting-edge.

I can’t think of too many of the personal computers of the time that were so closely associated with a single individual. None of us knew who’d founded Acorn, or who the Vic was behind the VIC-20. Even Apple had two Steves, not one. Clive was one of a kind.

18 September 2021 · Infotech

A Cure for Cancer

One woman’s mission to eradicate Nazi revisionism on Wikipedia.

All of those women were right.

The paradigm that derailed the science of obesity.

Has mRNA biotechnology delivered a cure for cancer?

The man who helped make Pixar possible.

Ubermenschen.

2021: A Bus Odyssey.

Mozu Miniature Studios (via).

Demolition Man.

18 September 2021 · Weblog

Falling Down

The twentieth anniversary of 9/11 felt more significant than in a while, probably because the fall of Kabul to the Taliban last month had already taken the world right back to 2001. I wouldn’t add much to my comments of those early years, but some of the articles that did the rounds were worth a look.

“The Falling Man” is still you and me.

My mother died on 9/11. Every year, her absence feels larger.

9/12, by Edward Snowden.

The wildest shit from ’01 to ’06.

I also watched 102 Minutes That Changed America, which because we didn’t have a TV in September 2001 was the first time I’d seen the footage at such length. A waking nightmare.

18 September 2021 · Politics

The State of It

Why there is a shortage of drivers in the UK.

Why public schoolboys aren’t fit to run the country.

The hollow heart of Brexit.

EU citizens who have applied for settled status in Britain are being threatened with deportation.

Why is English spelling so weird?

The Mask

Typical mid-pandemic sights. Mouseover for more.

Quiet is the New Loud

Now that I’ve got 2020’s sounds out of the way, time for a post about 2021’s (so far).