ChatGPT made this image of a cranky psychology professor playing soccer while a bellicose commentator looks on and the players stare bewilderingly at the proceedings that are not a part of Imagine a scenario in which a well known radio host with a penchant for American sports talks with a Jungian psychologist weirdly obsessed with the culture wars, about football tactics. Neither one knows what the hell they are talking about, but they have large social media followings so somehow we should listen to their opinions. ChatGPT helped me out here, because I’m incapable of writing this dialogue without losing …
It’s undeniable that in the time I have been publishing on the web (and before that on usenet and bbs’ dating back to 1992) we have seen a shift from protocols to platforms. Back in the day, people made protocols so we could all talk to each other, regardless of the platforms we used to do it. The web today runs on these protocols, which allows us to use all kinds of different platforms to communicate. Think email. We all use different email programs, but when I send a message, it gets to you regardless. The enclosure of the commons …
Spending the past few weeks immersed in football culture in England and back home at Canada fed my soul. There is so much about football that I love, from the complexity of the game, all through to the culture and atmosphere of the stadium. I have been a dedicated and deeply involved football supporter of the Vancouver Whitecaps (2010-2018, ended over a series of unresolved sexual abuse scandals) and of TSS Rovers (2017- the present). The thing that drew me to football as a kid was hearing Liverpool supporters singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” on the BBC Match of the …
It’s late April on the coast. Huge flocks of geese are finding their way north making a beeline from their stopping grounds in the Fraser River estuary and heading straight over our island as they follow the inlets and mountains on their journey to Alaska. The sea lions are still out there barking and normally their presence would be a sure sign of spring as they come in with the herring, dragging all the mammal eating killer whales with them. But this year has been weird and we’ve had a herd (pride? flotilla? complaint?) of sea lions in Mannion Bay …