The last rose…?
Quote of the Day
” Before you react, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you criticize, wait. Before you quit, try.”
- Ernest Hemingway
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Rory Gallagher (&Taste) | I’m Moving On
Long Read of the Day
’Til ChatGPT do us part: how chatbots are breaking up marriages
My latest Observer column…
My eye was caught by a vivid headline: “ChatGPT Is blowing up marriages …” it began. Below it was an intriguing piece by Maggie Harrison Dupré based on conversations with more than a dozen people who said that AI chatbots played a key role in the dissolution of their long-term relationships and marriages. “Nearly all of these now-exes,” Dupré writes, “are currently locked in divorce proceedings and often bitter custody battles.” She also reviewed AI chat logs, records of conversations between spouses, social media posts, court records and other documentation.
One of the couples she spoke to had been together for 15 years. “We’ve had ups and downs like any relationship,” said the husband, “and in 2023 we almost split. But we ended up reconciling, and we had, I thought, two very good years. Very close years.”
But then “the whole ChatGPT thing happened”…
Do read the whole piece.
Books, etc.
Famous IVF memoir had hidden ghostwriter who spun breakthrough into emotional quest, archives reveal
I’ve just come across a fascinating account of the research that reveals how a Welsh poet turned the story of the first ‘test-tube baby’ into a moving narrative that helped draw attention to the women involved.
A Matter of Life, co-authored in 1980 by geneticist Robert Edwards – who spent much of his career at Cambridge and went on to win the Nobel Prize – and gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe, tells how their research led to in vitro fertilisation (IVF). The book is the basis for last year’s Netflix film Joy.
A study of Dannie Abse’s archive in the National Library of Wales by Prof Nick Hopwood from the University of Cambridge reveals how Abse overhauled reams of rough and underwhelming text submitted by the duo to a publisher that had bought the doctors’ story of the “baby of the century” in the hope of a quick bestseller…
Over the weekend we watched Joy, the 2024 movie which was based on the book and shows what a great storyteller can do with the tale of how a momentous scientific advance gets made. We watched it on Netflix. It’s a fabulous movie — fascinating, close to the bone at times and deeply moving. Highly recommended.
My commonplace booklet
One of the eerie things about our current moment is the way many (most?) people in Britain seem to think that what’s going on the US has nothing to do with us. Which is why this report of a speech by Chris Hewett, CEO of the Solar Trade Association, to the Solar & Storage Live trade show in Birmingham the other day, struck a chord.
Having condemned the “malicious lies” spouted against renewables by Donald Trump, Hewett turned his attention to Reform Party.
“Nigel Farage wants to subsidise fracking in Lincolnshire. He wants to send the Welsh working class back down in the coal mines. His sidekick, Richard Tice, has been sending threatening letters to investors in solar and battery sector, saying if Reform were to win power at the national level, it would cancel CfD contracts. He’s actively saying he wants to stop billions of pounds of investment into the UK economy in the energy sector, and the consequence of that would be that Britain remains hooked on expensive oil and gas from petrol states like Russia, like the Middle East, like the US.”
Reform councils are not simply opposing solar farms, Hewett noted. “They are now cancelling solar rooftop projects on public buildings. So again, that means they would rather see schools have high energy bills paid for by the taxpayer, rather than reaping rewards of investments and renewables, which will mean they can employ more teachers. Make no mistake, if Reform get their hands on national in the power national level, they will want to threaten all your jobs,”
Now of course he’s a spokesman for the solar industry preaching to the converted, but still…
Feedback
Thanks to Paul Pearn who, in response to my puzzlement at this year’s fruitfulness of our crab-apple tree, wrote:
John, it’s a simple answer. If the tree is producing fruit then there is not enough energy to grow fruiting spurs for the next year.
So it was a sign of drought-induced stress.
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