The Candle That Burns

The terminal quietly beeped twice to alert the operator that its latest process had been completed. Although barely distinguishable from the various other noises in the research station, the entire crew leapt up as if it was an ear-piercing critical alarm.

“The results are in, lads!”

“Stop calling us lads. You’re the only man here.”

“I call everyone lads! Now’s not the time. Look!”

The three researchers huddled around the terminal, bug-eyed. There was life in the ice core samples they had. Confirmed non-Earth life. On a non-Earth moon.

“Three hundred and fifty-seventh time lucky, eh!” cried Andrew, dancing a jig. “We’ve hit the jackpot!”

The next few hours passed in a blur as Catriona set about the task of programming the station AI to isolate and analyse the bacterial life they had extracted.

Flopping back in her seat, Isla fetched her tablet and saw the blinking blue envelope icon she had been avoiding. It was from Osiris PMG, the extrasolar corporation that had contracted them to find promising new mining locations. They needed an update. She didn’t have one. Until now.

Decommisioned

    The AI lifeform was already sitting in Blake’s office when he arrived. They always were. He was purposefully late every time he had to meet with one, as a show of dominance. It was his way of demonstrating that he had full free will and that the AI lifeforms he had to interact with were stunted and flawed in this regard. Not that it made any difference to the AI lifeforms.

    Regardless, he wasn’t interested in how they felt about it. Pettiness was also a uniquely human trait. He did it to make himself feel better. More powerful.

    Treating AI lifeforms cruelly and with disdain was pretty common, so Blake was not an outlier in this regard. In fact, the majority of the population in most towns and cities across the country had decided to see the lifeforms that had replaced human labour in almost all production and manufacturing jobs as subhuman and treated them accordingly.

    Early 21st-century thought around the proliferation of bots was that people would be likely to treat them as they would other people. Early experiments also demonstrated that even non-humanoid bots elicited empathetic reactions from people when they were knocked over or blown up.

    These small-scale experiments proved useless at predicting how that feeling would change when the first wave of general-purpose bots caused mass unemployment all across the globe before Justinian proposals were made legislation.

The best lemon juice

I've been drinking more than I used to lately
but when I get there my thoughts don't die down they go crazy.

Mistakes and wins merge and spin in my mind.
Don't know what I'm searching for, or what I want to find.

I guess I'm trying to make sense of why.

I look in the mirror and think "do I really hate this guy?"

"I'm putting him through so much stress for nothing less than a salary that fails to impress and shit sleep."

Is this peak? Is this a career? Because all I have is a pot belly from comfort eating and a creeping fear that won't leave my side no matter how much I try. Or drink.

I will say this, it's made me rethink how to spend my time instead of sitting on my arse from nine until... Usually nine.

"But hey that's fine as long as it allows you to climb". But it doesn't. I was given a rope and a bundle of hope and told "figure it out yourself".

In the end I only figured out how to hang myself. A long walk but a short shelf life.

Whether a knife at your throat or a paycheck round your neck to keep you afloat, handcuffs made of gold or a misplaced sense of values to uphold, truth be told, it's really just not for me any more.

If this experience has taught me anything it's taught me everything.

I now know to stay sane, and be the person deep down I want to be again, there's a simple rule to follow.

Unless what you do sometimes makes your heart skip a beat, and the rhythm you play with your hands, mind and feet means you lose track of time, and you are so happy that it just has to be some kind of crime...

don't give all you have to give.

Squeezing the lemon of every last drop is a sour way to live.

Please keep to the right

Why do so many of my generation feel so entitled? I used to hate it. I used to think they were lazy, and unimaginitive. I used to look down on people with that attitude  because they lived as if it was easier to be lost in the garden of eden, even if it was all made of cardboard and eventually sucked them dry, than it was to find themselves.

I don't feel like that any more. The previous generation had Holden Caulfield, and mine had Neo. Someone who stepped outside the world and seen it for what it is. Someone who has seen the machines we set in place to keep ourselves comfortable. We live in a human zoo.

People feel entitled because they have done everything they were supposed to do, that they were told to do, in order to have a good life. Yet they don't. And they can feel it. They have seen actors pretending to enjoy products and widgets and trinkets in TV advertisements so much that they ape them and think that's how to live. Doing what they are told to do.

Our whole society is built on behaviour/reward. You do what you are told to do, what you are supposed to do, and you receive your reward. The problem is, for being obedient, going to school, getting good grades, going to work, putting the hours in, raising a family, getting a loan to buy a car, getting a mortgage to own a home, for all of this, the reward has been mis-sold.

Although it might seem like it in the prospectus, in the recruitment material, in the adverts, the reward for obedience isn't happiness. It's comfort. It's someone else's definition of what is a good enough standard of living for you.

So when I see people of my generation feeling entitled, I no longer feel angry at them. I feel angry for them. I feel angry for me. I spent 30 years without knowing what I know now. I was caught in a scam.

Everyone knows that in the long run, in blackjack, the house always wins. The problem with our society is that we think we can influence the house. We think that if the dealer is our friend, or someone like us, we might get a better hand. We might last longer in the game. We might end up with more for ourselves. But happiness is rarely found in quantities, and it's never in any hand you are dealt.

The reward for obedience has been mis-sold, and comfort is not the same as happiness. I don't blame people for feeling entitled any more.

Why a majority Conservative government is bad for Scotland

Here is why a Conservative government is bad, even for Scotland with our own budget and an SNP-packed Holyrood. I wrote this as a Facebook post, but it's far too big.

Political parties are made up of people who have a similar mindset on how certain things should work in an ideal world. One of the main differences is (or was) the purpose of government. This is where the left/right wing terminology comes into play.

Left wing parties such as (old) Labour, The Greens, SSP etc believe that government is fundimentally there to serve the interests of the people, and look for ways to provide more for the largest amount of people. They believe in helping people who cannot help themselves.

Right wing parties such as The Conservatives and UKIP believe that the government should not get involved in the personal lives of people, and should play as little a role as possible. They believe in helping people who help themselves.

Centrist parties include New Labour, Lib Dems and SNP. They all lean a bit more to the left or right of centre, but all believe that government has to play a role in helping both people and businesses succeed. This isn't a lazy approach. It requires leniency to businesses on some occasions and generosity to the people on others, and also knowing which to choose.

I know people with all of these views and I would not say that either is evil, or either is the "right one". I can say that without a shadow of a doubt though, that the current Conservative government is a bad thing for us.

The main reason is that their approach to economic is flawed. You don't even need to be an economist. It's even wrong if you believe in right wing politics. Our large and prolonged austerity program, where taxes are raised and spending is cut, results in less money for ordinary people like you and I, which is bad news for businesses because it means you and I have less to spend.

Because we have less to spend, and businesses suffer, we can say that the economy is shrinking, not growing. This means that the government have to borrow more money. Cuts, as they are seen in the UK, do not allow us to repay the deficit. They mean that the country has to borrow even more! The Conservative and Lib Dem government have borrowed far more in their 5 years in power than a Labour governmenf did in almost 15 years.

Where has this money gone? Well, one of the other things that brings political parties together is a belief in how public services should be provided. Aside from smaller government, the other main pillar for Right wing political parties is that they see the free market (supply and demand) as being far more efficient than publically run organisations.

Where the public (ie government) run a public service, it is run for public good. Where a public service is run by a private company, it is run for profit. Cutting public spending and replacing this hole by allowing the private sector to fill it means that jobs and services which were paid for by public money are now filled by private companies and their employees. This is seen as good for the economy by the Right, because it looks like it increases employment. This is because private firms can employ more people by paying them less. Usually it's the same people doing the same job (or more) for less pay.

An example is hospital cleaning. If you are employed by the NHS to clean hospital wards, your primary motivation will be to make sure patients have a clean ward. If you are employed by a private cleaning company who have been contracted to provide cleaning services, your main motivation will be to do your job. This will be guided by what the company want you to do. They want to increase profits, so you are going to be asked to clean a wider area in the same time as you would have been given before so that the company can see a return on investment.

We are borrowing more because we are cutting very heavily and the work still needs to be done so we pay private companies to come in and do a the same job for profit instead of public benefit. The extra money we are borrowing as a country goes into the pockets of rich people who own established businesses and is then "trickled down" to employees (ie us). Instead of a private companies profits coming from the general public spending their own money (and letting the market decide which businesses are good and bad), public money from the government is used instead.

This Conservative government are more interested in making themselves and people they see as "them" (as in, not you and I) more wealthy. They are helping people who help themselves to help themselves.

This is especially bad for Scotland because we don't spend what we put into the system. We spend what we are given based on a number of factors. We essentially get a share of money in the pot. If the pot is smaller (because the economy is shrinking and money the UK borrow is tied up in private support disguised as public spending) then Scotland gets less. The more moderate approach of the SNP of increasing spending and paying our deficit back slower, as and when the economy grows will never get a chance to see the light of day.

A majority Conservative government who have already committed to even deeper cuts (which even the IMF say are going to harm the economy, not heal it) means less money for Scotland. It means there is less money for the majority SNP government to work with, and means they can't increase public spending at the rate they would like. It means that you and I will still be worse off, despite publicly rejecting right wing politics by voting in the centrist SNP.

"Some Day" Isn't A Real Day

It feels like a prison sentence
living in this town
look around, the same glass ceiling
it really brings me down
some people don't agree
because they feel a sense of freedom
"We could leave if we wanted to,
but we don't have any reason".

David Hume said it best
when talking about free will
it only matters if you *could* do different
but many false steps were made by standing still
so why not take that challenge
see if your freedom's really true
do something unexpected,
completely out of the blue.

Or live life never asking
what could have been if i wasn't "realistic"
if I wasn't safe and "sensible"
If I wasn't so pessimistic
The fear you think you're escaping
will follow you to your grave
and you'll have lived a lonely life
if all you've done is work and save

Leaving great things for your children
is a kind and noble cause
but I promise they'll be happier
instead of hearing what could have been,
stories of what was.

Deferred Life Plan

They say good things come to those who wait
but I think that theory is up for debate.
Sit on your hands and good times will arrive?
I want my pie now, not at sixty five!
That seems like madness,
that seems like wishful thinking
and I'm slowly realising
why everyone is drinking.
But the path to the bottom of the bottle ain't sweet
and the only thing there is the taste of defeat
If you dread Monday coming and then celebrate Friday
you're wishing more than half of your life away.

When did you start your deferred life plan?
Didn't you ever have dreams?
Or do you just have a short attention span?
Look, I know it isn't that easy to start,
but if you're doing nothing now
your life and your dreams will always be miles apart,
and I know you don't believe in immortality
but that's your current rationality.
Just cos Ronan Keating said it, don't make it untrue
Tomorrow never comes...
At least that's the conclusion I've come to

When we see a hardship, some people duck their heads.
Some people wear a hat and pretend they're someone else.
Some people wear a mask, sink down low and disappear,
but some people thrive, and that's why I'm here.

A job doesn't make you happy in the long run,
having values and knowing you live by them
will make you happier than having none.
Remember what a job is for, generating income.
If your job gives you money but robs you of all your time
through worry, stress or working on your own dime
it's a crime, it's voluntary mental slavery.
But for some reason you think that's fine
because the boss will recognise your sacrifice
and reward you by allowing you to climb,
but you'll never reach him, there'll always be another one.
You'll never reach the top, there'll always be another rung.
If you're climbing the wrong ladder, you'll always come undone.

So why climb at all? You can fly! You can have it all.
Open your mind and see that there's another way.
Find someone living your dreams and live their life for a day,
ask how they got there, I bet it wasn't just wishes and prayer.
And as you stare and wonder how to live the life you want
remember you can have it all, all you need to do is make that jump.