The faithful transcript of my first conversation with Deepseek. Looking at where we are right now (April 2025), I'm not really sure that I should be more wary of Chinese than of US AI. So I went and dipped my toe. I didn't give away too many personal secrets, other than the fact that I'm an OBVIOUS NERD. If you are not, you won't enjoy this post, in which I discuss the works of Liu Cixin and classic Doctor Who. If you are an OBVIOUS NERD, you might be interested.

Anyone who knows a bit about East Asia should be aware of the fact that China doesn't really have a lot of friends in the immediate neighbourhood. The only real "friend" that Xi Jinping has around him is Vladimir Putin. The kind of friend we all dream of. A couple of nights ago, while analysing who's GONNA win this superpower showdown, I heard a French journalist mention that one of China's great weaknesses in this confrontation is her lack of soft power. I've been thinking about that over the ensuing 24-48 hours, and this post is the outcome.

Here's one for the NERDS 🤓 Or rather, for both computer nerds and for nerds who don't understand anything about computers, but who get frustrated that they don't understand and would like to try to understand a little bit at least. The whole process of setting up my suite of personal websites seems likely to end up clocking in at approximately one year. The following is an attempt to chronicle the development of those sites, and to provide an approximate timeline of work that is yet to be done.

A beautiful day, albeit also a very tiring one, in Manchester yesterday. My class at Sunflower Manchester has been granted an extra month of life, thanks to a personal donation by my students' local MP Christian Wakeford.