Oxford, Paris, and other things

  Fairacres is a funny place, exotic almost, to my eyes. It is both a carpark and a retail centre. Well in fact the carpark is for the retail centre. If you are luck enough to walk there in the morning there are no cars yet, apart from a few employees.  It was born not long ago, at least for the Easter part, as you can see from this timelapse video dating from 2021 The shops... there’s nothing exotic about them. It’s the same shops you find everywhere in the UK, or perhaps just England, I don’t know: Dreams, a shop for mattresses and all things related to sleeping; Pets at Home, a shop for everything related to animals including a veterinary centre; B&M a discount shop selling from food to toys to any house related gadget including vapes, I go there sometimes if I have a vape liquid crisis; a gym, don’t ask me the name I forgot, but walking near there in rush hour, you pass near people with not much one, running or walking on a treadmill; Homebase, a décor shop with painting, f

 I have three Rebecca Solnit in my backpack, it must be love! So yes, in my bag I have (apart from my notebook, a scarf, two multicoloured pens, one highlighter and probably, right at the bottom of it, a condom which expired some time in the last century...): Wanderlust , a voyage reminiscing of all the walkers out there who also write  A Field Guide to Getting Lost a mix of personal memories and philosophical thought and walking of course, is the desert for Solnit the same as the Parisian arcades for Walter Benjamin? The Faraway Nearby   a series of stories, so far based on her mother (I haven't checked a synopsis as it might spoil my fun) And yesterday, apart from a quick work meeting online which lasted 5 minutes (joy!), I found the time to search the web for interviews with her. Very pleasant, and pleasant also to discover new people (this guy with an accent as strong as mine, Paul Holdengräber). So here she is speaking with him at the New York Public Library: Pleasant also t

 My aunt from America sents me this link to news in Las Vegas https://www.npr.org/2023/09/04/1197138244/vegas-ai-workers-brace-for-change Apparently a few robots have appeared in bars, serving customers. So of course, workers are scared their jobs are going to be taken away. It is a touching picture to see, these men and women holding bilingual protest signs, in both Spanish and English, wanting to have their rights protected.                                              " Vegas - Fremont St (6) " by  The Steampunk Explorer  is licensed under  CC BY 2.0 . Is management that thick to think that robots will do the job perfectly well? That they are saving on people who become pregnant, who become sick, who then need to retire? That is really blind management. Every nincompoop, north and south and east and west thinks this is it, I'm investing right now but saving money as humans cost money, as humans are humans. Can't they see however, that this is the future? That compa

  The dogs are furry and white Like snow in fact How it makes the news here If snow starts falling Is it the leading star of LA television news- & does it make the national news?- Who ventures the streets of Beverly Hills To report the three flakes falling? Who knows? They don’t care, they walk the streets of Venice They have their snow globe of a dog ancestors’ souvenir of winter, They don’t care, the dog owners.