Fast Pseuds

The Ferrari Luce Isn’t For You, And That’s Okay

The $640,000Ferrari Luce isn’t for me, either. The greatest automotive experience of my life came at the wheel of a sixty-year-old Ferrari 250 GT. But I think I understand where Ferrari is coming from. Or rather, what the pens of Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson of design agency LoveFrom have set out to achieve...

Revealed earlier this year, the interior is a celebration of tactility, from its solid metal switchgear and analogue dials, to its simplistic, almost retro steering wheel and plush leather upholstery bathed in ambient lighting. This is a car interior for the newly wealthy who recognize the damage caused by a decade of scrolling. There’s no ghastly passenger touchscreen, no dimwitted haptic touchpads and no infuriating AI assistant. Instead there are beautiful materials that are sure to bring joy with every interaction. They’ll remind the driver of their Leica camera, their Linn turntable and their Rimowa suitcase.

Labour Party: Two Headlines

Baroness Harman: Labour leadership hopefuls must be radical feminists

Women in party should use challenges from Streeting and Burnham to ‘marshal our unreasonable demands’, peer says

'Labour lacks coherent plan,' says Sir Tony Blair in essay critical of government

Sir Tony Blair has warned Labour against forcing out Sir Keir Starmer without having a proper policy agenda to follow him, as he launched a criticism of the Government’s time in office.

Robotic Agentic AGI Prototype

 

Numbers Game

While browsing the internet over coffee this morning, I took a casual gander at some basic information about Angola. This snippet from Wikipedia is interesting as yet another hint that the game of made up numbers still has plenty of life in it.

 

Due to climate change, Angola's annual average temperature has increased by 1.4.°C since 1951, and is expected to keep rising[76] while rainfall is becoming more variable.[77] Angola is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Presumably we are expected to believe that since 1951, Angola has been measuring surface temperatures accurately enough for a claimed 1.4.°C temperature rise to be reliable, although I'm not sure why there is another decimal point after the figure 4.

Alternatively, as the Wikipedia link indicates, the number comes from World Bank Group which of course is linked to the UN. In which case it may be a global UN number rather than a statistical output from accurate and reliable Angolan temperature measurements.

Hmm - made up number seems to be the safest assumption.

At least sometimes or often

I’m a psychologist. Here’s why 40 per cent of the world avoids reading the news

What’s the solution to news fatigue? Well, it’s not avoidance. A democracy depends on informed citizens

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they’ve stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.

This experience is far from an isolated one. According to the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, 69 per cent of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.

Globally, 40 per cent report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.


This story from an outfit which peddles climate doom as one of its doom staples. Don't they realise that at least sometimes or often many of us find it entertaining? Some of us couldn't enjoy our morning coffee without it.

I'm not a psychologist, but at least sometimes or often I check the Independent for a morning lift. It's a confirmation that all is as it was, nonsense hasn't been supplanted from its global throne and the world of mainstream media isn't likely to become disturbingly rational.

Lavish Lifestyle

Police: Peter Murrell abused position to bankroll lavish lifestyle he craved

Peter Murrell abused his privileged position to bankroll a lavish lifestyle “he craved but could not afford”, Police Scotland has said.

The former SNP chief executive has been remanded into custody at the High Court in Edinburgh after pleading guilty to embezzling £400,310.65 from the SNP.

He admitted the charges when he appeared at the court on Monday morning.

Media phrases eh? "Lavish lifestyle" is a popular one for stories where a wrong 'un takes money which isn't theirs and spends on what the media consider to be luxuries such as posh cars, exotic holidays, fancy tattoos and so on.

On the other hand, when a government spends many billions propping up a failing but politically important project such as HS2, we don't usually describe it as lavish politics.  

Maybe that's because we need new words such as hyperlavish for government largesse. This would give us Ed Miliband, Net Zero and the hyperlavish funding which keeps it tottering along. 

Green Data Centres Go AWOL

 

Government slammed for failure on hyperscale data centre emissions

The Scottish Government faces urgent calls to address "major shortcomings" in its data centre policy, as Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) alleges a critical failure to account for the emissions of hyperscale AI facilities in assessments of "green data centres" and their contribution to climate targets.

Kat Jones, director of APRS, branded the situation "pretty shocking". The government’s NPF4 national planning framework states that "green data centres" will have an "overall negligible impact" on Scotland’s emissions reduction goals.


A chap is bound to wonder what a "green data centre" might look like within the strange, mysterious and eerily mystical minds of Green folk.  

  

Use of an abacus, as illustrated in
Margarita philosophica (1503)
Source