Tags: i

Progress Without Disruption - Christopher Butler

We’ve been taught that technological change must be chaotic, uncontrolled, and socially destructive — that anything less isn’t real innovation.

The conflation of progress with disruption serves specific interests. It benefits those who profit from rapid, uncontrolled deployment. “You can’t stop progress” is a very convenient argument when you’re the one profiting from the chaos, when your business model depends on moving fast and breaking things before anyone can evaluate whether those things should be broken.

We’ve internalized technological determinism so completely that choosing not to adopt something — or choosing to adopt it slowly, carefully, with conditions — feels like naive resistance to inevitable progress. But “inevitable” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Inevitable for whom? Inevitable according to whom?

Every culture has its myths and legends. Greece has its gods and warriors. England has its stories of Arthur. Ireland has the Tuatha Dé Danann, The Ulster Cycle, and more.

But while the Arthurian legends and the Greek myths have been retold many times, the stories of ancient Ireland have remained largely untouched.

Kim Curran’s book The Morrigan takes on this challenge.

The blurb for the book compares it Madeline Miller’s Circe, which is a bold comparison. The writing in The Morrigan isn’t in the same league as Circe, but then again, very little is.

Structurally, the comparison makes complete sense.

Circe starts with the titular nymph in the world of the gods of Olympus before moving on to more mortal affairs, coming to a head with the events of The Odyssey, when Odysseus’s story dominates.

The Morrigan starts with the titular goddess in the world of the gods of the Túatha Dé before moving on to more mortal affairs, coming to a head with the events of The Táin, when Cú Chulainn’s story dominates.

I took me a little while to adjust to the tone, but once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed this retelling. It manages to simultaneously capture the bloody, over-the-top feeling of The Táin while also having a distinctly modern twist. By the last third, I was completely engrossed.

After finishing Circe I went on a spree of reading many, many modern retellings of Greek myths. Now that I’ve finished The Morrigan I want to do the same for the Irish legends.

But I can’t. Apart from re-reading a translation of The Táin, there’s not much else out there for me.

Kim Curran does have another book that’s just been released; Brigid (the goddess? the saint? both?). If it’s anything like The Morrigan, it’s going to be a must-read.

I hope these books are the first of many.

I watched a good film last night. Tornado from the same writer and director of the also-excellent Slow West.

Tornado is a Scottish Samurai Western set in the 1790s. Although it’s not likely that many Samurai would’ve been in Scotland during the sakoku period, I was willingly able to suspend my disbelief …until something quite minor happened on screen.

One of the characters is seen playing a concertina. “Hang on”, I thought, “1790s? That’s not right!”

And indeed, once the film was over I reached for my laptop and confirmed that the concertina is very much a 19th century invention.

Look, it’s not that I know when most musical instruments were invented, but I happened to know about the concertina’s origin because of a different technology.

See, the concertina was invented by one Charles Wheatsone. He invented quite a few things. He, along with William Cooke, more or less created the electric telegraph, around the same time as Samuel Morse.

I only know this because of the excellent book by Tom Standage called The Victorian Internet:

The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s online pioneers.

Prompted by that book, I found out more about Wheatstone, including the fact that he invented the concertina. So that’s why I found myself slightly taken out of the action when watching that film last night. In the 1790s, nobody was playing the concertina in Scotland or anywhere else.

Today, though, the concertina is thriving, especially in Ireland. It’s particularly popular in County Clare. Though, as I’m writing this, I’m listening to the playing of a Kerryman, Cormac Begley.

I’ll be seeing him play tonight in the Brighton Dome where he’ll be providing the music for the superb Teaċ Damhsa production, MÁM. This’ll be my second time experiencing it. Táim ar bís!

What’s new in web typography? | Clagnut by Richard Rutter

There have been so many advances in HTML, CSS and browser support over the past few years. These are enabling phenomenal creativity and refinement in web typography, and I’ve got a mere 28 minutes to tell you all about it.

I’ve been talking to Rich about his Web Day Out talk, and let me tell you, you don’t want to miss it!

It’s gonna be a wild ride! Join me at Web Day Out in Brighton on 12 March 2026. Use JOIN_RICH to get 10% off and you’ll also get a free online ticket for State of the Browser.

Saying “No” In an Age of Abundance - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

In an age of abundance, restraint becomes the only scarce thing left, which means saying “no” is more valuable than ever.

I’m as proud of the things I haven’t generated as the things I have.

Stop generating, start thinking - localghost

Generated code is rather a lot like fast fashion: it looks all right at first glance but it doesn’t hold up over time, and when you look closer it’s full of holes. Just like fast fashion, it’s often ripped off other people’s designs. And it’s a scourge on the environment.

Coding Is When We’re Least Productive – Codemanship’s Blog

I’ve seen so many times how 10 lines of code can end up being worth £millions, and 10,000 ends up being worthless.

Jeremy Keith – beyond tellerrand Podcast

I really enjoyed this chat with Marc:

I recently sat down with Jeremy Keith for a spontaneous conversation that quickly turned into a deep dive into something we both care a lot about: events, community, and why we keep putting ourselves through the joy and pain of running conferences.

Towards the end of 2025, I wrote:

I think I might change things up in 2026. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to write all the little reviews at once, I think I should write a review as soon as I finish a book. Instead of holding onto my reckons for months, I can just set them free one at a time.

I’ll get the ball rolling with the first book I read in 2026.

I’ve mentioned before that one interesting lens to apply to modern retellings of the Greek myths is how they treat deities. Are gods and goddesses real in this story? Or is it a non-interventionist tale with a purely human cast? In her book The Shadow Of Perseus, Claire Heywood wrote about Perseus, Medusa, and Andromeda without any supernatural characters. Having been impressed by that, I figured I’d go back to investigate her debut, Daughters Of Sparta.

The framing device is one I hadn’t come across before. It follows the diverging stories of sisters Helen and Clytemnestra, flipping back and forth between the two throughout their lives. I’ve read plenty of takes on the Trojan war, and I’ve read plenty of takes on Clytemnestra’s revenge, but I think this is the first time they’ve been combined like this.

Overall, it works. There are inevitable time jumps. Some time periods are bound to get more attention than others. And at some point, the narrative just has to wrap up, even though we know there’s pleny more that follows afterwards.

All in all, a good addition to the list of modern retellings of classical Greek stories.

You Can Just Say No to the Data - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Appealing to data as the ultimate authority — especially when fueled by engineered desire — isn’t neutrality, it’s an abdication of responsibility.

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Some neat CSS from Tess that’s a great example of progressive enhancement; these book covers look good in all browsers, but they look even better in some.