Archive • The Nexus Files • Buttondown

October 13, 2024

I’m broadly a fan of the BBC, but one criticism often aimed at them is of taking such an overly pedantic point of neutrality that they’ll treat both sides of...

The Middle English Creole Hypothesis

September 21, 2024

Or how those bloody Normans screwed up our language Are you an English-speaking monoglot like me? Feel faintly ashamed that you can only speak the one...

How Do You Tell If Someone's A Vegan?

September 13, 2024

So the other day I had an electrician, Luke, round to move some plug sockets (🇺🇸power outlets). We’ve met a few times to get quotes, and he spent a couple of...

Phoenix From Hacked Ashes: My New Author's Website

September 1, 2024

Yesterday, I hit my various social media accounts (Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, and Facebook) with the news that I had a new author’s website, which can be...

What Is A Barbecue?

August 17, 2024

“Words have meanings” is a hackneyed phrase oft deployed by those who would like the world to be simple and neat, and while they’re correct in believing that...

Why Atheists And Theists Are Doomed To Talk Past Each Other

July 28, 2024

I recently came across a post on Threads that stated the following: Someone said today, "Atheism is also a religion. It is the belief that God does not...

Bluesky vs Threads: A Tale of Two Posts

June 16, 2024

A while ago, I came across an interesting distinction between the two types of social media network, that being connection-based and interest-based. Put...

On Social Anxiety (SF Convention Version)

April 13, 2024

A couple of weeks ago, having a made a somewhat fleeting one-day visit to Levitation, the 2024 Eastercon at Telford, I made the following observation: A...

Why My Tesla Is The Best, And Worse, Car I Have Ever Owned

April 7, 2024

I love my Tesla Model 3. It's a dream to drive, has a bigger battery than our previous car (a Nissan Leaf), and the Supercharger network makes longer...

He Ain't A Third-Level Fighter/Rogue, He's My Brother

March 27, 2024

My roleplaying group have just started a new Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) 5th Edition campaign with Tom(1) doing the GMing(2). Notes:If you're looking for...

What Everyone Misunderstands About The UK Citizenship Test

March 24, 2024

It's possibly a failing in me, but hypocrisy angers me more than malevolence. If you're going to be evil, at least have the decency to be honest. Don't try...

The Day I Won A Free Trip On Concorde... The Day Before I Took A Free Trip On Concorde

March 16, 2024

We never win anything. That's always been the mantra in my family, and while mostly true it does ignore two things: we're in possession of most of the forms...

Why Wanting-To-Be-A-Writer Is A More Popular Hobby Than Playing Dungeons and Dragons

March 14, 2024

Back in the largely pre-Internet 1980s and 1990s, the British roleplaying community had one big dream: a professional, monthly roleplaying magazine available...

Who Killed Humour SF/F? Why The Genre of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett is Now Dead

March 9, 2024

A decade or so ago, I attended an Eastercon event where a panel of writers, agents, and publishers advised would-be-writers on the subject of how to get...

Why Writers (But Also Everyone) Should Avoid Stereotyping

March 3, 2024

According to many Northerners, this man doesn't exist Last week I was back home in London, and one morning I accompanied my mother to the chemist (pharmacy)...

Why A Failed Camouflage Pattern Is Going To Get This Build-A-Bear Killed

February 25, 2024

A bear (rabbit?) who won't survive five minutes once he hits an active war zone Marx once said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as...

The Saddest Story I Ever Heard

February 17, 2024

I need to start by saying that this isn't my story; hell it wasn't even the story of the bloke who told it to me. I can't even credit the teller of the...

Vision: The Stuff I Didn't Say In My Previous Post

February 15, 2024

When I was a teenager, I played a lot of RPGs with my friends*, although calling them "friends" is perhaps stretching it a bit, given that of the four of...

What A Huge Indoor Waterpark Can Teach Us About Vision

February 13, 2024

My view sitting in a cafe at Tropical Islands resort, imagining I'm in a domed Martian or Lunar city When I was younger, my teachers taught me something I...

Apologies

January 28, 2024

About half an hour ago, I sent off a post on this newsletter (the first proper once in its new Nazi-free, Buttondown incarnation). And then immediately after...

I Don't Get Lunar Starship (SpaceX's Starship HLS)

January 28, 2024

For those who don't know, nearly three years ago NASA selected a lunar-landing variant of SpaceX's Starship as the craft to land humans on the Moon as part...

Testing, Testing, One Two Three...

January 21, 2024

<tap> <tap> Can everyone hear me at the back? Okay, so this is basically a test email to try and figure out how Buttondown works. From my initial experience...

The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back

The story so far (a.k.a. "My God! It's full of links!")

Confessions of A Hapless Monoglot

December 13, 2023

On how the Swedish for "vegan" took me down a linguistic and grammatical rabbit-hole...

Is Die Hard A Christmas Movie?

December 11, 2023

...And what this question can tell us about the meaning of art

Nuts & Bolts: Richard Osman

December 9, 2023

A structural analysis of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club Books

When Software Turns Evil

November 18, 2023

On how my elderly parents were utterly bewildered by some seriously nasty, software updates...

Beyond Plotting vs Pantsing (to Plot-Plotting vs Pants-Plotting

November 13, 2023

On why there's more to plotting than simply plotting...

My Dream Campaign

November 4, 2023

The game I'd like to gamesmaster...

The Parable of the Chieftain Tank

October 23, 2023

How your opinions on the safety or otherwise of 4x4s/SUVs reveal a lot about how you view the world and the other people who live in it

Digital Having and Digital Have-Notting

October 2, 2023

On how ownership of a smartphone is now a prerequisite for participating in society

Curating Your Social Media Feed

September 16, 2023

a.k.a. How I made Bluesky work for me

Land Of The Free?

September 9, 2023

A tongue-in-cheek look at the USA’s freedom and liberty from an Englishman’s point of view (a.k.a. the shit that Americans put up with that simply would not fly this side of the Pond)

If I Were Prime Minister

August 31, 2023

The four ignored laws I'd enforce on my first day in office

My experience and thoughts of the editing process

Surprisingly Late Scientific Discoveries

June 28, 2023

Or how my 1970s children's science book lied to me!

The Best Dream I Ever Had

June 19, 2023

Or How I Didn't Actually Appear On Masterchef

Refill Shops

June 14, 2023

How they work, why you should try them

How I Plot Novels

June 11, 2023

My spreadsheet based toolkit for plotting a novel

To Writers Group Or Not To Writers Group

June 9, 2023

On why a writers’ support group might be what you’re looking for

Life Hacks Of 1955

June 3, 2023

What a "gadgets" guide from 1955 can tell us about how society and consumption has changed since then

National Identity, Regional Identity, and Actual Identity

May 24, 2023

On how you can feel like a foreigner in your own country

The Impossibly High Hurdle For Self-Driving Cars

May 20, 2023

Why human factors and perceptions of acceptable risks may keep self-driving cars off the roads

Separating the F from the SF in SF/F

May 15, 2023

On defining a difference between science-fiction and fantasy

Cool Bombs

May 14, 2023

Self-contain nuggets of wonder that can bring fiction alive

On How Plot Construction Reverses Cause and Effect

May 11, 2023

A simple plot-building trick in which you create your plot backwards

Fixing Eurovision (In Both Senses Of The Word)

May 9, 2023

Why the UK should trade its automatic qualification for the final for something much, much better (other countries may disagree)

Now That’s Magic!

May 7, 2023

Or what games/dungeon masters can “steal” from Charles III’s Coronation