Had a dark dream about being in a large building where the lifts and escalators never take me to the right floor. I wouldn’t call it a nightmare, more a mildly annoying purgatory. By the time I reached the floor, I had forgotten why I wanted to go there in the first place.
Someone joked the other day that, like Dorian Gray, I must have a picture in my attic locked away. I can confirm that is true. But instead of ageing, it slowly metamorphoses—first sprouting antennae, then hard carapace, until scuttling off the canvas.
In an office setting someone who didn’t know me very well referred to me as “Mozart sitting over there”. It was totally not in context, he looked confused with himself for saying that for a moment, then continued speaking about something not related. Obviously I’m no Mozart, but a particular quote by him is very true for me: “When I am … completely myself, entirely alone … or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.”
Flawed assumptions slip into us quietly, inherited from habit, culture, or authority, and we carry them as if they were self-evident truths. Rarely do we pause to question them; they feel too deeply woven into the fabric of thought. Yet time reshapes the world, and what once stood firm begins to crumble. Still, reason marches on, building its chains from foundations already cracked. The conclusions that follow seem unavoidable, yet they are only the echo of premises long outdated. It is in this silence—where the roots of thought remain unexamined—that error grows inevitable.
In the workshop of the mind
memory is no archivist;
it blends pigments of longing and fear,
painting over cracks
with colours we ache to believe.
We speak in a chorus of selves,
each vying for the final line,
each certain its version is true.
So we live as our own narrators,
weaving tales that seem seamless—
until the light shifts,
and the joins gleam like scars.
For most of my life, I ate meat. After deciding to notice that the animals I was eating are sentient, and opening my eyes to the cruelties of the meat trade, I stopped. I was first a pescatarian, then a vegetarian, and eventually a full vegan for several years. Now I’m mostly vegan, though I do eat some dairy—cheese, for example—and very occasionally fish. It’s a balance that works for me.
I don’t prescribe how others should live. Eating meat is still a cheaper and easier way to get the nutrients your body needs. People often say something like, “I’d never give up bacon,” but taste buds change—after a while, meat no longer appeals and can even make you feel nauseous.
It’s for each person to work out what’s best for themselves. But to make those decisions easier, food technology needs to make plant-based options cheaper, more nutritious, and tastier than meat.
We gather around our rectangles of light,
sharing warmth we cannot feel,
our eyes reflecting blue fire—
the oldest need
disguised as the newest god.
If Earth’s past is any guide, human expansion to Mars would almost certainly reproduce familiar patterns of rivalry. Once Martian settlements achieve self-sufficiency— able to generate their own air, water, energy, food, reproduce their population, and secure the materials and technology needed for industry—their dependence on Earth evaporates. Distance alone ensures that political authority from Earth becomes impractical; communication delays and supply constraints make direct control little more than symbolism. Independence follows as a matter of course.
With autonomy comes competition. Separate colonies, each managing scarce Martian resources—such as access to ice deposits, geothermal sites, or habitable caverns—would develop competing interests. On Earth, similar pressures produced millennia of conflict between proximal polities.
The power dynamic between planets would be sharply asymmetrical. Earth’s greater population and industrial base might suggest supremacy, yet a Martian society living deep within caverns—an architecture dictated by radiation shielding and thermal stability—would be naturally protected from nuclear attack. Earth, by contrast, remains exposed. Any advanced Martian polity with the capability to launch kinetic or nuclear strikes could threaten global devastation while remaining largely invulnerable in return.
In such circumstances, rivalry between Martian colonies and a strained, imbalanced relationship with Earth is not only plausible but historically consistent with how human societies behave.
Rob Walker 