An evolutionary tale Once upon a time, there were trillions of balls of dust on a very large piece of slate. The dust balls had formed from sticky bits of dust and were being blown around the slate by the wind. There were alternate periods of light and dark. Food…

In September last year I felt stuck. I was living in East London in a borough called Tower Hamlets. …

How I met the career coach The first two were straight off the top of a Google search. Lisa Larue, from Careerworx and Corinne Mills of Personal Career Management. Both offered free introductory chats and were available the week I called them. Lisa held a full house: two degrees, three…

Advice from a veteran — It might seem dramatic to compare the most talked-about dating app to a battleground. Unless you’ve used it. Scores of men and women drop explosive chat-up lines on each other. Vile perverts fire off lewd comments in every direction. My own tour lasted five years. I’ll never be the same…

A wave of excitement washed over journalists around the globe yesterday, as they frantically rushed to their keyboards to hack out the latest “Artificial Intelligence is going to kill us all” style headlines. Facebook had abandoned a test of its latest AI bots after they started communicating to each other…

Behind the roads. Under the shadows of houses and offices throughout London, there run some canals. As well as hosting a lot of fish and moorhens, the canals contain several hundred boats, which are inhabited by the 0.0001% of Londoners who choose to make their homes upon the water. The…

A review of House of Cards Season 5 The problem with promoting a character to President three seasons into a five-season show is that once he’s been shot and suspected of murder in the fourth, he becomes disposable in the fifth. Even if he’s Frank Underwood. As what feels like…

A way through the forest There once was an acorn named Jack. Like all acorns, Jack longed to become buried in the soil, so he could turn into a beautiful tree. Unfortunately, Jack the acorn was plagued by all kinds of debilitating thoughts. “I’m not a good enough little acorn” …

18 questions If only. If only they’d disciplined me. Supported me. Understood me. Financed me. Liked me. Fed me. Quality parenting is like happiness. Unevenly distributed and widely misunderstood. Still, that doesn’t prevent us from analysing the crud out of it. Disclaimer Due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter…