There’s been widespread criticism of their lacklustre Coronavirus management strategies — so why are Johnson and Trump seeing a huge spike in their approval ratings? — “The perpetrator of a confidence trick (or ‘con trick’) is often referred to as a confidence (or ‘con’) man, or con-artist.” Make them think it’s their idea Sometimes the origins of common phrases aren’t immediately obvious. For me at least, the term ‘con-man’ is a good example. Oddly, I only recently learnt what the ‘con’ element of the term meant. (Of course, I knew what a ‘con-man’ was — I’d just never properly interrogated the term.)

The Coronavirus crisis blasts light through the gaping holes in Western economic ideology. Can our collective future afford such a delicate system? “…if it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands.” History is a catalogue of sensational collapses. Every advanced society eventually meets the aggressor that it can’t overcome — natural or economic. …

Coronavirus has invoked a historic, government-backed halt on work. What happens in a rentier economy when capitalism folds? A storm made of storms Coronavirus is a storm of ten-thousand smaller storms. Originally brazenly minimised as some exotic, tropical virus that Britain could somehow fend off with a giant Union Jack, a red-arrow flyby and a box of buttery crumpets, Coronavirus is now here, properly. A sitting Conservative government has sent everybody in the…

To kill the Coronavirus, global air travel is cancelled. Now airlines across the world are in crisis, and begging for state bailouts Growing up, my mother would say something to me that now, I think about a lot. It goes: “Be careful who you stamp on on your way to the top — you see them all again on your way back down.” Anyway, on a related note the airline industry is…

Post-industrial society has been plunged into a historic healthcare and trade crisis, and now capitalism needs to be paused. Will a global healthcare emergency transform healthcare and economics as we know it? The wheels are rapidly coming off of capitalism’s runaway train, and we’re in a collective, televised race to repair it. With more than 225,000 official cases globally, and nearly 10,000 fatalities (at time of counting — a figure widely acknowledged as being hugely underreported), a highly contagious virus is rapidly…

Find out how Python 3’s function annotations can help you write clearer, more human-friendly Python functions. — Straight as an arrow If you’ve been developing Python applications for any length of time, you’ll occasionally find corners of the language that you’re not immediately familiar with. …

Handling exceptions in Python is a little different than in some other languages. So, when and how do we use try-except? — A Quick Intro If you’ve ever been confused at how or when to use try-except blocks in Python, you’re not alone. Let’s take a look at what try-except is, when it’s best used, and how we use it in Python. First, let’s very quickly think about what the word exception means. …

Internet technologies are more sophisticated, intelligent and invasive than they’ve been yet. So how realistic is it to truly disappear online? — Thumbing through social media? Checking out some new shoes online? Reading about President Cheeto’s latest failure? Nice. You’re screaming, at high-speed, through hundreds of connected computers - and you are being watched. …

The global political power system is rapidly re-organising amidst a storm of digital propaganda. So why are the poor protecting the interests of the class that are exploiting them? While scratching around for some Christmas cheer through the oft disgraced but equally celebrated ‘Poet Laureate of LA Low Life’, Charles Bukowksi, I wandered upon an old favourite. Paraphrased, it, goes: “The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose…