Odds and Ends #16: The tech guy making the world worse

Surprisingly I'm not talking about Elon.

Photo by Charlie Seaman on Unsplash

Hello! After a week off for Important Parking Chat, your newsletter-within-a-newsletter is back with a round-up of links, shorter takes and this week… an obituary.

But don’t worry, the sad bit is only short. So read on for my take on how AI is revolutionising music but ruining the web, the return of Doctor Who… and how the Royal Mail might finally be on to me for all of my Postcode Address File activism.

Terry O’Malley (1931-2023)

There was sad news in my family this week as my last remaining grandparent, my Grandad, died at the age of 92.

I’m not really the sort of writer who can write with any semblance of emotion, but I wanted to mark his passing in my newsletter. He led a good life, and lived long enough to have been both a child evacuee from London during the war, and to have experienced Wii Sports Boxing – as you can see in the video above (which over the last 16 years has somehow accrued over 77,000 views).

I’m also incredibly proud of the choice he made to donate his body to medical science. We’re not really sure exactly what motivated his decision, though according to my parents he had been determined to do so for many years. And this really is the most noble way to go – to help train future generations of doctors and scientists so that we can continue to build a better world¹. So perhaps, in a sense, he was the original O’Malleyist.

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And now for an intensely awkward gear-shift, as we return to our usual round-up of interesting links and shorter takes.