Minor Spillage

I had a training session at work, in which my colleagues and I were told that Chat GPT can’t generate an image of a completely full glass of wine. This is because nobody ever fills a wine glass right to the top, and if anyone ever has done, apparently nobody has ever posted a photograph of it on the internet. The AI has nothing to go on, because AI cannot imagine; it can only scavenge. Here is a comprehensive list of impossible things which ChatGPT failed to create for me*: - A glass of wine full to the brim - A plane flying in reverse - An inside-out cat - Paul McCartney losing his temper  - A coherent episode of The One Show - A McDonald’s apple pie at a mouth-friendly temperature  - Lime bikes that aren’t in the way when not in use - A return train journey where both trains run on time - An affordable flat to rent in London - A properly-funded NHS - A billionaire-funded trip to space that isn’t pointless - A way to always remember your bag for life - A Reform MP with no sec...

Real fear is on the inside.  That's where real fear lives. Everybody thinks it's about the people around you. The strangers coming to get you. The outside coming in. But real fear?  It's about the inside getting out.  That's when you need to be scared.  And that’s good. You can run away from all those strangers. Those “monsters” stalking your dreams.  But you can't run away from yourself.  Unless...  You end that “something” inside you.  The worry...  The anguish...  The poison… Cut it off at the roots.  Cleanse your doubt.  End your fear. Ryan Croughan is the unfortunate soul who keeps the Minor Spillage ship sailing. Sailing? Probably better to say paddling. As well as producing, he finds time to present and provide voiceovers. He also says he doesn't like the sound of his own voice. Bit odd really.

I'm going to make a case to you. A case for derelict buildings. Why? Because I love them. They have so many stories to tell. Where I live, there's an abandoned factory, rotting by the side of a railway track. It's not a very nice building. Some derilct buildings are nice. They're libraries, or manor houses, or ornate, imposing police stations. This one is a brick, boxy, monster of a building. But in its own right... it's beautiful. Not for how it looks, but for what is was. When I see a new build, a fresh, sparkling totem, standing at the centre of a city, it's exciting. It's a place that's about to create memories. A place where people will make mistakes, where people will fall in love, and, where people will (no doubt) trip over in a very undignified fashion when they go down the stairs. New places, like children, are amazing and wonderful and are about to bring so many stories into the world. But with derelict buildings... these are stories long past....

When I wake up, the first thought I think is that everything in our lives is going drastically wrong. The second thought I think is that I probably shouldn’t have bothered waking up. Maybe it’s the waking up bit that I’m getting all wrong. Maybe it’s the waking up bit that I totally misconstrued along with the rest of humanity. Perhaps we weren’t meant to wake up. That’s got to be it. That’s the clincher. Nobody thought there was any decent reason to get out of bed until somebody somewhere thought it would be an awfully good idea if they could clip their toenails. They just had to go and ruin it. Before we all started to wake up the future of humanity seemed so positively bright. But no, toenails. And so people started to wake up. At first people tried this whole waking up fad just to clip their toenails. It was the passing trend of the day. Their feet used to feel so cripplingly heavy under the wrath of the eternally expanding toenail. But then, we made the enormous intellectual leap ...