Search results

Wages/freelance rates over here are a lot higher than in London. If you're solely reliant on your own income, then things like medical insurance and cost of living eat into that pretty quickly. But it's a pretty good place to come and earn for a few years if they'll let you in.

My family, most of whom are nurses and teachers, would say that what I do isn't work. But I do freelance a couple of days a week; mostly out of anxiety about being out of the loop and then not being able to get back in should I ever need to.

My wife is English and we live in California now. Her family aren't mega rich compared to the kind of people we live around these days (billionaires just a couple of streets over), but they've definitely got a few quid.

I've always enjoyed annoying my wife with a line from a movie I can't remember the name of. Someone asks "how did you make your money" and the guy replies along the lines of... "I made it the old-fashioned way. I married it."

Got the same thing in the US - they call them "superfund" sites. One around here is so bad that the buildings they built on it have to maintain positive air pressure to stop the gas leaking from the soil getting inside and poisoning everyone who works there.

All I can remember about London Orbital is that he keeps wanging on about Bugsby's Marshes, as though the name is evocative rather than mundane.

I was gonna use a line from Point Omega as the epigraph of a novel I wrote about silicon valley and transhumanism, but alas, no takers. when it went on submission.

"They sometimes looked unsettled when they noticed me leaning against the wall opposite the TV: a lingering presence in the half-light, the whites of my eyes flickering suddenly into view when lit by the screen." The whole thing is full of clangers. And an irritating pompousness about...

I was in Waimea Bay last year (just looking, not surfing). Beautiful little beach. Was taking the bus to Haleiwa from our hotel and along the way there were loads of local kids getting on and off with their gear moving between beaches. Going back to Hawaii in a couple of weeks, but I don't think...

The young conservatives are trying to co-opt Mark https://thecritic.co.uk/Ghosts-of-British-life/

Yeah, it's all a bit of a smokescreen, as the GOP tends to raise deficits faster than anyone.

I joined during the pandemic, so I've never actually been on site at the place I work (and don't intend to, as I negotiated to be a fully remote worker when they hired me), but I don't think there's much diversity from what I've seen on Zoom. I live in Palo Alto, so you do see quite a lot of...

I have a pretty modest job as a writer/editor for a middle-rank tech company. My wife is the high flier (and the reason we came over here/qualified for visas etc.)

Thanks - I've popped back a few times over the past year, but not to post much. It was hearing about Mark Fisher that brought me back originally after a decade or so away. From mid-twenties precarity in London to early 40s relative comfort in Silicon Valley, Dissensus feels very different...

These Madison Cawthorn leaks are pretty wild. The way Republicans go after their own when they step out of line is something to behold.

Specifically, trying to interpret it only in the sense that it was understood/intended at the time of writing. Which as intellectual frameworks go is pretty fucking idiotic for one of the three bodies charged with guiding a country into the future.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure how or why they've done it this way. The court-packing strategy has been in place for at least a decade and probably more, and each time they get a chance they put a conservative Catholic on the bench. Being lapsed in a family of deeply conservative Catholics, I...

Not surprising. For some reason all five Republican appointees are Catholics (with Sotomayor the only Catholic Dem appointee) despite the country being only 20% Catholic (and that 20% being famously selective in which elements of doctrine they follow).

I was tempted, but had to be satisfied with online scans/transcriptions. I think most of the stuff is out there, though some of it is only accessible through archive.org. I did buy myself a first edition of Crowley's 'The Soul of Osiris' when I finished my first draft, but it was a fair bit cheaper.

California seems to have a lot more remote-friendly employers. After being self-employed for 12 years, when I was offered a job over here I asked to be fully remote and they only put up minimal resistance (getting them to agree to a three-day week was harder, but they also gave in on that too).