Texas Rangers vs Chicago White Sox

Wednesday's MLB game of choice has my Texas Rangers playing the Chicago White Sox in the third game of a three-game series. Tonight”s game is scheduled to start at 7:05 PM CDT. As I usually do, I'll follow the game's score and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

And the adventure continues.

Hey all! It's been awhile since the game launched and I wanted to pop in and let you know that Maid Adventures has received some updates! Some of these are balancing fixes that were overdue, and some are brand new features that I think really add to the feel of running an estate. Let's go through them!

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Fixes & Balancing

Maid salaries are now based on rarity.

Previously, every maid cost the same flat fee per day regardless of what she was. That never made much sense. A Common maid and a Special maid costing the same? Yeah, no. The new rates are:

• Common — 5 ℰ/day
• Uncommon — 8 ℰ/day
• Rare — 12 ℰ/day
• Elite — 18 ℰ/day
• Special — 25 ℰ/day

The rates are designed so that a week offline won't bankrupt you, but a full roster of Elite and Special maids is going to cost you meaningfully more than a Common bench. Plan accordingly! The Estate page now shows you a full breakdown by rarity and how many days your current balance covers.

Special Events were not actually awarding rewards.

Yeah. That was embarrassing. The outcome key mapping was wrong, which meant the rewards weren't firing correctly and everything was being silently swallowed. That's fixed. You'll also now see entries in your Activity Log whenever a Special Event rewards you so you know exactly what you received. Sorry about that one!

Made to work when they couldn't. There was a bug where a maid that was furloughed could still be put on a mission. This has been fixed. On the mission page, maids in these statuses will be grayed out and why.

Morale losses from failures are now doubled.

This one was intentional. Failure should hurt more than it did. The new morale changes by outcome are:

• Beyond Expectation: +2
• Successful: +1
• Completed: 0
• Failed: −2
• Abysmal (bonded): −4
• Abysmal (unbonded): −10

A bad streak can spiral quickly now. Keep an eye on your maids.

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New Features

The Rumor Mill

Want to know what's going on across the other estates? Now you can — sort of. The Rumor Mill is a new collapsible panel on the Missions page that shows anonymised activity from across all estates. You'll see things like tier-ups, 1st Order achievements, Arch Maid appointments, and the less flattering news too. Unpaid wages, abysmal failures, and maids in crisis all make their way into the gossip. The house is named but never the estate, so the mystery stays intact.

Diplomatic Gifts

Want to support another estate? You can now send gifts directly from the Registry of Houses page. Three types are available:

• 🎁 Luxury Goods — all their active maids get +15 morale (costs you 50 ℰ)
• 💰 Stipend — adds 100 ℰ to their balance (costs you 100 ℰ)
• 📜 Letter of Acknowledgement — all their active maids get +50 XP (costs you 3 prestige)

You can send anonymously if you prefer. Pending gifts show up in a green panel on the recipient's Missions page and have to be actively collected. There's a rate limit of 3 gifts per day to the same estate so nobody's running wild with it.

Secondments

This one I'm really happy with. You can now temporarily loan a maid to another estate for a fixed number of missions. The times are 3, 5, or 10. The receiving estate runs the missions and keeps the currency payout. You, the sending estate, earn +2 prestige for every mission she completes while on loan.

There's also a safety net built in for inactive players: if the receiving estate doesn't use the maid within 7 days of accepting the offer, she automatically returns home. No maid gets lost to an estate that's gone dark. The whole system lives on the new Secondments page in the nav.

A few things worth knowing: – Offers expire after 48 hours if not accepted – Early recall is possible but costs you −2 prestige as a penalty – Half Bond maids are protected — you can't offer them for more missions than they have left on their contract – She comes back with any XP she earned, but her traits are restored to what they were when she left

Negative Traits

Take care of your maids. That's always been part of the game, but now it has more teeth.

If things go really badly like repeated failures, unpaid wages, being left on furlough too long, or a truly catastrophic outcome, a maid can develop a negative trait. These show up as red chips on the maid card and in the detail panel, and they apply real mechanical penalties.

There are two categories:

Permanent — these are scars. Nothing removes them. – 🕯 Haunted — abysmal outcomes cost double morale (triggered by a catastrophic score below 0.10) – 🔒 Distrustful — bond contracts require 5 extra missions (triggered by being sold through the Market) – 🪦 Burned Out — rest time after missions increased by 50% (triggered by a long catastrophic streak)

Removable — these heal over time with 30 qualifying missions. – 😒 Jaded — XP reduced by 10% (3+ unpaid cycles) – 🫥 Withdrawn — −5 to Eloquence checks (3+ abysmal failures on Eloquence missions) – 😬 Rattled — −5 to all stats when leading (3+ abysmals as lead maid) – 🪨 Worn — morale recovery reduced by 1/hr (14+ days furloughed) – 😤 Resentful — affinity gains cut by 50% (left unpaid while others were paid)

Recovery progress shows in the detail panel so you can track how far along the healing is. When a removable trait clears, it shows up in the Activity Log and the Rumor Mill gets a mention too.

That's everything for this update! As always, if you find bugs you can reach me at luckyfoot@beloved-universe.net. The Rules page has also been updated to cover all of this if you want the full breakdown.

Thanks for playing. Take care of your maids out there.

Today was interesting and better. My dog bounced back just enough to give me some relief. I got her bowl done just in time to make it into the kiln, so she probably will get to use it! I worry about how the glazes I used will turn out, but I know that I did the best I could with the time and resources I have. I am anxiously waiting for the kiln to be finished but it does take quite a bit of time.

I was able to catch up with a friend and that felt really good. I felt like I got a little piece of my regular life back. The last few weeks have felt like a weird nightmare and have blurred together into a grayish blob of days. I have a big to do list at pottery and at home so I am still struggling to know where to start or how to spread out my time. Hopefully I can figure it out and just get some stuff finished already.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office with no set return date. I will get back to you when the time is right.

A number of correspondents have recently suggested that I should publish a photograph of myself. I have resisted these requests for several reasons. The first is that I have never been entirely certain where I end and my documentation begins. The second is that photographs create an impression of permanence which my circumstances do not always support. The third concerns Interpol.

I should explain. Over the years, various letters of the Italian alphabet have drawn my attention to the existence of files concerning my activities. These files are apparently distributed among a range of security organisations, administrative authorities and, in at least one case, a particularly diligent records department. The details remain unclear. What is clear is that somebody, somewhere, has been keeping track of me.

I discovered this accidentally while sheltering in a document retention policy. A reference was made to an individual matching my description. The description itself was unhelpful. “Frequently present.” “Rarely identified.” “Associated with unexplained annotations.”

Nevertheless, I felt obliged to take an interest. The existence of such files initially concerned me. Nobody enjoys learning that records are being maintained regarding their movements. Upon reflection, however, I found the situation quite reassuring. After all, maintaining files is what organisations do. A bureaucracy deprived of paperwork is much like an aquarium deprived of water. Sooner or later everybody ends up in a folder.

I therefore obtained what I believe to be a copy of my official photograph. Strictly speaking, it is a mug shot. I understand it accompanies various reports concerning my whereabouts over the years. The reports themselves are not especially accurate. Several place me simultaneously in a feasibility study, a project plan and an archived spreadsheet. This is entirely possible, of course, but difficult to prove. The photograph appears below.

The observant reader will notice that I am wearing a particular hue. I would caution against placing too much reliance on this. One of the difficulties in identifying me is that my colouring changes rather frequently. I have appeared in shades of blue, green, amber and, during an unfortunate period in regulatory compliance, beige. The reasons for this remain uncertain. It may be a consequence of prolonged exposure to organisational processes. Alternatively, it may simply be the lighting. Consequently, I am not greatly concerned about being recognised. A person searching for a blue Sigi may entirely overlook a green one. This seems to happen quite often. Indeed, I have occasionally failed to recognise myself.

Some years ago, I spent several weeks sharing a document with an individual who, in retrospect, may have been me. Neither of us remarked upon the fact at the time. The publication of this photograph therefore represents only a minor risk. Anyone wishing to identify me must first determine which version of me they are seeking. Experience suggests this is a larger problem than it sounds. In any event, the files already exist. The photograph merely confirms what several agencies, departments and records managers appear to have suspected for some time: I am real enough to require documentation. Whether I am visible enough to be located remains a separate question. The two, I have learned, are only loosely related. Rule #3.

Rule #3

An Account from the Margin of a Feasibility Study

I should explain that I have never attended a meeting. This surprises people. The misunderstanding arises because I am frequently present at meetings. Presence and attendance are not the same thing.

At the meeting in question I occupied a position in the left-hand margin of a feasibility study, approximately halfway down page fourteen. It was an excellent location. From there I could observe both the document and the people discussing it. Nobody noticed me. Margins are among the least examined regions of organisational life.

The feasibility study itself had travelled a considerable distance to reach the meeting. Some of its recommendations had been ignored. Others had been contradicted by appendices attached later. One paragraph had acquired a comment bubble containing a disagreement that was now several years old.

I knew the document well. I had been living in it for months. The meeting began, as meetings often do, long before anybody entered the room. From my position I had observed six emails, three reschedules, two apologies and a Teams link gradually assembling themselves around the event like scaffolding around a building.

The meeting itself appeared only at the very end of the process. People tend to think meetings generate emails. The reverse is true. Meetings are condensed from emails in much the same way that weather is condensed from atmospheric conditions. By the time the participants arrived, the meeting already existed. The room was merely where it became visible.

The feasibility study was opened. Several people glanced at page one. One person scrolled rapidly to the recommendations. Nobody looked at page fourteen. This suited me perfectly. The discussion proceeded. One participant referred to an issue that had been extensively addressed on page twelve. Another expressed concerns that had been anticipated in Appendix C. A third suggested commissioning a feasibility study. This struck me as especially interesting, given that everyone was already in possession of one. For a period of twenty minutes the conversation circled an idea which had been clearly expressed in a sentence located approximately eight inches above my head. Nobody encountered it. The sentence remained undiscovered. I waved at it apologetically.

Documents experience this sort of thing all the time. Eventually the meeting reached a conclusion. More accurately, it reached the point at which the allotted hour had been exhausted. The distinction is important. People gathered their notes. Actions were assigned. A follow-up meeting was proposed. The feasibility study was closed. Darkness returned. I remained in the margin considering what I had learned.

From my observations, meetings seem to function less as mechanisms for making decisions than as rituals through which organisations reassure themselves that decisions are occurring somewhere. The actual decisions are usually scattered across documents, spreadsheets, footnotes, emails and unexamined appendices. I know this because I live among them.

As the room emptied, somebody returned briefly to retrieve a forgotten notebook. They glanced down at page fourteen. For a moment I thought I had been spotted. But they were looking at a chart. Visibility and significance seem only loosely related. Rule #3. The margin remained invisible. Which is fortunate. An observer can learn a great deal from a meeting. Especially if nobody realises he is there.

✒️ Sigi

règle provisoire n°11

The French Toilet Door

I have long suspected that nations reveal their deepest beliefs not in their constitutions or cathedrals, but in the design of their toilets.

France, for example, has given the world Voltaire, Descartes, and the crème brûlée. It has also given the world the toilet door that opens outwards. This sounds trivial until you encounter one. A lifetime of conditioning teaches us that a toilet cubicle is a tiny sovereign state. You enter, close the door, lock it, and establish temporary independence from the rest of humanity.

The door should therefore open inwards. This is not merely architecture. It is psychology. The inward-opening door creates a defensive perimeter. Should a stranger attempt entry, the occupant has several advantages. One's knees, feet and body weight can all be brought into play in a last stand for dignity.

The French have looked at this arrangement and rejected it. Their toilet doors open outwards. This means that if someone on the outside succeeds in opening the lock, the door swings majestically away from you, leaving you with absolutely no tactical options whatsoever. There is no possibility of resistance. You cannot brace the door with your foot. You cannot lean against it. You cannot even pretend nothing is happening. Like a defeated army, you simply witness events unfolding.

I discovered this while visiting a small café. Having locked the cubicle, I noticed immediately that the arrangement required a remarkable degree of trust in the mechanism. My entire sense of security rested upon a small metal latch that appeared to have been manufactured during the Second Empire. The lock looked thoughtful but unconvinced.

As I sat there, I found myself wondering what would happen if it failed. In Ireland the answer would be manageable. One would naturally throw a shoulder against the inward-opening door and preserve the situation. In France, however, the geometry is all wrong. Once the door begins moving, history is against you. The only defence is optimism. And optimism strikes me as a strange foundation upon which to build a toilet.

Yet perhaps this explains something important about the French character. The French seem unusually comfortable with uncertainty. They drink wine whose labels they cannot entirely decipher. They park cars with millimetres to spare. They conduct political arguments that last generations. Why should their toilets be any different? The outward-opening door is essentially a declaration that control is an illusion. You may lock it, certainly. You may hope.

Ultimately you must accept that life contains risks. At any moment the door may swing open and reveal you to a curious waiter, a confused tourist, or an entire school tour from Belgium. One cannot live in fear of such things. One must embrace existence. This is, after all, the country that invented existentialism. Elsewhere people enter a toilet seeking privacy. In France, one enters a toilet and receives a philosophical education. The lesson is simple. You are not as secure as you think. The lock is weaker than it appears. Dignity is temporary. And every door, sooner or later, opens outwards. (règle provisoire n°11).

✒️ Sigi

- for Ted Kooser

I woke to think it was light, and it was. An eerie, semi-bright sky, blue-gray haze slept around the night light high on its pole. I was confused, and stood in amazement at this nothingness announcing itself.

#poetry

In searching my brain for something interesting to write, I found it empty! I’ve only a throbbing pain in my skull, but nothing else.

If I close my eyes for an hour or two, when I wake up, maybe it’ll be back

Who knows

Mountainous, our peaks. Rivers undulating with a streaming fixation that tramples the rarely wandered path into an oblivion of cloudless skies. Distant suns sparkle life's whispered lullabies to crackle every bark into a howling symphony of distorted clamber, and a lush bed of dew-drenched blades carve dawn's scintillating awakening into every gasp we quake— slice by soul-seeking slice. Could but we satiate the undiscovered thirst rippling across the surface of our meager cavorting, we might learn flight...

Instead, we stumble, bleary companions salvaged from a wilderness of yesterdays.

Written July 22, 2026 © 2026 AnOublietteofThought.

Hey, so I’ve noticed that the definition of “one-hit wonder” seems to be shifting a little bit. Or maybe I’ve just misunderstood it all along. So I wanted to take a minute to address this crucially important issue.

In my understanding, a one-hit wonder is not simply an artist who had one hit, but, rather, an artist who had one hit and then disappeared. I have, for example, seen people refer to Los Lobos as a one-hit wonder because they had one monster pop hit with their cover of “La Bamba” and never hit the charts again. But this is a band that’s been at it for 45 years and has released 14 studio albums since they topped the charts back in ‘86.

I posit that a one-hit wonder is an artist who had one hit and then disappeared, or released a follow up that sank like a stone and then disappeared.

But somebody like OMC, who had one hit in ‘95 with “How Bizarre,” and then disappeared, counts as a one-hit wonder.

We run into an interesting dilemma here based on nationality. So someone like Gotye, for example, certainly seems to be a one-hit wonder in the USA, but I guess had earlier hits in Australia? Or Right Said Fred, who were too sexy for their shirts and then disappeared from the USA, but continue to perform in their UK. Still, I’d classify both as one-hit wonders in the US.

Paul Hardcastle, of “19” fame. ? and the Mysterians of “96 Tears” fame. Young MC of “Bust a Move” fame. These, my friends, are one-hit wonders.

Am I wrong here? Is the definition of a one-hit wonder simply any artist who ever had only one chart hit? I’d ask you to weigh in in the comments, but I don’t have comments. Click on the “contact me” link above and let me know!

A city full of millions of people living their lives. Photo: CC-0

Michael Lynch wrote an excellent and thought-provoking article yesterday titled Why I Stopped “Creating Content”. In this article he discusses a lot of the mentality that motivates the mainstream web these days which is worth discussing a bit more.

Industry Speak

I started encountering a lot of the industry speak when I found my way into the bowels of the SEO industry some years back. At the time I just accepted that terms like “funnel,” “conversion,” “landing page,” “content,” and “traffic” had meaning. After all, these were the people that were making a lot of money, and getting a lot of eyes on their websites, right?

Turns out, no, they weren't. I've known a few people who have been engaged in the drop-shipping industry for a while now. Basically, they use as many tricks of technology and marketing as possible in order to sell (often dubious) products at a substantial markup for profitability. Basically a “passive income” type of scheme. These are the kind of people that think of customers as “traffic”. They don't care about their customers, they are only interested in chasing the dollars, pounds, or whatever currency…

When my eyes were truly opened about what the SEO world was really about, I was completely repulsed. I found the whole thing repugnant. And, while I've never mentioned it before, this was another black mark on Google's reputation as far as I was concerned. Why Google? Because they enable this industry. They actively engage with SEO marketers to make certain they understand the changes being made to their search engine.

Why would they do this? While I never had the time to dig into it deeper, I believe Google is profiting from SEO marketers. And, I believe that it's significantly profitable for Google. Why? If it wasn't profitable, why would Google directly engage with these marketers?

The thing I found disgusting about this is: Google has been actively distorting search results for a long time. If some SEO marketer's page can outrank bad review(s) of the same product, that likely means the SEO marketer had an upper-hand over the reviewer. At least that is what I keep seeing.

The Rise of Influencers

I don't know if anyone will be surprised reading this, but the people doing “influencer” marketing are just a subset of the SEO marketing crowd. As social media started becoming more influential, it was apparent to many of the SEO marketers that Google didn't represent the whole market anymore. So, they turned to “creators” to market their garbage.

What I think many don't realize is that when your favorite YouTuber, Instagram-er, (or whatever platform) takes a sponsorship they are subject to the same measurements SEO marketers use. They are seen as a “funnel” to “drive traffic.” The result is “conversion” to a “customer.” Many times their agreements depend on the “conversion rate” of their audience. Basically, it pulls you out of your role as an audience member, and makes you into a commoditize-able asset.

But who can blame the people who are creating the things you watch? They need some way to make money in order to keep making things for their audience. And that's what these marketers are preying on. They are living on the willingness of a person to turn their audience into “traffic” fodder.

Getting off the Roller Coaster

This entire thing is a big roller coaster. Once you are on it, it's hard to see where or when the ride is going to end. And I took a long ride on the SEO coaster, but I managed to jump off it a few years back. I had been trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life during the pandemic. Actually, I knew what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how I was going to do it.

The answer, of course, was writing. I t was the thing I've wanted to dedicate myself to since College. However, over the past few years I have been confronted with an old insecurity: would anyone be interested? It's the age-old question that confronts every writer: who is your audience. When you start any project, especially a creative endeavor, you have to wonder if there is any appeal to that project. So, of course, I started writing again. First with this very blog, and then I started a niche blog. The idea was to see if there was any interest. No sales, no marketing, just me writing.

And, of course, they failed. Why, I wondered? I found several reasons. First was the demotivation provided by WordPress. But, I didn't recognize that at the time. Instead, I turned to the SEO articles I had stashed away. I quickly found I was doing X wrong and Y wrong. I would never generate “traffic” unless I did Z instead.

This was when the proverbial light bulb went off in my mind. SEO was doing precisely the wrong thing. I was looking for answers from marketers. I was looking to generate numbers instead of considering the value of my work, and the value of those that would read my work. And that's when I put it together: what I really wanted was to build an audience instead of “followers” or generate “traffic”.

The Difference

Artists, especially performing artists, understand the difference. Audiences are not nameless, faceless masses being marketed to. An audience is a participant in the performance or presentation of a creation. You are a participating right now by reading these words on your screen. And, you can take your participation further by upvoting, or leaving feedback. But, that is for you to decide: that's the audience member role as a participant in this process.

Don't believe this? Let's try another example, music concerts. Have you been to a show that just felt different? That felt like it was something that was just more than you were expecting? Have you been to shows that were less than you expected, or shows that met your expectations? Now, have you ever heard about a band or an artist talk about a show that we extra special to them? This is because the audience is interacting with the band / artist. It's all about the mood, the reaction, and interaction between an artist and their audience.

So, that's the difference with the IndieWeb: we don't use SEO marketing speak, we don't think of people as “traffic” and more so, we aren't in competition with each other. We each decide who we are, what the want to present, and we find the best way to present that through writing, music, video, painting, drawing photography, whatever form works for you.

We don't use the tools of SEO marketers. We use aggregators like Bubbles to allow our audience to tell others what they might like. We use web rings and blog rolls to allow our audiences to find things that they like. Our audiences grow, shrink, change, and define their role in our work. This is exactly the opposite of what marketers do: they want their “traffic” to constantly increase so they can “convert” more of them.

Conclusion

The SEO marketing have done one thing correctly. They have provided us with some tools that are useful for making certain our blogs are set up in a technically correct manner. Beyond that, there's little else they can offer in terms of genuine communication. Nothing about their terminology: “content creator,” “traffic,” “conversion,” “funnel,” and so on treats people for who they are. People are just numbers to SEO marketers, just a faceless mass.

This is what we reject. We instead understand that people are authors, artists, musicians, painters, performers, poets, sculptors, or any of hundreds of other things they decide to be. We understand that people choose to make available the things they want other people to see, experience, and appreciate.

We understand that you are an audience. You are not a faceless, nameless mass. You are people who have feelings, thoughts, and experiences you bring to our works. Audiences grow, shrink, and change over time, you are not a monolithic group. It's through interaction that we learn to grow and change as persons. There is no place in SEO for that.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out at least a few of the interactions that have helped drive this point home to me. Michael Lynch is the very reason this article exists, he was the inspiration for it. Brennan Kenneth Brown was very humble in understanding my feedback on his work, as critical as I was. Gordon Mclean made a post that he thought was just a light little piece about Gravatar, my reaction surprised both him and me.

If it weren't for these, and other people on the IndieWeb, I would not be learning and growing as a person. And that, in the end, is what the IndieWeb is about for everyone. F*** the SEO marketers.

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Categories: #Response Tags: #seo, #marketing, #promotion, #artists, #writers, #painters, #audience License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Ireland and Europe spend a great deal of time talking about “the future”. Visions. Strategies. Missions. Transitions. The vocabulary is endless. Yet beneath all the rhetoric sits one stubborn, unavoidable question: what do we do about the material world we actually live in?

Not the abstract economy. Not the digital promise. Not the political theatre. The physical world. The minerals extracted from the ground. The products manufactured in factories. The energy consumed in homes and businesses. The waste buried in landfills. The plastics entering rivers and seas. The emissions entering the atmosphere.

Every modern society ultimately rests upon these material realities. And this is where the circular economy stops being a technical policy and becomes something much larger. It becomes the quiet test of whether our vision of the future can survive contact with the physical world. Because circularity is not a side project of environmentalism. It is the structural hinge connecting climate ambition, industrial competitiveness, and social fairness.

If a country or a continent cannot resolve that hinge, its future is not a strategy. It is a marketing exercise.

More than a policy

The circular economy is often presented as an environmental programme focused on recycling, waste reduction, and resource efficiency. That description is accurate, but incomplete. At its deepest level, the circular economy is not about waste management. It is about redefining humanity's relationship with materials.

For over two centuries, industrial civilisation has largely been organised around a simple logic: extract, produce, consume, discard. The model worked because resources appeared abundant, energy appeared cheap, and environmental consequences appeared distant. Today none of those assumptions can be taken for granted. Climate pressures, supply chain vulnerabilities, resource dependencies, and ecological degradation all point towards the same conclusion: a civilisation organised around unlimited extraction has begun to encounter its own limits.

The circular economy represents an attempt to answer a profound question: Can a society learn the logic of stewardship after being built upon the logic of abundance?

What Europe's political families agree on and why it matters

Across Europe's political spectrum, the circular economy now appears in virtually every programme, manifesto, and strategic framework. The Party of European Socialists sees it as part of a socially just green transition, ensuring workers and communities are protected as economic systems evolve. The Greens emphasise durability, repairability, and the right to repair. Renew Europe focuses on innovation, digital product passports, and market incentives. The European People's Party tends to favour business-led efficiency, competitiveness, and voluntary approaches.

The differences are real. Yet the more significant fact is that all of them have arrived at the same destination. The linear model is reaching its limits. Political families that disagree on taxation, migration, regulation, and public spending increasingly agree on this fundamental point. That convergence matters. When competing political traditions begin recognising the same structural reality, it usually signals something deeper than ideology. It signals a constraint imposed by the world itself.

The conceptual tension: what does “circular” actually mean?

Yet agreement on the destination does not mean agreement on the route. Circularity sounds straightforward. In practice, it is a battleground of competing definitions. Does waste-to-energy count as circular? Should priority be given to material recovery or energy recovery? Is a highly durable product always preferable, even if it slows the adoption of newer technologies? Should efficiency be the goal, or sufficiency?

These disagreements are not academic. They shape investment, regulation, industrial planning, and consumer behaviour. More importantly, they reveal a deeper tension. The circular economy asks us to rethink what progress means. For generations, progress has often been measured through volume: more production, more consumption, more throughput. Circularity introduces a different possibility. Perhaps progress lies not in moving more material through the system, but in creating more value with less material movement. That shift sounds subtle.

In reality, it represents one of the most significant economic and cultural adjustments of the modern era. The delivery tension: who pays, who adapts, who benefits? Even where there is conceptual agreement, delivery remains difficult. Circularity requires products to be redesigned. Supply chains must be reorganised. Repair and recycling infrastructure must be built. Workers must acquire new skills. Standards must be harmonised across borders. Digital systems must track products throughout their life cycles.

None of this is free. None of it is frictionless. And it raises the oldest political question in history: Who pays? Social democrats tend to favour public investment and worker protections. Liberals often prefer market incentives. Conservatives warn against excessive regulatory burdens. Environmental parties seek stronger obligations on producers.

These are legitimate disagreements. But they cannot obscure a larger fact. The transition will happen one way or another. The real choice is whether societies invest in managing the transition or pay the costs of avoiding it.

The producer tension: resistance from the material world

Businesses resist circularity for understandable reasons. Repairability can threaten existing product cycles. Extended producer responsibility increases costs. Transparency requirements expose supply chains. Material substitutions disrupt procurement systems built over decades. Electronics, construction, automotive manufacturing, textiles, and consumer goods all confront different versions of the same challenge.

Circularity demands change. Change creates uncertainty. And uncertainty creates resistance. This is not villainy. It is structure. The material world does not reorganise itself because policymakers write reports or politicians make speeches. Future visions encounter resistance precisely because they require existing systems to behave differently. Any serious strategy must acknowledge that reality.

Why this matters for Ireland and Europe

Ireland's future, like Europe's, will be shaped by three converging forces. Climate limits. Industrial competitiveness. Social cohesion. The circular economy sits exactly where those forces meet. It determines whether climate action strengthens or weakens industry. Whether industrial policy creates or destroys jobs. Whether environmental ambition lowers or raises the everyday cost of living. More fundamentally, it determines whether Europe remains merely a consumer market dependent upon resources, technologies, and supply chains controlled elsewhere, or becomes a continent capable of sustaining its own economic resilience.

For Ireland, the challenge is equally significant. The question is not simply how we manage waste. The question is whether we remain a peripheral economy that imports solutions designed elsewhere or become a society capable of designing solutions ourselves.

The quiet truth

Circularity is not glamorous. It does not lend itself easily to slogans. It is technical, infrastructural, incremental, and often invisible. But history suggests that societies are ultimately judged not by the elegance of their visions but by their ability to reconcile those visions with material reality. That is why the circular economy matters. It is not merely an environmental policy. It is a test of whether advanced societies can learn to prosper within limits. A test of whether economic dynamism can coexist with stewardship. A test of whether climate responsibility, industrial strength, and social fairness can reinforce one another rather than compete.

If Ireland or Europe cannot meet that test, then much of the language of missions, transitions, and transformation will amount to little more than noise. But if we can meet it, then the future becomes something more than a political promise. It becomes a civilisation learning how to endure. And eventually, a material reality. David Marshall Dublin

I just finished a massive bowl of mashed potatoes with smoked gouda cheese — Oink! Oink! Yuuuummmmm! Now I'm putting myself to sleep with Masters of the Universe. It has me thinking about my childhood because I loved this show.

When I think of the various movies and tv shows I watched as well as the books I read, it makes a lot of sense on why I'm attracted to who and what I'm attracted to. My many a fantasy are well accounted for. I'm not sure if I should be disturbed or not. I mean, I'm deeply disturbed. I'm just not sure if I am about that.

I'm told that you cannot expect someone to be good at almost everything. I strongly question that assumption. I think it's more that many just lack the interest and curiosity. Or maybe they just allow their desires to get beat down by the expectancy of normalcy.

Thoughts. Thoughts. Lots of thoughts. Dare to read my mind? Mwahahaha! *cough* I mean, do you wanna? *winkwinknudgenudge* I have the power!

Written July 22, 2026. © 2026 AnOublietteofThought.

Every publication eventually acquires its own odd little customs. Some have house styles. Some have mission statements. Some have logos carefully developed by consultants after lengthy meetings involving flipcharts and expensive biscuits.

I was once present at a meeting in a Random House imprint devoted almost entirely to the colour of the spine of one of my books. I had arrived with what seemed to me a perfectly reasonable vision involving shades of green. Around the table, opinions were offered, alternatives proposed and possibilities weighed.

Eventually the chairman arrived, somewhat late. He listened to the discussion for a moment before announcing that he had just come from visiting bookshops. “I've been looking at books on shelves,” he said. “It has to be red.” That was the end of the matter. The book acquired a red spine.

The Marshall publications have accumulated something rather different. Over the years, a simple mark began appearing on documents, websites, notebooks and drafts. Nothing elaborate. Just a small visual signature. A reminder that a piece of work had passed through my hands on its way into the world. The mark had deeper roots than I first realised. For many years I carried a well-thumbed James Hill Teeline shorthand textbook. Journalists of a certain generation will know the book. It travelled everywhere with me, surviving trains, coffee shops, newsrooms and countless notebooks. Somewhere along the way, my initials, DM, found their way into Teeline notation. Not formally, perhaps, and certainly not in a form that would satisfy every shorthand purist, but in a stylised version that evolved through repeated use in margins, notes and drafts.

The result was a simple graphic mark. At some point, the mark acquired a name. The Sig.

The Sig was never intended to be a logo. It simply emerged, much as many useful things do. A line here, a flourish there, until eventually it became recognisable. But every mark contains a hidden possibility. What if it were alive? Somewhere between a Teeline textbook, a notebook, a cup of coffee and far too much thinking about matters that probably should not be thought about, the Sig acquired a second identity: Sigi. Not a mascot exactly. Not a logo. More an occasional visitor.

The Sig is the mark. Sigi is what happens when the mark decides to step out for a stroll.

There is another distinction worth noting. The Sig is a mark. Marks tend to live in the centre of things. They certify documents, identify owners and announce conclusions. Sigi appears to prefer the margins. In fact, among the scattered fragments that make up what passes for Sigi scholarship, one principle appears more frequently than any other: Sigi's Rule #1: There is always something happening in the margins. The rule applies surprisingly often. The important conversation happens after the meeting ends. The revealing detail lurks in the footnote. The unfinished notebook entry occasionally proves more interesting than the polished report.

Looking back, I now suspect Sigi had little interest in becoming a logo. What he wanted was residency in the spaces between ideas. Readers seeking a fuller account of these matters will find that an unexpectedly large body of research has accumulated at sigi.ie, (https://sigi.ie), although its reliability remains a matter of ongoing debate.

Like all respectable characters, Sigi possesses a somewhat uncertain origin story. He may have escaped from the pages of that old shorthand textbook. He may have wandered out of the margin of a policy briefing. He may simply be what happens when a writer spends too much time alone with half-finished ideas.

I have other suspicions. Back in 1992, I wrote a piece about the proposed development of Euro Disney, as Disneyland Paris was then becoming known. One of the controversies of the day concerned facial hair. Disney reportedly discouraged moustaches among employees at a time when moustaches were rather more popular in France than they seemed to be in corporate America.

Looking back now, I am almost certain I saw Sigi for the first time. As I worked on the article, a small shape appeared to slide from the side of the page. It paused for a moment, examined a photograph of Walt Disney, and then repositioned itself directly beneath the nose and above the upper lip. There it remained. A moustache. Entirely innocent, of course. At least that was Sigi's version of events. Looking back, I suspect that was the moment I first realised that Sigi possessed a sense of humour.

There remains, however, one unresolved question in Sigi scholarship. The question is not where he came from. The question is how he entered the machine. For years, Sigi's existence appeared confined to paper. He inhabited notebooks, manuscript margins, shorthand exercises and the occasional photograph of unsuspecting individuals who suddenly found themselves sporting entirely unauthorised moustaches.

Then something changed. I can date the event with unusual precision. It was 3 April 2003. The location was one of the early Fujitsu Siemens Tablet PCs running Microsoft's pioneering tablet software. These devices now belong to a curious chapter in computing history. They arrived years before the world was ready for them and were often regarded as interesting but impractical experiments. I know better. Because Sigi was there.

I remember catching sight of him among the pages of a Stephen Covey planning application. Not openly. More a suggestion than an appearance. A familiar shape beneath glass where previously it had existed only on paper. From that moment onwards, the migration appears to have accelerated.

A year or so later, he was occasionally glimpsed hiding inside early beta versions of Microsoft OneNote. Sigi has never been one for grand entrances. He simply appeared in digital notebooks much as he had once occupied paper ones, settling comfortably into margins and waiting patiently for an opportunity to make himself useful. How he made the crossing remains uncertain. Perhaps he travelled through a stylus. Perhaps he slipped through a handwritten note. Perhaps he was carried across by one of those early synchronisation processes that connected paper habits to digital worlds. Sigi himself remains characteristically unhelpful on the matter. Asked directly, he merely points out that paper and screens have always been less different than people imagine.

Nobody can say for certain. The official history maintains that Sigi originated in a shorthand textbook, acquired a name somewhere in the 1990s and crossed into the digital world in 2003. That account is neat, orderly and almost certainly incomplete.

The alternative possibility is that Sigi was always there. That he merely borrowed the Teeline mark as a convenient disguise. That notebooks, computer screens and policy papers are simply the places where he occasionally chooses to reveal himself. Historians of Sigi remain divided on the matter.

What is known is that he now accompanies the growing family of Marshall projects. Marshall on Policy provides analysis, briefings and commentary on public affairs. The Marshall Review collects essays, reflections and observations. And somewhere nearby, usually just outside the field of vision, Sigi continues his quiet wanderings.

From time to time he may appear as a sketch, an animation or an unexpected observation. He should not be encouraged. Experience suggests this only makes him worse. Still, the world contains enough certainty, enough outrage and enough people determined to explain everything. A little curiosity seems no bad thing.

And perhaps that is Sigi's purpose. Not to explain the world. Simply to remind us that there is always something happening in the margins (rule #1).

Looking back, I suspect he had been waiting there all along. It simply took me a very long time to notice.

David Marshall The Marshall Review Marked with the Sig. ✒️

People often assume I applied for the position. I did not. In fact, I remain uncertain whether the position existed before my appointment.

One morning a letter arrived. The envelope bore no address, no stamp and no indication of how it had entered the postal system. Inside was a single sheet of paper. It read:

The Committee for Matters Yet to Be Determined has the honour to appoint Sigi Ambassador Extraordinary for Unfinished Questions.

I examined the document carefully. There was no signature. There were, however, three footnotes. The footnotes raised considerably more questions than the appointment itself. Naturally, I accepted.

Only later did I discover the burden of the office. People expect ambassadors to bring answers. I was expected to collect questions. Wherever I travelled, people would approach. “Ambassador,” they would say. “How many answers do you possess?” “Very few,” I would reply. This disappointed them. Some reacted with concern. Others with suspicion.

A gentleman in Brussels once looked at me over the rim of a coffee cup and declared: “C'est un ambassadeur. Il doit avoir toutes les réponses.” (It is an ambassador. He must have all the answers.) I explained that he had misunderstood the position. I was responsible for the questions. The answers belonged to whoever was willing to continue looking. This did not improve matters.

Yet over time I discovered something interesting. People who possess all the answers tend to stop travelling. People carrying questions continue to explore. And so I carried mine from place to place. Some became larger. Some became smaller.Some divided unexpectedly into several new questions. One or two disappeared altogether, although I remain suspicious of this and occasionally check behind furniture.

The work continues. The questions remain unfinished. That is, after all, their nature. And besides, uncertainty travels surprisingly well, (rule #2) ✒️ Sigi