I just finished watching 'The End of Oak Street'. It's a very simple movie, but parts of it made me smile. My favorite part is the color scheme with its dreamy blur. It captured the feeling of the early 80s properly. I would have been ten. I was always, and still am, enamored by the variety of green that exists in nature. My second favorite part is the feathers on the dinosaurs. And my third favorite part is the Sagan quote. The movie only shares part of it. I will share the entire quote as follows:

“What does seventy million years mean to beings who live only one-millionth as long? We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” —Carl Sagan

If that quote is kept in mind while watching the movie, it really shifts the tragedy. Doesn't it?

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

The error codes were lying, and the machine was very sure of itself.

In the 1980s, a Xerox field service technician was called out to a photocopier. It produced, in the words of the researchers who later wrote the episode up, “copious raw information in the form of error codes” and “obligingly crashed when tested”. The trouble was that the error codes and the crashes did not tally. The company's training and its directive documentation tied each error to a code and each code to a fix, so once the codes stopped telling the truth, the official procedure had nothing left to offer except replacing the machine. The technician called in a specialist. The specialist was baffled too.

What happened next was recorded by Julian Orr, an anthropologist then working with Xerox PARC, and later retold by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid in a 1991 paper that became one of the founding texts of organisational learning. The two men did not consult a manual. They told stories. Through the morning, over lunch, and back in front of the machine all afternoon, they swapped memories of other copiers with overlapping symptoms, testing each story against the machine's behaviour. Orr's account describes “a five hour effort” that “yielded a dozen anecdotes”. The diagnosis finally came out of what Orr called an “antiphonal recitation”, in which the two men told different versions of the same encounter until the versions converged on the fault.

Keep that scene in mind, because it is the most precise description available of the thing Pearson says the skilled trades are about to lose. It is not information. The machine had plenty of information. It is the judgement to know when the information is wrong, and that judgement lived in two people talking to each other beside a broken machine.

On 24 September 2026, at the WorldSkills International Conference in Shanghai, Pearson launched research warning that a “triple capability gap” is opening across the skilled trade, technical and service occupations that keep hospitals, factories and infrastructure running. AI is reshaping those jobs faster than education and training systems can adapt, the report argues, just as experienced workers retire and take decades of practical knowledge with them. The result is a generation of early-career workers at risk of becoming, in Pearson's phrase, “AI-rich but experience-poor”.

Which raises two uncomfortable questions. What happens to a trade when the apprentice turns up holding an AI assistant, but the mentor who was supposed to teach the difference between right and almost-right has already gone? And can the knowledge that lives in a plumber's hands and a technician's instincts be written into training systems at all, or does some of it only ever travel from one person to another?

What Pearson Actually Found in Shanghai

The report is titled For Every Future: Preparing Early-Career Skilled Trade, Technical and Service Talent for an AI-Infused World. It combines labour market and AI exposure analysis across the United States, the United Kingdom and China with surveys, interviews and roundtables involving employers, educators, industry bodies, workforce experts, students and early-career workers. It also looks closely at two occupations: pharmacy technicians and industrial machinery mechanics.

The core argument is that these workers now need three things at once. The first is role-specific AI literacy and the critical judgement to use AI safely. The second is a set of human capabilities, including communication, collaboration, adaptability, emotional intelligence and learning agility. The third, and the one this article is about, is the practical and institutional knowledge traditionally developed through experience and handed down by experienced colleagues. Pearson's framing is that AI is more often changing day-to-day tasks than eliminating roles altogether, which makes the gap harder to see: nobody gets a redundancy letter, but the job underneath them quietly changes shape.

Some of the numbers are stark. Across the UK occupations covered by the research, 99 per cent of openings are expected to come from replacement demand, meaning workers who retire, change careers or leave the labour market, rather than from new jobs. The US figure is 98.5 per cent. Fewer than half of the industrial machinery mechanics surveyed felt their training was preparing them for AI-enabled work. One UK pharmacy industry participant told the researchers that it takes two to three years to revise pharmacy technician education and training standards, which is a long time in a field where the tools can change within a single product cycle. And the stakes are not abstract. Among pharmacy technicians, 98 per cent rated exactness and accuracy as extremely important, and 44 per cent rated the consequences of error as extremely serious.

Sharon Hague, Pearson's President of English Language Learning and its UK chief executive, put the problem plainly at the launch. “The challenge is that demand for these workers is rising just as many experts are retiring and taking decades of practical knowledge with them,” she said. “If we don't rethink how expertise is developed, the gap between what employers need and what workers can do will continue to grow.”

It is worth being clear about what kind of document this is. Pearson is an education and assessment company, and a report concluding that training systems need rethinking is also, inevitably, a report about a market Pearson sells into. That does not make its findings wrong, and its replacement-demand figures sit comfortably alongside independent labour data. But its most interesting claim is not a statistic. It is the idea buried in the third capability: that there is a category of knowledge that cannot simply be bought, downloaded or prompted into existence, and that its main carriers are leaving.

The Arithmetic of Replacement

Start with the people who carry that knowledge, and the rate at which they are leaving.

In construction, the Construction Industry Training Board's Construction Workforce Outlook for 2026 to 2030, published on 17 June 2026, estimates that the industry will need an average of 41,200 extra workers a year, roughly 206,000 over five years. CITB's diagnosis is blunt: too few people are entering the sector, too many experienced workers are leaving, and productivity improvements have not been enough to close the gap. In US manufacturing, Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute projected in 2024 that as many as 3.8 million additional employees could be needed between 2024 and 2033, and that as many as 1.9 million of those jobs could go unfilled if the skills and applicant gaps are not addressed.

Plumbing makes the pattern concrete. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 510,600 plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, projects around 42,000 openings a year over the coming decade, and notes that many of those openings will come from the need to replace workers who move to other occupations or leave the labour force, for example to retire. The same entry explains how the trade is learnt: most plumbers learn on the job through an apprenticeship lasting four to five years, with 2,000 hours of paid on-the-job training each year alongside technical instruction. In England, the Level 3 Plumbing and Domestic Heating Technician apprenticeship standard has a typical duration of 48 months.

Those durations are the real point. Four years is not how long it takes to learn the facts of plumbing, which would fit in a decent textbook. Four years is how long it takes to be around enough jobs, enough awkward pipework, enough customers and enough mistakes, in the company of someone who already knows, for the facts to turn into judgement.

And the pipeline feeding that process has been narrowing. Department for Education figures published on 27 November 2025 recorded 353,500 apprenticeship starts in England in the 2024/25 academic year, up from 340,000 the year before. But in 2016/17, the year the apprenticeship levy was introduced, there were 494,900. The mix has shifted too. Higher-level apprenticeships now make up around 40 per cent of starts, while intermediate apprenticeships, the traditional entry route for young people into a trade, have fallen from 43 per cent of starts in 2017/18 to 19 per cent. The system is producing more graduate-style apprenticeships and fewer people at the bottom of the ladder, which is precisely where the long, slow, person-to-person transfer of craft knowledge has always happened.

Put the two trends together and you get Pearson's scenario in its simplest form. The mentors are leaving faster than they can be replaced, and the replacements are arriving through a narrower door, into jobs whose tools are changing underneath them.

Knowing More Than We Can Tell

To understand why the loss of mentors matters more than the loss of workers, you have to go back to a Hungarian-British chemist turned philosopher.

In The Tacit Dimension, published in 1966, Michael Polanyi compressed a lifetime of thinking about scientific practice into a single sentence: “we can know more than we can tell.” We recognise a face among thousands without being able to say how. Polanyi's claim was stronger than the observation that some knowledge is hard to describe. He argued that all knowledge rests on a tacit foundation, a set of skills, habits and perceptions that we rely on without attending to them.

The idea might have stayed in philosophy if a young sociologist had not put it to the test. In the early 1970s, Harry Collins, now a distinguished research professor at Cardiff University, studied laboratories trying to build a then-new device called the TEA laser. His finding, published in 1974 and followed up in 1975 with his co-author R. G. Harrison, was striking. No scientist he studied succeeded in building a working laser using only published papers or other written sources. Every group that managed it had obtained some crucial part of the knowledge through personal contact: phone calls, visits, someone who had built one standing in the room. The written account was complete in every respect except the one that mattered.

Collins spent decades refining what that means, and his 2010 book Tacit and Explicit Knowledge offers the most useful map we have for Pearson's question. He splits tacit knowledge into three kinds.

The first is relational tacit knowledge. This is knowledge that could in principle be written down but in practice is not, because nobody has bothered, because it seems too obvious, or because someone would rather keep it to themselves. The torque setting a senior fitter uses on a particular flange, which differs from the manual for good reasons nobody recorded, is relational. So is the knowledge that a particular customer's boiler has a history.

The second is somatic tacit knowledge, which lives in the body. Balancing a bicycle is Collins's classic example. For the trades, think of the feel of a pipe cutter biting cleanly, the sound of a pump running slightly wrong, the resistance of a fitting that is about to strip. This is knowledge whose limits come from the nature of bodies and brains, not from social choice.

The third, and for Collins the deepest, is collective tacit knowledge. This is knowledge that belongs to a community rather than to any individual: the sense of what counts as a proper job, which rules can be bent on site and which cannot, when a shortcut becomes a hazard. You acquire it by being socialised into the group that holds it, and for Collins it is the hardest kind of tacit knowledge to make explicit, because it lives in the group rather than in any one head.

That three-way split turns out to answer most of the question in the headline, but before getting there it is worth seeing what happens when a society forgets that the split exists.

When the Recipe Loses Its Impurity

In the 2000s, the US National Nuclear Security Administration set out to refurbish the W76 warhead carried on Trident submarine-launched missiles. One component needed a classified material code-named Fogbank. The facility that had produced it had long since closed. According to a 2009 article in Los Alamos National Laboratory's Nuclear Weapons Journal, most of the personnel involved in the original production process were no longer available, and the agency had to reconstruct the process from historical records.

The reconstruction did not work. According to the Los Alamos account, as reported by the defence publication The War Zone, the new process made a purer material than the old one, and the purity was the problem. The original batches had contained an impurity that the weapon's performance had quietly come to depend on. Nobody had documented it because nobody had known it mattered, and the people who might have noticed the difference were no longer there.

The Government Accountability Office report GAO-09-385, released on 2 March 2009, documented the cost. The planned first refurbished W76 slipped from September 2007 to September 2008, and NNSA spent $69 million addressing Fogbank production problems.

Fogbank is an extreme case, but it shows plainly what Pearson is warning about. The written record was, as far as anyone knew, complete. What was missing was not a fact but a relationship between facts, the kind of thing an experienced operator notices because something looks or feels different from last time. In Collins's terms, it was relational knowledge that had never been told, and the only people who could have told it were gone.

The Assistant That Talks Like a Journeyman

Now introduce the AI assistant.

The tools arriving on shop floors and in vans are not speculative. In May 2025, Siemens announced that its Maintenance Copilot Senseye would give maintenance teams “expert-level equipment diagnostics” without their needing specialist technical knowledge, citing pilot implementations with an average 25 per cent reduction in reactive maintenance time. In September 2025, ServiceTitan, whose software is widely used by US plumbing, heating and electrical contractors, launched Atlas, an AI assistant that gives technicians in the field instant answers through its mobile app. Its co-founder and president, Vahe Kuzoyan, described it as “a trusted co-pilot or even a chief of staff that adapts to the specific workflows” of each business.

There is real evidence that such tools help people who are new to a job. The best-known study, by Erik Brynjolfsson, Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond, published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2025, tracked 5,179 customer support agents as a generative AI assistant was rolled out. Productivity rose by 14 per cent on average and by 34 per cent for novice and low-skilled workers, with minimal effect on the most experienced. The authors offer suggestive evidence that the tool worked by spreading the best practices of more able workers and helping newer ones move down the experience curve. In other words, some relational tacit knowledge, the kind that top performers had but had never written down, had been captured in the data and handed on.

That is a genuine counterweight to the gloomier reading of Pearson's report. But notice what it measured: speed and resolution in conversations, in a domain made of language. The question for the trades is what happens outside that domain, where the work is physical, the stakes are safety-critical, and the machine can be confidently wrong.

Collins has a concept that fits the new assistants almost too neatly. In Rethinking Expertise, written with Robert Evans and published in 2007, he distinguishes contributory expertise, the ability to actually do the work, from interactional expertise, the ability to speak the language of a practice fluently without being able to practise it. Specialist journalists and good peer reviewers have interactional expertise. They can talk the talk. In a 2024 paper in AI and Society, Collins argued that large language models learn from the internet rather than being socialised into communities, and that the result is systems that answer with fabrications as fluently as with facts.

An AI assistant is, in this sense, the most complete interactional expert ever built. It speaks the language of every trade. It can explain a pressure test, describe a failed seal, list the causes of a tripping breaker. What it lacks is the thing that made the Xerox specialist valuable: a body of experience against which to notice that the story it is telling does not fit the machine in front of it. Hand that fluency to an apprentice who has no such experience either, and you get Pearson's phrase exactly. AI-rich. Experience-poor.

Right Versus Almost Right

The danger is not that the machine is usually wrong. It is that it is usually right, and people learn to stop checking.

Researchers have been measuring this for decades. In a 2010 review in Human Factors, Raja Parasuraman and Dietrich Manzey described automation bias as the tendency to over-rely on automated aids, producing errors of omission, where people miss problems the system fails to flag, and errors of commission, where they follow advice that is wrong. Two findings from that review should worry anyone designing AI-assisted apprenticeships. Automation bias occurs in experts as well as novices. And it cannot be prevented simply by training or instructions.

Recent studies show what happens when AI enters that picture. In the field experiment with 758 Boston Consulting Group consultants reported by Fabrizio Dell'Acqua and colleagues at Harvard Business School, Wharton, MIT Sloan and Warwick, AI help made people substantially faster and better on tasks within the model's capabilities. But on a task deliberately chosen to fall outside what the AI could do well, consultants using AI were 19 percentage points less likely to reach the correct answer than those working without it. The researchers' metaphor for this is a jagged frontier: the boundary of what the AI can do well is irregular and hard to see, which makes it easy to cross without noticing.

Then there is the question of what reliance does to the learner. In January 2026, Anthropic published a randomised controlled trial of 52 mostly junior software developers learning an unfamiliar Python library. Those who used AI assistance scored 50 per cent on a follow-up quiz, against 67 per cent for those who coded by hand. The largest gap was on debugging questions, which is to say on the ability to recognise when code is wrong and why. Code is not copper pipe, but the skill that suffered is exactly the one the Pearson report is worried about: knowing when the output in front of you is almost right, and therefore wrong.

The most sobering evidence comes from medicine, where the consequences are measured in missed cancers. A multicentre observational study led by Krzysztof Budzyń and published in The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology in August 2025 looked at 19 experienced endoscopists, each with more than 2,000 colonoscopies behind them. After AI-assisted detection was introduced, their adenoma detection rate in procedures performed without the AI fell from 28.4 per cent to 22.4 per cent. These were not novices. They were experts whose unaided performance appeared to decline after routine exposure to the machine. If skilled professionals can lose ground that quickly, the question for a trainee who never builds that ground in the first place answers itself.

Lisanne Bainbridge saw all of this coming in a short paper published in Automatica in 1983. “Ironies of Automation” observed that efficient retrieval of knowledge from long-term memory depends on frequency of use, and that some knowledge “develops only through use and feedback about its effectiveness”. Then she wrote the sentence that reads like a summary of the Pearson report forty-three years early: “There is some concern that the present generation of automated systems, which are monitored by former manual operators, are riding on their skills, which later generations of operators cannot be expected to have.”

That is the mechanism. Today's AI-assisted workplaces look safe partly because the people supervising them learnt their trade before the assistant arrived. They can tell when the answer is off because they once had to work it out themselves. Remove them, and the safety margin goes with them, without anyone noticing, until the error codes stop matching the crashes.

How Apprenticeship Actually Transmits Judgement

If the mentor's value is not information, what exactly is being transferred when an apprentice works alongside one?

In 1991, the anthropologist Jean Lave and the educational theorist Etienne Wenger published Situated Learning, built partly on studies of Vai and Gola tailors in Liberia. They found that the apprentices were not formally taught tailoring in any conventional sense. They learnt through what Lave and Wenger called legitimate peripheral participation: doing real but low-risk parts of real work at the edge of a community of practitioners, gradually moving towards the centre as their competence grew. The learning was inseparable from belonging. You did not learn tailoring and then join the tailors. You became a tailor by being among them.

Richard Sennett, the sociologist, made a related case in The Craftsman, published in 2008. He describes craft as “a dialogue between concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sustaining habits, and these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding.” Problem finding is the key phrase. A manual or an assistant can solve a problem you have already identified. Knowing that there is a problem, that the joint looks fine but is not, that the reading is plausible but wrong, is the skill that comes from the rhythm Sennett describes, and it takes time. “By one commonly used measure,” he notes, “about ten thousand hours of experience are required to produce a master carpenter or musician.”

Sennett also noticed what happens when a tool takes over the part of the work where that rhythm develops. Writing about computer-aided design, he recalls the physicist Victor Weisskopf telling MIT students who presented him with computer-generated results: “When you show me that result, the computer understands the answer, but I don't think you understand the answer.” His conclusion is blunt: “when the head and the hand are separate, it is the head that suffers.”

The most careful modern study of this problem comes from Matt Beane, who researches technology and work in the Technology Management department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and whose 2024 book The Skill Code draws on years of fieldwork in robotic surgery. In traditional open surgery, residents learnt by doing progressively more of each operation with a senior surgeon's hands beside theirs. The surgical robot changed that. “My research shows that the lead surgeon controls the robot, and the trainee has become completely optional,” Beane said when the book was published. The few residents who became genuinely skilled did so through what he calls shadow learning, bending the rules to get practice, including spending hundreds of hours watching recorded procedures. Beane frames the conditions for building skill as challenge, complexity and connection, and it is the third, the bond of trust between novice and expert, that intelligent machines most easily sever.

The pattern in Beane's operating theatres is the pattern Pearson is warning about in plant rooms and pharmacies. The technology does not attack the apprentice directly. It makes the apprentice unnecessary to the expert's work, and in doing so quietly removes the apprenticeship.

What Can Be Written Down and What Cannot

So, back to the second question. Can a plumber's hands and a technician's instincts be written into training systems?

The honest answer is some of it, more than sceptics assume, and less than vendors claim. Collins's three categories show where the lines fall.

Relational tacit knowledge can be captured, and there is a famous proof. In his 1991 Harvard Business Review article “The Knowledge-Creating Company”, Ikujiro Nonaka described how Matsushita's engineers struggled to design a home bread-making machine that kneaded dough properly. A software developer, Ikuko Tanaka, proposed a solution: she trained with the head baker at the Osaka International Hotel, whose bread was reputed to be the best in the city, to study his kneading. She noticed that he had a distinctive way of stretching the dough. After a year of trial and error with the project's engineers, she produced specifications, including special ribs inside the machine, that reproduced the baker's technique. The resulting “twist dough” method gave Matsushita a product that set a record for first-year sales of a new kitchen appliance.

It is often told as proof that tacit knowledge can be made explicit. Look closely, though, at how it was done. The knowledge was not extracted by interview or questionnaire. Tanaka had to apprentice herself to the baker, learning by observation, imitation and practice, as Nonaka put it, before she could translate anything. The conversion ran through a person. And it took a year.

That suggests a practical route for the trades. Much of what a retiring engineer knows is relational: the history of a particular plant, the quirks of a particular model, the workarounds that never made it into the manual. That knowledge can be captured, and AI can help, by transcribing, indexing and retrieving it. The Brynjolfsson study suggests AI can even spread the habits of top performers to newcomers. But capture has a deadline. It has to happen while the experts are still at work, alongside the people who will inherit the job, because the Tanaka story suggests the most valuable capture happens through apprenticeship rather than interview. Fogbank shows what happens when nobody does it.

Somatic tacit knowledge is harder. Simulation, haptic training rigs, augmented reality overlays and video can all accelerate it, and Beane's finding that some surgical trainees built real skill through intensive video review shows that recorded expertise has value. But a body still has to do the thing, repeatedly, with feedback. No amount of fluent explanation from an assistant will teach an apprentice how a compression fitting feels when it is right. At best, the machine can tell them what to practise.

Collective tacit knowledge is the category where the answer is closest to no. The sense of what counts as a proper job, when to stop and ask, which risks the trade tolerates and which it never does: this is the property of a community, and it passes by socialisation. Orr's copier technicians illustrate it. Their diagnosis came from a shared stock of stories that belonged to the group rather than to either man, and it was the group's norms, including the loss of face that came with simply swapping out the machine, that pushed them to keep going. Brown and Duguid made the point that the training and documentation were about maintaining machines, while much of the real work was about maintaining the social setting. An AI can summarise the stories. It cannot make an apprentice a member of the community that tells them.

Designing for the Mentor's Absence

None of this means the AI-equipped apprentice is doomed. It means the assistant has to be designed and deployed as part of an apprenticeship, not as a replacement for one.

The evidence points to some fairly concrete principles. The first concerns how the tool is used. In Anthropic's trial, the developers who retained the most were the ones who used AI to build understanding, and the highest-scoring group asked only conceptual questions and then relied on their own improved understanding to do the work. At the WorldSkills conference in Shanghai, Pearson's chief technology officer, David Treat, made the same point from the other side: “If you are using AI as an answer engine, you're not engaging the brain in the struggle that learning requires.” An assistant that makes the apprentice explain why a reading looks wrong before offering its own view is a different educational instrument from one that simply supplies the fix.

The second concerns mentors. Pearson's own recommendations call for expanding opportunities to develop practical know-how through mentoring, observation, feedback, simulation and hands-on experience. That sounds obvious, but it runs against the economic logic of the tools themselves, which are sold on making experts more productive and novices less dependent on them. If an assistant frees up a senior engineer's time, some of that time has to be deliberately spent with the apprentice, or Beane's operating-theatre pattern repeats itself on the factory floor. Bainbridge's final irony applies directly: “it is the most successful automated systems, with rare need for manual intervention, which may need the greatest investment in human operator training.”

The third is the unglamorous one. Apprentices need structured practice without the machine, which is what the endoscopy study implies clinicians now need too. The point is not nostalgia for doing things the hard way. It is that the ability to notice when the assistant is wrong is built by doing the work without it, and cannot be built any other way.

Go back, one last time, to Orr's copier. The machine gave its technicians more information than they could use, and none of it added up. What saved the job was not better data. It was two people with long memories, a shared language of experience, and a professional pride that would not let them give up. Today's AI assistants are, in a sense, error codes that can talk: fluent, confident, usually right, occasionally and invisibly wrong. The apprentice holding one needs what the Xerox technician had, someone who has seen this before.

The uncomfortable arithmetic of the Pearson report is that for many apprentices, that someone is already retiring. Some of what they know can be written into training systems, and the effort should begin now. The rest will travel the way it always has, from one person to another, beside a broken machine, or it will not travel at all.

References and Sources

1. Pearson. “Pearson research warns of a 'triple capability gap' emerging as AI adoption outpaces education and training in skilled occupations.” Press release, PR Newswire, Shanghai, 24 September 2026, launching For Every Future: Preparing Early-Career Skilled Trade, Technical and Service Talent for an AI-Infused World; also reported by FE News, StockTitan, People Matters and ChannelLife, 24 to 25 September 2026. Accessed 25 September 2026.
2. Pearson plc. “Pearson Appoints Experienced Company Executive Sharon Hague as President of English Language Learning.” Press release, 28 February 2025.
3. WorldSkills Conference 2026. “WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 outlines a human-first approach to AI.” Conference news, National Exhibition and Convention Center, Shanghai, September 2026. Accessed 25 September 2026.
4. Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. Doubleday, 1966; reissued University of Chicago Press, 2009.
5. Collins, H. M. “The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks.” Science Studies, volume 4, 1974, pages 165 to 186; and Collins, H. M. and Harrison, R. G. “Building a TEA Laser: The Caprices of Communication.” Social Studies of Science, volume 5, number 4, 1975.
6. Collins, Harry. Tacit and Explicit Knowledge. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
7. Collins, Harry and Evans, Robert. Rethinking Expertise. University of Chicago Press, 2007.
8. Collins, Harry. “Why artificial intelligence needs sociology of knowledge: parts I and II.” AI and Society, volume 40, 2025 (published online 18 May 2024), pages 1249 to 1263. DOI: 10.1007/s00146-024-01954-8.
9. Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. Yale University Press and Allen Lane, 2008; extract published as “The Troubled Craftsman”, Arquitectura Viva.
10. Nonaka, Ikujiro. “The Knowledge-Creating Company.” Harvard Business Review, November to December 1991; reprinted July to August 2007.
11. Lave, Jean and Wenger, Etienne. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press, 1991.
12. Orr, Julian E. Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Cornell University Press, 1996.
13. Brown, John Seely and Duguid, Paul. “Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation.” Organization Science, volume 2, number 1, 1991, pages 40 to 57.
14. Bainbridge, Lisanne. “Ironies of Automation.” Automatica, volume 19, number 6, 1983, pages 775 to 779.
15. Parasuraman, Raja and Manzey, Dietrich H. “Complacency and Bias in Human Use of Automation: An Attentional Integration.” Human Factors, volume 52, number 3, 2010. DOI: 10.1177/0018720810376055.
16. Budzyń, Krzysztof et al. “Endoscopist deskilling risk after exposure to artificial intelligence in colonoscopy: a multicentre, observational study.” The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, August 2025. PubMed ID 40816301.
17. Anthropic. “How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills.” Anthropic Research, 29 January 2026.
18. Brynjolfsson, Erik, Li, Danielle and Raymond, Lindsey. “Generative AI at Work.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, volume 140, number 2, 2025, pages 889 to 942.
19. Dell'Acqua, Fabrizio, McFowland III, Edward, Mollick, Ethan, Lifshitz-Assaf, Hila, Kellogg, Katherine C., Rajendran, Saran, Krayer, Lisa, Candelon, François and Lakhani, Karim R. “Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality.” Harvard Business School Working Paper 24-013, September 2023.
20. Beane, Matt. The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines. Harper Business, 11 June 2024; and University of California, Santa Barbara, “How to build and protect skills in our modern workplace, a world filled with AI and robots”, The Current, 2024.
21. US Government Accountability Office. “Nuclear Weapons: NNSA and DOD Need to More Effectively Manage the Stockpile Life Extension Program.” GAO-09-385, 2 March 2009; and The War Zone, “Fogbank Is Mysterious Material Used In Nukes That's So Secret Nobody Can Say What It Is”, citing Los Alamos National Laboratory's Nuclear Weapons Journal, 2009.
22. Siemens AG. “Siemens introduces AI agents for industrial automation.” Press release, May 2025; and Contractor Magazine, “ServiceTitan Brings AI Automation to the Trades With Atlas”, 19 September 2025.
23. US Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters.” Occupational Outlook Handbook, accessed 25 September 2026; and Skills England, “Plumbing and domestic heating technician” apprenticeship standard ST0303, Level 3.
24. Department for Education. “Apprenticeships, Academic year 2024/25.” Explore Education Statistics, 27 November 2025; and House of Commons Library, “Apprenticeship starts: has there been a big fall?”
25. Construction Industry Training Board. “CITB publishes Construction Workforce Outlook 2026-2030.” 17 June 2026, with figures reported by Construction News and Building; and Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, “US Manufacturing Could Need as Many as 3.8 Million New Employees by 2033”, April 2024.

---

Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

Listen to the free weekly SmarterArticles Podcast

Support What We Do

Inbetweeners 42- Xalatra Questline Part 3- The Substructure Warrens and Cult of Vecna

The lift in the Gutworks took the players to a lower part of Sigil called the Reconfiguring Channel. This is literally where entire sections of the city are broken down or fabricated. Other than Dabus, no sentient beings inhabit this layer as it is extraordinarily dangerous. Sections of building, road, etc fly at high speeds like a vortex of city sections. Failing a Dex Save of 15 leads to massive bludgeoning damage. The players had to dodge pieces to head to essentially a manhole/service ladder even deeper into Sigil. Xalatra left some unstable glyphs behind on the manhole cover that caused a mini volcanic eruption if triggered. The players activated it from a safe distance before proceeding down to the Substructure Warrens.

The Substructure Warrens are inspired by decommissioned or abandon subways and tunnels beneath cities like New York or Paris. It is a series of passages, tunnels and rooms that were formally like the Gutworks but no longer serve a functional purpose to Sigil. These layers are essentially relics, vestigial organs of Sigil left behind as the city continued to grow and evolve. For a long time, no living creature inhabited these layers. However, after the Faction War, which saw Vecna try to seize control of Sigil, his surviving followers in the city had to flee. In my version of events in the faction war, Vecna never really posed any sort of threat to the Lady of Pain, as her power eclipsed his by many orders of magnitude. More she was irritated by the impertinence of his actions, and the sheer delusional egotism that he thought he could actually challenge her control of the city. Of course, had he succeeded, Vecna would have catapulted himself to a power level beyond any other deity save Primus or the Overgods. He was convinced he could exploit loopholes in how Sigil worked and sieze the Lady of Pain's power from her. This would be like a hummingbird thinking it could outsmart a tornado, and it went about as well as that scenario would for the hummingbird.

Once Vecna was imprisoned, his followers/worship was strictly outlawed across Sigil. Any of his surviving followers were rounded up and placed in endless labyrinths and four dimensional prisons from which they would never leave. To the Lady, death was not an appropriate response for what Vecna had done. Death has little meaning in this multiverse, and his being a cult of death and undeath, would mean even less. But trapping an entity in a fractal fracture between realities where it will be slowly unmade over millennia is far mroe suitable. Many of Vecna's followers abandon worshipping after his fall. Others managed to escape Sigil. But some decided to embed themselves deep underneath Sigil as they bided their time until they found a way to free their vaunted master. The Gutworks wouldn't be low enough, they were still frequently patrolled by the Dabus. However, these substructure warrens are so low, so forgotten, that not even the Lady would notice their presence. The substructure warrens' proximity to the maw only helped in this regard.

So as soon as the players went down into this level, they were discovered by a patrol from Vecna's followers. The patrol consisted of 2 Elite Doom Guards Lords and 4 Deathlock Masterminds. That is two CR 12s and 4 CR 8s. At the Inbetweener's current level, they could potentially defeat such a group but at grave loss of resources and hit points. That's a combined total of 844 hitpoints worth of enemies and A LOT of necrotic damage. And even if the players were successful, this was simply a patrol. They were never meant to fight there way through this level... it was more about diplomacy, stealth or creativity. Vecna may have been a chump compared to the Lady of Pain, but he was still a deity, and these are his most loyal and powerful remaining followers.

The players were brought to the “court” where they were essentially interrogated by the “judge” (a lich). In attendance at the court where a number wights, wraiths, cultists, vampires and a spirit naga. My plan was if the players died, they would be resurrected by the lich but under an intense form of Gaes to free Vecna. Instead, the players spoke to the lich, and they tried to withhold information and deceive him but he cast dominate monster on Bruce who then spilled everything. Their quest, why they were seeking out Xalatra, and their connection to the Lady of Pain. The connection to the Lady was of particular interest to him, since she was their sworn enemy and they were constantly living under a sort of Sword of Damocles that if she discovered them they'd be wiped out. However, the Lich picked up on the groups importance to the Lady of Pain, and immediately realized it was in his best interest if the players succeeded in their quest. Should they die, it could draw the attention of the Lady to their sequestered court and their imminent demise. So, the Lich made a sacrifice. He cast a spell that destroyed his phylactery and instead made Bruce his phylactery. He would live inside Bruce and could only be removed when Vecna was freed. This would bind the group to his cause, and since the Inbetweeners were so important to the Lady of Pain, she might be willing to free Vecna in return for their assistance. It was a long shot, but the remaining followers were dwindling, either by leaving or other forms of attrition. It was clear Vecna wasn't going to be freed on the current course,

The way this worked mechanically is that the lich could perceive anything Bruce perceived, and take control of Bruce through a contested wisdom save if Bruce did anything not in his best interest. His soul was tied to Bruce's, so any attempt to dislodge or remove him would risk destroying Bruce's soul. The only way to get the lich out was for him to voluntarily leave. Hence, new side quest for the group—deal with Bruce's possession. It wasn't all bad though, Bruce could tap into some of the Lich's powers if the Lich agreed to it and also the Lich would act to ensure Bruce didn't die. The Lich instructed his group to wait for further instruction, and stay hidden here in the meantime. This was the best leverage they've had on the Lady of Pain, and he would make the most of it.

After that, the followers of Vecna provided the players instructions and let them know they saw Xalatra pass through months ago. She was headed deeper... towards The Maw. Her mental state was fractured, and she was so dangerous that even the entire court of powerful undead did not want to test her, and they instead let her pass through and disabled her potent glyphs left behind.

And I think I'll leave it there. Bruce is the phylactery of the head surviving lich of Vecna (surviving is a funny word here but... you get the idea).

Shorter post, but I've been dragging my feet on writing these and I have a lot in the backlog so I figure I will get some down when I can to keep up the momentum. Next up, the showdown with Xalatra!

Sometimes we are guided to a person, place, or thing to learn that we don’t want those things. Will you recognize the pattern and take action to break the cycle? Or will you stay stuck in self-pity or blame others for your misfortune? It’s up to us.

S.N.I.t. ; Vijftien Minuten Roem voor Vijf Euro

Ik heb mijn vijftien minuten voor een vijfje te koop gezet op marktplaats er heeft nog niemand naar de aanbieding gekeken iedereen denkt dat er voldoende plaats is voor hun eigen talenten maar als ik al niet aan de bak kom dan is de kans dat jij het wel komt bijzonder klein minimaal ze zijn niet in voor roekeloos spelen met taal je zal moeten doen wat anderen voor je hebben gedaan dan voor een zakcentje extra zien ze je even in hun schaduw staan laat maar lopen dan los laten en door gaan ik doe het wel zonder loon naar werken zonder applaus, uitgesproken waardering en een nummertje in de bovenhoek je mag mijn vijftien minuten hebben met bonus schrikkel seconde ik laat de prijs voor je zakken nog even en je kan het zo meepakken voor nop zoals ik alles weggeef en ook naar leef zonder belang, zonder opsmuk, zonder doel alleen op gevoel op puur instinct zeg ik alles wat ik denk laat maar gaan van voor naar achter en weer terug twee handen op een buik, alles mijn eigen en geen zwaar houten kruis als loden last op de rug van links naar rechts van onder naar boven van boven naar rechts en van links naar beneden schitterend in volstrekt onbekend verleden en heden voor iedereen onopvallend in erkers en nissen optreden diep verborgen in de donkerste schaduwen ben ik voor eeuwig de uwe niemand die me hoeft te kennen die de kost voor mij moet winnen of ermee die ruimte voor mij moet vrij maken in een media kast geld moet uitgeven voor mijn nabijheid me niet hoeft mee te torsen als stoffig omhulsel dat amper om het moede lijf past je mag me gerust vergeten, hoeft mijn naam nooit te droppen geen credtis te geven en geen royalties ik ben gewoon je beste onzichtbare vriend die iedere keer als ik zelf wil en kan je met lappen tekst op een wit gelijkend blaadje bediend je mag alles over me zeggen, ik hoor het niet en als ik dat wel doe dan negeer ik het anderen gaan niet voor mij en ik ga zelf ook niet rond met de pet daar gooi ik wel zo nu en dan mee maar ik denk dat u mij dat voor het gemak wel vergeeft niet waar over waar gesproken, de vijftien minuten gaan nu voor 1 en negenennegentig euro cent weg het is het toppunt van de roem, nooit slecht vers, heeft bijna tien jaar op de bovenkamer stil gestaan in een oude loopschoenendoos bij de hoge stapel bewaard oefenmateriaal, compleet zinloos klik het tenminste even aan doe dan even alsof je interesse hebt in mijn kwartier spotlicht beschouw het als je minst vervelende plicht als roem als handelswaar al niet voldoet komt het dan ooit nog een keer goed zoals iets schijnt te doen als je iets anders een keertje per ongeluk goed doet onbewust van het goede van je daad maakt mij niet uit als je maar even op die flikkerende link staat die ik voor je heb aangemaakt mijn roem is de beste ooit in ieder geval beter dan nooit ik stuur het vanaf daar rechtstreeks op naar je waarschijnlijk zeer aantrekkelijk kop om over de rest maar niet te zwijgen hiermee kun je voor 900 tellen de successen aaneenrijgen één vijftig, lager ga ik niet, inpakken en wegwezen het nut er van, er in opgenomen, geabsorbeerd, zal je worden bewezen je hoeft niet eens kleine lettertjes te lezen en ook niet drie handtekeningen op een formulie neer te pinnen gewoon inloggen digitaal betalen en drukken op accepteren en jij zal zijn wat men anders over mij zou beweren goeie deal of niet dan een soepele overgang naar een gewenste toestand jij mijn roem ik jou één tien en we hoeven elkaar nooit in de ogen te zien allemaal voordelen voor ons allebei ik krijg een grijpstuiver van jou en jij alles van mij voor vijftien vette minuten ben jij hipper dan ik ooit zal zijn

i spoke too soon about fixing my sleep schedule. im back to sleeping at ridiculous hours and waking up when the rest of the world has finished its day. maybe daylight isnt for me anymore. ive tried to make it work, but i don’t think we’re getting along anymore. maybe we will later on. anyway, ive been having a harder time controlling myself lately. my emotions, mostly. anger, fear, jealousy, all of them. i cant seem to keep any of it under control, and its getting irritating. i thought id gotten past this but apparently i didnt. ive changed, for the better, id like to think. i dont miss the person i used to be. i know exactly what im capable of becoming, and i have no interest in going back to that. i wouldnt want to see that version of myself again, let alone become him. but lately it feels like im having to fight myself over the most basic things. i dont know how much longer i can keep doing that.

Theres something i need to do. i might regret it later, but thats a problem for later. id rather deal with that than become someone ive spent so long trying not to be. thats it.

Sincerely, My own worst company.

In Summary: * Listening to relaxing music as I eat fresh apple chunks, prepare to enter the night meds and night prayers phase of my evening, and wait patiently for the pregame programming for the night's college football game to start broadcasting.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 216.49 lbs. * bp= 151/78 (64)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, toe raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 05:05 – 1 banana * 05:30 – pizza * 10:00 – snacking on m&m chocolate candies * 12:00 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 13:45 – pizza, Mongolian beef lunch order, fried rice, egg roll * 16:40 – 1 fresh apple

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 02:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:30 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:10 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, take daily meds, unpack, organize, and nap * 15:00 – watching old episodes of Classic Doctor Who * 16:30 – listen to relaxing music

Chess: * 11:50 – moved in all pending CC games, winning 1, declined an invitation to a new tournament

Ingezonden stukje ; Generaal Pardon

Hi, ik ben Generaal Pardon, ik heb een mededeling voor u aangaande de inhoud van mijn excuses gemaakt over vele op dit moment urgente zaken als ook eerdere. Er is mij opgewezen dat niet alles wat ik heb geschreven betreffende deze onderwerpen even duidelijk is, zo heb ik gezegd dat ik spijt heb als haren op mijn hoofd, terwijl ik niet meer zoveel haren op mijn hoofd heb, maar toen het gebeuren waarnaar ik in dat ingezonden stuk verwijs plaatsvond had ik nog een hele dikke bos haar. Tevens heb ik gezegd dat ik ernstig gegrieft was waarbij ernstig niet echt duidelijk werd gedefinieerd, was het ernstig zoals turend naar een onwillig, hakkelend object, een staafje dat niet in een gaatje wil, of zeer ernstig in geval van een vreselijk falen, zoals bij een humane ramp veroorzaakt door persoonlijke fouten, ik bedoelde het laatste meer dan het eerste. Er is ook gezegd dat ik voor lang niet alles wat erg is sorry heb gezegd, dat ik zeker vijf procent van de delicten waarvoor ik min of meer zijdelings verantoordelijk zou kunnen zijn niet ter sprake heb gebracht, geen afstand heb genomen van deze toch zeer kwalijke zaken waarin onnodig veel schade is berokkend aan heel veel mensen, het merendeel verkerend in onmacht. Daarom zeg ik u nu dat dit allemaal niet de bedoeling was, abusievelijk nam ik aan dat het duidelijk was dat ik voor alles waarvoor ik heel zacht ter verantwoording kon worden geroepen ook mijn verantwoording heb genomen ook al heb ik dit niet nadrukkelijk gezegd. Ik hoop dat ik hiermee en ook met de komende vijf ingezonden stukken binnenkort te lezen op mijn weblocatie generaalpardon.com aan ieders excuus wensen zal hebben voldaan zodat iedereen verder kan en ik dus ook met het aansturen van mijn vele meelijopwekkende divisies vol dappere doch empathische para-soldaten, het excuus voor een leger. Sorry, sorry, en nogmaals sorry.

Ik wens u veel sterkte de komende minuten.

Why write now?

I rarely navigate the internet without bumping into LLM-generated content. A simple search for throat pain relief generates summaries I never asked for and points me to websites made for bots rather than humans. Does anyone need a top 13 list of pain relievers?

At work we embrace AI maybe a little too much. I find myself proof-reading strategic documents that explain concepts so verbosely that their authors never bothered reading them. Even simple messages, email or Slack, regularly carry the handwriting of the model du jour. As if we don't trust ourselves with writing anymore.

Oddly, this flood of text has led me to rediscover blogs. I imagine their authors typing on clicking keyboards rather than dictating instructions to an LLM.

I have been reading their posts and musings with great joy, impressed by how concise the writing is, how fresh it sounds with all its imperfections that are not at all imperfect to me. They stand in stark contrast to the slop I read every day and make me feel more connected to the author.*

Now I want to write my own thoughts, somewhat coherently, on my own clicky keyboard. Foremost, to help sort my thinking. And one day, who knows, for others to read or even enjoy.

* This is not a black-and-white case against LLM-aided writing. For example, SmarterArticles describes how “AI” aids their writing process, and I enjoy reading their results.

Its not worth it

When I was sixteen, I lay on a rugby field at Grey College in Bloemfontein, gripped by the worst pain I’d ever known. A loose scrum had collapsed on me during a match, shattering my leg into 27 pieces, as the doctor later told me. I tried to stand, only to see my leg bent at a grotesque right angle. I clawed at the grass, my fingers bleeding, as spasms wracked my body. The coach called for an ambulance, & a kind-hearted teacher we called Os checked on me. Through gritted teeth, I told him I felt “fokkin’ seer.” At Universitas Hospital, morphine dulled the agony, but I waited eight hours in the emergency room before surgery to reset my bones. For sixteen weeks, I wore a plaster cast from toe to hip, my medical expenses covered by the newly established Chris Burger Fund, created to support rugby players injured on the field.

In September, I read about Chris Burger, the fund’s namesake. A versatile Western Province backline player, he was 28 when a loose scrum collapsed on him in 1980 at the Free State Stadium. Dr. Moss recounted how Chris lay motionless, telling the team doctor, “Dok, ek het geen gevoel in my bene en arms” (Doc, I have no feeling in my legs and arms). Carried off on a makeshift stretcher, he was rushed to Universitas Hospital, the same emergency room where I’d lain. Despite efforts to save him, his broken neck proved fatal. Fully conscious, he faced death with courage, telling Dr. Moss, “I know my God. I am ready to go.” He passed peacefully of respiratory failure the next morning. A loose scrum took his life, just as one had nearly taken mine. He died; I lived.

Along life’s path, I’ve endured other pains & witnessed traumatic deaths, some as bad or worse than that day on the rugby field. Those stories belong to other chapters. But no physical pain, no matter how excruciating, compares to the soul-crushing weight of a toxic work environment. Physical wounds heal with time, casts, & morphine, but psychopathic intimidation & manipulation erode something deeper, your spirit, your sense of self. You can choose to endure a debilitating workplace for financial gain, but at what cost? When the loose scrum of a toxic job collapses, it’s not your life at stake, it’s your soul.

I faced that choice at Investec, where a manager in the dealing room turned my days into a living hell. Incompetent & a master of backstabbing politics, she thrived on making others miserable. I confided in my wife, who saw the toll it was taking. “Leave,” she said. So I did. The second time was at WBS/iBurst, under a micro-managing narcissist who suffocated any spark of creativity or autonomy. When a retrenchment package came up, I seized it without hesitation. This time my wife wasn’t around any more to ask, I did that from muscle memory.

Physical pain, I learned, is temporary. You can grit your teeth, claw the grass, & survive. But a workplace that grinds down your soul? That’s a price too high to pay. No paycheck is worth trading your spirit for a loose scrum that leaves you broken in ways no hospital can fix.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

This month I've finished the “Action Hero” chapter I talked about last month. This took longer than most chapters: as well as turning out to be one of the longest chapters in the game, a lot of it is one big fight scene, which is something I find difficult and kind of exhausting to write. Plus, about 1/3 of the way through you get to pick your badass weapon, so nearly every passage from that point on had to have separate versions for each weapon.

In order to get to this chapter at all you have to choose it over the stealthy, non-violent options, but even so I think it's turned out kind of bloodthirsty, so when I come back to revise I might try to add a less lethal alternative path. But for now, like the hero in the story, I'm pressing forward!

I'm now working on a chapter called Laboratory of Death, where the player ventures into a sinister laboratory to stop development of a bioweapon that can wipe out humanity. Appropriately enough for Halloween, I'm giving this one more of a sci-fi horror vibe.

Besides pulp sci-fi, my main inspiration for Foolish Earth Creatures is games with a villain who talks at you while you play. In this scene in particular I'm being inspired by the classic of that genre, System Shock, which has you survive a creepy space station filled with mutants while a mad computer monologues at you. But don't worry, the overall tone is still going to be “fun sci-fi adventure” and not “disturbing body horror.”

I don't think the next few chapters will be as difficult to write as big fight scene was, so I'm hoping to have some more to show next month.

Our hero has overcome the difficulty of writing an action-packed fight scene...but can his writing do justice to the horrors of the laboratory of death? Learn more in next month's developer diary...IF YOU DARE!

*

In other news, the post I wrote last year about Dan Dare has inexplicably become one of the most viewed posts on this blog. So in case anyone's interested in more of that, I've started a very nerdy side-blog in which I do commentaries and analyses of the Dan Dare stories.

#FoolishEarthCreatures #DevDiary

I canceled my YouTube Premium yesterday. I really only used it for music and to ignore ads. Their constant layout changes annoy me, and the latest one has made it impossible for me to easily see what I want to without subscribing, so I canceled. So much is AI slop anyway. Even long-time science and educational channels are clearly heavily using it. I wonder if they understand how easy it is to see and hear.

It becomes pointless really. I think one just has to accept that the majority of persons are going to eagerly use it in all its many forms if it means they can have less effort involved. After all, why take a photograph that actually celebrates the moment when you can have AI clean it up to an ideal memory? Look at the photograph enough, and the actual memory will eventually be completely replaced.

It all just saddens me. I think the world does in general. So many eager to experience “life” that they forget what “experience” actually means. I am surely an alien stranded upon a desolate isle.

In other personal updates, I'd really like to stop coughing now. I think it's getting a little better. I hate sucking on lozenges, but it's the only thing helping. I slept most of the day and allowed my fever to hopefully be close to running its coarse. I'm in pretty good spirits all things considered.

I think I shall go drown myself in a cold shower. I'd normally choose scalding when dealing with respiratory nonsense. Steam and all. I am finding the icy showers invigorating in a different manner. I think, perhaps, they feel more natural. I'm exploring the sensory aspects of it all. I suppose the real experiment will be on the coldest months of the year. Will I be able to handle it then? I've done a cold finish for a while. Can I comfortably continue a cold throughout? I don't know. For now, it's pleasing in a new way.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

Lieu : Sur une roche de la rive, parc Riverside, Siknikt Date : 2026-10-30, 11 h 22 HAA Conditions : 15 °C, ensoleillé, marée descendante. Une brise légère, des chants d’oiseaux, et mon corps, toujours sur la défensive.

En voiture de l’aéroport il y a quelques jours, on est passés devant le panneau sur la rue Main qui annonce les heures du mascaret : un seul pour la journée. J’ignorais que c’était possible, mais ça fait du sens quand t’y penses : il glisse parfois par-dessus la ligne du jour, alors certains jours en ont deux, d’autres un seul. On est arrivés à l’hôtel environ 45 minutes avant le mascaret. Naturellement, j’ai déposé ma valise et je me suis installé sur une roche, au bord de la rive. Aujourd’hui, j’y suis de retour.

C’est à couper le souffle. La zone littorale se vide peu à peu, l’eau se rétrécit vers la mer comme un enfant qui court après sa mère. Siknikt, en mi’kmaw, veut dire « lieu d’écoulement ». Beaubassin, en français, nomme (évidemment) un beau bassin. Deux noms pour la même région, deux manières de la regarder. Sous les deux, la même eau se retire, chargée de minéraux.

Cet endroit a une texture que je n’arrive pas encore à mettre en mots. Un lieu working-class où des peuples distincts (Autochtones, Acadien·nes, francophones, anglophones) se mêlent comme ces eaux, des destins entrelacés même à travers les distances. Cet équilibre tient tant bien que mal, et des regards venus de l’extérieur de l’Acadie le compliquent encore.

La brise fait tomber quelques feuilles de plus à chaque passage, et leur bruissement s’ajoute aux sons des coureurs en spandex et aux regards évaluateurs des passants, dont la plupart se taisent en m’approchant, un silence que je perçois sans même lever la tête de mon cahier. Les marées, elles, continuent de descendre.

---

Je suis ici pour présenter ma recherche au tout premier Sommet en santé 2SLGBTQIA+ au Nouveau-Brunswick. Un honneur, pour de vrai. Deux des organisateur·ices m’ont vu au Sommet du Centre de recherche communautaire en 2025 et m’ont approché après. Franco-Ontarien moi-même, je suis toujours réceptif à ce genre d’initiatives venant d’autres communautés francophones en contexte minoritaire.

Ça fait quelques minutes que je suis assis ici, à tenter, largement en vain, de réguler mon système nerveux. J’ai marché jusqu’ici depuis le pavillon Léopold-Taillon, sur le campus de l’Université de Moncton, parce que mon corps avait besoin de mouvement. Arrivé pour le déjeuner à 8 h, j’ai eu des discussions fascinantes avec les autres conférencier·ères, des sujets stimulants qui portaient de l’espoir. Espoir qu’on allait pouvoir créer ensemble. Et je le crois toujours : une de mes interlocutrices mi’kmaw était vraiment sur la même longueur d’onde que moi, ce qui confirme que je me dirige dans la bonne direction.

Et puis, l’incident. Je vous épargne les détails : un manque structurel de considération, une somme de micro-agressions, personne en particulier. Ce que je partage, en revanche, c’est ce que mon corps a fait.

Je sors de la salle Richelieu en plein milieu du panel, sans sac à dos, sans manteau, et la première réaction de mon corps est de fuir. Dans le couloir, je croise une personne du CA d’Alter Acadie derrière la merch table, et tout ce que j’avais retenu déborde sur elle, ma voix partant avant même que j’aie choisi mes mots. Je commence à bégayer quelque chose de quasi-cohérent que je ne me rappelle même plus, mais c’est pas grave. No matter how much j’aurais voulu m’expliquer, cette rage, cette réponse impuissante et viscérale, me précède. Je décide de laisser mon absence parler et de quitter les lieux.

Je traverse la cafétéria. Elle s’appelle Le Mascaret. Bien sûr.

Une porte. Un petit couloir. Encore des portes, et la salle sensorielle, quelques portes plus loin. Je prends un moment d’étale, lumières fermées. C’est juste une salle de réunion, en fait, table pis toute. Il n’y a personne. Je m’assois aussi loin que possible de la porte. Un instinct d’enfance. La tête dans les bras, j’essaie de pleurer. Mais rien ne sort. Colère, frustration, impuissance, et cette indignation que me prêtent les ancêtres face à l’injustice. C’est à moi de porter ça, encore : un manque de considération qui s’infiltre sous la peau, glissant vers les épaules et s’installant avec toutes les autres micro-agressions qui me rappellent ma place dans la hiérarchie. Un commentaire de trop et le corps s’active tout seul. L’injustice, gravée dans la mémoire, dans la chair, est désormais indissociable de toutes les belles conversations, de toutes les réponses positives et reconnaissances de la valeur de mon travail. Une tension se loge dans ma mâchoire, alors j’expire profondément et je me lève.

Je me retire par le même chenal : le couloir, Le Mascaret, la merch table, jusqu’à la salle Richelieu pour récupérer mes affaires. Puis une troisième fois, jusqu’à la sortie du pavillon.

Une fois dehors, je suis les trottoirs de ce campus peu familier vers l’entrée principale. Je prends un selfie avec le welcome sign, juste pour le geste, avant de traverser le pont qui relie le campus à la ville. Il y a des travaux sur mon chemin, que mon esprit de Montréalais négocie sans peine. Je continue, avec un petit hochement de tête pour les deux étudiants noirs qui se dirigent vers le campus, puis je retourne aux sons dans mes écouteurs. Un arrêt au Brix Café pour utiliser un coupon pour une boisson gratuite (un latte à l’avoine dans mon cas), qui m’a été offerte avec un service à la clientèle exécrable. Un petit moment de confusion devant le café, puis mon téléphone me guide sur la rue Lutz, où je croise le chemin de fer, jusqu’au parc et à la rive. Il reste encore plus d’une heure avant le mascaret, et l’eau descend toujours. Mais je ne suis pas pressé. Je reste, le cahier ouvert, face à l’eau qui se retire, et j’attends qu’elle change de sens.

Our memory experiences time non-linearly for sure, but I think also discontinuously. At least for me, it feels like a folder of dossiers on memorable life situation with the disconcerting feeling that you will go back to those soon, or even that you should be able to move between them.

Lydia's Weekly Lifestyle blog is for today's African girl, so no subject is taboo. My purpose is to share things that may interest today's African girl.

This week's contributors: Lydia, Pépé Pépinière, Titi. This week's subjects: The “I Have Nothing to Wear” Office Fashion Emergency, Choosing the right hubby is only the beginning of the road, Ladies, Beware!, Crescent Rolls, and Sushi at Home

---

The “I Have Nothing to Wear” Office Fashion Emergency There is perhaps no greater morning drama than standing before a wardrobe filled with clothes and confidently declaring: “I have absolutely nothing to wear.” For the Accra corporate girl, this familiar fashion emergency usually happens on the morning of an important meeting, a presentation—or simply a day when looking effortlessly polished feels non-negotiable. But before rushing to the shops, consider this: the perfect office look may already be hanging quietly in your wardrobe. The Art of the Wardrobe Rediscovery: Luxury is not always about owning more. Often, it is about seeing what you already own with a fresh perspective. That forgotten blazer can instantly sharpen a simple pair of trousers. An old white shirt becomes effortlessly elegant when paired with a structured midi skirt. A neutral dress you rarely wear can feel entirely new with a belt, refined accessories and a beautifully tailored jacket. Start With the Classics: When inspiration disappears, return to the pieces that never fail: crisp shirts, tailored trousers, structured blazers, elegant dresses and timeless skirts. Then elevate them through styling. Think tonal dressing in shades of cream, chocolate, black or soft beige. Add polished shoes, a structured handbag and subtle jewelry. Suddenly, familiar pieces feel intentional, sophisticated and quietly luxurious. Style Over Shopping: The most stylish women are not necessarily the ones with overflowing wardrobes. They are the ones who understand proportion, layering, texture and the power of impeccable styling. So the next time you find yourself staring dramatically into your wardrobe, remember: you may not need a new outfit. You may simply need a new perspective. Because sometimes, the most luxurious thing in your wardrobe is not something you just bought—it is something you finally learned how to style beautifully. Choosing the right hubby is only the beginning of the road. It appears that men have a tendency to keep their eyes wide open, even after the marriage, for anything that moves and wears a skirt. On top of that, once you are pregnant it is not so easy again to give in to all his desires, and immediately after delivery you are literally out of the running for quite some time, and busy with the newborn, lack of sleep, and no time for the gym. So what now do you expect? Let’s look at the basics. What do you really want? You want your kids to grow up in a harmonious peaceful environment, with sufficient money available to take care of everyone’s needs. But here goes, he’s found another fresh green leaf and even moves out. Most often the kids suffer enormously during and after such separation, though you may not immediately notice it. Often school performance goes down, some even start stammering, some are lost between the many grandmothers and aunties trying to take care of them, and trust no one again and learn to steal what they need. Many kids after a separation carry serious trauma, sometimes all their lives. I’ve looked at my friends, and my little survey shows that 8 out of 10 come from a broken family. And most of them somehow are traumatised and have difficulty performing socially and having honest relationships. So, no matter what selfish ugly bastard he turns out to be, do whatever you can to stay together, at least till the kids have grown up. You owe it to these kids, who did not ask to come into this world. And if that means you have to literally go on your knees, then do so. And there’s more. Every guy has a soft spot; find it. Maybe cook like his mum, or visit his mum often. Or show your buttocks right into his face and allow him to grab them, if that’s what he fancies. Or whatever. And if he is kinkier than you like? It is not about you; it is about the kids. Make sure that with you he gets something he gets nowhere else. Make the effort to find out what really turns him on, into your power.

Ladies, Beware! First, we had the Russian man with the video spectacles who posted many girls naked on social media. Then there was this man from Puerto Rico (I think it is part of the USA) who claims that he wants to marry five ladies from different countries. And the latest I heard of is a man who claims to have a real jacuzzi in his house and who is inviting girls to enjoy it (and of course, take selfies). But it is not clear whether he provides bathing costumes or if to really feel the flow of the water you have to attend in Eva’s costume. I’d say: beware, and curiosity kills the cat.

Crescent Rolls. And talk about curiosity! I went to Melcom Labone and decided to try their croissant au beurre (butter croissant), proudly baked by l’Artisan (the craftsman) at GHC 20. The price is a bit more than I would pay for a good croissant in France, but this was not a good croissant. Maybe “crescent roll” was a better description. No Frenchman would recognize this as a croissant, apart from perhaps its shape (even that was overdone). A good butter croissant should taste rich, with creamy, aromatic butter, balanced by a mild, natural sweetness from the yeast dough and just a subtle hint of salt, rather than heavy sugar, artificial flavourings, or greasy vegetable oil. The deep golden-brown crust should add a slight, pleasant toasted or nutty undertone. On the outside it should be crisp and flaky, shattering and crackling when pressed or bitten into with light flakes falling away. Inside, it should be tender, warm, and soft, with an open, airy honeycomb structure formed by delicate layers rather than the dense texture of a heavy bread roll. Finally, a well-made butter croissant should dissolve easily in the mouth and never leave a heavy, waxy, or greasy coating on the lips or fingers.

Sushi at Home. Do you like sushi? In Ghana it is mainly slices of raw seafood, mostly served with a roll of rice. I make my own and use cassava fish (not always easy to get) which has a neutral but still fishy flavour. I marinate small pieces for about three hours in lemon juice and add finely sliced onion, a very little bit of hot pepper, some small pieces of tomato, and tomato paste (ketchup is too sweet). Try it with a nice glass of cold Prosecco! (Of course, the cassava fish should be very fresh.)

Lydia...

Do not forget to hit the subscribe button and confirm in your email inbox to get notified about our posts.

I have received requests about leaving comments/replies. For security and privacy reasons my blog is not associated with major media giants like Facebook or Twitter. I am talking with the host about a solution. for the time being, you can mail me at wunimi@proton.me

I accept invitations and payments to write about certain products or events, things, and people, but I may refuse to accept and if my comments are negative then that's what I will publish, despite your payment. This is not a political newsletter. I do not discriminate on any basis whatsoever.