Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Musk just threw down the gauntlet to Uber, public transport and logistics

    Last October I wrote a widely shared blog post on Medium, concerning the launch of the Tesla Model X. In the post I argued that many of the features of the Model X did not relate to their stated goal – but instead were features of future planned vehicles. I concluded: If I’m correct — and I…

  • Blogiversary

    On July 19, 2002 this blog started – 5,114 days/14 years ago. It was just 10 months after 9/11 and blogging was just getting started. Here’s to the next 14 years.

  • From pull to ‘stream’ economies

    I was interested to read Ben Evan’s recent take on the “Facebook of eCommerce”. He concludes: That kind of scalable automation, though, could also go in completely the opposite direction for some things – away from any kind of decision at all. You put an Amazon Dash on the machine, or perhaps it can measure…

  • Attracting readers

    Elizabeth Spayd, the new Public Editor at The New York Times has written her first column. The previous public editor Margaret Sullivan departed recently for the Washington Post. In her first column, Spayd grapples with the core issue of attracting readers and the changing nature of the audience: What would prove more fruitful is for…

  • Thoughts on Brexit

    It’s now 2,840 days since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and we are still living in the crisis wrought on the global economy. It is probably widely perceived that 2008 is a long time ago, that we’ve moved on with our lives, that the crisis is in the past, that unemployment is falling and the…

  • Elon Musk’s sleight of hand

    [cross posted from Medium]. Like many people, I’m a fan of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Chairman of Solar City. So much so that I’m nerdy enough to listen to the quarterly conference calls of Tesla, and keep a close eye on the movements of each company. Watching Tesla launches, like the…

  • 10 years a blogging

    Just to mark – though I have since moved on to thestory.ie – that this blog is 10 years old today! 🙂 Thanks to all my readers over the years – and the stats just passed the 2 million mark around the same time…

  • De blogging

    Things have been quiet around these parts of late. I moved to Dublin, started working for Storyful, and have been kept very busy over at thestory.ie doing FOIs. Do readers want me to cross post everything from thestory.ie to here?

  • Anglo – requesting information

    [posted to thestory.ie] Readers will be aware that Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised in January 2009. This came after the bank guarantee scheme of September/October 2009. Anglo became a prescribed body under the Ethics in Public Office Act last summer, which was expanded through a statutory instrument in February 2010 to cover many subsidiaries of…

  • Ireland honours St Patrick

    Great video:

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