James Michael

🪤 Turns out leaving Google is harder than you think…

2 min read

On 30 August 2026

Welcome back to the next part in the series I’m calling “Encrypted Pigeons“. Why? Because it’s a frankly terrible name and I’m sticking with it.

At the end of the last issue, I was talking about my overall experiences with privacy, and how that has changed quite a bit. Roughly six months ago, I had no real understanding of digital privacy, and I was perfectly happy to keep going as I was. My main computer was Windows 11; I messaged everyone on WhatsApp, and practically everything I did backed up onto Google drive in some way or another. Google Photos, Google calendar, Google everywhere.

I was happy with that, because it all worked together quite well. I only had a vague sense that maybe my digital life wasn’t quite in my control.

🧙 My review of Earthsea: the first four books.

4 min read

On 26 August 2026

I’d been quite excited to read this one for a while. It was a Christmas present, and I’d been told that Ursula Le Guin was “the birth of modern fantasy”. Tolkien’s predating her by about a decade aside, it was certainly interesting.

One disclaimer: the edition I read was the original Earthsea quartet of A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu. It did not include the two later books written to finish the series.

🇬 I tried to get rid of Google

3 min read

On 25 August 2026

Part of Encrypted Pigeons

I use Google Wallet.

That’s a bit of an issue for me, because I’d quite like to stop using Google’s products.

🥔 Scotland’s termtime schedule is based on potatoes?

< 1 min read

On 18 August 2026

In Scotland, the country harvests their potatoes — colloquially known as “tatties” — around mid-October. Farming families, looking for more labourers to help them, would often bring their children out of school during the season to help with the harvest.

Eventually, schools became so empty during this period that the schools themselves, who generally received funds based on attendance, were suffering, and complaining to the then Scotch Education Department. Around the 1870s, the Department decided to make the entire period a school holiday, which was quite an effective way of avoiding having to deal with the problem. 🤣

🧑‍💻 Why I care about privacy

2 min read

On 13 August 2026

I use Google Wallet.

That annoys me somewhat, because I’d quite like to stop using Google products. Not because Google is necessarily evil, but because I don’t agree with what they do with my data, whether I knowingly hand it over or not. And so far, I’ve managed pretty well to avoid most of Google’s ecosystem.

That’s why I use Proton for my email and my passwords. I self-host my photos, my documents, on Nextcloud. I replaced Google apps on my phone with more open, more privacy-respecting ones. Honestly? It was kind of fun.

So why is it that, when I go into a shop, and put my phone to the card machine, it’s a little Google logo that turns up and takes my payment?

This got me thinking a lot about what “privacy” actually means to most people, particularly today, when so much of the data companies collect is increasingly being fed into AI systems. I’m not especially interested in perfect privacy, I’m not going to ditch every proprietary app, go live in the woods, and communicate with the world through encrypted pigeons. That’s just ridiculous.

What I am interested in though, is understanding just what’s at stake when I click a cookie banner, or open an app. What am I giving to companies, in exchange for the services they provide me?

🐴 My ode to The Odyssey

3 min read

On 9 August 2026

Today, I finally got around to watching Christopher Nolan’s new(ish) film: The Odyssey. Overall, it wasn’t bad, but there are a few key areas that I would question.

For the avoidance of doubt, and if you hadn’t realised already, this post contains spoilers for the film.

📅 Why are months named so oddly?

2 min read

On 1 August 2026

There are twelve months in the year, and each one has a unique and distinctive name. There are some distinct patterns though, linked mostly to history, and specifically the Romans.

🔮 How often do coincidences actually happen?

2 min read

On 30 July 2026

Recently, I was telling my family an interesting bit of research I’d found that day, about wartime defences on the Suffolk coast, such as the Sound Mirrors of Dungeness. These are giant concrete structures there from the 1930s, designed to reflect engine motor noises from out at sea into specially tuned microphones. The intention was to hear enemy planes before they arrived to prepare.

Those defences were never used during wartime — radar was invented soon after as a much more accurate system — but the walls are still there after over 90 years.

Anyway, as I was telling my family about this over dinner, the television was on at the same time with Jim Moir in the BBC’s Walking With… series, making his way around the Kentish coast. We weren’t really paying attention to it, but I could see the screen out of the corner of my eye.

As I was telling them about these defences, what should come onto the screen but the very stone walls and parabolic shapes of the Sound Mirrors that I was describing! I was pretty surprised, as was the rest of my family.

⛵ What’s the difference between “Boat” and “Ship”?

2 min read

On 29 July 2026

Watercraft of some form or another seems to have existed for around the last 50,000 years, with the first rafts coming from settlers in Australia. But since then they have evolved enormously, from canoes to rowboats, to war and cruiseships. With them has evolved the terminology we use, but how much do we actually understand what we’re saying? What is the difference between a ship, and a boat?

The etymology of the two words can give us some insight. Both come from Old English, where boat or “bat”, may have meant something like “to split”, potentially referencing the way a tree trunk is split to carve out a boat. Ship, however, comes from “scip”, which specifically refers to a larger ship for navigation.

So it’s sorted: a ship is larger than a boat. Problem solved! Except it’s not that simple.