Tales From The Simulation: Part Two — When Your Old Computer Dies

 

Actually, my old computer didn’t die, but its replacement did. 

That was a year ago. I needed to upgrade my old faithful PC, as it was beginning to struggle with a lack of memory. I suppose that comes to us all eventually. For several years it had done a good job, but time had arrived to upgrade to something that didn’t take thirty seconds to start a YouTube video.

Enter a new Dell, Windows 10 PC. Well, a new(ish) refurbished Windows 10 PC. All was well until it wasn’t. After three months it developed a clunking sound at start-up, only running silent after a restart. It sounded like something was going to fail, so I took it back to the shop.

“It’s a noise from the fan.” Said the shop assistant.

“No, it isn’t,” I replied. “I took the side off, and the noise is near the start button. A component part is going to fail.”

“I’m afraid you will have to bring it back when it fails, as the PC runs perfectly on a reboot.”

Customer service.

I took it home, but one day three months later it made a clunking sound for the final time. I looked at the monitor, and it was like a scene from The Matrix. The picture was breaking up, Matrix-style, numbers falling down the screen. Except this was the PC wallpaper image making a pretty pattern of broken pixels.

Tales From The Simulation: Part One - Do We Live In a Simulation?

 

Something strange happened to me a few days ago. It was something that I struggled to explain logically, other than the idea of coincidence in life. It was as satisfactory an explanation as any other, but only in that it was convenient.

Occasionally, things happen to me which make me wonder what is going on? There is a theory that explains it all, but it is somewhat controversial, and some might say unbelievable. A theory that belongs more in the world of science fiction than science fact — that we are living in a simulation. 

That someone, or something is in control of everything we see and do.

And I regularly ask myself the question. ‘Are we living in a simulation?’

It does sound like science fiction, but there are scientists, philosophers, and tech billionaires who have seriously discussed the idea that our universe might actually be a simulation. Some propose that we are living in a kind of ultra-advanced computer program. It is a serious proposition.

The theory became widely known after philosopher Nick Bostrom published his “Simulation Argument” back in 2003. What he was suggesting was something surprisingly simple; it goes like this.

If life became so advanced that they were capable of creating simulated worlds that were so realistic and indistinguishable from the reality that we know, then how would we tell the difference? Each simulation would contain beings who believed they were alive and real. They in turn would create their own simulated realities. There could eventually be millions, or even billions of them. 

If that happened, statistically, it might be more likely that we are inside one of those simulations rather than living in the original “base” reality.

The Writer's Life: First Steps On The Property Ladder (From My Soon to be Published Book)

 

Imagine the scene. It is the mid-2000's, and property prices in Britain are rocketing (as usual), and I'm viewing a property, and in conversation with an estate agent.

This is part of that conversation.

“Well, a garden would be ideal,” I said. “It’s just a bit small, more of a patio, with a bit of grass.”

Charles leaned back, full of property-market wisdom and self-assurance.

“But it would be your garden. And it wouldn’t need much work to keep it in order. Gardens add value. If you want one at this price level, this is the best you’ll find.”

He was right. Gardens did add value, but I saw the “value” as more than just money. I don’t think Charles did. And this one had already added a little too much monetary value, for me, anyway.

“I don’t think I can afford it,” I said. “The salary multiples don’t work. I might need to win the lottery.”

“Yes, the lottery! I won the lottery once, just ten pounds. I make a lot more selling houses.” He laughed.

And that’s when the conversation took a turn.

“There is one possibility,” he said. “Have you heard of a self-certification mortgage? They are quite popular at the moment.”

I had. In fact, I watched a documentary about them. They were being handed out to people that they weren’t designed for, most likely fuelling the very property boom Charles was profiting from.

“You basically fill out the form, write down your income, we send it to the bank, and it all goes through,” he explained.

“But I don’t earn enough.”

“Well,” he said, lowering his voice a little, “you just have to be a little creative in the numbers.” He smiled. “Lots of people are doing it. The banks don’t check. It always comes back approved.”

“Really?” I said, pretending to be shocked.

“Then we’ll celebrate with a bottle of champagne. You’ll be on the property ladder. And you’ll have your own little show garden.”

The Great Creator Squeeze: Why Platforms Are Paying Less and the War Against AI Slop

 

For many years, the idea of earning a living online was simple: create content, grow an audience, and be blessed by the algorithm. Making money online was possible, and for a while it looked too easy. In reality, it was still hard work, but getting there could happen if you put in the time and effort.

Now, everything seems to be changing, and fast. Across platforms, creators are facing stricter monetisation rules. This can be seen in falling payouts, and an increased risk of demonetisation.

I noticed it firsthand when Medium slashed writer earnings from the beginning of 2025, and they haven’t recovered. They had problems from late 2024, and the new year began with lower earnings and a purge of writers who were not all that they seemed. AI writing might have had something to do with it.

Meanwhile, creators at Facebook have recently reported and complained about much-reduced payouts.

But the big change seems to be what is happening at YouTube.

So, what’s going on?

Most days in my YouTube recommendations, I will see videos from creators who have been demonetised or banned. Others report lower views and payments. Some say that payments have fallen, although view count is the same.

YouTube has tightened its policies around AI and the use of “reused” content. They are cracking down on “inauthentic” content. In recent months, the platform has stepped up action against AI-generated content that has little input from the creator.

Videos that are:

• Inauthentic
• Repetitive or produced from templates.
• Mass-produced.
• Reusing content without making significant changes.
• Or 100% AI.

All are being targeted and removed when found.

Content that falls into these categories is increasingly being demonetised, with channels being removed from the Partner Program entirely.

But is it just about the use of AI?

Some who have been banned claim that they are not using AI at all to create their videos. But even on appeal, they remain banned. And many very popular AI-produced video channels with millions of views have been demonetised and banned.

Is it a ban on AI?

The Writer's Life: Thoughts on the Art of Writing Creative Non-Fiction

 

 

Creative non-fiction sits in an interesting place in the world of writing. It lives somewhere between not quite being journalism and also not quite being memoir. Complicating matters further, it’s also not quite storytelling in the traditional fictional sense. Yet it borrows something from all three.

I’m attracted to creative non-fiction because it allows me to write about subjects normally found in books written by academics with letters after their name. My writing often touches on historical events or the way life was in the past. It’s a lived experience, why not write about it?

Adding the personal touch moves the story away from something that looks like writing from a text book. The writing becomes a personal account, with real-life history as the backdrop. The events and the people involved are real. The emotions and experiences come from life as it was lived.

At its heart, creative non-fiction writing is about telling true stories using the techniques of good storytelling. But the writer looks to shape the story with care, using a narrative structure to make the story engaging and meaningful for the reader.

It can be one of the most personal forms of writing.

Unlike fiction, where characters and situations are typically invented, creative non-fiction requires the writer to work with reality. Memory becomes an important source of material, as do personal observations. Everyday experiences, and the moments that may have seemed insignificant at the time, can reveal something deeper when revisited.

There is something to be said for the quality of how ordinary life can be. Putting it into words in a story that means something is the difficult bit. It could be anything. A walk through an unfamiliar neighbourhood, a childhood memory, or even a conversation overheard on the bus. All of these might seem ordinary at the time but can become the foundation of a piece of creative non-fiction.

One story can, and I find frequently does, lead to another. They are stories within stories. It is essential that good creative non-fiction does more than simply recount events.

When I was at school, writing about historical events was presented in order, one after another. I think it was called ‘learning by rota’. It refers to a type of learning through repetition and often involves memorisation of dates and facts.

The Writer's Life: Why Writers See the World Differently

 

An idea crossed my mind.

Writers often move through life with a slightly different perspective from everyone else. It is not necessarily something that the writer chooses. In many cases, it simply happens over time. The more a person writes, the more they begin to observe the world in a way that others might overlook.

And I asked myself the question, ‘Why?’

I am a latecomer to the world of writing. Five years ago, writing was just something that I did when I had to. Social media, blogs, and bulletin boards were not something that had taken over my life. I did occasionally write a post here or there, but I felt that I had better things to do with my time. As a form of writing, though, it was all very fleeting. 

And then I wrote a book, Son of My Father.

I wrote it because after the death of my mother, I went through the experience of thinking about the past. Memories and stories started to fill my mind in a way they hadn’t before. Then I had a thought. I decided to write about them.

From that moment I was hooked on writing. 

I came to think that writing about life changes the way we observe it. A writer does not just experience events; we notice them. Even small details become important. Watching how someone pauses before answering a question, or noticing the exact phrase used in a conversation and the tone behind it. Being aware of the language used, the mood in the room, and how people react. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but it carries meaning.

The Writer's Life: Finding Your Authentic Voice

 

Every writer is told, sooner or later, to find their authentic voice. That we should try to write true to the person that we are. For me, that is good advice, because my authentic voice is a simplistic one. It has to be given my background. I’m not sure that I could change it to anything else, even if I wanted to.

Let’s start at the beginning.

At school, writing was something that we had to do, once we had learnt to write, that is. For me, I don’t recall being a natural when it came to writing. If anything, like most things at school, it was a chore. I tended to prefer lessons like games or art.

Writing could be hard work, especially the grammar side of it. Turning an idea, a story, into something that read as it sounded in my mind did not come easy to me. I’m tempted to say that is still the case. I have to work on that all the time. 

One of the things that I have noticed about grammar checking software (especially AI), is that it doesn’t always recognise the authentic voice when making recommendations.

The Writer's Life: The 4000 Weeks of Life, How Do You Plan to Use Them?

I was reading an article recently about the average life span. It informed me that, on average, we have about 4000 weeks of life. From birth to death, we have 4000 weeks to live.

If you’re reading this at age forty, you have around 2,000 weeks left to live. 

At sixty, which I reached five years ago, it is approximately 1000 weeks. 

It’s a startling thought when you first encounter it. Not because it’s dramatic, but because that is the calculation. Most lifetimes, at least in advanced industrial nations, stretch to roughly 80 years — about 4,000 weeks. By midlife, at the age of forty, half of those have already slipped quietly behind you, often unnoticed; time has just passed.

But the average life expectancy will be different depending on where you live in the world. There are many factors that will determine how long we might live, and they are not equal across the world.

So, I looked into the numbers a little deeper.

According to the United Nations, the current average age at death for people across the world is around 73.3 years, which is 3822 weeks. For women, the average is 76 years (3963 weeks/912 months), and for men, 70.7 years (3687 weeks/848.4 months). It is well known that women, on average, live longer than men.

Weeks are an uncomfortable unit of measurement, and 4000 does seem a lot. Years can feel generous, decades abstract. But weeks are tangible. They are ordinary, repetitive, something that we feel and easy to waste. It is seven days of life — the here and now — they come and go. 

Many of us spend the first half of life building careers, working, raising families, chasing stability, and waiting for the “right time”. Somewhere along the way, we forget to ask what we actually want our remaining weeks to look like. We assume there will always be more time later.

There won’t.

Our time on this planet is finite, and the clock is always ticking. Life is full of numbers and averages.

The Writer's Life: The Writer As An Observer of Life - A Hospital Visit

 

A writer rarely enters a room without quietly taking notes. Not with pen and paper; that would be too obvious, but with something far more instinctive. I find myself observing what is going on around me, and the potential for a story forms in my mind.

A writer notices the way a conversation develops or stalls, the glance that lingers too long, and the sigh that says more than words ever could. The looks on the faces of everyone in the room, friendly or grumpy, hostile even, every room has its own look and character.

I was in one such room last Friday, when I had to pay a visit to a local hospital. A hospital waiting room is not a place where most people would want to be. Uncertainty about our health takes most of us there, unless you were in support or there to assist someone.

The hospital was busy; they always are, but the first thing I had to do was find the waiting room. Report to Ward 34, I was told by my local surgery. I diligently wrote down the details, including a long abbreviation that must have been code for something. It was the only writing that I had done for a few days.

Ward 34? I began to wonder about all the other wards (33 of them), and then how many more there were after 34. The hospital was a big place. I arrived at the main reception, where I noticed someone, who looked like he might be a volunteer, advising others on where to go.

“Do you know where you need to go to?” He asked.

“Ward 36.” I replied, without realising that I had given the wrong number.

“I’ll take you to the lift. From there you go to the second floor and turn left, and the waiting room for Ward 36 is at the end of the corridor.”

The Writer's Life: When Illness Strikes - The Art and Fear of Being a Writer

 

I recently caught a winter cold, which turned into an infection,  or it came with it, just before Christmas. It was just a cold, or so I thought.

The common cold had taken a backseat in recent times, as COVID-19 got all the headlines. But it has been around a long time; there are about two hundred strains of it. It was just waiting its turn, or a new strain was around. Old or new, I got it from somewhere.

And it was a lingering cold.

A continuous cough is not just something that comes with COVID-19; mine from this simple cold lasted three weeks, and I’m still not over it. The cough pounds away at the rib cage — it’s like going ten rounds with Mike Tyson at his peak.

It all meant that I struggled to write. That’s the way it is when I’m ill. I might have good intentions, that having all that time,  I will write. In reality, that doesn’t happen. Being ill drains any desire to do anything, other than to get over it.

You eat a meal without tasting a bite. You read a message twice and still don’t absorb it. Watch a YouTube video, without taking it in. Somewhere along the way, you forget to write. The hours drag on.

And this is where writing lives.

To be a writer is to exist half a step removed from the world, constantly translating experience into language in a way that, hopefully, someone will like and understand. The writer is always watching, listening, and storing fragments away in the mind for future use. Even in moments of rest, or illness, thoughts are working, shaping sentences, rehearsing conversations, rewriting endings that never happened.

This is the art of it.

The Writer's Life: Whatever Happened to Storytelling? We All Need Stories.

Whatever happened to storytelling?

It’s a question I’ve found myself asking quite a lot lately.

I read that people want real stories, the personal, authentic glimpses into someone’s life. I was watching a YouTube video on this yesterday, and I thought, “Yes, I’ve been there.” But scroll through your average feed, and you’ll see something else entirely. A parade of how-to guides: how to write better, how to be more productive, how to succeed at something (anything!), how to do this and that.

Then there are the ‘how-to’ stories — which, ironically, often don’t contain much storytelling at all.

They all seem to follow the same formula:

• Identify a problem.
• Explain why it matters.
• Offer a neat solution.
• Finish with a motivational takeaway and a promise of success.

And that’s fine, for a certain type of writing. There’s a huge audience for that kind of thing. The self-help and “personal development” world is thriving. But that’s not always storytelling. That’s instruction. It has a purpose — but it’s not quite the same as sitting someone down and saying, “Let me tell you what happened to me one summer…”

Or, “I wrote a book of good stories that might offer a life lesson or two. Hopefully, you enjoy the read.”

A story doesn’t need to solve a problem. It doesn’t need to teach you how to fix your life or build a better version of yourself. Sometimes, a story just needs to help the reader drift off into a different world for a few minutes — escapism.

But surely, storytelling is, and always has been, about entertainment.