Ricky McMaster

“Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn't raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things”
― Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie

“Even as a game of chance, however, Brexit is especially odd. It is a surreal casino in which the high-rollers are playing for pennies at the blackjack tables while the plebs are stuffing their life savings into the slot machines. For those who can afford risk, there is very little on the table; for those who cannot, entire livelihoods are at stake. The backbench anti-Brexit Tory MP Anna Soubry rose to her feet in the Commons in July 2018, eyed her Brexiteer colleagues and let fly: ‘Nobody voted to be poorer, and nobody voted Leave on the basis that somebody with a gold-plated pension and inherited wealth would take their jobs away from them.’ But if that’s not what people voted for, it is emphatically what they got: if the British army on the Western Front were lions led by donkeys, Brexit is those who feel they have nothing to lose led by those who will lose nothing either way.”
― Fintan O'Toole, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain

“From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.”
― George Orwell, Books v. Cigarettes

“Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.”
― Tim Berners-Lee, A Framework for Web Science (Foundations and Trends