philcain

Proud to present a sneak peak of the 1, the ultimate in minimalist mobile communication devices. In transmit mode it can be used to reach friends, family and all-important business contacts at surprisingly long distances.

And, deployed as a full bandwidth audio receiver, it can receive quiet voices and even rustling and other nature sounds several meters away. Hand-crafted from fully-organic materials to your specification for just $599. ■

For a more serious take on this you could read about a simple way I found to avoid internet use problems.

“There we are, Cath: 73rd best eggs and toast worldwide this morning, and 423rd of all time. And that’s official. Top ten percentile. It’s a personal best!”

Craig slid the plate towards Cathy along the breakfast table. She looked down as the immaculately presented eggs and toast slid into shot. The eggs oozed lustrously and the toast was grilled to perfection. Over the top were fresh ripped basel, cracked black pepper and a fine web of seasoned vinaigrette.
“Well it certainly looks good!” Cathy said with enthusiasm.
“Only 72 are better,” Craig said with a self-satisfied smile, “That’s official.”
“Does it come with any cutlery?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” he jumped up to fetch them from his Rank Me presentation rig, turning off the lighting system as he did so. “Here we are,” said Craig, dumping the knife and fork on the table.

Cathy took them up and tentatively sawed off a corner. She impaled it with an upturned fork, creating a base on which she mounded some egg, then sweeping up some oil with the toast, she brought the assembly to her mouth. An astonished expression spread across her face.
“So, what do you think?” asked Craig. “How is it?”
“It’s a really, really delicious combination of flavours. The texture of the egg is perfect, still liquid but not raw. And I absolutely love the hint of chili and citrus in the oil. It’s really delicious. Truly.”
“But? There’s a but coming?”
“There’s no but coming, Craig. It really is absolutely delicious, like I said. The eggs are cooked to perfection.”
“But?”
“There is no but.”
Cathy insisted on a softer word after a painful experience of not treading carefully enough to satisfy Craig’s ego. “Only… it’s stone cold.”
Craig looked relieved.
“Oh, that! Is that it? That’s not a problem. That just helps stabilise the egg for photography, which makes up 70% of the analysis. Variables like temperature don’t count towards the ranking,” he picked up her plate. “I’ll bang it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Listen, I’d better get moving.”

A minute-and-a-half later there was a ping and Cathy got up from her thoughts. She carried the steaming plate back to the table, protecting her hand with her sleeve. She took a picture and hit “Rank Me”. A momentary pause and the answer came back, “Outside top 50,000”.
“In other words it’s just a fucking mess for me,” she whispered.

She flipped open the app where she found Craig four months ago. She felt something. Was it a pang of guilt? Maybe, but a bit of window shopping was okay. And, let’s face it, there had to be some motive for Craig’s recent ranking drive.

As she swiped, from the hallway came the rhythmic whir of the rowing machine, as Craig began his “Daily 5k Challenge”. He kept telling her he would make the top 20,000 by Christmas.

Cath flinched as she burnt her lip on some superheated egg white and, without thinking, she swiped right. ■

“To the Success of our Hopeless Cause” is a suitably paradoxical title for this fascinating journey into the perilous and puzzling world of Soviet dissidents. They were not fighting as would-be westerners, but as homo sovieticus. This meant they were not struggling for consumer capitalism or liberal democracy, but for better communism. And their strategy was also perpendicular to that of many western protest movments. At its core was not civil disobedience but a campaign for obedience. The USSR needed to obey the laws it had already set for itself on human rights and transparency. As a teenager I accidentally read Vladimir Bukovsky’s gruelling account of dissident life, twice. Its title, “To Build a Castle”, refers to the imaginary castles he built to endure long periods of solitary confinement. So the subject of this book felt earily familiar on one level, but it also forced me to accept the cause I had read about was that of a radically different world at the time. But the need to find ingenious ways for citizens to resist a regime which systematically breaks its own law is now no longer quite as alien. ■