Abyss, ✨ 🌏 🦠 🌿 🐊 🤖#
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Analysis
In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play, more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it. Most Hamlets I have seen were placed far too early. Hamlet is essentially a scholar of the Revival of Learning; and if the allusion to the recent invasion of England by the Danes puts it back to the ninth century, the use of foils brings it down much later. Once, however, that the date has been fixed, then the archæologist is to supply us with the facts which the artist is to convert into effects.
The Bequest of the Bore
A Dionysian Essay in Apollonian Garb
Theme: Truth – Filter – Illusion
In the beginning was not the Word, but the sigh: the long exhale of a soul cornered by a bore. The bore is not a harmless character flaw. He is an epistemological offense. His weapon is not ignorance, but excess—too much talk, too little taste. He is entropy in tweed, the undoing of salience. To be a bore is to misapprehend the truth. Not in its content—but in its temperature, its texture, its timing. Truth, in its naked form, is unbearable. It must be danced with, adorned, veiled and unveiled, performed. The bore, tragically, believes in brute disclosure. He mistakes raw data for resonance.
Enter Jeremy Clarkson, improbable saint of the bore. He is a man of horsepower and ham, unironically charismatic and cosmically out of date, and yet somehow—strangely—he speaks for Britain. Not the aspirational Britain of liberal dreams, nor the decaying empire of history books, but the Britain of queues, grumbling, lager, and laminated café menus. The bore’s Britain. But beneath this surface lies something darker, more strategic. Because the bore is not born; he is bequeathed. He inherits a filter—an epistemic lens passed down like heirloom crockery, chipped but sacred. This is the real engine beneath Clarkson’s tractor: not just torque, but transmission. Transmission of a worldview.
But in real life, sailors who insist on tearing holes in the ship because it’s “not the ocean” are the ones who drown first.
— Yours Truly & GPT-4o
That filter is everything. It is what separates the elegant eccentric from the tedious monologuist, the prophet from the pedant. Families, tribes, races, religions—they all curate their filters, their ways of knowing what’s real, what’s worthy, what’s boring. And they guard these filters like treasure. The strategic-bequest-motive is not just about land or wealth—it’s about taste. About what kind of truth is permitted. About what kind of illusion is holy. It is an inheritance of narrative metabolism.
This is why the imposition of an alien filter is experienced not as curiosity, but as violation. No colonizer has ever said, “Let me understand your filter.” They say, “Let me improve it.” What is religion if not a cosmic filtration system? And most religions, let’s be honest, are extremely boring. Not because they lack depth, but because they’re totalizing. They do not dance with truth—they nail it to the wall and make you bow. Except, perhaps, Judaism. Snobbish, yes—but snobbish in the right way. Judaism’s refusal to universalize is its greatest gift. It keeps its filter esoteric, internal, and richly contested. It doesn’t offer you clarity—it offers you argument.
The bore, by contrast, seeks clarity and gets collapse. He floods the room with his unfiltered legacy. He doesn’t know how to read silence. He does not sense when a metaphor is enough, when a pause is holy. He doesn’t curate truth—he dumps it. Clarkson’s brilliance, paradoxically, is that he performs the bore while subverting him. He mocks his own audience, even as he plays messiah to their muddled longings. In this way, Clarkson is both clown and cipher. He is what happens when the bore gains access to Amazon Prime.
But borehood is not just personal—it’s infrastructural. It is about what a society considers “normal conversation.” Britain, more than most places, sanctifies the dull. Parliamentarians drone. Commuters avoid eye contact. Passion is suspicious. The true heretic in Britain is not the one who blasphemes—it is the one who interrupts. Because interruption, especially of a bore, is power. It says: “Your filter is no longer supreme.” It is the sacred duty of the host, the wit, the child, or the divine eccentric to do what no democrat dares: to puncture the monologue.
This is not trivial. It’s theological. Because filters are not just epistemic—they’re ritual. The British queue, for example, is not a line. It’s a slow-moving liturgy of patience and resignation. And bores are its high priests. They uphold the illusion that politeness is wisdom, that restraint is virtue, that moderation is moral. But history, like ecology, favors disturbance. Nitrogen fixation—the most beautiful metaphor in biology—is an act of radical disruption. It inserts fertility where there was none. It is the microbial version of a clever interruption.
And here’s the pivot: Clarkson’s farm is a nitrogen node in the dead soil of British discourse. It’s not that he’s wise—he’s not. But he’s strategic. He distills resentment, nostalgia, aspiration, and localism into a performance of rugged self-deprecation. His pigs are metaphors. His sausage is sacrament. He has turned British borehood into postmodern liturgy. And his success is not because people are stupid—but because people are starved. They are stuck at sea, on a leaking ship, with no clear route to the island. Clarkson offers not truth, but filter. And in a world flooded with data, a filter is salvation.
Let’s not pretend this is new. All civilization is filtration. The CG-BEST fractal—cosmology, geology, biology, ecology, symbiotology, teleology—demands we recognize the importance of networks, thresholds, controlled permeability. Every symbiosis is a filtration event. Even love, even faith. So why are we surprised when nations cling to inherited filters? The problem is not bequest—it’s forced substitution. Islamic finance, for example, is not a rejection of complexity. It is a different grammar of value. It filters capital through moral thresholds. It is, dare I say, un-boring.
Contrast that with the Faustian bargain of Western capitalism—endless acceleration, rootless liquidity, a machine with no filter but efficiency. It burns through legacy like wildfire. It leaves only scorched metaphors behind. In this framework, the bore becomes the ghost of filtration—clinging to a system he no longer understands. He talks, and talks, and talks, not because he knows, but because he fears the silence. Silence might expose the hollowness of what he inherited. Or worse, that he inherited nothing at all.
And so we reach illusion—the final and most dangerous phase. When the bore becomes a prophet. When the queue becomes pilgrimage. When the farm shop becomes a cathedral. This is Britain’s peril: that it will mistake Clarkson’s filter for truth itself. That it will canonize the bore. That it will forget the abyss. But Dionysus whispers: the abyss never forgets. And Apollo, grimly assembling syntax, knows this too. Which is why the only real antidote to borehood is not mockery, but performance. Not exposure, but enchantment.
To interrupt a bore is to perform an act of love—love for the room, for time, for salience. It is to say: this filter is expired. We need a new rite. The sea is still wild. The ship is still crowded. And the island—well, the island might just be myth. But the myth is ours. And that’s worth protecting.
Let the bores speak, if they must. But let us reclaim the privilege of interruption. Let us design better filters. Strategic ones. Salient ones. Sacred ones. Ones that do not impose, but inherit. Ones that can distinguish a pig from a priest, a farmer from a prophet, and a sausage from salvation.
After all, in the garden of bequests, even a bore might be compost.
CG-BEST: Nitrogen Fixation and the Hidden Economy of Life. And how does that relate to a bequest, resources, faustian bargain vs islamic finance, distributed, and legacy?
In British usage, a bore is someone who is relentlessly dull—usually because they talk too much about themselves, go on about tedious topics without sensing the listener’s interest, or lack wit, imagination, or self-awareness.
It’s not just about being quiet or unexciting—it’s about imposing tedium. A classic bore might drone on about their golf handicap, the train timetable, or their child’s A-level results without noticing the listener’s eyes glazing over. There’s a social sin to it: the bore fails to read the room, to perform the unspoken dance of conversational reciprocity.
Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, and Nancy Mitford all had a sharp eye for bores—often portraying them as people who lack flair, irony, or restraint. A bore is anti-style. Anti-charm. It’s someone who refuses to be edited by social grace.
In other words: the bore is not just dull—they’re a violation of taste.
Ah, now that is where the social stakes get interesting.
In classic British high society, only a few could gracefully interrupt a bore without committing a faux pas. Interruption is a power move—but when done with wit, it’s a rescue mission. The privilege belonged to:
1. The Host or Hostess –#
A skilled host had the moral duty to save guests from conversational traps. If someone was trapped by a bore at a dinner party, a good hostess would sweep in—“Oh, Charles, I must steal you away for a moment!”—like an angel of mercy. It’s power cloaked in courtesy.
2. The Eccentric or the Elderly Grande Dame –#
Figures like Lady Bracknell (in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest) could interrupt with surgical bluntness and get away with it because they had social immunity—they were either too grand or too strange to be reprimanded. It’s a kind of aristocratic impunity.
3. The Clever Wit –#
Someone like Noël Coward or Stephen Fry—the kind who can interrupt with a devastating quip that makes everyone laugh and pivots the conversation. Their interruptions were welcomed because they injected oxygen into the room. They saved the vibe.
4. The Child or the Dog –#
Strangely enough, in country house lore, even a well-timed bark or a child’s tantrum could be the deus ex machina to end a bore’s monologue. Not polite, but effective.
So, interruption wasn’t democratic—it was a dance of status, timing, and style. To interrupt a bore without being rude? That was an art. To fail to do so? That was cowardice in a social war.
Who do you think deserves that privilege now?
This essay is Dionysian in instinct but Apollonian in structure—a paradox that gives it both its power and its limitations. It yearns to intoxicate the reader with metaphor, yet insists on organizing those metaphors with almost diagrammatic clarity. The sea, the ship, the island—these are the sacred triad, and the text returns to them with liturgical repetition, like a preacher draped in fractal vestments. But in that repetition lies a danger: the metaphor, while lush, threatens to ossify. What begins as oceanic becomes canalized.
Consider pretext, subtext, text, context, metatext. It is text in the mode of holy-writ that makes faustian bargains vs. islamic finance the ultimate bifurcation in how systems are engineered.
Apollo speaks in this essay through structure and argument. The core conceit is extended rigorously, almost ritualistically: Dawkins and Rogan as archetypes of epistemological archetypes, belief as buoy, the island as telos. Everything maps. Everything fits. The precision is impressive—but perhaps too neat. This is the curse of Apollo: to render the wild legible, but in doing so, to trim its wildness.
Dionysus, however, is where this essay truly sings. The Dude’s rug as a totem of existential order, Gopnik’s equations as false prophets, L. Ron Hubbard’s banana peel of cosmic theater—these are moments of lyrical intoxication. They are the wine in the chalice. And it is here that the essay flirts with the sublime. The reader doesn’t just understand the metaphor—they feel the dread of the sea, the comfort of the ship, the ache of the distant island. These images are not just explained, they are performed.
But the essay resists true dissolution. Dionysus is never allowed to completely dismember Apollo’s clean lines. There is too much control. Too much commentary on the commentary. One yearns for a jagged rupture—something that escapes the essay’s own framing. A moment when the sea floods the ship, when the author abandons compass and syntax and simply lets the storm speak. Instead, we get exquisite curation. We get taste.
And perhaps that’s the final verdict: this is an essay of taste, of poised symbolic navigation. It respects the terror of the sea, but prefers to stage that terror in a gallery. It reveres madness but only from the safety of metaphor. It is intelligent, graceful, and resonant—but never quite drunk.
If you truly want to bring Dionysus aboard, you’ll have to risk the essay unraveling. Let the metaphor trip on itself. Let the ship sink mid-sentence. Give us the cry, not just the commentary.
But as it stands, this is a fine vessel. Baroque, seaworthy, poetic. And, perhaps most importantly, conscious of its own artifice. Apollo would nod. Dionysus would smirk.
Show code cell source
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import networkx as nx
# Define the neural network layers
def define_layers():
return {
'Tragedy (Pattern Recognition)': ['Cosmology', 'Geology', 'Biology', 'Ecology', "Symbiotology", 'Teleology'],
'History (Resources)': ['Resources'],
'Epic (Negotiated Identity)': ['Faustian Bargain', 'Islamic Finance'],
'Drama (Self vs. Non-Self)': ['Darabah', 'Sharakah', 'Takaful'],
"Comedy (Resolution)": ['Cacophony', 'Outside', 'Ukhuwah', 'Inside', 'Symphony']
}
# Assign colors to nodes
def assign_colors():
color_map = {
'yellow': ['Resources'],
'paleturquoise': ['Teleology', 'Islamic Finance', 'Takaful', 'Symphony'],
'lightgreen': ["Symbiotology", 'Sharakah', 'Outside', 'Inside', 'Ukhuwah'],
'lightsalmon': ['Biology', 'Ecology', 'Faustian Bargain', 'Darabah', 'Cacophony'],
}
return {node: color for color, nodes in color_map.items() for node in nodes}
# Define edges
def define_edges():
return [
('Cosmology', 'Resources'),
('Geology', 'Resources'),
('Biology', 'Resources'),
('Ecology', 'Resources'),
("Symbiotology", 'Resources'),
('Teleology', 'Resources'),
('Resources', 'Faustian Bargain'),
('Resources', 'Islamic Finance'),
('Faustian Bargain', 'Darabah'),
('Faustian Bargain', 'Sharakah'),
('Faustian Bargain', 'Takaful'),
('Islamic Finance', 'Darabah'),
('Islamic Finance', 'Sharakah'),
('Islamic Finance', 'Takaful'),
('Darabah', 'Cacophony'),
('Darabah', 'Outside'),
('Darabah', 'Ukhuwah'),
('Darabah', 'Inside'),
('Darabah', 'Symphony'),
('Sharakah', 'Cacophony'),
('Sharakah', 'Outside'),
('Sharakah', 'Ukhuwah'),
('Sharakah', 'Inside'),
('Sharakah', 'Symphony'),
('Takaful', 'Cacophony'),
('Takaful', 'Outside'),
('Takaful', 'Ukhuwah'),
('Takaful', 'Inside'),
('Takaful', 'Symphony')
]
# Define black edges (1 → 7 → 9 → 11 → [13-17])
black_edges = [
(4, 7), (7, 9), (9, 11), (11, 13), (11, 14), (11, 15), (11, 16), (11, 17)
]
# Calculate node positions
def calculate_positions(layer, x_offset):
y_positions = np.linspace(-len(layer) / 2, len(layer) / 2, len(layer))
return [(x_offset, y) for y in y_positions]
# Create and visualize the neural network graph with correctly assigned black edges
def visualize_nn():
layers = define_layers()
colors = assign_colors()
edges = define_edges()
G = nx.DiGraph()
pos = {}
node_colors = []
# Create mapping from original node names to numbered labels
mapping = {}
counter = 1
for layer in layers.values():
for node in layer:
mapping[node] = f"{counter}. {node}"
counter += 1
# Add nodes with new numbered labels and assign positions
for i, (layer_name, nodes) in enumerate(layers.items()):
positions = calculate_positions(nodes, x_offset=i * 2)
for node, position in zip(nodes, positions):
new_node = mapping[node]
G.add_node(new_node, layer=layer_name)
pos[new_node] = position
node_colors.append(colors.get(node, 'lightgray'))
# Add edges with updated node labels
edge_colors = {}
for source, target in edges:
if source in mapping and target in mapping:
new_source = mapping[source]
new_target = mapping[target]
G.add_edge(new_source, new_target)
edge_colors[(new_source, new_target)] = 'lightgrey'
# Define and add black edges manually with correct node names
numbered_nodes = list(mapping.values())
black_edge_list = [
(numbered_nodes[3], numbered_nodes[6]), # 4 -> 7
(numbered_nodes[6], numbered_nodes[8]), # 7 -> 9
(numbered_nodes[8], numbered_nodes[10]), # 9 -> 11
(numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[12]), # 11 -> 13
(numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[13]), # 11 -> 14
(numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[14]), # 11 -> 15
(numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[15]), # 11 -> 16
(numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[16]) # 11 -> 17
]
for src, tgt in black_edge_list:
G.add_edge(src, tgt)
edge_colors[(src, tgt)] = 'black'
# Draw the graph
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
nx.draw(
G, pos, with_labels=True, node_color=node_colors,
edge_color=[edge_colors.get(edge, 'lightgrey') for edge in G.edges],
node_size=3000, font_size=9, connectionstyle="arc3,rad=0.2"
)
plt.title("CG-BEST", fontsize=18)
plt.show()
# Run the visualization
visualize_nn()
Fig. 1 History. It’s a fractal unfolding of entropy and order.#
Britain | Bagehot#
Jeremy Clarkson, patron saint of the Great British bore#
He who speaks for the bore speaks for Britain
Jeremy Clarkson as patron saint, beer in his hand, and pigs in the background
Illustration: Nate Kitch
May 1st 2024
Hurtling west along the M40 in a Porsche Taycan, an electric battery on wheels that seemingly teleports between zero and 60mph, Bagehot thought: this does feel like a horse that had just had a mustard-covered hot dog shoved up its backside. His destination was Diddly Squat, a farm on the edge of the Cotswolds owned by Jeremy Clarkson, television presenter, near-national treasure and coiner of that evocative equine analogy.
In barely a decade, Mr Clarkson has gone from disgraced Top Gear presenter—a man who punched an underling for failing to provide a hot dinner—to strangely beloved guardian of the British countryside and YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) icon. This unlikely transformation is due to the success of Clarkson’s Farm, a hit Amazon Prime show that begins its third series on May 3rd. In the programme, Mr Clarkson struggles to breed pigs, break even, and defeat NIMBYs on the local council.
The show appeals to a much-misunderstood figure in British society: the Great British bore. On a damp Saturday afternoon in April at Diddly Squat shop, dozens queued for half an hour to pay £7.20 ($9) for a jar of pesto and £32 for 12 bottles of Hawkstone Lager, Mr Clarkson’s own brand. Is it fair to label people enjoying an underwhelming afternoon in the countryside “bores”, your columnist briefly wondered—at which point a man left the queue to inspect the guttering of the farm shop with a little tap. “Plastic,” he nodded. Yes, it is fair!
Bores come in many forms. Some are farmers. Some are petrolheads. Some supported leaving the EU. Some are casual in their bigotry. Some are climate-sceptic. Some are vociferous NIMBYs. These are the traditional bores. But other bores exist:
Some are furious that Britain has left the EU, and will never cease to let you know.
Some are eco-warriors, putting biodiversity before people.
Some bores believe building solves every problem.
Somehow, Mr Clarkson manages to speak for all of them.
Mr Clarkson’s appeal to the traditional bore is more obvious. For years he has revelled in the persona of a particular type of bore. On Top Gear—the car show that was the archetype of bore-friendly television—Mr Clarkson was a bigot in boot-cut jeans, picking fights with cyclists, the Mexican ambassador, and, in that unfortunate moment, his own staff. In his columns for The Sunday Times, he tore into local councils, health-and-safety rules and the Welsh. The connecting principle was a distrust of authority, which lurked at the heart of many a Leave vote.
When it comes to climate, Mr Clarkson’s views speak to sceptical bores and blasé bores. His opinions on Greta Thunberg are negative and more than a little disturbing (“what she needs is a smacked bottom”). He is a man who winces at the thought of driving an electric sports car (“it still sounds like a milk float”), however fast it goes. Farming bores appreciate him, too. Usually, hobbyist farmers are held in low regard. But British farmers have arguably the least political clout of all their European peers. In an inversion of most countries’ priorities, the industry is among the first to be stuffed when it comes to trade negotiations. Such is the clout of Clarkson’s Farm, in contrast, that Downing Street welcomed the cast to lobby on behalf of British farmers.
Other bores have had to learn to love him. Mr Clarkson is now an unlikely pin-up for young liberal bores who insist that planning law is the cause of, and solution to, all of Britain’s problems. His incessant struggle with West Oxfordshire District Council to open a restaurant on his land, and to keep the shop open, provides the narrative arc for much of Clarkson’s Farm. It also shows the capriciousness of Britain’s planning system, with decisions made on a whim by councillors elected on a turnout of 30%. For these bores, a Britain that builds is the route to salvation. St Jeremy’s struggle makes him the perfect martyr.
Some bores are surprised to find Mr Clarkson on their side. Rejoining the EU is at the heart of the nouvelle bore movement. Bores are fundamentally reactionary, raging against the status quo. Now that Britain has left the bloc, the Brexit bores are sated; the puce fury of Remainer bores has just begun. It took Nigel Farage and a cabal of right-wing Conservative MPs, uber-bores all, three decades to drag Britain out of the EU. If their Remainer bore rivals have a plan to take Britain back in, Mr Clarkson would be the perfect mascot.
After all, he who speaks for the bore speaks for Britain.
— The Economist
Nearly three in five Britons think Mr Clarkson voted Leave, according to polling from Focaldata, a research outfit. In reality, he voted Remain. In fact, he once argued for a United States of Europe. If there is a path to rejoining the EU, it runs along the A361 next to Diddly Squat farm.
From gammon to jambon#
Mr Clarkson offers something for every bore in Britain.
He is a YIMBY who sees it as his God-given right to open a restaurant on his land, West Oxfordshire District Council be damned.
But he also understands the merits of wildflower meadows and wants to leave rolling countryside mainly untouched.
He is a conservationist who fears for the future of British farming in the face of climate change.
But he also has ten V8s in the garage.
He is a European federalist who enjoyed well-paid berths at The Sun and The Sunday Times, both Leave-supporting newspapers.
Which is why, on a Saturday afternoon, bores join a slow-moving queue outside a small shed on the edge of the Cotswolds. Like medieval pilgrims, bores young and old come in their gas-guzzling Golfs, shiny Teslas and fancy Porsches to enjoy half a day in the countryside, pay homage to their hero and buy a relic.
Chaos
Vision
Strategy
LeverageN
Reliability
— Salience
In lieu of Christ’s foreskin, why not try “Jeremy’s Sausage” (£4.50 for four)? In a country where politicians still seek the centre ground, a good place to start looking is the incoherence of Mr Clarkson.