River & Pen

Writer, doodler, foodie, charming grump.

[riverspatrick]

Ai-chu & i

Series 1 Episode 1

“GIFT”

by RSP

Presenting ‘Ai-chu & i’! Bringing characters from ‘Les Énigmes De Ce Monde’ into these chaotic, “modern” days, the comic strip is a satirical take on Artificial Intelligence. A comedic slice of life serial with a darker underlying sub story for discerning, modern day geeks and freaks.

[riverspatrick]

Chat bots can't replace a warm hug.

[riverspatrick]

I'm no square!!! Whilst I thought of using WEBTOON purely as a repository, their vertical scroll format sent me back to the drawing board, in a good way! I find "stepping out" of the square panel rather freeing!

View the latest adventures of Ai-chu.

[riverspatrick]

It's good to creatively solve issues without compromising artistic integrity. Following @webtoonofficial censoring my bots' butts, I added Victorian swimwear! Quite fitting, don't you think?!

[riverspatrick]

Life coaching bots in full AI-CHURAMA coming soon...

[riverspatrick]

Sci-fi toilet humour in full AI-CHURAMA coming soon...

[riverspatrick]

Expanding the emotional spectrum in full AI-CHURAMA, coming soon...

[riverspatrick]

New philosophical shenanigans in full AI-CHURAMA coming soon

[riverspatrick]

New exfoliating adventures in full AI-CHURAMA coming soon...

[riverspatrick]

New adventures in AI-CHURAMA from the human behind 'This World's Enigmas' coming soon...

[riverspatrick]

DREAMS FOR MEMORIES

Every mother would have called me the ideal baby. I slept through the night and rarely made a sound come morning. Apparently they would lean over the cot to check I was still breathing.

As a child I had dreams so vivid that I am still not entirely sure they were dreams. I remember things that could not have happened, like visiting an uncle in my teens when in fact he had died well before a lone, hopeful chin hair ever appeared.

I remember playing in the garden with my twin brother. We played often, different games at different ages. I remember the dreams in detail. I also knew I did not have a twin brother in waking life, which did not stop me missing him when I woke up.

The grown up word for the science of dreams is oneirology, the study of what the brain gets up to while we are asleep.  It overlaps with neuroscience that looks at how sleep and dreams regulate emotion, memory, and mood.  That mix of vivid dreams and sleep science is a big part of what feeds my writing, especially my novel A Trader Of Old Men, which began with a simple premise: dreams as a gateway to an alternate reality, a parallel universe. Nothing wildly original on its own. I use it as a grounding explanation for what unfolds, call it magical realism with a sleep lab report attached.

If you want to fall down the rabbit hole yourself, here are a few good starting points:

What is oneirology 

Dreams and their relationship to waking life  

Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep

Sleep researchers have come up with many serious sounding names for what happens when dreams spill into daytime. You will find phrases like “sleep to wake emotion carryover”, “affective residue” and “affective rebound” in the journals, all circling the idea that dreams can leave behind emotional aftershocks that colour the day.  More dramatic cases get filed under parasomnias, the sleep disorders where odd behaviour or intense experiences crop up while we are sleeping or just as we wake.  There is also the wonderfully clunky “hypnopompic emotional activation” and “hypnopompic hallucinations” for those moments when the dream hangs on as you wake up and reality has to fight its way back in.  

Just this morning I woke up with one foot still in a dream, properly on edge. In the dream I was some sort of spy, working at an old beige Macintosh, trying to stay ahead of Russian agents who were tracking me through the machine. I had a bag half packed, a route mapped along the canal, and a secret getaway car waiting at the edge of town. I woke up at the point where I was cutting through back gardens, already out of breath.

The hypnopompic intrusion, as scientists would call it, kept my shoulders up around my ears for the rest of the day.

Was my mind genuinely brushing up against an alternate version of me in the night. Or was it the “Maclock” advert I had seen on Instagram mixed with yet another news story about a high window, a Russian, and gravity doing its work. The Kremlin may want to look at its building regulations.

Who can say with certainty. That gap between science and story is exactly where A Trader Of Old Men lives. Two men, both called Théophile Arnaud, Theo the grouch and Phil the artist, slowly bleeding into one another through shared dreams, each waking with the other’s emotional hangover.

Or so the story goes.

[riverspatrick]

AN END TO AN END

The things we must do the most that keep us from doing what we love most. Moving, mourning, caring for the ones fading in sight – we often forget to put our mask on before helping others.

This is me putting the mask on. My life is worth saving.

'A Trader Of Old Men' – one of many concurrent projects that have been shelved during consecutive states of heightened stress – are finally getting the focus and love they deserve.

'A Trader Of Old Men' is no longer labelled as WIP. An end and a start. It feels... strange. I love the process above all else. Finishing something usually means starting another. That's the freelance mentality. Now, it feels strange looking at all the "abstract" ways I must take toward getting published.

Not as tangible as writing, painting, recording.

But I believe in this book enough to join a heavy traffic on the winding road that leads to the mysterious zone literary agents and publishers inhabit; that mythical space behind the Great Wizard's curtain.

How hard can it be? I have the heart, the brain... courage? Let's find out.

[riverspatrick]

A Fan Letter To Graham Linehan Niamh Connolly

Dear Niamh, I am a devoted fan, with a small note of concern. I have loved every album you have released, and although the inexplicably underrated Black Books is, to my mind, your finest, I still play Father Ted and The IT Crowd most evenings.

I worry you are drifting into full Bono mode. The extracurriculars are starting to outshine the repertoire. The public persona feels a bit Bishop Brennan these days [1], with flashes of Mrs Carberry [2]. Quoting your own punchlines back at you would not feel out of place, and Colm’s line to Father Ted only needs the word “racist” swapped for “transphobic” [3]. I can almost see you, handcuffed outside a gender clinic, behind a big DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING placard [4].

Here is my plain English view. Trans people sit on the same human gender spectrum as the rest of us. Few men would ace the Tate brothers’ masculinity test, and few women meet Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s very restrictive idea of womanhood [5]. Whether you or I think a trans person is strictly a man or a woman misses the point. The evidence based route, from the NHS to WPATH, is to support people with gender dysphoria so they can live and be well, using a range of approaches that suit the individual. That includes social transition and therapy, and when appropriate hormones and surgery [6][7]. That consensus did not appear out of nowhere. It was forged by testing alternatives, including some grim dead ends that should not be repeated.

Also, this is a tiny group. In England and Wales, fewer than one percent of adults reported a gender identity different from sex registered at birth [8]. Torch and pitchfork campaigns against a minority that small are not noble. They are old fashioned obsessions with better slogans.

You are extraordinarily talented. If you have energy to burn, please pour it into the next masterpiece rather than into other people’s medical care. If the creative fire is flickering, that is fixable. Artists relight the pilot all the time. What is not fixable is pretending the buzzing in your head is everyone else’s fault.

So, step down from the soapbox. Tune up. Despite everything, I am still waiting, hopefully, for the next album.

Until then…

[1] Bishop Brennan overview — Wikipedia

[2] “I hear you are a racist now, Father?” scene — IMDb quotes

[3] “I hear you are a racist now, Father?” — YouTube clip

[4] “Down with this sort of thing / Careful now” — YouTube clip

[5] Arkansas executive order context for definition of “woman”

[6] NHS: Gender dysphoria treatment overview

[7] WPATH Standards of Care version 8 overview

[8] ONS: Gender identity, England and Wales, Census 2021

[riverspatrick]

Porn Politics

Rolling Stones 'Sticky Fingers' 1971 LP cover by Andy Warhol

What counts as “pornography” online, and who decides?

Pornography is about control, and what becomes “pornography” is often outside our hands. On social platforms, what gets flagged as “explicit” depends on the platform’s own rules and tools. Tumblr has censored some of my posts for reasons that felt questionable. In one case, an algorithm decided that a photo of plain white Y-fronts listed on eBay by the person I was writing about was explicit, even though they were unworn and laid flat on a table. Would it censor the cover of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers for a similar reason [1]? Tumblr’s own pages explain how to appeal flags, which rather suggests the machines are not always right [2][3].  

Pornography is usually defined as material created with the intention of sexual arousal. That sounds simple until culture and politics arrive. The same act can be read very differently depending on who is looking and where they are standing. A kiss between a man and a woman is rarely flagged, while a similar kiss between a same-sex couple is still labelled “explicit” in some corners of the internet. The definitions remain subjective and contested, as even encyclopaedias and dictionaries quietly admit [4][5].  

Consider the recent fuss over Lightyear. Snoop Dogg said he felt “scared to go to the movies” with his grandson after seeing the film’s brief same-sex family moment, because he did not want to answer questions about it. That became a headline, and then a backlash, and then further commentary about representation in children’s media. One movie, one scene, a thousand interpretations [6][7].  

My own rule of thumb is simple. Pornography is subjective, but nothing is inherently pornographic and everything is potentially so. Context is everything.

Here in the UK, Ofcom now requires services that publish or host pornography to keep children out by using “highly effective age assurance”. The duty covers both Part 5 pornography services and, through children’s safety duties, user-to-user and search services. The regulator has published final guidance and timelines, with enforcement stepping up through 2025 [8][9][10].  

Will that protect children? Possibly. Will it do so on its own? Unlikely. Every modern device already includes parental controls that can block adult sites, restrict searches, limit app installs and even disable form uploads. Apple’s Screen Time and Microsoft’s Family Safety both let parents filter categories, set time limits, and lock down browsers and app stores at the operating system level [11][12]. Google’s SafeSearch adds another layer on search results, which can be set to filter or blur explicit imagery [13].  

If you want a quick reality check, try the following on an unprotected machine and then again with parental controls enabled.

Three steps to find explicit content via an image search

Type a sexual term into a search engine.

Click the Images tab.

Turn SafeSearch off.

It takes seconds. With system-level parental controls properly configured, the same query will either not load or will load in a heavily filtered way. System controls beat site-by-site checks because they act across apps and browsers. That is not an argument against Ofcom’s rules. It is an argument for both. Use device-level controls to reduce exposure everywhere, and use age checks to make dedicated pornography sites harder for children to access.  

There is also the privacy question. Age checks often mean sending sensitive data to third-party services. Civil-society groups have warned about the lack of robust privacy guarantees in some implementations, while the Government and Ofcom have outlined the intended safeguards and responsibilities. The debate is active and necessary [14][15][16].  

Finally, remember that artificial intelligence changes the risk picture. Criminals already sell ransomware and malware kits as services, and AI is making the discovery, targeting, and blackmailing of individuals easier. National cyber agencies and researchers have been warning about AI-enabled extortion and data theft all year. If you would not send your passport selfie to a random website on a normal day, be doubly cautious when that website promises to “verify your age” in seconds [17][18][19].  

So whom are we protecting if children can still find explicit material via search engines, and adults are pushed to hand over identity data to unknown sites? By all means, enforce the rules for pornography services. At the same time, make the simple fixes mandatory and easy: turn on the parental controls that already exist, improve defaults, and require clear, privacy-respecting design from any service that checks age. That is a better balance between protecting children and respecting the privacy of adults.

[1] Rolling Stones — “Sticky Fingers” cover overview

[2] Tumblr: Appealing content flagged as explicit

[3] Tumblr: User Guidelines (sexual content and other rules)

[4] Britannica: Pornography — definition and context

[5] Merriam-Webster: Pornography — definition

[6] The Independent: Snoop Dogg backlash over *Lightyear* comments

[7] People: Snoop Dogg clarifies “scared to go to the movies” remarks

[8] Ofcom: Statement — Age assurance and children’s access

[9] Ofcom: Guidance on highly effective age assurance (PDF)

[10] Ofcom: Age checks — what you need to know as a user

[11] Apple Support: Parental controls with Screen Time

[12] Microsoft: How to set up Windows parental controls

[13] Google Support: Make Search safer with SafeSearch

[14] Open Rights Group: Regulating age verification — privacy concerns

[15] UK Government explainer: Online Safety Act changes

[16] Ofcom: Quick guide to implementing age assurance

[17] AP News: Europol warns AI is turbocharging organised crime

[18] UK NCSC: Global ransomware threat expected to rise with AI (PDF)

[19] Check Point Research: Ransomware in Q2 2025 — AI joins the crew

[riverspatrick]

PROPAGANDA OF LANGUAGE

Literacy has shaped the modern world, but have we really left behind the days when rulers preferred what a certain orange president called “the poorly educated” and praised them for their loyalty [1]? The habit lingers in how schools so often reward parroting instead of curiosity. We ask “What year did Columbus discover America?” when the richer question is “What sent Columbus to land at Guanahani, and why does the landing site remain debated?” [2].

Not so long ago, literacy could be restricted by design. When mass schooling arrived in Britain it did not arrive as a revolution all at once. It grew through nineteenth century Acts, with compulsory attendance only later enforced and shaped by church and state interests [3]. Meanwhile, the written record has always been curated and contested. The great Enlightenment Encyclopédie was suppressed and formally condemned in 1759, and flourished anyway through persistence and plate volumes [4], while the Catholic Church maintained an Index of Forbidden Books until 1966 [5]. That so much survived censorship tells its own story.  

What most shapes our mentality, though, is the language we use to frame the world. Language influences how we notice, sort and remember things. Linguists debate the strength of this effect, but some influence is widely recognised as real [6]. Dictionaries record that change in real time. They are updated continuously, not carved in stone, and their revisions are public and ongoing [7][8].  

This is why pronouns matter. English has long used singular “they” for an unknown or non-specified person, and it remains a practical and respectful choice for many people today [9]. Older defaults that treat the masculine as the generic are quietly giving way to forms that do not exclude by design. Style guides in the UK public sector now recommend gender-neutral job titles such as firefighter, police officer and postal worker, which is not political correctness so much as clarity and accuracy [10].  

Cultures have also imagined and honoured gender in more than two forms. Hindu traditions give us Ardhanarishvara, a composite of Shiva and Parvati, a sacred image that unites male and female in one body and invites us to think beyond tidy categories. That the same kiss can be read as devout, innocent or indecent tells us less about the act and more about the lens.

Words are suggestive tools. If we teach children that the default human is a man and that the feminine is a marked or lesser form, we should not be surprised when value follows grammar. Names, too, carry scripts. Some communities draw their names from animals, qualities and places rather than from gendered lists. That flexibility can be kinder than policing a boy called Maria or an artist called River.

Professions and identities alike are easier to describe when we keep language open to reality. Words are letters and sounds that serve us for a season. The people and practices they name will outlive any definition. Our job is to keep the map honest.

[1] C-SPAN clip: Trump, Nevada victory speech, “I love the poorly educated” (24 Feb 2016)

[2] Britannica: San Salvador Island and the debate over Guanahani

[3] UK Parliament: The 1870 Education Act and compulsory schooling

[4] Britannica: Encyclopédie — suppression and formal condemnation in 1759

[5] Britannica: Index Librorum Prohibitorum

[6] Britannica: Whorfian hypothesis (linguistic relativity)

[7] OED update page: new and revised entries

[8] OED explainer: A brief history of singular “they”

[9] Time: Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year 2019 — “they”

[10] GOV.UK style guide: gender-neutral job titles and inclusive wording

[riverspatrick]

OUR HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET

I try to be a good neighbour. I give a hoot, rarely a boot, and people often respond in kind. We swap larger words, then larger sentences, and suddenly we are on first-name terms. With the fences down, you become privy to people’s highs and lows, stories that would otherwise fade in silence.

Our household includes a dog called Bowie. We live a short walk from a bustling park, the reason we bought the Victorian terraced home a year and a half ago. The park is Bowie’s second home. I know most local dog walkers, certainly those from our street, but to my surprise few know each other. Responsible dog walking helps everyone share the space, people and wildlife included [1].  

Bella, at the last corner before the gates, knows no one below her number. After a long illness, her paraplegic husband died recently from sepsis. She knows Barda across the road. Barda’s husband is slowly declining with dementia. I see him most days sitting on the wall, smoking, looking vacant. He has stopped washing. He has stopped talking. Until he crashed the car, he would not stop driving. The cracks are showing. He is one fumble away from a bad fall. Support for carers matters as much as treatment for the condition itself [2].  

Neither Bella nor Barda knows that the man two doors up, above Mr Cyclops, looks out for me when I walk Bowie at two in the morning. Noah will sometimes catch up and talk about his fantasies. I wear Apple’s bright pride watch band, so he assumes I am safe to talk to. He is bipolar and appears only on a high, which means he does not trouble me often. Bipolar disorder is real and treatable, and care plans help people manage the swings when they come [3].  

Mr Cyclops lives on the ground floor with his wife and Boss, their terrier and shih tzu cross. It is hard not to glance at his left eye socket. Some days pollen and dandelion fluff gather there, and my unhelpful brain imagines udon noodles. If it were me, I might wear a patch with a blinking light, useful for picking up Bowie’s poo in long grass at night.

On the next block there is the house with the psychedelic sixties wallpaper. The mother of an eight-year-old boy died after her husband passed away months before. That is what we gathered. The boy was seen running in the street, crying out. It was the first time either Bella or Barda had seen him or heard his voice. He was homeschooled, as I was at his age. They kept to themselves, though their day-glow wallpaper never did. Now the blinds are shut and the colour has gone.

Nearer to us are Tony’s properties, due to be split between two daughters and two nieces. Tony died last week, two days short of ninety-nine. The rent is cheap, but the trade-off is rough. The houses are worn and a few are frankly unsafe. In England, the landlord’s duty to keep homes fit for habitation and to handle repairs is not optional [4].  

At the corner, a couple uses while a dealer works the door. At the end of our block, Tony’s place is empty, and the large family next door has grown louder. They keep mallards in a paddling pool. They must have caught them in the park. Wild birds are not pets to be scooped up and penned. Taking or keeping wild birds is against the law without a licence [5].  

Next to us, on the top floor, lives Patricia. She loves Patsy Cline loud and throws empty bottles at the ducks while cursing. The ground floor has been vacant since Guillaume disappeared after never paying the rent. He traded under different names. Debt collectors kept knocking because the alias had our address on file. There are steps you can take when bailiffs pursue a debt that is not yours [6].  

Across the street, Gertrude’s son has returned from prison and begs to be let in. Only last week it seemed the police took him away. Perhaps it was not too serious. She swore she would never let him in again, and then of course she did. She is a mother. That is her whole story. Tomorrow she will tell me she will run out of things for him to steal and then he will have no reason to return.

I have skipped Mario, a lonely man in his seventies who once sent me a link to his webcam chat so we could talk in private. He has been cool with me since I did not take him up on it. A pity, as his dog Lobo and Bowie loved the park together.

I can see Mick at work, cleaning windows. He was the first to welcome us to the street. He is a proud and friendly JW and a practical businessman. He once broke his back falling from a ladder and switched to long water-fed poles. Avoiding height is the first rule for window cleaning for a reason [7].  

Here is what prompted me to write. I stop at the halfway mark where Lee used to live with his partner of twenty years. I did not know he had been forced out until I ran into him this morning. His partner’s daughters had hidden cameras in the house and now accuse him of assaulting their mother, who has dementia. They moved their mother into care and rehomed the four dogs. Lee is broken. Mario said hello for the first time in months because they are good friends and were just setting out in Lee’s van when I asked how he was. If you use cameras at home, remember that filming beyond your boundary brings data protection duties and neighbour rights into play [8].  

That is only half of my street, one street among thousands in a town smaller than average, yet it is the quietest street I have lived on. People carry more than we can see. If you meet the dog first, the story often follows. If you meet the story first, offer tea. How is your street doing these days? Reports suggest many of us feel lonelier than we admit, and it shows on our pavements and in our parks [9].  

All names are changed for privacy. Every story is true to the best of my knowledge. For anything that sounds like health advice, speak to a professional. If you or a neighbour is struggling with mental health, support is available and it helps to start with trustworthy sources [10]. 

[1] RSPCA: Walking your dog safely and responsibly

[2] Alzheimer’s Society: Understanding and supporting a person with dementia

[3] NHS: Bipolar disorder overview

[4] Shelter England: Landlord responsibility for repairs and fitness for habitation

[5] Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (wild birds protection)

[6] Citizens Advice: Stopping bailiffs if you do not owe the debt

[7] HSE: Working at height whilst window cleaning

[8] ICO: Home CCTV systems and filming beyond your boundary

[9] ONS: Personal well-being and loneliness in Great Britain

[10] Mind: What is bipolar disorder

[riverspatrick]

An Art Is To See 芸は見をたすく

Picture me at 12, Catholic high school, forging an identity, refusing to go to the barber for the usual Douglas-Fairbanks from the hairstyle-for-boys poster, picking the plain black clothes from the racks at the local Woolworth. Blame Mafalda. She’s the one who encouraged me to transition from the medium of comics – her own medium no less – to an art book. My parents were hoping for a Manolito (ambitious capitalist) when I was truly a Miguelito (traumatised hippie). I’d now consider myself a Guille (awkward child)/Libertad (hopelessly cynical) hybrid. That I was sent often to the principal’s office shouldn’t surprise anyone, then. Straight from the pages of a Mafalda comic book. I had the puns to boot. Mafalda taught me well [1].

At 13, Father Brimstones retired from his post and for the first time in its history, the school welcomed its first secular principal who grew fond of me. Instead of lecturing me, his office became a pitstop to enlightenment, I kid you not. If he still lived today, I’d thank him for sentencing me to community service at the school library under the supervision of Mr Beauregard, the wise and astute librarian. The unpaid work paid off for everyone. Socialism at its best. Mafalda would be proud.

Mr Beauregard had the admonitory stance and marital status of a Catholic priest. In hindsight, I presume that by mirroring his employer on the exterior, he was able to let a few controversial books slip onto the otherwise pure and sterile shelves of a conservative school.

Seek and you shall find.

The rare books were found besieged by the institutional on the lowest shelves from the darker reaches of the farthest room from the library’s one entrance and exit door. Few ventured past the bright, open front-room where one row of shelves filled with the essential academic books relevant to the school’s curriculum didn’t block the sun. Rows of tables and chairs were widely unused unless a full class was made to study there in the absence of their teacher. Crossing over to the other room, the shelves outnumbered the few rows of individual desks lined up against tall and narrow windows. By the flaking yellowed paint from the damp window frames, the dark corners where eery shadows roamed and the uncomfortable chairs, you’d think the room was intentionally left this way to keep the students away from veering too far off the beaten path. And they were right to do so, if indeed they meant to, for I ventured deep inside the darkness and found a transformative light.

I was a curious Smalltown Boy [4].

The books I found, lord almighty! They could only be signed out to an age appropriate student – 16 and over – or I could flick through them from the farthest desk along the East wall where one of only two windows didn’t face a building. Sat anywhere else on a cloudy day and you could barely make out the ink from the page.

That’s how the outside world introduced itself to an outsider – there existed an alternative to my one-moose town! Somewhere lived people of a different ilk who broke all cardinal sins and lived to tell the tale! How had they managed to avoid god’s lightning spear?

Removing the cover sleeve to ‘Japan’ by Seiji Kurata [2][3], a collection of photographs documenting Tokyo’s subculture, would be the only censorship made to the book. Originally, you’d find a jolly drag queen announcing without ambiguity that the pages at her back are nothing to do with feng shui, bonsai or origami, harmless forms of Japanese art most Westerners are familiar with – no!

The book may have past the censor board the same way nudity is shown before watershed on National Geographic for its exotic content of academic interest – Japan’s sinful ways could be explored from a safe distance if only to expose the devil’s rule on nations that didn’t follow Christ. I did not see the differences; these outsiders were instantly relatable to me. I had rarely seen people without the veil of emotional repression and conformity, exposed, proud, full of conviction, and it gave me the courage to be fearless and unapologetic, to be an artist.

It isn’t so ironic that I should be introduced to drag queens, transexuals, homosexuals, prostitutes and the Yakuza at a Catholic school [6][7]. No one can oppose something without exposing it, feeding the immortal beast they are hoping to starve [8].

[1] Mafalda overview and characters (Manolito, Miguelito, Guille, Libertad) — Wikipedia

[2] Seiji Kurata, *Flash Up* (first edition details, Tokyo 1970s) — Le Plac’Art Photo

[3] Seiji Kurata, *Flash Up* (new edition overview) — shashasha

[4] “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat — Wikipedia

[5] The song’s enduring impact and themes — The Guardian

[6] Index of Forbidden Books overview — Wikipedia

[7] Vatican notice abolishing the Index, 1966 — Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

[8] UK school library bodies on censorship and intellectual freedom — CILIP, SLA joint statement (PDF)