Yesterday I read what some might think is good news. Tabloids in England are firing human writers because Google AI summaries are undercutting human reader traffic to their sites. To this I have two comments.

Before every newspaper was pay-walled I would browse to The Guardian, the Independent, Le Monde, Le temps, Le Matin, and dozens of other newspapers. With time every one of them brought up a paywall and you might think “They’re right to, they deserve to be paid for the work they do but it’s worth remembering that for over a century, and during our lifetimes you could go to a newspaper stand or magazine shop and buy a newspaper and read all of the day’s stories, or you could buy a magazine and read all of the week’s or months articles. Now you’re expected to pay either for a single article, or per month, or per year.

Last night I was at a book about “The God of Small Things” and I’d be tempted to say that I hated the book for the same reasons that I don’t like Jane Austen books, that I didn’t enjoy Blindness and other books. I don’t know whether readying it, rather than listening to it, would have helped.

It’s a book I didn’t like because it used vile imagery. One image is about body functions into the mud, that is then washed away by the tide. There are mentions of other body functions or body party where we feel that disgust is a desired reaction.

Yet another article has been written about how smartphones are a trap we built for ourselves by VOX. The article is paywalled so I didn’t read it but it’s worth commenting on the headline.

This weekend I was in Divonne volunteering at the Triathlon de Divonne and during this time I was surprised by a single thing. I was surprised by how many people I knew through cycling, after-work drinks and one or two from running. Divonne isn’t a place that I go to very often. I usually go on the last Saturday of the month, to ride with friends.

Many years ago, I couldn’t drive for a month, so I saw this as a brilliant opportunity to take a break from driving. To replace the car I used a foot scooter, a bus, and one or two trains. In the process I had a tremendous amount of fun. In contrast, more recently I tried an e-scooter and I’d be tempted to say that the experience sucks.

The key reason that it sucks, for me, as a cyclist, and as a runner, is that it’s stuck at 20 kilometres per hour. If I run I’m slower, but I’m doing sports, and if I’m cycling then I’m twice as fast when riding down to Nyon. Heading home I am also faster, within reason.

It’s a very easy habit to pick up, once you find an affordable EV. The EV habit makes tremendous sense. When I learned to drive petrol was about 1.21 CHF per litre, and when I was driving the most it went to about 1.71 CHF per litre. Recently, due to recent electoral choices petrol has risen to between 1.98 CHF to 2.20CHF per litre in Switzerland.

When you see this price increase it means that your fuel costs from 70-100 CHF per refuelling stop. Even with the petrol scooter it went from 6 CHF up to 9 CHF. Within this context it means that driving to Geneva with the scooter doubled in price. That’s a discernable difference. That is quite the psychological wall.

For the first time in months it is raining properly. We don’t have torrential rain, and we don’t have drizzle. We have proper rain. Proper river filling rain. Proper lake filling rain. It’s the type of rain that falls and hydrates the soil, the planets, the lakes and more. It’s the type of rain that cleans roads of their greasy films.

It’s the type of rain, where if you walk in it for five minutes you will be drenched. It is the type of rain that cleans veluxes, and potentially cars. It’s the type of rain that makes a nice change from constant sunshine.

According to MétéoSwiss, as the app is called, if you have your iPhone in English, it is currently 34°c in Nyon, that 16°c hotter than the norm for this time of year. After the summer of heat waves the heat persists at least until the anticipated storms this evening.

The storms, yet again, may be torrential. Cycling earlier today around the Vallée de Joux saw me fighting a wind from the west on the way back towards the car. It was strong and persistent.

I woke early on Friday to go for a run. From 5am onwards people start to gather and at around 5:15 there is a quick warmup and at 05:30 the run begins. The run is without a timer so this isn’t a race. It is a persona challenge instead.

I was right at the front of the race, with the fastest of people, running at 3-4 minutes per kilometre. When I noticed I slowed down to a pace that I thought would be sustainable for 5km. As a result some people overtook me and I resisted the desire to speed up.

I love to be part of online communities that also meet in the physical world on a regular basis. I enjoyed tuttle meetups, seesmeetups and more. I also really enjoyed when running and cycling groups have whatsapp channels where we can chat. The reason for this is simple.

There are five to ten running groups in Nyon, and several dozen between Morges, Rolle, Geneva, Nyon and Lausanne, without excluding Divonne and other places.

Recently I went out for the entire day and when I came home I had a swarm of flies sitting by the velux, two days in a row. The buzzing was loud. It’s a good thing that I am not squeamish about flies because this was the stuff of nightmares.

This summer I’ve had puce de canards burrow into my legs and die causing discomfort for a few days, I’ve gone for monday runs where midges were an issue, and recently I saw clouds of flying ants, but luckily these insects didn’t pester me.