In a week where white-tailed eagles soar over Exmoor to the sound of furious farmers, and 'alarming' caterpillar webs turn out to be harmless nursery suites, one begins to suspect nature is merely mocking our fragility. While a paragliding presenter attempts to monitor the air we choke on, our digital companions are far less benign: Waymo robotaxis are seemingly developing a worrying taste for Texan creeks, and a new AI assistant promises to organise the utter chaos of our lives—presumably before steering us into a ditch. It seems whether biological or digital, the predators are circling, though at least the internet watchdogs have finally remembered that fining suicide forums and warning 70 million perverts might be a jolly good idea.
🎵 (s)Hit of the Day 🎵
Version 1
Version 2
📜 Lyrics 📜
[Verse 1]
Well the eagle's back on Exmoor, spreading terror from the sky
And the farmers looking upwards with a hungry, nervous eye
They say the lambs are dinner for a feathered aristocracy
While the public weep for nature and its savage majesty
And down in local parks, there's webs of white and sticky string
Butterfly Conservation say it isn't anything
So don't panic, dear citizen, it's merely a cocoon
Not an arachnid invasion coming for you soon
[Chorus]
Oh, progress is a beautiful thing to behold
As we're selling off the future for a pocket of gold
With a stiff upper lip and a jaunty old smile
We're marching through hell for a country mile
Yes, we're keeping up appearances, steady and straight
While we're waiting for the driver to slam on the brake
[Verse 2]
Well Fen Cottage got listed, it's a Grade II little gem
A monument to poverty, a museum piece for them
While Jon Cuthill went paragliding with the smog inside his lungs
To document the pollution from the power plants and the suns
And Waymo called their robotaxis back to base today
One went swimming in a creek, the American way
It seems the algorithm failed to spot the water's edge
Now there's a submarine in San Antonio, teetering on a ledge
[Chorus]
Oh, progress is a beautiful thing to behold
As we're selling off the future for a pocket of gold
With a stiff upper lip and a jaunty old smile
We're marching through hell for a country mile
Yes, we're keeping up appearances, steady and straight
While we're waiting for the driver to slam on the brake
[Piano Solo]
[Bridge]
And Poppy's got a new A.I. to organise your mind
But the internet's a sewer of the very worst kind
Ofcom fined a forum nearly one million quid
For the kind of place where decent humanity hid
And seventy million warnings went to people looking low
At the filth upon the servers that the children shouldn't know
It's a digital frontier where the shadows are deep
And the wolves are always watching while the innocents sleep
[Verse 3]
So here's to conservation and to history preserved
And the white-tailed eagle soaring where the starving currents curved
We'll list the humble cottage and we'll study all the air
While the robot cars are drowning and the webbing's in our hair
[Outro]
Yes, progress is a beautiful thing, I'm sure you'll agree
Just don't look at the wreckage of what we used to be
[Spoken] Lovely. Just lovely.