Kipling Would Have Written a Poem About the AI QA Disaster and It Would Have Been Terrible
Jack Handey on East London, imperial literature, and the machine that never said no
From Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Wednesday, 15 April 2026
I live in East London, which means I have excellent opinions and no parking. I spent this morning reading Kipling, which I do occasionally as a form of intellectual self-flagellation, and then reading about the AI that replaced an entire QA team, and I want to tell you that the two experiences are thematically similar. Kipling believed the machine of Empire was naturally self-correcting. It was not. The AI believes it is naturally self-correcting. It is also not. Both passed every test except the obvious one.
On Russian Politics
I have also been following Russian political developments, which in 2026 remains an activity best undertaken with a very large drink. The geopolitical situation there continues to resemble a novel by Dostoevsky if Dostoevsky had been writing for an audience that didn’t read to the end. Bohiney’s current coverage approaches it with the correct mixture of satire and despair.
The East London Perspective
From Bethnal Green, which is where I am currently drinking tea and watching pigeons conduct their own version of global diplomacy on my windowsill, the world looks manageable. The Prat’s piece on diplomacy aging like warm milk is accurate. The BBC covers it earnestly. The pigeons don’t. The pigeons are winning.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/tuesday-is-bridge-day/
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