So, the first draft of my paper is written. Six and half thousand words on why Rumours are more reliable than Conspiracy Theories. It is already two and an half thousand words too long for the actual talk and probably a good one and half thousand words too long for it to be a decent article. Still, that’s the point of writing a draft and then spending several days editing it; I know there’s a fair amount of redundancy in the exposition and I’m fairly sure that the more settled terminology of the second half of the piece will translate into a breezier first half.Still, thank the gods, should they exist, that the process of dragging ideas from the slime of the recesses of my mind is over and done with. Expect a tidied form of the draft to ‘go live’ by the end of the week.