Pete Ashton's Notes & Links

Accidental ziggurat for lunch.

Status:

Took a sleeping pill last night because I really didn’t fancy another restless night of stress dreams. (I have a handful left from before I started on melatonin.) It worked, in that I woke up feeling fine for a change, though I was quickly back on edge with a stress headache and needed a lie down in the afternoon. I heard back from Meridian, the therapy centre, and I’m next on the list when a counsellor becomes available, so fingers crossed that’s soon as I feel there’s some psychic bloodletting to be done.

After my nap, and feeling somewhat better, I was out with the rabbits when I remembered I knew how to flatten a warped piece of wood using a router. So I made a very rudimentary sled to do that, and it worked! Very satisfying, and something I can do very slowly a little bit every day without exhausting myself.

So, you know, win some, lose some.

Reading:

• Stay Classy — Andrew O’Hagan collects the receipts from the astonishingly corrupt and entitled lives of Prince Andrew and family. Obsequious servility has a lot to answer for.
• Some writing from my retreat designed to support people like me — “To have long Covid is to be politics embodied, just as my queer HIV+ ancestors were. Harder to stigmatise us “long haulers” for our “life choices’”, but also easier to ignore."
• Reading is magic — Sam Kriss on the psychological implications of our post-literate age. Being able to read changes how you think in some quite radical ways and “the youth” are increasingly unable to read. What can this all mean?
• The artists sick of the pressure to promote on social media — “Seeing creative people chasing the algorithm, craving to go viral, and completely forgetting their purpose: it’s tiresome."

Watching:

• The fabulous engineering and design of duct tape ‌(10:43) — For a while circa 2010 I joked that I was an artist working in the medium of duct tape as I would use it to make my various camera constructions, but this video is the first time I’ve fully understood how it works.
• Noah Kalina ‌(21:23)

Looking:

• Post-digital digital glitch collages by Anton Elfilter

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Big Mistakes

Status:

Rest day? Recovery day? I dunno what to call it. A bit of pottering, a bit of not much more. Feeling OK.

Am thinking about making a table top. Found two nice pieces of wood. Now pondering how to slice and splice them without doing me any harm. Have a plan.

Reading:

• What’s the point of hardback books? — A UK bookseller does a deep dive into why publishers still lead with a format readers don’t seem to like. Interesting that hardbacks are still a thing in mainstream publishing 20+ years since I left bookselling, given the rise of the ebook and such.
• SunnO))) on hiking — “There was an acknowledgement that it was somewhat of a personal moment for both of us, so there was no reason to fill the air with words. Rather, it’s important to listen to the air."
• Mysterious blue glow traced to Flying Banana — Traveling around the country at 125mph packed with scanners and cameras it’s quite a beast.
• Interview with Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive — “It used to be church and King. Now it’s corporations that are really leading the way towards destroying our libraries."
• My husband had brain surgery, and the cat isn’t handling it well
• The tragedy of Mrs. Dr. Seuss

Watching:

• Planting my carrots 🥕 ‌(10:51) — Another fascinating technique from internet grandad Gerald for growing ‘perfect’ exhibition vegetables, this time using oil drums filled with sand.
• When oil gets expensive, cities get better ‌(22:53)
• Trailer: The Christophers ‌(2:09) — Steven Soderbergh, Ian McKellen, Michaela Coel (and written by the co-creator of Bill & Ted).
• Vintage sausage filler restoration ‌(19:40)

Looking:

• Pluto’s Hillary mountains
• In every language — “Wikipedia has over 300 language editions. Each one picks different images to illustrate the same topic."
• Kyoto Aquarium Penguins Relationship Chart 2025

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [##########] 100% (+7)

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Big Mistakes

Status:

Feeling better today but definitely delicate and on the edge, so took things easy with lots of rests.

Decided to renew the ash10.com domain after all. It’s too cute to give up and you never know, I might be well enough to do some mad project with it one day.

Reading:

• Adam Greenfield reviews Stewart Brand’s new book — I have a similar history with Brand, finding him endlessly inspirational and fascinating, probably the source of my belief that interested people are interesting, and then slowly finding him increasingly disappointing by the conclusions he comes to and the company he keeps, so it’s good to read Adam’s personal account on reconciling this.
• Orban defeated: Good morning and goddamn it’s a beautiful day — Ian Dunt on the Hungarian election as a chink of light. “The fight against the far-right is much more compelling to voters when it is framed in the practical opposition to corruption than the ideological opposition to populism."
• The nannasphere is an antidote to the world’s grief and horrors — I like the core idea here (behind the horribly gendered, ageist assumption that old ladies are inherently good people) that a counter to toxic ideologies is people coming together in broadly disorganised ways to do creative and caring activities. It’s the best way to embed and grow a resistance for when the fascists come to town.
• Laurie Penny: Feminists began raising the alarm about the manosphere decades ago – and we were ignored
• What it’s really like to be autistic: 12 things I wish the world understood
• RIP Asha Bhosle

Watching:

• Ants Pants: Logging with Soviet Equipment ‌(3:08:14)
• The disappearing and unappreciated art of audible alerts ‌(24:10)
• Laura Kampf ‌(18:39)
• Nerdwriter: How Shakespeare manipulates an audience ‌(11:46)

Listening:

• Doomscroll 45: John Wilson — Nice relaxing chat with the creator of How To With… He has a new movie out, The History of Concrete, which I was hoping would be all about concrete but it seems it’s actually about urbanism and affordable housing. Which is fine, I’m also interested in those things.

Usability-ing:

• Enabling the zoom peek gesture in MacOS — I’ve had this enabled for years and can’t imaging using a computer without it. If you have a Mac, give it a go. It’ll change your life for the better. (Especially if you need reading glasses.)

Bookmarking:

• Google has a secret reference desk. Here’s how to use it. — I barely use Google anymore but do go there if DuckDuckGo fails me. Usually Google then fails me too, but this might help.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [#########-] 93% (+11)

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• University Challenge

Status:

Very much a shite day. Started off feeling not too bad so we took the compostables to the allotment and I worked on slowly filling the compost hexagon. Last time I did this I was able to pace it and not get too tired but this time I was pretty wiped within minutes leaving me in a grumpy mood which carried on all day. Battery at zero, capacity nil, tinnitus ringing, mood shitty. It will pass. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

No links to share today. I opened plenty of tabs but haven’t been able to read anything, let alone write about it. Go check the last few days if you’re in need.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [########--] 82%
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [##########] 100% (+15)

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Status:

Rest and recovery day. Done nuffink of note.

Had a visit from our local councillor, the Labour candidate, accompanied by a bevvy of grandees: a mayor, two MPs, a baroness and a lord (admittedly the lord is our old MP - the current one is probably too busy climbing an arctic mountain or something (local in-joke)) so things are clearly getting serious. It’s going to be a tricky local election as she’s a great councillor, one of the rare ones who gets things done and sticks up for our interests. But Labour have bollixed their time running Birmingham as a whole, from the bin strikes to the bankruptcy farce, not to mention the nightmare in Downing Street. We’re such a safe seat here that she’d normally be a shoo-in but this year the Greens are in ascendency so progressives actually have a choice.

And to be honest, I don’t know how I’m going to vote. Party-wise, it’s clearly Green. But if she was standing as an independent I’m vote for the incumbent in a heartbeat. The hustings are on the 27th April and I think I’ll save up some battery to attend.

Reading:

• Lena Dunham on toxic fame, broken friendships and her ‘lost decade’ — I have so much time for Lena Dunham and very much enjoyed this interview.
• Midge Ure talks through the making of Ultravox’s iconic Vienna — Since I was a wee kid when this was all over the dial I just assumed this is what pop music sounded like.
• Ian Francis has a plan to save the Electric Cinema — Hope this come to fruition, not because of some nostalgic desire for a bygone age (like Ian I spent many hours in the 90s watching weird films there when it was a flea-pit) but because it’d be good to have an arts centre for cinema, run by the Flatpack festival, in the middle of Birmingham. (Only half the article is free but it carries the gist.)
• ‘The party was chilled until police sent in the riot squad’: when a Dorset free rave turned violent — I read the initial BBC report on this and noticed it was entirely from the police perspective. (Interesting that these things seem to come in 30 year cycles. 60s, 90s, 2020s?)

Watching:

• Datsun 240Z Valve Cover Mod – Shaved & Cleaned ‌(16:06)

Listening:

• In Our Time: Handel’s Messiah — As the young child of a classically trained singer I spent plenty of time bored in concert halls ignoring the rehearsals on stage but I do have a vivid memory of being blown away by the sheer power of the “Hallelujah” bit of Handel’s Messiah. After listening to this I put it on but it’s not the same on headphones. You need real people projecting it at you from their fleshy lungs.

Clicking:

• Snapmatch — Bascially the same mechanics as 368 Chickens albeit with a bit more strategy and less dumb luck.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [#######---] 82%
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [########--] 85%

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Big Mistakes

Taken yesterday evening. Today has been cold and overcast.

Status:

Should have been a rest day but I had my CFS occupational therapy session today, which I only remembered late last night and hadn’t budgeted energy for, so I had to push through that on top of a rough night, which means most of today has been a tightrope walk of monitoring the tinnitus alarms, keeping occupied but not too occupied, keeping moving but not moving too much, and so on. The session was good but I’m now at zero battery and looking forward to a restful weekend.

Reading:

• Toxic putdowns, brutal zingers … and an unexpected love story – inside the joyful climax to brilliant sitcom Hacks — One of our favourite shows. Hannah Einbinder is one of those people whose work I feel I’m going to love for decades to come.
• Going with the Flo — Jules got one of those fancy FFP2 masks and goes into the whys and wherefores of masking when fuckall other people are masking. Starts full of righteous anger, ends as a calm crafting tutorial.
• RSPB guidance on what and when to feed garden birds: Feed seasonally. Feed safely. — They’re asking people to take down bird feeders in the summer because congregating birds spread diseases.
• The battle against Trump is a battle against genocide — Ian Dunt puts the last week on the record. cf President Nyarlathotep is simply engaging in classic “Mad Outer God” negotiating tactics
• Who was Hilma Af Klint? Exhibition to highlight exclusion of women from abstract art
• Exit 8 — movie review

Watching:

• Primitive Technology: Tile Drying Hut ‌(12:52)
• Practical Engineering: The spillway that fails on purpose ‌(19:03)
• NASA’s Artemis II Live Views from Orion — When I tuned in there was some confusion over which version of an Excel document they were supposed to be adding new burn data to. Along with the Outlook issue this truly has been Microsoft’s greatest moment.

Music:

• Angine de Poitrine Vol.II — Now the hype has settled a bit I’m having another listen, this time as an album without the visuals, and am noticing the stuff that’s a bit different from the traditional math rock of times gone by, like the klezmer vibe of track 4, Utzp.

Not for me, but maybe for you:

• Moselele song book — Friends of mine have been running a ukulele group in the once-fashionable Moseley district called Moselele for 16 years now and have adapted over 750 songs for the uke. They’re now available as a web-app with chords, lyrics and such, should you want to start your own ukulele group.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [#######---] 82%
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [########--] 85% (+5)

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Big Mistakes — Dan Levey’s new thing, though co-creator Rachel Sennott’s manic vibe is palpable, in a really good way. Enjoyed the first episode a lot and looking forward to seeing where this goes.

Our cherry blossom emerged yesterday.

Status:

Definitely a rest day today with limited capacity for anything, online or off.

This morning we (by which I mean Fi) had three of the great-niece/nephs, M, G and R over as part of the Easter holiday occupation emergency which was a little daunting but it turns out school has got them quite accustomed to sitting around a table doing painting and shit, with occasional breaks to watch Trolls World Tour which G is obsessed with. I was kinda into it for a while as I knew Rachel Bloom voiced the main baddy and I always have time for La Kendrick, but then they started singing and I had to bail.

Oh, and then we had another visit from the puppy.

And then I had a nap.

Reading:

• Artist of the Month: Editoriat — Keep it under your hat but Editoriat is the name Fiona, my wife, does her art as, mixing collage, paint and print to interrogate the magazine publishing industry, amongst other things. This is a nice interview about her practice, ahead of a forthcoming exhibition. Proud of ya, hun!
• Birmingham focus group shows shift from Labour support — I won’t give this much weight but I do think a trick is being missed here by just reporting their opinions and beliefs as fait accompli. I’d love to see some kind of show where people’s understandable misconceptions are corrected and they develop a more accurate opinion. Or for the BBC to trawl their comment threads for subjects to do explainers about. And I should add I’d be delighted to have my notions subjected to interrogation by experts. I’m sure I’m wrong about stuff and would really benefit from some corrections. (From experts.)

Watching:

• Simone Giertz ‌(14:43)
• Laura Kampf ‌(16:05) — Felix!
• Elle Cordova ‌(0:41)

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [#######---] 82% (+7)
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [########--] 80%

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Scrubs

Status:

Felt pretty good, and the weather was gorgeous, so a pottering day with an Easter holidays visit from bits of Fi’s family. Possibly did too much as I have a bit of tinnitus and brain fog this evening but fingers crossed. At least the weather is bobbins tomorrow for a crash.

Had a email from Matt about this blog which was lovely. I don’t have a huge readership here, maybe enough to fill the small room of a small pub, which is how I like it, but without the usual attention-economy feedback metrics (which I don’t want) it does sometimes feel like shouting into the void. It helps that my main motivation for doing this is to learn how to write sustainably again so it doesn’t really matter if no-one is reading, but ultimately I have always written for an audience and find that, for whatever reason, writing a private journal just doesn’t happen. So it was good to get some feedback! (This is not a cry out for feedback!)

Like many of you I was relieved when armageddon was postponed at midnight last night. It was a strange day watching that deadline approach, but then everything about this war with Iran has been strangely unreal. Clearly not for those not the ground, of course, but I’m starting to get a more nuanced understanding of Baudrillard’s The Gulf War Did Not Take Place which maybe could be applied to the Trump era.

Anyway, one should not invoke Baudrillard when on the cusp of a chronic fatigue crash. G’night.

Reading:

• ‘We can’t increase prices any more’: UK hospitality firms hit by cost triple blow — Before I took medical leave, figuring out Loaf’s budget was my responsibility (and yes, probably contributed to my taking medical leave) so I identify with all of this. Fact is, until 2020 the financial weather for hospitality businesses was pretty steady and reliable, and then it went haywire. There will be exceptions, and I am by no means a financial expert, but I would advise those who enjoy indie cafes and restaurants and the like to expect lower quality, higher prices and eventually closed businesses. None of it is sustainable on the old model.
• Don’t fall for WSJ’s ‘normal gay’ whitewashing of queer life — I’m fascinated by the distinction between gay and queer, in that you can be gay but not queer. I often wonder about being queer but not gay (cf bell hooks, Tilda Swinton) and then start getting a bit lost and aware I’m in danger of embarrassing myself and offending others, so I stick with “weird” as my label of choice.
• Quick, shallow, and over-confident — A look at the legacy of the business books of the 1990s on our current political culture that “discourages deep thinking and values novelty above substance, fetishising approaches that are simplistic and en vogue”. Listeners of If Books Could Kill will be familiar with the genre which I remember well from my time working in bookshops in the City of London.
• 17776 — A piece of hypertext fiction which I missed when it came out in 1997 and was intrigued by when it popped up in my feeds this week. Apparently it’s about football, so I may well bail, but the first couple of chapters have been pretty good.
• Mystery of odd flashes documented in sky before first ever satellite was launched gets even odder

Watching:

• The Sunshine Recorder ‌(7:47) — I have a sense that I knew what this was already but not in any useful way. Would love to use the burn marks as musical notation and see what the weather back then sounded like.

Listening:

• Empire: Arab-Israeli Conflict pt 1: From Suez To The PLO – Focusses on the state of the Arab world, which was not a homogenous block but fractured along ideological lines.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [#######---] 75% (+13)
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [########--] 80% (+4)

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

View from the lunch table

Status:

Chum Antonio came over for a long overdue visit today. We became good friends about 20 years ago when I was realising I might be an artist and he, along with the redoubtable Nikki Pugh, gave me a model of artistic practice I could apply my techy nerdery to, because Ant and Nikki, as well as being great artists, are nerdy as fuck.

Co-incidentally Fi had taken great-neph M to check out the new train line because he too is a massive nerd and I was really pleased he got to meet Ant. I feel it’s my duty to expose M to weirdos who are living the weird life as best they can, so he can see that being on the spectrum isn’t just a problem to be managed like it seems to be at school. The best bit was when Ant got out his bag of USB adaptors which he carries everywhere and M was entranced.

Ant got his ADHD diagnosis a few years back, surprising nobody, and I was a little wary about him visiting as his verbosity could be exhausting. But I just sat back and let it wash over me and it was hugely enjoyable, like a big verbal hug, and when we did get into proper discussions that could trigger my brain fog I set a timer and took breaks. It all worked swimmingly.

Reading:

• Laura Snapes on West End Girls — Fantastic piece of writing from 2020.
• Why NASA sent a 10-Year-Old Nikon D5 DSLR to space. — short answer, it has really good low-light capabilities and is therefore the best camera for the job. Nice titbit that the Earth in shadow photo that’s been posted everywhere was shot at ISO 51,200.
• ‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’: the radical history behind one of Europe’s biggest socialist movements — Lovely to see Molly Crabapple’s new book getting a decent amount of attention.
• OpenAI bought a livestream no one watches — Your weekly Garbage Day dispatch from the bad side of the internet.

Music:

• Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith — The track Thoughts of the Future caught my ear while listening to Night Tracks (in fact that whole programme was full of stuff I intend to follow up on) so I went hunting for more. Her recent full album Gush is more poppy and vocal, which is not a bad thing (paging Julia…) but I’d like more of the Terry Wiley-esque stuff. Will keep digging through her back catalogue — I like the sound of an album called Useful Trees!

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [######----] 62%
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [#######---] 76% (+14)

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Treasure found in the shrubbery beds.

Status:

Very much a pottering in the garden day. Fi attacked the plants and borders while I did little jobs, as is my way. Mounted the bee hotel on the fence and rabbit-proofed a tree. Was nice to be outside.

Reading:

• Too many drivers see road safety rules as a personal affront. It’s time to tighten up UK laws — I learned to drive in my 40s and it was a real shock to discover just how badly my fellow adults behave on the road. I would experience it as a cyclist and pedestrian but there’s nothing like following an otherwise sane human doing stupid things for miles. I think the best tightening of UK laws would be a re-test every ten years. The license card itself expires requiring a signifiant fee. Why not bundle proof of knowledge of the Highway Code into it? (And for what it’s worth, anyone who identifies as a “motorist” deserves war declared on them.)
• Social media has become a freak show — My interest in mainstream corporate social media is minimal these days but I do like to check in now and then to see how badly it’s all going. This is a nice overview of the political corners by Nate Silver which I’m delighted to say does not mention Mastodon. We do not want these people anywhere near Mastodon.
• As an almost 70 year old man, I have some advice for young men. — As an almost 55 year old man I would agree with most of this thread.
• Sentiers No.397 ‌Geist in the machine ⊗ The prospect of Butlerian Jihad — To avoid disappointment always remember that when folk talk of the Butlerian Jihad they are probably not talking about the one involving Judith Butler.
• Machiavelli and the Veil of Ignorance

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [######----] 62%
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [######----] 62%
snap!

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — Back to season 1 to see if Fi remembers watching it. (She kinda does, maybe?)
• University Challenge

Status:

Many moons ago Fiona heard of a shed that was going free. We collected it, piling it onto the roof-rack of our hatchback and deposited it at the allotment. It was mostly fine but I figured it could be made pretty much as-new with a bit of work which I looked forward to doing. And then I got properly ill and it just sat there.

Since then my sister has pretty much taken over the allotment and this weekend she a bro-in-law decided to see if the shed was good enough to put up. This afternoon we visited as they were putting the roof together and, yup, it’s fine! Has some gaps and such but will be good for storing tools and sheltering from the rain.

Wally is also fine, like nothing happened. He was bounding and binkying around the garden this afternoon with gay abandon.

I am also fine. No weird head nonsense and have resumed light pottering which, other than getting outside in the sunshine, involved shredding decades worth of documents that a family member decided to clear out. All food for the compost worms.

Reading:

• Progressive Paris has many weapons to fight the far right, but the best? Spaces where you can simply hang out — This has been bubbling around my feeds for a few days and it’s a really pertinent point. There’s also this article in French which I read in machine translation but the gist is clear. When bars and tabacs close: the erosion of the local social bond and the progress of the far-right vote in France. There’s something deeply important here, not just in the fight against the fash but about neighbourhoods in general. We need open and accessible places to just hang and talk and be people together.
• Sam Kriss: Is my writing too wet? — A “defence of gloop” which I was worried was going to be about AI slop but it mostly isn’t. Some nice stuff about Fleischer cartoons: “Popeye and Betty Boop, the subterranean alliance of Jews and blacks, immigrant modernity, mongrel impure, wailing ghosts, black-eyed strays, demonic cave paintings, a druggy decadent sexuality, plump thighs, mutability, the gods of the underworld and the night."
• All the President’s Men turns 50 — Some fun behind-the-scenes stories.

Music:

• Sunn O))) by Sunn O))) — Having mostly experienced them live at various Supersonic events I’m never quite sure how I should be listening to Sunn O))) at home. Headphones, clearly, but how loud? Loud enough to hear the nuance in the drone, I guess. But a fun thing to try is to listen to them quietly, like ambient background music. By taking it away from your attention it kinda worms into your brain, colouring whatever else you were doing or reading in a creepily subtle way. Anyway, the album is good. There’s some nice weird bits in there, almost melodies at times. And the nature sounds are a nice touch.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [####------] 47%
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [#####-----] 56%

Movie night:

• Sinners

Wally in his hiding place, wanting to be left alone to die. Not today, chum.

Status:

Feeling better again, but still a bit fragile. Was nearly sideswiped by Wally deciding to stop eating this morning necessitating medication and syringe-feeding. He really didn’t look great and I was catastrophising, especially as the recovery food wasn’t mixing into a suspension like it’s supposed to, but we waited the normal amount of time and he slowly got better. By 10pm he was pretty much back to normal.

This is on the Saturday of a long bank holiday when the vets are all closed, so of course it’s when a rabbit decides to get ill. Fucking pets, eh?

When a rabbit gets ill in the wild they tend to go off and find somewhere to die away from the pack and it’s notable that Lavander was ignoring her bonded life-partner today while he just sat in a corner hunched up, waiting for a predator to take him, or something. It’s not even like he had a disease or anything, just some blockage in his gut which could easily be dislodged. Such fragile creatures – it’s no wonder they only live for a year or so in the wild.

Reading:

• Where to begin with Peter Weir – A director I feel I have a handle on, but then realise I don’t, or do I? And then I read a list like this this an am all “he did that?”
• The Zlotnian Calculator, Official Digital Calculator of the Zlotnian Space Program

Watching:

• CinemaStix on Peter Jackson’s King Kong ‌(12:24) – While it’s not a film I think about ever, I remember liking it for the simple audacity of him just making it seemingly for himself. Like he’d done the LotR stuff and now he got to do what he’d wanted to do since being a kid.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell [####------] 40%
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge [#####-----] 52%

Movie Night:

• Ghost Elephants – A lesser Herzog, I think, though that’s still well worth anyone’s time. Be warned, there’s an extended sequence of archival sports-hunting footage which is quite disturbing.

Importing greens from next door’s lawn.

Status:

Somewhat improved mood today. I tried pulling back and Fiona gave me some space and it seemed to work. The brain is a muscle and sometimes it needs to rest. I even tried to crack a couple of jokes this evening. One fell flat on its arse but the other was OK.

Accidentally finished the bath panel project by sticking a piece of wood in to see if it fitted and realising it didn’t need any more work. It all just slots together with the bath. Slightly disappointed I won’t have to figure out the fixings but also pleased to have produced a not-bad looking thing. Will have to get some photos.

Reading:

• Ian Dunt: Trump vs NASA - Ian’s Trump rant is nothing new, but his progressive take on NASA’s Moon and Mars ventures is interesting. Flawed, but interesting.
• The Yugoslav psy-op that may have given us Laibach… and inspired Rammstein - “May have” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here but that doesn’t take away from some fascinating history. I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of ex-Yugoslavian culture but what I saw via zine networks in the 90s was definitely special, befitting a people who seem to have been at the centre of a shit-tonne of history.

Listening:

• In Our Time: The Spanish-American War 1898 - aka the end of the Spanish empire. I’ve idly wondered what happened to the Spanish after they did all that colonising of the Americas, and this recounts the closing moves as they lose Cuba, turn inwards and start the journey towards Franco. Apparently something major happened in 1820 or thereabouts – more research required.

Clicking:

• Am I German or Autistic? - with Wittgenstein as the yardstick. Sent this to my probably neurodiverse German friend who wanted to select all the possible answers.

Music:

• The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld - Needed something a bit soothing and familar this morning and by fuck this holds up as a piece of work. I know it was nobody involved’s first rodeo but even so.
• Transmissions From The Beyond (Part I) by Burnt Paw - First music released by an old flatmate in a little while. A lovely long noodly piece that reminds me of our living room a little.

Books on the go:

🎧 Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell
📖 Stone Junction by Jim Dodge

Telly:

• Deadloch - That was a wild, wild ride with a perfect conclusion. Five stars.
• Scrubs

Status:

Feeling a little better today but have a sense I’m going to be in this mood for a while. Maybe I won’t be (one thing I’m sure of is I have no idea how I’m going to be day to day) but this feels like a bit of a slump, like I should just go hibernate for a few days.

That aside, I am quite excited about the first human initiated translunar injection burn since 1972. Playing The Orb in honour of it. (I once mentioned out loud I wanted a t-shirt with Translunar Injection Burn on it and the next birthday Fi got me one. That’s love that is.)

And yes, I’m deeply skeptical of the whole Artemis programme and this need to colonise the moon. Contradictory feelings are still feelings and they’re OK to have.

Reading:

• Sunn O))): Sunn O))) review – a seismic return to drone metal’s elemental core - ‌opening the studio doors and placing microphones in the surrounding landscape, which presumably accounts for the fact that, when the first big explosion of bass occurs, two minutes into opener XXANN, it comes accompanied by the sound of a stream and of birdsong.
• An even-handed review of Stewart Brand’s new book - Pretty much as you’d imagine, confirming my view of Brand as someone who notices a lot of things but doesn’t really know what to do with that noticing.
• UK flag-raising group leader arrested on suspicion of causing ‘alarm and distress’ - I had the misfortune to meet Ryan when his gang came to Stirchley and can reliably say he’s a far-right christofascist nationalist. Nasty piece of work.

Watching:

• Splitting the biggest firewood logs I have ‌(2:21:12) - Andris' woodchopping odyssey has been emotional but it’s finally over. (Don’t tell me how many hours I’ve spent watching this man chop wood…)

Booklistening:

• Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell - She has a great radio voice so the audio book is perfect. The first couple of chapters are fab.

Bookreading:

• Stone Junction by Jim Dodge - Re-reading after 20 years in an effort to get back into fiction-on-the-page (or screen). This is a favourite, up there with The Illuminatus Trilogy for me.

Telly:

• Deadloch
• LOL: Last One Laughing UK

Status:

Overcome by a remarkably foul and grumpy mood today so will just note that and not write much more.

Reading:

• Say hello to the UK’s most successful growth industry: organised waste crime - I think the most pertinent observation George Monbiot makes here is the curse of “efficiency” which inevitably meant kicking the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

Watching:

• Why did The K Foundation burn a million quid? Interview with Gay Byrne: The Late Late Show, 1995 ‌(21:31) - Hadn’t seen this interview before.
• Firing the Tesla Tower as a Plasma Cannon ‌(17:50) - For some reason I never managed to watch this first time but I’m glad Jez reminded me as it turns out to be the Survival Research Labs coil!
• True Facts: Geckos ‌(13:28)

Telly:

• Deadloch
• LOL: Last One Laughing UK

The view from my hammock.

Status:

Last night’s sleep was a bit rough. For some reason my teeth were hurting, not in a call-the-dentist way, more like there was a pressure on them. Fi thought it might be something to do with the trigeminal nerve, but that information hasn’t really helped, and anyway it’s a bit better today. Probably similar to my sinus pain which flares up when I get overly fatigued and/or stressed, not because I have sinusitis.

So I’ve been trying to take it easy again, which is never simple. A brief potter can quickly become an exhausting activity requiring a sit down, as I found when I went to shave a few millimetres off a piece of wood for the bath panel. Shouldn’t have been a big deal but left me gasping for breath. Dammit.

The night was also disturbed by woodpeckers at 6am. They’ve been spotted on the terracotta chimney pots on the terraces around here bashing out a string of taps. Apparently this is a mating call which they would normally do on hollow branches and the like but clay pots have clearly better acoustics. It’s lovely when you hear it out in the garden with all the other bird sounds, but when it’s on your house at dawn it echoes down the chimney like a power-drill. Not the chorus we ordered. Here’s a video taken by a neighbour.

Reading:

• Masking my autism made me sick - Lovely piece of writing about getting an adult diagnosis. As always I can’t identify with the specifics (if you’ve met one autistic person you’ve met one autistic person) but a lot of the emotions rings true.
• There’s a massive new crater on the Moon - Before and after pics are in the linked to PDF.
• Some Kind of Divine Manipulatrix - Grant Morrison at Vertigo - Another chapter of Liz Sandifer’s big book which, as ever, will be of very little interest to most of you but of great interest to maybe a couple of you, and that’s all good. Notable for the bit on Kill Your Boyfriend, one of the few Morrison comics I actually like, and which I didn’t realise was intended as “a modern Dionysic myth of ecstatic violence”.
• I regret the blood pact i have made with iCloud Photos - I too have made this pact. While photos from my “proper” cameras are all backed up in various places my phone photos are all on iCloud. I could and should start the process of copying them off there, and implement a better system going forward, but frankly, who has time?
• Capitalism makes women of us all A good analysis of the recent Louis Theroux doc (which I confess I haven’t had a chance to watch yet). I liked this line: ‌"an accelerated, mutated misogyny that’s too ever-shifting and unsustainable for even them to actually fully embody — because it is optimized not for the individual man, or even just for the benefit of a broader patriarchal-capitalist society, but for the needs and wants of the algorithm." Also some good stuff on empathy: “The problem is that the demand for empathy, explicitly or not, is often more specifically the demand that we have more empathy for those men than for the women they’d like to see dead or barred from public life."

Watching:

• Lindsay Ellis: Did Disney Really Steal Aladdin? ‌(1:07:06) - Lindsay talking about Disney and Broadway musicals. It’s like it’s [some years ago] all over again.
• Come and mix my nutrients with me! ‌(5:41)
• Olivier Gomis builds a kitchen island ‌(33:12)

RIP:

• Glen Baxter - ‌His work took the form of a deceptively simple template: a crisp ink drawing, often hand-coloured in crayon, paired with a caption that bore no logical relationship to what was depicted above it. Cowboys debated the merits of abstract painting in the Wild West. Gentlemen in tweed discussed matters of cultural importance in increasingly improbable settings.
• The Oasis indoor market - for my generation of youths, and a few before and after, this was where all the cool shops were and where we got our bongs and piercings. It’s being demolished, because that how Birmingham do.

Clicking:

• As Slow As Possible - Classic arcade games like Pong and Breakout, except they’re agonisingly slow. I love this and could play for hours. Perfect brain calmer. Great soundtrack too.

Telly:

• LOL: Last One Laughing UK

“I am smoking. A. Faaaag."

Status:

Rest day. Made another cut on the bath panel project and my sister came over for a catch up (all is well) but otherwise did nuffink. Although I’ve got a stinging headache this evening so maybe I did too much.

Listening:

• Naomi Klein on Trumpism and Our Age of ‘Unlikely Bedfellows’ | The Ezra Klein Show - (Two Kleins, etc.) This is one of those “if you click on one thing…” links in that I got a lot out of it and would recommend it to all. It mostly serves as a digest of her book Doppelgänger, specifically the stuff about the far-right reactionary mirror world of Steve Bannon et al. But there’s plenty more and it concludes with some good thoughts on community, reflecting on the resistance in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and diagnoses of why the billionaires are backlashing. “I think they’re angry that they no longer get treated like gods. And that feels like being terrorised to Mark Andreessen." Just put aside an hour and listen. Transcript and audio on NYT is unpaywalled at the moment, via Sentiers who has more commentary.

Reading:

• ‘Wow, people were so angry at Labour!’ Green MP Hannah Spencer on politics, plumbing, smears and snobbery - ‌“The common ground that a lot of us have, that anger and that frustration, boils down to the same thing. It’s being treated like shit by people who are absolutely laughing at us.”
• Reason and Passion - ‌David Hume blows into his hand, making farting noises in objection to Plato

Booking:

• We are making a film about Mark Fisher - It’s showing in Birmingham as part of the Flatpack Festival at the newly refurbished Edge, both of whom I have a lot of fondness for, so I’m going to make my best effort to attend.

Watching:

• Laura Kampf ‌(36:15)

Music:

• Four Tet - Couldn’t sleep and needed something chewy but calming to occupy my brain so decided to work through the Four Tet back catalogue. Somewhat amusingly Apple Music have conflated his albums with those of 4tet, a Czech vocal harmonising four piece who do cover versions, so when their interpretation of the Addams Family theme came on I thought “that’s a brave choice”. Took a while to find the Czechs on the web and in doing so discovered there are quite a few musical four-pieces doing a play on Quartet. (I, of course, had never seen the connection and thought it was something to do with the Vietnam war.)

Telly:

• Deadloch
• University Challenge - My brain shut down a couple of times to protect itself.

Status:

Sleepy sleepy sleepy today. No energy at all, and content to just lean into that.

A few people in my streams are moaning about the clock changes but I have to say it never bothers me. I wake up at some random time anyway and get used to the lighter or darker evenings within a couple of days. If I had to choose I’d say summertime hours all year round, but that’s just because I’m rarely if ever up before double figures so it doesn’t bother me what time we assign to sunrise. Couple this with my relative immunity to SAD and I’m easy really. This has been a counting-my-blessings paragraph.

I’ve started copying these daily status paragraphs into monthly digests on my long-dormant other blog, just to see how they read. Inspired by the format of Alan Bennett’s diaries which flit between the mundane and the profound, though clearly not of that pedigree. Will sit with it for a bit and then quietly publish if I’m happy with them.

Reading:

• Why we made a film about Mark Fisher called We Are Making A Film About Mark Fisher - I remain healthily skeptical about the film itself until I get to see it (which might be in a while since they’re sticking to in-person screenings right now) but I very much enjoyed this rationalisation for its existence, being a neat rundown of Fisher’s life and work and the meaning behind it, and do applaud the motivation to move it on to whatever the next stage might be.
• Warren Ellis' notes on Hail Mary - Some interesting observations, particularly on scriptwriting choices, and no major spoilers that weren’t in the trailer, I think.
• A lot of Opportunities: Pet Shop Boys' Please revisited - We’re at the stage where albums that came out when I was 13 going on 14 are having their 40th anniversary retrospectives. Loved this bit: “recurring themes in Tennant’s writing, namely doomed love, self-doubt and a tension between nihilism and intellectual indoctrination."

Skimming:

• Long COVID Treatment Guide - A summary of treatments, supplements and medications that have been tested on people with varying forms of Long Covid. Reading it started to trigger my symptoms but it’s intended to be discussed with a medical professional so I’ll send it to my occupational therapist and we can talk about it next time we meet. (Sent to me by a fellow LC sufferer.)

Watching:

• Snakes and Ladders ‌(52:59) - audio of Alan Moore’s performance playing over panels from the comic adaptation by Eddie Campbell.
• I spent 2 weeks restoring this chair ‌(29:54)

Listening:

• How Reading Made Us: 3. How Reading Made Our Politics - Slept through half of it but to be honest I’m not too bothered to re-listen.

Music:

• Angine de Poitrine - Apparently this weird duo are blowing up with “the kids” and I’m delighted to see weird shit like this can still make an impact. It’s sort of like what if Lightning Bolt were a microtonal motorik comic published in one of Fantagraphics' weirder anthologies, except more so? Here’s their website.

Telly:

• Deadloch
• LOL: Last One Laughing UK

And and Or, as I’ve named them, two sibling black cats who are rarely seen together, exploring my neighbour’s new concrete pad.

Status:

Chum Gareth came over today for a chat about the zine archive. Ironically, just as I’d taken it offline and was content not to think about it for a few years, he’d messaged with the wheeze to do an exhibition of it at the university where he works. To which I replied “errrrrrrrmmm…” and invited him over for tea.

I’m not saying anything will happen to it, and I’m not saying it won’t, but he has a much better sense of what it contains and how I feel about it going on show. Right now I think the best practice would be to select a few interesting items that might be inspirational to the students and focus on them, ideally with the permission of the original creators, rather than dealing with it as a whole archive, but who knows.

What I do know is after Gareth left I had to wind down with a jigsaw and then slept for two hours. So I probably shouldn’t be too involved!

Reading:

• On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde: “The Master’s Tools” in Tech Discourse - This is so good. Like a lot of people I’ve cited Audre Lorde without fully understanding what she meant by “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” and just moulding it to fit whatever I was struggling to articulate, so if nothing else this is a good correction to that void of ignorance which I enjoyed filling. It also has some good advice on how to take her intended message and use it accurately and effectively.
• Anil Dash: Endgame for the Open Web - It’s all over, apparently. I was saying to Gareth today that it feels to me like “the internet”, as in the stuff that’s not on corporate platforms, is becoming underground again. I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing but it’ll certainly be interesting to look back on in a decade or two.
• Born on the Death Star - Jay Babcock’s countercultural ephemera roundup. Strummer and the Dead, Fred Dibnah, rent parties and psychedelic entities.

Listening:

• Origin Story: Introvert / Extrovert - Fun mid-season episode looking into the origin of the Introvert and Extrovert concepts featuring Ian Dunt recounting the platonic yet erotic love affair between Freud and Jung.

Music:

• All You Fascists Bound to Lose - Bette Midler - after Woodie Guthrie.

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Having now re-watched all of season three over a couple of weeks I can safely say it’s top notch telly, five stars. Well done everyone.
• Deadloch - One of our favourite shows of a couple of years ago is back. Fi was cackling all the way through.

Status:

Very much a crash day today. Thought I might be OK when I got up (which is not the normal way of things) but Fi asked me to explain something I should have had no problem explaining and I stumbled and fell into a brain fog. So have been taking it easy as my mind jumps from zombie to spiralling. Did I do too much yesterday? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Not me. My brain is not doing the figuring things out thing today.

In other news I had a message from my GP surgery via an alert to the NHS app. I think it’s probably best quoted in its entirety.

‌We introduced EMMA, an AI receptionist a few weeks ago, with the intention of improving the service. It hasn’t worked as expected, and we know lots of people have found it frustrating. We have switched it off today.

I see Wes Streeting’s plan to use AI in the NHS to save money is going well.

Reading:

• Scientists film whale giving birth while other whales work together to help her

Watching:

• Restoring a French bread guillotine ‌(20:49)
• Restoring a rusty ratchet wrench set ‌(13:17)

Listening:

• In Our Time: Silicon - Fascinating stuff on “the role silicon compounds play in the biology of life on Earth, on the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the cycling of elements between land, oceans and atmosphere that sustains us."

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Wally has started digging his dust bath patch so I thought I’d get a photo of the action. Instead he looks like he’s praying towards Mecca. (I checked and he’s off by about 40°.)

Status:

Slept much better and felt able to do some mild woodworking today. I’ve been working on the bath panel I planned out earlier this month at a glacial pace, making a cut then sitting with it for a couple of days, then making another, but had got to the stage where I needed to get out the router, which requires a bit of brain clarity as it’s not a tool I have a lot of experience with. I took my time, thought it through and managed to make a decent cut that fitted. Yay! And in my victorious reverie I figured I’d capitalise on this and do the next cut, forgetting the first rule of chronic fatigue: do not trust your adrenalised self. Cue spectacular failure. Thankfully I have spare wood.

I have been working on this on and off for 18 days and am about a third of the way through. I reckon it’s an afternoon project, if that. Pacing, innit.

Reading:

• AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying - A fascinating and disturbing article that quickly dispenses with the AI-chatbot-gone-awry narrative (by explaining why everyone gets this shit wrong) and dives deep on how the military has tried to shorten the “kill chain” with, as they say, disastrous results for those on the ground. In short, this is nothing new, just faster and more, and unless we muzzle the likes of Palintir it’s just going to get worse.
• H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright typographic mystery - An H on the front of the Unity Temple in Chicago is upside down. There now follows a deep dive into when that error happened. See also half of Hospital H signs (in the US at least) are upside down.
• Meta Loses Two Landmark Cases Regarding Product Safety and Children’s Use; Google Loses One - Nick rounds up some reporting on the ruling. I particularly liked this outrageous quote from Google in the Guardian’s report: “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site”. O RLY?
• Everyone’s very angry online right now - At least they are from where Garbage Day is sitting. Thankfully I don’t sit there. (Angry people in my streams get muted for a week and then unfollowed.)

Watching:

• Colin Furze: The Secret Garage Car Lift Part 1 ‌(29:52)
• Fill my parsnip tubes with me ‌(3:44) - I’m mildly fascinated by Gerald’s method of growing parsnips in drain pipes to keep them as straight as possible for show competitions. He harvests one in this video. I’ve had a quick search and I can’t see any mention of this technique.

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - The Doug episode. Nuff said.
• Last One Laughing Ireland - such a weird show. On the one hand it’s hilarious and I love it, on the other it’s kinda cringe reality slop. But I laughed and have some new comedians to look out for now.

Status:

Mad March weather today, literally swinging from bright blue skies to thunderous clouds in minutes, then back again. Even the rabbits were freaked out by a sudden hail storm.

This cartoon strip came to mind today.

I saw it on some feed at the start of the month and was struck by how good it was, like a really professional piece of work, but of course there was no credit attached. A bit of reverse image searching revealed it’s by the late Richard Thompson who worked at the Washington Post from the 80s until his death from Parkinsons in 2016. It looks like it’s from his weekly series Richard’s Poor Almanac which is running on GoComics.

Otherwise today was a light pottering day. I slept really badly but didn’t want to just rest up, so did some light chores around the house. Turns out the filter in the dishwasher needs cleaning. Who knew?

Reading:

• An exploit kit that can hack millions of iPhones has been publicly leaked - Anyone who can upgrade to iOS 26 should do so as soon as possible. This is not a drill. And so my holdout on all the awful liquid glass bullshit has come to an end. It’s ugly, but with judicious application of accessibility settings, plus the fact that I don’t really use my phone for much other than reading articles and listening to podcasts these days, means I can probably deal. (Thankfully this exploit doesn’t seem to affect the Mac so my actual computer can remain usable for a while longer.)
• Google is automatically rewriting news headlines in its search results - One the one hand, fuck Google for playing god, but on the other hand, online headlines are often terrible and click-baity so re-writing them to actually describe what’s at the link is not a terrible idea. I mean, I do it here when a good page has a title so bad I’m embarrassed to have it on my site. Related: Google just patented the end of your website with an “AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user.”
• “A new world is being born”: Rebecca Solnit on the slow revolution the far right cannot tolerate - Really looking forward to Solnit’s new book because we need a bit of grounded, long-term positivity in the fight against the omni-awfulness. Related: The one thing everyone gets wrong about feminism.
• Welcome to Paris, the city that said no to cars - A walk through the astonishing changes Paris has undergone in the last decade. And they seem to both be working and be popular.

Watching:

• House Party! (1983) ‌(20:48) - A student short film that Reginald Hudlin later remade as the 1990 hit comedy film. Early hip-hop delights with shades of Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock.
• Ants Pants: Buying and using the biggest ECHO chainsaw - Echo CS7310SX ‌(1:58:42) - Andris buys the biggest chainsaw he can and cuts up some wood.

Subscribing:

• ComicCaster creates RSS feeds for comic strips that don’t have them (such as on GoComics) so you can add them to your feed reader. I have a nice folder of daily comics that I read over breakfast which will now be a bit bigger. (Adding Nancy, classic and current, and the above mentioned Richard’s Poor Almanac)

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Last One Laughing Ireland

Status:

Had a visit from a puppy today. Nothing else that happened today matters.

Reading:

• ‘The most stunningly awful wonderful record’: how The Shaggs became rock’s most divisive band. - One of the great things about the 20th century is the infinite amount of weird outsider art there is to discover. Never heard of The Shaggs, despite them being championed by Zappa and Cobain. Not sure I can listen to the whole album in one sitting but definitely enjoyed a dip. Will keep an eye out for the documentary.
• Ibram X Kendi on book bans and far-right fear-mongering - A reminder to put How to be an Antiracist back on my to-read list and to check out his new book, Chain of Ideas, which looks right up my street.
• Self-Defense Techniques for Jazz Musicians - ‌Take five. Have a smoke. Offer one to the person hitting you. Ask them what music they like. Listen intently and then tell them how what they like can be traced back to jazz. Get punched again.
• Girlguiding gives trans girls and women until September to leave UK organisation - I don’t want to rise to rage-bait but that quote from Helen Joyce from Sex Matters is just fucking disgraceful. Shame on you.

Looking:

• Hurvin Anderson review – this haunted, hazy, beautiful show is like stumbling through someone’s memories - Anderson had a show at Birmingham’s Ikon a while back and it was tremendous. Would highly recommend this to those who can get to Tate Britain.

Watching:

• Eyelet Press Restoration ‌(15:22)
• What if you kept digging downward? ‌(2:52)

Listening:

• How Reading Made Us: pt2. How Reading Made Our Feelings - Interesting stuff about the rise of the novel giving people access to the interiority of others, though tempered by a bit too much Steven Pinker (an era has the public intellectuals it deserves, I guess) and a jarringly wrongheaded conclusion by the host about social media. “If the bias of the novel is towards empathy, the bias of social media is towards rage.” Well, yes, if you’re using the stuff that is optimised for rage. I know I have gained much empathy for others by engaging with them on non-commercial online environments, especially those based around text. You know, like novels. Anyway…

Telly:

• University Challenge
• The Singers
• Last One Laughing Ireland

Status:

Very much a resting day. Slept a lot, then went back to bed later. Feeling OK but definitely like something relatively minor could tip me over.

Fi excitedly told me she’d received an extras call for a “kissing couple” who are already in a relationship, which meant I could accompany her on this new adventure. While sitting around for nine hours with occasional bursts of “action!” sounds potentially doable with my condition, I think I need her to have a go first and report back before I even contemplate applying. But you never know! (Also, surely they want pretty young things snogging in the background, not us crones.)

Admin:

Have re-jigged the links categories - Overnight Listening is now just Listening and moved down next to Watching, because I’m sleeping much better at the moment and would like the option to listen to audio in the daytime. Plus, as you’ve maybe noticed, it’s mostly Night Tracks at the moment.

Reading:

• The Histomap - I feel sure I’ve seen this before, maybe in print or maybe on the early internet? Either way, the origin story is new to me and quite interesting.
• Thomas Aquinas on Sex - Sartre put him right.
• Why Lab Coats are White - Or, why surgeons moved from heavy frock coats to something less gross. “The surgeon operated in a slaughter-house-suggesting frock coat of black cloth. It was stiff with the blood and the filth of years. The more sodden it was, the more forcibly did it bear evidence to the surgeon’s prowess.”

Watching:

• Syringe feeding a baby beaver ‌(2:58)
• Laura Kampf ‌(32:11)

Listening:

• How reading made us: 1. How reading made our brains - A literary reviewer realises he can’t read anymore and wonders what’s going on with his brain. I’ve often thought about the relationship between various forms of literacy and how we think and process the world, so this looks to be very much up my street. (This whole Understand strand looks worth exploring too.)

Clicking:

• 100 Jumps - the new hotness in incredibly addictive single button games. I think it’s hard because it leverages an optical illusion, but that knowledge doesn’t help. So far I’ve reached 40 jumps.

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
• Last One Laughing Ireland - Aisling Bea and a bunch of people we don’t know (yet).

Status:

Felt OK this morning so we joined my sister and our mum’s old friend at the allotment for tea, and saw loads of other friends there and on the way (including Roo who is dogsitting a huge friendly rottweiller who was a delight to meet). And then in the afternoon great-neph M hung out with me in the garden while I lay in the hammock trying to photograph birds. Had one success (above).

M had a go with the Nikon and seemed to not hate it – I think he might respect it as a piece of technology with loads of buttons and dials. I offered to lend him my old Nikon if he was interested and he didn’t say no. He’s very demand resistant so you just have to leave things open for him and let him come to them on his own terms, but it’d be fun if he did get into photography when he’s a bit older.

And then I had done plenty so had a nap. Tomorrow will definitely be a recovery day and then I’ll take stock on what was my first full rest week.

Overnight listening:

• Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber - Finished this, and I’m not really sure it was worth it for me. I think the problem is Graeber is a proper anthropologist who does the work and I got a bit lost in the granular details while waiting for the big ideas. It’s good to know the work was done but I was satisfied with just the introduction and the conclusion. On the plus side, the detailing of the sociopolitical nuances of the various Malagasy people did help me get to sleep a few times.

Reading:

• We are living in a period of political anti-intellectualism. But in pop culture, clever is the new cool - While I tend to avoid anything about fashion and trends, because I have no interest in or knowledge of such things, I do have a soft spot for Jess Cartner-Morley’s writing, so I enjoyed this article in a slightly perverse way. Once you get past the “famous people are reading books in the same way they wear clothes” stuff there’s some interesting observations about how intellectualism intersects with culture. I’d say it’s always been thus and the book trade is no less superficial than the fashion biz, in its ways. And a young person reading a book has always been sexy.
• John Allison: Easy vs Hard - Delighted to see John has made his occasional musings on his cartoonist craft open to all.
• God is a comedian - “Three weeks into the Iran war, reality has passed through the looking glass, out the other side, and is now selling tickets to the gift shop. What follows is not satire. Satire requires exaggeration, and you cannot exaggerate something that is already operating at maximum absurdity. This is simply the news."
• Sentiers 395: Habermas and his coffeehouses ⊗ The case for radical solar optimism - Issues of Sentiers seem to be swinging like a pendulum for me right now. Last week I had zero interest in anything Patrick posted, this week it was like my own personal fanzine. And that’s cool. I enjoyed the coffeehouse stuff (I remember Ben Hammersley making this analogy with blogging around 2002, back in his longhair frock-coat days) and I always like a good solar story. Have lined up a couple of other links for reading later in the week.
• School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books - one for the “what right wing fuckers do in the US, they will eventually try here” files. That said, the mention of Greater Manchester reminded me of James Anderton’s reign of terror in the 80s, so maybe it’s home grown rot.

Watching:

• My Favorite Twilight Knockoff ‌(1:40:32) - Jenny Nicholson is the OG long-form video essayist for me, talking at great length about subjects which I never thought I’d be interested in, in a manner which holds my attention to the end. I love how she just pops up every year or so with a video in exactly the same style and format, like nothing has changed.

Telly:

• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds