Status:
Feeling OK today but keen not to push anything too far - the tinnitus is hovering like a coalmine canary. Want to get back to a full rested state before I start pottering too prescriptively but I can’t just do nothing. So I went to the pharmacist on my wee scooter to pick up my prescriptions, a nice flat journey along the river in the sunshine. Well, apart from the bits of the path where the tree roots are bursting through. That’s a fecking nightmare on three wheels.
Overnight listening:
- Empire: Bronze Age Apocalypse: How To Survive The End of The World - the regular presenters, William and Anita, are starting to annoy me so this podcast is not long for my world. But it’s been a good ride and introduced me to some new things about the ancient Middle East.
Music:
- Black Box Recorder - they’re back, apparently. I have a memory of housemates being a bit worried I was listening to Child Psychology on repeat but that album got me through a tricky time. The albums hold up well and the third one (which I didn’t know well) is quite odd in places.
Reading:
- Populism is an information problem, but not in the way that you think - looking at John Harris' recent reporting from Denton and comparing his findings with Dan Davies’ book The Unaccountability Machine.
- Tech legend Stewart Brand on Musk, Bezos and his extraordinary life: ‘We don’t need to passively accept our fate’ - I find Brand fascinating not just because he’s a kind of Zelig figure, appearing in the background of loads of things I’m interested in, but because he’s so often right about the problems but hilariously, tragically wrong about the solutions, believing the worst people in the world will save us.
- Molly Soda’s Desktop Diary #12 - “The process of transcribing something forces you to go inward, to give that thing your full attention, whether you want to or not."
- Tear Gun by Yi-Fei Chen - “Collects and freezes actual tears to shoot them back at the person who caused the cry." I feel like this sort of tech-art has disappeared in the last decade or so. I’m sure I used to see more of this kind of thing.
- Nick Land, Silicon Valley’s favorite doomsaying philosopher 🪜 - Another deluded weirdo from the past who should have drifted into obscurity but has been dragged back into the light by far-right tech capitalists. If you squint, the yin to Stewart Brand’s optimistic yang.
- How The Disintegration Loops became a requiem for the 9/11 attacks - Beautiful interview with William Basinski and Anohni about the 90s New York avant-garde queer scene that produced “one of the most important musical recordings of the 21st century.”
Watching:
- Sort through my potatoes with me (3:13) - I did not know you could cut chitting potatoes in pieces and grow from them…
- Datsun L28 carb swap - filling injector ports with laser welding (9:51) - I have no interest in cars but I do like watching people fix bits of them.
Telly:
- How to Get to Heaven from Belfast - Five stars, excellent. Utterly bananas and held it together right to the end.