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.