Status:

After yesterday’s brightness today was a bit subdued. I tried a few things and quickly realised I was going to fuck them up so didn’t push the pottering. Mostly resting and doing my breathing exercises to see if it might shift the brain fug. It sort of did, until it didn’t. Definitely one of those “oh bollocks, I have CFS” days.

Reading:

• The English community that brought its river back from the brink: ‘If we can get it right here, we can do it everywhere’ — River engineering seems to have a lot of unintended consequences.
• Can Burnham turn ‘Manchesterism’ into a practical offer for government? — I’m less interested in Andy Burnham as an individual as I am in how progressive political ideas can be incubated out of the glare of Westminster, strengthened by practical testing and then imported into national governance, so I’m keeping an eye on this.
• Dawn of the Electric World Order — An interesting overview of how electrification is accelerating globally after two oil-disrupting wars. (While I’m in broad agreement with everything here it’s worth noting the publication is funded by the non-profit wing of a hedge fund.)

Listening:

• Lifepod: An Ode to Tek — In which Adam draws inspiration from mushroom cultivation communities to form a nicely coherent model for preserving and sharing knowledge and experiences without imposing dogmatic strictures. Very relevant to my thinkings about commentaries local to me. (Transcript available at link.)

Watching:

• Ants Pants: Talking about summer plans & emptying firewood log deck — More log splitting!

Looking:

• The Goodwoof festival — A seemingly endless scroll of photos of dogs and the weirdos who love them. I don’t know much about this event but it looks like a chill antidote to the nonsense of Crufts.

Music:

• 30 Something and 101 Damnations by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine — I somehow forgot yesterday that these were their first two albums and arguably better than 1992. I still need to find a control group to be sure that they were actually good, but the single Sheriff Fatman alone is a legacy to be proud of.