Status:

Was determined to resume pottering today, a medically prescribed activity which keeps me moving in a non-fatiguing way. In other words, get off the fucking sofa. The best pottering activity I’ve found is tidying up, so I’ve been working along the bench in the shed, putting things away and sorting through those plastic boxes of random bits that just accumulate over time.

Wally was doing that slightly needy thing he does sometimes, hanging around near me and looking a bit sad. He’s not actually sad. His breeding just makes him look like an insecure 2000’s era San-X character. I think he might be a bit needy though, poor little boo.

Reading:

• The Online Marketplace of Ideas — I love this exhibition, made up of merchandise and books sold by online influences and thought leaders, or whatever we’re calling them these days, from blatant grifters to considered academics.
  • “Merch is where the immaterial experience of web 2 culture touches down into our lived human space. It is the physical precipitant of “the digital” into our material world. As an analogue display technology, it works to signal identity in social contexts where the screen cannot reach."
  • It looks like an old fashioned boutique store, but it represents a virtual world, and that intersection of two worlds which have radically changed in the last couple of decades is particularly fascinating.
  • ‌"Within the exhibition, this wide gamut of political positions is contrasted against an underlying uniformity of material supply chains. While recent commentary has focused on the controversial opinions of online personalities, it has often overlooked the platform’s reorganization of work and materials in the world."
• John Harris: Cars burn in Belfast, bricks fly in Southampton – and the ubiquitous cry of ‘civil war’ goes up again — ‌For lots of people, mundane daily reality now carries a lot less weight than what they see hundreds of times a day on the small screen they carry in their pocket. And if you are partial to a vision of a Britain constantly on the verge of violent crisis, your algorithmically curated video feeds will deliver exactly that kind of stuff – fighting, riots, angry altercations on public transport – and foster the sense that you are living in a dystopian drama, for which Farage constantly provides the ugly narration.
• It was Britain’s most expensive house. Why is its only resident a homeless man who lives on the porch? — An article in two parts. First the ongoing obscenity of empty mansions during a housing crisis. Secondly the interview with the homeless guy who of course has a fascinating story.
• ‘It’s not about heroes and villains’: the triumphant return of I Shot Andy Warhol — Such a good film. I remember seeing it with a friend who subsequently photocopied the entire SCUM Manifesto and pasted it up in her living room.
  • Barely related to this, other than for former wrote an essay included in SCUM, today I learned Paul Krassner and Paul Karasik are different people.
• German ruling declares Google’s AI Overviews are Google’s own words and makes it liable for false answers
• I am a horse and I would like to try cake

Watching:

• Ants Pants: Removing rotten and leaning trees ‌(2:27:40) — When I was thinking about what I do on my computer and whether it’s healthy or not, I did reflect that I spend a lot of time watching this Estonian man cut down trees on his farm, so it’s not all algo-doom.

Listening:

• Origin Story: Evangelicals pt 2 — Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, oh my! Some batshit stuff here, as expected. I appreciated a focus on “the electric church” of televangelism as a technological shift with social consequences, which I think could be applied to what’s happening with algorithmic social media today.