Status:
Rest day after yesterday’s occupational therapy which is always followed by a bit of a comedown. An hour of sustained concentration and conversation takes a lot out of me. So I’ve spent most of today in the garden, reading in the hammock and pottering in the shed.
Great-nephew M came over for a bit to hang out. His request, which was nice. Fi had come back from some art thing in Balsall Heath (she’s such a fucking artist these days) with a copy of Bed Zine, a collection of “art and writing by chronically ill, neurodivergent & disabled artists” which she showed him, because it’s always good to expose him to different stuff, and he spent a good half hour reading it, which was great! And then we slowly realised that, while Fi had flicked through it, we didn’t know whether it was totally suitable for a nearly 10 year old. But this is what uncles and aunts are for, right? Of course when we asked him what he thought of it he said most of it was interesting and when there were things he didn’t understand he just skipped over them, which is how it works.
The main thing though was him reading it from cover to cover and not looking at his screen once. And then he sat and looked at the trees while listening to his music. There’s hope for these kids yet.
Hogwatching:
- Hedgehog Cam 6-9 June 2026 — For some reason my wildlife camera stopped recording for the start of June but I got it working again.
- Hedgehog Rolling — An 11 second excerpt from the above showing some weird and fascinating behaviour!
Reading:
- ‘Why would you put a toxic product into the hands of a young child?’: director turned activist Beeban Kidron on why big tech needs its tobacco moment — I empathise hugely with online safety campaigners like this. Unlike the censorious puritans of my age, Mary Whitehouse et al, they are not defending a moral status quo by punching down at minorities and they have genuinely important and vital concerns. I do think the tobacco analogy is apt, and I think this is a bigger issue than children. We’re probably in a mental health crisis across the whole population right now thanks to unfettered addictive corporate media, something that has been growing for decades before exploding in recent years. I mean, have you seen Facebook? It’s not kids on there. What to do about it? I’m not going to try to answer but none of the technical solutions seem sensible or effective — in order to check a child’s age you need to check everyone’s age, and that can fuck right off as it plays right into the surveillance capitalists hands. Something more fundamental is needed, targeting the rights of the companies themselves to exploit their audiences rather than the rights of adults to do internets on their own terms. Anyhoo, interesting interview.
- Mother Fucker — Emily Ratajkowski: After becoming a single mom, I began compulsively dating in order to figure out what kind of woman I wanted to be. As so often with Ratajkowski’s writing I wonder how much of this is a rare view into “hot people problems” and how much can be universalised to the rest of us. Still, if people who look like her are going to be fetishised and idealised by mainstream society it’s probably healthy to have them humanised a bit too.
- The barnacle problem waiting behind Hormuz — Fascinating report about “biofouling” of cargo ships which reduces reduces their fuel efficiency and handling, something that happens naturally but is being accelerated on ships stuck in the Straight of Hormuz where “a harsh combination of high water temperature, high salinity, and prolonged stagnation […] can quickly turn a microscopic slime layer into algae, barnacles, tubeworms, and heavy calcareous growth." The longer they’re stuck there, the worse it gets.
Watching:
Listening:
Browsing:
- Birmingham Resistance Library — I’ve been linking to various online and offline zine and anarchist libraries and today discovered there’s one in my own city! No idea who’s running it or how long it’s been going on for but I like the mission statement and look forward to visiting sometime. Might even donate some stuff that would otherwise get lost in a charity shop.