Status:

Woke up grumpy as fuck today and quickly realised I wasn’t going to be much use or fun to be around so went back to bed. Feeling a bit better this evening after a decent stretch of box breathing and a good nap.

In hindsight this week was a lot and my planning wasn’t sufficient. A lot in this case being “going to a quiet cafe for half an hour” and then a couple of days later “writing something long-ish for my blog” outside of my usual slow, paced pottering. I’m not beating myself up because it will take me a long time to get this right, if I get it right at all. I shall remain optimistic, even when my optimism might lead me astray.

Reading:

• It’s only an island if you look at it from the water — A lovely piece by Elizabeth Cantwell on Jaws as a story about men, America and love. “This is a story about Quint and Brody and Hooper. The man who distrusts authority, the man who is authority, and the man who wants authority. The man who owns the boat and the man who is wary of the boat and the man who drives the boat. The man with no fear, the man who has always feared, and the man who does not yet understand what fear is."
• Bomb the Arctic, dam the Mediterranean and build a second moon: five outlandish plans to remodel our climate — The Guardian has been giving a bit too much uncritical space to geoengineering of late so it’s nice to see this look at stupid ideas from the past to put the contemporary hubris into perspective. My personal fave is the German plan to drain the Med which crops up in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
• Happy 25th birthday, BitTorrent 🪜 — Legal and moral qualms aside, the protocol itself is one of the wonders of our internet age. I remember figuring out how it worked back in the day and being so impressed.
• The universe, as it turns out, is mostly Kirby Krackle
• Molly Crabapple’s reflections on her book tour
• Phil Gyfford’s weeknotes

Listening:

• You’re wrong about: The JFK Assassination pt 2 — Gets a bit into the weeds with this very long conclusion, and I confess I dozed off a few times, but still nice to hear all the conspiracy theories debunked with some thoroughly random digressions.