Status:

Heatwave #3 is here and I’m delighted to say my idea of hanging silver reflective sheets over the front windows has had a tremendous effect, keeping the two rooms that usually heat up in the afternoon sun remarkably cool. Who knows, maybe I’ll start a trend on the street. That’d be nice.

(I would normally post a photo but, while I’m sure the information available to anyone who looks hard enough, we’d rather keep the front of the house private. Hit me up if I know you and would like to see it.)

So the day has mostly been spent in the newly cool room staying relatively cool, pottering on the internet and pondering the next development in my blogging. The shape I’ve iterated to over the last 9 months is very nice but the scheduling feels like it doesn’t work anymore, as seen yesterday. I’m wondering if a M/W/F notes and a more considered Sunday e-zine (for want of a better descriptor) might give me a bit more flexibility and allow for my slow reintegration with society to develop. I started this current format because I was basically stuck in bed or on the sofa all day. Now I’m on doctor’s orders to potter and move gently about the place, which doesn’t lend itself as much to daily blogging.

Anyway, as a great man once sung, songs about songwriting suck. Have some links.

Reading:

• Reasonable Concerns — Trans girls and women participating in women’s sports, which was recently prohibited in the USA, is one of those areas where even the most liberal of people might pause and have “reasonable concerns”. The problem, as Parker Molloy neatly identifies here, is this is just where it starts. The gender purists know this is the easiest of wins from which they can build to a comprehensive erasure of anyone outside a harsher and harsher binary, something which harms all of us. “The people you called alarmists have been right about every step of this, and most of you have met the moment they were proven right with silence."
• An interview with Andy Baio — Andy’s Waxy.org sidebar linklog very likely inspired me to try the form back in the early 2000s and I credit him with helping me see the value in pointing at cool things, something I consider the duty of all citizens of the internet. Really interesting to learn how he started and how he scours the web.
  • I’ve just thought of a great punchline to a joke about Andy trying to post something to Instagram. “Linking Baio.” Badumtish.
• Every photo of the moon behind a rainbow will show the moon in exactly the same phase — Maths, innit.
  • What would a rainbow be like on Tatooine? ‌(2:45) — If it ever rains on Tatooine…
• A thread about hippos that goes places — Nearly impossible to neuter and they bleed acid. And that’s just for starters.
• Low-cost loans for solar panels could save households hundreds on bills — Thinktank report so not necessarily going to happen, but it’s a good step. One of the problems with solar (and most renewables) is you need a significant up-front investment and a few years before it becomes ‘free’ energy. This would ease that.
  • Plug-in solar update — A gov.uk update from last month. No firm date yet but more retailers are on board so it’s looking good.
• The great carbon capture con — It seems the UK gov has put aside £21.7bn for this fantasy technology that will not make a jot of different. Maybe spend it on putting solar panels on every south facing roof instead.

Listening:

• Doomscroll: Hito Steyerl — Joshua Citarella talks with the creator of ‌How Not To Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File, a film which captivated my brain a decade ago, and author of Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War which I confess I haven’t managed to finish but hope to one day. I was wary this was going to be full of art/theory speak, and it is, but she comes over as a lovely, open and funny person who’s very willing to say “I don’t know” and then start figuring out an answer. As often with Citarella’s chats I find myself wondering what it would be like to have lived a life where you’re able to converse at this level, but I’m sure they’re both idiots when it comes to talking about compost or underground comics.

Watching:

• Folding Ideas: Belle and the meaning of place ‌(10:13)
• Practical Engineering: The flaw that flooded New Orleans ‌(24:33) — Grady has a new book coming out which he talks about at the end.

Music:

• Was skimming through the tracks I’ve faved over the last 25 years of using iTunes and came across Nevermind Tribute, an unassumingly titled album of Japanese cover versions of Nirvana tracks. It’s heavier than you’d imagine but has some very enjoyable moments. Not as good as the borderline problematically titled Yellow Loveless but few are.