Happy autumn! Oh, it’s still July? My mistake.
Status:
Psychotherapy day today so I’m taking it easy in the garden, grazing the internet and letting my thoughts settle. We talked a bit about my choice paralysis which can go from being a joke (when presented with a menu I will ask the waiting staff what they have too much of and I’ll have that so it’s not wasted) to being, well, paralysing.
I’ve realised that through my life I’ve rarely had to make a big choice between two equal options. Most of the situations I’ve found myself in just imposed themselves upon me, or just required a yes/no answer, so I’ve never had much practice. Having to choose where I don’t know what the outcome might be is just horrifying. When I do find myself in that situation I’ll usually just wait until one of them expires and then do the other one, or do neither. I have no idea how common this is but it does make me wary of libertarians who crow about wanting absolute freedom. No thanks!
Weather’s quite pleasant today. Technically the heatwave conditions are still here but there’s a strong breeze coming from the north east (usually it’s from the south west) which really takes the edge off.
Reading:
- Inside the Luddite festival harnessing Gen Z’s rage against big tech 🪜 — Fascinating to see this in Wired of all places, especially as it’s a very sympathetic and non-judgemental piece. Reminds me a lot of local art-friends Hipkiss and Graney’s work, especially their Woodland Games festival.
- British grammar invades the American World Cup 🪜 — Apparently the way we speak about soccerball has impacted how USAmericans do words. As someone British who has consumed a vast amount of American media over the decades and who has never attained a formal understanding of grammar (I taught myself to write using a mostly vibe-based system of trying different things until it feels right, and then getting educated people to proof-read if necessary) I was utterly bemused by this article. It’s nice that people have things they care about, but really?
- “If HEIC has no haters I’m dead.” — Summarising a thread about people’s favourite and hated filetypes, because we all have them. I don’t come across HEIC that often because I immediately disabled all that shit on my devices, but Fi had to get a new phone and I noticed she unknowingly sent me a couple the other day. My least favourite is probably “anything that should be a Jpeg”. More positively, while TXT is functionally my favourite I do have a soft spot for PSB, the Photoshop format for documents over 2GB. It literally stands for PhotoShop Big and I love that.
- Can humans hibernate their way to Mars? — Beyond the tedious headline (stop trying to colonise to Mars, it’s not going to work) this is some seriously interesting research into how some animals hibernate and whether than can be applied to humans for medical purposes.
- US-style ‘whites-only’ towns spread to Wales — A report in the Telegraph (which reminds me of when it used to be a proper newspaper) on the connections between white nationalist compounds in the US and UK. The Woodlander Initiative in Wales is kinda fascinating for the overlaps it has with more progressive, less fascist movements and ideologies, and really shows how easy it can be to slip from one to the other, as anyone who’s followed crafting and woodland YouTube channels can attest to. But what really struck me was that whites-only towns already exist in the UK countryside — they just tend to be populated by wealthy posh people in places like the Cotswolds. Which is doubtless why the Telegraph isn’t glowing in their coverage. Scruffy lower-class oiks, fascist or not, don’t deserve to be in the countryside unless they’re working for the lord of the manor, what? (Also interesting that the US version is called Back To The Land, echoing the 60s hippy movement , but that’s a whole other kettle.)
- Frances Ryan: Here’s what a truly progressive PIP system could look like — PIP is back in the news, which is never a good sign. I don’t expect any government that worries about the hard-right press to do the right thing but you never know, their might listen to Ryan and maybe even save money!
- Hating AI in 2026 — “I’ve struggled to write something that would persuade my colleagues and friends to ditch AI and affirm their avowed beliefs about climate change, the trustworthiness of megacorporations, and our right to live and work with dignity. I accept that I’m not up to that task. So I wrote this instead for anyone who someday wonders what the hell is wrong with us."
Watching:
- Trailer for Digger (2:39) — the new Alejandro Iñárritu film. Looks suitably batshit.
- LIVE Brooks Falls - Katmai National Park, Alaska 2026 — Watching this livestream of brown bears feeding on migrating salmon(?) and marvelling at how evolution got fish to jump up a waterfall and bears to stand at the top haphazardly catching them. (The bear I’m currently watching seems particularly incompetent.)
Clicking:
- Clipart Studio — I’m not sure the art of magazine collage translates to a click-and-drag screen-based medium but then I thought the same about jigsaws until quite recently. This uses Internet Archive mags and images and the gallery has some nice stuff in it.