Status:

A light pottering day today. Tidied the kitchen a bit. Thought about how much the football commentary annoyed me last night. Didn’t do much else.

OK, I’ll bite. In short, commentary for big sporting events that take over mainstream channels should contextualise and explain to the viewer what it going on and not assume that viewer has been following the minutiae of said sport in the months and years prior this big event. Football commentators do not do this. Commentators for other sports and similar big niche events have their flaws but at least at Wimbledon, Crufts, the Olympics, they make a fucking effort to address a broad audience that is genuinely curious about what’s going on. Don’t moan about what in your clearly superior opinion the players should be doing using insider terminology and jargon. Tell me why they did what they did so I can make Amy own judgement. Also, Ally McCoist is perfectly capable of talking in a clear and enunciated way when it suits him, he just chooses to mumble incoherently 90% of the time like he’s in the pub with his mates.

I’ve very much enjoyed the matches but frankly I’ll be relieved when all this is over and I can leave planet football for another couple of years.

Reading:

• The radical resurgence of UK fanzines, 50 years after punk — The Guardian has noticed it so it must be real. Not going to read too much into this survey as I’m sure everyone involved is cringing at aspects of it. My instinct is these zines are less about sustaining networks, something which has been superseded by “the socials”, and more about creating islands of sanity that interface with other network. Zines today seem quite expensive to produce and distribute, which I find interesting as historically their cheapness and accessibility was their primary appeal. So if it’s not cost or reach, what is their purpose now? I don’t pretend to know the answer, btw.
• Heat deaths are a public health crisis rooted in housing inequality — The poor tend to live in smaller accommodation which they’re unable to modify in urban heat islands that amplify the harm. Modification for changes in climate is a luxury unavailable to them. (I’m very aware that my efforts this year have been enabled by my being time rich.) Of course killing off unproductive poor people is not a problem for capitalism.
  • Heatwaves will scorch British economy — Maybe losses of £25bn a year will get their attention. (I’ve definitely noticed that during heatwaves everyone else’s productivity drops to my CFS level, which makes me feel much less stressed but probably isn’t great for the economy.)
  • Thx to Jules for those two links.
• Once again we are told AI may be conscious – I study consciousness, and I have my doubts — The Guardian, like many outlets, has been quite susceptible to AI boosterism so this is a welcome correction.
• I hate the way we talk online — One of the most bemusing things about learning stuff is you assume that because you now know it so does everyone else. I learned about context collapse nearly 20 years ago and yet social media corporations seem to have built their entire models around making it worse.
• What would a land value tax actually do? — Also summarised in this Bsky thread. Apparently there is a serious proposal to replace stamp duty and council tax in the UK with a tax on the value of the land you own. It would be much more equitable but if suddenly introduced would produce a lot of winners and losers. Interesting stuff, though I have no idea how likely it is to happen.
• Time might not exist – and we’re starting to understand why — Confess I got a bit lost in the weeds of this and will come back to it when my head is clearer, but the basic idea is nice and chewy.
• The oceans are full of heat, and it’s coming ashore — What happens when the heat sinks are full of heat?
• The state of RSS feed readers — A 2026 survey which looks to me like very little has changed, which is probably a good thing?
• Climate we had in 20th Century ‘has now gone’ - Met Office — Ah well. Good job we’re developing new climate appropriate infrastructure then right? Right?

Watching:

• Werwulf trailer ‌(2:14) — New Robert Eggers film incoming. Looks grimy and a good fit for the Weird cannon. Fun fact: it’s co-written by Sjón, a childhood friend of Björk and who performed with her and the Sugarcubes as Johnny Triumph.
• Martin Lewis on knowing if an advert on social media is real or fake ‌(2:29)
  • Via this post which highlights Lewis’s term “the legitimate web” which I obviously like a lot.