Pete Ashton's Notes & Links

Notes and links from 8 Aug

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:12:47 +0100

Went to see the musculoskeletal specialist this afternoon about my bad back, which was doing much better today until he gently poked at my lower spine to see where it hurt, and then it hurt again. It’s nothing major, thankfully, and it should continue to improve. I have a 5 page PDF of gentle exercises for my core muscles to try. Let’s see if I can do them for a more than a few days before I forget.

This was one of those moments where I was reminded that I don’t leave the house very often and that this sort of thing takes a toll on me. I don’t think I did enough to trigger a crash but I definitely felt the fatigue afterwards.

Jonny Depp’s bed

Bobby Fingers' latest diorama, the creation of which is documented at great and meandering length. If you’re not familar with his work please watch five or ten minutes and see if it chimes with your whims. He’s developed a form of video art which feels timeless but which, and I mean this in a really good way, could only really work on the internet.

One of the most useful Mac hacks that I really resent having to employ is taking a screenshot of text which, for whatever deranged reason, is not selectable so I can open it in the Preview image viewer and use the OCR function to copy the text I was prevented from selecting. This is even worse in stupid phone apps which I’ve mostly given up on expecting any semblance of functionality from. All computer text should always be selectable unless there is an extremely good reason for it not to be. (I did hear something about this maybe being fixed in macOS releases later than 14.8 but that’s not enough of a trade-off to upgrade to that shit.)

The end of Google Search — and the Internet — as we know it

This has been brewing for a long time but it seems it’s finally here. Google is no longer a website company, and so the web has to figure out what sort of web it wants to be all over again. Back before the pandemic I ran a one-person photography teaching business which relied 100% on organic Google traffic, partly because the other photography teachers in Birmingham didn’t understand websites so getting up there was easy. But I was very aware that all my eggs were in this one basket and, honestly, I didn’t know any other way to get business. I shut it down in 2020 but I suspect it wouldn’t have survived long anyway. And that’s OK. Google search turned out to be a blip and a bad idea in hindsight. Now we can try something else. (Sidenote - some nice Station 11 references.)

New Mountain Goats album, their 24th (!), just dropped.

Some Questions for Channel 4, about their documentary ‘The Great ADHD Myth?’

I’ve been around enough blocks to have lost any and all respect for Channel 4 and this forthcoming ADHD doc looks to be another chapter in their pitiful excuse of a public service remit. Five stars for the “are the makers of this programme paedophiles? Because the public are concerned about that. Just asking!” bit.

How to store shit in media

I remember the trick of hiding an mp3 in the header data of a jpeg from back in the days when there was at least a theoretical need to do such a thing, and I’m familiar with the fungibility of filetypes, where you put images through audio processors and see what the effects look like, but I definitely didn’t know about some of these techniques, especially those that survive social media compression. Warning that the video is very “YouTube” in style and crams a lot in, but there’s plenty to follow up on if your interest is piqued.

Afronauts - the stage show telling the true tale of Zambia’s 1960s space programme

But Nkoloso was undeterred. He wrote an op-ed titled We’re Going to Mars! With a Spacegirl, Two Cats and a Missionary, asked Unesco for a £7m grant, and continued work on his mission with 12 young men and women handpicked for his training programme. The curriculum was mostly delivered on a remote farm a few miles outside the capital city, Lusaka. It included swinging the “Afronauts”, as they were so named, on ropes that were then cut as they reached their height, dunking them in rivers, and rolling them down hills in barrels.

Loaf on tour in numbers

The worker coop bakery which I’m a member of has been homeless for five months thanks to the incompetence of the social housing cartel entrusted with building their new home. They’ve been working out of other small businesses and have just about kept afloat. (I’m technically still part of the team but have been on unpaid medical leave since before this with strict instructions not to get involved.)

Wishlisting: Stewart Lee - Basic Lee (Live At The Lowry) — Weird Walk look to be packaging up Lee’s complete back catalogue as a series of DVD/CD/books. I don’t need these, especially at £25 a pop, but I kinda want them on my shelf, which I guess is the point.

Notes and links from 7 Aug

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 21:52:12 +0100

With judicious application of ice-packs, tiger balm, ibuprofen, walking up and down the garden and lying on my side, my bad back has slowly gotten less bad. I can now sit upright for more minutes than previously and occasionally forget to take my walking stick with me to the bathroom. I have a doctors appointment (more accurately a musculoskeletal specialist) tomorrow so I’m sure it’ll have totally cleared up by then. The text message with the appointment reminder called them “The MSK” which sounds like a cool rapper name and has me wondering what the K stands for. The Musculo Skeletal King? I shall try not to ask and focus on listening to their advice.

Trying out a different blogging format, in the sense that I’ve thrown out the format. I’ve bashed this out in an evening based off my bookmarks, but the future plan, such as it is, is to write through the day and see what format is needed. And in the meanwhile work on the broader project, whatever that ends up being. Be less precious.

Zoe Williams knew Rod Liddle and hated what he became. He would have wanted her to say so — What is it with this sanctity washing of arseholes when they die? Especially those who revelled in publicly being arseholes and willingly took billionaire money to be arseholes in national newspapers.

Zoe links to a useful theory of the post-1968 ‘type’, those drawn to transgression for transgression’s sake and who have happily traversed from punky socialism to reactionary fascism. Helpful in understanding why some counterculture figures turned bad.

If Cinderella was really working class she would have organised a revolution once that slipper fit.

Ogmios is back

“Creativity is fundamentally not an efficiency problem.” — This sort of thing seems to be cropping up a lot as a way to push back against AI tools and like everything else it’s not really about AI but about the drive for efficiency above all else, because that’s the best way to accumulate more capital, the only thing capitalism is interested in, hence the name. I did like Marcin’s example of deliberately choosing not to “replace all” in his code so he could spend some time with it, time that wasn’t optimised towards a goal, time which was “wasted” or “pointless” but which felt worth allocating in this way. As anyone with an art practice will tell you, pointless activities are when the best ideas come. Efficiency is the devil. Efficiency has us driving everywhere when we’d be better off walking. Fuck efficiency.

For the wishlist: Nick Abadzis' new book with Angela Watson about racism in Britain through the lens of their interracial marriage. I met them both a few times in the early 2000s and have fond memories.

Friendfeed:

Antonio: What happened to my website?

Notes and links from Mon 3 August

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 22:32:31 +0100

Had a nice week off from the blogging treadmill. It was a bit weird at first as one of the motivations for starting this blog up during my CFS recovery was to give me some kind of identity, a thing that I do that counts for something other than sitting around getting better, and suddenly taking that away reminded me of that need. So it was good to embrace that void of purposelessness for a bit and try not to fill it, at least at first.

And then just as I was getting ready to try something new over the weekend I threw my back out. I think it was when I stupidly picked up a 20 litre bottle of grey water and carried it a couple of meters across the lawn though it didn’t really kick in until Saturday. Proper bad agony stabs and all that jazz. I don’t think it helps that I’m now three years into zero exercise, thanks to the CFS, so my core muscles are weak as shit and can’t support a sprained back. Fi had had similar a few years ago so she knew what I needed to do and it’s slowly getting better.

The biggest issue is I can’t sit on a chair for more than 10 minutes, so I can’t really be on my laptop, even at the desk. So my blogging break is going to be extended by a few days, maybe longer.

Years ago I was at SXSW in Austin, Texas and all the bars were carding, seemingly regardless of how old you looked. I asked one doorman if there was anyone he wouldn’t ask for ID. “White beard and a cane.” Today a neighbour dropped off a kneeling stool for me to try out and I answered the door with my long white beard and a walking stick. I can now go drinking in Austin without any ID.

10 minutes is up. Posting now. Apologies for any typos.

Notes and links from Sun 26 July

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:05:57 +0100

I’m going to take the next week off from this blog. I only announce this in case someone notices and gets worried, which is highly unlikely but you never know.

It’s not for any burnout or CFS reason. I’m feeling as OK as I ever do. I just reckon I need a break from the (quite healthy) treadmill I’ve made for myself to recharge the batteries and refresh my perspective and mid-summer feels as good a time as any.

See you on August 3rd.

Notes and links from Sat 25 July

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 21:27:26 +0100

No links today. Sort of took a day off and have been spending a bit of time thinking through the options for how I might blog next year. The idea is to slowly figure it out over the next few months and build something simple that works for what I need, rather than try to make a commercial service fit me.

Might take the whole weekend off, will see how tomorrow goes. Hit the archives, kids.

Notes and links from Fri 24 July

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:02:31 +0100

Status:

I fitted the tiny solar panel on the shed roof and it’s been powering the extractor fan for a few days. I think it’s made a difference — while the shed is not cool it’s definitely cooler when the sun it as its height.

The panel says it generates 10w at 12v and I’ve been wondering what else of that voltage I can power from it. The bilge pump needs 36w but I knew USB starts at 5w so I ordered a cheap charging port like you’d install in a campervan. (I still haven’t got watts, volts and amps straight in my head so don’t @ me, I’m working on it.)

It arrived today so I hooked it up and plugged in an old USB battery pack. I now have a solar power bank running in my shed, albeit in miniature. Clearly it’s of no practical use unless there’s a catastrophic power cut and we need to run a lightbulb off the battery, but as a proof of concept it’s surprisingly exciting. Just need to scale it up now.

Meanwhile our neighbours have hired a bouncy castle for their kid’s birthday which is currently inflated in their back garden running of a rather loud fan. They don’t use their garden much it’s a bit of a shock suddenly having this giant blue structure whirring away next to our normally peaceful zone. But it’s just for the weekend and any annoyance on my part can be chalked up as karmic payback for the hours I’ve spent out there with power tools, fabricating compost bays and building camera obscuras and geodesic domes.

I was joking last night that I’ve spent so much time outside this summer that indoors has become a bit alien. Indoors is going to get quite familar again this weekend.

Reading:

Gonzo Borges
- Paul Graham Raven has a go at defining Sam Kriss whose verbosity I find veers between enchanting and irritating. “The aesthetic of an encounter with history for a generation that has been raised to assume that everything prior to the advent of digital cameras is probably just backstory."
Burnham Week One: This is what a professional political operation looks like
- Ian Dunt is very happy with how our new centrist dad PM is settling in, which is nice for him, but this is worth reading for his deep dive into what actually happened.
How the wrong kind of nostalgia can endanger a society
- “Unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters." I’ve long been skeptical of nostalgia so I’m primed to agree wholeheartedly with this. It’s slippery though. You can’t ignore the past and should definitely learn from it, but romanticising a time when if you were even alive you were young and stupid is hugely problematic. The present might be tricky but the past was always worse, even when there were shards of light.
AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making
- I confess I skimmed the crap out of this as it’s aimed at people working in software. What I did read strengthened this notion I have that this is not a technology problem as much as a management one. I’m reminded of Cory Doctorow’s idea that incompetent bosses are terrified that they’re irrelevant and AI lets them “wire their toy steering wheel directly into the drivetrain of the car”.
The ten greatest failures of Orson Welles
- Welles remains a fascinating character, someone who kept reaching and failing, partly because he had no industry support, but also because he had to. I really should read a proper biography of him sometime.
Understanding large numbers: It’s our ethical duty
- The perennial explainer of how a billion is significantly larger than a million and how we just can’t wrap our tiny human minds around how much larger is it. Essential reading for anyone who thinks an individual owning a billion dollars is absolutely fine actually.

Watching:

Kermode on Andy Serkis' Animal Farm ‌(13:11)
- Rather annoyingly I may have to watch this now, though I’ll put it low on the list.
Star Trek to Strange New Worlds ‌(2:06)
- If SNW is a prequel then it really should be done as a 50’s style TV show.

FriendFeed:

Matt: On the edge of things

Notes and links from Thur 23 July

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 22:39:38 +0100

Status:

Bit of an odd day. I think I might have made a decision. It’s probably a good one but I need to digest it a bit before writing about it.

Reading:

UK households free to install plug-in balcony solar panels from end of August — Hooray! It’s happening! I’ll probably hang on til the spring to see how the prices and options settle out but this is very exciting.
Autistic meltdowns & shutdowns — A good explanation of the various forms they can take and how to go about managing them. I’ve never knowingly had the stereotypical meltdown but I’ve definitely had flavours over the decades. And my Long Covid / CFS definitely matches the Autistic Burnout description (which has been fun, jumping between those to models). Anyway, this might be useful to folks figuring this stuff out.
A sobering account of how TheNumbers.com was taken down by AI scraping and AI-enabled hacking — The traffic numbers for AI companies hoovering up data from the open web are horrific. ‌"Anthropic crawls over 38,000 pages for every single visitor it refers." These companies are criminal in every way they operate.
Let’s make it harder to buy government — One political party in charge is bad. Two is better but still open to abuse.
How the hosepipe ban got caught up in the culture wars — The culture war stuff aside (it’s basically the latest “middle class people who pay taxes are being asked to do something they don’t want to do which some other people, who may not pay taxes, are exempt from” wedge issue) this is a pretty comprehensive survey of how we got here and how we might fix it.
Who is Miatta Fahnbulleh, the radical-thinking new UK energy secretary? — She seems great. I have cautious hopes.
Interview with Nicolas Winding Refn — On the release of his new film Her Private Hell which looks to be in the vein of The Neon Demon, which I really liked.
Listening to Cassandra: Misogyny, classical and modern — Excellent (as ever) piece from Rebecca Solnit using the Odyssey to talk about violence against women from the dawn of literature to the present day.

Notes and links from Wed 22 July

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 20:03:29 +0100

Status:

Still feeling tired and a bit fuzzy, same as yesterday. Did a tiny bit of DIY in the house that Fi was struggling with, which was pleasing as it’s good to be useful, but otherwise rested. Cooler today, about what summer is ‘supposed’ to be like.

Reading:

The ghost in the spam folder: Remembering Mark Smith — Martin was given the archives from his old band when his estranged bandmate left them to him in his will and has written a lovely piece about those times that ended badly but were still foundational to who he is.
A trans ban came to rugby. Baltimore’s Ferals played on. — This is how you deal with bigoted legislation targeting individuals. You come together and ignore it as a community. Do not make persecuted people stand alone.
Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them — Nice to see the BBC highlighting this pattern of behaviour from the tech bros that the media seems unable to see through. They keep making these “unsubstantiated claims of power” as a distraction from the grim reality of their burning earth’s resources and eroding the foundations of society. ‌"Talking about their products as if they could end the world has not hurt these companies. It has not limited their power. If anything, it makes people feel like the only ones they could possibly look to for protection are the companies themselves."
- Could AI be conscious? — Case in point is this piece of nonsense the Guardian posted the other day by their resident effective altruism shill. Don’t worry about the clear issues these computer systems are having on people and the planet right now, worry about whether lines of code can get upset or whatever.
- The looting of science fiction — Definitely related is this overview of how tech oligarchs selectively absorb science fiction, entirely missing the point of what are usually cautionary allegories about present day issues, not roadmaps. “At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus!" and all that. (I haven’t fully digested the essay yet so might return to it.)
Why many Black Americans were rooting for Argentina to lose the World Cup — I watched the soccer last month with a fairly neutral eye. My support for the England team was purely because I knew them to be good people, not for some nationalistic nonsense, so I was also on the lookout for other teams to take the side of, should I feel the urge. Argentina were a candidate as I’d heard good things about Messi, but I quickly soured on the rest of the team who seemed to epitomise everything I dislike about the culture of football. And Messi, as captain and figurehead, was culpable in that toxic culture even if he didn’t directly partake in it. I had no idea their fans were also cockwombles, but there you go.
- As for that Malvinas banner, the issue of the Falklands can seem a bit tricky for leftist Brits as we clearly can’t support how Thatcher ran that war and the very notion of the islands being “British” is patently absurd. But we have to remember that Argentina in the early 80s was under a neo-fascist military dictatorship, and is one again dabbling with that shit. Sometimes both sides can be wrong, as Raymond Briggs made clear in what should probably be the last word on that shitshow.
- (In case it needs saying, not all Argentinians.)

Watching:

Practical Engineering: What’s under your feet in New York City? ‌(22:31) — When my art practice moved towards walking I found myself thinking a lot about the underground and otherwise invisible networks as a guide for exploring the city, so I’ve always had a fascination with the pipes and tunnels. One of the greatest moments of living in this house was when the water company dug up our entire road to expose the sewer. You could flush the toilet and run outside to see it shoot out of the pipe!

Music:

All Rights Reserved by The Evolution Control Committee — Not a big surprise that I started listening to this after hearing some totally random song and wondering what it was sampled on, looking it up on Who Sampled, getting the answer I expected and then seeing the ECC also listed. I was enjoying the listen and wondering if this sort of thing was still interesting or relevant given the progression of, well, everything. And then California Dreamings kicked in and, yeah, big grin. Such a stupid little thing yet saying so much about 20th century music. I probably have mp3s of this album somewhere but the big shock was finding it on Apple Music and Spotify. What has the world come to??!?!

Notes and links from Tue 21 July

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:01:30 +0100

Status:

Hot again. Not heatwave-hot but still a bit sweaty. Resigned to taking it easy this week with just one little thing happening on Thursday afternoon.

Had both great-nephs over briefly this afternoon. Younger G wanted to see all the things and stroke the rabbits. Older M was a bit burned out but still chatty. We’ve agreed to do some uncle/aunting over the next few weeks so looking forward to seeing them.

Have taken the first step towards a special Sunday edition of this newsletter. Will be monitoring how much work it takes.

Reading:

Your Ring camera isn’t stopping crime. But it might be making you paranoid. — US based research but the tech is the same so it’s mostly applicable to the UK, I feel. I have a theory that the main participants on neighbourhood group chats are people who don’t go out much, mostly because I’ve seen my engagement on ours grow since I’ve been homebound, and I’m sure that context filter affects how we perceive our neighbourhood. I also think I’ve seen a correlation between those neighbours who exhibit a more paranoid and defensive attitude with those who post clips from their doorbell spy cameras. But due to my inability at the moment to engage outside of the house I wouldn’t want to draw too much inference on the effect this tech is having. I might share this link to the group chat though…
Man’s legal e-bike seized and destroyed by police — The test the police used is bizarre in how it totally misunderstands what it’s trying to test. If this is a targeted crackdown on what is definitely an actual problem (unlicensed electric motorbikes masquerading as assisted pedal bikes), and not just a random stop, the training is clearly pitiful. Also, features one of my mates from the Bike Foundry.
The lost joy of music piracy — The rise and fall of music piracy and how it changed the music industry while also not really changing the music industry is a long and complicated story with many villains across the board, but I think it’s worth remembering, in this era of fetishising vinyl and record shops, that the pre-internet music industry was corrupt as fuck and hardly any artists made a living from it. “Artists are the ones being mistreated, while the middlemen are making a ton of money. There’s this whole world where people exist just to show up in the middle and take a big chunk of the money from something they had no part in creating." True since the advent of recorded music.
Miliband has been relentlessly attacked for net zero; what will happen now? — I was a bit dispirited to see Miliband moved away from his energy role since he’s been remarkably effective at kickstarting the decarbonisation of the UK despite determined lobbying by Sauron’s forces. On the plus side, as foreign secretary he can take this effectiveness to the international stage and his replacement has been promoted from inside the department ensuring some continuity. Plus the renewables ball is rolling now and will be hard to stop. Fingers crossed.

Notes and links from Mon 20 July

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:18:47 +0100

Status:

Feeling a bit woozy and on the down-low today. Not incapacitated by any stretch and in a fairly good mood, but definitely not able to reach out of any comfort zones. I did get a fair few tabs closed and written up below, which might seem counter-intuitive, but those feel nicely contained with clear parameters. Anything broader and uncertain, not so much.

The two things I thought I might start pondering today are the redesign of the front of the shed where the rabbit run is and the retooling of this blog into something that can iterate in a new direction. The former has been planned for a couple of years and really needs to happen this summer before the rains come. I have a good plan for how it will work but haven’t figured out how to actually build it, especially as I won’t be doing any building so need to instruct others. That’s going to need a fully rested day to get my head around.

The latter is relatively simple but just needs a switch in workflow to test out some things. I want to see if I can batch up a chunkier and more themed post over a few days rather than just through the afternoon and while that’s not much it just feels a little daunting today. I might start by doing a very overdue Aerobic Digest since there’s plenty in the bucket and the first link below has gotten my stinky juices flowing.

Reading:

Cas Marketos: What is compost, and why does it work? — A couple of short excerpts from her new book, the first of which is the simplest, almost poetic explanation of composting I think I’ve read. “There is, however, an important distinction between “compost” and the plain fact of decomposition: the presence of the composter. The composter is tasked with stewarding the conditions of the compost pile." (I often think if I hadn’t gotten ill I could have achieved with the Aerobic Digest what Cas has, but I know that’s probably just wishful thinking.)
The rise of intellectual clout — I didn’t enjoy reading this, at least not as first, as I felt incredibly seen and not in a good way. What they’re describing here, using terms like “intellectual maximalism”, is essentially how I’ve functioned for 40-ish years and very much how I approach my online activities, and yet the framing here is the next big self-improvement, social capital trend. I know the capitalist shite-verse is inevitably going to overlap with whatever you’re doing in your goblin cave before moving on to the next shiny thing, but it’s quite disconcerting all the same. What is interesting is the framing of this emergence as a reaction against educational institutions that are failing us, something that definitely happened to me in my teens and twenties and caused me to find my own way. So maybe, beneath the polished surface for the algorithm, there’s something actually going on here.
Why some DVLA digital services don’t work at night — My doctors surgery will only take online queries during office hours. This is basically a webform which reception then forward to the right person but for some reason they can’t or don’t want to manage a backlog that might have built up overnight. It’s quite frustrating (I’m very much an evening admin person) and when I’m not annoyed by it I’m fascinated as to why this might be. For example, I can submit a repeat prescription request through the NHS app at any time but I can’t ask them for a sick note renewal at 8pm. This explainer as to why the DVLA website does a similar thing reminded me of it, though I doubt the surgery runs on COBOL. via
The rise of “surveillance chic” — Apparently people are taking footage from their surveillance devices at home or work and using them to post to their streams. In itself not hugely interesting (though only half of this post is publicly available) but there is a long history of this sort of thing, going back at least 20 or 30 years. I particularly remember an artist who staged dances in front of CCTV cameras and then requested the footage (which you can do if you’re in it) to edit into a performance. The fun quirk was the surveillance companies had to manually censor everyone else for privacy reasons so she was dancing with these black-blobs headed people. There’s also been a lot of work done around how the static camera records what happens in front of it — dashcam footage is part of this — and how neutral or biased that can be. So yeah, good to see people are still interrogating this stuff.
- (If you can remember what that dance artwork was please let me know!)

Watching:

Noah Kalina reviews the Freedom 250 Great American State Fair ‌(23:15) — Low hanging fruit but still fascinating to see how bad it was.

Listening:

Origin Story: Starmer revisited – Where did it all go wrong? (1h27) — Two years ago, just before the election, Dunt and Lynsey recorded their hopes and fears for Starmer’s reign. This is part autopsy (plenty of blame for putting McSweeny in charge of delivery) but also a mea culpa on their parts, which is always refreshing.

Looking:

Top 30 from half a million World Cup photos — The Guardian picture editor choses his favourite pics and explains why they work for him. There’s a journalistic bias to his eye, of course, but they’re still great picks. Even if you’re not bothered by stadium sports there’s something about the mix of action, colour and lighting conditions, plus the sheer volume of cameras around the stadia giving full coverage but also the opportunity for creative play, that produces objectively great images.

Neologisming:

Otrovert — ‌a neologism coined by New York psychiatrist Rami Kaminski for a proposed personality type described in popular media as involving a persistent sense of being an outsider in group settings, even when the person is socially included, and a preference for selective, one-to-one connections over group affiliation. This rings disturbingly true for me — my comfort zone is quiet and alone but I can pull out (and do enjoy being) charming fun Pete when needed. Intro vs Extro never felt right so I welcome this new ‘vert and am adding his book to my long-list. via

Notes and links from Sun 19 July

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 23:29:30 +0100

Status:

Saved my batteries up today so I could go to the allotment to top up the compost. Went across the park on my own on the scooter and did the decanting at my own pace. Had a nice short chat with a lady I hadn’t seen for a while and then came home. All managed without any help from Fi.

Reading:

Still Expanding Those Minds — My spiritual weird uncle Erik Davis on recovering a podcast he made a decade-plus ago, but the best bit is an account of visiting one of those insane looking Mormon churches on the rare occasions they open them up to the general public. Erik addresses the building’s aesthetics ‌(“a baroque futuristic monument that rockets toward the heavens like two frosted X-wing fighters racing neck and neck”) and gets into the weird mix of the cosmic and the anodyne that epitomises the Mormon practice. It’s easy to laugh at it but that mix of the extremely ordinary and the extremely out-there is, well, it explains Battlestar Galactica.
The Andy Burnham I’ve met over the past 20 years gives me hope for British politics — John Harris, on the eve of the anointment of his chosen one. I joke, and I’m not expecting much once he has to eat his bowls of shit, but it will be interesting to see someone who hasn’t come up in the hothouse of Westminster take control of this island.

The Sunday Papers:

Somewhere there’s a think piece about why so many digest-style newsletters come out on a Sunday. Have they replaced the Sunday newspaper ritual of grazing in bed slightly hungover with coffee? Anyway, here’s my main three.

Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends #777: Happily surrendering our leisure to lines — Really like Caitlin’s perspective on internet culture. This issue has a fun bit about people queueing in New York which she finds horrifying but which to this Brit seems perfectly normal.
Sentiers No.412: The looting of science fiction ⊗ We’ve been here before — Nice chunky issue before Patrick’s summer break. Will be holding this in reserve.
Orbital Operations: Misc — I’ve long had a complicated relationship with Warren Ellis’s (not the musician) output in that I’m not a fan of his work but I do share his interest in a lot of subjects, plus I like how he documents and shares that interest. But his comics, books and community curation leaves me at best cold and at worst annoyed. Which is fine, plenty of people like what he does good for them and him, I guess. Recently he’s been retooling his Sunday newsletter to be less pointy and more curatorial but this issue, ironically due to a lack of time, is all pointing and it’s full of the good meat.

Watching:

How my off-grid drinking water system works ‌(6:28)

Notes and links from Sat 18 July

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:04:36 +0100

Status:

Slept for a very long time last night, maybe 13 hours. Didn’t even need my pillow-friendly headphones to send me off. I was feeling pretty antsy last night and on reflection I did do something every day for four days, so even though those were limited, well managed and not harmful in themselves they did add up. Today I’m feeling much clearer but the lesson has been learned, keeping it on the down-low.

Reading:

Energy and the Matter Problem — This has been sitting in my tabs for a while as I thought it would require a clear head to process, but it turns out to be a very accessible read which I commend to you all. Not a surprise as Deb Chachra is a great writer. Here she looks at how abundant energy, correctly applied, could solve “the matter problem”, as in how we deal with the atoms we extract, use and dispose of as an earth-bound society. The opening example of how aluminium went from a near-impossible to produce luxury metal to literally disposable is particularly enlightening. Bascially, if you throw enough energy at it, properly recycling plastic waste at an atomic level becomes viable. Via Sentiers who provides a good summary of the idea and some context.
I’m queer, not gay. It matters. — I remain interested in this distinction between what we might call weird gays and normie gays.
Find the Fox – new Cartography — It’s often said that an artist shouldn’t explain their work and leave it to the viewer/reader to interpret, but I have to say I love it when an artist spends time writing about how something came about. Especially when they’re as good as Ed Pinsent.
Astronauts returning from six-month missions describe a persistent ‘observer’ sensation — the feeling of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame, weeks after they’re back on the ground — Many physiological and psychological reasons are given related to them having been in space but I think the dramatic context shift plays a big part. The way we’ve decided to run our modern lives is really odd and in many ways quite inhuman when you come to it objectively. I wonder if people doing similar ground-based things like long-distance walking or solo yachting around the world show the same effects.

Watching:

Timber framed barn part 39: Horizontal bifold door ‌(56:46) — When Kris' videos come out I always look forward to seeing how he dealt with recent weather conditions.
The “bluetooth connected!” voice actors ‌(5:16) — Quite surreal as they slip in and out of their device voices.
so Pixar made a movie about climate change ‌(1:05:29) — I have a soft spot for young nerds talking passionately and intelligently about ephemeral pop culture and was pleased to stumble upon Angela Collier who mixes up theoretical physics and science communication with her love of the movies. Here she does a deep dive into the recent Pixar movie Hoppers, which it turns out is bad for reasons that are quite interesting actually. Yes, there are strong echos of Lindsay Ellis and more directly Jenny Nicholson, and yes this probably didn’t need to be an hour long, but this is Not A Problem.

Calculating:

Rooftop and Plug-in Solar Calculator — Been poking at this for our east-west facing terrace. The interesting discovery is regardless of whether you go for a simple no-battery 2-panel plug—in system or full roof with battery storage the payback timescale (after which the energy is basically free) is about the same, ±8 years. Really shows how interest-free loans are the answer here for people who don’t have £5-10k to hand.

Notes and links from Friday 17 July

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 19:39:47 +0100

Status:

My monthly-ish occupational therapy for the chronic fatigue was today. The general consensus is I’m doing pretty well at pacing and keeping to my baseline while pottering around the house. That baseline is pretty unproductive though and while productivity is a toxic concept, I do need to feel like I’m contributing something.

So the next task is to try to do more things, see if and how they harm me, regroup and then try them differently. The goals we set are to go to a cafe/bar once a week on my own and to develop the writing I’m doing here into something more packaged and “useful” rather than whatever happens to come out of my fingers that day.

The former is to get me back into the community while the latter is to get to a position where someone might pay me to work from home. Both are very much long term goals which I don’t expect to fully achieve before the year is out, but they also feel doable.

Reading:

Ghost Town, At The Club and Britain’s summer of discontent — A history of The Specials recording their 1981 number one single and its roots in the broader ska and reggae scenes. I would have been nine and vividly remember this song being everywhere and the riots being on the telly news. The coverage was all about “youths” and it was a while before I realised a “youth” was not a term for a violent rioter and that my older cousins were “youths”.
- ‌Dammers had noticed it while on the road with The Specials. They’d arrive in each town to find shuttered shops and barren high streets. In an interview with the NME he recalled the particularly bleak sights of Glasgow where “little old ladies were on the street selling household goods.” He put pen to paper, jotting down a few lines which might capture those scenes. “This town…” it began.
‘People are picking the dumbest fights’: the tortured history of America’s culture wars — Interesting new book about the US religious right targeting contemporary art in the late 80s (Mapplethorpe, Piss Christ) because it was the last bastion of queer culture in a censorious mediascape, and how that informed our current clusterfuck of nonsense. This bit is a good lesson:
- ‌ Asked why the liberal establishment failed to counter this rising tide, Butler identifies two fatal flaws that continue to plague the Democratic party today. First, they underestimated their opponents. Just as many initially dismissed Donald Trump’s escalator descent as a clown show, the Yale-educated liberal elite of the 1980s looked at figures like Wildmon and Helms and dismissed them as “yokels”. Wildmon, for his part, relished being misunderstood and underestimated.
- The second, and perhaps more devastating error, was the liberal fetishisation of compromise. Butler says: “It is this feeling that, if you’re attacking me, if I give you a little bit of what you want, you’ll calm down and we can work this out like reasonable people. It doesn’t work and we saw that under Obama, who would often compromise even before the fight started.
Turning front gardens into driveways is adding to night‑time heat — This is a big issue in Birmingham, the most car-centric of the big cities. It’s also a problem in new developments which seem to need to accommodate wide roads, pavements and driveways at the expense of lawns.
Football, England and the triumph of modernity — Ian Dunt saves me the bother of writing about football. (90% agree with this.)
The toxic legacy of Starmerite philosemitism — This reminded me of how, should we ever visit Fi’s extended family in Ireland, I should definitely not talk about Irish politics because while I have opinions about Ireland and GB’s relationship with it, they are comparatively on the level of “oh look, the dog thinks it’s people” and should rightly be ignored. Thankfully my opinions about Ireland have no impact on anything at all because I am not Prime Minister.

Watching:

Social Singing with Moselele ‌(9:50) — My good friends Daz and Emma talk about the ukulele group they set up 16 years ago where being able to play the ukulele is optional. (Fi was an early regular and they played our wedding.)

Music:

Ex-Easter Island Head is a name I’ve seen around for ages, mostly in Supersonic Festival communiques and the like, but somehow had never listened to until they cropped up on a particularly stacked episode of Night Tracks. For some reason I’d assumed they were heavy sludge metal (which is fine) but they’re a really interesting kind of percussion-y minimalist drone sort of thing. I like! I like a lot!

Notes and links from Thur 16 July

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 20:36:43 +0100

Status:

Had a couple of friends over last night to watch the football, which was nice but also the first time, in my 54 years, I’ve ever had someone over to watch the football, so it was a little odd. I wasn’t sure if we should be catching up or attentively watching the little men run around. Match was fun, and I confess to some schadenfreude at the eejits in their crusades cosplay at the end looking all sad. Fuck those guys. Learn your history.

Today I took some portrait photos for my bro-in-law who needs to update his CV. We had a highly amusing discussion about what he should wear and what kind of background, me knowing nothing and him knowing only a little more than nothing about what might go down well. In the end we went for what he wears to meetings. The pics came out really nicely, which was a relief, and might even be good enough, although we’re probably going to have another go now he’s got a baseline. In the old days we’d have spent a while going back and forth but I could only manage 20 minutes. Still, I managed 20 minutes!

Two social interactions within 24 hours. Definitely having this evening to myself…

Reading:

The Dacre dynasty: how Britain’s rightwing press was radicalised — A dare-I-say essential read for anyone wondering why so many newspapers have gone batshit crazy over the last decade or so. If I had a pantheon on villains Paul Dacre would be high up there.
What on earth is “QuickTime”? — An article about accumulated debt in a software that also has a nice history of the Mac’s QuickTime player. I got a key for QuickTime Pro around 2003 from a friend who worked in The Movies which I treasured until it was finally discontinued as it was the quickest way to turn a movie into images (and then I discovered ffmpeg).
John Waters on 60 years of screen carnage — Nice interview focussing on the releases of Hairspray and Desperate Living.
Clown Logic: The Crow nears 40 — leaving aside the clunky headline (‘The Crow at 37, or 33 if you’re talking about the collection’) this is a reassessment of James O’Barr’s goth classic which, despite it’s legacy, is really not a very good comic. But it resonated. Boy did it resonate. And this is a nice look at why that was.

Installing:

WhatCable — Given that a UBS-C cable can be any number of things from a dumb charging cable to a high-speed data conduit, it always seems strange that macOS doesn’t have a utility to tell you what you’ve plugged in. This attempts to do that. Still a bit more limited than a dedicated device but better than nothing!

Notes and links from Wed 15 July

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:08:50 +0100

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 my 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.

Notes and links from Tue 14 July

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:12:44 +0100

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.

Earworm:

Bauhaus: All we ever wanted was everything

Notes and links from Mon 13 July

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:44:50 +0100

Status:

Most of the stuff my PE teachers at secondary school said went right through me as it was irrelevant nonsense, but one thing has stuck with me. I remember one of them talking about the importance of keeping up sports once we left school and didn’t have him forcing us to do it. He told us about meeting star pupils years later and them smoking and being fat (this was the 80s, and he was a PE teacher) having let themselves go.

I don’t really care about that — fuck 80s school sports and all who taught them^* — but what’s struck me is I don’t think my other teachers gave a talk like this. Nobody explicitly warned us about the dangers of stopping learning academic stuff.

Looking back, the stuff I learned at school was of course important (and while I didn’t do at all well at formal exams I did still learn a lot), but it really just formed a foundation layer for the enormous amount I’ve learned since. Maybe this is normal and unremarkable and everyone keeps learning through their lives, whether it’s through career development or hobbies. I clearly didn’t need it, but maybe I’m like those people who go to the gym for fun. What about the people who just stopped learning once they didn’t have to anymore? I don’t know where I’m going with this.

^* Like many things in education, they’re probably much better now.

Reading:

RIP Sam Neill — One of the really good ones. It’s rare to find someone whose work you really enjoy and who then turns out to be a really great person in real life.
Flickr’s optimistic committing — Or, isn’t it neat how Flickr’s uploader shows you what’s going on? This is one of the features from when Flickr was run by the original team and it really shows. There’s so much annoying crap on there now that Yahoo later implemented and which for some reason SmugMug haven’t rolled back. Flickr was very much of its era but produced so much best practice stuff that today’s web companies could dearly learn from.
Astronomers detect ‘raspberry sugar’ on dust cloud in Milky Way — Today I learned sugars came from space.
Jessamyn’s guide for removing unwanted AI from your junk — As part of her role helping library patrons with their tech problems. This is apparently a frequent request.
Using the Xteink X4, a minimalist e-reader — I remain intrigued by this stripped down, pocket sized ebook reader. Not enough to drop ~£50 on it though.
Sentiers No.411 — Still processing the links from yesterday’s edition but I did enjoy reading the newsletter itself.

Watching:

Laura Kampf ‌(17:11)

Notes and links from Sun 12 July

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 21:05:03 +0100

Status:

Over the last week the rabbits' biological systems have been instructing a significant amount of their fur to leave the building and as such we have had some buns with rather tufty butts. Because they don’t run through spiky undergrowth it’s up to us to groom them, something they really do not appreciate. It’s a fairly regular occurrence, particularly when the temperature changes and new coats are needed, but today was quite the haul, as seen in the photo above.

The main adventure today was my bro-in-law’s 70th birthday picnic which, unless I’m forgetting something, was the largest social event I’d been to in a good couple of years. A bit of anxiety beforehand, of course, as I’d be meeting new people but it turned out to be lovely. Everyone was sensible and quiet and no-one minded me sitting alone on the periphery. I even managed to take a group photo, organising people like I used to do at weddings, although I needed a good lie down afterwards.

The weather helped. After days of paralysing heat it was just warm enough to be pleasant with a nice breeze. Though I do see that after a brief reprieve we’re not going much below 29 degrees next week. Might leave the window coverings on for a bit longer.

As such I haven’t done my usual level reading today, and that which I have read I haven’t had the capacity to write about. Enjoy.

Reading:

Britain’s biggest community solar farm forced to shut over grid overload fears
John Harris: Farage is just one strand in the tangle of rightwing politicians and crypto investors — The scariest thing about Farage is that he’s probably not that important in the grand scale of things.
My confidence in my understanding of the scientific theory
Describing the early Internet was surprisingly easy
Phil’s Weeknotes
Matt’s newsletter

Notes and links from Sat 11 July

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 20:25:40 +0100

Status:

Before the heatwave I ordered a cheap solar powered extractor fan. Today, as the heatwave enters its final stages, the fan arrived. (No problem with the delay - it’s hot out there!) But there’ll be another one along in a few weeks I’m sure, so it’s not wasted.

As is often the case I misread the measurements and thought I was getting as 12" fan but of course it’s 12cm, which is fine but quite limited in the amount of air it pushes through. It’s not going to work as a people-cooling fan in the dome, but it should fit nicely in the shed where it can pull out the warm air and make it nicer for the rabbits. Looking forward to fitting that once the heatwave fully passes.

While it only generates 12v it’s also the first modern solar panel I’ve gotten to play around with, which is quite exciting in anticipation of the plug-in revolution to come. I’ll doubtless be trying to wire it to all manner of low-voltage gizmos over the summer. Interesting how it seems to need sunshine on the entire surface in order to work. A couple of fingers of shade and it shuts down completely rather than just lowering the output. I now need to know why that is.

Today’s links start with three Stirchley-specific things, so feel free to skip if you’re not local to me. I’ve often been torn between the local and the global in my blogging. Both are important to me and I’ve never really figured out how to merge them. I remember the term “glocal” being banded around and frankly that can fuck off.

One of my back-burner ideas is for a Created in Birmingham-style^* blog for grassroots progressive, activist and cooperative activities in the city, building on the networks I’ve developed around composting and coops. I reckon there’s an audience and a need, and maybe even a bit of funding. Something to consider if/when my CFS subsides.

^* A CiB-style blog, in my parlance, points at all the things going on in short posts, giving a daily or weekly snapshot of a scene or community. These days it would have to deal with the walled garden of Instagram, but that’s for another day.

Locally Campaigning:

Help us save the Warehouse — A very good and necessary plan to widen a railway viaduct in Digbeth is threatening the Birmingham Friends of the Earth building on Alison St which has been flagged to be demolished so land can be temporarily used for a construction worksite. In most other locations in Digbeth this wouldn’t be a huge problem as it’s mostly home to temporary and transient businesses and projects awaiting the inevitable redevelopment apocalypse. But FotE (who are otherwise in favour of the transport plans) have spent the last five decades developing that location into the hub of progressive, ecological action for the city. If you’ve ever used the building or the attached garden (Roo and I built our first compost bay structure there which led to refining the design and repeating it across the city) please contribute to the consultation and hopefully they’ll change their plans and spare it.
A local church has plans to take over an old council office building on our high street, next to the primary school, and turn part of it into a community centre. This would be fine, except they’re one of those evangelical churches that doesn’t like gay people and thinks women are secondary to men. Which is fine, you can believe whatever you like, but I’m not comfortable with a community space that presents as a neutral good being run by extremists like this. They’re running a consultation really pushing the community bit, which has got my goat. (I have no problem at all with churches, mosques, temples, whatever and think they can provide valuable spaces and services in communities, especially at the moment. Faith is great, bigotry is unacceptable.)
McDonalds are looking to build a drive-through in Stirchley. I’m actually not too exercised about this. Are McDonalds an evil megacorp with toxic business practices? Sure. Is a drive-through a terrible idea on an already congested road? Of course. Would I prefer they didn’t build here? Definitely! Have I used them when in a strange town with social anxiety and knowing exactly what I’ll get with the minimum of interaction is just what I need? Yes. But I know people who are very angry about this so here’s some advice. Don’t fill in the “consultation” that’s going around, especially if you object. It will have no impact on the council’s decision to give planning permission and will just allow them to tailor their application around your objections. Wait until that’s submitted to the council and then leave comments that actual decision makers will read.
- Here’s a much more positive plan for the land, devised by local people, that just needs capitalism to go away.

Reading:

Un-Doing Philosophy — Apparently AI chatbots are popular amongst academic philosophers. Not custom machine learning models that interrogate specific data sets, but your boilerplate ChatGPT scholastic parrot junk. Which is kinda worrying, no? Lily Hu thinks so and outlines why in this very entertaining and accessible essay which has applications in all disciplines, I think. [via]
- “The dominant philosophical style today is stylelessness: a mode of writing that attempts at effacing the fact that a work has a creator at all. But while the fantasy that underlies stylelessness might have appeared fifty years ago as a mostly harmless expression of the philosophical aspiration to objectivity, it appears rather more ominous today. A technology which seems to speak from everywhere and nowhere on any issue, instantly, is now here.”
- I tend to think, if you’re doing some tedious busywork from which you will learn nothing then yeah, automate that shit. But if the work is training, something which will make you better and stronger and wiser, then why the fuck would you offboard it to a machine? It’s like a marathon runner using a motorbike in their training. Use it or lose it people.
The 13 biggest myths about heatwaves – and how to bust them — Useful back-pocket facts.
Stewart Lee: Move over, Nigel – it’s time for the Bin Supremacy — The only people worth listening to about Binface are comedians and satirists. No-one else is qualified.

Watching:

What is LaTeX? ‌(20:43) — Something I’ve often wondered as I’ve seen it mentioned about the place over the last few decades but never had the need to investigate further. I still don’t, but I love the fundamental idea behind it, allowing scientists to write formulae etc without having to worry about how it looks on the screen so they can focus on the actual work. “Formatting is not writing” is one of the most profound things I’ve heard in a long time and is why I love writing in Markdown. I don’t have to think about how it looks. That comes later.
- via Unsung who zeroes in on how giving the user very limited control is way better than the semblance of full control. This is why WYSIWYG web editors are a nightmare. THEY LIE!
Torbjörn Åhman makes a burnisher ‌(19:55)

Listening:

What On Earth? With Count Binface ‌(28m) — A 2021 half hour of semi-serious nonsense from Radio 4 which ends with advice from Martin Bell who sort of predicts the current moment.

LOLing:

Fiona is watching the US traitors at the moment. I can’t deal with that sort of programme so she’s got headphone on, but every so often I look up and see Alan Cumming dressed in the most ridiculous outfit and kinda wish I could join in.

Notes and links from Fri 10 July

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:39:42 +0100

The plants in the garden are really suffering right now.

Status:

I have found the perfect way to spend less time on my phone.

I needed to employ my secondary swimming shorts today as the main ones needed a wash. The elastic on these is not what is was and while they’re fine in a push I can’t have anything heavy in my pockets. So if I carry my phone with me, as I’m wont to do, every step reveals a fraction more arse until I’m borderline indecent.

Within the home this isn’t necessarily a problem but I don’t want to inflict this upon any neighbours in their gardens. So my phone stays in its dock while I find myself wondering what to do while I give the rabbits their run and just lean into looking at the trees and letting my mind drift.

The only thing I miss is the camera. Might be time to dig out one of the old compacts.

Archiving:

Assembly Birmingham: from precarity of modern living to the power of righteous fury — Back in 2018 my chum Antonio curated a conference of smaller arts orgs in Birmingham and I was employed to report on it for the Artists Network. It’s no longer on their new website (because who needs history!) but Ant found it on Archive.org and I was pleased to see my writing stands up quite well. I wonder how many of the young people mentioned are still trying to make a living from their art.

Reading:

Taking back control of rents: The impact of rent regulation on affordability, public spending and landlord profits — A policy document on imposing rent controls at a government level. I’ve just read the executive summary (and the bit on the Guardian’s politics blog) but it all seems highly sensible stuff. The difference between paying rent, mortgage payments and having paid off the mortgage is probably one of the big divides in the country and having been in all three positions at some point the unfairness feels untenable. ‌"For mortgaged landlords, a 20% reduction in rent reduces mean pre-tax profit margins from 70% to 64% – which means they would still be 4.5 times bigger than the mean pre-tax profit margin for UK businesses." How is this legal for something as essential as housing? Grrr.
How to get ahead in journalism — Ian Dunt’s guide for young folks thinking of a career as a journo, written as a riposte to the old folks who told him it was a dying trade and he shouldn’t bother. “People have been proclaiming the death of journalism my entire career, but it’s still here. It’s still possible to have a career in it. It’s still possible to make money in it. Will you be rich? No. But you will work in the most exciting job in the world."
‘See the whole world in lichens,’ the marvels that grow anywhere — A lovely piece about the tiny probably-plants that grow everywhere and the scientists who study them. I once joined a moss and lichen guided walk around Birmingham with magnifying glasses and it was marvellous, finding these little forests in the bricks.

Watching:

Primitive Technology | Firing tiles and building the roof on the mud mortar/fired brick hut ‌(16:11)
Welcome to Auralnauts ‌(2:50) — News of their demise was wrong, actually. Looking forward to the new stuff!

Listening:

Origin Story: Luddites ‌(1h44) — A solid deep dive into the actual history of the General Ludd, such as it’s possible to discern, and how the meaning of the word was twisted into an insult before being reclaimed in recent years. I disagree with some of Dunt and Lynskey’s conclusions at the end, but that’s one of the reasons I listen to them (never limit your inputs to people you always agree with).

Music:

Feeling Lost by Echo Juliet — My friend has released some music and I like it!

Notes and links from Thur 9 July

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:31:22 +0100

You and me both, Wally.

Status:

Taking it easy in the heat today. Had a brief visit from my sister this morning and a long-overdue visit from one of my Loaf colleagues though we mostly talked about other things. It was all nice.

House continues to be 4-5 degrees cooler than outside, which is a win. Last night was a bit warm though — still haven’t got a good draft going between the bedrooms yet. (The idea of opening the loft hatch so it worked like a chimney had to be quickly abandoned on Tuesday when it became an oven and started heating the landing. Probably needs a temperature controlled extractor fan up there.)

Hogwatching:

Hedgehog Cam 3—9 July 2026 — We’ve moved the feeding station to a slightly more secluded area so they hang about more and we’re already seeing some fascinating behaviour. Look for timestamp links to a couple of face-to-face clashes over the water bowl.

Reading:

Beat legend, ‘boy lover’: how should we reckon with Allen Ginsberg’s complex legacy? — I’d forgotten Ginsberg was a supporter of the North American Man/Boy Love Association, one of those groups that makes even the most transgressive freedom-loving freak pause and back away. I have a memory of NAMBLA cropping up in some of the zines back in the day, usually in the cataloguing of far-out shit, though it seems even Ivan Stang didn’t include it in High Weirdness by Mail, which is saying something given some of the evil nutjobs in there. It’s basically pedophilia advocacy, and would have rightly faded into history, except for Ginsberg, one of the greatest writers and countercultural figures of his time. Kids today with their “problematic faves” don’t know how easy they have it.
- While checking that last sentence I discovered that the Milkshake Duck was 10 years old last month.
Flock and Ring are champions of the privatized surveillance state — Someone on our street chat was encouraging the rest of us to get a CCTV doorbell after a spate of Amazon packages were snatched. I’m not sure that’s the right solution.
How the heck does GPS work? — One of those things I mostly knew (triangulation of satellite signals, right?) but didn’t completely understand, until now.
Summer of Ludd schedule — This finished a few days ago in New York but I was curious to see what compromised a “week of free, public, and participatory events to get people off big tech, into public space, and re-enchanting each other."
I trust in TextEdit — The Mac’s basic text editor hasn’t changed in aeons so you always know what you’re going to get when you load it. All software should be like this. I’ve tried using Apple Notes a few times over the years and each time it’s like a completely different app, and will likely change again. No software should be like this.
UK has ‘no future’ if it fails to act on ecosystem collapse threatening national security — A report by intelligence services painting ‌a devastating picture of severe food shortages, price rises, migration, political destabilisation and possible war, resulting from the collapse of ecosystems, fuelled by the human-induced climate crisis and over-exploitation was blocked by Downing Street for reasons not given but I’m guessing because a) it’s fucking terrifying and b) would require global cooperation. But if they did publish the whole thing would the public take any notice? It’s not like this hasn’t been known for years already. ‌“The government can summon billions of pounds for new military hardware when the defence sector calls for it. We need an equally decisive mobilisation of investment to restore the natural world on which we rely for our food, water, and clean air. Without these essentials our country has no future.”
I survived a cold plunge and all I got was everything I ever wanted 🪜
Tremble before my gracious heat!

Looking:

Tish Murtha & Kuba Ryniewicz Close to Home — an exhibition at the Baltic which I’m clearly not going to get to see but it’s good to see Murtha’s documentary photography getting a showing. I really enjoyed the documentary Tish which is still on iPlayer and well worth your time.

Watching:

Dune Part 3 - trailer ‌(2:49) — No idea how this is going to land — the trailer looks all over the place but so is the source material at this point. I’m committed now. Bring it on.

Notes and links from Wed 8 July

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:22:06 +0100

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.

Notes and links from Tue 7 July

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 20:51:10 +0100

Status:

When I sat down this evening and opened this document I was surprised to see I hadn’t got any links ready for today’s post. None whatsoever. I’d sorted out the reflective cover for the bay window, which hangs nicely now and is doing the job, and had my psychotherapy session, which was a bit more intense that usual but didn’t leave me wiped out. Then I watched some soccer (Egypt wuz robbed), placed a supermarket order and did a bit of tidying up in the kitchen. Nothing out of the ordinary but definitely no sitting on my laptop reading articles and making notes.

So, no links today. Plenty of tabs open with interesting articles ready to go but that’s not where my head is at right now.

Some recent posts I’m rather pleased with that might be worth a revisit would be:

Fingers crossed I get my mojo back tomorrow, eh readers?

Notes and links from Mon 6 July

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 22:05:06 +0100

Status:

Mostly recovering and pottering today but did need to do some prep for the heatwave. I’d planned out how to hang the big silver shade over the front window with the minimum of effort (because effort is in scarce supply these days) and with Fiona’s help I got both screws into the brickwork with ease. Then we hung the sheet and I pulled it tight, only for it to tear where I’d put the eyelet in. Unfortunately, as it’s the skin of an indoor hydroponics tent, it’s not particularly tough material, so I’m going to have to try something else. I reckon I know what to do though. Will see if it works tomorrow.

Big Read:

TCJ interviews Evan Dorkin

If you know Evan Dorkin this is a lot of fun, tracing his career from the very early days (there’s the first Milk and Cheese sketch on a napkin!) to the imminent publication of ‌Nerd Inferno, the 650 page doorstop collection of his life’s work.

Should you bother clicking if you don’t know Evan Dorkin? Um, I dunno! If you think this is a work of genius then dive in.

There’s a bunch of things about the origin of the Eltingville strips that I didn’t know, leading to some cutting stuff about a comics industry made up of fans.

Terrible fans move into the industry. We get these people as professionals. […] The people that you’re not safe around in this industry, they came from fandom. From just being people who scream at interns at DC Comics, to acting like some of the ways Jim Shooter acted with older professionals and whatnot. To the way that people act on panels or in the offices. We are they and they are us. We all come from fandom. Almost nobody comes to this industry accidentally.

Dorkin is one of the more insightful of cartoonists with a strong moral compass about the culture and industry he’s found himself in, for better or worse.

Reading:

Heatwaves: expert tips on redesigning UK homes to cope with hotter temperatures — A rather aesthetically bold experiment from Loughborough University putting massive shades on a semi-detached house, and some interesting facts about how insulation can help or hinder cooling.
The Art of Air and Space: Interpretations of Flight — Great review of this show at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Was delighted to see a decent chunk on Robert Rauschenberg. Would love to be able to visit this - hopefully it’ll tour?
Balls (practically) to the wall — Fascinating insight into how the 1961 IBM Selectric typewriter prevented you from pressing two keys at the same time (something that was still a problem on my Smith Corona in the late-80s.)
sighs, updates Number Of Days Since Judge Dredd Was Right About Something board
Referee Philosophy

Watching:

The Onion’s America: Birth Of A Nation ‌(26:01) — Starts reliably funny then goes proper weird in a very good way.

Listening:

Origin Story: Paranormal Investigations — Didn’t fancy anything too heavy and this was just right.

Notes and links from Sun 5 July

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 19:39:15 +0100

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.