This is my notebook. Stuff I’m doing, stuff I’m thinking about, stuff I’ve seen online and feel is worth sharing.
Hedgehog Trailcam is back, because hedgehogs are back in our garden! One so far. Gonna do compilations each month.
Carole Cadwalladr went back into the TED lair and delivered a barnstormer. Real canary in the coal mine stuff, except the canary survived. Well worth 20 minutes of your time.
Elle Cordova knocking it out of the park again.
Say what you like about the British Conservative Party but when their lunatic members put someone in charge who proceeded to tank the economy they got fucking shot of her pretty sharpish.
Star Wars original cut to be screened this summer in London
This original 1977 35mm British release print is preserved at the BFI National Archive, in its world class preservation conditions.
Is it wrong that I would really really love to see this? (No, of course it’s not wrong.)
Today’s mindfulness photos.
I have a new pill to take for a middle-aged man condition (enlarged prostrate) and the colour scheme is intriguing. Never seen one quite so 70s before.
Was looking for ways to visually record my chronic fatigue and frying an egg for lunch is the one hot meal I can consistently manage at the moment, so I’m photographing them. Nine so far, which is a grid. Next grid at 16. #cfs
I had this notion to take the index of a non-fiction book, grab the Wikipedia pages for each entry and compile them into a companion book. The idea being browsing it would cover the same ground but in a radically different way. I can’t tell if this is genius or utterly stupid.
Every quarter I get, and devour, a copy of Rabbiting On from the excellent Rabbit Welfare Association, and I’m always struck how it’s like those low-grade “womens” magazines with a happy smiley lady on the cover surrounded by the darkest of headlines. Aw, cute bunny! Oh, intestinal worms…
Partial solar eclipse, 29 March 2025, 11:53am, Birmingham UK.
Every few years I listen to The Stone Roses' I Am The Resurrection and am gobsmacked by how good it really shouldn’t be. The raw ingredients are baggy indie disco nonsense but something (chutzpah?) drags it to immortal genius. I also love the fadeout, implying it could, no, should go on forever.
It’s nearly 10 years since Kenneth Goldsmith wrote It’s a Mistake to Mistake Content for Content, his essay on Vilém Flusser which so radically informed my thinking about [gesticulates wildly] that I’d probably consider it the most consequential thing I’ve read.
I was reminded of it when reading the excellent AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality, the conclusions of which I think Goldsmith explains through Flusser wonderfully well.
UbuWeb is archiving avant-garde artifacts again.
In a moment when our collective memory is being systematically eradicated, archiving reemerges as a strong form of resistance… Together we can prevent the annihilation of the memory of the world.
Darryl Cunningham’s books were a question on University Challenge this week. 1990s zine Pete did not see that coming. Next week I’m expecting: “Luke Walsh’s 1992 work Weird Astral Detective Fiction features the Silver Ghost, the Green Ghost and which other colour ghost?”
We’ll see how it pans out, but Liz Kendall was quite specific about the changes to PIP and it would appear I will no longer be eligible for my disability benefit from 2026. I have post-viral chronic fatigue, barely leave the house and a trip to the supermarket sees me bedridden for 36 hours.
The CF specialist at Birmingham hospital reckons I’ll be like this for 5 years and any recovery is predicated on minimal exertion, even if I feel capable. I cannot “work” even if I want to (and I do).
I won’t be drinking this abomination a visitor left in our tea cupboard but I am grateful for the Fall earworm.
🎶 They were rooibos oranj. Brrrp ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.
Woke up on the sofa, saw this, thought “that’ll make a good photo”.
I appear to be watching Oscar nominated movies this last week or so.
A Real Pain ★★★★★ Just gorgeous. I saw myself in both the cousins and wanted to give them a big hug.
Anora ★★★★☆ Felt a bit uncomfortable watching it but in hindsight that was the point. Nicely ambiguous, and I need to see his back catalogue now.
The Substance ★★★★☆ A wild fucking ride. Am amazed this got nominated for anything. Will be thinking about it for a while.
Conclave ★★★☆☆ Entertaining nonsense with a stacked cast but pretty lightweight and unmemorable.
My neighbour makes these neat little film analysis video edits and the latest is particularly clever.
Decided last night that since peanuts are botanically a fruit and potatoes in French are “apples of the earth”, a bowl of crisps and nuts is effectively a fruit salad and therefore a healthy pudding.
The Guardian has a multi-page excerpt of Becky Barnicoat’s new book on the reality of motherhood and it pulls no punches.
A three page strip by Art Spiegelman (author of Maus) and Joe Sacco (author of Palestine et al). When I heard this was coming I was expecting a book, but while this is slight it probably says enough.
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse review
The reviews are coming in and this one on Roger Ebert is very positive. “A remarkably cogent and compelling presentation not just of Spiegelman’s life story but also his personality and art.”
(via)
After I was signed off long term with chronic fatigue syndrome last year we applied for PIP, a government benefit. Today I got a message saying we’d been successful and it would be awarded, details to follow. The whole process was incredibly stressful so this is quite the relief.
Also, this means I’m now officially “disabled” in the eyes of the state, which is something to process.