Weeknotes

1641: poking my head in

struggling on

Weeknotes

1637: pause

I have decided to spend a bit of time deliberately not blogging (rather than the usual “skipping my scheduled days to post because I don’t have the juice”). All is good—I just want to try and turn my focus inward for a little while, and that’s made

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Blog About List

I've been tidying up the significant number of lists that are kicking around in my Obsidian, and realised that they fall into different kinds, so I've been trying to come up with a typology for them. I'm sure someone's done this before,

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85k Circulation

I've been watching Jon Bois' Reform!, a look at the weird and wonderful happenings with and political legacy of the Reform party. (I'd like to do something like that for the various electoral incarnations of Euroscepticism over here, maybe called Referendum! or something similar.) Something

1635: go jets

Still fiddling around with this format, to the extent that it's been taking me a bit longer to get these done. One of the unquestionable benefits of a defined format for something is that it lets you put doing whatever it is into a less intimidating mental box.

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At The Allotment

Perhaps it's because I'm getting closer to having kids myself, but I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately. I see him more and more when I look in the mirror; but I realised recently that the him that I see there isn&

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cranks 2 high voltage

To continue: in a way, the media are the biggest cranks of all—able to maintain an absolutely rigid belief in whatever their thing is at the time—it's just that unlike normal cranks, it can change on a dime. Consider the media narrative that predominated shortly after

Resistance Is Futile

I have talked in the past about my weird love/hate relationship with cranks. Thinking on recent events has caused me to realise something about where the positive part of this might come from. The world is very complicated, but while we must perforce rely on preexisting societal mechanisms to

Weeknotes

1634: new format new me

It took me a while to get around to changing my weeknotes format—so long, in fact, that not only did I not manage to do so fully, I managed to lap myself by taking two weeks. I was talking to CM the other day about how I think about

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Six Cans And Two Grams

Thankfully, Wednesday's countrywide far-right kickoff failed to materialise—and nowhere less so than in Brighton, where four guys spent a somewhat uncomfortable evening getting roasted by a crowd of thousands. I read in the Financial Times that: It is in no way an attempt to legitimise violence and

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Just Go WOOOOOOOO!!!

I think sadness is an inherently transitory emotion. I don’t think it can’t last (sometimes for a good long time!) but it’s generally a response to something, and eventually it will lift. There is something which seems like sadness, but is not quite, which I will call

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An Operating System For Life

I was talking to a visiting friend a few months ago about their 'systems for life', and when they said they didn't have a to-do system I stopped making dinner to talk at them at length about it (until CM asked me pointedly whether I was

Weeknotes

1632: put a ring on it

I was off work last week, so I took a break from blogging too. I'm also taking a break from the usual format because (inspired by Jay's post on the topic of weeknotes) I'm thinking about rejigging it a little, but I don'

Notes

Shownotes: The Acolyte S1

Oh come on. After Andor you’ve really got to do a bit better than this. Look, I fully admit that I am the problem: I keep watching this crap. It wasn’t irremediably bad, but the thing I came back to watching The Acolyte was how thin it all

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My Father Said, When I Was Younger

I’ve had a thought rattling around in my head since Mania: Cody Rhodes’ entrance theme—though it has the one thing every wrestling fan loves, a sing-along bit—paints a misleading picture. “My father said/when I was younger/hard times breed better men” is, of course, a reference

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Not Buying It

For once in my life I’m not spending too much money on a gadget I don’t need

Weeknotes

1630: euphoria

Throughput * I've realised, not for the first time, that unless there is something actively affecting my emotions, their half-life is fairly short and they don't linger. Which is to say: I was going to say "I've had a good week" because I&

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What's My Problem With Ted Gioia?

Ted Gioia is a remarkably popular Substack writer—you might have seen some of his posts go around before. He's written things which have gained enormous reach, on things like Barnes and Noble's recent growth, ways to evaluate character and 'dopamine culture'. Given that

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We Don't Do That Thing We Do

what is up with phillip morris' website

Making It Seem Unimpressive

I don't know if this is a function of the thing itself, or of my media diet, or of the human ability to quickly get bored of anything, but the more I think about all the LLM stuff the more I'm impressed at how unimpressive it

1629: engerland

Throughput * It's actually been quite a good week on the whole! * Despite this, I did spend the first few days with a dreadful cold, which was not much fun. * Also yesterday I discovered a kiwi allergy, or possibly Pollen Food Syndrome. A slightly scary afternoon though thankfully I

No Mindreading

I did a course a little while ago created by Hayley Honeyman, an ADHD coach who has that unsettling North American positive intensity (I used to have a Canadian girlfriend and let me tell you: Canadians love it when you refer to them as 'North Americans') but she

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The draw of cybernetics

I had a spare Audible credit so I listened to Dan Davies' new book about Stafford Beer a few weeks back. It chimed with some thoughts I've been having since listening to the last General Intellect Unit, which I've been listening to (on and off)

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What's up with those LBC headlines on the BT screens?

A few years ago, to the consternation of... presumably some people other than just me, some big BT-branded screens went up all around Brighton in place of phoneboxes that are constantly displaying adverts for things. They're awful and they break up the streets and I hate them. One

Weeknotes

1628: the pop out

Throughput * Another absolutely dud month in terms of bad stuff happening with my friends and family. I am hoping things settle down a bit now. * However: I did go home last weekend and it was nice to see my parents and brother, we had a nice swim in the sea