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Weeknotes 1461

And we're back.

Every Man A King

Every Man A King

if it's sunny june, and december too,

Priority

I've been learining to play Europa Universalis IV, which is a cool game with a dizzying array of menus and levels ticking up and down. I'm starting to get the hang of it now, but the thing I've realised after a while as a

Old stone

I was talking to my housemate about the Warren and he observed that its temporary nature (only there for the month!) also gives it more vitality—people are more likely to go in the knowledge that it won't be around for too long. Conversely, I've spent

Straight lines

Changing spaces

Changing spaces

Brighton Festival and Fringe season is upon us once again, though I've only had a chance to go to a few things so far: a production of Anthony and Cleopatra at the Rialto (felt like a bit of a student production), a jazz thing called Played Twice where

Monoliths

This is a repost of something I wrote several years ago now which I mentioned (will mention?) on the latest (next?) episode of the podcast and therefore thought I should make available. It’s something I noticed first reading (of course) Lawrence Miles, and it was odd: the idea that

Gamenotes: Night In The Woods

Gamenotes: Night In The Woods

At the end of everything, hold on to anything

Booknotes: A History Of Western Philosophy

Booknotes: A History Of Western Philosophy

Just finished reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy for the first time since I was a teenager, and while interesting, it made for somewhat odd reading. I've been going through a lot of textbooks or textbook-like things lately (which is why I haven't

Julius Caesar

"This would be a good wrestling venue" was my first thought when entering the performance space of the Bridge Theatre, though I at least had the grace to be suitably ashamed about it. Seating on all sides and a central performance space—it's like the Cockpit

Booknotes: The Bible

Booknotes: The Bible

A collection of notes from a bunch of separate posts from my read-through of The Bible. Goel I've been reading through the Bible (as you do), and though I'm still mired in the early Old Testament, it's interesting to see what stands out. Most

Trust Our Institutions

Trust Our Institutions

So, this sort of thing. I get a similar feeling about this that I get about the Everything You Do Online Will Be Online Forever stuff. Roughly speaking: even leaving aside the (broadly correct) stuff that people like Jeremy Keith bring up about it not even being that true most

Pomes

Unlike Tom, I've never really been a poetry person. I do, however, have a friend who has made it their mission over the last few years to get me into poetry, periodically sending me stuff—often Mary Oliver—which I will read, admit is Actually Good, then say

Riptide

Quite a long time ago Kat and I talked about starting a wrestling promotion, since Brighton didn't have one. It was going to be heavily intergender, have an emphasis on storylines and have the ring announcer come out to Too Many Man by Skepta. Inevitably, we didn'

Help Me Ronda

So, the Rumble was last night—pretty great, imo, the most I've enjoyed a WWE show in absolutely ages. All the matches were some kind of great fun, and the surprise appearance of Ronda Rousey at the end was really exciting. But why? What is it exactly about

Go down, Moses

Recently, my iTunes decided that it was going to forget where all its files were. Not delete the files—that would be too obvious—but just decide to stop recognising the 100gb or so of audio files that it had been using quite happily for the last 4 years or

Losing

Hey folks, this is about weight loss. If that's something you don't want to read about, consider yourself warned. Also, it's not a condemnation of people who haven't been able to lose weight despite effort (which was me, for ages!) or people

Negative Lessons

Negative Lessons

I've been thinking about how I learn and retain information a bit lately. Listening to podcasts with some interesting, smart people who clearly think quite differently from me, I notice that they have a seemingly boundless capacity to recall specific facts in detail—names, places, relations, specific wording.

Support

After Patreon changed and then un-changed their fee model change the other month, I was reminded of my ideal Patreon model: everybody gives a dollar a month to everything they like. No reward tiers, no fancy nonsense. A little bit from a lot of people seems more stable, more sustainable

Catching up

When listening to a podcast recently, a remark by one of the hosts struck me. He persisted with books he wasn't enjoying because, he said, some part of his brain was convinced that then he'd get to tick that entry off on some infinite cosmic checklist.

Running

This evening I managed to run for 10 minutes without stopping. This left me in a bizarrely euphoric state, frantically messaging various friends. JUST RAN FOR 10 MINUTES WITHOUT STOPPING STILL BUZZING I'll probably clean up and repost the piece I wrote last year about losing weight sometime

#goals

I've spent much of the last few days (weeks, really) putting off my year-review-and-planning process. This is one of those things I do where, when describing it to people, I realise that I treat my life like a job. Alex Vermeer's 8760 Hours system is the

Parabo

Parabo, pronouced (I hope) like 'Haribo', is a service that lets you print stuff. For the past few years I've used it to print my 25 favourite pictures from the year. It affords me the opportunity to review the year through the prism of the photos