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The blog is where I write about whatever I want.

Blog About List

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,

85k Circulation

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

At The Allotment

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&

cranks 2 high voltage

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

Six Cans And Two Grams

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

Just Go WOOOOOOOO!!!

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

An Operating System For Life

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

My Father Said, When I Was Younger

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

Not Buying It

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

What's My Problem With Ted Gioia?

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

We Don't Do That Thing We Do

We Don't Do That Thing We Do

what is up with phillip morris' website

The draw of cybernetics

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)

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

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

It's Not The Work You Do, It's The Work You Don't Do

It's Not The Work You Do, It's The Work You Don't Do

A conversation with a friend about how to allow yourself to rest caused me to reflect on the following things I've been focusing on lately: 1. Being okay with doing things a bit at a time People are very fond of the pomodoro timer, a way you can

The Rolling Stock Trick

The Rolling Stock Trick

When you're a kid, you often notice things you don't quite understand. TV is different from films—it's not as wide, why is that? If you work out how to frame the question right you'll be told by an adult or the

AI Is An Orange Juicer

AI Is An Orange Juicer

An analogy of which I am inordinately fond is that of orange juice: a delicious beverage that is created by taking a whole thing, an orange—which presents you with a balance of sweet enjoyment and fibrous goodness—and dividing the two, leaving you with an insulin spike in a

It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for

It's the end, but the moment has been prepared for

The Matt Levine Exhaustion Index

The Matt Levine Exhaustion Index

For a number of reasons, I'm extremely tired right now. So tired that my first run at the previous sentence read "For a number of reasons, I've extremely tired right now." A good way of gauging how much my tiredness is impacting my capacity

Trad Life

I find the trad people fascinating, and as such I really enjoyed this New Yorker piece which is mostly about one of the OG trad people, Alena Pettitt, a woman from Cheltenham(?!) which is curious as I'd really thought of it mostly as an American thing prior to

The Essence Of Crankdom

The Essence Of Crankdom

In response to Freddie's very reasonable question of why some people get an easier ride than others from the media for their bad actions, Tom suggested that it's basically the cool factor: Pharrell was in the Blurred Lines video that caused so much furore back in

New Podcast!

At long last (I have finally edited the episode we recorded about a month ago) the first/zeroth episode of the scifi book podcast I'm doing with my pal Shonalika is live! Very exciting stuff; we talk about Yoon Ha Lee's Hexarchate Stories, and all the

From A Certain Point Of View

I've started seeing an IFS practitioner because I found the book I read about it so useful, and even though we've not properly started yet I've already found it useful. Something they said in our first session that's really stuck with me

First Day Of Spring

My health has been quite bad the last few weeks, and to compound it the weather has been almost universally dreary. Whenever we've had even the hint of blue sky I've been outside to try and make the most of it. The drab sameness of the

Institutions Are Made By People

For lunch today we went—for the last time ever—to The Green Kitchen, the best vegan cafe in Brighton. Actually, just the best cafe in Brighton. Katie, the morris-dancing lesbian owner, came over for a hug and said farewell, Cody, the front-of-house, showed us pictures of his parrot. CM

Be Nice To The Robot

I don't believe that ChatGPT is anything close to a person, but I find something fundamentally upsetting about a lot of the prompt tricks that people use to get it to do what they want. The ones that present it with a whimsical scenario: pretending you're