Weeknotes 1469

Fortnightnotes

• My goodness, if I thought the last few weeks were busy, the last two were somehow even busier. And it continues, as you might notice given that you're getting it two days later in addition to the extra week delay.
• I say "somehow": I know exactly how, and that's that I've taken on a bit too much. I often compare my method of working out my capacity with Calvin's  dad's explanation of how bridge weight limits are worked out, and it seems like I've hit mine for now.
• Part of the explanation is the extracurriculars I give myself—Seagull, etc—but part of it is that now I'm trying to build my own thing, my inclination is that every opportunity is one to be seized. This means I've got a diverse menu of things to do, but sometimes also leads to my getting overstuffed.
• Last week I had lunch with one of my best friends from school, who has his own video production company with his brother and his partner, and he said that feeling of the need to seize every opportunity never goes away. So, cool.
• I also got my second dose of vaccine, which was good, and also didn't donk me as comprehensively as the first. I was feeling a bit wobbly but no cold sweats or massive headaches. Thank goodness.
• I've been to more Fringe shows; reviews on Seagull, of course! One I have yet to write up is the image at the top here: the Odditorium, featuring one of my faves, John Higgs, who writes books that are basically coherent versions of what Memhaz is going on about when we actually have a point. Back around this time in 2019, I saw him at the Odditorium. Back then, I wrote:

...when I signed up to John Higgs' newsletter (after seeing it recommended in the generally good Nothing Here) I saw he was having a book launch at the Fringe, so I thought I'd go along... I am extremely glad I did. The event was a series of talks, interactions and performances, anchored around Higgs' new book The Future Starts Here, which is about generational differences between Gen Y and the rest, the death and potential return of future optimism and The Breakfast Club. I bought a copy after the show... The real joy of the event for me was a personal one: reconnecting to a part of myself that's been a bit neglected of late. I've fallen out of chanelling energy into some of my key creative outlets, namely amateur sociopolitical theorising and talking bollocks at variable length on the internet. This really just felt like my kind of thing, and I in turn sat there feeling like I needed to start doing things again.

What that doesn't really get into properly is that I was in a real hole mentally, at the time, for various reasons, and it was one of the things that I think started to pull me out of it, which I got to tell him, and he appreciated, so smiles all around :) I also bought his new book so I'm looking forward to finding the time to get into that!

Links

• On the busiest day I had over the last couple of weeks, I forced myself to stop for a bit and carve out some time for cooking a proper dinner. I made this curry; it was absolutely delicious; would strongly recommend—especially when accompanied by one of these naans.
• A look at the diaries of inter-war gadabout Chips Channon.
• This is very good, on attributing things to cognitive biases incorrectly.
• "One is to not be priggish humourless moralistic whiners, but to present instead an image of fun-loving liberality. We must lighten up, drop the censoriousness and laugh more."
• This piece on Chen Quifan reminded me, weirdly, of this profile of Daniel Dennett—specifically around the use of fiction as a way to make arguments and examine the shape and boundaries of ideas and views.
• Ironically, given that the author disavows it, the beginning of this read to me like a mirror-darkly version of the beginning of The Three-Body Problem.
• Ed Zitron has written a couple of pieces on remote work and the desire of bosses for the feeling of control above all. I think this might be worse in larger companies—I feel like lockdown pretty well broke the hold of presenteeism in the companies I work for/with.
• It's possibly also worse in America or for folk who work in media jobs: I was agog at the expectations on display in this piece about out-of-office emails.
• I feel like email would've been a more sensible way for criminals to communicate than Whatsapp but specifically for criminals.
• The text of a speech on the absolutely ludicrous miscarriage of justice that was the Post Office Horizon scandal is worth reading, especially if you, like me, have been following it on-and-off in bits for years but not really pulled back and looked at the big picture.
• More pull back and focus on the big picture: the tax evasion of the richest.
• "YIMBYs are a group of people who are almost always right on the big picture, sometimes wrong in the particular, and very often immensely annoying."
• And finally: Lemonade, a tiny animation that has vibes of PES' Fresh Guacamole.

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Over and out.