Aching Eyes

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5 minutes

Blugh. My yearly week of hay fever hell *Shakes fist at ornamental cherry*.

After about 10.30/11am everyday all week I’ve felt like my head has been in a vice. Blocked up sinus’ and aching eyes. Boo hoo.

It started for the first time when I was in my late 20’s, now it’s become a yearly thing I have to endure. It only lasts a week or ten days then it migrates down in to a chesty cough for a week. So I’m almost over the worst of it. But this year I’ve gone hard on the antihistamines.

As a result, I’ve been trying to get as much ‘committed work’ done as possible immediately upon waking. Then just spending the rest of the day feeling slow and sorry for myself. I don’t have that much to show for myself this week in my weeknotes. I took the decision to take a few days off.

Which meant that I played a lot of cities skylines when I was feeling really bad at the beginning of the week. Fixing traffic jams with roundabouts and lane mathematics is really satisfying.


My contributors copy of Unsound 2020’s Intermission Book arrived. A welcome surprise to fall though the letterbox to be sure.

I’ve read a couple of the pieces from people over lunch and its a fantastic collection. It’s the first collection of material I’ve read produced last year during the depths of the pandemic. It’s one of those books that I’ll return to in a few years to get a sense of what last year was actually like.

I know I’ll be reminded of sitting out in the garden, listening to a silent street writing my piece in the baking sun.

Permanently Moved

Conductors and Coordination

Modular politics and coordination online, Soviet Moscow’s First Symphonic Ensemble, Sacred Harp Singing, Gershwin, The Baton, Wands, and Alister Crowley.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

Blugh hayfeaver

Dipping the Stacks

Big Tech fights foreign terrorists, not so much domestic – Protocol — The people, power and politics of tech

“Nobody’s going to have a hearing if a platform takes down 1,000 ISIS accounts. But they might have a hearing if you take down 1,000 QAnon accounts.”

North Jersey officials are trying to shut down a Little Free Library because of “zoning.”

It’s unclear what the exact claim being made by local officials is—whether the Little Free Library is being identified as a commercial enterprise in a residence zone, or whether it’s simply subject to a city ordinance regulating free-standing structures on personal property

Trees As Infrastructure. An open source model to support… | by Dark Matter | Dark Matter Laboratories

A handful of cities are already innovating in the way they purposefully connect trees as green infrastructure with other urban systems to encourage an effective maintenance of forestries.

Seeing into the True Nature: A History of Weird Sun Twitter

Though its tweets are alien, I presume Instance Of Class is run by a human. And I get the impression that at least part of the motivation for creating the account was as a place to be less constrained by the automatic filtering brains do when saying things for an audience:

Reading

The Way Of A Pilgrim

I finished The Way Of A Pilgrim this week. I can see why this 19C book has been growing in popularity in the english speaking world since its was first published in 1931.

There is very little by way of how to pray going around these days. It;s a particular bugbear of mine. This book even mentions/acknowledges the similarity between The Jesus Prayer and Hindu mantra. Which is fascinating for a book written in Russia between 1853 and 1861.

I enjoyed every page of this book and it has given me a lot to consider and literally meditate on.

Penitent – Dan Abnett

I finished listening to the follow up to Pariah. It’s the second book in the final trilogy, of the trilogy of trilogies in the inquisitor series. It might be one of the best Warhammer 40k books i’ve ever read. I think Abnett is absolutely flying as an author in this novel.

The book contains loads of 40k weirdness plus a good helping of Lovecraftian horror. Book 2 continues Abnett’s new YA form for this trilogy. As I said the other week – A Young woman with special skills is sought by various factions with conflicting and contradictory offers.

If you are a fan of 40k then this series being 7 books deep might not be the place to start. Despite the self contained nature of the trilogy.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist 

IU – Lilac

I love the videos washed out colours. It’s great.

It’s the perfect time of year for a spring summer driving song. The subject of the song is about spring so some real vibes.

LastFM tells me that the last time I listened to IU was 5 years ago with the release her Chat-shire EP. Not that I really remember it all that well. Dipping in and out of Kpop for so long has caused a lot of it to all blur unless the tracks are exceptional.

Anyway. I dig this track and I’ve listened to it a few times walking along the river.

Remember Kids

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