Horizon Line

5 minutes

It just so nice to see the horizon.
It’s one of the things I miss the most about living in the city.

It’s hard to describe what I miss the most about it. It’s a mix of things.

I miss the way your eyes relax when you look at it and they sink into a very natural resting state in their sockets. It’s almost as if humans were built to look out at the horizon lol.

It also re-sets my expectations. ‘Where I am in the world’. It represents the maximum sphere of influence I have as a participant in the co-creation of the world. ‘As far as the eye can see’ – literally.

When you are in a city, there is always more and more just around round the corner. And who knows how long, and for how far it all goes on for?

As soon as I see the gentle curve where the sea meets the sky, that line at the end of the world, I feel myself relax.

Been on a bunch of walks around the coast in the last few days. The Blackthorn is flowering like crazy, so plenty of sloe foraging to be done later in the summer.

The Hoary Cress or Thanet Weed is flowering too at the moment. If you don’t know that it smells like then you’re lucky.

Its funny that Thanet Weed, a being that arrived during the Napoleonic Wars doesn’t affect me at all. But beautiful cherry tree blossom? That will make me feel awful.


Internet & Futures

In the before times I used to get to travel and give talks at festivals etc.

Here’s a little video featuring me looking extremely like I’ve spent a few days in Barcelona. The video was recorded by Sonar+D and weare-europe.eu on Internet & Futures in 2019.

Everybody speaking in the video above were part of We Are Europe’s ‘Faces of Europe’ 2019 cohort.

My script for the ‘Tales of the Next Internet’ panel I was on at Sonar+D is here.

Permanently Moved

Sounds Like Home

Back on the chalk, the characteristic of sounds of my family home have remained the same as if time has flowed around them.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

I was still suffering from the same hay fever as last week this week. I got some bits and bobs done. now I’m taking some time off, and just funding rhythm within the daily lives of my parents.

Back to work work in earnest next week.

Dipping the Stacks

Explorer Richard Garriott reads poetry at the bottom of the ocean (and in space)

Well, I am a huge fan of Shakespeare broadly, and have even built a scale version of Shakespeare’s Glob on my Texas ranch.

Pro-Amazon, Anti-Union Bots Are Once Again Swarming Twitter

Fake anti-union, pro-Amazon accounts have been popping up on Twitter since as early as 2019. They are fairly easy to recognize thanks to their eerie-looking avatars, their peppy, pro-Amazon posts, and their usernames, which tend to begin with the phrase “AmazonFC,” capitalization intact and all.

On Twitter, You Can Never Log Off – Study Hall

Everyone on Twitter is losing their goddamn minds. Also, everyone is, more generally, very miserable.

Outrage: the false promises of floating gardens – Architectural Review

Trees aren’t static objects; they turn towards the sunlight, warp during high winds, reaching outwards as a way of life. But when left unsupported without healthy root systems, they wither and break.

Your brain is temporal soup: How past narratives trap our future thoughts – BBC Science Focus Magazine

It’s a virtual (at present) exercise in revealing how the future is colonised by ideas from the past. It exposes the ways the present has been pre-emptively defined by previous generations, and what we’ve lost as a result. 

Reading

Death Or Glory – Sandy Mitchell

Book 4 of the Ciaphas Cain series came out on Audible this week. I bought it immediately and listened to it in the evenings in a couple of days.

First published in print in 2006 Mitchell’s Ciaphas Cain series is buit around the first person memoirs of the erstwhile hero for which the series is named.

Cain is basically ‘Flashman’ accompanied by his phlegmatic aid, Jurgen. Imagine ‘Flashman and Bladrick’ space and you are more than half way at grasping the tone of the series.

Unlike Flashman however, Cain isn’t a complete asshole he’s a coward who fails upwards. Which makes him rather likeable.

This book recounts the story of cain falling into an active warzone from an escape pod and landing behind enemy lines. Though a series of mishaps, pulling together an army (think Lawrence of Arabia) of militia and scattered troops that accidentally turns the tide of the war. All because he really wanted a nice cup of tea.

After 4 books, Mitchell has found his grove with the series and I can’t wait for the next audio book to drop.

The Corner Shop – Babita Sharma

I should be finished with this by the end of today so calling it ‘a read book’.

Mum handed it to me the first evening I was back. Babita Sharma grew up in a corner shop in Reading in the 80’s. The book charts the shifting landscape around the British corner shop. The changing politics and fabric of the country they are embedded in. As a child of immigrants Sharma provides a fascinating insight into the lives of people from India, East Africa and Eastern Europe from the 60s to the naughties who re-built the British institution of the corner shop after the introduction of the Supermaket to the UK.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist 

Studio Killers – Jenny (Feat. Kim Petras)

TikTok reviving Studio Killers is one of the best things its done for the world so far this year.

If you don’t know Studio Killers are a Finnish virtual band like the Gorillaz in concept.
The remix of their 2013 summer hit Jenny is now out featuring blog fav Kim Petras.

This new version is about a Minute shorter than the original and has gone though the 2021 pop-production machine and sounds even better than it did the first time.
Nothing better than a summer pop hit about a psycho in the friend zone.

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