Fear City x

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5 minutes

It was the Surbiton summer fete this weekend, conveniently right outside our flat. Day two is happening outside right now in the pouring rain. So we were lucky with the weather yesterday and I had a really nice time.

Local country band The 105 played. The 105 also includes 2 of members of my band, so it was nice to see the lads and see them play for the first time since the pandemic began.

The 105

Speaking of the Forest Bed, we start fortnightly rehearsals again on Tuesday next week: 7-10. I’m really excited to get back in the practice room and make some music with other human beings. We were almost ready to record when lockdown began last year, so we are hoping to get back to square one again and have a semi-decent sounding demo up on bandcamp by the end of the year. After that we’ll look for some gigs.

💀 Fear City x

This absolutely amazing graffiti appeared at the local train station. ‘Local instagram/Twitter’ is full of grumbling and pearl clutching. But I think it’s fantastic environmental storytelling, and captures of the mood of ‘right now’ perfectly.

Here’s a picture of the Thames at sunset. This is my favourite spot along the river.

Thames Sunset

Permanently Moved

This Week’s Podcast

Behind today’s 5min of content is about Five hours of work, and about 4.5k words. 3.5k of which I threw away.

I’ve been having some trouble with Libsyn. Even if I deselect youtube as a destination it’s still auto publishing the audio version there. So I’ve finally removed it, this I hope should consolidate views into the *actual* video version (Above).

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

  • I’ve been working on my ‘Mother of All Chains’ essay. I appear to be ‘doing a philosophy’.
  • I’ve crossed of so many annoying little things off my to do list this week – been really productive – feels good.
  • Booked in calls with lots of folks.
  • Have some writing commissioned that needs doing before December. Call booked with editor to discuss that.
  • Got asked to be interviewed for a TV show. Investigated with the producer but decided they were wasting my time.
  • Did some more Unreal/Quixel Mixer/Blender tutorials.

Dipping the Stacks

Don’t fall for this Elite Dangerous scam – Polygon

A small group of players in Elite Dangerous were trapped in a system far from home and forced to mine so that other players could profit. Waylaid and forced into labor 800 light-years from home, another group of players has come to their rescue.

Community-Controlled Games | Essays

The tedious nature of a CCG’s gameplay can often makes players quite bored. However, as Gotschall explained, it is during the tedious tasks of everyday life that we most often tend to daydream. During gameplay, players who are bored or frustrated with the lack of narrative progress may begin to impose a narrative on the story. 

An Almost-Country in the Desert That Doesn’t Care About Your Understanding of Politics – Tablet Magazine

At first glance, there’s a lot to be cynical about in Somaliland. For instance, in order to join the national military, you must first acquire your own gun, which seems almost humorously backward.

“The basics of everyday life are a similar source of bewilderment, at first. Somaliland has two locally owned telecommunications companies, Somtel and Telesom, which do not allow their respective users to call each other 

“To get attention you need to be a troublemaker. The fact that you’re a normal functioning country is not important. Bad behavior gets attention.” Her implied point of comparison was Somalia, whose leadership she characterized as “an illegal government not elected by anyone and put there by the international community, and that pretends they’re the boss over us.”

If you are going to click one thing in this post at all click though to the essay above. It’s amazing

Revolt of the NYC Delivery Workers – The Verge

Exploited by apps. Attacked by thieves. Unprotected by police. New York City’s 65,000 delivery workers have only themselves to count on. They’ve improvised solutions, like bridge patrol to protect themselves from attacks, to make their jobs feasible.

This is also amazing!

Spreading the love throughout Paradox’s medieval soap opera Crusader Kings 3 | PC Gamer

A wise man once said “Make love, not war”. That man would probably have died in a week in Crusader Kings III’s world, but that is not to say he didn’t have a point. All this scheming, fighting, and murder… where is the compassion for one’s fellow man?

Reading

After watching James on the Stoa during the week, I bought his essay collection ‘Exiting Modernity’. Essentially collecting posts and essays from his blog meta-nomad.net. I’m about 60 pages in. Its been fun revisiting pieces I read online many years ago. Also If you haven’t seen it, James went interneting with me in Season 1.

I’m still reading FALC.

Still reading Building Imaginary Worlds.

Music

Tim Hecker – The North Water (Original Score)

Yeah. Damn. This is something else.

There is a sense of scale and space in this soundtrack that hasn’t been quite so fully realised in Heckers other work. You are almost experiencing the songtitles, the weather, the setting via auditory ossmosis.

It’s very John Luther Adams like. The instant the opening track Seasick came on, I was reminded of JLA’s Become Ocean.

There is also something to be said about the way that Hecker uses the Orchestra as sonic object alongside his more familiar sonic pallet of noise, loops, reverb, crystal synths etc.

I am not someone who watches TV. But if the TV show is as good as the score is – I’m definitely going to watch it.

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