Midlist | Weeknotes

The todo list of doom I mentioned the other week is still in progress. I’m still chugging though, ticking things off every day, lots more still to do. The concrete I’ve been pouring in 2023’s foundations is beginning to set – so that feels really good.

Even better, I’m finally getting things on the doom list that are future facing!

I don’t know what your process is for planning lists of ideas and projects, but I’m currently in the middle of the following.

1. Brain dump a list of ideas and things you’d like to do/get done
   • Do this in one sitting about 2 hours. No distractions
   • Don’t be tempted to group or order the items by type
2. Returning a few days later: Under each item, brain dump a story or long narrative about what it is – what you want to achieve, learn, what you want it to be.
   • Each entry should be several paragraphs, ideally.
   • If the item is currently in progress (like my podcast), write a narrative about what/where you want it to be in a years time.
3. Returning a few days later review the written narratives and then try to sum the idea/project up in one or two sentences.
   • Elevator pitch it.
4. Then write two sublists under each idea.
   • The steps that can be taken right now to realise the idea
   • The challenges involved in doing it *right now*

I’m still in the process of doing step 4, but several projects on the turn out involve learning Affinity Designer/Publisher. Man I love lists

So the project that has been prioritised is the one which will allow me to learn basic Affinity Publisher skills and practice them regularly. Which incase you are wondering, is re-designing/settling on a consistent design for my zine. (I have 3 copies left of issue #004 btw).

Issue #005 goes in the post next month. Subscribe!

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Podcast

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Finished re-drafting a couple of old blog posts
• Confirmed with a former client I am no longer under their overly expansive and onerous NDA 🥳
• Couple of fun calls
• Finished the spreadsheet I was building for Novara
• Wrote 5k word report on tumblr in 2023 and sent it off

Terminal Access

Wassim and the Cryptographic Poetics Researchers’ Union just posted Pt2 of the The Necroprimitivist Manifesto. It’s Machine scripture sent back in time from a maximalist blockchain future.

Dipping the Stacks

Super Lesbian Animal RPG is a big hit with the target audience | PC Gamer

The recent release of Super Lesbian Animal RPG seems to have greatly pleased people who enjoy the idea of a game called Super Lesbian Animal RPG.

Mutually Assured Engagement – by Ian Leslie – The Ruffian

In the real world, if you make a verbal attack and the other person comes back with a devastating riposte, you lose. You are humiliated and slink off home. But that’s not how social media works, at least not for figures like Tate.

I wrote a story for a friend – by Julian Gough

Before I liberate myself, let me formally liberate the End Poem.
I hereby liberate it from the corporate economy, where it’s been illegally detained since 2014, and place it officially in the gift economy.

This longread is by the author of the end poem in Minecraft. It’s one hell of a piece of writing.

Archiving Your Teen Self – by Anne Helen Petersen

We are so much more than what we keep. But what we keep anchors us when and where memory inevitably fails. You don’t need a mom’s basement to put aside the things that make you feel like you — to begin or continue to preserve the language that future you will one day read. The storage container didn’t magically contain everything I felt or made or endured as a teen, not even close.

Is Microsoft about to get the deal of the century? Or is Sam Altman unloading OpenAI at just the right time?

Whether you think $29 billion is a sensible valuation for OpenAI depends a lot of what you think of their future. (Revenue so far is rumored to be more like $29 million/year, so you have to think things will soon get a lot better to make this sort of deal).

Reading

I finished Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. OH LORD its one of the best books on creativity and ‘art making’ I’ve ever read. I’ve said it 3 weeks in a row now, but this my generations War Of Art/Artists Way. Rubins book is more ‘koan-like’. Each chapter is less practical than other books on creativity. The reader has to do far more work interpreting the aphoristic writing style.

So good. 5* book. So good in fact I might go back to the beginning and read it again. The last book that had this effect on me was the War of Art!

I finished reading Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants. Originally written in 1972 this book is by John Clark, a chemist who worked in the development of US rocket fuels during the 1960s and 1970s. A first hand account full of humour about the nascent rocket industry and an explainer of how the science works. My favourite bits in the book where something unexpectedly explodes, in an engine, in a test bed or on the chemistry bench. I was also delighted to discover that some compounds are simply label S.E for Sometimes Explodes. The exact chemical mechanisms for spontaneous exploding being unknown.

Still chipping away at How to Read a Book by M.J. Adler. Been reading it since early Jan and it feels like the ‘only book’. It’s sooooo long.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Swearwolves (UK)

I saw on instagram that my mate Hassan’s band Swearwovles are back(?) together. Or at least they were at a band practice.

Swearwolves are local noisemakers who play some really heavy rock and roll.

00’s machine head, mixed with iron maiden and guitar solos? Rock!

Remember Kids: