Last week was crazy. Berlin and back. Lots of writing, calls and other commitments. Then… I bought a new Macbook pro on Friday! I go the base model 14″ M2 Max. Upgrading from an early 2015 Intel mac pro.

Part of me thinks, given the way the world is going, that this might be my *last* laptop. Or at least the last one priced under the logic of global capitalism (half a car). In another 8 years time when its battery health is tempting me to get another one – a mac pro will probably cost .. a whole car.

I might do a deeper review once i’ve had it a month, but I do not regret buying this device/tool. Only comment is the lift and shit from the 2015 intel time machine back up to 2023 apple silicon did not go as smoothly as advertised. Also the keyboard is weird.

As it was such a crazy week, I was just catching up to about Thursday on Saturday. Then yesterday I just.. crashed. I had my podcast written and ready to go but about lunch time yesterday I decided to write the whole day off. I went for a big walk along the thames and enjoyed the sunshine.

Hopefully regular service will return this week.

Permanently Moved

Threads, Carnival and the Bazaar

Social media right now feels like nothing more than a rigged carnival. “Roll up roll up, read this, pass it on, there’s more.” It’s been bad for years. But now there’s different variations of the same flavour of network on offer, I realise how sour it all tastes. 

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Went to Berlin, did a workshop
• Came back from Berlin
• Follow up Zoom call/workshop
• Recorded an Experience.Computer interview
• Catch up about my week teaching on the new centre course
• Writing
• Writers Bloc, session 3
• Lots of life admin
• Calls
• Commitments

Terminal Access

Third instalment in a back and forth blog exchange between Paul Graham Raven and Matt Webb:

On my more cranky days, I find myself thinking that transhumanism is basically a sort of end-game or maximalist liberal rationalism: Progress elevated beyond the level of a mere principle, to the status of an ideal or even a sort of deity. There are clear lines one could draw between them, of course, though they could not be drawn clearly quickly; reading Torres and others on the longtermists is a very good place to start. To believe in Progress is not to be signed up for the full transhumanist package!

BUT

Dipping the Stacks

How MrBeast Became the Willy Wonka of YouTube

Compared with the strange and compelling creatures on display elsewhere on YouTube, it can be hard to understand precisely what’s appealing about MrBeast

The Monster Discloses Himself | By Theory Possessed | Issues | The Hedgehog Review

As you watch your single conspiracy shiver into a mass of details, possibilities, smaller overlapping plots, you feel that you have reached a perilous moment. Do you search for one truth or for many? Are you pursuing facts, or meaning? A world within the world, or just…a world?

No One Knows Exactly What Social Media Is Doing to Teens – The Atlantic

Years and years of research add up to an uncomfortable reality: The connection between social media and mental health is more complicated than it seems.

Guillermo Del Toro on His Future: “I Only Want to do Animation. That’s the Plan” — World of Reel

“[Why] does everything act as if they’re in a sitcom? I think is emotional pornography. All the families are happy and sassy and quick, everyone has a one-liner. Well, my dad was boring. I was boring. Everybody in my family was boring. We had no one-liners. We’re all fucked up. That’s what I want to see animated. I would love to see real life in animation.

I actually think it’s urgent. think it’s urgent to see real life in animation.”

Roleplaying is the perfect medium for stories of sex and romance – so why is the genre so underserved on the tabletop? | Dicebreaker

The tabletop roleplaying game feels like the perfect landscape for romance and sex stories to thrive within – especially when it comes to more modern TRPGs, where the goal is often to develop bonds between characters rather than win battles.

Reading

It seems that Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today by Marco Arnaudo is airport reading. I finished it on the plane home from Berlin. This book is a really interesting deep dive in to narrative generating mechanisms in systemic boardgames. Individual / influential games and their influence on the medium are contextualised and contrasted against other games released around the same period.

I finished reading Leviathan by Darius Hinks. A typical product tie in, but I enjoyed the books 50/60’s pulp alien invasion vibe. Lots of blood, guts and gore.

Having finished two books, resolve arrived from somewhere and I also finished Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication by Oren Jay Sofer. I was telling Dougald Hine on call recently is a very good ‘NVC 201’ book. More of these sorts of second order / what next books are needed. Everyone is done with their ABC’s at this point in the timeline.

saturdays at your place – always cloudy

Yikes. On the surface this album is pure midwest power emo. Its absolutely incredible. It sounds exactly like how I heard and perceived the world when I was about 17. Mathy guitars, gang vocals on the chorus’, irony drenched self effacing lyrics. LOVE LVOE LVOE this album. Check out the (imo) best single on the album below:

Remember Kids: