Big thanks to everyone who sent messages and emails about last weeks post on SDAM and autobiographical memory. It was really interesting to read all your own experiences of events and memories. Some vastly different from my own.
It’s really wild how we all go through life assuming that our inner experience of the world is ‘normal’ and we share it with everyone else?
I should also follow up on some of the messages here and say: yes, I have Crohn’s disease. I’ve had it since I was 17. I don’t really talk about it all that much. It’s just a thing that happened, and a thing I live with. But thank you for your well wishes none the less. Maybe store them up until I’m ill next though !? Which *touches wood* which shouldn’t be for a long time!
I’ve been all over the place this last week. I’ve started a lot of things and finished none of them. Hugely frustrating. I just need to find some clear water, some mental space to sit down and write in. To work for a long stretches and get some words under my fingers. I may have to start going to a local coffee shop or something.
More excitingly, this week the Autonomous Worlds Network announced one of the things I’ll be participating in at the Autonomous Worlds Assembly in Istanbul next month in November. I’ll be moderating a panel on Decentralised Narratives with Kara Kittel, GVN and Venkatesh Rao! What a line up! Looking forward to it!
In the mean time I need to get my talk on mythmaking mechanisms in autonomous worlds together for the event. So much to do! 😬
Permanently Moved
In A Playful Way
I’m going to try my best to approach making the show in a more playful way. A change in creative position or approach.
Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/10/08/301-2332-in-a-playful-way/
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Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
- Started a new LONG post on ‘the alms race’ and patreon
- Working on the chapter titles for a long essay ‘mother of all chains’
- Several calls about worlds
- Working on my mythmaking talk
- Sorted issue 007 of Star Select Reset Zine out.
- Finally managed to get Automatic1111 upscaler working again so I can get back to work on my AI game
- Booked some meetings in
- Lost half a day fucking about with my phone after Android 14 install went very badly.
Terminal Access
Simon wrote an absolutely *incredible* essay about NFTs last week
Most databases are snapshots, but blockchains have history. When you see an NFT as having history associated with it, then you understand why a right-click-save only serves to add to its ongoing story. From the other lens, seeing an NFT as only a snapshot, you miss why much of this technology is important as a medium for information: not just in terms of art, collectibles, and new forms of finance.
This era will be marked as the first skeuomorphic era of the medium. What was made, was simulacra of the real world.
The argument that all the ugly apes JPEGs were skeuomrphic baby-steps into this new era of immutable digital ledgers and agreement medium is a compelling one.
Alongside those who saw a record-keeping machine, it would attract the worst kind of people, those whose only meaning comes from prices. For this story to keep being told, its narratives have to change.
The next era, will hopefully thus, be marked as a recontextualisation to make apparent that this medium is buffeted by context and provenance.
Honestly read the whole thing. It’s great!
Dipping the Stacks
The TikTok exodus: how an Albanian town was emptied
TikTok became a recruitment tool. Videos urged people to make the crossing before it was too late, creating a sense of urgency by referring to increasingly harsh immigration policies. There were even “Black Friday” deals on boat trips.
China AI & Semiconductors Rise: US Sanctions Have Failed
By the end of 2024, China in total will have more than 1 million A100 caliber or better chips from Nvidia.
My goal in writing the book was to explain what climate models do, how they are built, and what they tell us. It’s intended to be very readable for a general audience, in the popular-science genre.
Terraforming Mars makers defend use of AI art in upcoming board game expansion amid fan grumbles
“We have and will continue to leverage AI-generated content in the development and delivery of this project. We have used MidJourney, Fotor, and the Adobe Suite of products as tools in conjunction with our internal and external illustrators, graphic designers, and marketers to generate ideas, concepts, illustrations, graphic design elements, and marketing materials across all the elements of this game,”
The persona illusion: Do you actually exist on social media?
That ranking and rating of certain identities as better than others, what is these days referred to as the “creator economy,” is bitterly ironic. For, another potential violation of human and civil rights on social media is the lack of a right to property, something that, again, the United Nations has declared a fundamental human right.
Reading
Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
I’ve read loads of ‘history of the semiconductor’ books over the past few years but this one is the best. Not only for it being from 2022 and therefor contemporary. But because telling the story though a global policy lens results in a compelling narrative sweep through the history of technology development, geopolitics, and globalisation during the second half of the 20th century up to the present day.
Many older books from the 00’s on the subject will belabour the impact and influence of W. Deming on Japanese quality control, but as far as I remember he’s not mentioned here once – as the salient point at the global level was ‘Japanese chips were cheaper and more reliable’ .
★★★★★
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
I finished my re-read of Only Forward in prep for Ghost in the Tome podcast. I fricking love this book. This PKD award wining debut novel from 1994 is bursting with ideas with a plot that is constantly oscillating between surface and depth. Conscious and unconscious. It is above all about – Truama. Lots of people hate hate hate this book. They think its childish but to me at least its one of the deepest books about chaos magic and dreams, and dealing with ones past I’ve ever read.
★★★★★
X by Y
I’m still reading the large chunk of my mates book draft. It’s a PDF and the font is very small.
You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy
After finishing Chipwar, started reading You’re Not Listening by NYT journalist Kate Murphy. I haven’t got passed the introduction so can’t comment on this yet.
Music
thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist
Diana Starshine – Fairy pop
The new Diana Starshine album dropped. It’s extreme hyper-pop that pushes the limits of listenability in places. The sonic pallet cuts across breakcore and gameboy bleeps and bloops. Feelingz is my fave track. Love this album.
Remember Kids:
This is me
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