I went to Ignota Books’ 5th birthday event on Friday. As a contributor-at-large, I thought that I needed to show my face! I was an amazing event. Hilight’s include: Jennifer Higgie’s 40min long essay ‘Spirals Signify Evolution’. Nisha Ramayya and Paul Purgas, Shumon Basar gave a weird talk about the Hitchcock movie Vertigo (which obviously I haven’t seen). Sarah and Federico Campagna had an really interesting conversation on stage, and I really enjoyed MJ Harding’s organ composition.
It was all good to be honest. And it was lovely to see people and catch up and up with familiar faces.
Unfortunately, just as the evening concert started I started to feel ill. Totally out of sorts. Had hot and cold sweats on the tube home and ended up fast asleep by about 8.30pm. Yesterday was also a total right off. Spent most of it sleeping. So I’m a bit out of sorts. Still not 100% today.
It’s a mystery illness. No idea whats wrong. But seem to be over the worst of it.
Permanently Moved
What’s the difference between experiencing Presence and Immersion in a world? Or in techno-social systems of any kind?
Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2023/10/15/301-2333-presence-in-worlds/
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Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
- Working on my Istanbul Talk
- Working on ‘Mother of All Chains Essay’
- Met up with Ruth from Furtherfield to catch up. We gossiped and talked world and roleplay game design.
- Met BV in town on Wednesday. Been too long. Worth it.
- All day Ignota event on Friday it was nice to see some old friends for the first time in ages.
- Sorting out a post for the blog on ‘The Alms Race‘ and the new Patreon announcements.
Terminal Access
Bix wrote a great post about Aphantasia and SDAM quoting from my piece the other week and also other posts that have been going around the web recently. As the title of the post says ‘It’s Aphantasia O’Clock Somewhere‘
It was actually Bix’s writing that first made me aware of SDAM in the first place – but like many things – I thought it couldn’t possibly apply to me (the same as I knew about Aphantasia years before I realised I had it)
The key takeaway for me is Bix’s conclusion:
It’s tough to communicate to some people precisely how your autistic brain functions differently, when it’s so distressingly easy for normative conceptions of things to read executive dysfunction as laziness. When people discover that they don’t mean the same thing by “picture an apple”, though, it makes neurodiversity very easy to see.
No matter what your own particular mind’s eye might be like.
This is 100% spot on, it seems to me that Aphantaisa is one of the best examples to use in conversation when talking about neurodivergence, another one (I think) is asking people if they have an internal monologue or not.
The video below is a great example of …. people just talking and learning from one another about their own unique experience of the world
For my part, my internal monologue has changed after a decade of mediation. But it certainly still exists. It’s much quieter and far less chatty than it used to be day to day, but takes over when I’m typing/writing.
Dipping the Stacks
Generative AI exists because of the transformer
The reason for this is that current LLMs are trained on most of the English-language internet — a volume of information that makes them far more powerful than previous generations.
Willingham Sends Fables Into the Public Domain
As of now, 15 September 2023, the comic book property called Fables, including all related Fables spin-offs and characters, is now in the public domain. What was once wholly owned by Bill Willingham is now owned by everyone, for all time.
In A Sea Of Disposable Content, Video Essays Offer A Reprieve
Video essays can be seen as this generation’s equivalent of podcasts. There was a millennial podcast boom in the early 2010s, with seemingly every single topic having a podcast that would follow a similar formula of summary, analysis, joke and conclusion. It’s very similar to the video essay format (though, admittedly, these podcasts usually didn’t veer as heavily towards Internet culture as video essays do).
Telling AI model to “take a deep breath” causes math scores to soar in study | Ars Technica
in this latest study, DeepMind researchers found “Take a deep breath and work on this problem step by step” as the most effective prompt when used with Google’s PaLM 2 language model.
30 Years Ago Myst Introduced Us to an Unforgettable Abandoned World – Paste Magazine
How do you make a world that feels like it is already over? How do you create worlds made by humans and abandoned to dust? These are intangible ideas, and certainly not a science, but it is undeniable that one of the thrills of being in these Ages as a player is reinhabiting, and activating, these long-dead puzzles and to operate on the spaces.
Reading
You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy
This is a wonderful book about ‘the practice’ of listening. Both its place in our society at larger, but also how we should approach the activity as individuals. I really enjoyed it. This book is timely reminder!
★★★★
Only in Death By Dan Abnett
As is tradition, the newest audiobook in the 40k Gaunt’s Ghosts series dropped and i got it as a day one purchase on Audible. I love Toby Longworth’s narration. This is book 11 in the series. Only one more to go until it catches up and reconnects with existing audiobooks! BUT books #13 and #14 aren’t read by Longworth. I haven’t spent … 90+ hours with his performance as voice of the series to have it switch? I hope they re-record them.
★★★★★
X by Y
I’m nearly finished with my mates book draft. It’s a textbook. Really really interesting. Man, imagine being a student who wants to work in AR/XR storytelling in 2023.
Cybermapping and the Writing of Myth by Paul Jahshan
I started reading this months and months ago, but couldn’t sink my teeth into it. This always happens with late 90’s early 00’s books about the internet. It often feels like they are writing about a foreign country, a forgotten time. But earlier this week I picked it up made a commitment to read 5% every night before bed. And wouldn’t you know, session 2 the book had some thoughts/information that is extremely pertinent to my interests. Also in the footnotes, it has led me to The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet by Margaret Wertheim written in ’99. I’ve just ordered the hardback on e-bay for a quid.
Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry by Jason Schreier
I finished Only in death and started listening to this book on the economics and deep operational flaws in the video games industry. I’m only 10% but the tensions between art and money men that fund it are right at the surface already. I mean … it’s a problem that pervades the entire culture sphere, movies, film, comic, music, books etc. There’s a reason is called an ‘industry’.
Music
thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist
Wallsocket by underscores
I really enjoyed underscores 2021 album boneyard aka fearmonger . But I don’t appear to have written about it on the blog. 2021 was a weird year for everyone. I wonder what new music I chose over and above it? Anyways.
undersrcores’ Hyperpop glitch rave aesthetic tips over in to … ‘Hyperpunk’ more than once on this album. I mean. It honestly sounds like the sort of music that GenZ would make and listen to and that no bad thing! Wallsocket is bursting with ideas, politics, cultural observations and storytelling.
Johnny Johnny Johnny for example is a deeply dark and disturbing hyperpunk singalong anthem
Album opener Cops and Robbers showcases almost everything that’s to come on the album: Pop punk fuse with energetic and bright synths and guitar riffs plus super cathy vocal lines.
One note. April/underscores’ vocal delivery on Wallsocet is bold and full of confidence. Something that I felt was a bit lacking on the debut. I think its an artist now growing into themselves and their identity.
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