I was at band practice most of today (see below) and I still need to eat dinner and then I need to jump on a call with Dougald Hine to speak with him for his Sunday School Sessions. He wrote a lovely little thing about our friendship and on going dialogues as an intro to the call later. So just a quick one from me today.
Where Interests Take You
I’ve been thinking about how the longer I go from spending time on social media, the more wide open my media diet is becoming. My digital media diet still remains similar as its always been, consuming work by peers and friends. And panning the streams.
But not being on social media has given me so much time and brain space back. It’s all just so nice. So I’ve been reading even more than usual the last few months since I got back from Thailand, and reading across a far broader range of interests.
I’ve added more history of computing books on the TBR pile, I’ve just started The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft by Robert Boynton. And for no reason at all other than this is where my interests are taking me, I’m thinking about reading a biography of Eisenhower I found in Oxfam next.
The main thing I’m noticing is the pivot to long form. perhaps I want this to define the rest of my year. Blog posts are better than tweets, but books beat everything. There is something about a long sustained argument and unfolding of narrative that I find super appealing as an antidote to the speed of the social web.
Solarpunk seems to be a bit of a theme for me this year, so I’m going to me make it a focus. I’d like to re-engage with some of the recent pop literature on climate and ecosystems restoration etc – I stopped reading it all in 2020.
Can anyone recommend something good? Comments open below.
Forest Bed
My band Forest Bed is playing the legendary Whats Cookin’ in Leytonstone on Wednesday (24th)!!!
We’re supporting Scott Mickelson, who is over from the USA on tour. His first album was Grammy Balloted so its a real honour to be opening up for him in London! It’s our first support slot opening for a out of big out of town band, so we’re going to do our best to do London’s alt-folk-rock / cosmic Americana scene proud! (admittedly its a small scene).
Another date for your diaries, is we’ll be playing Lambstock 2024 in Surbiton on the 1st June. No times or details yet, but its one of the best weekends of live music in my local area. Come down and hang out south of the river!
Permanently Moved
Little Wars of the Worlds
A review of HG Wells’ most important work, Little Wars. The book that changed the way table top war games were played and paved the way for the development of role-playing and modern war games.
Full Show Notes: https://www.thejaymo.net/2024/04/20/2405-little-wars-of-the-worlds/
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Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
- Started the edit/re-write of part 2 of Writing The Impossible Object essay
- Wrote a big PDF on the ‘state of things’ for a compnay I may be involved with
- Recorded TWO experience.computer interviews
- Band practice
- Prepped for Call with Dougald
- Started work my Solarpunk Talk for June
- Calls. So many calls that are leading no where work wise 🙁
Terminal Access
Dré Labre over at Design Fiction Daily has just released a super nice Comfy UI tool for stable diffusion called Trace Transform:
a versatile tool for supercharging one’s imagination, it can be used to speed up your creative workflow and come up with some novel future imaginings to inspire design fiction.
Dre and I have chatted a few times about stable diffusion workflows and its really cool to see that his has become robust enough to become a product!
Dipping the Stacks
“We have done an emergency expansion to the GM’s team,” Baskin said. “He’s only one guy, and he was just not sleeping. I remember over the launch weekend, he was sending me messages at 4am because we were the only ones still awake.”
Baskin went on to say that Joel has “a lot of advisors.”
Walden Pond is a little paper zine that comes once a month in the mail ✉. It’s full of a selection of the articles you’ve saved to Pocket, so you know that you’re interested in everything inside.
Seems cool?
Who Killed Prestige TV? Toward a “Good Fan” Theory of Television ‹ Literary Hub
Peak TV draws its audience in to a Spotified relationship to art. For a low, low price, lightly bundled streamers offer personalization in lieu of experimentation. And even when new ground seems broken, TV is undercut by the binging style of its consumption.
Interview with Raph Koster: The Declaration of Rights of Avatars – Fieldnotes from the Metaverse
From the beginning everybody intuitively spoke about virtual worlds as places. Nobody thought of them as being like a party line call. Nobody thought of them as being pieces of software. We casually spoke about “being there.” Everything was using metaphors of ”placeness”, of movement, of embodiment, but none of the legal views reflected that.
While the Sweet Baby conspiracy theory has picked up steam among larger content creators in recent weeks – leading to trending topics on Twitter and millions of views on YouTube – many of those who’ve propagated it over the past few months demonstrably have no idea how game development works.
Reading
I finished The Essential Letters 1936 – 2004 by Alistair Cooke. I grew up with Cooke on the radio, on a Sunday morning both Mum and Dad were big fans. Its a mammoth audiobook, but well worth a listen. I can’t get over his 2,869 broadcasts over nearly 58 years. What an achievement. I thought 250+ eps of 301 was good going! lol
I fired up The Chapter’s Due by Graham McNeill. Book 6 and currently the last book in the Ultramarines series focused on the space marine Uriel Ventris. Its more of the same pulpy 40k nonsense. LOL.
I started reading The Breathing Book: A Practical Guide to Natural Breathing by Brad Thompson on my kindle this week. Been on there for ages since it was referenced in the Feldenkrais book I read a while ago. It is quite a good practical book, aimed at western people who have never really encountered other breathing modalities.
Also started The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft by Robert Boynton.
Music
Claire Rousay – Sentiment
I guess the album of the week is Swift’s desperate ongoing attempt to become lana del ray, but the album that I’ve had the most conversations about is Claire Rousay’s (previously on the blog) emo album Sentiment
It’s the inevitable fusion of the current emo revival and the ambient trends in contemporary electronica. Low midwest riffs, strings, autotuned vocals and vocoda’s. It’s dreamy and shoegazy. Tracks also incorporate birdsong and other field recordings.
Headline track on the album is probably lover’s spit plays in the background:
But I also have a real soft spot for please 5 more minutes (feat. Lala Lala). its wonderful octave guitar parts, synth, field recordings and autotune.
She’s playing at the ICA next month on the 29th. I think I might grab a ticket and go ticket for one – unless anyone is up for coming with me?
Remember Kids:
“The future is a safe, sterile laboratory for trying out ideas in, a means of thinking about reality, a method.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
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