Cracks in the surface,
light seeps through,
Stagnant hands, yet visions new.
In chaos, seeds of change are sown,
A silent spark—build the unknown.
HNY 2025
Happy New Year, everyone! I hope UK-based readers are staying safe and dry amidst the grim weather we’ve had since the wheel turned.
As we kick off 2025, I find myself in a reflective space. Most of my year so far—yes, all five days of it—has been spent thinking about and writing my annual year end post for 2024. It’s nearly done and should be up in a few days. It feels like all my thoughts about last year are tucked away neatly in that piece, leaving me a bit hesitant to dive into this year just yet. 2025 feels like it’s shaping up to be a leap of faith—maybe even a Hail Mary. Time will tell.
Instead of peering forward, I want to focus on the present for this first weeknotes post of the year. Fair warning: it’s a bit of a moan, but I feel it’s necessary, not the way I’d like to star the year.
The UK IMO is, for all intents and purposes, in a massive recession—regardless of the optimistic framing from the Bank of England and financial media. Across my wider friendship group and professional network, the scale of layoffs and redundancies is staggering. It feels eerily reminiscent of 2008, another time of economic precarity. Things are not good.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe that five years have passed since I first noted the word pandemic in my diary on January 12, 2020. This half-decade has felt like a protracted liminal state: sclerotic stagnation atop a decade of pointless austerity. Productivity hasn’t meaningfully improved here since the Great Crash. Instead, we’ve seen entrenched systems doubling down on outdated thinking.
The two sectors I’m closest to—tech investment and the arts—are particularly illustrative of this. These fields, populated largely by people who work with computers rather than on them, are weathering their own storms. And here, too, things are not good.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the UK right now is a deep and pervasive incuriosity among those who control the money in these sectors. The lack of vision is staggering. Take grants, for instance: I recently looked into an AI Arts funding opportunity for a project I’m working on, only to discover it required a 50-page form for a maximum of £15,000. I bailed. The effort-to-outcome ratio wasn’t worth it.
What’s maddening is the sheer potential of this moment. Things are moving at breakneck speed—entirely new technologies, mediums, genres, and shared experiences are emerging before our eyes. Yet, there’s little to no opportunity to execute or take advantage of any of it, at least not in the UK. Companies engaged in genuinely innovative work are laying people off in droves, while funders cling to the safety of projects that replicate what already exists. Dynamism is nowhere to be found.
Despite all this, I can’t help but remain optimistic. There’s a firecracker of possibility buried in this moment—a sense that we’re on the cusp of something transformative. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I have a broad (yet oddly specific) set of interests. One of my current obsessions is the intersection of AI and virtual worlds, and I believe there’s untapped potential here for something groundbreaking and very useful. If this piques your interest, get in touch—I’d love to explore the idea further with like-minded folks.
For now, though, I’ll leave it there. I hope your 2025 is off to a better start than the broader state of things.
Let’s see what we can all build amidst the cracks.
Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️
Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
- Organised one meeting with someone for next week.
- Have a talk on the 18th that I need to write (oof)
- Lots to do. So little time to do it.
Terminal Access
Holly was recently interviewed about AI, identity and her work etc on The Future Of You podcast.
Really interesting conversation.
Dipping the Stacks
WhatsApp’s gradual Meta-morphosis over the last few years has drawn sharp criticism from the app’s original team. “It’s a shadow of the product we poured our hearts into, and wanted to build for the world,” Neeraj Arora, a former WhatsApp executive who orchestrated the Facebook deal, wrote in a lengthy LinkedIn post in 2022.
Intel’s Death and Potential Revival
Apple could not only not manufacture an iPhone in the U.S. because of cost, it also can’t do so because of capability; that capability is downstream of an ecosystem that has developed in Asia and a long learning curve that China has traveled and that the U.S. has abandoned.
A Different Way To Think About Ideas on the Internet
Fanfic is one of those things I think has never really gotten the respect it deserves, because it’s often associated with amateur level writing and treated as a cringy juvenile activity that bastardizes an author’s work. But it’s such a HUGE part of culture now
How Video Streamers Conquered the Media
The content creator is addressing a new generation of consumers for whom trust, as Schreier previously noted, isn’t a matter of facts so much as attention.
Mechanical Storytelling in D&D: Strahd in Relation to the Gothic
D&D is a deeply mechanical game. The DM has countless texts at their disposal, including lengthy rules related solely to their role within the game. 1 On the other side of the table, the players have their own individual rules, lists of spells, and enough dice hoarded away to make a dragon jealous.2 This paper shall highlight the mechanical elements of D&D, demonstrating how they interact with and against the vampire tradition.
Reading
I finished Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and the Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte. Wonderful book.
I also finished This Is What Matters by Perpetua NeoThis Is What Matters: A Step-by-Step Workbook for Identifying Your Values, Priorities, and Path Forward after a Crisis by Perpetua Neo which as I wrote on Goodreads: “Unless you have never ever engaged in a shred of self reflection. This book doesn’t matter.”
Still reading:The Ordinal Society, Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World and I recently started Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism by Anna Kornbluh
Music
MØL – Diorama
On NYE I was talking about all the weird anthemic black metal I’ve been listening to recently and the drummer in my band recommended MØL. Diorama is from 2021 but it sounds super fresh. Kind of in the vein of Deafhaven. It’s a nice change of pace as I’ve mostly been listening to Sleep and Iron Monkey so far this new year. lol.
Remember Kids:
It appears telegraph operators have a way of talking together over the wire, knowing little about each other, and nothing at all of their mutual personal appearance. In this manner, Nat became acquainted with a young man whom she knew as ‘C,’ and grew, to speak mildly, interested in him—Now, Nat, you know you did—and so, as I remarked previously, did I—we were introduced over the wire. In fact, he seemed everything that was nice and agreeable, and if we did not actually fall in love with him—you see, I am sharing your glory all I can, Nat—it is a wonder.
Wired Love / a Romance of Dots and Dashes by Ella Cheever Thayer
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