The light is brittle;
Shadows fall quickly.
A season out of step with itself.
Attention bends.
The clock insists,
but the body knows otherwise.
Turning of Attention
I seem to have been talking a good deal about the weather in these weeknotes of late, and this week is no different. The forecast says it will be fine again next weekend, which is nice. The warmth lingers, though the season has already turned its page. ‘Summer’, and as a measure of time, has gone. September begins, and with it the call to return to work, to school, to the rhythm of study. My partner goes back to teaching this week; the term has started once more.
I grew up in the orbit of the school year, not just because I was a pupil, but because my mum, and my aunties and my uncles were all teachers. The household bent itself around that calendar. And so even now, two decades out from university, I cannot escape the sense that September is a time for new beginnings..
January has always struck me as a false start. It arrives too soon after the years end everyone is tired, broke, and it’s dark at four in the afternoon. September, on the other hand, carries momentum. Now time for the harvest, and new pencils, new shoes, new notebooks. August is a kind of epilogue between parts of the school year, before the clock winds on again.
But since i’m not at school any more, and never will be again, September feels like a time for recommitment. A chance to pick things back up, or begin again with a little more focus. If January is about ‘resolutions’, then September is about momentum; carrying forward all the things conceived in the warmth of the year into the darker months ahead.
The task is always the same: to go on, to be faithful to the work one is engaged in, and to meet the turning of the seasons with our own turning of attention.
On The Blog
Talking 301 on Wolf Pod
You may remember that last year I joined Eddie Rathke on Wolf Pod to talk about William Gibson’s Blue Ant Trilogy across three episodes.
A year later, he invited me back.
This time we discussed the conclusion of Permanently Moved’s 301-second format.
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Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
Not much in this week as Eve had the week off.
- Recorded wolf pod this week! I was a guest on one. I was supopsed to record E.C but we rescheduled.
- Research for / on a potential future. Loading the Kindle with pdfs classic
- Only 2 Hours at the games company this week. Working on beta launch stuff for end of the month
- Inhaling the work of someone I met last week. Youtube at 2x etc
- Long call and a did a workshop.
Terminal Access
This 100min long conversation between Aaron and Jason Hickel is well worth your time
Dipping the Stacks
WASPInomics and the magic avocado tree
There are too many variables to factor everything in, but even if Jess is a few thousand per year better off, and even if she banks all of that in savings, it would take her perhaps another 25-30 years to save up a deposit for that average home. In that time, Linda will have paid off her mortgage and seen the asset she owns rise by more than £170k in value. Suddenly Linda, with her crappy salary and miserable 1980s diet, is richer than Jess can imagine. The WASPI tortoise has outraced the millennial hare.
Is this any way to treat a face?
So how do we begin to get our heads around the undetectable era of cosmetic surgery? Honestly I’m not sure. The impact of seeing celebrity after celebrity appear as a mannequin version of their former selves is a mirror to our own appearance; and one that will only ever feel lacking, unless we too partake. But that is where – as we’ve seen – money and access becomes the deciding factor. Do you choose to have a dream trip or have a facelift?
We face paralysis. It is quite probably true that as far as technological innovation is concerned, there is nothing for us but loss in the slipstream. For those of us who grew up with computers, Mr. Berry locates all that is desirable and meaningful behind us.
The majority of models, regardless of their origin, align closely with cultural values characteristic of English-speaking and Protestant European countries. This was surprising, mainly because it went against my initial hypothesis that Chinese LLMs would reflect Confucian values.
Main character syndrome is ruining public spaces
The sad thing is that fulfilling this protagonist character arc actually depends on the interactions and relationships we build in these public spaces. No successful main characters of the film or literary worlds ever became fully self-actualized on their own. It’s through relationships that we get to know ourselves even better.
Reading
I finished The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination by Adam Zeman. I think i’m going to try and get him on Experience.Computer.
I moved on to listening to, and finished Superbloom by Nicholas Carr. I have had it in my Audible library for a while, but have felt quite burnt out by ‘Social Media Discourse’ so haven’t got around to it. It was ‘ok’.
Still reading The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe by Richard Rohr and Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing Pain by John E. Sarno.
Music
Celebration – Midnight Channel
Hadn’t heard of canadian jazz collective Midnight Channel until this week. But i’m happy to have been making my way though their work. My entry point was their new single Celebration. I can only describe it as breakcore jazz with smooth sax? Like venetian snares level drum madness.
Amazing. I bet this band are fucking killer live.
Remember Kids:
At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland
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