Turnstones

I can’t belive its MAY. It feels like only yesterday that I got back from Sri Lanka. With every passing year, it feels like life is accelerating, but then again, so are events.

It’s Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK, so projects are on hold. The GF went to Scotland on Friday to see some friends for two nights, and rather than be on my Jack I went back down to The Chalk. I was only at home a couple of weeks ago for Easter, but in between then and now, my parents have been to Hong Kong and Taiwan and back to see my younger brother. So we had a lot to catch up on.

When I got back on Friday mum asked me what I wanted to do whilst I was home, and the two things I wanted to do were; sit on the beach in the sunshine and, go for a walk along a specific part of the coast. So we did both!

Very nice! Also saw some Ruddy Turnstone’s along the sea wall as the tide was coming in:

Today being bank holiday Monday, I’ve done a bunch of domestic things around the house. Once i’ve posted this I’m going to read my book with a cup of tea.

SSRZ15: Monsters in the Mirror

This zine contains the full essay transcript alongside an introduction and afterword written exclusively for print, material that doesn’t exist in the audio. 36 pages. A5.

Buy on Etsy

Properly printed on heavy stock with thick covers. Hand stamped twice, copy number and FOG logo. This is remaining stock after the print run for my paid subscribers. Once they’re gone, they’re are gone. £18 + shipping worldwide

CAVEAT EMPTOR: International zines are posted with full customs declarations as printed booklets. Depending on your country, local VAT, customs, or handling fees may be due on arrival.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Drafted the spine / argument of the whole of Episode 303 of permanently moved. Just need to write it now.
• Had a long workshop/call about the idea of ‘industrial coordination arbitrage’. Meaning there’s a competitive advantage to re-engineering or figuring a potential customer (or competitor’s) AI model provider and the system prompts of the business. “I know I can sell to you better if I know your infra’s thinking patterns” Inspired by this article on how LLMs prefer to sniff their own farts

Terminal Access

Woke up this morning to a pingback from Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden on this fantastically hypertext dense post: Aura through the Cult of Self: opportunity creates authenticity. It’s very much worth your time, i came away with a lot of thoughts and seeds of ideas.

In our modern, individualist culture, self-expression has become “not just a moral requirement, but a teleological one,” writes Tara Isabella Burton. “It is what we, as human beings, are for.” Rather than inheriting our identity from our roles in society as we did in the past, today we are each responsible for constructing our own identity. And so, writes Byung-Chul Han, “the production of self becomes a permanent activity.”

Importantly, we must construct our identity both for ourselves and for others. In On Photography, Susan Sontag explains that our culture believes that “images possess the qualities of real things,” but viewers apply this logic in reverse and “attribute to real things the qualities of an image.” Because of this interpretive transference, we can use images to create our selves online, irrespective of physical reality or ownership.

Reading

I’m reading Henryk Jurkowski’s Aspects of Puppet Theatre right now. This book is a ‘classic’ and is on most theatre and puppety syllabi. and i can see why. It’s so interesting! and is one of those books that has totally exploded my thinking into all different directions. No wonder it’s so influential

Still reading The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porete. Alan Chapman told me to read it after a conversation last year, and now I’m beginning to understand why.

On the recommendation of a few friends, I’ve started Listening to Will Of The Many by James Islington. I’m about half way though… its not the book i was expecting… it’s very good, it’s just… had I read the blurb, I wouldn’t have read it.

Denonbu – Ultrarhythm (Single)

I have just discovered Japanese producers Denobu, who have a whole J/Hyper-pop transmedia thing going on. An anime world full of story and key characters combined with a the music side which involves dropping a new single every week on a Thursday. They have an enormous back catalogue and i’ve only scratched the surface so far, but this track is a banger.

Remember Kids:

The post Turnstones appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Easter 26

The Chalk

I hope everybody had a lovely Easter weekend. I went back to the chalk and spent some time with my parents. We did some blustery walks along the coast, and also did an enjoyable, albeit bleak, visit to Richborough Castle. A Roman Fort that at one point, was the site of the biggest triumphal arch in the Roman Empire outside of Rome itself. I haven’t been up there since I was in primary school, so it was a very enjoyable visit and a good use of my freshly renewed English Heritage membership. The visitors centre there is full of cool stuff, and features a curated collection of finds from excavations at the site.

I did open my laptop while I was at home, as I had some computational tasks using my daily AI API credit allowance, I didn’t actually spend all that much time at my computer. As I just wanted to spend time hanging out with my parents: going for walks, participating in chaotic church raffles after the Easter service, going to the food fair, and doing odd jobs around the house involving lifting as my Dad’s recent hernia operation is still heals up.

Doom Eternal

The one thing I did do however, was play a lot of Doom Eternal on my Switch 2 whilst I was at home. I’ve owned it for years, but it was basically unplayable and extremely crashy. But it now runs like a dream on the new hardware. I dread to think how many hours I put into the game over the last five days, in the evenings and during the day, drinking cups of tea while mum and dad had the TV on. I’m nearly nearly done with it. I’m just working my way through the last level.

I have decided that Doom Eternal is a ‘good game’, it’s not quite as fun or innovative as Doom 2016. And I don’t find the gameplay loop as satisfying as the original reboot. Initially, I found the increased agility, double jumps, and rushing elements in the movement annoying, as it didn’t ‘feel’ like a Doom game to me. But now I’m however many hours in, I’ve accepted it as part of the affordances provided by the game world..

The game is also far less confusing in terms of wayfinding than the 2016 predecessor. I don’t find myself getting lost as essay. It’s not quite “yellow paint” guidance, but the green light storytelling is very useful for intuiting where you’re supposed to go. I also enjoy the interplay between the first lines of sight and the locations of the hidden secrets satisfying in terms of exploration. Anyway, I didn’t expect to write about my Easter weekend, and end up with a review of Doom Eternal, a six-year old game.

Yes, I spent a lot of time with Doom on my Switch at home, but it was the time I spent with my parents was the best bit of being home. It’s so nice to see them, hang out, and be a part of their world for a couple of days.

Slop Machines

I used both my train journeys from and back to London to work work on Slop Machines and more or less finished the first draft finished; excluding the final chapter. The last chapter on the Slop Machine itself will probably be another 10,000 words of so. But I want to do an editing pass first. I plan to go though the chapters sequentially from start to finish, and make notes as I go about what I’m going to say in the final chapter based on the preceding arguments that make up the bulk of the book.

It’s funny, even though I’ve just got to where I am with the first draft, at its peak, the document was about 75k words. Even before the edit i’ve cut so much stuff out of it already; multiple side quests that interest me, but aren’t necessarily relevant to the argument that I’m trying to build throughout the book. Anyway, I’m extremely pleased.

I’m only three months late with it than I had initially planned. But it is what it is. The original Points and Gestures talk with the same name was given back in December of 2024! And as a result I feel like the ground I’m covering in the text is already out of date. Well after I had initially had these thoughts. 

Monsters in the Mirror is, in fact, a prelude or prequel to Slop Machines. Covering a much wider span of time and history than the book does, which allowed me to get the wider frame of my thoughts in order, and that really helped and benefited the book itself.

Speaking of Monsters in the Mirror, because of the bank holidays, getting the zine issues back from the printer has been slightly delayed. But as soon as they arrive, I’ll be shipping them, hopefully this coming weekend.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Finished the first draft of Slop Machines!
• did a great deal of personal and life admin, prepared for my tax return, and generally got my affairs in order.
• I had an interesting conversation over email about my “Hard Worlds For Little Guys” series.
• I also have several other outstanding emails and correspondence I need to respond to.
• In my capacity as an advisor, I worked half a day alongside someone to get to to the bottom of some weirdness between subscriber recurring revenue and the reconciliation between different data sources.

Terminal Access

IYB Robotson Is back in the host chair of his podcast, Neomania.

The newest episode is about DIY Food Futures and Synthetic Ecology with @cyber_plantae from Futurespore. I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you haven’t done so already, you can check out my appearance on show here!

Reading

I finished the audiobook of Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky on the tube. It’s Book #4 in the Children of Strife series. It’s fantastic. I think this whole series is some of the best of contemporary sci-fi. Really enjoyed it.

Last night I finished The Heart of Prayer by Rupert Spira. Another great entry in his The Essence of Meditation series.

Rounds – Four Tet

For some reasons, perhaps stuck down with the affliction or disease known as nostalgia I’ve ben listening to Rounds by Four Tet. It’s really hard to belive that it came out 23 years ago.

Remember Kids:

The post Easter 2026 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Nice To See You

I went back to the chalk at the weekend to see my parents. The main mission was to top and tail my last visit back in November when I got the Christmas stuff down from the loft for them. This visit I took all the boxes back up again.

But, I also went to a friend’s birthday whilst I was there and had a lot of conversations with people I haven’t seen since my early 20s. Fun, but a bit strange. It meant I had a dozen or so variations on the same conversation:

Them: “Hi Jay! nice to see you!”
Me: “You too! So then, what’s happened with you in the last TWENTY YEARS?”
Them: “Same!”

It’s the sort of question that feels like an assault on your sense of narrative identity. The gap between the lived density of a life and socially acceptable summary is … weird. Also, given the context of who you used to be the last time you knew each other, and everything that has happened, what do you say?

You can’t explain who you’ve become to people who only knew the “before” version of you. You can’t hand someone the texture of your inner life or explain how your values or sense of self has shifted without sounding like you’re giving a TED Talk in a kitchen doorway at a houseparty.

Most of us I think choose the “socially acceptable summary” in this situation. We compress twenty years of mess and growth into a few “milestones.” But standing there, reciting my life’s highlights multipul times inside of an hour, I realised the summary only works in the past tense.

It might be just my Aphantasia and SDAM talking ,but this sort of summary turns your life into a sequence of closed chapters. You end up talking about yourself as if you’re a character in a book you just finished reading. Like a narrator giving an account of someone else’s adventures.

I really enjoyed the party, but it’s left me with a lot to think about. I think I’d like to speak to my friends about their own narrative identity and how they experience it.

On The Blog

2025 – Annual Review

After skipping my reflections on 2024 last year, I realised at some point during 2025 that writing these ‘year in review‘ things on here have become quite important ritual for me.

It is after all how the blog more or less got started way back in 2012, and without it, my year feels somewhat ‘unarchived’, the previous year bceoms a collection of events without a cohesive narrative put down and published.

I sat down last week intending to write this in one shot, but it quickly became a 5,000-word monster

Big shout out to everyone thats shared this, or been in touch! glad its helped deepen thinking etc

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Wrote my 2025 year in review post (see above)
• Wrote a conference abstract – call tomorrow about it with an *actual* expert
• Wrote and submitted a solarpunk talk/session proposal for a UK conference in the summer
• Final edit on 1/10th 302.
• More calls with folks experiencing vibe coding mania lol

Terminal Access

Andrew Dana Hudson has a new story out “Pursuant to the Agreement” which can be found in the ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination anthology Our Radioactive Neighbors. Here’s what ADH had to say about it:

My group got interested in that bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, and we devised a story, told in documents, about trying to keep such a facility going over decades — decades in which America experiences a profound political crisis that sees the breakup of the Union. Back in 2023 this “Great American Fracture” felt like a distant possibility.

Reading

I finished reading King of Dogs by Andrew Edwards. It’s one of the best fiction novels I’ve read in ages. Its full/total operator competency porn but absolutely like nothing I’ve ever read in the genre. The main character is a fascinating person to spend time with inside their head. Also, this book has one of the best and most realistic feeling chase scenes I’ve ever read.

As a Soviet-style collapse unfolds in America, Grayson, equal parts philosopher and warrior but legitimately neither, makes a death-bed promise to watch over a couple with a child on the way. Driven by his own severe loss, he must make good on his promise, and carry the psychic consequences as he races headlong into the fallout of our imploding civilization. Set in the hallucinatory desert southwest, populated with hunter-killer teams, awash with refugees, third-country mercenaries, and hostile, conspiring elites, King of Dogs pits the beauty of language and western philosophical ideals against the deep depravity and violent decay of our times.

IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing!

Post-Metal noise rock isn’t for everyone. But this album is for me. IAN are an immensely powerful riff band from London. The whole album is a mix of crunchy grinding doom riffs, screaming vocals and violin which come together in a way that i can only describe as foggy, or maybe that moment when the bechamel goes gloopy in the pan.

This track rules.

Remember Kids:

The post Nice To See You appeared first on thejaymo.net.

The Skies Over Thanet

I went home to The Chalk this weekend. My brother has been home from Taiwan for a wedding this week, and it’s my Dads birthday on Wednesday, so it was wonderful to be around the whole family.

Went for a walk along Palm Bay into margate of the first evening and I had to make this little image macro with this quote from JMW Turner. The skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe

When I still had my alt/lit poetry blog on Tumblr in the early 2010’s this is the sort of thing I used to make. LOL. But .. I mean he was not wrong though was he?

Also, I bought a cool hat!

Though Eve tell’s me that the full stop/period feels quite aggressive lol.

Today we had a family outing which involved sitting in enormous traffic jam on the M25, and then dropping my brother off at Heathrow for his flight home. Its been a bit of a whirlwind weekend.

On The Blog

Everything is Fine, Exit Through the Casino

I wrote a bit about the Coinbase advert that since posting, has been banned on TV here in the UK for being ‘too political’. This post has done quite well on socials, you should read it.

The Coinbase campaign is effective because it’s speaking to the public’s justified anger, and explicitly names the rot that we have all been told to ignore: a nation that’s been economically frozen since 2008. But it channels us away from collective political questions and towards individual financial risk.

As good as “Everything is Fine” is, the ad’s satirical despair is basically a marketing funnel for its preferred solution: “exit through the casino.” It reframes systemic failure as an opportunity for a personal gamble.

July 2025 | Photo 365

Photo 365 2025. Year 4 Month 7. Photo-a-day for the month of Jul 2025.

And I continue to post my Hundred Notes on Storydwelling over on my leaflet.pub BYENNE blog every other day.

The world was already talking.

You just walked in.

Late.

Unbriefed.

Yet still responsible.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Finished the restructure of Part IV in SLOP MACHINES. Editing this has been vexing me for weeks and I think I finally cracked it!
• Sent some more experience.computer emails and now i’m trying to organise dates.
• Going on Neomania pod next week will post about it when it’s out.
• I think i’ll also be back on wolf pod at some point soon, probably recording later this month. W/C 18th. Gonna talk about finishing 301, that whole process, what i’ve learnt, where i think social media is, and what’s next.
• Nearly finished this post about CLIPPY. I need to get this history out so I can just blog about things that are coming out using the terms and ideas for reference.
• Continue to ‘Degoogle’ my monthly ‘scrtach pad’ documents. Moving them into Obsidian. By the date the entries were created. Did a lot on the train on Friday, copy pasting.
• Finished up the design and layout for a marketing PDF for the game i’ve been working on at work. Finally can move on to other things and other projects.

Terminal Access

This article on how AI CAPEX is propping up the US economy is really worth reading. I think it speaks to why we aren’t going to see any serious regulation any time soon, and also why there’s a big race. As soon as the build out is done, all this spend/economic activity is gonna fall off the GPD books and in to day to day OPEX.

I have no idea what’s going to happen next. But if AI investment is so massive that it’s quite actually helping to prop up the US economy in a time of growing stress, what happens if the AI stool does get kicked out from under it all?

I personally, have just started thinking about the huge AI build out as an enormous economic stimulus / or bailout of the country by Silicon Valley, and is probably why they were all at the inauguration.

Reading

I finished reading two books this week: Tight Hip, Twisted Core by Christine Koth is an interesting look at the trunk and core muscles in particular the Iliacus in the pelvis. It points out that many long term issues around the body, shoulder pain, knee pain etc etc are biomechanically downstream of the core. For example, down in the foot almost all bunions are caused by a tight muscle somewhere way up in the hip/abdomen.

I listened to The Silent King by Guy Haley and burnt though it mostly on train commutes. Book 9 in Dawn of Fire series. I can’t wait to see how they bring this slightly eclectic series together in the last book out late this year.

Moving on from those two books i’ve started reading The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe by Richard Rohr. I’ve listened to so many lectures by Rohr on Youtube, or podcast interviews over the years that this book has been on my list for ages. However, I only feel ready to read it now.

Moving on from the twisted core book i’ve started reading Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing Pain by John E. Sarno the classic from the late 90’s. Only just started it so no opinions yet.

After I finished reading the warhammer book I was doing some tidying up in my audible app and I found No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz. I’ve read a bunch of IFS books, and don’t remember buying this one with a credit on Audible? So i’m listening to it now. Forward is by Alanis Morissette, fun!

Misaki Umei – Asleep Above Creatures

It came up in my Bandcamp recommendations on Monday and wow it’s just incredible.

I’ve have fallen head over heels in love with this album by Japanese Jazz composer Misaki Umei. It just has so much stuff in it! jazz, pop, breakbeats, soundscapes, classical, punk. But not one feels out of place at all, nor does it feel like genre hopping. Its all integrated into the vision of the album.

I think everyone should give this a spin, regardless of what genre of music you like.

Remember Kids:

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June 21, 2025

|

Permanently Moved 🔊 | Politics ⚖️ | The Chalk ♘

If life already feels precarious on your own high street, then a city like London must be ten times worse? 

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2025/06/21/2515-no-go-london/

Experience.Computer: https://experience.computer/
Worldrunning.guide: https://worldrunning.guide/
Subscriber Zine support the show! https://startselectreset.com/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

Subscribe to the Podcast: https://permanentlymoved.online/

No-Go London

Over the last few months I’ve been having a conversation with someone about why, exactly, “London is over/a bleak woke dystopia” has become the big talking point on the right. For many, London in their imaginary is some kind of end-times mash-up of: Blade Runner, stabbings, TikTok teens in ramen restaurants and roads blocked permanently by Just Stop Oil.

A view that when interrogated I think, tells us far more about life outside the capital than about the city itself.

First, The biggest burst of dislocation I have felt about the decline of this country wast not on a night bus through central, but back home in Thanet. 

With it’s seaside towns full of boarded shops, chain coffee shops and disappearing bus routes.

Over Easter a family friend, retired,  muttered over a mug tea that the town had tipped into violence; no police, no manners.

Later, walking in the Old Town, two cars locked bumpers. Drivers were out, shouting, slapping bonnets; passers by spilling out and joining in. The next day through a restaurant window, I watched a BMW cut off a young couple crossing the road. One pedestrian shouted, and the driver hit the brakes and got out, forehead to forehead with a guy shouting “you want some?” 

A lorry-driver, stuck, ended up getting out and playing referee until the driver moved on. 

My parents say these flare-ups are now routine. Maybe the pandemic fried everyone’s fuse. There’s anomie in the air. 

Right now, at home, there’s a dispersal order in place after a brawl in the same street. Thrown bottles, and smashed windows. Yet flip on the news and this sort of mayhem is always somewhere else; a stabbing in Hackney followed by a clip of Sadiq Khan looking concerned. An age based dispersal curfew aimed at young people is almost unimaginable in London, but they have been normal outside the M25 for decades.

If life already feels precarious on your own high street, then London must seem ten times worse. 

“London is Over” is a narrative fault-line.  

English culture has never quite trusted the capital. Blame Hogarth; blame the Victorian penny dreadfuls; blame Dickens if you like. The metropolis plays the villain because stories need a face; and London, unlike a declining business park in Essex, is a ready-made psychic landmark. Add in its diverse population and the scene is set. A convenient Other to shoulder the nations anxieties.

Yes, London has some grim statistics; but so do Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham. Yet overall, crime is down. 

Meanwhile, rural crime costs farmers millions, emergency response times in the sticks are way up, and deaths of despair peak in coastal towns. Plus you don’t get regular mass brawls on the beach in London.

The countryside and suburbs in my opinion just fails to film well. Distance matters, but cameras matter more. I made an episode 5 years ago about how the media and outside of London. It’s more urgent than ever. Camera crews can reach Soho in twenty minutes; but they need hours and a packed lunch to get to Eastbourne. So the capital always wins for airtime.

Older boomers, more rural with patchier broadband absorb a loop of London violence on TV. Whilst younger users in the city watch something else online.

Auntie May in the village watches the BBC at 6pm and scrolls Facebook between her soaps: and the algorithm serves her the same knife-attack clip twice.

Back in the 70s, Gerbner called this mean-world syndrome: the more TV you swallow, the nastier the world looks. In Britain 2025, the mean world is in our pockets with us all the time. The villains are migrants, eco-warriors, gender-neutral baristas. But strip those urban images away and the anxiety out in the shires, beyond the screen has nowhere obvious to land.

Projection does useful work. If your GP’s down to one doctor, the last bank replaced by a Costa, and there’s an hour’s wait for an ambulance, it’s neater to insist that things must be worse in London. 

So a loop forms: rural unease fuels anti-city talk; national media pumps London footage; Facebook pages ad YouTubers monetise the churn. The capital’s imperfections—and its migrants—become catch-all explanations.

Strangers sell stories. And London has a big cast. Racial characters are handed an old script: once it was the gin-soaked mother; today it’s second-gen teens with Caribbean or Somali roots. Same scaffold; same role.

London isn’t paradise; it’s expensive, noisy, and very unequal. But the portrayal of the capital collapsing under the weight of rainbow flags, vegan burgers is theatre. 

Meanwhile the real rot nibbles away in places where buses stop at 8pm and the mobile signal dies on the high street.

Politicians also know this. And “Take back our streets” polls well with the over-55s, but the problem is, they only ever visit the shopping centre out of town. 

If we insist on villains, let us at least try to choose systemic ones; under-funded services, hollowed out local economies, first past the post in local government. Blaming London (or the people who give it its colour) is as empty as shouting at the sea. 

It fills airtime, gets clicks, but changes nothing on the ground.

I’m not sure what to do about it, I have no advice. But I do know that if you start looking around at your own high street, instead of across at the city’s dark and ominous skyline, the fear will fade. Because the real work, as ever, lies at home.

The post No-Go London | 2515 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Back for a Speech

In my defence, every single weekend in May I have something on, both days! So busy! But last week was particularly busy.

I had several important deadlines, including closing out a project I’ve been working on for nine months. The final report was delivered on Friday, though I’m expecting to do a few editing rounds this week. But the good news is we can now move on to whats next/ other things.

This week I also had a couple of late nights working on my SLOP MACHINES essay text, which started life before Christmas as a talk. The first third of the current 30k words now feels properly edited and in a somewhat fixed and final form. Interestingly, the process of editing the opening ideas is actually informing things that still need to be written later on/further down the text.

Those late nights were of course unplanned. I thought I’d just do 20 minutes of editing on a short section before bed, but I ended up dropping into ‘the zone’, into some deep work, and doing far more than I’d intended. Going to bed really late quite brain dead. Not that I mind — the only downside is being tired the next day.

The weekend just gone was also busy. And when I got home on Sunday after meeting people on Southbank en route home i was exhausted and went straight to bed basically.

Anyways, I went down to The Chalk on Saturday morning because my dad was stepping down as president of a club he is a member of (after his year position was up) and he had to give a speech. So I was at home for the annual ‘dinner and dance’ up at the golf club. It was me, my Mum, Dad, my Auntie Jackie, and their neighbour Mike.

It was a really enjoyable evening but I might have taken the raffle a bit too seriously. And I still didn’t win shit!

Sunday morning we went on a long walk around the coast and that was super nice too. Though it’s in the low 20’s here in London and mid Teens at home! so I had to borrow a jacket off my dad LOL

Then I went back just after lunch. Thing is, trains were a nightmare all weekend in both directions. ‘m currently in the painful process of trying to get delay repay. Timetable changes and engineering works and safety inspections meant it took one and a half times longer to get from A to B. Finally back in London, as I said I stopped off in Southbank and had a beer and dinner there.

Today (Monday) has been busy too. I’ve had a few appointments this morning, which is unusual for a Monday. But the sun has been shining, so I can’t complain.

It’s going to be another busy week — friends’ weddings, meetings, birthdays, project kickoffs. And hopefully, I’ll find the time to keep working on the text.

Permanently Moved

Be Generous Online

https://permanentlymoved.online/

Generosity is the protocol that transforms the web from a collection of isolated ‘contents’ into a thriving, interconnected community.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2025/05/17/2511-be-generous-online/

Experience.Computer: https://experience.computer/
Worldrunning.guide: https://worldrunning.guide/
Subscriber Zine! https://startselectreset.com/

Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

Subscribe to the Podcast: https://permanentlymoved.online/

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Finalised the first 8k words of my SLOP MACHINES text!!!
• Sent off the RED TEAM report (finally)
• Finished research into print firms i’m going to use for the new bigger zines.
• Loads of meetings booked for next week. Another super busy week
  • Call about some work done in 2023/24
  • Interview about the last 10 years of Ethereum

Terminal Access

After Sjef’s grand announcement back in January that he was returning to blogging, he’s back with a fantastic guide to watching ‘The Perfect Amount of Star Wars’.

Most of us have watched too much Star Wars. If you have watched zero Star Wars, congratulations! You have watched a perfect amount of Star Wars. Try not to be fucking annoying about it. This is however, the rock-bottom tier in perfect amounts of Star Wars watching. Maybe though, you would actually like to watch some Star Wars? You may have previously been deterred by annoying fans or cartoon bullshit, and that’s fair. But now there’s Andor, and you have a unique opportunity to watch a perfect amount of Star Wars, in perfect order, with zero cartoon bullshit. Ok almost zero cartoon bullshit.

Reading

I’m still reading Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation by Mark J.P. Wolf.

Fire Blossom – Yaarrohs // edIT

edIT has a new single out! A Collab with Yaarrohs (who featured vocals on the The Glitch Mob’s Love Death Immortality album over a decade ago).

Its an edIT track. What is there to say? no notes! mood, tone, everything is pitch perfect. Gonna be on my summer playlist. It’s walking places music.

Remember Kids:

The post Back for a Speech appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Easter ’25

I went back down to the chalk on Wednesday last week and spent the time at home with my parents. Really blessed by the weather. It was supped to rain the whole time but it was really nice! The whole time back home was packed. We went to the theatre, I went to the dentist, we went out to dinner, I saw some family, we went to Canterbury and bumped into my Uncle Michael randomly in the high street lol, and also walked round the Cathedral, we visited Walmer Castle (saw Wellingtons Boots) and it’s gardens. Made several trips down the town for coffee, went to church, did some sea wall walks and popped into the Easter food festival.

So now I’m back in London, I’m looking forward to throwing myself back home into the normal routine for rest!

I was going to write a whole thing here this week, I had all the bullet points in my head. I was going to write it on train back from the chalk. But in the event, when I did get on the train back to London today, I sat down at an empty page in my word processor and just typed for an hour and twenty mins. It was just a huge brain dump, writing at the speed of thought. Writing is thinking, and it turned out that I had a whole bunch of thinking to do.

I really wish that this had been explained to me when I was younger. Perhaps it was, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. But I feel so much better for having exloaded a bunch of stuff on to the page. There are a few ideas in there that might become something – maybe not. But they are out of my head now. Once the ideas hit the page, they change shape. Sometimes they evaporate and go nowhere. Other times they calcify into something solid and worth taking further. Most of the time they’re just… dust. But either way, I’ve cleared the decks now.

One of the things I decided returning to the theme of last weeks post is that i’m actually going to drop one of the writing projects I have going and just focus on the one thing until its done. At least to first complete end to end draft anyway. The less there is to split my attention across the better.

That’s the update this week. Had a nice time at home. Did a bunch of thinking on the train No neat conclusions, just a quieter desk and a little more room to think.

On The Blog

AI UX: Pixel Agents, Talking Cars, and Moving Eyes

I wrote about some of the novel agent interfaces I’m seeing emerging.

There’s a meaning crisis going on, which means there is a gaping emotional void waiting to be filled by a good listener that’s found in the safety of a car. Some people, especially men, already love their cars. What happens when the car appears to care for them back?

Her becomes a lot more plausible when the AI you fall in love with is also a car.

Both Doug Belshaw over at Thought Shrapnel, and Patrick Tanguay at Sentiers Newsletter had nice things to say about this post. Click through to see their additions to this conversation.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Worked on SLOP MACHINES essay
• Worked on WRITING THE IMPOSSIBLE OBJECT essay
• Noodled 2k words into ON MEDITATION
• Updated worldrunning.guide to a new version. Added ‘Leaving Worlds Behind’ and many new items to the glossary
• 9 Hours production work
• 2h consulting calls
• Got given a quest

Terminal Access

Recommend this piece in the New Yorker by Kyle Chayka on Recession Indicators

In a follow-up essay that Lau co-wrote, he argued that the startup boom of the two-thousands created a culture of convenience and an appearance of innovation that has now dwindled: “a generation of youth are experiencing a brutal realization that nobody is coming to rescue them.”

Reading

Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan – Overspill Estates

Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan has a new EP out. According to the liner notes Overspill Estates contains tracks that for a long time were on last years album Your Community Hub. It’s more ambitious retro futurism. I love it.

Remember Kids:

The post Easter ’25 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Xmas 2024

I got back from The Chalk yesterday evening after a wonderful week back home at my parents house. It was a super chill week at home, saw my Uncle, went on some nice walks and ate way too much shortbread and trifle. I think I’ve put on a kilo in less than a week. LOL.

My brother arrived back from Taiwan into Heathrow on the 27th, but due to a huge accident on the M26 we the family basically spent a whole day doing the round trip collecting him from the airport. But all was well, and it was lovely to see him before I came back to London.

Currently prepping for NYE – what a weird year it’s been. Spent the train ride back re-reading my Year End posts – Wondering what to write about my life 2024.

Permanently Moved

Permanently Moved is a 301-second personal podcast, written, recorded, and edited by @thejaymo.

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The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Obsidian Copy Pasting
• Notes
• Zine #12 production
• Taking a Break

Terminal Access

Who gets shipped and why? A fantastic data driven piece from one of my favourite websites/outlets: pudding.cool

Fanfic originated out of fandoms that catered to men, which naturally led to more ships with characters who were men. Repeated exposure to men protagonists makes their perspective the default, leading to lots and lots of non-men writing about characters who are men.

These genres also appeal to women, nonbinary, and queer authors because they allow them to flip the script from the heteronormative, straight, mainstream perspective.

Media grounded in historically men-dominated genres can adopt the internalized machismo or homophobia one might expect from a high school sports team. Haikyuu, an anime about a high school boy’s volleyball team, is one of the most popular fandoms for romantic ideation, despite having virtually no romance at all in the source material.

Reading

I got Saints: A New Legendary of Heroes, Humans and Magic by Amy Jeffs for Christmas and have been working my way though that for most of the betwixmas.

I just today finished listening to Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee. Amazing book – so well researched it’s insane.

Still reading:The Ordinal Society, Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, and Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and the Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte – though should have this finished by the new year.

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – Your Community Hub

A sort of 70s utopian electronic revival album .

It’s all a bit Tangerine Dream while embedding a distinctly British nostalgia. The album feels like a sonic time capsule, 70s optimism with its lush, pulsating synthscapes and vintage timbres. There’s also a touch of British Rail’s “The Age of the Train” soundtracks in its atmosphere.

The whole album is a masterpiece of ambitious retro futurism. I listened to it on the train though Kent at Dusk yesterday.

Remember Kids:

The post Xmas 2024 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Wrapping Things Up

I spent most of last week wrapping things up for Christmas. Both literally and figuratively.

Much of the year has been put to bed already, I have a couple of things left on the ‘to do list’ that I may or may not get too before the new year. One thing I’m definitely not going to get done by the new years is the ‘Great Obsidian’ migration.

As I said last week, I’m currently in the middle of centralising all my notes from notion, drafts, google docs etc. I’m just trying to do a little bit every day to feel like I’m making progress – but I feel like I’m going to be at this for quite some time.

I started reading How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens the other day. I’m sort of flying though it as .. I am a compulsive note taker anyways, and i’ve used OneNote, Tiddlywiki and Notion at various times in my life. The main thing i’m reading it for, is the later discussion about the ‘System’. One thing I’ve taken away already is that I don’t need to get everything into Obsidian. Just all the notes for the projects that are in flight and might prove useful. What I need to do is have a system moving forward.

But all that can wait. I’m back home on The Chalk for Christmas and am really looking forward to being switched off for a couple of days. Before I left London, Eve and I had a little Christmas party and opened our presents to one another. She got me the Folio Society edition of Children of Dune, to go with the other editions she’s given me over the years.

Another incredible hardback:

I hope you all have a lovely break/week ahead!

On The Blog:

Been a busy week on the blog, also a big shout out to Patrick at Sentiers newsletter for linking to the Patchwork post below:

When preparing the newsletter, I almost skipped over this one by Jay Springett, since it’s nominally about Midjourney’s new Patchwork product, which I thought might be too niche for too many readers. Thankfully I changed my mind, since Jay actually spends more time on Frank Herbert and Max Barnard’s book Without Me You’re Nothing (1980), which aimed to “to demystify personal computing for a ‘computing-curious’ audience.

Without You, Patchwork is Nothing

I’ve seen a lot of (predictable) grumbling about Patchwork online from artists, authors etc. But, to me the tool feels like a big step towards Herbet’s Author’s Computer.

In the book Herbert spends considerable time describing features that are now standard in all word processors: dictionaries, spell check, grammar tools, note-taking, and organisation. He even predicts more specialised features of writing tools like Scrivener:

Apple Intelligence Is Fine

I just got Apple Intelligence on my MacBook, and I’ve spent today playing around with the summarisation, rewriting, and proofreading features.

My hot take: It’s fine.

I’ve had all these features and more running via my launcher, Alfred, for months now, so experiencing them doesn’t feel as magical as when I got LLaMA 3.1 8B running locally on my machine back in July. The model does a decent job—it’s not bleeding-edge for me, but for many people using it for the first time, it absolutely will be.

Podcast Recommendations (2024)

I haven’t done a podcast recommendations posts since the dark days of 2020, but I thought I’d do a quick one rounding up top 5 podcast series that were new to me this year.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Monthly checkin with a project funder
• Team meeting for the above
  • Begun working on an application with a tight Jan deadline
• Mostly been me and my computer all week. Working on/in obsidian getting podcast episodes into it, and all tagged up and referenced.

Reading

I finished the book I was a beta reader for. Gonna feed a few things back in the new year.

I’m still listening to Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee. It’s just got very Dianetics heavy. Despite knowing how it turned out, The psychological/magical turn all these folks took in the 1950’s post the bomb and WW2, does actually seems super logical and understandable. We’re due another one.

Still reading: reading The Ordinal Society, Playing with Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World, and Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and the Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. 

ك​ا​د​ي​م​ي​ة ا​ل​ق​م​ر ا​ل​ك​ي​م​ي​ا​ئ​ي by Dëgénéréscence

The other day my old housemate Phil messaged me to say “Heard this record and thought of you❤️” He was right. Wowowowow.

I’m going to give you a bunch of genre tags as this album is really really hard to pin down: Atmospheric Black Metal, Blackgaze, Hyperpop, Vaporwave, Cloud Rap, 90’s Video Game, Ambient Trance. That sort of gets you close to whatever is going on in this.

It’s an album thats full of sonic dream logic, just shifting and rolling though one genre and music idea after another. Incredible stuff. It sounds like something that could have only been made in 2024. Somewhere in amongst it all it reminds me of the Azerbaijani Blackgaze legend Violet Cold

Remember Kids:

The post Wrapping Things Up appeared first on thejaymo.net.

August 10, 2024

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Permanently Moved 🔊 | The Chalk ♘

I don’t think there is a single place in England that I know better than those 6 feet of sand in font of a shed in Broadstairs.

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2024/08/10/2418-six-feet-of-england/

• Experience.Computer: https://experience.computer/
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Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo

Six Feet of England

I went home earlier this week, back to the chalk to see my parents. 

The weather was fine so we went down the beach hut for a couple of hours. I don’t think there is a single place in England that I know better than those 6 feet of sand in font of a shed in Broadstairs.

The hours, over years, of my life spent watching the tide. The way cliff shadows move across the beach, which wind direction whips waves over the sea wall. Details change, but the place itself remains the same. 

When I was much younger, late 90’s early 00’s maybe, a man would fly a red diamond kite with a bow tie tail. He would come down early in the morning and tie it to the pier. It would fly up in the sky above the bay, all day. Above the cliff top hundreds of metres out to sea. When the sun went and the evening drew in, he would come back and reel it in. Pack it down and go home. I don’t know who he was, why he flew the kite, or whether he was even around during the day to see it soaring high. But it was an act of public kindness, a magical act that brought joy. 

Over 20 years later I think about that kite. Just as I think of the birthday parties with friends from school. Mums and Dads sitting on deckchairs chatting whilst we ran about in the summer sun. Later birthdays like my 16th, my friend Steve sitting in the hut the whole time with a can of lager and book. Pier jumping and iron maiden through a tinny portable speaker.

The summer mum entered our beach hut in the fancy dress competition with a little mermaid theme. My cousins coloured in paper starfish whilst mum staple gunned green and blue paper seaweed to the doors. Later that day but before the judging it poured down. As children and adults sheltered in the hut the colour from the crepe paper began to run in the rain. My brother’s blonde hair dyed green, mine and my cousins’ back a pale blue.

Sand castle competitions revealing budding talents. Technically minded personalities and Organisational skills. Bossy 8 year olds directing others into roles that suited people’s strengths and ages — you fill buckets, you pack sand, and we’ll all dig the trenches. The white noise rhythm of waves masking the hubbub of humanity around us on a busy day. 

Sunny afternoons with family members long gone. My Grandad in shirt, tie, and trousers sitting on a towel. Running his hand through the sand like he was casting a spell. And how without fail, each visit this magic would reveal exactly enough change from the sand for all us youngsters to have an ice cream each. 

My mum and I went looking for cowries along the shore this week. You cannot go to the beach at low tide without the engaging in a hunt – it is tradition. Something happens when you comb for tiny shells along the strandline. The beach dissolves, what was just sand, with attention resolves into its individual grains, shells and flecks of seaweed. The enormity of it all creeps in.

The beach is a dynamic place; always moving, shifting and changing. It breathes with the tides, reshaping and refreshing itself anew twice a day, every single day. I found 3 cowries but Mum found loads. 40 shells in the hut pot so far this season. 

Sitting in the blazing sunshine I ask my Dad if he remembered the days we sat on wet spring mornings with heavy drizzle after my operation. Not a single soul apart from us, sitting side by side, drinking tea from polystyrene cups watching the rain and the tides. 

The beach is a special place where one world brushes against another. There are no greater pleasures in my life than watching the sea come in. Sitting in a chair and picking a spot along the beach and watching. Wondering when the water will breach an abandoned sandfort wall, or overtop a sandbar and run down into a tidal pool. Whilst time and tide waits for no man, this man will happily wait for the tides. 

But more than anything, the most special thing about the beach is beyond the land and beyond the sea. It is where the sky meets the stars. The horizon.

It is hard to speak about this with people who grew up amidst city or hills. But I find a deep peace in the presence of that vast line. My eyes, and my mind, rest upon it and relax.

The edge of the world, as far as the eye can see, a boundary between the knowable and the mysterious. Everything between you and it is knowable. When I look at the horizon the complexity of life fades away, leaving a line on which everything can be settled. A surface on which to hang all existence. 

This week, sitting in a chair at the hut, I was struck by how this shoreline and distant horizon have been constants in my life. I chased the tides and sketched castles as a child. Now, as an adult, I trace those same lines. Memories washed up like shells at the shore. A kite soaring high, birthday laughter, and all storms I’ve sat and weathered. I realise that upon that 6ft of England, I came to know the world.

The post Six Feet of England | 2418 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Last year was a Covid Christmas. A plague house where we all got sick one after another a few days apart. This year I’m please to report that everyone is in the rudest of health and I’m looking forward to food and family.

I’ve been back on the chalk since Friday, and have quickly fallen into Mum and Dad’s routine. Jumping in the car whenever they are popping out around town.

We’ve been for some very blustery walks along the seafront. And its been super nice to see the horizon and see the sea.

Had some nice coffees and trips around the island. It’s been good! A very different Christmas from the year before!

My brother is spending another Christmas where he lives in Taiwan so it’ll just be a zoom call with him tomorrow, but my uncle Michael arrives Christmas morning and is staying until the 27th which should be nice.

Eve and I already did Christmas the other night. This year she got me the new Folio Society edition of Dune Messiah. It’s a wonderful hardback full of incredible art by Hilary Clarcq. The book also includes the restored ‘Death Cell’ interview from the first edition, which I haven’t read before.

It looks great next to the FS edition of Dune!

I hope that everyone has a lovely couple of days!

Experience.Computer

Having an existing show thats a top 20% show by download numbers means that ‘what success looks like’ is a bit of an open question. So I went into launching my new podcast with zero expectations. But I’ve been please with the response to it so far, and the show charted briefly as top 100 iTunes shows in a few countries around the world – but quickly dropped back out again.

Asking existing listeners to 301 to commit to listening to a weird 90min long interview show about aphantasia, imagination and creativity is a bit of a different ask to a 5min essay show, lol! I think the show will be a slow burn/build – finding its own audience month on month as new Epsiodes come out. Now that the show is out and online though, when I get back from Thailand in Feb, I’m looking forward to reaching out to guests etc

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• As I said above Experience.computer is out. It was a lot of work to get it over the line! who knew!
• Calls with founders of cool companies that I was introduced to last week
• Last of the xmas shopping
• Train home

Terminal Access

Following my massive 9k word drop on the history of web2 last week someone on medium (in Portuguese) wrote some commentary on it, and the beginnings of the social web – which was nice.

I’d also like to hilight Brett Scott’s piece from the 19th Dec on The War on Informality: What seven hours in London teaches me about surveillance capitalism.

It’s one hell of an essay – not very festive or cheery reading, but worth the read.

Dipping the Stacks

(Reasons to) Get off social media – time spent offline

As far as I am concerned, in my reality, my life is great. Nothing out of the ordinary, mind you; nothing noteworthy and worth posting about on social media, but it is a great life nonetheless.

Social media is sugar. It’s time we limit its negative impact

There are plenty of resources available to help us break our addiction to social media and boost our understanding of its tripwires and underlying advantages, not least of which is the fact that it’s been architected by psychologists, engineers, and powerful businesses to drive behaviors that lead to profit—and control. Remember that even Steve Jobs wouldn’t let his kids have iPads for the same reason we regulate our kids’ candy intake.

None Of You Know What Haiku Are

Well, let me get into why the 5-7-5 understanding of haiku is wrong, and also what makes haiku so special (with examples)!
First of all, Japanese doesn’t have syllables!

Manifesto for posting online in 2023

Most people would prefer you to be an indentikit loaf of sliced white supermarket bread, but we know that all of the goodness is in your funky sourdough starter mix.

Yahoo! Internet Life: The Strange World of Offline Internet Magazines | Good/Bad Marketing

So, why then did Yahoo! Internet Life end in 2002? The simple answer? Because the target audience of Yahoo! Internet Life was the same audience that moved onto the internet.

Reading

Still reading Art Of Gig by Venkat from Ribbonfarm. To quote Ben V “I don’t know why I haven’t read this before”

Been really busy, but I did manage to listen to most of The Practice by Seth Godin. I have about an hour left to go. It’s a good book, but nothing is going to beat The Creative Act for decades to come.

UCC Harlo – Topos EP

I listened to UCC Harlo’s (Previously on the blog) 5 track EP Topos on the train home from London on Friday. The record is also named ‘Place’ and each track feels like a landscape of its own. Each track has its own tonal centre. My favourite being March 6th

A sort of mesmeric folk dance full of strings, stomping, clapping, hollering underneath a repeated mesmeric viola refrain. Wonderful stuff.

Remember Kids:

The post Xmas Eve 2023 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I’ve been back on the chalk for my Birthday week, and to see my Dad early as his birthday is soon but, I’ll be at a wedding. I can’t belive I’m 38. Christ. Turning 30 feels like just yesterday.

For my actual birthday on Tuesday, Eve got me a nice new satchel with a padded laptop compartment. I also got some hot sauces (the mildest, Scotch bonnet, is nearly all gone lol). Then a full days work on Wednesday and then train home to Kent on Thursday morning.

Its been so nice to be back at home for a few days! In cultural oscillation to attending the Opera last week, on Friday this week I went to see Tom Jones at Dreamland, Margate .

ONE OF THE ALL TIME GREATS.

I’ve said it before, that mans voice is a weapon. He’s 83! a living legend, not that many people who were right there at the dawn of the pop era still working, let alone producing #1 albums.

The set at Dreamland was great. He did some nice story telling and had lots of anecdotes woven in throughout the setlist. He played a lot of material from Surrounded By Time which was very cool. When you are that famous, you can play whatever you want. He played Crumble, possibly his best song ever, it was a powerful moment in the middle of the set.

The rest of the weekend has been dinners with my parents friends, walks along sea walls and clifftops. Also, it’s Illegal to come to Thanet and not have an ice-cream from Morelli’s

Permanently Moved

No podcast this week. it’s been my birthday, plus i’ve been really busy; struggling with/writing/editing my new centre talk for Thursday.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

Writing, editing, stressing out.

Terminal Access

THE WEB IS FUCKED I came across this amazing one shot website/essay by Kev Quirk:

I have something to tell you, dear reader. The web is fucked. It’s a sad state of affairs that we’re in – gone are the days of Web 1.0 where the humble personal blog and the likes of GeoCities reigned supreme.

Instead we’ve been left with Web 1.0’s rotten remains where centralisation, monopolies and tracking are the order of the day.

It’s shit.

It pairs nicely with the ‘Reconstructing our Attention’ link in the stacks below.

Dipping the Stacks

*Audiobook* Document Your Culture | Emma Warren | Sweet Machine Publishing

This 36pp pamphlet with pink and red cover and b&w pages is designed to help you tell the story of a space or a community. It is written by Make Some Space author Emma Warren and is a companion piece to that book.

Document the Ting | ewen

bottom line was that we all participate in the production of culture and, with the right care, should all be documenting it more. What happens if we leave the decision of what “deserves” to be documented to other people?

What Really Happened at Current Affairs? – Yasmin Nair

Workplaces are formed out of human relationships, and those relationships will be contentious at some point or another.

The real story about what happened at Current Affairs (turns out no one got fired for workplace organising). Everyone involved seems to have behaved poorly though.

How China Is Developing The Global South

If the Chinese economy is the set of processes that created and create China, then its exports today are China — technologies, knowledge, communication networks, forms of organization. But is China a place, or is it a recipe for social structure that can be implemented generically anywhere?

Reconstructing Our Attention in the Era of Infinite Digital Rabbit Holes ‹ Literary Hub

You may remember, hazily, what it was like back in the early aughts. Falling into a book or a long magazine article was easy. Boredom was possible. Long walks by yourself, disconnected from the matrix of urgent knowledge.

Reading

I finished reading The Martyr’s Tomb by Marc Colins the 6th entry into the Dawn of Fire WH40K series. It’s a fine entry. Moves the whole plot along a bit, potential for other novels and short stories that cover several big events that happen off screen etc.

Still reading Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity by Stevan L. Davies.

Tom Jones – Crumble

I can’t believe I haven’t posted this before. I know it’s ‘The Voice’ blah blah blah. But what a song! and what a magical moment caught on TV?

Remember Kids:

The post All Time Great appeared first on thejaymo.net.

Happy new year everyone! I hope you had a good Christmas?

My Christmas went something like this: Dad had covid, then Mum had covid, then I had Covid.

In between all the coughing, spluttering, sore throats however, much merriment was found in the xmas/boxingday window. My brother Skype’d in from Taipai where he lives on xmas day and we opened our presents during the call. I got some thoughtful items, books, stationary, a new torch, Pokemon violet!

I also ate so much food! Even when I was down for the count I still found the energy to eat trifle for breakfast because you can’t stop tradition! I also learned this Christmas from that Nigella on TV that Italians call Trifle ‘English Soup’ (zuppa inglese) which is delightful.

This years xmas pudding was great. Another triumph. Funfact! A previous home made pudding from our house is currently the canonical photo of a flaming Christmas pudding on the ‘Christmas is Ireland’ wikipedia page. Which is ironic as you can’t get more further away from Ireland in East Kent if you tried.

In all honesty, the thing I appreciate the most about Christmas is.. just spending time with people I love, my family.

Being ill I didn’t see any friends over the break, tho it didn’t stop me thinking of some of them. Nor did I get back to London for my own NYE party that happened in my flat! Though I understand a good time was had by all.

I did get back to London earlier today tho. A generous lift back up from my parents. I’m still not 100%, (nor are they) but things are moving in the right direction for everyone I think.

There will be a flurry of activity on the blog over the next few days, I have Dec 2022 photo-a-day to post. I also want to write about the experience of completing the project for the first time. I have a 2022 ‘in review’ post half written, it seems most folks got theirs out in the gouch week, mine’ll be out soon.

Podcast season 7 begins this week, if you are feeling full of Christmas cheer why not consider becoming a paid supporter?

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Closed down 2022 completely.
  • Updated spreadsheets, archived files, all the usual things.
  • Only one thing outstanding / carrying over.
• Filled in the “Year Compass‘ workbook for 2023.
• Pre-Christmas I built a website for a project kicking off next year
• Post-Christmas I did nothing

Terminal Access

Over on Bestseller, Kelby Losack coins the term Ghost Audience

the Clout Trade Center known as Twitter/Instagram/etc, is an arbitrary number on your profile representative of a ghost audience. To post is to perform in front of a faceless crowd that you can’t see beyond the brightness of the stage lights.

Dipping the Stacks

Maybe that’s the lesson – annie mueller

The more I burn to the ground the more space I have. Sometimes it feels like a big blank space opened in my mind and it is full of dancing question marks and I don’t even know what the question is.

Fandom should be a hobbyspace

it’s too often younger ones holding fandom spaces as societal influence & activism spaces instead of a HOBBY SPACES.

The rise and fall of British institutions – by Ed West

If you ever wonder why many British men care so much for their football teams, sometimes to a deranged degree, then for many their club might be pretty much the one stable institution in their lives.

What Is Even Happening?

The problem of Kanye’s madness implies a similar set of questions: is this just an accident brought on by temporary mental illness, or does this reflect something deeper or more problematic going on in the culture and society?

From Andrew Tate to Corn Boy: How the TikTok algorithm changed the fame game in 2022 | British GQ

TikTok’s mysterious algorithm has turbocharged virality beyond anything we’ve seen before, convincing a generation that online celebrity is just one post away

Reading

I finished Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace. It was an interesting and very personal book expressing her relationship to the divine, but its no Sayings of Light and Love or whatever. I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Unless her anarchism gave permission for PoMo atheists to engage with mystical material?

I finished Book 9 in the Warhammer 40k Ciaphas Cain series – The Greater Good.

I started reading How to Read a Book by American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. This book is super famous, and really really good. A remarkable text.

I read Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins. A wonderful portrait of the man. Quite an upsetting book too.

What a horror Alzheimer’s is.

I also started reading Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The third book in his amazing Children of Time series. I’ve only just got passed the first chapter so can’t comment on how good it is yet.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Unusually I didn’t listen to anything at all.

Remember Kids:

The post Xmas 2022 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I went down to the chalk for my Dad’s 70th (!!!) birthday. Saw lots of family, ate some lovely food at a local restaurant. It was great!

I also spent two full days down the beach with the rents. That spot, that little corner of the beach is where I have spent 1000’s of hours of my life. I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world where I’m more relaxed.

There is a part of me that questions the need to fly somewhere to sit on the beach when I could just go home.

In addition to Dad’s Birthday, my brother is home from Taiwan. Back for the first time in 3 years. It was super super nice to see and spend time with him too. Time flies.

It was also Broadstairs Folk Week. So saw plenty of Morris, I bought some art. Great times!

The trip back home was super relaxing. A break before some really intense months I have ahead. We are living in troubled times things are going to get really difficult for everyone.

As you may have already heard in this weeks podcast I’m taking a month off. After 200 Episodes inside of 301. 200 Episodes inside of a 5 min container I’m excited to try and make something else. Explore other creative avenues etc

I’m also starting my course at The New Centre this week. Looking forward to that immensely.

Photo 365

Permanently Moved

Episode 200

I can’t believe I’ve made 200 of these.

Episode 1 seems so very far away! One of the things I haven’t yet thought about, is how do I know when I’m done?

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Holiday!
• Worked on New Centre Talk for next week.

Dipping the Stacks

Russia And China Officially Announce A “New Global Reserve Currency”

once again, as happens often with consequential news in the United States and the West, no one has noticed and no one seems to care.

Training Your Own Unconditional Diffusion Model (With Minimal Coding) | PeakD

That’s really all there is to training your own custom diffusion model! It’s really not as daunting a task as it may seem from the outset;

The Demise of the Mildly Dynamic Website

PHP enabled dynamic web applications for the masses. But an interesting and particular effect of the rise of PHP was that it enabled and led to the rise of what I’m going to call “mildly dynamic” websites.

Princess Mononoke: The masterpiece that flummoxed the US – BBC Culture

Twenty-five years old this week, the film is Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki’s most complex work. But how it was mishandled in the West speaks of fundamental artistic differences

How Web 2.0 Created an Internet Desert | Frieze

These forgotten and unnoticed regions of the web and our memories of living online represent the foregone conclusion of a simple story: how we were convinced by these platforms that this is how we should participate in the world, and how we took up their offer – in fact, how we continue to do so.

Reading

I finished reading War of Art by Steven Pressfield. That book is a total pep talk. I love it. I see why it has had such a big influence on people since its publication. I was talking with someone about it, and mentioned that it had ‘male motivational coach energy’. I suppose I ‘get on’ with that vibe than Julia Cameron’s vibe in Artists Way (still a fucking amazing book tho!) For me, its just not a re-read this thing, and do the program every year kind of book.

I read a book about active listening down the beach this week. Active Listening Techniques: 30 Practical Tools to Hone Your Communication Skills by Nixaly Leonardo. I really enjoyed it. If someone had handed me this book in my early 20’s I don’t think I would have found it as useful or as good as I did. I’m reading it at the right time in my life where i think/feel like i should/need to read it?

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Anna Calls From The Arctic – Dry Cleaning (Single)

I heard the new single from Dry Cleaning earlier this week. I was walking along into town. I stopped walked where I was going, sat on a bench and restarted the song.

I had to restart the song and pay it my undivided attention after hearing the part at 1m20secs when the singer starts humming along with the saxophone. Amazing. What a moment.

Remember Kids:

The post Summer Chalk appeared first on thejaymo.net.

As I said in the pod yesterday I’m back down on the chalk. A late Easter is always lovely. It can be, if you’re lucky a little like late August weather.

I’ve been away from my laptop since Wednesday evening. Mostly been enjoying sitting in the garden and being out and about. In the absence of having anything to say – here’s some photos.

Photo 365

Permanently Moved

Travelling Gadgetman

Coming home on the train I felt a bit like a ‘travelling gadgetman’. A condition that has crept up on me in the last decade.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Been working on a zine. More info next week.
• Written a bit more of ‘Mother of All Chains’ – mostly notes
• I’ve been writing a blog post called DAO’s Moving Castle (mentioned the other week)
  • I think I might have to break it up in to separate posts. Simulation of ‘game space’ section has got really long.
• Calls with cool cats
• Confirming my upcoming Teaching commitments

Dipping the Stacks

Opinion | We Aren’t Just Watching the Decline of the Oscars. We’re Watching the End of the Movies. – The New York Times

My favored theory is that the Oscars are declining because the movies they were made to showcase have been slowly disappearing.

On Notes to a Future Self: How Journaling Helps Me Write

I save a line or a section into a note on my computer. I’m assembling layers of reference, my records compounding year over year, events from my past now taking on a sheen of dramatic irony. 

Hybrid workplaces for offices aren’t working.

It’s not just needless commutes that are aggravating people. It’s also the sense that companies are forcing people back into old ways—ways that come with not-insignificant inconvenience—without any real justification for it. 

The Millennial Aesthetic Comes for Your Vacuum Cleaner | The New Yorker

“It’s a meditation on dust and how to clean,” Joseph Guerra, the designer behind the new company Airsign, says.

The Internet Changed My Life | Pointers Gone Wild

I’m not sure how old I was exactly, but not that long after I got internet access, I decided to do some online searches about mental illness. I found a webpage that described the symptoms my mom had.

Reading

I’ve been reading James’ Ways of Being. It’s exactly the book I thought he’d write back when it was announced. It’s a really important book for ‘right now’. Part of the pivot, the attempt to move western ways of thinking way from its anthropocentric concerns and moves ‘intelligence’ out into the living cosmos. Its existence makes me far more confident in some of the unpublished crazy man things I’ve written but not published.
More thoughts once I’ve read more of the book.

James was on Rune soup this week talking to Gordon about the book. Fantastic discussion. I hope they speak again some time.

I’ve just got to MUD’s in Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games. It’s full of really interesting (and surprising) information if you are a RPG nerd, and interested in historical computing.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Oso Oso – sore thumb

A quick search says I haven’t mentioned Long Island Emo Band Oso Oso on the blog before. I really enjoyed their 2019 album basking in the glow. It was an extremely competent mid wast emo album – more of the same place.

sore thumb however is a different beast. You need to get to the B-side of the album before you reach anything that is recognisably midwestern. sore thumb is weirder, more experimental. The first 5 tracks on the album are lo-fi. The sort of thing my mate Matt would have loved when I was growing up. There’s hints of Cake, Sebadoh, dare I say Neutral Milk Hotel and Pedro The Lion throughout this record. Really recommend it.

Remember Kids:

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