I haven’t done a podcast recommendations post 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.

In no particular order:

Sold a Story

Sold a Story is a compelling podcast series about the decades long reading crisis in America’s schools. It deep dives into the systemic issues surrounding reading programs, and the settled science of how children learn to read.

The host has been on this beat for years, but the podcast (and its audience) emerged in the aftermath of the pandemic lockdowns – driven by concerned parents who witnessed the quality of their children’s reading lessons up close for the first time.

This show has a lot in it: A fascinating exploration of learning itself, the science of reading, and the challenges to structural reform due to cult-like creators of reading programs, publishing industry interests, government funding, and teachers’ unions opinion of George Bush Jr. The whole show orbits stories from children themselves.

As the series progresses, the impact of the shows reporting begins to have an impact on school boards around the country. Later episodes thoughtfully examine the reintroduction of phonics into curriculums and how the dogmatic application of ‘Science of reading’ reforms risks undermining the very goal of improving literacy. An easy binge.

The Telepathy Tapes

This is, without a doubt, the single best piece of media I’ve consumed all year.

The Telepathy Tapes explores the telepathic abilities of non-verbal autistic children who have learned to communicate using the pointing method. What begins as a series about unconventional communication methods expands into profound spiritual questions and the existence of astral realms.

I devoured all seven hours of it in just one day last week.

If you’re a staunch materialist, I encourage you to suspend your skepticism and approach this show with an open mind. They are taking donations and raising money to make a documentary series, as the host is a film maker. I’ve donated so should you!

I cannot recommend this podcast enough. It’s been absolutely blowing the people I’ve been sending it to’s minds. It’s blowing loads of peoples minds actually.

There are so many books I want to recommend people who enjoyed this, but Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe by by Dean Radin is a very good follow up

The Department of Midnight

The Department of Midnight is a six-episode audio drama is a collaboration between Warren Ellis and The Bellport Theatre on the Air.

It follows Dr. John Carnack and his role at the Department of Midnight—a clandestine organisation tasked with investigating and policing dark matter experiments.

As the story unfolds, you’re drawn into a richly realised world where dark matter, ghosts, demons, and folklore are all connected.

No spoilers, but the final episode was a great way to end the series. The production quality is also outstanding, right up there with some of the best radio dramas I’ve listened in my life including all the classics from the Golden Age of radio I’ve consumed.

With dashing adventures, daring deeds, and a wonderfully irreverent take on HR departments and bureaucracy, it’s very cool from start to finish. Folks who have read Warren’s Injection series for Image Coics will recognise some thematic echoes. I really hope it gets a second season, and has a pre-roll ad read with 1940s/50’s J-E-L-L-O style production.

Venthuffer

Created by Jmac (aka Halstrick), Venthuffer is a deeply personal journal podcast that reflects on the host’s relationship with the Steam Deck and video games and gaming in general.

Each episode is a wonderfully written vignette, focusing on a particular game, genre, and the host’s connection to the subject.

I love the tone that Jmac strikes towards his subject matter in the show.

The episodes are fantastically produced. It’s not just a podcast about games—it’s a celebration of the medium and its personal impact. I know I only wrote about this show the other week, but I’ve found it utterly charming, and very inspiring.

Side Missions

Side Missions describes itself as “low-key meditations on art, life, and the everyday.”

There’s only one episode so far, but it’s an absolute masterpiece.

Clocking in at 47 minutes, 8-bit, 8 bar, is a deep dive and labour of love audio essay about how vintage video game soundtracks influenced the development of UK grime.

It’s jam-packed with examples, samples, and references, all strung together with engaging narration. The towards the end the episode, it hones in on the creative cross-pollination between UK and Japanese grime scenes, exploring how video games sit at the heart of this international relationship – super fascinating! I can’t wait to see what comes next from this show!

Permanently Moved

Permanently Moved (dot) Online is a quarterly audio personal podcast, written, recorded and edited by by @thejaymo

The post Podcast Recommendations (2024) appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I had a drink with Matt Webb the other day and I was telling him about all the ‘History of Computing‘ books I’ve been reading over the last few years.

Here’s the list as of July 2024:

John Atanasoff prototyped the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1939 and influenced the ENIAC creators a great deal. Whilst the ABC is neither programmable, nor Turing-complete, it is the first machine with an ALU (arithmetic logic unit) which is found in every modern processor’s design.

I’ve put this book on the list first as all the other books I’ve read focus on ENIAC and Mauchly and Eckert’s careers. The key moment in this book is the Sperry Rand Patient lawsuit which (as the blub says) paved the way for the personal computing revolution.

This book is a breezy read. The tone of the author is great. It covers in a great deal of detail the creation of ENIAC. All the pressures of wartime and budgets, funding etc. All the backroom deals and rivalries that emerged too. It’s actually quite a gripping read at times.

The later half of the book covers the other side of the lawsuit mentioned above – one the pair ultimately lost.

Correcting a huge omission from McCartney’s history of computing book on ENIAC above, Proving Ground covers the day to day lives of the first computer programers working on ENIAC. The context of WW2 is important and well integrated into the narrative, as it allowed these amazing women to do work they did. It also makes the important point that whilst Mauchly+Eckert designed the machine .. these young mathematicians straight out of university figured out how to program it by themselves – mostly theoretically – using pen and paper and chalk boards.

Bonus: here’s an excellent and humorous interview with one of the programmers featured in the book, Jean Jennings:

I actually found this book riveting, couldn’t put it down. This book takes a cool approach to its subjects by going back in time and introducing the each of the men involved by taking us though the lives of their grandparents and then parents. The story is very human and has lots of detail. When the story of the semiconductor kicks of proper, the author had access to the teams lab note books and you get a real play by play of what went on and when.

The final 1/3 of the book covers the deep interpersonal animosity that emerged between the three semi-conductor transistor inventors. Post invention the story mostly follows William Shockley’s career kickstarting Silicon Valley by being a hopeless manager and then his re-invention as a crazy racist in later life.

When you start reading this, you’ll think that it’s going to cover all the same stuff as the book above, but the invention of the transistor is only covered in the first 20% or so. It then picks up where Crystal Fire left off. The development of Silicon Valley as an industry etc. The books main focus is on the integrated circuit. The rivalry between Texas Instruments and Intel, Sony and kaizen etc, Lynn Conway’s work at IBM and Xexrox on integrated chip design which kickstarted the silicon foundry model we still have with us today.

Two things that stand out in my memory as a type – 1. The long section describing how a scientific calculator works, zooming in from the screen and buttons all the way to the micro hertz pulses coming from the clock and instructions happening in the memory. Very understandable and very readable! 2. That todays Silicon chip industry should be seen as an extension of the printing press and watch making industry.

An in depth history of Bell labs. iI covers all the major discoveries but does not focus on any one for too long in particular. There’s a lot in here about running and working for a huge organisation that has continuity over generations! and the need for pure research in the corporate world. Great book. Don’t bother reading that recent viral thing on Substack about Bell Labs, read this instead.

Seymour Cray is a legend! Talking to elves in the tunnel you’re digging under your house is how we should be solving all our problems. Speaking of which: There’s a lot of “why” engineering decisions and “how” problems were resolved in this book. As well as being a humorous look at an upstart entrepreneur and a genius. Some of the ‘how to build a business with out loosing your soul’ parts in this are also really good!

Oh if only we could all write like Kidder! This book chronicles the creation of Data General’s Eclipse MV/8000 computer from the engineers’ point of view. It highlights that working conditions at tech companies were just as awful in the 80’s as they are now. This book exposed ‘Mushroom management’ for the first time, as well as describing self imposed crunch. The ‘Soul’ of the machine in the book comes from the engineers who develop the computer. Pulitzer prize winning classic.

This book covers the history of the Internet. The ins and out’s of DARPA, and ARPA. Military money and the importance of having people with long term vision. There’s a LOT in this book. Lots of great people making clear and far sighted decisions who deserve to be more well known. As the narrative progress the story zoom’s in on BBN (Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc) who built the first Interface Message Processors for the ARPA net, Designed TCP/IP etc. The last 1/4 of the book covers what happened ‘after’ everyone got connected to the internet but before the eternal September began. It did come out in 1996 after all.

This book is really really good. But it’s also super frustrating. As you read, you won’t belive how short sighted Xerox as a company were. It’s interesting to compare the management and corporate events in this book to The Idea Factory. This book covers the work of Ted Nelson and the Alto computer, the Xerox Star – as well as the invention of the Intranat and a host of other technologies like the LCD, laser disk and 3D rendering.

The last book on the list, but by no means least. Chip War covers almost all everything in the books above but at a really high level. It situates the semiconductor industry geopolitically and explains the economic contexts for a lot of events that happen in the other books – in particular Japanese chip reliability in the late 70’s and 80’s with Sony, and then it’s shift to Taiwan as part of their industrial policy. Global supply chains and bottlenecks etc. It also covers some of the history of Russian computing which I haven’t read about elsewhere.

I really recommend this book and it’s a must read to fully understand the shape of geopolitics in 2020’s.

The post 🗒️ History Of Computing Books appeared first on thejaymo.net.

At the end of last year all the cool kids – inspired by episode 97 of the Hemispheric Views podcast – posted a list of the default computer apps they were using. Robb Knight is maintaining a list of people who have joined in.

I really liked seeing people’s lists flow past my RSS at the time they were first going around the blogosphere. They are a window into peoples computer experience and an interesting snapshot on ones digital life.

My default apps for Summer 2024 are below. It’ll be interesting to re-visit this in a few years and see how things have changed.

Default Apps 2024

• 📨 Mail Service: Google Workspace
• 📮 Mail Client: Gmail WebClient
• 📝 Notes: DayOne, Notion
• ✅ To-Do: Todoist
• 📆 Calendar: Google Calendar
• 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Google Calendar
• 📖 RSS Reader: Feedly
• 🌎 Blogging: WordPress
• ⌨️ Launcher: Alfred 5
• ☁️ Cloud storage: Google Drive
• 🌅 Photo Library: Google Photos + External HD Backup
• 🌐 Web Browser: Brave (Desktop & Phone)
• 💬 Chat: Beeper (Telegram, Signal, SMS, Discord, LinkedIn DMs, Instagram DM’s, Twitter DMs, Slack DM’s), KeyBase
• 🔖 Bookmarks: Pinboard.in
• 📚 Reading: Kindle Paperwhite 11
• 📜 Word Processing: Google Docs, Hemmingway Editor, Written (Beta Testing)
• 📈 Spreadsheets: Google Sheets
• 📊 Presentations: Google Slides
• 🛒 Shopping Lists: Todoist
• 🍴 Meal Planning: Whiteboard on Fridge
• 💰 Personal Finance: Google Sheets
• 📰 News: Feedly
• 🎵 Music: Spotify, VLC
• 🎤 Podcasts: PocketCasts
• 🤦‍♂️ Social Media: Slack, Discord, Tumblr, Instagram, Warpcast, Twitter, Mastodon
• 🌤️ Weather: Met Office app
• 🔎 Search: Brave
• 🧮 Code Editor: Xcode + Sunset Code

Bonus Software

• 📓 Journal Diary: DayOne
• 🎙️ Podcasting Tools: Descript + SquadCast
• 🎶 Music Production Tools: Renoise
• 🎨 Design + Publishing Tools: Affinity Suite: Photo, Publisher, Designer
• 🕹️ 3D Tools: Blender, Godot, Unreal Engine (In order that I’m comfortable using)
• 🎥 Video Tools: DaVinci resolve
• 🔊 Audio Tools: SoundSource, Audacity, AudioHijack, GarageBand
• 🖥️ Screen Tools: Flux, Monitor Control, Hidden Bar (Menu Bar), Bluesnooze
• 🚷 Productivity Tools: Freedom.to
• 🤖 AI Tools: ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion Local (Automatic 1111)

Hardware

• 👨‍💻 Laptop: Macbook Pro 14″ M2 Max
• 📱 Phone: Pixel 6
• 🖱️ Seenda Ergonomic Mouse
• 🎙️ Microphone: Rode NT USB Gen 1
• 📷 Digital Camera: Pixel 6, Sony ZV-1
• 🎞️ Film Camera: Olympus Pen EE
• 🕹️ Gaming: Nintendo Switch, Acer Nitro 5 Laptop

• ⌚ CASIO A168WA-1WDF

Rock ‘n Roll Equipment

• 🔊 Bass Amp: Trace Elliot AH150 SMC (Bass Head),
• 🔊 Guitar Amp: N/A – But use Orange Crush Pro 120 @ rehearsal space
• 🎸 Bass Guitars: Tanglewood Rebel 4k, Honor B2A V
• 🎸 Electric Guitars: Gibson SG 120th Anniversary Ed, Washburn Maverick BT-4
• 🎛️ Pedals: BOSS – TU-3 Chromatic Tuner Pedal
• 🔌 Cables: Ernie Ball Cables

Look at the list written out all in one place, its pretty clear that i’m locked into the Google eco-system. As a hardcore Android user this is something thats crept up on me over the years, and something I should consider. I added some stuff to the usual list like bonus software, and the equipment I’m using in my band, because i’m interesting in how they are going to change over time.

The post 💼 Default Apps 2024 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

It’s probably for the best that I had a week off from making the show. I start work on a new project next week, so have spent a great deal of time getting my ducks in a row for the kick off.

I wonder if it’s a mix of low social media use and not having to deliver a show this week has resulted in more mental space. I’ve had several ideas for future shows throughout the week and captured the moment by sitting down for 10/15mins and bashing out 500 words with several bullet points at the end to finish it off. This hasn’t happened before. Feels good tho.

I also used the extra headspace to take a look at some of the remaining things on my ‘life list’ that I wrote at the beginning of the year. So I spent evenings this week knocking off some of the ‘medium effort’ items on it that I’ve been putting off.

The three biggest wins are as follows:

Day One APP

I want to write about this in more detail, but the TLDR is that since the beginning of the year I’ve been copy pasting my diary from all its the various formats that I’ve used over the years (OhLife emails (I lost my json export) .txt files, markdown files, Google docs etc) into the Day One app from Automattic. 1220 entries beginning August 2009. Since the new year I read and reviewed a great deal of my adult life moving it from one place to another.

It’s been quite interesting and a bit of an emotional experience. Glad it’s over.

Worldrunning.guide

One of the most annoying things about having ideas for ambitious projects and then not executing on them is that they hang around in the mind as open loops. This results in unnecessary cognitive overhead. At worst it results in guilt.

One of those open loops has been worldrunning.guide. Two years ago I set up the domain to point to a Google Doc; with a little spiel about world running saying that I had an idea to write a book in public, basically a promise to write something there some day.

Which obviously I never got around too…

worldrunning.guide

Until now. Recently I was doing some website admin and noticed that according to Cloudflare’s analytics worldrunning.guide gets over 500 hits a month.

Which means for years I’ve been dropping 100’s of people into an empty google doc with a broken promise dated 2021. Not a great first impression. This knowledge pushed up the urgency of doing something about the entry marked simply worldrunning.guide(?) on my list of things to do.

This week I collected and lightly edited 15 episodes of Permanently Moved I’ve made on the subject of worlds and put them into the document.

Its nice to have all my public thinking/writing on worlds in on place, and am looking forward to writing more and seeing worldrunning.guide grow.

The only thing left to do over there for now, is write an introduction.

I’ve been joking that I shook my blog and a 13.3k word essay collection fell out.

Start Select Reset

For some reason I didn’t have a page on my website about my zine!

I’ve always just linked to the zine category page – which probably isn’t the best presentation when you are trying to advertise the existence of something and hope that people will pay to sign up!

So this is now fixed. I’ve also put it prominently in sites menu too. Collapsing my hello/contact page into the About menu.

I’m really happy with how the page turned out. I learnt a lot about some of the newer wordpress design and layout tools. Looking forward to re-themeing my site soon. Tinkering and noodling with this now 14 year old website is still as fun as when I built my first Geocities page in the 90’s.

At the bottom of the page I also included a little history and documentation (that I have to hand currently) of all the zines I’ve been involved in over the years. I made my first ever zine in the mid 90s! when i was 9/10 years old. Click though to see photo! lol.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Booked flights and hotels and all that admin jazz
• Workshops next week.
• Sorted out worldrunning.guide finally. Lots of content compiled over there.
• Got my first hit on the blog from permissive.works
• Many calls this week.
• EmAiLs, so many emails.

Terminal Access

Urbanomic posted this fun video about the conception and making of the Toy Model AGI Playset – an exclusive Lego kit with accompanying map produced to accompany Reza’s book Intelligence and Spirit. Stuff like this really tickles me.

Dipping the Stacks

Computers in the 1970s – History-Computer

What were computers like in the 1970s? From design features to programming language, technology has come a long way. Here’s your guide!

Why 65 Percent of Fourth Graders Can’t Really Read

COVID didn’t necessarily cause these structural breakdowns as much as it exposed just how broken the system was to begin with.

How broken? Consider the shocking fact that 65 percent of American fourth-grade kids can barely read.

New research suggests that privacy in the metaverse might be impossible | VentureBeat

A new paper from the University of California Berkeley reveals that privacy may be impossible in the metaverse without innovative new safeguards to protect users.

The Bitter End of “Content” – Freddie deBoer

The marketplace of attention was supposed to solve this problem; we were told that the good channels would be elevated by the platforms and that people would stop watching the bad channels. But the marketplace of attention cares only about attention.

Social Media Is Dying – Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At

There are only so many living souls with devices and wallets, only so many advertisers, and only so many ways to connect these two parties in a way that doesn’t break the law

Reading

Still reading If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland – first published 1938. It’s a wonderful book about writing. Can’t recommend it enough.

Also how good is this chapter title!

Still reading Gods of Mars – book #3 in the Forges of Mars series by Graham McNeill. It’s a chonky boy, by far the longest book in the trilogy. I’m about half way though. I suspect I’ll finish it whilst waiting around in the airport next week.

A whole bunch of books arrived this week! Posted ’em on my Tumblr

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Mice Parade – lapapọ

Remember Kids:

The post ‘Medium Effort’ Items appeared first on thejaymo.net.

The todo list of doom I mentioned the other week is still in progress. I’m still chugging though, ticking things off every day, lots more still to do. The concrete I’ve been pouring in 2023’s foundations is beginning to set – so that feels really good.

Even better, I’m finally getting things on the doom list that are future facing!

I don’t know what your process is for planning lists of ideas and projects, but I’m currently in the middle of the following.

1. Brain dump a list of ideas and things you’d like to do/get done
   • Do this in one sitting about 2 hours. No distractions
   • Don’t be tempted to group or order the items by type
2. Returning a few days later: Under each item, brain dump a story or long narrative about what it is – what you want to achieve, learn, what you want it to be.
   • Each entry should be several paragraphs, ideally.
   • If the item is currently in progress (like my podcast), write a narrative about what/where you want it to be in a years time.
3. Returning a few days later review the written narratives and then try to sum the idea/project up in one or two sentences.
   • Elevator pitch it.
4. Then write two sublists under each idea.
   • The steps that can be taken right now to realise the idea
   • The challenges involved in doing it *right now*

I’m still in the process of doing step 4, but several projects on the turn out involve learning Affinity Designer/Publisher. Man I love lists

So the project that has been prioritised is the one which will allow me to learn basic Affinity Publisher skills and practice them regularly. Which incase you are wondering, is re-designing/settling on a consistent design for my zine. (I have 3 copies left of issue #004 btw).

Issue #005 goes in the post next month. Subscribe!

Podcast

Not Only in the Now

The artist should not concern themselves with the effervescent present of social media. The artist lives for deeper time & even deeper links.

Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Finished re-drafting a couple of old blog posts
• Confirmed with a former client I am no longer under their overly expansive and onerous NDA 🥳
• Couple of fun calls
• Finished the spreadsheet I was building for Novara
• Wrote 5k word report on tumblr in 2023 and sent it off

Terminal Access

Wassim and the Cryptographic Poetics Researchers’ Union just posted Pt2 of the The Necroprimitivist Manifesto. It’s Machine scripture sent back in time from a maximalist blockchain future.

Dipping the Stacks

Super Lesbian Animal RPG is a big hit with the target audience | PC Gamer

The recent release of Super Lesbian Animal RPG seems to have greatly pleased people who enjoy the idea of a game called Super Lesbian Animal RPG.

Mutually Assured Engagement – by Ian Leslie – The Ruffian

In the real world, if you make a verbal attack and the other person comes back with a devastating riposte, you lose. You are humiliated and slink off home. But that’s not how social media works, at least not for figures like Tate.

I wrote a story for a friend – by Julian Gough

Before I liberate myself, let me formally liberate the End Poem.
I hereby liberate it from the corporate economy, where it’s been illegally detained since 2014, and place it officially in the gift economy.

This longread is by the author of the end poem in Minecraft. It’s one hell of a piece of writing.

Archiving Your Teen Self – by Anne Helen Petersen

We are so much more than what we keep. But what we keep anchors us when and where memory inevitably fails. You don’t need a mom’s basement to put aside the things that make you feel like you — to begin or continue to preserve the language that future you will one day read. The storage container didn’t magically contain everything I felt or made or endured as a teen, not even close.

Is Microsoft about to get the deal of the century? Or is Sam Altman unloading OpenAI at just the right time?

Whether you think $29 billion is a sensible valuation for OpenAI depends a lot of what you think of their future. (Revenue so far is rumored to be more like $29 million/year, so you have to think things will soon get a lot better to make this sort of deal).

Reading

I finished Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. OH LORD its one of the best books on creativity and ‘art making’ I’ve ever read. I’ve said it 3 weeks in a row now, but this my generations War Of Art/Artists Way. Rubins book is more ‘koan-like’. Each chapter is less practical than other books on creativity. The reader has to do far more work interpreting the aphoristic writing style.

So good. 5* book. So good in fact I might go back to the beginning and read it again. The last book that had this effect on me was the War of Art!

I finished reading Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants. Originally written in 1972 this book is by John Clark, a chemist who worked in the development of US rocket fuels during the 1960s and 1970s. A first hand account full of humour about the nascent rocket industry and an explainer of how the science works. My favourite bits in the book where something unexpectedly explodes, in an engine, in a test bed or on the chemistry bench. I was also delighted to discover that some compounds are simply label S.E for Sometimes Explodes. The exact chemical mechanisms for spontaneous exploding being unknown.

Still chipping away at How to Read a Book by M.J. Adler. Been reading it since early Jan and it feels like the ‘only book’. It’s sooooo long.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Swearwolves (UK)

I saw on instagram that my mate Hassan’s band Swearwovles are back(?) together. Or at least they were at a band practice.

Swearwolves are local noisemakers who play some really heavy rock and roll.

00’s machine head, mixed with iron maiden and guitar solos? Rock!

Remember Kids:

The post Midlist appeared first on thejaymo.net.

October 29, 2022

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Attention 🎯, List 🗒️, Permanently Moved 🔊

You are leaving a place that has done immense damage to our society and culture. You and I both share in that complicity

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2022/10/29/301-2238-10-tips-on-leaving-twitter/

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My feeds today are full of people expressing their desire to leave the bird site. 

By quite some margin, the most successful Episode I’ve made so far this year has been 10 Tips for Creators in 2022.

Produced from my experience after making over 16 hours or 200 episodes of a different type of social media.

If you are new around here or listening to Permanently Moved for the first time, I direct you to that show. It’s a companion to this one.

10 Tips for Leaving Twitter

1. Have Some Ambition

Whatever you decide to do after leaving Twitter, I hope it’s ambitious

The average Twitter user spent 5 hours a month there. Just 10mins a day

Some of you are leaving after regularly spending 15 hours or more there a week

Remember, according to the place you are leaving, tweeting three to four times a week made you a heavy user

Posting just 1200 characters was apparently enough to make you a meaningful contributor to our collective culture

It did not

2. Pay Attention

Your Attention is Sovereign

Where and what you are going to put your attention on is currently the single most important question you have to answer for yourself 

Cultivate and relearn the practice discernment

Attention is such a powerful a resource that humanity harvests it for profit

Humans create and consume culture just as the bees produce and consume their honey

Consider the quality of the honey

Consider the bee keepers intentions

3. Who Cares Anyway

Next time you go out for coffee or dinner, take note of how long it takes for the conversation around you to turn to something that happened on social media

Twitter is only the 15th biggest social network on the Internet

Talking about your pinterest collection is actually more relevant to more people than any event that occurred on Twitter

It is likely no one cares more about Twitter than you did

4. People Stop Playing Games All the Time

Do not feel remorse or regret for putting Twitter down

Nine out of 10 people do not finish a game they have bought and paid for

Twitter was a terrible game

Followers, likes, retweets and replies. A big chat room with added metrics

Wherever you’re going next, that old scoreboard has no relevance now

5. Play a Different Game

There are two types of players. Uploaders and downloaders.

Don’t get sucked into short form videos, unless you’re making them. 

Otherwise it’s pure downloading and penny theatre.

Write, think and create in more than 240 characters.

Level up

It’s check out my Tumblr, not check out my Tumblr post

Create and curate content to be consumed in aggregate, not isolation

For the love of blarg start a blog, a newsletter, a Youtube channel

Whatever

6. What Do You Want to Do Instead?

I’ve changed my mind. Uploader and Downloader player types are a bad metaphor

And a bad metaphor, Tyson Yunkaporta reminds us, is a curse

All of the web is viewed through the metaphor of the window

Take this good metaphor seriously

You move horizontally across the web, not upward into abstraction

Tip the gnostic up and down of cyberspace outward into the field.

Ask yourself: Are you looking in through the window of the web browser or are you looking out?

7. Subscribe to My Newsletter

Twitter metrics have pickled your brain

An audience of 7 is not disheartening or pathetic

7 people in your living room is wonderful – if a little crowded

If all of you listening right now were together in person we’d need a local theatre

Twitter made you lazy.

Up and down created hierarchy.

It’s the to-ing and fro-ing that creates the relationships

If you choose to play a different game, tell people. You can’t take your network with you

If someone decides to play a different game, like and subscribe

Follow them wherever they are headed, you might make new companions on the journey

8. Create Something (Every Week)

You’re not on Twitter anymore, there’s so much extra time

Create something meaningful to you

Spend a few hours doing it

Do it regularly

Don’t get mad if others are doing it too

The publish button is the same for you as it is everyone else

9. What Are You Willing to Pay For?

Creating anything more ambitious than a tweet requires graft not craft

These 5 mins of social media right now are the result of multiple hours of my life, in both effort and time

If you come across something online that is meaning–full, consider paying for it

Remember: You never spent a penny on Twitter because it was all meaning-less

10. Read the room

You are leaving a place that has done immense damage to our society and culture

You and I share in that complicity

Wherever you decide to go, whatever game you decide to play, it is likely there are other people already playing

Complete the tutorial

New worlds have different norms and different cultures

Check the date when you arrive, it likely reads Eternal September

Consider that you may have brainworms and may need quarantine

Watch

The script above is the original script written for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the edit.

If you’d like to support this blog and its various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. It genuinely helps me keep things up and running, so thank you!

The post 10 Tips for Leaving Twitter | 2238 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

July 23, 2022

|

List 🗒️, Permanently Moved 🔊, Writing ⌨️

After 4 years and nearly 200 podcast episodes, here’s 10 tips for creating online in 2022

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2022/07/23/301-2229-10-tips-for-creating-online/

Watch 301 on youtube
Support the Show!
My Blog

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

Show Supporter 📻

£5 MONTHLY 👏

Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️

Subscribe 🔊

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10 Tips For Creating Online

Episode 200 is on the horizon. Just 4 more weeks. Yikes.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a Discord community full of 20 something creative artists, writers, musicians, etc. Called ‘No Notes’ the guest must speak off the cuff about their work and life for 40mins.

I started at the beginning. Family, Church, Tolkien, Warhammer, RPGs, DIY Punk, Zine making, Magic, University, Meditation. I spoke about the things I’ve done, Geekzine, various Bands, Stacktivism, Solarpunk, The Thought Menu, jobs, life, living arrangements, learning to write. I’ll admit, it was much harder than I thought it was going to be.

During the Q+A we discussed strategies for being a creative online in 2022. I thought I’d write that conversation up.

Here’s 10 bits of advice for creative people after 4 years of work and nearly 200 podcast episodes:

1. Avoid platforms that privilege the present

It is preferable to work in persistent digital mediums.

The rise of newsletters, podcasts, video essays and the rss revival speaks to this trend. 

The half life of a tweet is 30mins.

It is always now on social media.

One of the most read things I’ve ever written was posted the day after the 2019 election. 

I wrote that people should stop posting Twitter threads and ‘For the Love of Blarg, Start a Blog’. 

That post is still getting views.

How many insightful Twitter threads from that morning after are still being read in 2022?

2. Find a Safe Platform

Develop a safe and secure platform from which to work.

Own your data.

If you must use an intermediary or 3rd party. Choose platforms with strong values.

Use open protocols where possible.

Keep backups both on and offline.

Document your work, keep notes.

Be prepared to lose everything and to reconstruct your digital life at least once.

Myspace may happen to you at any time.

3. Find Rhythm

Engage with the algorithm on your own terms.

If there is no longer a sense of linear time online, create rhythm.

If you make, create, produce creative work online then publish with a pulse. 

Post content in persistent mediums with solid cadence and regularity. 

Post monthly, post weekly; whatever works for you.

Once you make a start, persist. Commit.

4. Abandon Ship

Beware!

Life and circumstances may change at any time. 

Do what you can, with all the integrity you can bring, in the context you are in. 

If the context changes, abandon ship.

The sea is so very big, and your boat is so very very small.

5. The Body of Work Is the Work of Body

Persistent work, created with rhythm results in an accumulation of creativity. 

The demonstration of effort, the work of the body, becomes practice.

Every episode of this podcast, all 16 hours of script, would fit into just 4800 tweets.

This episode alone is only 24 tweets in length. 

What is the best use of your effort, time and attention? 

4800 tweets is 22 tweets a day for 7 months.

What tells a more satisfying story?

A body of work or shouting into the void for half a year?

Promoting that work, and telling that story after the fact, does not diminish the integrity with which it was made

6. Be Generous

Social media in all its forms, for various reasons, encourages us to create atomic items of creative work.

Or rather, it encourages us to think about the things we create as content. 

The result is work divorced from context.

At the beginning of every single URL is HTTP. Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

Extensive cross-referencing between related sections of text and other material is literally what the web is for.

As Mat Dryhurst continually reminds us, the meaning of protocol is not just a system of rules. It also means procedure or set of behaviours. 

The behaviour we should all model on the web and in our lives is generosity.

Link to your own writing and link liberally to others.

Every page should feel like wikipedia.

A Retweet is not a social act.

7. Be Playful

Do whatever the hell you want on the Internet.

Do it under your own name, do it under an alias.

Write a blog, write a story, make music, make a meme.

Especially do these things if you have never done them before.

Don’t stop at just one. Make another.

It doesn’t matter if nobody saw it. Statistics are a trap. 

If you enjoyed making it, make another. 

Practice makes progress.

8. Start a diary

Write a diary every day.

Get those words, thoughts, and feelings out.

You’ll find that once you’re done, there’s plenty more to come. 

9. There’s a Book in You

It might not be a good one.

But do a NaNoWriMo. 

Discover graft, not craft.

10. Your Attention Is Sovereign

Watch

The script above is the original script written for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the edit.

If you’d like to support this blog and its various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. It genuinely helps me keep things up and running, so thank you!

The post 10 Tips For Creating Online | 2229 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I wrote a whole thing about everything being terrible this morning. Then I remembered I’m not the sort of person who posts negative shit on the internet anymore.

Here’s a handful of weird musicians I follow on youtube instead.

Beat Rita

Beat Rita plays the spoons. She’s very good.

First came across her as I was searching for washboard ties.

ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS!

Electronicos Fantasticos! is the project of artist and musician Ei Wada. The band build instruments out of weird electronic junk.

Todays video is a room fan:

Here’s them jamming with a desk fan, CRT monitors turned into guitars and a weird barcode instrument.

Ok Housecat

OK Housecat makes all sorts of circuit bent weird things

Here’s ELMOFX and a game boy

This 3D printed spring reverb unit he made is very cool.

LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER

Look Mum No Computer got the organ up and running (sort of) in his museum

Xtra Spice Mikey

XSM makes dnb, jungle and hardcore on his Amiga, and livestreams regularly

Amiga Samplers

Chase XSM with this 30min video on amiga samplers/trackers.

Acid Arab – Gul l’Abi (feat. A-WA) 

Bonus check out this incredible music video 👀

Photo 365

Permanently Moved

Navigation Styles

A world has to allow players to change their play style as they learn more about themselves in the context of the world.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Got several 1000 words of writing done
• Had 2 hour dialogue/call with Reza Negarestani and Mat Dryhurst as part of Impossible I/0’s ‘Conversations on AI’ series.

Dipping the Stacks

Reputation in Web3: Ships Built on the Great Flood — Dark Star

Is this what we mean when we refer to Web3? Will it replace the set of principles, technologies and behaviors that we’ve come to know as Web2? (Is this even the way that phases of the Internet works?)

Enchanted — Working With Lore P2 Discursive Landscapes

Lore unlocks the potential of distributed teams, but putting it to work is difficult. This eight part series dives into how distributed teams use lore to establish an ongoing aesthetic and narrative framework

Spotify’s acquisition of AI voice platform Sonantic will lead to more machine-narrated audiobooks

“We’re really excited about the potential to bring Sonantic’s AI Voice technology onto the Spotify platform and create new experiences for our users,” says Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s Vice President of Personalization.

New York’s hipster wars – New Statesman

Why the city’s clash of cultures between progressive Brooklyn and transgressive Manhattan marks a new era in American politics.

SR-71 Pilot trolls bragging F-18 Pilot | MiGFlug.com Blog

“It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed”

Reading

I finished listening to The Last Ditch. Book 7 in the Ciaphas Cain series. Its one of the most ridiculous Cain stories so far. everything is turned up to 11. The book opens with him getting into extreme peril and it just keeps turning the dial from there. Some great/funny moments in this book. Also glad that stephen perring thee narrator made the local planetary accent south African – A nice touch.

I burnt though all of Freedom TM. The follow up book to Daniel Suarez’s 2006 Daemon. It might be even better than the first book!! Wowowow I think taken together as a pair, the Daemon series is right up there in my top 5 cyberpunk books of all time. fantastic premise, he nailed our present/the near future over a decade ago. Really good book. Pairs well with Accelerando.

Started reading Permutation City by Greg Egan this morning. A 1994 sci-book that ‘explores many concepts, including quantum ontology, through various philosophical aspects of artificial life and simulated reality’. It was recommended to me by one of the DiscworldMUD devs in an e-mail exchange – looking forward to reading it.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Perfect Light – 40 Watt Sun

A friend recommended 40 Watt Sun to me after I played him my bands EP. I’m so glad he did!

Perfect Light is a quiet and tender album. Written and recorded during the pandemic, the album has a real sense of melancholy mixed with rays of sunshine.

Dramatic chord changes seem to be one the main tools in the songwriters bag tricks. It happens at least once a song, not complaining Love it.

40 Watt Sun are apparently London based. According to posts online they fell out of the Doom metal scene of the 00’s.

I’d love to play a gig with ’em.

Remember Kids:

The post Youtube Recs appeared first on thejaymo.net.

October 9, 2021

|

List 🗒️ | Permanently Moved 🔊

S04E38

In no particular order, here’s some things from friends and acquaintances that I think you should check out. 

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2021/10/09/301-2138-recommendations/

Watch 301 on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/jayspringett

Support the Show!: https://thejaymo.net/support/
Website: https://thejaymo.net/

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

Show Supporter 📻

£5 MONTHLY 👏

Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️

Subscribe 🔊

Wherever you get your podcasts

Recommendations

I haven’t made an episode recommending other people’s work for a little while. 

When you’ve done 150+ podcast episodes. It’s hard to remember what got posted where. So I looked it up and the last time I did one of these was July of last year.

I talked about how I was trying to pay more attention to things created by people I know IRL. Blogs, podcasts, essays, web shows, writing etc. 

The lockdowns last year resulted in me tightening my information sources. Being more discerning about where I was placing my attention. And what I was placing my attention on.

I think it’s super important to orient your attention towards things that are being created by people you know. I don’t mean social media posts or instagram snaps. But longer, more thoughtful content that is going out into the world.

So in no particular order, here’s some things from friends and acquaintances that I think you should check out. 

First out the gate is ‘ol buddy old pal and fellow Solarpunk, Andrew Dana Hudson’s new newsletter. Solarshades.club. 

Long time listeners may remember Andrew from his guest episode Midsommar vs The Buddha from way back in the before times. Episode 19-35 back in November 2019. He also co-wrote the BSFA longlisted Solarpunk short story ‘In the Storm, a Fire’ with me.

Andrew and I chat every day and I’m really glad that he’s finally started a fortnightly newsletter. 

The first email went out last week. He explained that as an upcoming author, with not one but two books up for pre-order he’s found promoting his work difficult. Tweets/posts about them having far less engagement than regular tweets. So he’s pulled the trigger on rule 101 internet marketing, and building a mailing list. 

The newsletter is still taking shape. But in the first issue includes what he’s currently working on. Links to things he’s been involved with. Interesting tidbits of research he’s come across for his socialist detective novel Zoo York City and a personal update. Good stuff.

Continuing with newsletters. OG conceptual crypto artist and fellow guild.is member Rhea Myers has started an occasional newsletter about her art, work and media appearances. The first newsletter covers her newest work Proof That One Doge Equals One Doge. Stay up to date at rhea.art/newsletter

My next recommendation is the Night Dream Podcast by Laurie Pike. A recent addition to my podcatcher after Laurie liked a tweet of mine a few weeks ago. The show is fantastic.

‘A collection of short/flash/meta fiction which puts the listener at the centre of the story‘. Each story in the second person. Pike’s writing, narration and production results in capturing the project’s dream-like qualities. Especially if you (like I did) binge the entire back catalogue of 100 short stories over just a few days. 

As luck would have it. I’m away next week and the Night Dream Pod will be guest hosting next week’s episode. Presenting a short story called ‘Pit of Snakes’. So go binge the Night Dream today to whet your whistle. I’m thrilled to have Laurie guest hosting next week.

Next up is old buddy ‘ol pal and another guest host around these parts author Huw Lemmey.

You may know him has the author of the as yet incomplete Chubz trilogy of political satire. Co-author of the book Unknown Language in collaboration with 12 Century Mystic Hildegard of Bingen. Or as the co-host of the massively popular podcast Bad Gays.

The publisher Verso, recently announced that the podcast is becoming a book in 2022. Written with co-host Ben Miller, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History will put the queer villains and evil twinks of history centre stage. Pre orders are open now. 

O’l buddy and O’l pal, Jay Owens AKA @hautepop, the writer behind of the smash hit newsletter Disturbances, recently announced her first book. Dust: A History and a Future of Environmental Disaster. It is being published by Hodder & Stoughton in hardback, trade paperback, audio and e-book in 2022.

The book will cover the deep entanglements of people, capitalism, and the natural environment, from the earliest industrial history into the future speculative technologies for geoengineering a cooler planet. 

Jay or Other Jay as we refer to each is a fantastic writer and I can’t wait to get my hands on this book. 

Next up is the anthology/collection Altered States by Ignota Books. The book brings together thirty-six contributions united around the questions: What are altered states of consciousness? And Can altered states produce altered worlds? 

The book explores consciousness and revelatory experience.

It has some amazing contributors: K Allado-McDowell, Paige Emery, Erica Scourti, Emily Segal, Merlin Sheldrake, Rebecca Tamás and Ayesha Tan to name a few. 

Lastly but not least, it would be remiss of me to not mention the ongoing kickstarter for the Solarpunk Magazine. Which at the time of writing is fully funded with 22 days still to go.

Solarpunk magazine will be publishing short stories, poetry, art, non-fiction and more in a utopian mode. It will provide space for optimistic stories about sustainable communities that thrive on cooperation and mutual aid. There are now plenty of people who want to read optimisitc stories, and people writing them. Solarpunk magazine is hoping to bring the two together. 

I had a fantastic conversation with a few members of the editorial team the other week, and I’m excited for the future of the project.

Watch

The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in the audio due to time constraints.

If you’d like to support this blog and its various projects, please consider making a regular contribution here. It genuinely helps me keep things up and running, so thank you!

The post Recommendations | 2138 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

December 4, 2020

|

List 🗒️ | Permanently Moved 🔊 | Writing ⌨️

S03E48

Lessons learnt from participating in this years NanoWriMo, and thoughts on staying with a creative moment for as long as possible.

Full show notes: https://thejaymo.net/2020/12/04/301-2048-nanowrimover/

Webshow: http://comeinternetwith.me
Website: https://thejaymo.net/
Support: https://thejaymo.net/support/

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

Show Supporter 📻

£5 MONTHLY 👏

Quarterly zine; my gift to you ✉️

Subscribe 🔊

Wherever you get your podcasts

NanoWrimOver

It’s been a weird week for me. Oscillating wildly from intensive periods of focus and effort. Contrasted with two whole days where I did absolutely nothing. On those days, I struggled to even open a program/tool on my laptop that had the potential to be a space for productivity or creativity.

I spent yesterday beating myself up for not doing anything. The only thing I did do was binge on my backlog of ‘people exploring abandoned mines’ videos. Eve reminded me last night that I have just finished nanowrimo, I and haven’t had a day off since October. Which is fair enough actually.

I talked about Nanowrimo in Episode 20-44, and how its helped me come to terms with my dyslexia. 

I completed it again this year, and now have about 2/3rds of a Solarpunk novel under my belt. It’s about smugglers in east Kent. Dealing with a plague, interpersonal BS, and ongoing climate shocks in the early 2100’s. 

For the first time this year going into Nanowrimo I had a plan. 

I used the classic 3 Act / 9 Block / 27 Chapter Outlining Method. I had a word count target for each chapter and a clear idea of scenes, the plot and character progression.

I’m quite pleased with how it the story is going. But finishing up November with 1 / 3 of the story still unwritten was surprising. And I’ve learnt a lot.

Off the top of my head here are some of my learnings:

1
Word count targeting chapter lengths is good for NanoWriMo.
But impractical for actually telling a story.

2
I found sustaining a single POV / narrative for a whole novel really hard.

In fact there were times where even I thought my main character was actually quite boring.

So I introduced a new character quite early on writing in the form of email missive to an off screen entity. They attach a few PDFs from the ‘margate historical society. Which meant I unlocked a way of infodumping in a fun and interesting way. 

I’m going to continue to write the book and finish the whole story from A-Z with the main character in January.

In the re-write I’m going to go back though and introduce more characters in a Mosaic style. Inspired by KSR’s recent The Ministry for the Future. With the whole narrative spine of the story already written. I’m hoping it will be easy add in more points of view.

3
A few days were a struggle creatively trying to get the words out and onto the page.

But the physical graft of sitting down and typing was not a blocker this year. I have however hurt my wrist. 

I must have written something like 75-80k words this month. As a result – the RSI I first developed working in a shared service center during the noughties has flared up again. Doing Nanowrimo AND starting a blog series about the metaverse, dweb and the #supportnet, may or may not have been a mistake. 

4
Word Counts, targets, and pacing work for me.

Nanowrimo reminds me every year. Then it dissolves away again as the weeks and months go by the learning drifts into a cloud of forgetting. 

5
Thinking about the editing process

Lastly, this is the first year that I’ve been thinking about the editing process as I’ve been writing. Having planned it out, as I wrote the chapters dissolved down into scenes. For the first time, now understand the utility of scrivener as a writing tool. Particularly the Index Card view and the ability to move scenes around on the fly.

I think that feature will be invaluable in the second drafting process. As I try and reshape it from a single narrative POV to a Mosaic.

So yeah. November was pretty good.

Through the act of doing…

Through the act of doing, I am once again reminded that I’m one of those people who thrives on momentum and routine. The more effort I put into a single task, the more creative ideas seem to flare off into other areas and interests.

I once spoke to an artist whose work I admire about this creative phenomenon. They said that if you are in that spot you just have to let it all pour out. Stay with that effort, stay in the moment, and capture all the ideas with a net for as long as possible. Because if you lose momentum or set that moment aside even for a hot minute, it will escape you.

This feast of creativity in the last month or so resulted in some long days. Working and typing well after Eve had gone to bed. 

But being in creative fugue state was a very pleasurable way to spend Lockdown 2. But deeply appreciate that this experience has not been the same for everyone. 

I’m very thankful that I have the time and space to be able to do that.

The script above is the original script I wrote for the episode. It may differ from what ended up in audio due to time constraints.

The post NanoWrimOver | 2048 appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I’ve been tidying my podcast app today. Trying to pare down the list as it was a little out of control.
As with the 10 Youtube Channel Recommendations I did the other week, I thought I’d write up list of recommended podcasts. Something something content in the age of isolation.

So here’s a random selection of shows (In no particular order) that I really like, that you may or may not have come across before. I’m sharing them as it would be nice to be able to talk to people about them! Comment below or blog about them if you take a listen!

Click the show covers to take you to the podcasts website/homepage.

Marooned On Mars With Matt And Hilary

Matt and Hilary began this podcast reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy chapter by chapter. After that epic slog concluded they have moved on to other KSR material. Its one of the best ‘book club’ shows I’ve listened to. A few friends have started reading the Mars Trilogy for the first time recently and have commented to me that they are loving listening to this.

The Thin Layer

This is a podcast about dirt, soil, and landscape. Its a 5 episode mini series full of great reporting and information. Each episode has a theme / topic regarding soil and explores it. Really recommend it.

Containers

8-part mini series from 2017 on Containers. Alexis uses a collection of anecdotes to explore how global trade has transformed the economy and ourselves. In doing so, he provides an insightful, in-depth perspective regarding the role that global trade has had in shaping capitalism, ushering in the world of commerce as we know it today.

Have You Heard George’s Podcast?

This is an astonishing podcast from Londons own spoken word Performer George the Poet. Listen from episode one. It is quite frankly, like nothing you will have ever heard on the radio/podcast before. 5 mins in to the first episode it will become very clear why it’s won so many awards.

How Sound

How Sound is hosted by Rob Rosenthal from Transom Workshop/PRX. It bills itself as ‘The Backstory to Great Radio Storytelling’. Week by week Rob does the deep dive on a piece of great radio and (usually) interviews the creator about their decisions/challenges when making it.
I really like this show. Partly as its so inspirational, but also because it exposes me to so many different types of radio, field recordings, interviews that i wouldn’t have heard anywhere else.

Bad Gays

Hosted by my friend Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller bad gays is a show about evil and complicated queers in history.
It is extremely well researched and you will all definitely take something away from each and every episode. Season 3 has just started.
Also check out these interviews with them about the show in Vox, and Vice.

Through A Monk’s Eyes

A sporadic and occasional podcast by Fr Seraphim Aldea from the “The Monastery of All Celtic Saints” on the isle of Mull. The first Orthodox Monastery in the Isles of Scotland in over a thousand years.

It is a wonderful podcast. Deeply, deeply, personal, caring, and kind. I really does provide an insight into what the world looks like through a monk’s eyes.

Rune Soup

Of course I can’t compile this list without including Gordon White’s Runesoup podcast. Especially as we both spoke at an event just 3 weeks (seems like months? years?) ago. It covers, occultism, psi, history and culture and the paranormal. Great topics, great guests, great show!

London’s Peaks

Another wonderful sporadic podcast. This series is about walking to the summits of each of the 32 London boroughs with an interesting person from each borough.

I hope they do another series. Even if the host has been there before it would be great to revisit the peak with a new guest in a different season. Lots of great local knowledge and love of place and landscape in this podcast.

A Phone Call From Paul

This is one of the podcasts that has been in my feed the longest. The conceit is fantastic. Quote-a-manic Paul Holdengräber – host and director of the interview series LIVE at the New York Public Library calls people on a land line to have a conversation. There is something about the sound of a phone conversation that makes it feel very intimate and spontaneous. Paul is a fantastic interlocutor, really recommend the show. The Le Guin interview (I think) is the last recorded interview before her death.

The Botanical Lovecast

Hosted by botanical illustrator and my relative in-law Maddy Maine. This is a fun show that explores relationships between people, plants, and culture. Guests range from organic perfumers, artists, and sound therapist. Really interesting and eclectic.

Bundyville

Now into its second season, Bundyville is a deep journalistic investigation in to the Bundy family, the 2014 Bundy Farm standoff, and the armed uprisings they inspired. Also old time religion and ranching.
This show is amazing. I’ve been recommending it since Episode 1 back in 2018.

Dolly Parton’s America

Hosted by WNYC’s Jad Abumrad (Radiolab) as soon as it was announced I knew that this show would be great – It did not disappoint. This show is also Fantastic. It also feels more like watching a documentary rather than listening to one. Really inspirational show, and (for me) represents where podcasting and radio can go in the future as a form. The fact that most podcasts are listened to with headphones means that detailed and lunch stereo field recordings can be used to great effect. Just listen to it. Its amazing.

The Burner

Last but not least is The Burner from Novara Media. First conceived during the 2019 election, The Burner is now back with its own feed. Publishing weekdays (currently) with news and commentary related to the Covid-19 Lockdown, labour struggles, the emerging mutual aid groups etc.

Definitely subscribe if you like a short podcast with your morning coffee.

Speaking of short podcasts….

Permanently Moved

Hosted by a very dashing and handsome man, the conceit of this podcast is that the host writes, edits and records a podcast 301 seconds in one hour every week.
I sometimes suspect that it takes him a little over/longer than 1 hour sometimes, but who am I to judge?
Each episode is very different and is basically just a product of whatever the Host has been thinking about that week.

I have loads more I could have included – but this list has got very extensive already. Apologies to friends who’s shows I’ve missed/not included. You know I try to promote your content when ever I can! You’ll make the next list I promise!

The post Podcast Recommendations (2020) appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I have been trying to curb my time wasting on Youtube for a while. Over the weekend I unsubscribed from over 100+ channels. But STILL find myself subscribed to 260+ channels ?.

Because its top of mind this morning – here’s a selection of good channels (In no particular order) I really like, that are away from the beaten path of ‘regular youtube’.

Bournemouth Jet Washing

Literally what you think it’s going to be. In each video the affable protagonist ‘Ricky Banjo’ travels to a job and cleans something with a jet washer. Its 3 act story telling at its best. I also enjoy the shredding air guitar solos at the end of each video.

Vortecks

There is a whole sub genre of ‘men in sheds building insanely dangerous ebikes’. Vortecks is my favourite. The channel also does great breakdowns of how to build power cells of 18650 batteries etc. Also check out the most recent video where he tests a modded escooter that does 30/35mph! I think the whole scene is solarpunk as hell.

Greg Judy

Greg Judy is one of the many regenerative grazers I follow on ‘Farmtube’. Richard Perkins is the TOP Farmtuber IMO. But I like Gregs video style. It’s usually a 10min musing from the field on the state of the grass, happy cows, fencing etc.

London Worms & Garden

Guy has LOADS of worm bins. He does lots of experiments, usually debunking packagings claims of being compostable. Its very casual, lots of advice on how to manage worm bins in the UK climate.

Kris Harbour Natural Building

This guy lives in the woods somewhere in Wales. He’s built a house, a DIY hydro electricity system that also does 3 phase. For the last year he’s been building an off grid workshop with a reciprocal roof. I started following him back when he was building the house in the video above.

Wildlife Exposed TV

This Channel is great. He only has 600 something followers at the time of posting. Jack Perks is a great host and each episode is on some weird aspect of British Fauna. TBH I think the BBC should give him a TV show.

John Vervaeke

John Vervaeke, PhD is an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science and Buddhist psychology. He’s deep in ‘Meaning crisis’ youtube.

Chi With A C

Chi with a c is from my hometown, I really like her humor. Its a great channel. Good greenscreen work.

Travels With Sheila

Some big boomer energy on this channel. Sheila has been traveling the world since 1960. She has visited 150 in over 60 years of travel. She is always on holiday… like all the time. Cruises, sightseeing etc. She posts reviews of all sorts of things, flights, hotels, tourist attractions, food. She also makes great travel tip videos how to buy train tickets from an airport etc. Really useful when we were travelling though Asia last year.

BOAT TUBE

Acorn to Arabella

Sampson Boat Co

These two videos come as a pair. There are loads of people building boats on youtube but these folks are my favourite. It’s really informative, and seems to perhaps herald a resurgence of traditional skills and methoeds.

As the world re-greens as part of the anthropogreen perhaps more and more boats will be built as all the rewilded forests need thinning. Its also solarpunk as hell.

Bonus video:
Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t

This video was posted by an admin at solarpunks recently.

This video tour of his Guerilla Gardening whilst cruising around on a hacked electric scooter is an IRL Solarpunk VIBE.

Thats the list for now. A bit bro heavy I’m afraid/aware. I’ll do another one of these at some point in the next 6 months as “I recognise my failing and will strive to correct it” as the saying goes.

Obviously, if you can’t be assed to subscribe to my podcast via audio app. you can always subscribe and listen to it on youtube here.

The post 10 Youtube Recommendations appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I am beginning to hate twitter threads with a passion. My pinboard bookmarks are full of them and its a little confusing despite diligent tagging. Why can’t folks just have a blog? I always think to myself, scrolling though an epic 50 post thread on a super interesting topic.

The question is rhetorical however as the answer is that the logics of Twitter demand that attention be kept inside the high walls of the network – but still. There are so many places on the internet to hangout.

I keep wondering if RSS readers are too much effort in 2019? or is that there are no decent free options? Rolling your own culture/internet is what it has always been here for …

Anyways I posted this list to Tumblr the other night. I had forgotten how rich Tumblr looks compared to Twitter. Despite being a heavy tumblr being an admin on solarpunks.net.

WordPress is obviously still the least worst option. But I like that I can just embed the whole post below. Perhaps I’m warming to Gutenberg … Perhaps.

The post 5 Favourite Tracks of 2019 So Far appeared first on thejaymo.net.

I have always been a ‘notebook guy’ – since I was about 16 . I carry one and a parker jotter pen literally everywhere. Perhaps it started as an emo diaries thing or just an affectation that I thought would look ‘cool’. But the thing is, there is a natural law which goes something like: ‘If you carry a note book and a pen you will end up using it’.

I’ve had a lot of types of notebooks over the years and switched over to Moleskine’s variants in 2013. Since then they have all developed a fairly consistent archive aesthetic.

So this week for the first time (perhaps) this year I wrote a list of 21 things to do this week and when I hit post on this blogpost I will have done 18 of them.

Thats not a bad score for the first week back in to giving a shit mode.

I’ve archived over 10k emails in gmail this week, everything is tagged and filed. SO SO GOOD!

I’ve always run my life from lists. My general policy when I’m in a workplace is ‘if you didn’t see me write it down then it is not going to happen’. This has been an extremely useful rule at several startups i’ve worked in. To the point where close colleagues will say ‘write that down’ to me.

Sometimes, people who are younger than me (an occurrence that is increasingly more and more common to me much to my creeping horror – I was always the youngest person in the room since going right the way back to helping run the Geekscene DIY collective in Margate at 15ish) laugh at me about that rule. But they quickly understand that I’m not joking – I’m a week late on something, they chase me and I say “Argh I didn’t write it down”.

Indeed Alex from Common Knowledge chased me up this week for a testimonial and I realised I hadn’t written it down as he asked me in the Dark Forest whilst I was away in the Netherlands last week.

I started writing lists properly very soon after getting my first proper job out of uni. Before then I’d only worked in retail and many of the tasks daily/weekly were routine and could be held in your head, scribbled in the shop diary the day before by another supervisor. I found very quickly in the office environment that I just couldn’t keep all the things i needed to do in my head, and getting in trouble for not doing something sucked.

Eventually when I was a team leader in the shared service centre I worked in. My todo list would be written out every morning, and I’d carry over about 1 column of a 2 column A4 page every day. By the end of the day I’d have filled the whole page and marked off a lot. A running list of 100 things to do however is an endless task and not very psychologically healthy.

I should also note: There is absolutely no point in staying late or working yourself to the bone in a start up environment – Especially if you are in the senior layer but you actually have very little influence over anything super important. Don’t get manipulated to finish one more thing before you leave – The endless list of things to do will still be endless the following morning.

I sometimes wonder what sort of person I would have been if I’d found the secret of lists before I was an ‘proper’ adult. At school or university even. My life could have been very different.

I reckon if I was growing up now, I’d be extremely into bullet journaling (my notebook kinda looks like one anyway see below)

I can see how/way I got in to project management and implementation consulting and eventually operations management. It’s a natural progression from being a ‘list guy’. Offloading your tasks one layer of abstraction higher into a project plan is obvious in a techno social institution like a company. AND as a result of being ‘The keeper of the list” you get to tell other people when and what they need to do as well.

But this week I’ve surprised myself by how easy it is to return to the feeling of having wrestled back some control just by having a list of things to do.

I have been running the last 18months with a daily chore list – meditate, write diary, write LAP or some fiction, Make my podcast on a Friday etc but doing that means you feel satisfied having done the bare minimum. As i understand it daily habit building is supposed to build on everything else you do daily so you can do more – not the bare minimum.

The running list in physical pen and paper zeros/zooms in on immediate priorities.

I did a GTD course years ago as a project manager and it changed my life. I am not naturally an organised person at all but GTD combined with project management training were vital skills that I took on board and it changed my day to day. However I very rarely apply them outside of the work environment to my own life. With the exception of all my bills and utility filing system.

Seeing as I’ve been freelance for 18months now perhaps i should … Anyway this is a long way about saying that i feel good about the last week and want to carry the momentum into next week – buy writing another magic list.

Permanently Moved

The Anthropogreen

S2E12

Catching up the last two weeks. I cover some of what I said at Bordersessions festival in The Hague.

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You can subscribe to Permanently Moved in itunes: permanentlymoved.online/itunes or search in all your favourite podcatchers.

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

Dipping the Stacks

Does Neven’s Law Describe Quantum Computing’s Rise? | Quanta Magazine

The Era of Quantum Computing Is Here. Outlook: Cloudy | Quanta Magazine

Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing Reflect on the Plantationocene

Attorney General ‘awkwardly uncomfortable’ about plans to legalise Obeah | News | Jamaica Gleaner

The Ministry

Yeah fuck loads of stuff got done this week. The first of the samizdat PDFs coming soon. By encouragement from m1k3y

Reading

I re-red dark night of the soul by John of the Cross this week. Its full amazing lines.

Silence is God’s first language.

Is one of the truest lines i’ve ever read and makes me belive that my meditation practice is actually getting somewhere. As i know this to be true.

Music

Louis Center returned to twitter this week. But in the Dark Forest he sent me a link to this track. Its amazing if you are in need of a dose of Super Sweet Glitchy Chiptune in your life right now.

I’ve been listening to it non stop this week. Even going as far as making it my alarm clock music. (RIP rollin’ by limp bizkit)

I also bought a USB to 3/4 inch jack cable this week. For the first time ever I can plug a guitar into my laptop with no external device. I’m not really sure about the build quality of the cable but for 11 quid on amazon its already been worth the money. I might do a proper review of it at some point.

Remember kids:

The post Notebook share – Being a ‘List Guy’ appeared first on thejaymo.net.