Mixed Reporting

1 hour of silence occasionally broken up by Michael Jackson sounds

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:53:56 +0000

Exactly as advertised. Sixty minutes in which the only noises are silence and, occasionally, Michael Jackson. You will not regret a single minute.

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 18:08:45 +0000

A field guide to why the logos of every AI company appear to be converging on the same conclusion. Once seen, cannot be unseen.

GifCities

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 21:52:20 +0000

The Internet Archive's search engine for GeoCities GIFs. The visual language of a dead internet, preserved like amber.

Umarell

Tue, 02 Apr 2024 21:16:19 +0000

The Italian word for a pensioner who stands around watching construction work. Italy got there first because it needed the word.

Prisencolinensinainciusol (Remastered)

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 19:14:55 +0000

Adriano Celentano's 1972 single sung entirely in invented American English — gibberish that sounds, to Italian ears, exactly like American pop. He was proving a point. He was right.

Chimney Sheep

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 14:39:03 +0000

A felt plug for your chimney. British, woolly, and does one job beautifully — the kind of product that makes you wonder why everything else exists.

Replica Train Departure Boards

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 06:28:39 +0000

A replica train departure board for your home, wired to live national rail data. Now you can experience the anxiety of a late-running service from the comfort of your kitchen.

The man who sold the future

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 12:00:00 +0000

David Bowie fans will make themselves known to you faster even than vegans and wild-swimmers. Even six years after his passing, Bowiefication continues so strongly that you might be forgiven for thinking that nobody else had an impact on popular culture between 1962 and 2016.

Bowie’s career is noteworthy for being long and prolific: releasing 128 singles from 26 albums, even if only five were hits. This is double the output of The Beatles in their eight years together, although the Fab Four’s hit-rate was four times higher as one band, higher still when including their time individual artists.

The unrelenting tidal bore of relentless cryptobullshit

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 06:00:00 +0000

I’m cautious of being sure of something. Going beyond the point of doubt is akin to fanaticism: but, time and again, the digital era has shown us things are always nuanced.

I became convinced that Web3, particularly crypto, was completely and sensationally bad. In its contemporary form, could find not one single merit. So I put some pocket-money down and had a close look, to see if it does indeed behave like a credible market. It does not.

with a bang

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Ahoy lovely email friends and I hope all is just tickety-boo with you, or at least pointing in that direction.

This is the last 💥BLAST! for now. What a tremendous honour has been to take a place in your inbox over these last three years. I do mean that: your inbox and attention are under constant attack, so it’s been a privilege to share some things with you almost every week.

Calligraphy, hype and mood shame

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends, hope you’re well. Millie is supervising me closely this week. If it were up to her, all the interesting things included this week would be fish. Particularly of the canned and/or freeze-dried variety. I sometimes wonder what would happen if she met a live tuna. I sense she wouldn’t like it as much as she does when it comes in a can. Right, care for some non-fish-related interesting things?

Trauma dumping and jets a'jumping

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends, hope you’re well. I was going to write that this email was prepared a little in advance, as this week I’m moving around. But then I was reminded of my favourite Simpsons joke and, of course, these emails are always prepared a little in advance. So it really makes no odds either way.

🛩 1996: Man sues Pepsi for not giving him the Harrier Jet from its commercial: The campaign was simple: buy Pepsi products, collect points from Pepsi labels and claim prizes like t-shirts, sunglasses, or—for 7 million points—a Harrier Jet. But a 12-year-old business student noticed some fine print: consumers could buy Pepsi points for ten cents each. So backed by investors, he sent a cheque and waited for his bargain jet.

The true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Warmest greetings to you lovely email friends on Groundhog Day. While we wait at Gobbler’s Knob for Punxsutawney Phil to emerge and see, or not see, his shadow, we have a chance to reflect upon the movie based on this esoteric meteorological tradition.

There can’t be many Nineties comedy films that hit upon a cultural and perhaps spiritual significance, intentionally or otherwise. What’s uncommonly interesting about Groundhog Day is it doesn’t leave you with a particular joke or wise-crack or pratfall, but rather pondering the big questions. Perhaps the biggest questions.

Why time is speeding up and new music is rubbish

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends. Let’s do a theme. I’ve not stuck to a theme for ages, and so this week’s theme is… ages. If you’re lucky, ageing is inevitable. I expect you’re doing it right now. Well, good. And yet it’s still taboo, which these days seems conspicuous. There was a bit of that in 💥BLAST! #53, back in the good old days. I no longer have no idea how old I am, since every time it gets close to celebrating the passing of another year, we all have to stay in. Maybe I can claim these back later, or something. Anyway, here are your links for the ages:

Socks! Microaggressions! Exclamations!

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Hey there lovely email friends. You can already just-about notice that it’s getting a little brighter here. I am surrounded on all sides by brambles, all of whom have definitely noticed. They’re up and about already, as if it were mid-summer. Must be exhausting. Well there’s my bramble ramble, let’s see what else is going on, shall we?

❓ Phil Gyford’s Favourite Asks of 2021: Now look, when it comes to this new-fangled cyberspace malarkey, I can’t think of anyone that does it better than Phil Gyford. These days there aren’t many people who’s posts I read word-for-word every time. I could go on about this, but for now let’s just say when (if?) I grow up I want to be Phil Gyford, and so should you. Anyway, his tolerance for Ask MetaFilter is much higher than my own, and he has listed his favourite questions posted last year. You should read them.

Abundance, burnout and horseshoe crabs

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends, hope you’re well. I recently bought another record player—not a fancy turntable, but a little portable thing—in an effort to make my records as close-at-hand as, say, Spotify. Then at Christmas I was generously gifted a little case in which to keep a small selection of my most treasured albums. To select which should be shortlisted for this exclusive collection-within-a-collection, I posed myself a question: if my home were ablaze, which would I rescue? What I’ve learnt from this exercise is I’m unlikely to survive a house-fire. Please test your smoke alarm.

Starting as you mean to go on, with Garry Shandling

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon gorgeous email friends, and let me be among the stragglers to wish you a happy new year. This week I bring you a mix of optimism and geekery, but kicking off with a clash of titans.

🤺 Garry Shandling and Ricky Gervais’s Epic Sparring Match: I don’t recall why the masterful Garry Shandling drifted into my consciousness over the festive period, but I started rewatching The Larry Sanders Show as well as Judd Apatow’s The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling documentary. The latter is lengthy and heavily-populated with stories both of the subject’s talent and support for protégés. Then, late on, we’re shown a different side of Shandling as he finds Ricky Gervais in his kitchen: a man with a comedy career built upon antagonising people. Either spontaneously or by planning, Shandling is having none of it; instead allowing Gervais to reveal himself to the camera as shallow, insecure and vulnerable. Gervais would’ve done well to heed that old advice about not meeting his heroes.

Bad gifts and eating too much

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Ahoy there lovely email friends, I hope you’re well and starting to ease into something approaching a festive period. No 💥BLAST! next week, so I’ll see you next year. Meanwhile here’s a mix of interesting seasonal and non-seasonal things to keep you ticking over:

🥗 What humanity should eat to stay healthy and save the planet: More than 2 billion people are overweight or obese, mostly in the Western world. At the same time, 811 million people are not getting enough calories or nutrition, mostly in low- and middle-income nations. Unhealthy diets contributed to more deaths globally in 2017 than any other factor. Meanwhile the current industrialised food system already emits about one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as 70% of freshwater use and 40% of land coverage. What we eat needs to be both nutritious and sustainable, so researchers are trying to figure out what that looks like around the world.

Pop hits and and pop misses

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hey there lovely email friends, it’s getting pretty dark on the top half of the planet so I hope you’re getting enough light. I’ve been thinking a lot about the wonderful, sparkly life-giver that is popular music. So there’s a bit of that shiny shenanigans thrown in amongst your bunch of links this week.

🕴 Why the Year’s Most Popular Song Never Went to No. 1: Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” is 2021’s biggest song. It has hung around all year, spending most weeks in the Top 10, but in in Billboard’s Hot 100 it never got higher than No. 2. It’s a fine piece of pop, but Lipa, her label, radio programmers—everybody underestimated its potency.

Crap gadgets, cool Britannia and the great Web3 lie

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon lovely email friends, how’s it going? If you’re a Christmas person, I hope and expect you’ve dived right in already. If you’re not, I hope it’s leaving you alone. Remember, if that blasted Wham song becomes an earworm, you can always get rid of it by singing Club Tropicana. Not the vocal bit, mind—otherwise you’ll just end up with another earworm—you need to sing the trumpety bit from about 3:39 onwards. Trust me, Club Tropicana is like salt on a wine-stained carpet. Works every time.

Translators, cocaine gadgets and hot-dog buns

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hey there lovely email friends, hope all’s well. Perhaps like you, I’ve been humming Beatles songs all week. I love that illusion of old songs: you can’t remember them ever not being there, so it’s strange to think there was ever a time before they existed. It’s pretty impressive, therefore, to get a change to show an audience footage of the precise moment a song they all know fell out of the mind of its creator.

Alright, bab?

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends. Hope you’re okay. As a handful of you know, once the pandemic had arrived on these shores last year, I left London and headed northwards. I try and base all those pesky big life decisions on Alex Garland screenplays. I’ve been camping out in Birmingham: unattractive by reputation but, I now realise, this is just a means of keeping Londoners away.

If you can live with agricultural connectivity and a lack of—nay, contempt for—public transport, then Telly Savalas was right: there are a great many things to like about Birmingham. Not only friendly people and extensive leisure and shopping opportunities, but also fine satirical artworks and an actual chocolate factory.

The Clapton Effect

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon gorgeous email friends. The democratising effect of the internet killed the printed word. This amateurisation made it harder for papers and magazines to recover from their inevitable mistakes. Once everyone became a publisher, the demand for even well-loved titles dwindled until they could no longer see a point in continuing.

At least, for a while. The internet has been around long enough for us all to understand the effect of giving everyone a publishing platform: many benefits but also considerable drawbacks that were initially obscure.

No Mr Bond I expect you to die (and take us all down in the process)

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hey there lovely email friends. Recently I’ve had many lovely replies and I’m grateful for all of them. What a nice bunch you are. So if your prefrontal cortex aches wearily from the relentless pseudo-political tinnitus of social media, perhaps it’s a good time to close down that infinite scroll, hit the compose button and drop a note to someone you’ve not had proper contact with for too long. Meanwhile, here’s some interesting things for you.

A climate of crisis, OK and neutrinos

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello again lovely email friends. You might have noticed that I prefer to avoid covering things the mainstream media have gathered around—errant politicians and the like—not because it isn’t interesting, but because you certainly know where to find them. But COP26 is a particularly good time for coverage on emissions and the climate crisis, so this week I’m starting with a few articles that I’ve found particularly interesting.

Earlier this year I completed a course at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, in which the case for economic growth as the mechanism of change was substantiated. But there is also a strong opposing argument, set out in the first link below. Both are worthy of detailed study: and I mean that not to devalue the thinking on either side, but rather that it may be necessary to support one while we figure out how to adopt the other, as time spent choosing is time wasted. And there is no time.

Gas and oil and plant-based meat

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon lovely email friends. How are you? I love what you’ve done with the place. I think this is the week in the year for which it’s hardest to dress. The optimum outfit is exactly between one and two layers, and nobody makes a layer and a half. So it’s a hoodie-on hoodie-off kind of week. On, off, on, off. Anyway, nearly the weekend!

🔪 Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace Is a Pitch-Perfect Horror Parody: Halloween is the perfect time, if you haven’t already, to discover Darkplace. If you know it, it’s time to watch it again. While you can (and should) watch it any time of year, the spooky season is an ideal time for your first viewing. But the show has plenty more targets besides horror. [thanks, MS!].

Bergerac, blushing robots, bastard spiders

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends. I encountered a spider, and my goodness it was a biggie. The largest I’ve seen in the northern hemisphere, just standing there in my front room. It was wider than any glass I own and I didn’t fancy my chances with any other kitchenware. So I’m ashamed to say I used the vacuum cleaner. Not the fancy but ineffective bagless one that would force me to witness the horror of my crime, but the old-style, smiley one; its eyes judging me.

Mind palaces, scanned archeology, gendered play

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Happy Wednesday lovely email friends, hope all’s well with you. I don’t mind telling you this week’s email almost didn’t happen, since I’d fallen straight down the rabbithole that is the Thames Television archive. Anyway, here it is, with this week’s selection of interesting things:

🎙 Which Singers Have the Biggest Vocabularies? For some stars, a big vocabulary is priceless. Singer-songwriters from Patti Smith to Nick Cave have built careers with songs whose rich language is as important as the music. This article studies how the diversity of words used by current-generation stacks up against musical legends.

Tiny walls, inner critics, literary cuckolds

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Greetings again lovely email friends, it’s Mo here again with more things of interest. Speaking of which, last week’s email prompted the most out-of-office replies ever… not interesting ‘we’ve all gone to the pub’ ones, but boring ‘I’m in meetings all day’ ones. Guys, c’mon. Your out-of-office replies are supposed to help those that email you overcome the disappointment of you being incommunicado. So sprinkle a little interestingness… maybe one or more of the below?

Carbon-neutral buildings, stealing books and stately ghosts

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon lovely email friends, hope you’re okay. There’s something about wrapping the world’s largest tree in aluminium foil to guard it against wildfires that illustrates our contemptuous relationship with the planet that raised us. I sometimes wonder whether this, and our other limitations, derives from our tendency to view the world through the lens of a human lifespan.

That giant sequoia they call General Sherman is at least 2,300 years old. Its eponym, William Tecumseh Sherman, lived for 71 years. To the tree, a human life must seem fleeting. To be named after one would be equivalent to me being named after something as ephemeral as Katy Perry’s marriage to Russell Brand.

Hope, nostalgia and musical insults

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello there lovely email friends, it’s Mo here. Hope you’re well and everything. You look well, anyway. This is one of my favourite times of year so, regardless of all the many and varied things that are going on at the moment, I’m doing my best to be present and not miss it.

🤞 Hope is the antidote to helplessness. Here’s how to cultivate it: Several decades ago, two psychologists stumbled upon a phenomenon that changed the way we think about adversity. When faced with a difficult situation that feels uncontrollable, people tend to act helpless and depressed. As millions have had their lives upended, this idea feels more relevant than ever. It has inspired work that offers positive insights into how people can remain resilient, even in the face of uncontrollable adversities. The key is having hope.

Changing jobs, changing friendships, changing history

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello again email friends, I hope all is well. Have you ever had the misfortune of encountering someone who’s been to Peru and sampled the psychoactive effects of ayahuasca? It has the curious side-effect of making the participant bore on about it to everyone, forever.

Fortunately, but not for you, I already have various subjects to bore on about (veganism; panel vans; cats) which saves me going all that way just to get shitfaced. But to this list I can now add first-hand experiences of life beyond home shores. I snuck out, see, to remind myself what fully-stocked supermarkets look like. To remind myself how societies can unite in the welfare of all. And to remind myself what sunshine is. Don’t set me off; for I shall be boring.

Printed houses and rotting cars

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon gorgeous email friends. This week I am thinking about waste. This began literally: my domestic wheeliebin, collected weekly, is dragged out to the kerb almost empty. My recycling bin, collected fortnightly, always bulges with cardboard, cans and plastics. That the respective volumes of my household waste is at odds with the municipal collection suggests I’m not in step with the general population.

But then, another way to think about this is visibility. Domestic waste is highly visible, since I handle each item of it. But waste resulting from my actions is usually obscured: the banana I didn’t buy, that nobody bought, was grown and transported for my convenience but ultimately wasted. So while I may appear to be out of step, it may be that my passive waste is much greater. Who can say.

Coffee is good, fashion is bad, burnout is ugly

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hey there email friends… as you surely know, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Nowhere is this truer than online and, in particular, the weird world of email newsletters. All sorts of complex limitations mean the usage statistics offered to newsletter authors about their readers are, I can assure you, totally misleading and should never be trusted.

But if one were to employ these spurious data as the basis of decision-making, and I should stress again that one should never do this, then it would build a picture of the readership’s interests, albeit an entirely misleading one. To that end, and just for our casual amusement, this week’s 💥BLAST! relies heavily upon the numbers: I’ve picked out what might be interesting based on what the statistics say was most engaging in the previous 125 editions. Don’t do as I do.

Catastrophising, Interoception, Yoko and Tokyo

Wed, 18 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello again lovely email friends. It’d be all too easy for an email like this to draw upon the many troubling news stories in the mainstream media right now. As I started to assemble some links for this week, an undertone was noticable. So I’ve been particularly alert to stories of good outcomes emerging from bad situations—light from darkness—and they’re mixed in below. Hope you have a good week.

👂 How to Fail: Martine Wright is a survivor of the 7/7 London terrorist bombings. She was travelling on the tube when a suicide bomber sitting three feet away from her set off an explosion that would change her life forever. She lost both legs and was in a coma for ten days, after which she underwent a year of intensive rehab and multiple surgeries. Astonishingly, Martine went on to become a sitting volleyball player and represented Great Britain’s women’s team at the 2012 Paralympics in London. This is her extraordinary story.

Collective paranoia and architectural entropy

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends, hope everything is tickety-boo with you. I’ve been writing a lot recently, but not for any audience besides myself. Just as a means of organising my thoughts. When we convey ideas to other people we tell stories; when we do the same for ourselves we write lists. So I’m experimenting with applying the former approach to the latter situation—if you don’t try, how can you know?

Blake, insect protein, future factories, drumming

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon lovely email friends, hope all is well. That there John Higgs, author extraordinare, has me thinking about William Blake. This is something I’ve not had cause to do before which, I rather think, is exactly what Higgs is up to. The best discoveries are unexpected, see. Here’s the book, the clever blighter.

🛴 Voi e-scooters are replacing more walking and cycling than car journeys: If you subscribed to this thing very early on, you may remember I am interested in electric scooters, or more specifically what they indicate. Superficially, they look like they might unlock urban dependence on high-emission transport, but not only are they not so climate-friendly after all, they also can now be shown not to reduce car journeys.

The strange case of the Bristol hum

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 22:58:44 +0000

The BBC investigates the low-frequency drone that has bothered Bristol for years and has no agreed source. The mystery endures; the hum remains.

Dumb Cuneiform

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 22:58:44 +0000

A service that presses your tweets into actual clay tablets. Permanent, insufficiently sceptical, and probably exactly what the ancient Sumerians would have wanted.

Doctorin' the tower: KLF maverick in a small Antrim town

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 22:58:44 +0000

A small Antrim town, a KLF maverick, and the relentless pursuit of turning things that shouldn't be art into art.

Basic necessity

Wed, 28 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hey there email friends, happy Wednesday. I have a nagging thought; more of that in a minute. First, here are some interesting things, many and varied, upon which to click.

👩‍🎤 Only 21% of all artists at this year’s biggest UK festivals are female: A study also concluded that, despite festivals not going ahead in 2020, the percentage of female artists due to play the postponed events was higher than this year by 1%.

Utopia vs. violence, conspiracy vs. counterculture

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello there lovely email friends, hope you’re staying cool. I ventured outside briefly and now I look like a lobster trapped in a postbox. Anyway, I’ve ventured far and wide for you this week, virtually though as it’s too hot to move around. A fair few of these are worth more than a skim, when you have time this week.

📮 Open Letter to the Good Guys: Originally an Icelandic newspaper article, now translated by its author. Gentlemen in particular, please give this a thorough read. Women have worked long and hard enough to curb men’s violence; now it is men’s turn.

Adland’s misogyny and automotive’s misfires

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends, hope all is well with you. In the Nineties, any trip I took into London was an excuse to stock up at the little Anything Left-Handed shop on Brewer Street. The capital used to sustain a broad variety of small stores catering to specialist items; of course, almost all have now shut up shop and moved online.

But closing the physical specialist store and making left-handed whatnots highly available hasn’t led to me buying more; possibly the opposite. It wasn’t availability that made sales, but rather occasion: I had tied the act of going to London together with the headspace for whether I needed left-handed scissors, can-openers, drumsticks or whatnot.

Models and modernism, joy and joinery

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon once again lovely email friends, hope you’re well. Somehow, the door to my fridge became covered in magnets from various travels. Yesterday I happened to notice the most recent addition was not from some far-flung country but from the fantasy world of Miniatur Wunderland; Hamburg’s delightfully bonkers model railway.

I have eulogised tiny worlds before, so it may not surprise you that I was delighted to see this effort to preserve Hong Kong in miniature. I have enormous admiration for those who are built for such precise and detailed obsessions.

Qualities of questioners and quitters

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello you, hope all is well. How is it Wednesday already, I ask myself. In contrast to last year feeling fallow, this one feels hectic. Not complaining, though. Anyway here’s some fun things upon which to click. Shall we?

🙋‍♀️ How to Ask Useful Questions: Asking useful questions is a skill, and it requires practice. Inexperienced questions go unanswered because answering them would take too much effort, so the recipient doesn’t bother. For better answers, you’ll need to tailor the form of the question to the type of information you’re seeking.

Creativity by experts, jazz for everyone

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon once again lovely email friends. Looking at the week ahead, I’m starting to wonder how I’m going to fit everything in. With the return of Love Island on Monday, which long-time readers may remember I consider one of the most important contemporary cultural touchpoints but also immensely time-consuming, there may not be enough hours in the day. Nice problem to have.

🎺 A Beginner’s Guide to Miles Davis: As a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer, Davis was one of the most influential and prolific figures in the history of jazz. So prolific, in fact, that Spotify is brimming with his works, but with re-recordings and jazz being so improvisational, this huge body of work is a little impenetrable for the more casual listener. This guide was written to welcome non-experts into Davis’ incredible world.

Truth, cookery and bowling balls

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends. I hope wherever you are the gift of sunshine far outweighs the snag of pollen. I tend to steer well clear of ‘current affairs’ here since there are many better places for them. So where possible I’ve tended not to bring up, y’know, all that has been happening.

But I particularly enjoyed reading Linus Torvalds, the noted Finnish computer scientist, head-on tackling an anti-vax conspiracy theorist on a mailing list discussing the operating system Torvalds founded. It is bristling, as internet-based discussions often are, but it is also the best plain-English explanation of the vaccine I have found.

Amateurism, Brainstorming, Cluttercore

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Good afternoon lovely email friends. I finally got a haircut, and it’s a delightful thing to experience after so long. Also I had the presence of forethought to find a picture of myself looking reasonably collected, which I could point at while pleading “that guy—make me look like that guy”. So now I look like that guy, if he ate nothing but cake for a month.

💖 Feel free to stop striving: learn to relish being an amateur: A nice examination of what it means to do things for love rather than money; it needn’t mean sacrificing your aspirations, it simply means that you become the custodian and narrator of your own experience of striving. See also: The joys of being an absolute beginner – for life and, from far back in the archive: We’re all a bunch of amateurs.

Synthesizers, solo successes and the networked self

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Hello lovely email friends. There’s been a welcome improvement in the weather here, so suddenly lots of things are getting done. Many people would spend lottery winnings on a massive house, whereas I think I’d buy a modest home and a maybe a warehouse in which to work on things independently of favourable weather. For now though, the sun is shining and things are getting done!

☸️ How will the next Dalai Lama be chosen? It would be fun to think that you’ll just get a phone-call, Postcode Lottery style, to tell you it’s fallen to you. The reality is more nuanced, as you might expect, and also much more politically charged. This spiritual reincarnation will have political consequences for America, China and India.

Dogs and cats and thumbs and bums

Wed, 26 May 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Greetings again lovely email friends. Many treats for you this week, including a couple I left out last week and they haunted me ever since. Here we go:

🤙 To be more tech-savvy, borrow these strategies from the Amish: According to Donald Kraybill, professor of Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, the Amish adopt technology selectively, hoping that the tools they use will build community rather than harm it. There’s a mindfulness to this strategy, from which anyone could learn by example. This intriguing article is fronted by an extraordinary photo by Dina Litovsky.