One of my coworkers suggested this the other day. I’m not sure exactly what it would look like, but I want it.

• Sites should be run by individuals or small groups.
• Sites should be primarily not-for-profit.
• The personality of the site owner(s) should not be obscured behind a Brand.

Other cool links

Electric Heartbeats

Reminds me of the locative art from Spook Country.

The Home Stayer

Luis Mendo’s excellent COVID era cover covers.

Howl

Probably the first beat era poem I’ve read all the way through. Feels like rolling waves crashing against the rocks. Reminds me of the Philip K. Dick bit from A Scanner Darkly: “They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed–run over, maimed, destroyed–but they continued to play anyhow.”

Inputs and the Information Firing Squad

Jeremy Bassetti: “It is difficult, if not impossible, for someone to live and work optimally when they have too many inputs.”

Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green

I love this sort of thing. It would be fun to take the colour palette and turn it into a CSS theme.

Somewhere around hour two, sitting on your couch, trying to re-pair your earbuds while your watch throws errors and your smart lock has locked you out of your own home, the feeling crystallizes:

I am doing a job.

Just yesterday I was looking at my wristwatch and appreciating the fact that it just sits there, telling me the time.

I can’t articulate the feeling as well as Terry Godier has, so I won’t try.

It turns out what I thought was the story of Dracula was only really the first sliver of the book. A great story with compelling, heart-on-sleeve characters. Enjoyed reading it out loud and doing the voices.

Lord Foul’s Bane - Stephen Donaldson

Stephen Donaldson manages to create a sympathetic protagonist out of a man who is not very nice most of the time. Very Lord of the Rings (complimentary). I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

Ship of Magic - Robin Hobb

The writing feels a little less crisp than I remember from the Farseer trilogy, but I don’t know if that’s just whiplash from how poetic Stephen Donaldson is. I love Kennit so far, or rather the peeks we get into his inner monologue that show the gulf between his carefully manicured presentation and what a baby he is inside.

Cinema Speculation - Quentin Tarantino

An enjoyable trip through a particular era of US cinema, as told by someone who grew up glued to the screen. Tarantino took a (verbal) swing at Paul Dano not long after I finished reading this, so take any opinions with a heap of salt. I love Paul Dano.

Municipal Gothic - Ray Newman

Ghost stories in a traditional vein, taken out of a Victorian setting and told in council estates and neglected parts of the city. A fairly breezy read at 13 short stories. Enjoyed them a lot. Keen to read more of his work.

Wintering - Katherine May

Rest and retreat, in a year where I needed a lot of rest and retreat.

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

Incredible opening and doesn’t get much worse from there.

An Idler’s Manual - Tom Hodgkinson

A light and entertaining read, as you might expect from the editor of the nation’s premier magazine for loafers.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

A great work of poetry as translated by Edward Fitzgerald. Turned onto this by a column in Idler.

Careless People - Sarah Wynn-Williams

Just put it all in the bin, frankly. Facebook, I mean, not this book. The book can go on a shelf, probably. I greatly enjoy the Tech-dumpster-fire genre, and Careless People does not disappoint.

Arks (Volume 1)

Good art, very gruesome, but I don’t feel incredibly compelled to get the next one. It mainly just made me want to replay Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Useful, Not True - Derek Sivers

I previously read his book How To Live, and I enjoy Derek Sivers’ brief, thought-provoking books. Both books are less about giving you answers and more about helping you ask good questions. https://sive.rs/u

The Mad Ship - Robin Hobb

Packed with the character development and engaging character arcs that I’ve come to love from Robin Hobb.

The Anarchy - William Dalrymple

I knew almost nothing about the history of India going into this, and learned so much.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism - Grady Hendrix

Pulpy, trashy, a lot of fun.

The Wager - David Grann

A real page turner. It’s got boats, it’s got mutinies, it’s got drama, it’s got everything.

Things Become Other Things (RH ed.) - Craig Mod

A masterful expansion on the fine-art edition. Struggled with the B&W photos when reading in a dimly lit room.

The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers

Started off eldritch horror, finished a bit Jeeves & Wooster.

Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Book Store - Robin Sloan

I spent most of the time kind of annoyed by the dorky protagonist, but it was a fun mystery adventure. One of the key takeaways is that being a Ruby programmer is an attractive trait, so… I’ll take it.

Walking the Great North Line - Robert Twigger

I love a walking memoir, and this is the second Robert Twigger book I’ve read since *Angry White Pyjamas.

Spook Country - William Gibson

A lot of focus on brands, colours, design. Gibson apparently said his main interest is fashion, and he the novels are primarily a vessel for that.

Side Wounds - Lena Oleanderson

A book of poetry, mostly about their friend’s suicide at 17 and their relationship with faith.

The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper - Roland Allen

I really enjoyed this read. Very interesting, very inspiring.

Notes to John - Joan Didion

A summary of Joan’s meetings with her therapist, mainly regarding Quintana’s alcoholism, written as a series of letters to her husband John. Knowing how things would unfold (The Year of Magical Thinking, Blue Nights) made this a tough read.

Farenheit-182 - Mark Hoppus

I was (am) a big Blink fan, so it was cool getting the behind-the-scenes.

Do you feel overwhelmed by RSS?

No, for I have given up. I subscribe to:

• A few dozen RSS feeds and e-mail newsletters;
• some YouTube channels;
• a couple podcasts;
• and two print magazines.

There’s no getting through it, and it would be very easy to let the little unread badge on my various apps become a source of stress.

But somehow, I don’t.

When I think about the things sitting in my read-later list, it’s hard not to also think about the thousands of worthwhile books, movies, songs, blog posts, etc. that I never heard about. Compared to that, the small number of neglected feeds in my reader pale into insignificance.

In other words, the battle against the onslaught of media is well and truly lost. We never had a chance. There’s no point worrying about it.

I do a few things to try to make the best of what little time I have:

• I have a “newsletters” label in my e-mail but also an “old newsletters” label which is anything older than 6 months. Apart from a couple favourite writers, these get purged without much of a glance.
• Subscribing to a couple Widgets Weekly newsletters instead of a hundred tech blogs gives me plenty of high signal reading.
• If I find myself scrolling past the same thing repeatedly, accept it and mark it as read. It was a nice idea, but I’m just never going to watch a 90 minute doc about manhole covers or whatever.
• I try to understand that very few things I read or watch are as important in themselves as the habit of regularly exposing myself to new things.
• Important ideas tend to get repeated. There’ll be plenty of chances.

Umberto Eco has a good bit about books, which I’ll include here:

I try to apply this to media across the board. Not “how am I going to get through all this?” but “thank goodness, I’ll always have something to read.”

if your chat friends ask for a pic of your legs be careful. its probably a trick to examine the bg of the pic for a strange tv/desk setup or poor cable management. they dont actually want to see your legs

I love getting to be nosy with people’s workspaces. Sadly for me, a lot of workspace photos (look at the front page of r/battlestations and you’ll see what I mean) are beautiful but… sanitary. They’re clean. They’re extremely tidy. They’re Instagram Perfect. They appear untouched by human hands. This is fair. They’re being posted online, and the dangers of leaving a visible photo with a scrap of home address are real.

What I love, though, is a photo that gives a sense of the person whose space it is. Something that goes beyond their taste in RGB lighting and generous keyboard budget¹ and instead reveals the texture of their days. The towering stacks of papers. The cup of coffee they made because they forgot they already had one. The DIY they had to do to make the space work at all. The books they refer to while they’re working and the books they want people to think they refer to while working. Bud Smith’s truck desk has texture.

Every now and then I’m lucky enough to get desk shots from work, a group chat, or smaller forum where people feel like they can be a bit more candid, and boy oh boy do I zoom in.

The state of some of these cables, honestly.

We live in a globally connected world, in which many of our labours are separated from the turning of the soil and the seasons.

In the middle ages, you could hardly move for Saint’s days and feast days. We still have the biggies, of course, but previously the year was punctuated with observances to a much greater degree than we’re used to now. Now, I don’t even notice when the clocks change. Our phones update silently while we snooze, and two nights out of the year, we wake up inexplicably grouchy or well-rested.

So, for the past few years I’ve peppered my calendar with observances to give me little somethings to celebrate throughout the year.

Some are seasonal, like full moons and solstices. Some are global observances, like the anniversary of Neil banging out the tunes (this Sunday just gone), Bat Appreciation Day (today, April 17) or any of the dates in my (always in-progress) Year in Movies page.

Happy Bat Appreciation Day to those that celebrate. 🦇

The idea, I think, was that once I got through the backlog of second-rate stationery and finally get to use the good stuff, I’d realise the full dream of the picture perfect desk, my life as a stationery enjoyer could truly begin, and my creative output would be boundless and of unimpeachable quality.

I managed to get a grip. Imagine the look on my face if I got halfway through using up the rubbish pens and then got hit by a truck or something.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.

I got really into the story of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as translated by Edward Fitzgerald when I read about it in Emma Park’s article in issue 80 of Idler.

Two¹ people united across time and language by out-of-steppishness, love of a good book, a good sit down, and a bottle of wine within arm’s reach.

Both the article and the Rubáiyát are well worth reading. There are some beautifully bound editions of the Rubáiyát available (I guess they know their target audience) but you can grab a well-presented e-book edition for free at Standard Ebooks.

“booking flights on a phone is crazy. that is a laptop activity”
~ @soulohlove

Trying to do pretty much anything on a mobile browser is starting to feel like pulling teeth. Maybe that’s for the best. Less time tapping away on my phone when I’m out and about.