12aug26

Spent last night reading a stack of issues of the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT that had piled up over the last few months. As I said in the newsletter the other week (Unphoning), I have been disconnecting from as much of the internet as I can. Yesterday I forgot to post here because I was hanging out chatting at the coffee shop and then had to bang out nine pages of work before cooking dinner because herself caught a bug at Bloodstock. Today I hope to see an eclipse. My connected devices are off. Unmonitored. Most notifications off. Selectively informed. I was almost tempted to get a few daily newspapers, but that really wasn’t realistic. Today I saw an article in the WSJ about “datamaxxing,” people shoving the take from as many connected devices and inputs and possible into AI chatbots. There was a time where that would have made me curious. I was at a gig a few weeks ago and partway through I realised I’d stopped listening because I was actually being left alone and there weren’t…