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Wearing a Victor Victoria shirt from the Nineties and a Swatch Metropolis from the Eighties and accepting that all this is “vintage,” not “last year.” Julbo don’t even make those shades anymore. DEPRESSING ACCESSIONS: While I was reading PHENOMENA by Annie Jacobsen (click this link and scroll halfway down for my initial notes), which is in large part about remote viewing used by the US military, I kept being reminded of this book I read when I was a kid. Written in 1973, FLIGHT FROM TIME ONE…
Paolo Lazzarotti (Italy), “Complete Rainbow” Good morning sinners. My problem, apparently, is that I’m interested in too many things. In fact, someone made a point of writing to my office a few weeks ago specifically to tell me that my interests aren’t interesting. I never had a problem with being a generalist – it’s a big world and it’s been around a long time and I want to learn as much about it as I can. But, these days, to get ahead you have to niche down hard, to become a trusted expert in…
I grew lilies. I have a whole new, and hopefully long-term, plan for the garden, and am looking at an autumn/winter of being outside with implements of destruction. The raspberries have been great, I have some blueberries coming, and it looks like I may get figs this year. I decided I couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to go and see THE ODYSSEY. That last trailer removed any wish I had to go and spend three hours of my life in front of it without access to cigarettes and alcohol. I’m sure it’s the…
TELEMETRY: Are people really using AI to text friends and family? Is that something people would actually do? I said to a friend last night that when I go to the mainstream internet these days it makes me feel sane, ordinary and normal. Sitting down is the new smoking, again. (Except of course that no causation was established) I noted some influencer last night declaring this to be “pivot season,” which brough to mind Julian Simpson, a few weeks ago, reorganising his entire creative endeavour…
Tamara Dean. Eliza Douglas. journaia. morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day. My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
Well, I wasn’t in the mood to post anything during the heatwave, and my poor eight-year-old ThinkPad was in such dire straits that opening more than four tabs while I had any other applications open was becoming a serious challenge for that faithful machine. To the point where I couldn’t finish the novella I was supposed to be landing last week. It took Lenovo a month to ship me a new ThinkPad. I’ve been using ThinkPads for decades, as they have the best keyboards, but next time I need a new…
It is absolutely blazing out there today. Heat warnings are in effect. Friday looks like it’s going to be the hottest day. OPERATIONS: 700 words yesterday, looking for at least 1000 todaySTATUS: DHL have lost a mystery parcel that was on its way to me last week. They claimed to be “tracing” it yesterday, but had it in three different locations at the same time, so I figure that’s gone for good. And my two Royal Mail parcels have just been marked as “Unable to attempt delivery.” Is everything…
This week will probably just be a writing log. 500 words down yesterday. I always console myself that Graham Greene only ever wrote 500 words a day. The start of a prose piece is always slow for me, because I’m finding the voice and the pace of the thing as I go. Those first 500 will get revised to death once I have my full first draft. It speeds up as I go – I wrote the last three thousand words of DEAD PIG COLLECTOR in a single day.
Evidently we are now on track for our seventh prime minister in (checks watch) fifteen minutes. The Met Office has issued a rare red warning for 09:00 on Wednesday to 21:00 Thursday for parts of England and Wales.This means the heat is likely to bring impacts to health and could be a danger to life, but also a risk to infrastructure such as power supplies and transport.Temperatures will increase significantly in the next few days with the potential for 38 or 39C by Wednesday and Thursday.…
Leonora Carrington. CONNECTED: i left my soul in bed: 10feb26 morning computer pluriverse 27jan24 Yuji Agematsu. Love the little SCHWA alien. morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day. My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/
I’ve been bad. I’ve done the worst thing in the world. I’ve been on eBay. The Camel Trophy was an international driving competition sponsored by Camel Cigarettes between 1980 and 2000. And every time they did one, they released a watch to commemorate it. This one is from the 1990s, apparently – not the original strap, sadly, but I’m not really concerned about that. The case is basically a chunk of bronze. It’s not a huge watch, but it has that field-watch easy legibility and it’s a proper…
Another idea newly influential in analytic circles at this time originated with Brian Jenkins, an expert at the Rand Corporation in California, who had studied art history and was steeped in the radical artistic production of the 1960s. He argued that the use of violence in terrorism was not ‘mindless’ but carefully designed to communicate a message to specific audiences: terrorism as theatre. THE REVOLUTIONISTS is an immense, deeply researched and sourced work about extremists. The sort of…
Too much to do today. Had three deliveries before noon – a CD, a magazine, and a pair of pre-owned grey canvas Carharrt work trousers I got for the price of five packets of crisps from eBay. In my experience, Carharrt clothes are near indestructible, so even though those things are a bit worn and stained, they will probably outlive me. And yesterday evening I got a box of blu-rays. Out to dinner tonight at the only local place to be included in the Michelin guide. Email is very quiet. I have to…
I have always wanted to see this, and it popped up on sale while I was trawling through the bottom of Amazon the other night. Judex (real name Jacques de Trémeuse) is a fictional French vigilante hero created by Louis Feuillade and Arthur Bernède for the 1916 silent film serial of the same name. Judex (whose name is Latin for “judge”) is a mysterious avenger who dresses in black and wears a wide-brimmed hat and cloak. He was possibly conceived as a heroic version of the criminal character…
The raspberries are excellent this year so far. I felt the need to offline for an hour, so I walked into town while listening to Spaceman’s Transmissions and got an early lunch and a glass of wine. That’s the Halfpenny Green Red Sparkling, for those keeping count. (Yes, Mark, I see you.) And also a leather small-carry shoulder bag which I cannot recall the purchase location of. I brought my notebook but didn’t open it in the end, or read a book or read the news. My body decided it was time to…
David Muenzer. Afropresentism and Kinternet: “Afropresentism says, I am here bearing witness, yes, and it aches. And yes, I am grieving. And most importantly, yes, I celebrate still being alive enough to feel all of that. I see that you are also grieving and I see that you are alive too… Yes, I celebrate the rage I know I’m not alone in. Yes, I see the everyday barrage— the advertisements and the architectures that have grown so elaborate, so unrelenting in their reminders of our compromise.…
So, I think I was vaguely aware that Fritz Lang filmed THE NIBELUNG, but as I was kicking around Amazon, I tripped over this, a four and a half hour long full restoration. Never seen it. This is probably the only way I ever will. A real discovery. UK release – there’s a different version for US+. CONNECTED: HOB’S LANE 21 Cyberpunk Gandalf Metropolis METROPOLIS And The Confusion
Trying to keep up with my own brain today. Flurry of thoughts. This edition of Feed Me connected to some recent notions. Mostly offline today – lots of work, and I want to capture and develop as many of these floating ideas as I can. Commodore, of all people, have invented a flip phone that’s “halfway between dumb and smart” – runs messaging apps, blocks social media and browsers. OPERATIONS: just processed an attachment agreement to try and turn one of my old books into a film. Prose serial I…
Seth Pick. Songs prep the brains of finches yet to hatch for a hot world Exposure to parents’ “heat calls” makes finch young more resilient to heat after hatching @sciencenews https://www.sciencenews.org/article/songs-prep-unhatched-finches-hot-world Ganzeer’s CAIRO DIARIES. MIXAM: This seems to be a print on demand service for zines that lets you sell individual copies through their website rather than having to order a bunch and sell them yourself. morning computer:
For better or worse, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle engineered the Western mind. Above all, they formed part of a movement that stood at the crossroads of mythological and scientific-rational thought, at the crossroads of mythos and logos. Although the path of logos had already been beaten by the pre-Socratics, and would be paved by the Stoics, it is they, the Gang of Three, that forced the carriage to turn. This book sets out to do three things: trace the journey from mythos to logos; outline…
The G-Shock is running three minutes fast, it turns out! I love a big chunky G-Shock. I read yesterday that they’re coming back into fashion as the whole lo-fi anti-networked thing gains pace in some spaces. Toby Standing, menswear editor at online shopping platform Lyst, where G-Shock currently dominates demand in the digital watch category, believes the trend is linked to the rise of “dumb” phones and wired headphones. “A willing adoption of tech that is ‘worse’ than something else available…
Xie Lei. Viceroy Los Cabos. Sea levels are just the start of how climate change will upend the ocean. Rising temperatures are also threatening a critical artery that runs through the ocean known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. This current, in short, sends warm water northwards and dumps colder water southwards in a giant loop, massively influencing the world’s weather systems along the way. If temperatures keep soaring, scientists fear that AMOC could collapse —…
I had this on VHS about a million years ago. HAXAN is a lovely little thing, genuinely strange, and I am looking forward to discovering the ton of extras they’ve bundled in here. This is the UK only release: the US+ has a different version on Criterion. CONNECTED: TANNHAUSER, Via Abraxas Spectra Ex Machina / A Sound Anthology of Occult Phenomena 1920-2017 Vol.2 Alchemists In Chelmsford ERIC SATIE THREE PIECE SUITE, Ian Penman The Spirit World Of Our Age: THE MAGIC BOX, A Book Of Strange…
Yesterday, as is tradition, I gave herself the first ripe raspberry of summer. Today, we were out in the garden in the rain with a bowl collecting raspberries and redcurrants. I had a whole plan to Go Outside today, but the weather has not cooperated, so I’m indoors going through my Bandcamp queue and probably buying too many records again. On Friday, we went to see The Cobras in Harlow, because we know the bassist, and on Saturday I went to the final Konsztrukting Soundz of the season.…
Alexis Mata. Noah Barker. The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot’s spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces. A team of astronomers led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin identified the lucky dot in question: GLIMPSE-17775. By carefully analyzing the dot’s spectrum captured by Webb—the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot—the…
It has rained all damned week. Three thunderstorms yesterday alone. Teeming down today. It’s dark when I wake up. Middle of June and I’m still going outside in the morning in a heavy coat, winter gloves and a watchcap. Everything in the garden is suffering except the bindweed coming through from the neighboring gardens. I’m hitting pause on these notes for a few days. Sunday’s newsletter is already in the scheduler.
Paul Thek. For no good reason, I woke up today thinking about BIG WORLD CAFE, a music tv show that ran for… 1989. One year. Their idea was, if we can get you in by telling you New Order are playing, then we can also show you the Bhundu Boys and Erotic Dissidents and The Jungle Brothers. Here’s Diamanda Galas playing live on Big World Cafe. Just typing big world cafe into YouTube will surface a surprising number of digitised VHS tapes of the show. Related:…
Shawn Huckins. Amazon Web Services are having issues. Which means half the internet is off. I’m okay with that. If I wasn’t buried in finishing a delayed job and it wasn’t forecast to monsoon out there, I’d say fuckit and walk to the deli for a glass of wine and a charcuterie board. But I AM in fact buried in putting an end to this job. Therefore I am indoors. But a music PR just added me to their press list, so later on I have some new music to listen to, for which I am grateful. So this is…
Amy Casey. TELEMETRY: A killer opening to a piece that is actually about Kraftwerk playing a gig in Bournemouth: “I remember the shock at discovering that Marlene Dietrich was still alive in 1992. She lived long enough to have raised a glass with Brecht and listened to all but one of Kraftwerk’s albums; and if she hadn’t been careful, ample time to take in Klaus Kinski and The Scorpions as well. Perhaps sensing that contemporaneity would eventually kill her, Dietrich wisely locked the door and…
1938 photo of archaeologist Manuel Esteve wearing a freshly unearthed ancient Corinthian helmet while casually smoking, creating a surreal blend of ancient artifact and modern Habit Substack https://substack.com/@armenikus/note/c-260375385?r=48lpsr&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action TODAY Marjane Satrapi died, age 56: ‘“Marjane Satrapi died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” a statement from close friends and family…
