Good piece on the AI bubble from last year, podcast to go with it also a good listen
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Currently reading Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle for fun, pretty good so far. His stuff can be hit or miss, but this is building up nicely. Also, I’m reading Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity. Those kinds of books aren’t the sexiest (even to tell people about lol), but it’s about how the usual standards of productivity don’t really apply to knowledge workers and I want to see if it can help me slow down and not lose my mind at work.
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Some of them were racist football thugs before they discovered E, and have just reverted to type.
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If you like wind up bird, his first trilogy is great (hear the wind/pinball sheep chase).
He wrote it in english then translated it to japanese to simplify his writing style, because before that he felt his style was too complex. Wild Sheep Chase is particularly good in my opinion.
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I loved wild sheep chase! Hear the wind/pinball was eh for me, but if I’m not mistaken that was the first novel (or was it two in one) he wrote, so I guess he was still finding his style there. I also just read that Dance Dance Dance is apparently also part of that story? 
At any rate, Kafka On the Shore was what got me back into reading a few years ago.
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I only mentioned the first 2 cos it’s a trilogy, but I agree that sheep chase was the highlight (I’m a completionist). Hard-boiled wonderland is great IMO too. Agree on kafka on the shore.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang might be of interest to you. Slightly more Scifi, but not in a traditional way
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Hard-boiled wonderland is on the list! Will add the other book as well, ty.
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Problem 35 years later though is that you can’t get enough money from benefits to pay for your own flat on housing benefit or blag it on jobseekers as easily.
Back then it seemed that disenfranchisement was a party political issue- “Tories are c***s” etc,- the idea that Labour could save the country from the right wing was still a viable concept.
But 35 yrs later post New Labour (who can never be ‘new’ again, thanks to Blair) a genuine socialist alternative to the mainstream parties just isn’t viable. You can’t appeal to people’s better nature and the idea of helping others when they can’t feed themselves and the state has nothing to offer- regardless of who is in power-
Younger generations are living in this non party political state of disenfranchisement in 2026 and I think the far right appeals to the inevitable nihilism that follows and more importantly, the far right are very organised. The socialist equivalents aren’t- they can’t even agree amongst themselves.
Fucking shit situation
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A nice summary that (liking with a heart for that not the situation 
) - too many parties now on both sides that are inevitably smaller, probably a hung parliament next time 
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The two fundamentals of Life, The Universe and everything are Time, and Energy. Yet, the deeply held political philosophy an economic orthodoxy, accepted by many of both Right and Left, pretty much ignores Energy altogether. I honestly thought this shit would be in the bin of history following the 2008 crash.
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Going in on some hardcore anti-AI doomerism
Cory Doctorow’s explanation of why tech companies have to keep chasing ‘the next big thing’ is interesting (‘growth market’ stocks are worth more than ‘mature market’ ones, so you always have to be promising to change the world). If true, I have no idea.
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Maximise Shareholder Profit - another massive cancerous turd, squeezed out by Milton Friedman that has made Democracy a fading memory. That this stuff is still the guiding political philosophy is.
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This (excellent) article got me thinking about specific examples of music that completely floor me eg 69 ‘desire’ and why it has that effect. What is that endorphin stimulus with certain sounds and frequencies?
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Had a similar moment with Desire many years ago. Also, ecstatic moments with 'Birth of New Life" by Drexciya and Nurse with Wound & Stereolab’s ‘Simple Headphone Mind’.
The most impactful one was hearing ‘Going Up’ by Coil for the first time - total WTF and mind blown. I just couldn’t get my head around it. This hauntingly beautiful first part, the repeated refrain, “are you ready to go now?”, like some musical accompaniment to accepting the brute fact that death is the ultimate truth of the Universe, and everything. Or the (sublime?) feeling of existential vertigo that I have to pass through on mushrooms.
The beatiful, almost operatic, falsetto in the second half, with lyrics about (going up) the floors in a shopping centre are 
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Maybe for the clothes thread but enjoyable all the same.
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Interesting piece. Resonates with me.
“The kids actually doing something new aren’t building audiences — they’re avoiding them.”
Rebellion nowadays is staying off the tech billionaire platforms.
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