/reader

 

Sharing is caring,
The woods a mercy.
Planes stitched the sky.

Making new radio,
Zines to follow.

• The Weather Turned
• Podcast / Zine
• On The Blog
• Permanently Moved
• Photo 365
• The Ministry Of My Own Labour
• Terminal Access
• Dipping the Stacks
• Reading
• Music
• Remember Kids

The Weather Turned

First a big thank you to everyone who shared my post on Playability last week, it’s lead to some really interesting conversations.

The weather turned really hot last week we’ve had multiple 30C+ days with, as I write this on Monday afternoon, one more to go. After that things drop back to the more manageable mid 20’s. Despite the heat, Eve and I went to the woods yesterday.

Spending an hour or so in the cool dappled light was very welcome, before tackling the hill. Which on such a hot day… was baking. But it was worth it as we were rewarded with the view, and we stood and watched the planes coming in and out of Heathrow for a while. But with the punishing sun went back down and walked home. The day was then spent hiding from the worst of the heat, with our floor fan coming out of storage to do it’s heroic work once again.

Podcast / Zine

Pre-production work (making notes lol) has started on what I might do once 301 comes to the end of it’s run at the end of this month. Right now it’s looking like things will fall into two categories. I will keep posting audio essays online as per the style of 301, but they won’t be 5mins1sec they will be as long as they need to be. These ‘shorter’ shows will be a learning zone for going a bit longer, finding the vibe and shape of the show without the 301 container. I’d like to try weaving interview content in with narration etc as thats a new kind of writing challenge I haven’t approached before. I also have some lectures and talks I’ve given over the last few years that i’d like to share with you as a audio, and they will come out ad hock.

The second kind of content type is full blown ‘radio’ I want to make ‘a show’. A topic explored over multiple episodes with scoring, interviews, on location audio etc. I have a couple of ideas, and the first kind of content will (for a while) be practice runs for this more ambitious show.

One thing is for certain is that each episode going forward is going to get it’s own zine. Either in the one page format and eventually more ambitious things will be printed at a printers, A6 and stapled. I’m really into the idea of each episode having it’s own zine. I figure if people liked an individual episode and wanted to support the show you can ‘buy’ the zine version of it as merch. I think I’ll overprint the zine run by 20% or something and set up a shop. Regular supporter will continue to receive whatever/everything that has come out quarterly in one package.

Speaking of which!

Q2’s zine (#Issue 14!) is nearly finished I just have to do the layout in affinity and i’ll be getting it printed next week. Why not subscribe now, get that, and also help me produce the next phase of the show, and my creative life with confidence?

Start Select Reset 📑

SSRZ is a quarterly zine, posted to your door like it’s 1994.

Get the Zine!
£5/month 💌

No spam. No email. Just ink on paper, four times a year.

On The Blog:

Haven’t posted anything on this blog here at thejaymo.net this week. But!

I’ve started another blog hosted by leaflet.pub. In part to try the platform out, but also to support the leaflet team as I think they are doing great work. You can subscribe via rss or the Bluesky publications feed functionality.

BYENNE

A newsletter about storydwelling. Byenne is what’s left. After the storm. After the telling.

by Jay Springett @thejaymo.net

Permanently Moved

Tales Untold

It is the graft that reveals the craft. 

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2025/06/27/2516-tales-untold/

Experience.Computer: https://experience.computer/
Worldrunning.guide: https://worldrunning.guide/
Subscriber Zine support the show! https://startselectreset.com/

Support ✨

£5 MONTHLY 👏

Includes Handmade Zine ✉️

Subscribe

Wherever you get your podcasts

Photo 365

Tyger Tyger, burning bright …
In the Bamboo Woodland Trail of the night

Sorry to William Blake for mashing up his words! But have you spotted the tiger in our Bamboo Woodland Trail? Yes really, a @Stevexoh tiger has crept into Kingston! Don’t worry though, we hear it is friendly so do give it a wave.

Do tag us in your photos – we’d love to see your tiger hunt photos. Like this lovely one on Instagram from @thejaymo.

… We’re going on a tiger hunt! …

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Received a lovely email via my contact form
• Finished the copy for a bunch of public facing versions of our final playtest report.
• Demoed our engine’s game editor
• Attended a call/talk on immersive and generative sound design.
• Had a call with someone at Microsoft Research
• Put Playability onto worldrunning.guide

Terminal Access

This medium piece on why the author nuked their ‘Second Brain’ is really interesting. Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of Ideas, and Every Thought I Tried to Save

Human memory is not an archive. It is associative, embodied, contextual, emotional. We do not think in folders. We do not retrieve meaning through backlinks. Our minds are improvisational. They forget on purpose.

Knowledge management systems they say give us a semblance of intellectual control, but also they can foster deferral. The belief that a better, future version of oneself will process and synthesise the ideas later. A self that never arrives.

Dipping the Stacks

How Wattpad changed the way we think about writing

As a 14-year-old, I found Wattpad’s saturation of teen popular culture exhilarating; it promised to appease my quickly shifting reading preferences. My digital library became a hoard of historical fiction and supernatural romance novels, where I surrendered to my teenage angst and lived vicariously through questionably written characters. For four years, I religiously followed the satirical but romantic Storm and Silence series, treating the Wednesday chapter uploads like morning church service.

The great Syrian gold hunt

Speaking in hushed tones in a crowded Damascus café, Abu Wael said that after 40 years of treasure hunting, he knows that riches are not easily found. He accused metal-detector salesmen of tricking people into spending their meagre savings on a pipe dream.

Why Gradients Rapidly Increase Near the End of Training | alphaXiv

In this work, we focus on one particular unusual behavior that arises only in longer-duration training runs, and not for all machine learning models, an uptick in the norm of the gradient towards the end of training

The messy end of the pageview economy

The end of the pageview economy is unfolding slowly and then all at once. Google’s addition of AI Mode is the writing on the wall. Anyone using answer engines knows this is a superior option for many searches than wading through a sea of blue links stuffed with SEO slop. The second-order effects on publishers are becoming clear. Some notes on my recent conversations.

The Drawings the Shakers Got from God

An exuberant exhibit shows that, when it comes to art, the community should be known for far more than its furniture.

Reading

This week I read Y2K: How the 2000’s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was) by Colette Shade. I absolutely inhaled this essay collection. It’s a personal memoir that steps us through the trends and cultural shifts of the Y2K in the first person. Having read Taylor Lorenz’s Extremely Online somewhat recently I appreciated the chapter on Britney, Fame, Paparazzi and the cultural logics of of Web2.0. The chapter “How Larry Summers Caused My Eating Disorder” for example is an intertwined look at fashion and the cult of skinny in 2000’s media, whilst skilfully giving us the historical arch of neoliberalism. Really good book, especially if you lived though it. Really good book.

Despite my ongoing ‘finish everything you’ve started’ policy for 2025, I cracked and started reading books on the backlog despite there only being TWO books left from ‘the old times’ the first was Shades book above, the second being The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena. What a remarkable book.

Music

Spotify Playlist

• Spotify

Stagno – OVO

Italian noise rock legends OVO have a new double A side record out. And it’s been the first thing I’ve been listening to whenever I’ve left the house all week. Not for the faint of heart. I’d love to see them live again.

Remember Kids:

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The post The Weather Turned appeared first on thejaymo.

 

June 28, 2025

|

Permanently Moved 🔊

It is the graft that reveals the craft. 

Full Show Notes: https://thejaymo.net/2025/06/27/2516-tales-untold/

Experience.Computer: https://experience.computer/
Worldrunning.guide: https://worldrunning.guide/
Subscriber Zine support the show! https://startselectreset.com/

Support ✨

£5 MONTHLY 👏

Includes Handmade Zine ✉️

Subscribe

Wherever you get your podcasts

Tales Untold

There is a book in you.

A story, a saga, untouched, awaits with potential just beneath the surface. Deep within the recesses of your mind, like marble awaiting the sculptor’s hand. Know this: it is there and you must find it. Somewhere within you is the tale that only you can tell. A story unique to you. Your voice and your imagination.

It may not bring fame. It may not bring laurels. In truth, it might not even be very good. But it is yours, and that alone is reason enough to bring it into being. Any humble story, written in fits and starts, over weeks, months and years, adds new thread to your creative life. For every story, no matter how simple or flawed, holds potential. Your book, no matter how imperfect, adds something new to the world.

So heed the call. And start the journey. Find the tome that resides within. Do a NaNoWriMo. A trial by fire, a forge for the fledgling writer. This challenge is a test of your creativity, but a trial of commitment and discipline. Over the course of a single moon, you face not just the blank page, but yourself. Your doubts, your fears of inadequacy, and your distractions. Within that month, your narrative may flourish or and falter, but if you complete it, you will emerge changed. This wordy challenge demands more than imagination; it requires graft.

A book is no gentle stroll through the Artist’s garden. It is a gauntlet, where you discover the essence of real diligence. The graft, not the craft of writing. You will learn that true creation is not a product of romanticised inspiration, but of daily dedication. Writing a book in a month is the accumulation of words. Sentences, paragraphs, and pages through the steady grind of repetition.

This is the unglamorous reality of writing: words pile up one by one, like footsteps on a long road. They may be clumsy, awkward and unsure, but each one brings you closer to the book in you. Through this process, the act of writing creates something real, tangible. A task that can be conquered not in a single sweep, but with steady effort. Each word you write is another chisel mark on the stone, each sentence a swipe of cloth upon a gem, the raw material of your story.

For it is restless labour, the ceaseless turning of thoughts into words, that transforms an ember into a roaring fire. Not all art springs forth from sporadic flashes of brilliance. Most arrive daily, in small bursts. Often difficult. You must learn to sit and do the work. Each word, of every sentence, is a victory. It is through this effort that the contours of your story will emerge, and the book within you will take shape.

This quest will not be without struggle. There will be days when the words do not come, when the story seems too heavy to move, inspiration far away. But it is in these moments, in the struggle, that the Artist must persist. Embrace the mundane, the rewrites, the awkward sentences, the late nights staring at the screen. Don’t wait for the next word, find it. This is the true work of creation, prove your commitment, not just to the story, but to yourself.

Each word you write, each piece of art you make is not just a contribution to your own story, but the breath of life into a world. As c haracters take form, their inner life and yours grows richer, plots begin to weave themselves together. Slowly, the chaotic mess becomes ordered, and what was once formless will take shape. 

Through persistence, the mundane becomes sublime, the simple profound.

A writing month will teach you that before there is craft—before there is finesse, style, and polish—there must be graft. Graft is the bedrock of all art, the foundation upon which all is built. It is the grind, the commitment to write even when the muse is silent, when every word feels like a battle. This is the part of the journey where the dreamers are separated from the doers, the wishers from the writers.

Just as a sculptor must first haul the heavy stone before they can begin carving, so must the writer gather a mass of raw material—ideas, scenes, dialogue, before the story can be refined. At first, the words may seem disjointed, fragmented, rough. But over time, through revision and perseverance, these scattered pieces can be polished, refined into a coherent whole.

Writing is an act of transformation. A before and after. 

The raw material of your thoughts, shaped through effort, becomes something finished. 

Remember, once again Artist. That a book does not emerge fully formed, as perfect as the dream. It will be rough, flawed, and unfinished. But through persistence and patience, it will take shape. You will find your voice, your rhythm, and your truth. And though that process, you will discover not just the story, but yourself.

So, dear Artist, do not shy away from this journey. A book within you waits. 

And remember, always, that it is the graft that reveals the craft. 

Start Select Reset 📑

SSRZ is a quarterly zine, posted to your door like it’s 1994.

Get the Zine!
£5/month 💌

No spam. No email. Just ink on paper, four times a year.

The post Tales Untold | 2516 appeared first on thejaymo.