Here’s the spiel that our singer Paul wrote about the song for our Bandcamp release page:
Forest Bed are proud to release their new single, The Party’s Over. Continuing their spaced out, atmospheric take on British alt-country, ‘The Party’s Over’ is a song for the last person at the party, trying to cling on to their glory days and struggling to move on to the next phase in their life. Written as much as political allegory as a personal cautionary tale.
Thanks to everyone who shared or got in touch RE last weeks ‘Voltage of the Age’ post. I also appreciate the somewhat productive conversations I’ve had with people who hated it lol.
Broken Cable, Broken Flow
I have had a really unproductive week, thanks to a technical disaster entirely of my own making. I was leaning over my desk to sort something out with my webcam, and moved my laptop aggressively out the way below me. In doing so, I sheered off the right angled USB 4 cable that runs between my laptop and external screen. FUUUUU.
At first, I thought I’d just swap it out with another cable, since having lots of cables seems to some kind of a hobby of mine, but I realised that I don’t have any USB4 cables in the house!
Every single one of sufficient length was a USB-C 3.2 PD cables. They look the same, of course, but when I tried to use one, the monitor was unresponsive. So I had to wait 3 days until a new cable arrived. It’s funny how quickly your workflow can collapse when one small piece of infrastructure goes missing. Not having a second screen was like losing a limb.
I didn’t realise how deeply my daily rhythm depends on that particular configuration of screens until it was gone. I tried to write, but it felt impossible. Everything was crammed into a single 13” window: notes, browser tabs, drafts, documents etc all flattened into the same claustrophobic space. I felt trapped
I don’t know if this is the same for everyone, but ability to think is bound up with the physical layout of my workspace. Everything is mentally spatialised. A geography, or topology to it. Notes go over here, outlines live over there. Writing happens in this window, research in that one. Even though it’s all virtual, it feels mapped across a kind of internal landscape. When I lose one of its “territories” I can’t navigate properly. It’s about mental positioning I think. I know where I am in a project/document by where I am on the screens. The act of moving my eyes from left to right, from reference to draft, from idea to execution. Without that, everything piles up on one screen, windows behind other windows and everything just turns to mush.
When the new cable finally arrived on Saturday and I plugged the monitor back in and my virtual desktop returned to its proper topography. A ‘world‘ restored, the place my thoughts inhabit.
Feel like i’m in the home stretch now as I continue to post my hundred notes on storydwelling over on my leaftlet pub. Up to #56 now.
There comes a point
when the edge
becomes a door.
The story
is no longer
where you are.
But where you go next.
I also want to just add that the leaflet team are fantastic. The platform is still under development, but run into a problem, need a feature? Message the team on bsky and they just address it within an hour or 2?
Organised arrangements for my upcoming flying visit to Berlin.
Great coffee meeting in central
Wrote an abstract for a game award been nominated for
Thinking a lot about stable coins
Got ChatGPT to code and extend a bunch of github actions, fun afternoon
Very little writing. Deadlines are now looming.
Terminal Access
This Fortune piece on Avi Schiffmann, the 22-year-old creator of Friend AI pendent is really worth reading. Anyone who has reposted the graffiti on those adverts got suckered imo
Most founders would cringe at that kind of backlash, but Schiffmann called it “artistically validating.” The white space in the ads was intentional, he claimed—the vandalism was part of the plan. “The audience completes the work,” he said, beaming. “Capitalism is the greatest artistic medium.”
To Schiffmann, the vandalized billboards aren’t defacement: They’re proof that his subway takeover is working exactly as intended. The goal, he says, isn’t just to sell a $129 AI pendant. It’s to provoke a cultural debate about what counts as friendship in the age of artificial intelligence.
The gospel of engagement duped people into mistaking using the software with carrying out meaningful or even successful conversations. A bitter tweet that produces chaotic acrimony somehow became construed as successful online speech rather than a sign of its obvious failure. All those people posting so often seemed to prove that the plan was working. Just look at all the speech!
The next day, I decide I’m really going for it. Instead of the cautionary double spritz and tap, I do my usual rotation: neck, wrist, hair, back of knees. This is the amount I go for on the daily with my usual, non-roadkill-coded scents, so it feels only fair to extend the courtesy to Silver Oud. Let’s dance.
Japan went through this in the Sixties, through a grass-roots student protest movement; America is experiencing it now, with the twist that the urge to dismantle and demolish is coming from the top down. Our two nations have been locked in orbit since the end of World War II, influencing and reacting to one another, so there’s a kind of yin and yang, of separate experiences reflecting and refracting across time and space.
Taken together, the messages are incoherent. This is irony-poisoned nihilism, tactical gear as shitposting—the only cause this person seems to have is to troll the viewer.
Very few companies in the world can produce this kind of advanced high-grade steel. Even so, Tata is being hit by the same forces that are pummeling every steel maker: Manufacturers are producing more steel than the world can possibly use.
I finished my re-read of Gordon’s Ani.Mystic. Remains a fantastic book. In fact, it feels more urgent and relevant now than when it was released.
I finished the audio book edition of Impro by Keith Johnstone. As I said last week, it’s been… 12/13 years since I last read it and wow. it’s also a book that is more relevant, and alive now than at any time before. Super important book.
I used another audible credit and started listening to The Autistic’s Guide to Self-Discovery: Flourishing as a Neurodivergent Adult by tiktok influencer Professor Sol Smith. It’s a bit of a strained read for me, as I’m pedantically disagreeing with lots of the things in it, but at the same time agree with the general thrust of the book. Hasn’t told me anything I don’t already know yet tho.
Discovered the 2022 album Luminous this week. An album of Cosmic/Americana soundscapes built around the acoustic guitar from musician Stefan Beck. It is apparently his 7th album and at some point I’m going to binge his entire discography.
I listened to it on the train into central London during the week, it made for fantastic people watching music as we were held at a signal at Clapham Junction for 10mins. I sent the album link to Paul in my band and he replied a few hours later “Very nice. Fits a crisp autumn day well” it sure does. Why not give this LP a spin if you need to move from A to B this week in the Northern Hemisphere?
Remember Kids:
Science does not consider itself an ideology, as it claims to only deal with what is real. This is, of course, what every ideology thinks of itself. The complete hijacking of all non-physical criteria of being human in favour of the unfounded belief that we are meat robots, lacking in free will, has enormous implications for what it is the archaeologist actually finds. As she thinks, so she proves.
