Salt climbs the hem
white geometry breathing
time dries the fabric
a body remembered
- Dirty Looks
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Dirty Looks
Because I was away from mid December onwards, I missed the traditional pre-Christmas ‘social season’ and haven’t really caught up with anyone. So now I find my elf in a ‘New Year catch up’ period instead where I’m hanging out with people 1:1. In fact, in a couple of hours at the time of writing I’ll be jumping on the train and heading into town to hang out with some folks from video games.
As it was, last weekend I spent the day with good friend Jay Owens and we went to the ‘Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion‘ exhibition that’s currently at Barbican until the 25th of Jan.
The exhibition was to my eyes, just a bunch of (in once case quite literally, rags) clothes grouped together under some tenuous curatorial direction written in International art english. But I did get to see some drippy/bad ass clothing that I liked a great deal. Stuff like this.
Now, I don’t know anything about fashion or haute couture so it was very useful to be with ‘Other Jay’ who is a walking encyclopaedia of fashion history. She was telling me all about the designers, the shows that the ensembles came from: why they were important, famous or influential etc. Really useful contextual information to have that was completely lacking from the wall text etc.
The real stand out piece for me and commissioned for the show by the Barbican by the artist Alice Potts:
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The bodice of this mid-20th century Madame Grès Haute Couture dress, once darkened with dirt, now glitters with jewel-like crystals. In using her bodily fluids to generate the materials of fashion, Potts’s work speaks to the porous nature of bodies and the inescapability of the personal traces we leave on the world; the ways that we are continually mingling with the surfaces and substances that surround us.
The salt crystals grown from human sweat clinging to the dress were absolutely beautiful. Using haute fashion as a ‘medium’ for bio-affected sculture really spoke to me.
I wrote the poem that opens this weeknote on the train on the way home looking at my photos.
On The Blog
December 2025 | Photo 365
Photo 365 2025. Year 4, Month 12.Photo-a-day for the month of Dec 2025.
Start Select Reset 📑
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Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
Several calls this week. One was impromptu with interaction designer Ramon Marc that lasted for nearly 2 hours. We were talking about Claude Code, Loom, and how to think about ephemeral software. Really good chat.
Most of this week was taken up with Admin holding over from last year and my taxes. But did start writing my EOY 2025 reflections.
I also reviewed a book proposal, as a subject matter expert, for Routledge which was a solid piece of work. I’ll admit that I had misjudged how much effort filling the questionnaire was going to be.
Lost half a day to setting up my new phone. Was very anoying.
Terminal Access
JDO wrote about being an indie author and the realities of interacting with the US publishing industry / establishment.
One of the assholes I met that night is probably one of the most successful weird sci-fi writers alive. I see his books pop up on TikTok book recommendations all the time, and his books have been turned into TV shows (or streaming shows, I guess). We were all standing in a circle chatting, then Johnny went off to talk to someone else, leaving me with this massively successful writer.
This writer started grilling me about who my agent was, who I knew at the conference, all these weird questions to figure out if I was somebody worth talking to. I said something to the effect of “yeah man, I don’t have any of that, I just like writing books.” And the guy sniffed and told me “that’s cute,” and walked away to go find someone who’d been, I don’t know, verified or something.
Dipping the Stacks
Everyone hated the Rabbit R1. They were right, but now they’re wrong
Now, the Rabbit R1 with RabbitOS 2 is an entirely different device, and anyone who bought one today should actually find things to do with it. That’s very different from how it was at launch.
Zohran Mamdani’s Casio is another man-of-the-people flex | British GQ
Only a few weeks ago, proud New Yorker Brynn Wallner wrote about very cheap watch flexes are in right now. It’s a trend Mamdani has been fully dialled into for a while.
‘OK Boomer’ Marks the End of Friendly Generational Relations (Published 2019)
In the end, boomer is just a state of mind. Mr. Williams said anyone can be a boomer — with the right attitude. “You don’t like change, you don’t understand new things especially related to technology, you don’t understand equality,” he said. “Being a boomer is just having that attitude, it can apply to whoever is bitter toward change.”
Record Numbers of Younger Women Want to Leave the U.S.
In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups.
AI-Powered Toys Caught Telling 5-Year-Olds How to Find Knives and Start Fires With Matches
After testing three different toys powered by AI, researchers from the US Public Interest Research Group found that the playthings can easily verge into risky conversational territory for children, including telling them where to find knives in a kitchen and how to start a fire with matches. One of the AI toys even engaged in explicit discussions, offering extensive advice on sex positions and fetishes.
Reading
Whilst I was away, I started reading A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity by Gary Tomlinson. This doorstopper has been on my TBR list since Holly Herndon told me about it around 2018. And OMG I can see why so many people who have read it rave abuot it. I’m only 30% of the way though, but I might already go as far as saying it’s one of the best books I’ve read in years.
Now, the book is extremely dense and some of the more techincal terms coming from academia and proto-inguistics are just wash over me but never the less. this book is the broadest and detailed overview of proto-humanity i’ve ever encountered. It’s approach to the subject though the lens of ‘musicking’ is extremely compelling. It’s absolutely blowing my mind.
Tomlinson builds a model of human evolution that revises our understanding of the interaction of biology and culture across evolutionary time-scales, challenging and enriching current models of our deep history. As he tells his story, he draws in other emerging human traits: language, symbolism, a metaphysical imagination and the ritual it gives rise to, complex social structure, and the use of advanced technologies. Tomlinson’s model of evolution allows him to account for much of what makes us a unique species in the world today and provides a new way of understanding the appearance of humanity in its modern form.
Music
LuLeLozk x nplsm – Sons of Phantom Liberty
If you have a hankering for PS2 era soundtrack drum and bass/breakcore then THIS is your album. It seems to me like it was the perfect way of starting the year. My favourite track is #2 ‘
Pseudoendotrizine’.
Remember Kids:
Alternative to a longer life is a mind with a long enough exposure to photograph the long truth
Heart of the Original – Steve Aylett
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The post Dirty Looks | Weeknotes #412 appeared first on thejaymo.
