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Meetings, greetings, and gifts.

• Back Again (Again)
• On The Blog
• Photo 365
• The Ministry Of My Own Labour
• Terminal Access
• Dipping the Stacks
• Reading
• Music
• Remember Kids:

Back Again (Again)

Another week’s weeknotes coming to you on a Tuesday evening. An irregular occurrence that has been happening quite regularly in the last few weeks. I’ve been sick, and I’ve also been abroad. Also, I absolutely knew this was going to happen and this would get posted well passed Sunday.

When I was at City Airport last Tuesday, just before I flew to Berlin for three nights, wrote ‘!!WEEKNOTES!!’ in my bullet journal. 

I saw this sign not long after arriving in the city.

The trip meanwhile, was successful (I think). I had a bunch of dinners conversations, coffees and meetings. I spent an afternoon with talking to a really cool startup. Then I went to see Mat and Holly’s Starmirror as last month when they showed me around it was still being installed. I also picked up their book ‘All Media is Training Data’. Obviously is pirated their exhibition as a gaussian splat too. lol.

I also spent an entire day down in the countryside at the facilities of a startup that is making dry composting toilets for municipalities, national parks, and festivals. It was absolutely fascinating, a really interesting day listening to the challenges of building a small scale manufacturing business. And also hearing about the regulatory environment in Germany and the EU around composting human waste — and the scientific studies they are involved in with their ‘night soil’.

It was extremely busy and basically non-stop. And then the weekend was somewhat of a write-off, a friends birthday lunch and then after my shocking cold that I had before I went, that I kept at bay with Lemsips whilst I was abroad. It came back hard and demanded it run out its course.

Yesterday of course was the first day of the new week, and I was getting back into the swing of things. Insane how much e-mail builds up over 7 days.

Right now, I actually only have two weeks left of my ‘year’ before Eve and I are supposed to be going to Sri Lanka on holiday. A trip of a lifetime that is currently in superposition due to the cyclone and the floods. So we are giving ourselves a moment to see how things are unfolding before we make a decision, and start investigating cancellations and our travel insurance etc. Or go ahead. Doesn’t look like we are going to be taking the train (One of the reasons we were going)

Anyways, because of the half month I was hoping, and planning, to get two big pieces of work and writing out before the end of the year. I wanted to publish Episode 302 of Permanently Moved, and set up pre-orders for the zine, and also publish the book I have been writing all year on the ontology of media. It’s about the Information Age Iconoclasm. Called SLOP MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE.

But there is just still so much left to do. Meetings in town, work and social commitments between now and when we leave… So I am not sure that either are going to get done.

I think perhaps I will try and finish the book and get that out on my return first thing 2026. And then towards the end of January, Episode 302 of Permanently Moved.

So I thought to myself the other day that “One does not need to believe in ghosts to live in a haunted house.” and posted it to bluesky. And Colin Walker replied “One does not need to live in a haunted house to believe in ghosts.” Which I thought was rather good.

So I wrote this double poem.

One does not need to believe in ghosts to live in a haunted house.

A place can hold a story
without your consent.

You move through it;
the residue remains.

Belief is optional.
It’s influence is not.

One does not need to live in a haunted house to believe in ghosts.

A story can attach itself anywhere
even without your giving it ground.

It travels with you;
location is irrelevant.

A house is not required.
Yet the haunting persists.

On The Blog

BYENNE is nearly finished! Only 5 days to go now! The half year long project of getting some of my thoughts out about the concept of Storydwelling is coming to an end. In the new year I’d like to do a physical print run via pre-order and the release them all as an ebook.

If you dwell inside

long enough.

You will come to think

it was always yours.

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Photo 365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

• Berlin!
  • Multiple meetings
  • Dinners
  • Site Visit
  • Discussions, Dinners and Dreams.
• Recovering, had a shocking cold the whole time!

Terminal Access

If you read one thing this week from my blog. Read this long read on NATO readiness and Drone warfare in Ukraine.

The most interested in the drones was a Czech instructor, Jakub (name changed), a veteran of peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan. Together with the Eighteenth, they decided to conduct an exercise: Czech paratroopers would assault Ukrainian positions, and the Ukrainians would fight back using Mavics.

“After the very first assault actions, he comes up to me and says, ‘Listen, can we remove the Maviks?'” the major recalls of that conversation. “Why, Yakub?”

“You can spot us with your ‘mavics’ instantly, we can’t even get close.”

“Jakub, unfortunately, we are preparing for a real war,” I told him.

Dipping the Stacks

In the AI boom, not all capex is created equal

That should bring closer attention to which companies are building the most cost-effective AI infrastructure, and which have sustainable pricing power. Google and Microsoft both registered stronger profit margins than Wall Street had expected in the latest quarter, while Meta’s operating margin dropped by three percentage points, to 40 per cent.

The End of Cloud Inference [Gdoc]

The core idea is simple: put the thinking (compute) as close as possible to the data and the person using it.

How the climate conversation went punk

The imaginations of our future have become increasingly bleak, and more so with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). Conversations today muse about AI bots replacing humans and wars over basic needs like water. Morbid as it may sound, cinema and literature have long captured these anxietie

The AI water issue is fake

Only 0.04% of America’s freshwater in 2023 was consumed inside data centers themselves. This is 3% of the water consumed by the American golf industry.

NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbage

Orion is far too expensive, too slow, too heavy, fundamentally flawed, unsafe, unfit for purpose. I’m calling it. Success is no longer in the set of possible outcomes, and hasn’t been for well over a decade. Let’s stop pretending.

Reading

I finished Elitism: A Progressive Defence by Eliane Glaser on the plane to Berlin on Tuesday. A very good book. Also in retrospect, a very brave book to write and publish in 2020 given the cultural environment at the time.

On the way home I was reading Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading by Nadia Asparouhova. It’s a very eerie book to be reading as its a summery of some of the ideas that have clearly been incubating in/across the same milieu as me. Perhaps we are only one group chat removed?

Still plugging away at Marguerite Porete: The Mirror of Simple Souls. The introductuary essay and analysis I think, is longer than the main text. Haven’t got to it yet. I’m also still listening to Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson. But I haven’t had any time really to press play.

Music

Spotify Playlist

• Spotify

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru – Souvenirs

The Bandcamp descriptions says it all:

“Crows of the sky, please tell me What is found above the clouds?
-Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, “Tell Me”

The first vocal album by beloved Ethiopian nun, composer, and pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru – profound and deeply moving home cassette recordings made amidst political upheaval and turmoil.

These are songs of wisdom, loss, mourning, and exile, sung directly into a boombox and accompanied by Emahoy’s unmistakable piano. Though written and recorded while still living at her family’s home in Addis Ababa, Emahoy sings of the heartache of leaving her beloved Ethiopia, a reflection on the 1974 revolution and ensuing Red Terror in her homeland, and a presentiment of her future exile in Jerusalem.

In the 21st century, Emahoy has become known worldwide for her utterly unique melodic and rhythmic style. Commonly misinterpreted as “jazzy” or “honky tonk,” Emahoy’s music actually comes from a deep engagement with the Western classical tradition, mixed with her background in Ethiopian traditional and Orthodox music.

Remember Kids:

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The post Back Again (Again) appeared first on thejaymo.

So you decide to start, even though you’re not 100% prepared, and you realize that it is the exact act of starting that ignites more energy, giving you the ability to build and create as you go. There is a certain mysterious intelligence to this. 

This is why I’ve never believed in business plans, because business plans are detached from reality. They don’t account for the people who appear as if out of nowhere, offering help and solidarity. They don’t account for the universe deciding to give you an invisible boost by handing out random gifts, like the telephone number of someone who is particularly resourceful, or the serendipitous encounter with a well-priced location in a lovely neighbourhood, and suddenly you find yourself blessed with the ability to see just about 100m ahead, and yet it’s quite enough, like how it is when you drive at night and your headlights illuminate just enough of the road for you to eventually reach your destination safely.

I hope this realization removes some weight from your shoulders and reminds you that it is impossible to know everything and have everything planned out 100% before you begin anything. In the face of this impossibility, you only have to start. You will make mistakes along the way, but these mistakes will be your teachers and you will be better for having made them. And finally, most importantly, you will begin to build, instead of only dreaming about building. 

You will actually start to make things, and as clumsy as it will all feel, you will begin to make some meaningful progress towards making things happen.

And that is everything.

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I love this idea of “growing down”, becoming more rooted and sturdy.

It got me thinking about the word “growth”.

Contemporary usage of the word in business often communicates human intervention and imposition against an otherwise natural outworking.

“Growth” in a forest is different than “growth” in business.

In business, we talk about “growth hacking” as if the natural cadence of growth isn’t sufficient. It requires modification because we deem it insufficiently slow.

We “engineer” growth instead of tending it.

Personally, when I say I want to grow, I mean like a tree. Not like a cancer.

Tree growth responds to its environment and integrates with its ecosystem. Growth is sustainable, balancing expansion and repair. It scales in harmony with its context.

Cancer growth is selfish, consuming resources at the expense of its host. Growth is uncontrolled until the system that supports it collapses. It scales through extraction until failure.

When we talk about the growth of technology in the 21st century, which kind of growth do you think best describes it?

“Hey, {social media | AI} grew so big, we all sat together under its canopy and enjoyed the shade.”

Said no one.

More likely: “Hey, {social media | AI} grew so big, it metastasized beyond what society could bear and now look at the mess we’re in.”

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