little surfer

I think I'll beat the drum of “please body, either be really sick or not at all” until I am really sick again. Then I'll go back to wishing for not being sick as much. I hate the middle ground so much. Last week was pretty aggressively okay.

• Lobsterbomb came to the studio to talk about their new record Overstimulated
• There was a new blog bandwagon in the ttrpg/osr space and it was all about The Appendices Ns or in other words lists of media that made people who they are now. Here is a collection.
• here is a movie about Grimdark and lots of small figurines

I had to think about this quote while walking through a neighborhood today. Sorry for its length. Emphasis mine.

It is strange and striking that climate change activists have not committed any acts of terrorism. After all, terrorism is for the individual by far the modern world’s most effective form of political action, and climate change is an issue about which people feel just as strongly as about, say, animal rights. This is especially noticeable when you bear in mind the ease of things like blowing up petrol stations, or vandalising SUVs. In cities, SUVs are loathed by everyone except the people who drive them; and in a city the size of London, a few dozen people could in a short space of time make the ownership of these cars effectively impossible, just by running keys down the side of them, at a cost to the owner of several thousand pounds a time. Say fifty people vandalising four cars each every night for a month: six thousand trashed SUVs in a month and the Chelsea tractors would soon be disappearing from our streets. So why don’t these things happen? Is it because the people who feel strongly about climate change are simply too nice, too educated, to do anything of the sort? (But terrorists are often highly educated.) Or is it that even the people who feel most strongly about climate change on some level can’t quite bring themselves to believe in it?

Funny how that quote is from a piece published in 2007. Has anything changed? And that reminds me that I should read How to blow up a pipeline and that Andreas Malm has a new book out soonish. I took a lot from The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth and the new one is called The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late and it is a “A scathing critique of proposals to geoengineer our way out of climate disaster, by the bestselling authors of Overshoot”.

Anne Trubek writes about reading more and how to do it. I did take my book with me. I listened to podcasts instead of reading. This takes work. Gina Trapani reminds us to take time off. Oh I am looking forward to one day taking a sabbatical. This last one is more for me. A reminder that You Teach a Class of 25 Individual Students, Not a Monolithic Many-Headed Behemoth.

So long.

Aubrey Watters writes (emphasis mine):

If you do not know what to say, if you do not know what to write, if you do not know what to think, it isn't a signal that you are flawed, that you are inadequate, inept, inarticulate. Sure, you might be lacking something – ideas, words, clarity, what have you – and certainly the latest “hot, new” product promises to fill up the page for you. But if you don't know what to say, it is quite alright to say nothing. You needn't supplicate the machine-oracle for “inspiration.” (It's not inspiration after all; it's autocomplete.)

You were not put here to “create content,” although surely this is what the “AI” gods (and the tech industry writ large) demand of us.

It is alright to be speechless when things are overwhelming. It is alright to sit in uncertainty, to contemplate. It is alright. It is expected.

Indeed, part of the problem, perhaps, is we live in a culture (an economy, a technology infratructure) that demands we speak on everything, that demands we post, we update, we share. “Say anything,” post something, or you are nothing.

And it resonates. Sarah Jaffe and Craig Gent talk about hope and being part of something. They read from a poem by Marge Piercy. It ends like this:

It goes on one at a time, it starts when you care to act, it starts when you do it again and they said no, it starts when you say We and know who you mean, and each day you mean one more.

They talk about David Graeber and a piece in the LRB by Richard Seymour called Baseline Communism that sounds excellent. Seymour also talked about Graeber in a related podcast. And I want to read Dawn of Everything again. Or rather start anew and finish it or keep going. Whichever. Where does one train to read Anthropology? To understand it and to learn from it? Did university teach me nothing or did my time at the computer shatter any resemblance of information intake?

Here is Aubrey Watters again:

What it means when teachers and professors push the button to create “AI” slop for themselves or for their students – whether that's assignments, handouts, quizzes, feedback, slide-decks, or essays; whether that's students pushing the button to create “AI” slop for their instructors.

And I think of my colleagues praising AI tools for what they can do for them and their classes. And here I get stuck in the sand. Between thoughts of optimization and relearning to do nothing. Relearning once again to fall into a book. To learn from it. Finding time for it. We'll see.

Sometimes I wish I had a job that actually ended when I leave work. Something that I do not take home. But I don't. So that's that.

This song is not about that. I am just feeling very seen in it's intensity.

It sure is a new week. The new first graders have arrived and suddenly the class is so much fuller than before. I was running around reminding kids of their tasks all day. But it was mostly fun and games.

What kind of media does a kid consume to sit on a chair and make constant finger guns and even do a reloading motion with their hands?

Good Luck are an excellent band. I love their record Without Hesitation quite a lot. It's been more than ten years since that record was released. Same goes for Ritual. I interviewed the drummer last week and it was interesting to hear what needs to happen for a band to start again after ten years. And especially for a band whose name has not really grown in that time.

• being bored is hard and I am not good at it
• I am in the market for a new gimmick
• this episode of One Shot is excellent and makes me really happy I backed the Cosmic Century Knights kickstarter! Will I ever get to play it? Who knows. I'll take those blades with me into other games for sure.
• are you a farmer or a builder?
• such cool art, and it is freeeee

Which brings me to me trying to make a Zungeon. My little notebook is full of dungeons that are drawn and not keyed. And now I have keyed one and when I started to type it up I immediately ran out of steam. I immediately felt like it was not great, didn't look good on the page and stopped working on it.

It is all bullshit of course. Just today I told the kids in class to just draw and not think about the way it does not look like the thing you imagined in your head. I want to ride the high of the TWG Game Jam and actually produce something. Make my own jam? I don't know yet. So I'll just keep on drawing dungeons. Better than looking at the phone in the subway.

Don't look at me like that. Slothrust are just too flipping great.

This weeks music comes from Plaids. A band that I saw play live twice, they were amazing and this record has a great energy. The melodies hit. It seamlessly moves from song to song. I like it a lot.

Dragons Eat Everything

Paula talked to Laura Lee of Laura Lee & the Jettes about their upcoming record. I mostly remember Laura Lee from her time with Gurr, an excellent band.

And on the show Claire Roy visited us for a talk about the band Berliner Doom. Excellent tunes. The interview will be a podcast soon!

A Matter of Entertainment

• here is a short documentary about a bunch of DIY spaces in Berlin and Leipzig. One of them is right around the corner from the school I work at. Reminds me to spend my money more wisely.
• I fell into quite the deep hole on Friday night, looking at old ALEX productions that I was a part of and this caught my eye again. A beautiful shot music video.
• a new Van Holzen record is on the way and it is a good one!
• I have been reading the new Charlie Jane Anders book. It is great. But I seem to not be able to brave upcoming doom at the moment. I don't quite know what it is. The story is about a person who can do magic of a kind teaching her mom and then there is so many ways this can go wrong that I stop reading. Which is not fair to the book. I have no idea where it will go. I just tense up and put my eReader down. I is called “Lessons ind Magic and Disaster” after all.

A thought: Comics in Bags

I have been haunted by thoughts about space left on my shelves, by time spent on whatever and by money stuff. Just now a friend sent me a text about her being at the flea market. And I am sitting at home looking at my screen and doing nothing really. Which is fine. I need to remember that. But it does not quite feel fine.

I am looking at my money spread sheet and at my actual bank balance and they don't match. It makes me anxcious. Like I missed something. I am fine, things are going to be fine. I just find myself worrying about spending too much for this and not enough for that. About buying too many things. How does my partner not spend money on anything (not true, it just feels like that), how did I end up with so many phyiscal hobbies? Do I really need all those short boxes full of comics? What is need then? How do I balance an interest in supporting local business and comics that I like with not having more stuff?

So often I find myself living through others. Be it their vlogs or their tales. Their messages from flea markets or tales of holidays. I had a great summer and did so many great things and I am just afraid of falling right back into my old ruts and ways where I just sit at my desk all day doing nothing of any substance while thinking of maybe doing things but having no drive to actually do anything about it. Wallowing you see. But I have heard that writing stuff out is supposed to be good for you. So here we are.

What am I going to do with my comics though?

I need to see them play again. Did so once I believe and it was great. They have changed so much and are still the same band. This here is a great record!

Maybe there will be four. I listen to music with MusicBee and it will throw in a mix of shuffled songs after an album has run through. It is a great way for me to reconnect to music I have not heard in ages and to just get to know the tons of music I rarely listen to. So here are four songs that came up yesterday that I really liked.

Mutiny on the Bounty were a pretty neat mathy post rock group from Luxembourg. I got to interview them once ages ago at Reeperbahn Festival. And while looking them up right now I see that they released a split in 2023. So not dead?

Den Sorte Skole are a duo from Copenhagen. They create sample based tunes and they slap. This one is from a record called Indians & Cowboys and you can get it for Pay What You Want on bandcamp.

The Sonder Bombs are from Cleveland, Ohio. This record is called Clothbound and it came up and I really enjoyed this song. Heavy variations and a certain emo (?) sound, that I really like.

Sometimes you just need a really good cover song. And Bandit delivers. The record is called Of Life, pwyw on bandcamp and just a really good one of those. Really nice voice, good tunes, something to sink into. Really good cover art as well. This particular music shuffle came after listening to this record.