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samjc

Husband, father, teacher. Likes climbing, fitness, photography, red/green politics, cooking, Linux, mathematics and coding. Sets crosswords as Dyno. Eats plants.

updates

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    Weekly Digest 13

    At some point I will accept that these “digest” posts are not weekly, at least not right now — we’re still in the so-called fourth trimester so finding quiet time where I have the energy is still a challenge. I’m on half-term break now and on Saturday I got to see some old friends I had not seen since before the pandemic, so that was lovely

    Playing

    I played Doki Doki Literature Club after following a thread from Dan Fixes Coin Ops. Not what I’d usually play, but short enough and pretty neat.

    Reading

    For casual reading, I’ve been enjoying The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin. For more serious reading, I’m reading Plato’s Republic. It’s been over 10 years since I read it last, and education is such a major theme of that work, and since I’m now an educator, I’m looking forward to reading it from a very different perspective.

    Watching

    Ludwig is a lot of fun, isn’t it?

    On this blog

    Originally I used tags to categorise the form of posts, mainly using the article tag to distinguish from microposts. But I don’t really do microposts on this blog anymore; I prefer Mastodon rather than “cluttering” my site and my RSS feed. So in future I’ll be using them to classify by topic.

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    Weekly digest 12

    • An Agony Of Effort: The True Story of Bloodborne A little-known multi-part video essay arguing that the 2015 gothic/cosmic horror video game Bloodborne is, in fact, an allegory for the medical establishment of Victorian Edinburgh (and intentionally so). The creator argues that Bloodborne’s core Lovecraftian story of opposing schools of scholars hoping to evolve humanity by studying the cosmic Great Ones represents the efforts of different groups of Scottish doctors, surgeons, and anatomists in their quest to advance knowledge of the human body. This year I have (slowly) played through Bloodborne for the first time and wondered in particular about its major theme of “forbidden knowledge” and what ill-gotten knowledge from the real world it may be critiquing. This series provided a compelling answer: the vile rituals of Bloodborne’s arcanists represent the dangerous, dehumanising, and sometimes outright murderous practices of Victorian medical researchers, upon whose discoveries much of 20th century medicine was built. This extensively researched essay draws on evidence from the game’s text, architecture, setting, and characters, and how they may be representative of real literary works, places, and people. There are many interpretations of Bloodborne online; I found this one utterly fascinating and full of “No way!” moments.
    • I love your week notes and day notes and art and lists. Annie Mueller reminds us that not everything we post has to be great literature.
    • LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem. I saw a job listing this week that I’d probably be qualified to do — training chatbots to do advanced mathematics. The pay was attractive (as it often is when profitability is barely a concern for these VC-funded tech firms), but I was sceptical of the product — I have seen no evidence that chatbots can be good at mathematics. This article confirms to me that it’s probably flimflam. Training them to do mathematics probably just means improving their ability to pretend to do mathematics.
    • Anger at UK’s ‘bonkers’ plan to reach net zero by importing fuel from North Korea. Net zero is also flimflam.

    Playing

    I finally finished Bloodborne after defeating the optional boss Orphan of Kos, which took me an embarrassing number of attempts that took literally hours (I am not good at this game). After that all three remaining final bosses fell within 15 minutes, two of them on the first try. I guess next I’ll finish Talos Principle for a bit of a change of pace.

    Reading

    At school during reading sessions, I’ve started on Le Guin’s The Word For World Is Forest. At home I’m mainly reading a Borges anthology.

    Listening

    Around 10 episodes of the Very Bad Wizards podcast are basically a Borges bookclub, so I’ve been enjoying listening them chat about some of the stories I’ve already read. I

    On this site

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    Weekly digest 11

    Work is more manageable now I am part time. Just as well as I’m still getting no sleep thanks to a certain small human, who gave his first smile this week.

    Reading

    Re-reading parts of This Life and some secondary literature regarding it, and also dipping into some Borges for fiction

    Watching

    Strictly, of course.

    Crosswords

    I finally finished constructing another crossword. The lovely people at Cryptic Sunday solved it on Twitch.

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    Weekly digest 10

    Tomorrow I go back to work after probably the longest break I will have from now until I retire (summer break + parental leave). It’s going to be tough, but helped by the fact I am going back part-time to make it possible to juggle my parenting and teaching responsibilities. Getting ready to go back has been difficult too, as we’ve had an IT migration, so there have been issues with getting to know the new system and also losing access to software that was previously integral to my teaching — hopefully I can sort all this out with IT once I get back to work.

    Clothes: A Daily Thread by Patrick Rhone. Patrick has been posting a daily series of reflections on his relationship with clothes.

    Reading

    I have finished This Life (finally… I’ve had a lot on, okay?). I’ll do a follow-up post. In fact, I may do a whole series deep-diving into some of the arguments.

    Watching

    Only Connect is back, babyyy

    On this site

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    Weekly digest 9

    Unsurprisingly, posting has completely fallen off this week. Even this update I’m writing with an 11-day-old child asleep on my chest, while my 2-year old bashes on a toy drum machine a few feet away. I’m not getting a lot of sleep either! But that’s great. It’s all part of it.

    • IndieWeb Assimilation. So it’s an overview of indieweb/smallweb, but I enjoyed this post because of the sheer number of interesting links to follow.
    • PlusWord a new-to-me daily puzzle. Solve a 5x5 quick crossword, then play Wordle with the rows of the crossword to deduce a hidden 6th word.

    On this blog

    Nothing! Other than a few updates to my crosswords log.

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    Weekly digest 8

    It’s a brief round-up owing to the fact I have a new baby as of Thursday. He is great, but we are struggling to name him.

    On this blog

    I added a new page to record crosswords I solve. Currently there is no navigation to this page.

    The fact that I now have a page I am regularly updating has spurred me to start adding support for editing pages to my micro.blog plugin for Neovim.

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    Weekly digest 7

    Blaugust is getting challenging. I’m not fully committed to posting every single day, but if I don’t try to do that, I’ll skip too many.

    Did a lot of nice things this week. Saw some friends, went out for anniversary dinner, took the little one to a country park.

    Reading

    I picked up Chiang’s other book Stories Of Your Life And Others, as well as a collection of stories by Borges, which I’ve just started dipping into.

    Watching

    This week I loved watching the Olympic climbing. After the women’s final I went climbing for the first time in months.

    I also watched the channel 5 documentary on the Lucy Letby case.

    On this blog

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    Weekly Digest 5

    Last week I had Covid and it was pretty rough. My wife also had it and is suffering some long-term (likely permanent) harms. Is this how we’re going to live now? All getting covid every couple of years until we’re all suffering from long-covid?

    I’ve not posted much recently. It’s not that I’ve not been writing, but the fear and doubt are back. I should try to be more consistent with these weekly updates at least, so I am at least keeping the blogging flame alive.

    Anyway, I just broke up for the summer. All efforts are now on preparing the house and our lives for another baby arriving next month.

    • The Secret to Japan’s Great Cities. I have never been to Japan but it’s the probably the place I’d most like to visit. This fascinating video goes into how Japanese city planning differs from typical Western cities, while also looking at challenges faced by Japanese cities.
    • AI as Self-Erasure. Matthew Crawford on AI and language.
    • Tech has no answers for you. Jason Becker’s angry but entirely on-point post about a tech sector that exists only to exploit and extract, rather than solve any real problems.

    Reading

    I finished reading Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Great book. Get the 2012 re-translation if you can — earlier versions were heavily censored due to the prudishness of the Soviet state (which is kind of funny — we imagine political speech being censored, but this really was just them being offended by a bunch of characters swearing and drinking heavily).

    Now I’m reading Ted Chiang’s Exhalation collection for my fiction fix, while still plodding through This Life.

    Listening

    After watching Glastonbury on the BBC recently, I’ve been going back to a bunch of 00s bands, such as Bloc Party and Interpol.

    Also, I’ve been enjoying the podcast If Books Could Kill, which dunks on non-fiction bestsellers.

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    Weekly digest 4

    Not posted a weekly digest in a while. It’s going to be a short one anyway

    Reading

    Still reading This Life by Marten Hägglund.

    Listening

    I’ve been listening to a lot of dance classics recently, a genre I’ve always kind of liked but never really embraced. The Prodigy, Groove Armada, Daft Punk, and so on.

    Watching

    • Started the Fallout show (I’ve not played any of the games). Very stylish and well done, so far.
    • Watched the election debates and found them mostly boring. The BBC debate featuring all major parties showed just how indistinguishable Labour and Conversatives are at the moment, allowing Nigel Farage to easily attack both from the right. The only person who convincingly challenged the current Westminster consensus on immigration, foreign policy, and fiscal policy was Stephen Flynn of the SNP.

    Other stuff

    • My son’s room now has a floor, just need to construct the furniture and move him in.
    • Picked up a Moonlander keyboard second hand
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    Weekly Digest 3

    Here’s what I’ve been giving my attention to this week

    • AI “art” and uncanniness. Doctorow forcefully argues that large language models do not infringe copyright, and there are better ways for artists to fight back.
    • The Stuff of (a Well-Lived) Life by L.M. Sacasas. I never miss a post from Sacasas, a tech critic with deep knowledge of the history of tech criticism. In this post, he uses Apple’s “Crush” ad to illustrate Borgmann’s “device paradigm”.
    • The Most Misunderstood Philosopher In The World by Abigail Thorn (Philosophy Tube). Gender and queer theorist Judith Butler is widely misrepresented and misunderstood by people who have not read their work but have an axe to grind. This video essay on their work was entertaining and educational, though I’m still not sure I fully understand.

    Reading

    Started reading This Life by Yale philosopher Marten Hägglund, and I’m excited by it. Its project is to ground spiritual meaning in life in secular terms, in which the timebound nature of our lives is an essential component meaningful existence — unlike the religious ideal of finding meaning in something eternal, the antithesis of this book — and works through the political implications of this “secular faith” via new readings of Marx. More to come on this later.

    Watching

    Watched Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time because I thought Furiosa looked like it might be fun to see during half-term. Enjoyed.

    Other stuff

    • Published a new crossword last weekend
    • Flooring arrived, just need some days to get it down now.
    • Weather has been pretty great two weekends in a row, so outdoor grilling season has begun.
    • Initial release of my micro.blog plugin for Neovim. Still a WIP but it works. Turns out just two days before I published the plugin, this guide to best practices was published, and my attempt certainly doesn’t follow a lot of this advice. Still, it’s given me some directions for how I can improve it.
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    Weekly Digest 2

    • Reviving rural railways with Monocab. This transport technology looks really cool. I can’t see it coming the Britain any time soon (our network is still largely non-electrified), but with public ownership of the railways just around the corner according to Starmer, who knows.
    • A Lesson From the Gymnasium. I enjoyed this post from Greg Morris sharing some wisdom from Marcus Aurelius.
    • CNN disgraces itself over Gaza. Owen Jones continuing to expose the media over its coverage of the atrocity in Gaza.
    • Simple, non-commercial, open source notes. I saw this when it first came out but was reminded of it earlier and how great it is. For those who love plaintext note-taking solutions — a highly entertaining trip down a rabbit hole.

    Cooking

    • Vegan Lachmajou. One of my favourite recipes. Super quick, high protein, with simple ingredients. Enjoy with flatbread, hummous, and a salad of finely diced tomatoes, cucumber, and perhaps vegan feta.

    Up to much else?

    • I’ve been coding this week in my free time, so there’s not a lot of stuff here. I’ll be posting what I made soon.
    • Finished laying plywood upstairs. Next is to get down the underlay.
    • Did gardening for the first time. Dug out a space and put in a raised bed.
    • Crossword is nearly finished, hoping to publish soon.
    • Next week I’m running an Only Connect quiz at school.

    That’s all for this week, thanks for reading.

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    Weekly Digest

    Trialing a new format.

    This week we have a bunch of lefty links.

    • The Forest and The Factory by Phil A. Neel and Nick Chavez. Long, occasionally whimsical essay on a question that is often overlooked in utopian post-capitalist imaginaries — how do things actually get produced? In particular — how are things produced at scale? Neel and Chavez identify as communists, but even if you don’t like that word there is much to be learned here for anyone interested in imaginaries like eco-socialism, degrowth, social ecology, solarpunk and so on. Link to Chavez’s website
    • Mother Trees and socialist forests: is the “wood-wide web” a fantasy? by Daniel Immerwahr. The idea that trees are altruistic and can share resources and information has gained a lot of traction recently, sometimes in eco/leftist discourse as part of a project to naturalise peace and cooperation. But I’ve always found it farfetched, and this article seems to agree.
    • We Live In An Age Of “Vulture Capitalism”. Interview with economics writer Grace Blakeley. Some interesting discussion about why “state” vs “market” is the wrong debate.

    Reading

    Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. Gripping Soviet-era sci-fi novel that the Stalker film and S.T.A.L.K.E.R games are based on.

    Listening

    The Airborne Toxic Event by the band of the same name. I’d not listened to this band in years. Brilliant album, with the standout track Sometime Around Midnight being one of the best sad songs of the 00s.

    Watching

    • Watched Into The Congo with Ben Fogle this week. Fogle visits Congo-Brazzaville, and spends time with many interesting peoples and people, including Mbenjele hunter-gatherers, the fashion-loving Sapeurs, and stars of the absolutely bananas Congolese wrestling scene. I have a dear friend originally from Congo (hi if you’re reading!), so it was nice to learn a little more about his country.
    • Watched Britain’s Got Talent for the first time in over a decade. Saturday night family entertainment is a thing now, I guess.

    Up to much else?

    • We’ve been laying plywood underfloor upstairs in our house ready to hopefully get some proper flooring soon.
    • Final parents' evening of the year was on Thursday. It went fine, despite me being a bit worried about it.
    • Made a bit of progress toward my next crossword for mycrossword.co.uk. I’ve not set one for months, and they take me so long to construct.
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    I now have an articles category for longer posts. If you’re not interested in short posts and photos, use this feed

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    2023 in review

    A brief overview of my year

    Main events

    • My little boy turned 1 year old, so I had my first experience of doing a child’s birthday party.
    • Had holidays in Llandudno and Christchurch, Dorset.
    • Became an uncle for the first time. The family is growing, and everyone is full of joy.
    • Finally bought a new house after months of living with my parents for logistical reasons.
    • Began learning web development via the Odin Project.
    • Made a good friend at work, and reconnected with some old friends.
    • Participated in the teacher strikes this year.
    • Published several cryptic crosswords on mycrossword.co.uk. My crossword setting and solving improved a lot over the year. I ran a crossword club at school.
    • Survived an OFSTED inspection (outcome: “Good”)
    • Started this blog 🎉.

    Patterns and themes

    • My progress in learning web dev slowed once the new school year started — many factors involved here, including workload, parenthood, living situation
    • Started lifting weights in August. Things started to fall off a bit in December due to a spike in workload (many end-of-term exams to mark). However, I’m still keen to go; I’ll pick the habit back up next week
    • Stress levels have been very high throughout the year, primarily due to work, but of course also to do with staying with parents, moving house, and so on.
    • Latter part of the year have had a big focus on family and marriage. Our living situation, together with my workload and stress levels, have been challenging for us all.
    • Got ill quite a bit in the first half of the year, but haven’t had a sick day since school started in September.

    Favourites

    Didn’t have time for much culture this year, but the best book I read was Neuromancer.

    Looking ahead

    • Keep making progress in learning web development
    • Keep going to the gym
    • Keep focusing on the family

    Happy new year 🥳