The medieval town of Pisciotta above its olive groves as the sun is setting.

A cluster of sunlit buildings is perched atop a hill covered with the dense green foliage of olive trees under a clear sky.

A decorative tile in southern Italy. The text means, “sit down and tell me all about it”.

A ceramic tile on a wall features a cartoonish man in a green jacket and tie sitting and holding a pipe, accompanied by the text ASSETTATI E CUNTAMI U FATTU.

In my experience if you want to make a ferment, wash every utensil first in soap and water, and rinse well with very hot water. Don’t use a tea towel to dry: let it air dry. Where the recipe says use salt, use sea salt, like Maldon, not iodised table salt. If you see a mould forming, chuck it away.


Here is where we are.

We will imminently acquire unprecedented tools for organising, summarising and mobilising existing knowledge.

At the same time, we are entering an era when genuine discovery, institutional resilience, and the capacity to deal with “surprises” become existential.


I hate the way AI glibs over everything and turns it into Challenger disaster bullet points.


Itunes just coughed up Judie Tzuke’s “Stay with me till dawn”.

I had totally forgotten about this song. I wonder now if it inspired Nyssa’s death scene in Blade II.

Stay With Me Till Dawn (Live) - Judie Tzuke. More: www.crucialtracks.org/profile/m…


I found Abba’s dark album in my iTunes library. Can I share it? Can I fuck!

I wonder which is the stub universe. The one where Abba recorded their dark album, or the one where you think I’m a nutter.


Heh. The AI literally just quoted Gramsci at me. No mention of load bearing just yet, though.


The government hasn’t announced its social housing funding allocation for London, but Burnham is already rowing back on his pledge to invest in council homes.

To put the housing crisis in context, in just the three London boroughs of Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets there are around 78,000 households on the local authority housing register, and almost 15,000 households in temporary accommodation.


Have you noticed how people muddle opinions and convictions?