Week 23 2025

I presented Littlebook briefly at OCWG #27 and then talked about collaborative rectangles.

I say “like” a lot but I sure am cute. Thank you to the everwonderful Jess for asking me to come along.

I walked into the Algorave. It was great. Whatever act was on when I arrived was really good feel. And the next one let me feel like I was being reprogrammed. Saw Lu which was, as always, a real treat. Lu is spectacular. Met a sweet boy with twinkly eyes and multiple names and an energy like he knows something you don’t. I like him. Somebody asked me if I am called “Tom” or “Joe” and I said “😺 I am going to kill myself” and went and cried in the train station.

It’s always the novel misgenderings that fuck me up. Being asked if i am called tom or called joe. Like that guy the other day gesturing to a group that included me while saying “people who can definitely not pass as lesbians”. Or when I said “girls in my team” and that girl corrected me to “women”. I have to do the math in my own head and then misgender myself with the result. Is that a monad?

Listen, I’m not going to tell you what to do or how to behave. But if you send me an e-mail that was generated by AI I’m going to find that offensive. Like, rude. Impolite. Poor etiquette. I want to feel your fingers through the screen. I gotta to be with you, in timeshift.

Watched this video about a new AI browser called Dia, and it was saying “hey wouldn’t it be cool if I could get it to e-mail Emma for me?” And the answer is no. What if I could tell it to buy all these items from Amazon for me? No, the answer is no. Is everyone really looking forward to their AI agents having “sponsored actions” and “sponsored responses” where they are guided towards activity and advice that favours the business model of companies that paid to own your computation? Because I’m certainly fucking not. By all means use AI for finding academic papers and generating demo apps, but please do not ever use it to communicate with me. I can only see your soul through the spaces between the words. And that’s the blood.

The extraordinary becky avery called me on Thursday and asked if I’d like to go to Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony. I did. It was really wonderful, the music went inside me and made me tingle and my teeth chatter. There was a raffle. The winner would conduct the Alton Towers tune. They’d sold 100 tickets. I bought 50 tickets. Wrote becky avery’s name on the back of each one. Doesn’t it seem so right? I wore my Thorpe Park hoody for luck. 1 in 3 chance. but the fix was in! and the guy dressed like a conductor won. Professional musician. With a cute little baby and glamorous wife.

Becky and me wandered around talking for a while. I talked too much. It was so nice to see her. Felt like it had been forever or mere moments ago. She is extremely special and dear to my heart. I wish there was some way to communicate to her what she means to me but I’m not sure it can be converted into words or symbols, it must be taken whole. I love listening to people talk, but when i get excited i start talking. and listening to people talk gets me all excited. gotta do something about that.

The Spanish place wasn’t open by lunch. We had a lovely meal at The Ivy. When she went home I hopped on a call to play Pictionary with my new coworkers. I lost.

The difference between chaos and change is communication.

I’m dying with anxiety and social shame before and after every interaction, but while I’m in the interactions and faking it I feel like it’s real and I feel like I’m on top of the world. I will optimize the amount of time I spend in the imaginary world that everyone sees, rather than the real world inside my mind.

On Saturday morning I woke up and went outside in my bright yellow jumpsuit (it’s new). Needed somewhere to focus and type on the computer, so I hopped on a train. The next train at LB was Cambridge. Hopped on a train to Cambridge. Nice to warm my Cambridge cache, anyway, in case I ever need it.

calling at Baldock, Ashwell and Morden, Royston and Cambridge

lol this train to Cambridge needs an Oxford comma

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I spent most of my time in Cambridge looking for a toilet. From toilet to toilet. I’ve upped my dose of anti-androgens in the hope of chemically castrating myself like Alan Turing so that I can continue to focus on my work even someone in the train station has said hello to me while owning thighs. So far the only effect has been that I need to pee 45 times a day.

The Local-First Conf newsletter came out featuring a photo where I am manipulating an idea in physical space while Orion either struggles to say awake or can actually see the thing in my hands.

On Sunday I hopped on a train too, but this time I only ended up as far as Cannon Street, then London Bridge, then home. I’ve considered getting one of those coworking space memberships so I’d have somewhere outside of the house to go and work. But you know, trains are nice. And sometimes they have little tables. And sometimes they have little sockets. Maybe the train can be my office. Can the train be my office?

I’ve added a bunch of stuff to Littlebook now. It is starting to coalesce into a shape that I recognize and understand. Soon it will be time to write it again from scratch (with some tests, lol) because I will finally understand what is is and how it works. Not long now. A couple of weeks or months or years i guess.

According to last.fm I’ve listened to almost as much music in the past week as I did the whole of last year. The butterflies are so beautiful flying around the sky, I wish that I could keep one in a jar.

We went out for dinner, but didn’t manage to make it into the restaurant. It’s sweet, it’s fun. Is it better this way? It’s honest at least.

I’m about to press a button that will hopefully publish this article from inside Littlebook, using a blog post publisher I wrote inside Littlebook. Wish me luck! If you’re reading this, thank-you. It means your wish of luck worked.