just pulled into Three Bridges. always makes me think of ac. we spent some time together here when we were teenagers. on the platform and among the daffodils.

last night, in the middle of the night, i woke up and i wrote in big letters on my whiteboard “GO TO THE WATER”. i think it’s important to follow instructions from yourself, especially those that were passed on from the witching hour. i slept late as part of a project to try and regain control of my mental faculties. they have been missing and/or damaged since at least w27. maybe earlier? when was the last time i was present in this world without that wax film between me and you?

part of the procedure has been banishing the human spoken voice as entertainment from my home. no television, no YouTube, no podcast. read book at night on kobo lights off 1% flavescent backlight fall sleep. other sound from björk and many artists i found through soulseek in decade 2 and from biiiy and all that jangle indie (gangpol, rilo, capsule, gong, dat politics, of montreal) and repeatedly KNOWER im the president.

i saw KNOWER at KOKO this week. took 3 hours to get there, 2 hours to get home. it was a good show but i was anxious and nowhere to place my human body which i regret making and getting inside sometimes. perhaps to deconstruct and reconstruct? perhaps to walk into the sea? destroy build destroy? as above so below?

so we go to the water, we go to the water. and we will wake up at the seaside. yes and so, i woke up and then i got on a train to brighton. and i’m staying overnight. i went down by the stones and water and sat and looked out into it crashing against the shore. and i let it run up to my knees. and i tried to remember what feeling is like or how it starts. i know it used to fill me up, shivering against my lungs and all my blood and bones all shaking and it was me in solitude or with god or in the sky or a point in spacetime or all the orb and grass and sabre tiger and corn and red dirt and pyramids. but now, nothing. pressure, stress. something in my gooey membrane. all wet eyes and heavy with shooting pains when i try to sleep. and my neck crunching when it turns. and no focus, and like my brain inflamed too big to fit inside my skull bones.

this week was my first week at my new job. tradition dictates i don’t really talk about my job while i work at it. this will continue for now, though it may grow more challenging as it may intertwingle with my regular life in a way other jobs have not. what i will say, though, is that i don’t recall a time that i have felt luckier; i am honoured & thrilled.

i don’t know yet how to be in the world where a symbol i have venerated is made, in part, of me. hope i’m worth the money.

Thank-you for the e-mails.

On Thursday evening I went with becky avery to see Really Good Exposure which was enjoyable and by the end i wished for many people to step on a lego. Before the show we went to Garlic & Shots and the nice person who served us our crumbed cloves told me she loves Björk.

On Friday afternoon I said goodbye to the people on my team, as my job there was over now. And then on the evening I had dinner at Dr Basman’s house where I met some kind new souls.

The weekend I lay still in one spot wishing I was dead, due to having interacted socially with so many people in such a short time.

I’m looking at some old wallpapers and mailing list art. Tacky amateur stuff get so charming and comforting after just a decade or two of distance. It’s so weird that in 2036 i’m going to find all this AI art so charming and warm. Unbelievable now, but it will happen.

Once they perfect that haptic technology for making touchscreens feel like different materials we’ll be making retro sites with the css * {texture: glass}.

My new job, new career, starts tomorrow. Wish me luck.

It doesn’t seem real yet. I feel as though I still have not yet had time to process the events of May, and now everybody says it’s September. Or, thereabouts. It all happened so fast. One minute you’re eating a whopper in the hot, hot sun. Next minute you’re single in an airport. Before you know it, there’s a Doctor in a merry-go-round, and an old friend, and a new job.

And now I have another new job. I am extremely excited. Or, I would be, if I had the time. For the first time in my life I will be working on something that I believe can and will meaningfully change the world for the better. I’ve worked places that I believed could, but never anywhere that I believed would.

Somebody sent me an email that made me smile. If you’d like to make me smile, please send me an email smiles@chee.party.

Sometimes I wonder, maybe there is a problem with a system that is incessantly trying to invent new kinds of slave.

---

A better world is possible. Maybe inevitable.

---

time for goodnight

Bank Holiday Monday is a kind of Sunday, isn’t it? I really thought I’d do something this weekend, but it didn’t come up. The week was strange. Monday I got some good news I can’t talk about. Spent some special days. But I kept on getting sicker. Thursday, I took the day off. Friday I worked very slowly. Sometime during that I caused a production incident. And some other time I said goodbye forever again and drank a nice iced latte.

We walked through that vigil. I wrote nothing. Imagine I made some music again sometime, that would be so interesting.

bye

sorry. haven’t had time to take notes because i’ve been out playing Relationship Simulator 2025 with my ex who is leaving the country for the rest of her life next week.

highlights:

i was really sick at the start of the week; some kind of festival plague that took me out and filled my every tube with glue. i’m still like this now, as i type this on the train home from Whitstable.

we went to Reading on a whim one afternoon. Whitstable on a whim on Sunday. other days we wandered around nearby. we hit the algochill on Thursday eve. I attended the ink and switch thing on saturday. v nice people at the ink and switch thing. v nice to meet all of them. i like all those people and it is so fun to talk about things i care about, i never realized how starved i was for it.

apologies to everyone who has messaged me to a resounding silence. i’ve been sick and incubating. i haven’t touched a line of code except for when i went into work on Friday and meekly nudged a Pull Request across the finish line with a small stick. there is so much information to load, but there is no space for it: there is only glunk. and nothing in the other hours.

i hope to get back to littlebook in the coming evenings as i have much to do on it. though i am currently distracted by installing linux on a couple of laptops and researching a cheap-but-good android phone to stick graphene or calyx on so i can once again exit digital society. though this time with the intention of building a new one. let me know if you have some tips.

i hope everyone is very well. a lot of money spent in restaurants this week to give little birdie a good send off. hopefully the rest of her life will be fruitful.

here’s Anas al-Sharif’s last will and testament:

This is my will and my final message.

If my words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and
silencing my voice.

First, peace be upon you and God’s mercy and blessings.

God knows I gave all I had — strength and effort — to be a support and a voice
for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys of Jabaliya
refugee camp. My hope was to live long enough to return with my family and loved
ones to our original town, Asqalan (al-Majdal), now under occupation. But God’s
will came first, and His decree is final.

I have lived pain in all its details and tasted loss many times. Yet I never
stopped telling the truth as it is, without falsification or distortion — so
that God may bear witness over those who stayed silent, accepted our killing,
and did nothing to stop the massacre our people have endured for more than a
year and a half.

I entrust you with Palestine — the jewel of the Muslim crown and the heartbeat
of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people and children,
whose pure bodies have been crushed under Israeli bombs and missiles.

Do not let chains silence you or borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the
liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom
rises over our stolen homeland.

I entrust you with my family: my beloved daughter Sham; my dear son Salah; my
mother, whose prayers were my fortress; and my steadfast wife Bayan (Umm Salah),
who carried the responsibility in my absence with strength and faith. Stand by
them after God.

If I die, I die steadfast in my principles. I bear witness that I am content
with God’s decree, certain of our meeting, and convinced that what is with God
is better and everlasting.

O God, accept me among the martyrs, forgive me my sins, and make my blood a
light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people. Forgive me if I fell
short, and pray for me with mercy, for I have kept my pledge and never changed.

Do not forget Gaza

and do not forget me in your prayers.

i took a little break this weekend. Have you ever realized you were dreaming, and then stayed in the dream? Not woken up, but also not taken up lucid dream opportunities. Instead just hung around, spending time with the people in the dream? It’s bittersweet to enjoy somebody’s company who will not exist soon.

it’s rude, isn’t it? to say things thoughtlessly. to say things without thinking, without checking if they are true. that it’s rude to just say the first thing that comes into your head without considering it, and the person or people who will hear it. i think this might even be uncontroversial. i think it’s easy to extrapolate from that that it is rude to send somebody many paragraphs of text you have not read, especially if you are unwilling to take authorial responsibility for it. it seems careless, and disrespectful. before, if somebody i respect sent me a novel 8 paragraphs of text they’d produced i would know that it was inherently valuable to read. even if it turned out not to be helpful in and of itself, the very fact that this person had put that much effort into it, it is worth reading. look at all those words! but now you fuckers can produce words in a faster time than it takes to even skim read them. and there is a halting problem, i have to read the engage with this drivel to know whether or not it was worth engaging with. please let us have dignity, humanity and life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

i feel like penguin off television sometimes, true.

getting off the train with my full backpack and overnight bag, the queue for the shuttle seemed too unpleasant. i do not like to queue. a two and a half hour walk doesn’t seem so bad. winchester is hills on hilltops. they must have incredible legs, the locals. the map takes me to a path that didn’t exist, through a farm field being worked on, it recommends that i walk in the pathway of a plow. i’m standing on a T shaped crossroad, but the map says it is a + shaped crossroad. no signal now, can’t load any more map. i pick a direction and start going. there’s a lady parked off the side of the lane. i ask if she is ok she says i’m just waiting for my son. i ask if it’s for a drug deal or weapons deal because why are we parked off the side of a country lane and she says ha ha i just can’t meet him where i normally meet him because of 👈 that music festival. that’s a boon, i follow her frustrated finger for another mile or so until i see a sign. the only way forward now is to walk down the side of the motorway, cars rushing by. i reached my limit an hour and a half ago but i’m still going. it’s good for the mind to do an endurance test every now and again, to be reminded that your limit is long after your limit. i find a way in to the festival. the fellow patiently explains this is red gate a staff gate and i must walk around the perimeter past east gate to south gate. off i trot. east gate. south gate. bag straps carved into my shoulders. a queue. an hour. finally. no, another queue, another thirty minutes. call from becky, i’m here. meet downtown. through the camp site, down the steep dirt path, down the hilltop staircase, down the metal stairs. meet becky. get tent. back to the campsite, up the metal stairs, up the hilltop staircase, up the dirt path. becky demonstrates the setting up and breaking down of the tent and refers me to some pictures of her father should i get confused. dark now. finally, i settle down on a corner far away. 7 hours have passed. i spend two days recovering enough from getting here and setting up the tent that i can take down the tent and leave. but it was so nice to see becky in her element.

on friday night i have a call with lucky. it’s four hours, i’m so cold shivering, last night i woke myself up with the sound of my chattering teeth. and then on saturday i go home. the moment i’m on the train, that oppressive feeling of isolation lifts and i am rabbit once again. and we met in the red light under the bridge by the emerald, and we lay down on a blanket in a embankment park, and we had pizza at a place near charing x that does very special yum yum pizza, it was a lovely night. and now lucky is in margate with some friends and i am lying on the mattress and i feel as though i’ve been infected with some kind of illness. i’m very dry and everything hurts.

seems people think LLMs are good at the stuff they don’t respect as requiring actual intelligence. backend people think it’s great at frontend code. frontend people think it’s good at design. and of course leaders in the software space who think in terms like “how long would it take 2 senior developers to complete this project?” without specifying which senior developers we’re talking about believe it can replace a developer. do not listen to them, do not let them worry you about your job, do not let them use this fear to intimidate you into accepting lower pay. here is the prime objective: don’t go insane.

haven’t had a chance to think much about anything else yet.

but i’ll off to lucky’s, and i’ll read the journal entry from the first week, and i’ll kiss her in the shower in all my clothes and i’ll get soaked and feel distance and not know why and not ask.