The Fun Features of an Atomised Society (long read)

Grow in two minds (then file under: Bad Poetry)

On doubt and creativity

Sources: Henry James - The Middle Years | Tom Waits interviewed by Francis Thumm, 1988

The emerging author (industry)

Portrait: Charles Chaplin

Portrait: Colette

But compare/contrast.

A little ditty about Home and Travel

The nine muses of social media

Portrait: Henry James

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_james 

Update: I have correctly sourced the photo. It is by Elliott & Fry, 1890, and comes from the Clifton Waller Barrett Library, special collections dep't, University of Virginia.

Our first persons are melting (Joyce, Ulysses)

The Newtonian neatness of weightlifting

The moral argument against downloading (slight rant)

Related, and slightly contradictory:

• Notes on content, creative work, hermit logic
• A music download success story

The biases of TV news (easy read)

Bad things I see (2013)

A slack, lumpen confederacy of the powerless, tweeting madly.

A diet that's one-quarter sugar.

We are suspicious & cynical of media, and yet we're *in* media 24/7. Cat videos and Downfall memes. The meme is now what we used to call 'culture'.

Lied to and manipulated, yet very nearly entertained to death. I see politicians using shiny-bauble arguments to distract us from real human issues.

Major (ongoing) human disasters & slaughters sit right next to glossy food pron.

We have all the information but no meaning. Content is a con - and mostly a commercial way to sell something.

You are not your brand or your social media presence or your gadgets or your likes. Or suckers for hype.

If there was a coherent rallying-cry we'd realise that we've been lost for a long time.

'Society' is being rewritten by the digital. Rights and civic awareness and citizenship are trumped by consumerism and the sale of privacy and spying.

There are few counterbalancing forces against the cynicism and suspicion - but they are mostly offline.

I want to see greater accountability, and greater awareness of responsibility; which makes me sound incredibly old.

I want more art, more beauty in our lives; and more coherent humanity. I want to defuse my default cynical reaction to so much these days: I hope this cynicism is the flipside of a sincere hunger for change.

Write your life

Technology über alles

Royal FP (Funky Purple)

Two-cent writing advice

Notes on content, creative work, hermit logic

These are notes in progress for something more coherent; the logic is a bit sloppy; but it's something I'm working out on the backburner.

Re-covering a Remington platen

** Notes ** - in the above, I meant to say 'Letter-Riter' both times. I've swapped covers a few times on my Rems and lose track of the particular -Riter I'm working on. Also, when I say 'tyre' I mean an inner tube, not an outer tyre with the tread etc. OK.
* Edit * - this is the Hermes Platen Re-cover job