six for the five pounds, 36

July 18, 2025
  • I have blogged since 2022 but elsewhere
  • like everyone who has every written a blog post or weeknote, I convinced myself that the platform was the issue, not the...not writing. it didn’t take very long to write a script to export Tumblr posts to Markdown, or to create an Eleventy site. file under ‘things that would not have happened before LLMs’.
  • nonetheless my position on ‘owned’ digital services has only become more extreme in recent years, I continue to resent how Medium tries to hijack my mouse when I engage in my habit of selecting text as I read, Substack is full of Nazis, Instagram shadow bans Gaza content. in 2006 I attempted to negotiate for GoodBooks to own their own mailing list, not Sony (it did not work). here’s my tiny Markdown-files-held-locally protest, 19 years later!
  • did nursery drop off this morning. his face crumpled as he realised I was leaving. ouch.
  • things keep costing money: vet bills (she’s fine), parking fines (I ran for a train and forgot), Italian lessons (gotta get that citizenship B1 exam passed or I’ll be the only non-European out of the three of us, even the dog has a European passport). I keep imagining that Things will stop happening, but they never do.
  • work is quiet, keeping up momentum on what there is while acknowledging and perhaps even enjoying the quiet is something I find challenging. I’m reading Not Working by Josh Cohen to help me come to terms with my inner slacker and-or slob.
  • haven’t yet read this by James Plunkett but everyone else I’ve seemingly ever met has, so if you haven’t maybe you’d enjoy it too.
  • more interested in reading Patricia Highsmith novels at the moment to be honest. she sounds from this like an absolute dragon but what a writer!
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