No No Everything Is Fine Why Do You Ask

Hello from out here on the Thames Delta, where everything that comes out of screens is awful, and that’s the way the people who feed the screens like it. But if you tune them right, and don’t live on them, you can find all kinds of fun stuff too.

.The Skhul I Skull, the 140,000 year old fossil found in Skhul Cave that is considered the earliest intentional homo sapiens burial in the world, has been found to display attributes of Neanderthal human and Homo rhodensiensis, suggesting the Skhul peoples were heavily hybridised. Hybrid humans. Sometimes we forget that this planet was home to several subspecies of human being. Just writing that down feels a bit like science fiction, doesn’t it?

I hacked together a podcasting rig using an ancient Zoom iQ6 microphone that physically plugs into the iPhone and a cheap plastic phone stand, just to see if it worked. Which it did. Thing is… I can’t think of a single thing to podcast about. Also I can’t stand the sound of my own voice, so editing audio would be a nightmare

The interstellar comet currently coming towards us, 31/ATLAS, is likely more than seven billion years old. For comparison, our solar system is 4.6 billion years old.

Morning routines have become a thing again, it seems. The 5-9 Before 9-5 has gotten a lot of traction, as has Ashton Hall’s radioactive with anxiety ‘350am-9am before his 9-5 and asleep by 8pm because “sin lives at night”’ video. I imagine most of you reading this stay up at night precisely because of that.

Grok AI is going to be installed in Tesla cars, so that MechaHitler can be your copilot.

I was invited as a guest to the SUPERMAN premiere in LA and the London screenings, but time and space were not on my side, and, honestly, I’d rather just give them my ticket money at some point in the future. Freebies are nice to have, but paying someone does more good in the long run. I hope the film does really well - it’d be nice to see my friends at DC have a win.

Textile art has made a huge comeback in high end galleries all over the world - I cannot unsee the words “tenderly crocheted” - as predicted in the Book of Revelations.

The period 11 billion years ago is known as “cosmic noon” due to its high activity in star formation and black hole gluttony.

I’ve taken the summer off from most online things. I won’t recommence writing on LTD until September, I’ve switched off or paused a bunch of internet stuff, and I’m happy to disappear off into the outside world.

A Chinese football team was recently fined four grand for attempting to curse their opposing team with paper talismans.

Seventy percent of a surveyed cohort of neuroscientists believe memories remain stored in dead brains, and half of them think we’re on track to be able to replay them within the next century.

I do a lot of creative consulting these days - contact my reps and I can do it for you too — and, on recently completing a big job, the client told me they were sending me an additional gift. Which I ordinarily wouldn’t share here, but 1) I am so shocked I’m still not sure it’s real 2) I discovered a few weeks back that there are a lot of watch people reading this! So, hereyou go:

That is the IWC Mission Earth Ingenieur. Look at that industrial 46mm beast. IWC stopped making these ten years ago, I gather, probably because there’s enough steel in this to build a small office block out of.

Person who gifted me this - I know you’re reading this, so thank you again.

Tadao Ando’s meditation space.

CURRENTLY READING:

Moscow is essentially the skull of the Russian empire and its strange strangeness lies in these ghosts of the past, which we call “imperial dreams.”

The Army had thrown him a lifeline. There, he had blossomed, single-mindedly transforming himself into the fine fighting machine that now lay spread-eagled on the cot and scratching his ball-bag.

Other signals warn of what is forbidden in a given place (to enter the alley with wagons, to urinate behind the kiosk, to fish with your pole from the bridge) and what is allowed (watering zebras, playing bowls, burning relatives’ corpses).

Also in circulation, Italo Calvino’s INVISIBLE CITIES, which I’ve been dipping in and out of for a while now.

Is there anything you want to see more of in these letters? Got any questions about writing, creativity or work and culture or life in general? Hit reply and send an email to the office telling us what you’d like to see.

Last year me and my friends made a six episode audio drama podcast, THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, and because we are all idiots, it’s completely free to listen to at that link there. James Callis with Alicia Witt, Carla Gugino, Adrianne Palicki, Nolan North, Brett Dalton and Gildart Jackson.

CURRENTLY LISTENING:

I just made a short playlist of stuff that’s been getting a lot of air in the office this week.

Also going to mention Susana Lopez’ wonderful new record MATERIA VIBRANTE, which is only available as digital or vinyl - listen to the whole thing here - but she apparently knows my preferences, because she mailed me a CDr, which was incredibly kind of her. It is a fantastic journey of a record. Something for the imagination under a summer sky.

Otherwise, I’ve been back on music podcasts this week. Here’s a few:

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That’s me done for this week. Look after yourself. And drink more water, it’s hot outside.

W