Periodical — 1
This is a semi-daily check-in. Experimental; likely to not actually be daily. Regular and short.
The kids are in the bath, listening to the Yoto Daily, which aptly describes itself as a “morsel.” The host offers stray thoughts, short learnings, words of the day, fascinating sounds, all kinds of timeless bits.
There are many such things for grown-ups, though sadly most of them are not the sort of morsel I’m looking for. They get the shortness part, but not the timeless part.
Anyway.
Here is a picture of Colin Wilson, sometime shortly after the publication of his breakout work, The Outsider. I love so much about this photograph.
The composition affords a peek into a modest kitchen of the early 1960s in the UK. Skillet, mugs, whiskey, rags, all within reach. The window situation is very appealing to me, and a bit of searching tells me that this is called a triangular oriel window. Can you blame Wilson for setting up shop right there on that window seat? Everything a mid-century philosopher needs is right there — sunlight pouring in, stacks of manuscript, telephone, and of course, the aforementioned whiskey. A very strong vibe.
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I stumbled upon a website created by the team at Superflux in support of their project, Cascade Inquiry that “imagines worlds where positive climate action has been taken.” I love that it’s another solarsite:
“This website runs on a solar powered server located on the roof of King’s College London just above our spatial activation.
To power the server at night or on overcast days, Superflux built a battery pack from 3.7v 550mAh 13400 lithium ion batteries salvaged from disposable e-cigarettes. The pack is charged by a consumer PWM solar charge controller with 5v outputs.
During periods of sustained bad weather this website may go offline.”
As it should be. Why not embrace cyclical up and down time — a techrise and techset, as it were. In addition to imagining the ways the physical world might be different after positive climate action, I’d love to imagine the ways culture — the lived world — might be different now that we’ve learned the pitfalls of a culture created in perpetual debt to nature.
Also, on a purely aesthetic level, I love the crispyness of a dithered image.
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I’m reading The Extratempestrial Model, by Dr. Michael P. Masters, a bioanthropologist who is persuaded that UFOs are time machines and aliens are actually evolved humans from the distant future. I find his case fascinating, though not entirely persuasive (so far).