I am very much sick of people sticking -maxxing on the end of words, just like I’m sick of -punk as a suffix, but the looksmaxxer pentastack is worthy of note, the “enhancement” cocktail consisting of Adderall, dextromethorphan, pregabalin, ketamine… and an industrial solvent called BDO.
“The purpose extended beyond personal protection. These rites aimed to stabilize political authority, ward off misfortune, and neutralize perceived supernatural dangers that could undermine a king’s rule. This reflects a broader Mesopotamian worldview in which cosmic order and political stability were inseparable. A threat from witches or malevolent forces was not merely spiritual—it was a potential crisis of governance.”
HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD was gifted me to the author, for which I am very grateful because it looks very much My Shit. BLANK SPACE had conflicting reviews, but when it showed up on Kindle for 99p, I figured I may as well find out for myself.
HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD, Robert Guffey (UK) (US+)
OPERATIONS: Crash week. By Friday night I want to have moved at least eighty pages of material out of the office. STATUS: Major reset. I’ve booked two gigs to go and see on the 16th and currently wondering where I can fit some small amounts of travel in. Inbox at 100, but a ton of those are delivery notifications READING: THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)
But despite the defeat of the Arab armies in 1948 they, like most of the approximately 750,000 Palestinian refugees scattered across the region, still believed they would one day regain their villages, land, businesses and property. The nakba, meaning simply ‘catastrophe’, as it became known, prompted feverish debate among the refugees and throughout the Middle East.
LISTENING: SONGDREAMING, Saadet Turkoz & Nils Wogram (UK) (US+)
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
OPERATIONS: work pressure is real now STATUS: 8hrs 40m sleep! Sleep isn’t cumulative, but lack of sleep is, and I’m hoping I’ve handled the sleep deficit from the last six weeks now. READING:THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+) LISTENING:THE MEDIEVAL DRONE SOCIETY III, Laura Cannell
LAST WATCHED: dunno how we ended up rewatching the first two VENOM films last night, but we did. Here are my notes on the third.
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OPERATIONS: I need to finish a piece today, but my mind seems to be wandering towards a couple of new project requests I’ve received. STATUS: 8hrs 26m sleep, finally clearing the sleep deficit. The wind is BOOMING out there. READING: finished THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli (UK) (US+) last night, back into HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY, Molly Crabapple (UK) (US+) LAST WATCHED: ARMAGEDDON was on last night and I always have to sit and watch at least the start, for the camera moves. The camera is always pushing in, in that first sequence, hurtling towards the scene.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
I hate these “recalibration” weeks where I have to reset routines, intents and diet back to zero.
Headline: Scientists Say They’ve Figured Out a Way to Get to Alpha Centauri in Just 20 Years. Actuality: it’s laser propulsion again, and it currently only works at the microscopic level. Takes me back to the days of Leik Myrabo and his “lightcraft” laser launch system, which didn’t scale up beyond the size of a coaster and got seventy metres up before they fell off the laser or melted.
OPERATIONS: got a 20pp piece out yesterday, so today is clean-up and development STATUS: finally, sleep. 8hr 21m. About to savage my inbox, which is around 130 READING: THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli (UK) (US+) LISTENING: I have a stack of CDs to listen to, but I’m also thinking about adding a playlist to the newsletter, almost as if I didn’t have fucking enough to do
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
the Trump administration is turning to a new clique of defence upstarts that are reimagining how to wage war. They are led by Palantir, a software giant providing intelligence systems; SpaceX, whose Starshield satellite network provides reconnaissance and connectivity; and Anduril, an up-and-coming favourite that makes air and sea drones alongside anti-drone weaponry. This trio of so-called “neo-primes” have close ties with gung-ho figures in the Trump administration. And they are making the giants of the military-industrial complex increasingly nervous.
America’s legacy “prime” contractors have, in the government’s telling, grown stodgy, overpriced and risk-averse as a result of their lucrative sinecures. “If the [newcomers] are good and they get their sea legs, they’re going to win some of that business that otherwise would have gone through a traditional prime,” Mr Michael says.
n case you haven’t gotten around to reading Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska’s 2025 book, The Technological Republic, (because why would you do that to yourself?), the company best known for supplying AI-driven defense and surveillance software to the likes of the US Army, ICE and NYPD shared a 1,000-word X post this weekend covering its main points. The entire thing is both bizarre and deeply concerning. “The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal,” one of the 22 points states. “It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”
The book is billed as “a passionate call for the West to wake up to our new reality,” and other excerpts in the social media post include assertions such as: “Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public”; “National service should be a universal duty”; “The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone”; and “Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive.”
The Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission, run by the Institute of Ancient Near East Studies (IPOA) at the University of Barcelona and led by Maite Mascort and Esther Pons, has identified a papyrus containing a fragment of Homer’s “Iliad” inside a Roman-era tomb dating to approximately 1,600 years ago, in the Egyptian town of Al Bahnasa, ancient Oxyrhynchus. The discovery is exceptional: it is the first time in the history of archaeology that a Greek literary text has been found deliberately incorporated into the mummification process
My colleagues’ takes are often quite diverse, but this year a chorus has emerged — of strategists proclaiming 2026 to be the year of nostalgia. Wired headphones, workwear (back, so soon), medievalcore, landlines for kids, #90s TikTok. Reading this year’s reports, I find myself agreeing with the observations — nostalgia is big right now, and there’s an opportunity for brands to tap into it.
But I also see nostalgia not just as a passing 2026 trend but a full-scale, post-digital revival — one that’s been a long time coming and will last beyond the end of the year.
OPERATIONS: aiming for another ten pages, plus other stuff STATUS: incoming, new plants for the local wildlife to destroy before I can get them in the ground READING: THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli (UK) (US+) LAST WATCHED: rewatched several episodes of TWIN PEAKS Season 3.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
I have two “AI” devices in a drawer. I’ve tried various different forms of AI. AI tops every Google search now. I still have Perplexity, which I use for a particular kind of deep research – it speeds up sourcing, like a good search engine was supposed to. It doesn’t get used often. I’m sure I could use AI to make myself various kinds of digital tools, but I personally would much rather buy them from the people who made them. I could use coupons to obtain polyester clothes from Temu if I didn’t give a shit about anything, and I tend to put “vibe coding” in the same bucket. I’m done.
There was a time where I had a window on the world. And then the platforms and tools that provided it ceased interoperability, became locked rooms, and were given to robots to run. By 2018, the joy and utility of these new tools were gone. And the people who achieved that are the same people who want to shove “AI” into our lives. I am tired of people somehow thinking this time will be different: that this time we will all be gifted the magical tool that will change our lives and neither it nor we will be fucked over next week by its actual owners.
Every few weeks I write a note saying “this will be the last note I write about AI for a while” and literally the next day someone pisses me off with their rented-robot-mule bullshit and I have to rant it out of my system again.
OPERATIONS: Need to get ten pages out the door today STATUS: 7hrs 15 mins sleep – didn’t work enough yesterday, too much screen time in the evening, hence poor sleep, apparently. READING:THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli (UK) (US+)
—When you think of it, he continued, the first half of the twentieth century was just that: a titanic confrontation between artists. Stalin, Hitler, Churchill. After them came the bureaucrats, because the world needed a rest. But today the artists are back. Look around you. Wherever you look, there is nothing but avant-garde artists who, instead of depicting reality, are busy creating it. Their style is the only thing that has changed. Today, instead of the artists of yesteryear, we have reality-show personalities. But the principle is the same.
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The next door neighbours are clearing their jungle of a garden and the mancub is furious.
I’ve just expired my entire RSS feed, removed some accounts, got rid of a couple of news provisions, and am gearing up for the new week, which needs to be very productive. I’m looking at a line of around 40pp of material out the door by Friday.
I was out last night at Konsztrukting Soundz 24, (almost) all musicians represented in links here at the gig page.
The first set in particular was marvellous, an improvised 25-minute vocal piece. I love these evenings so much, not least because I never know what I’m going to hear – as I told the organiser before the show, I never listen to the acts in advance online, so I come with open ears.
I may have bought a few CDs that night:
It’s slightly chilly but very bright out there today. Soon as I put this down, I’m heading out there with a list of planned tasks that I certainly will not finish. This is the way of things.
OPERATIONS: none today READING: finished THE GANG OF THREE: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, Neel Burton (UK) (US+) last night
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I should be pissed off that I’ve been sleeping so poorly this week. As of this morning, the only thing I’m really irritated by is having to use reading glasses. The worst thing about the reading glasses is that I’m practically blind for a couple of minutes after I take them off. Actually, no. The worst thing is having to fucking wear them. I’ve been undergoing standard age-related eyesight degradation for years – reading under strong light and using my phone to read ingredient lists and refusing to wear glasses because I always had excellent eyesight and my face has never suited glasses. I remember going to Harrods to try and find a pair of shades that fit my face well, and after trying six pairs, the assistant hummed and said “…Yes. Sir is difficult.”
OPERATIONS: Yesterday was 500 words and moving a complete episode of something out, today is newsletter and getting into a prose project and then probably sowing some more seeds that won’t germinate STATUS: worst insomnia jag in years: third night in a row, 6hrs sleep. READING:THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US+)
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