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Tag: history

7oct25

Published October 7, 2025 by Warren Ellis

TODAY:

OPERATIONS: Yesterday was something of a fail on several levels. I have to really dig in today, and will be mostly offline.
STATUS: Inbox 95 trash fire, seven and a half hours sleep
READING: THE BLAZING WORLD: A NEW HISTORY OF REVOLUTIONARY ENGLAND, Jomathan Healey (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Bloomberg Daybreak Europe

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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telemetry 16sep25

Published September 16, 2025 by Warren Ellis

New Music Show:

Tom Service presents a live set from the Polish sound artist and composer Anna Zaradny, recorded at at this year’s Eavesdropping festival at Cafe Oto in London. We’ll also hear the London Sinfonietta with a modern classic by Salvatore Sciarrino, his ghostly, shimmering …da una Divertimento, from 1970; and GBSR Duo perform Tim Parkinson’s Project 9000 for piano, percussion and backing track, described by the composer as “a sunset that’s been photographed, laminated and pinned on the wall of a disused office”.

Cult Pens sent out an email to tell everyone it’s 100 days to Xmas and I almost unsubscribed.

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morning computer imagined gardens

Published September 5, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Rafael Silviera.

Journey of the Senses by Zhuoer Zhong

“This project reimagines the river Clyde moored Renfrew Ferry venue as a high-tech, floating biomaterials education centre.

The Pompeii Archaeological Park has recreated an ancient perfume garden—right down to its antique roses.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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status 2sep25

Published September 2, 2025 by Warren Ellis

September skies in full effect now. Another couple of weeks and I’ll have to put the linen clothes in storage and shake out the work shirts and jeans. The boy cat must sense the season’s change, as I haven’t seen him yet today — he’ll be out somewhere taking in the last of the warmth and the occasional burst of blue sky.

TODAY:

OPERATIONS: Writing long and complicated production update emails to publishers. Then it’s scripting, then newsletter, then sawing a hole in my schedule to fit a 7500-word short story and a 20pp piece in.
STATUS: Inbox 87, still too tired for short-term memory to start working! I’ve had the memory span of a goldfish for the first two hours of every day lately.
READING: OUR DEBTS TO THE PAST by Ed James (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: BBC Proms: Pekka Kuusisto and Katarina Barruk

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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marks 2sep25

Published September 2, 2025 by Warren Ellis

“The most likely scenario is that the severed upper limbs were trophies taken from the bodies of enemies fallen in battle or raids immediately after death and brought to the village. Heads and hands seem to be the most common human trophies documented in the archaeological record, although written and ethnographic sources often refer to other body parts, including soft tissues which would not generally preserve, such as scalps, ears, or genitals,” the authors write.

Disney is suddenly freaking out about losing its “boy” audience. No, really—they’ve finally noticed that the demographic they’ve spent the last decade ignoring might actually matter.

Variety is reporting that the studio has been quietly putting the word out to producers and writers: bring us films that can lure young men (ages 13–28) back into the fold. That Gen Z demo has been drifting for years, preferring video games and viral meme cinema (“Minecraft”) to whatever Marvel or Star Wars are serving up.

The United States may be losing its edge in mRNA technology­­.

The technology, which powered life-saving COVID-19 vaccines and is now rocketing new cancer therapeutics forward, will soon undergo a scientific slowdown. On August 5, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would wind down mRNA vaccine development under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA.

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Zeppelin Studio

Published May 28, 2025 by Warren Ellis

…the term ‘studio’ derives from a verb as well as a noun. Studiolo denoted the scholar’s study or cabinet, but there was also studiare, linked to a certain kind of diligent or pleasurable work, which could take place anywhere. The word ‘studio’ was not used to describe the workplace of an artist until the late 17th century in Italy, and in Britain only from the 19th century, by which time the studio was already breaking out of its familiar four walls and beginning to move (quite literally, if we think of Charles-François Daubigny’s floating workspace on the river). Some studios, like Moreau’s, sloughed off any pretence of domesticity and achieved cavernous proportions. At the 1937 Paris World Fair, where the European dictatorships faced off against one another in monumental combat, Nazi Germany’s pavilion was guarded by a trio of bronze beefcakes (one female) sculpted by Josef Thorak. At once camp and creepy, and standing 22 feet tall, Comradeship was produced in Thorak’s atelier near Munich, designed by Albert Speer. The world’s largest studio, it could accommodate a Zeppelin.

WE DEMAND CLOISTERS, Tom Stammers

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morning computer big giant rocks

Published May 13, 2025 by Warren Ellis

The Olmec heads are among the largest non-architectural monuments ever discovered in Mexico, ranging between roughly 3.5 and 11.5 feet in height and weighing up to eight tons, with the largest of them weighing a head-spinning 45 tons. They all have a similar appearance, one strikingly similar to that of modern-day indigenous groups living in southern Mexico, featuring large cheekbones and flat noses. 

Researchers have found evidence that a giant “lid” made of magma could be stopping the supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park from erupting.

As detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature last month, a team of researchers discovered a “volatile-rich cap” a mere 2.36 miles below the surface, trapping pressure and heat below it.

In fact, the researchers believe the obstruction may be what’s preventing the volcanic system from erupting — a blast that’s happened several times previously in the history of our planet, and which could have devastating consequences for civilization if it happened again.

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27mar25

Published March 27, 2025 by Warren Ellis

The sun is out. Not sure I’ll have the time to make the most of it, myself, but he’s rolling around on the grass like a happy idiot.

🌐

OPERATIONS: Quick rewrite on deck, some breakdowns to knock out, wrapping up Sunday’s newsletter, a hundred emails to process – which I’m about to do, and maybe send some more, as I continue to fail to try to be better about being in contact with people.
STATUS: a geophysical artist I know has sent me an email entitled “cave cameras,” so god knows what he’s done this time. A few moments of frustration last night with my phone last night, my usual complaint that nothing on it works the way I want it to – why on earth would Fitbit not be accessible by Apple Health? Why do so few app makers produce widgets for their apps? Why isn’t this goddamn thing a glanceable terminal?


READING: THE NOTEBOOK, Roland Allen (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:

THINKING ABOUT:

When the copper returned to the station at the end of the beat, the duty officer could quickly inspect the notebook to verify that he had indeed performed his duty. That indoor role solidified into the rank of ‘inspector’; the officer whom we think of as an investigator was, originally, merely there to check the paperwork.

THE NOTEBOOK

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Now: DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast, THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM. Forthcoming 2025: FELL: FERAL CITY new printing, THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition, The LIGHTS OUT Anthology.

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morning computer ruin value

Published March 27, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Mandy Barker’s cyanotypes of junk found in water.

Brutalist-style hilltop home intended to look like an ancient ruin.

(Which really just summons Albert Speer and “ruin value” to my mind, oops)

A team of Egyptian-American archaeologists has uncovered the tomb of an unknown king who reigned over the region of Abydos in southern Egypt 3,600 years ago.

Luxury real estate goes off-grid. Ruins in waiting.

I used to ride the train past the Olympic stadium in Stratford quite often, and would frequently imagine it repurposed as a post-apocalyptic ritual space, a giant radio dish for praying to the space gods and a complicated gallows for mass executions.

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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