When god wishes to punish a man he first deprives him of reason.
I really don’t know what to write about this week. Normally I start and then it all sort of falls into place but I’ve been feeling scattered and tired, I’m not sure I have it in me. I’ve watched a lot of horror on TV which is a nice escape, have you got any good recommendations? I’ve been enjoying the Netflix haunting anthologies. I’m doing a lot of cycling this weekend, overnight to Whistable and back which around 200km then a club ride of 80 on Sunday. I’m just looking forward to those to be honest, is escapism a mark of age?
I’m sure you saw two blunders this week from the UK government in their inability to qualify the arts. Firstly, a skills identifying quiz that decided everybody should be a boxer and then a quickly rescinded campaign suggest ballet dancers retrain in ‘cyber.’ There’s nothing I can write that hasn’t been said elsewhere and better but I worry that in this crisis we lose sight of value. I’ve seen designers and artist fall into this trap recently too; extolling the financialisaiton of education and design, positioning graduates as arch-capitalists who should be ‘hustling.’ The financial dimensions of design and academic practice are real but are not ends in and of themselves. You need to understand them but only so that you can move through it and change them. Competitiveness is only going to be more and more encouraged; government believes in herd immunity for culture too.
Short Stuff
- Yuri Suzuki made the world’s greatest distraction from work.
- Here’s Sony’s own teardown of the PS5. I actually uttered ‘Christ, look at the size of those fans.’
- I was in Otford on the bicycle last week and came across Uranus in its model of the solar system. I had no idea this thing existed. It’s a scale model of the solar system based in Otford but its furthest extents are in New Zealand and Los Angeles.
- Translate English to Belter sasa ke?
This whole thing was a short stuff this week but it makes up for my lengthy diatribes the last two. Love you, speak next week.