Pete Ashton - 72 Pete

Three witches on an rocky outcrop holding v-shaped staffs in black and white.

Defining the weird

In which I revisit my obsession with the concept of Weird having found a useful working definition.

An old painting of a man with his head in his hand, trying to write something.

Blog posts I have not written

Given my burnout means I'm unable finish any writing I thought it might be useful to record the starts, if only to get them out of my head.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 11: Building a heap from scratch

I made a timelapse video of the compost bay being filled, and ponder the best way to bring life back to some dead soil.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 10: Biochar and red wrigglers

My compost brings all the worms to the heap, plus a deep-dive into making and using charcoal in your soil.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 9: Spreading on the beds

There's something very satisfying about seeing your compost spread across the allotment, ready to feed this year's crops.

Autism

Grief and autistic burnout - 2023 was a lot

This is a 2,000 word post about the last 18 months and what happened to me during them. It contains a lot, and I thank you for your indulgence.

Art

A Ralphie in Brighton

In January we went to Brighton for a week's holiday. Usually we go to the Welsh coast for a winter break but this year we had my niece, Isobel, to stay and thought Brighton might be a bit more interesting. One evening we met up with an old

Pete History

A tale of two volcanic tourist destinations

The above aerial photo of the volcanic eruption on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula (taken from a Kottke post) is of interest to me because, in the blue circle, is the Blue Lagoon spa, which Fi and I went to on our honeymoon in 2015. The spa is obviously closed at

The Weird

Costumes and the erasure of self

A week or so back, someone asked Nick Cave, the musician, what he thought of Nick Cave, the artist who makes "soundsuit" costumes. He said: I have admired the work of the American artist, Nick Cave, for many years. In creating his soundsuits he famously and audaciously turned

Capitalism

Systems of Interest

I haven't seen The Zone of Interest yet but I very much intend to and have been following the reviews. I particularly liked Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's discussion which included some observations from Mayo who has a prior interest in Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss'

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 8: Stinky heap

In which I detail how I made compost last year, share a rather eccentric 1939 booklet on compost making, and showcase some art about the acoustic study of the soil biome.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 7: Back to the heaps

I got back to the allotment after some enforced rest, during which I collected a lot of cool things for you to watch and read. Scroll down for an inverted triangle.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 6: A light dusting of fungal snow

In this issue: a new fugal feature film, a how-to from a Brussels kitchen garden, a vivid explanation of the soil crisis, and some beautiful mushroom watercolour paintings.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 5: Of rats and shrooms

Scroll down for a food scraps grinder I want to identify.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 4: Compost as the story of your life

Scroll down for a big question about soil contact. And another cat.

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 3: Hexagonal composting is the future

Scroll down for a cat on a compost heap

The Aerobic Digest

The Aerobic Digest 2: Like baking a cake really really slowly

Make oddkin with your compost heap

The Aerobic Digest

The first Aerobic Digest

You have to start somewhere. Here is where it starts.

Composting

Encouraging air flow in the heap

Today I implemented something new with my active heap. Because I mulch most chunky things and am increasing the moisture content (the last couple of heaps dried out from heat) the lower middle of the heap tends to get a bit stinky. I add a fair amount of dry carbon

Theory

Maybe inmates should take over asylums?

Nice observation in Jaymo's 301-second podcast (with transcript for those can't be dealing with podcasts) that the term the inmates have taken over the asylum assumes that this would be a bad thing and that the people previously running the asylum were doing a good job.

Gender

Queering the Normal

This interview with Tilda Swinton is a delight on so many levels. I commend it to you without question. So much in there about the importance of art, and also the importance of not doing art, of just being. She's such a breath of fresh air, both cleansing

Capitalism

Owning a trampoline

One lockdown phenomena I've seen very little written about was the rapid spread of trampolines across suburbia. From my back garden there were four within hearing range, sproinging away and very occasionally falling into glorious synchronisation as eight small feet hit the springs at exactly the same time,

Cooperatives

Oikos and Co-operatives

Oikos, from the Greek for 'household', is a new term to me, and it's made up of letters arranged in such a way that it refuses to stick in my brain, so I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around it, but

Cooperatives

Elinor Ostrom and the miracle of the commons

'The Tragedy of the Commons' is one of those terms that is often taken at face-value and assumed to be true. Humans, when left to their own devices, will consume and exploit everything they can until there is nothing left and they all die. The theory was devised

TV

A new Curtis lands

So there's a new Adam Curtis film out. It's 8 hours long over 6 chapters and in it he attempts to explain, or outline a theory explaining, how we have gotten to where we're at at this moment in time and why the world