72 Pete

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

Socialism

Exeunt Corbyn

Waaay back in 2000-whenever-it-was, when the world made a smidge more sense, I joined the Labour party to vote in the leadership election. You could call me an entryist, but I'd pretty much always voted Labour and been on the cusp of joining for a while. I voted

Media

Thoughts on The Social Dilemma

So there's this new documentary, The Social Dilemma, which goes into great detail about how terrible the social media industry is for its users and for society in general, ultimately concluding that unless something changes we could see the end of democracy as we know it. Netflix bought

Socialism

Heritage Socialism – a working definition

I'm working on a piece where the key concept is something I've called "heritage socialism", a term I like but which I've struggled to explain. So I'm going to have a go here. According to the Wikipedians, "cultural heritage

Woodworking

Dome Up

Last year I bought a geodesic dome connectors kit, Hubs, and a load of wood. We built a dome in the back garden, purely because I've always wanted to build a geodesic dome and had given up on waiting for a reasonable excuse to come along. Here'

Capitalism

Economics and Epidemiology

The pandemic has shown us how a lot of things we took for granted actually work. From the economy to handwashing, stuff we thought we'd got our heads around turns out to be significantly more nuanced once a couple of the pillars that prop up our specific variation

1972 Project

Revising the 1972 Project - Mrs America and Chernobyl

After making my video last Autumn, The 1972 Project has stalled somewhat, thanks to something that happened around March. It's also mutated because it comes from my brain, and my brain responds to circumstances, and circumstances have changed. The project was an attempt to make sense of the

Racism

History is constantly being "erased", and that's OK.

That Boris Johnson is a fool hiding under the cloak of intellectualism is not in dispute, but sometimes he utters a nonsense that is actually worth interrogating. Take his defence of statuary and condemnation of the very concept of maybe removing some of them. We cannot now try to edit

Racism

Marching against racism in Birmingham

I've seen some comparisons of the Black Lives Matter protests with the tumultuous events of 1968, some wondering if we're witnessing the start of something similarly historic. While comparisons can threaten to diminish rather than strengthen, it might be empowering for those marching to make some

Media

We need social media literacy or the fascists will win

Get off the Internet I'll meet you in the street Get off the Internet Destroy the right wing Le Tigra, 2001 Fiona was telling me about an acquaintance who has build up a reasonable five-figure social media following which augments their business in an "influencer" kinda

The Weird

Walking Weird Britain

In reviewing the first issue of Weird Walk, I survey the British "New Weird".

Photography

Good composition is ideologically fraught

Last weekend I was running a Photo School Composition Workshop for the first time, meaning I'd been immersing myself in "good" photography and thinking about what that means. On the morning of the class the story about Vanessa Nakate being cropped from a group photo of

Counterculture

Understanding Gilliam, and other men of a certain age

Oh, Terry Gilliam. * Terry Gilliam faces backlash after labeling #MeToo a 'witch-hunt' * Terry Gilliam on diversity: 'I tell the world now I'm a black lesbian' You were part of the counter-cultural movement that helped destroy the fusty hegemony of British society by laughing at

Philosophy

The danger of meaning

I would comfortably say that I'm often searching for meaning in things. This feels like a good thing to do, to not accept face values but to prod and question and figure out what's actually going on. And upon finding meaning I'm happy and

Cinema

Pretty Trauma

With some trepidation I watched the first episode of season two of The Handmaids Tale the other night. The first season had been very good but I'd heard the next was a bit all-out brutal horrorshow and, oddly enough, I didn't find myself needing that of

Birmingham

Chamberlain Clock

On a number of Birmingham's traffic islands you'll find these iron clocks painted green. They're total heritage but because they often have no pedestrian access it's tricky to see them up close. While doing a reccy for my Jewellery Quarter walks this