Psychosocial [576]
Greetings from The Borders...
I’m Christian Payne, photographer, writer and casual prepper. In this weekly dispatch I attempt to sound lucid after squeezing every possible hour out a few days in Newcastle and Gateshead. I shall still seek out novelty, explore the relations between things, how we share, what we share and consume, plus where we might be going… Which for me, will soon be bed.
Thanks for joining in.
#TheAction
The montage at the top of this page is merely a glimpse into the experience that is the Thinking Digital Conference.
I was still adding to my slides on the train to Newcastle and despite having not delivered this particular workshop before, I easily filled the three hours with stories, discussion and practical ideas around everyday resilience.
Thankfully people were attentive and generous with what they brought to the conversation. There were participants offering everything from deep technical insight into zero-day vulnerabilities and the end of encryption, to improvised low-tech systems and even a few tongue-in-cheek zombie-specific contingency plans.
We covered all sorts of scenarios. There was no fear or paranoia. Just thoughtful conversation, a laugh in parts and a little seriousness when needed.
Community featured heavily and I came away convinced that “casual prepping” resonated because most people aren’t looking for underground bunkers. The Thinking Digital attendees want to be aware of the options, any useful skills, local connections and a chance to exercise their creativity. Oh and they really like gadgets.
As it was my first time running through this, my timekeeping could have been better and I must remember to drop in a slide of a composting loo somewhere in the deck where the break should be.
Ultimately I feel everyone left with the knowledge of how to survive at least 72 hours without access to basic essentials.
If you think a workshop that explores everyday resilience and slow tech backup systems might suit someone or somewhere you know, let me know and I might roll it out again.
As ever Thinking Digital was an eclectic mix of people working across technology, creativity, infrastructure, psychology and systems thinking.
I particularly enjoyed Wil Cheung on aurora chasing, a powerful talk from Alex Partridge on ADHD, the hilarious comedian Valeria Vulpe and some brilliant magic from Paul Innes that I’m still trying to figure out.
I won’t talk about the internet based solutions for dogs abandoned at home, as if you’ve left them at home all day the last thing they need is a doggy doomscroll. Just pay a dog walker to drop by.🙄
Once again the really special part of the conference is the catching up with fellow nerds between the talks. Some of whom have been attending since 2009. We’ve seen a whole lot of change in that time and I don’t see the rate of change ever slowing down.
The Thinking Digital conference is still a highlight of my year and I applaud Herb, Beatriz and the team for keeping it fun, informative, friendly and as relevant as ever.
#TheSeen
Earlier in the week I went to the theatre at The Straw Yard.
‘We’re all right’ was a crazy conspiracy riddled cult fest from the Tideline Runners Theatre Company. I’m still thinking about it.
I first met Tom at Thinking Digital many years ago and it’s about time I shared another one of his widely watched videos.
Last year I hardly documented my visit to Cragside in this dispatch so am glad that Tom has done a proper job in this video. It’s a great tour of an amazing place. I love his corrections and connections. Especially the Armstrong Zuckerberg one. Both fascinating dangerous nerds.
All of the slides in my TDC deck were created by me using real photos. All but one taken by myself and that one stock image was CC licensed.
But there was a surprising amount of Generative AI in the speaker presentations at TDC26. So much that it was distracting and I didn’t hear some of what was said as I was counting fingers on hands.
I did see that one deck had placed a Gemini logo on synthetic images, but I’d like to see events have some kind of policy in place. Especially for academic talks.
Even if it just advises speakers avoid deceptive or misleading synthetic media, including cloned voices, fabricated screenshots, or fake people presented as real.
I feel this would go a long way toward adding transparency to talks that can sometimes feel disingenuous, while also reinforcing the authenticity of what’s being presented.
I have added a glimpse of my human made slides to the bottom of this dispatch for supporting subscribers.
#TheWords
Took me six years to read this. Ok, I lost it for a while, then only half heartedly dipped into it till recently while genning up for the workshop.
Part history, part science, part resilience manual, the book argues that preserving practical knowledge may be one of civilisation’s most important safeguards. It’d be handy to have this book in your library for that reason alone, but it should certainly not be treated as a guide to surviving the apocalypse as it’s less a survival manual and more a book about understanding the hidden scaffolding of civilisation.
You won’t find tales of derring-do or step-by-step survival instructions, but you may come away with a deeper understanding of systems thinking and the fragile complexity of modern life. 4/5
And this was a curveball choice.
A fascinating read and I kind of do and don’t want it to be all true. I’ve a feeling a large chunk of it isn’t, but the general trajectory of Genisis P.Orridge is crazy as hell. Even if embellished and warped.
I started reading this because I wanted to know more about the band Throbbing Gristle who basically invented industrial music in the late 70’s. And I did learn a lot in the book about the band, but it was wrapped up in an awful lot of other stuff. Stories that kept me reading… but that on the whole I felt they might be an attempt at retrospectively polishing the reputation of a difficult person that did some dark things.
#TheHeard
This is the album 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Throbbing Gristle. (FYI there are not 20 Jazz funk greats on this LP.)
Throbbing Gristle built on the existing experimental noise and electronic art music scene with this album and are generally regarded as the group that fermented those ideas into what eventually became industrial music.
It’s a fascinating album that I’m glad I have in the collection, but I’ve got to be in the mood to put it on. Think warped synth-pop-lounge-music, mixed with eerie disco snippets and some ambient electronics.
It’s a sinister, dark-electro-cheese mix of music from the future. The cover of the album is shot at Beachy Head. A popular suicide spot. And creepy as it is in places, it can also make you smile.
Backpack Studio the fully featured editing app is now Backpack Studio 3 and I’ve been testing and reporting bugs to its creator Ed. It’s still a great bit of kit with far too many features for me to mention now, but as an example I took this old audio track I made on the iOS GarageBand app , added it to Backpack Studio and exported it with a photo and some auto generated captions into a video.
I could have easily added a live voice intro explainer or exit jingle, anything shared to the phone or recorded with it. Lots of possibilities.
With Audio Bloggers Month (#AudioMo) starting in June, it might be something you’d like to try.
I’m not kidding when I say I’ve had the song ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ by Dusty Springfield as an ear worm for almost three weeks now. It’s not a bad song but I’m sick of catching myself whistling or la-la-la-ing it. I figure if I share it with you it might cancel the curse.
Also… Have you seen how many cool covers of this there are?
#TheConsumed
This is a slide from my casual prepping deck showing what we are currently growing.
If you are also growing food I’d be really interested to know what’s working for you. Comment below always welcome.
One of our Purple Plum Radishes is enough to make a salad on its own.
#TheThings
The Flipper One looks really interesting as it’s claimed to be a truly open Linux platform you can build almost anything on. It might i’d find it too steep of a learning curve.
OK. I tested the Petrol powered log splitter and it’s not a tool for me.
Yes it did a fantastic job… and with a 15 ton splitting pressure, you’d expect it to. It made light work of the knottiest wood, but there was something about it being petrol. I know the good bits. Being petrol not only makes it more portable, but it can deliver more power to the blade.
But I don’t suffer petromasculinity and much prefer the far quieter, less smelly and let’s face it, cheaper-to-run electric versions. (Electric is free on a sunny day.) It might be that I will need to chainsaw my logs a little smaller to start with, but the quieter, cleaner and easier to maintain electric option is for me.
I spotted this mystery car outside my hotel window this morning. It has that special camouflage on that is designed to obscure panel gaps, body creases and proportions. It looks like it might be the new Mazda CX 6e.
#TheLinks
Four years before Vine popped up (mentioned in the following linked article), we had Seesmic, 12seconds and Phreadz. Eighteen years ago… and I can confidently say short form video never got better than this. What we have now is invasive artificial and exhausting. Read these interesting thoughts on the possible end of short form video.
A fascinating animation showing the spread of Christianity.
Have you added yourself to the Documentally community map?
The feed is fake.
Things can be true in one context and false in another. The case against boolean-thinking.
Some of my other places include these… plus Strava for documenting exercise, my audio RSS feed stores recordings, LinkedIn for… not sure what that’s for, Mastodon for decentralised social. Supporting subscribers also get access to a Discord server. Message me for a link. 👍🏽
I get to meet all the cool people. And it doesn’t have to be at a tech conference. Today I bumped into Georgia Brown on the train. She’s an astro biologist heading to a local conference with the UK Environmental Law Association. She will be there talking about Space Law and Planetary Protection. The latter being a scientific/ethical field focused on preventing biological contamination between Earth and other worlds. You’d think we were too busy contaminating our own planet to have time to ruin others. Great to know some people are laying down the law though. Anyway, Georgia is close to 1000 followers on Bluesky and does fascinating work so why not follow her.
I also met a hiker who packed impressively light. She was heading into the wilds of Scotland to bivy and dreamt of starting a hiking lodge in France. I think her name was Dylan. I hope she follows her dreams.
I wonder if the fact you can’t google the word ‘disregard’ is some kind of joke?
#TheThanks
Special thanks to those supporting subscribers who pay a small amount every month to receive this dispatch and all other content. You keep it going. ♥️
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or Monzo …Either way… Thank you for being here and supporting a human doing manual work with their brain.
Thanks for reading. This was a bit of a rush job from a tired mind, started on the train in Newcastle and now finished at my desk at home. I hope you found something of interest. I now plan to catch up on some sleep and prepare for a weekend outside.
Have a great week!
“The more we know the easier it is to survive. Knowledge dispels fear.”
― John ‘Lofty’ Wiseman
Survive,
See you out there.
Over…
