Made a series of prints, one for each chapter of an essay submitted today on 'illustrating complex information'. Still hate writing papers, still love making prints. Turns out I really like doing spot illustrations in an editorial style to fit with the text 🖤 This first one is the cover pic...

Happy solstice! Little wood engraving made this morning ✨

Final mailout of the year is set to go out at noon UK time, get yourself on there if you fancy receiving (roughly quarterly) studio news and info on open calls as and when they happen 💫 https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63c07d7c2fd941fe62206344

Noting the wealthy local university advertising residency positions paid at less than HALF the artist union suggested rates https://www.artistsunionengland.org.uk/rates-of-pay/

!!!Album release!!! "220 under adit (techno from mine waste)" All proceeds will go to the Panzi Foundation, supporting victims of sexual violence in conflict mining areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an illegal exploitation that ends up filling our laptops and mobiie phones. Please […]

Just had a contract from a university that bans the use of any open source software. Have flagged it - new one on me.

With at least one powerful acceleratorist ai corporation looking to fund/partner with open source live coding projects, I wonder if anyone will take the bait

Sometimes I just get an idea and it won't go away

If you consistently downplay the importance of understanding the world via material, non-human entities and scientific process - you lose perspective and get an unhinged kind of world where AI has a future.

A little bit smug about finally getting round to animating our logo 😎 https://thentrythis.org/

Took a while to find this, and it's affected me somehow. A hidden and forgotten place that could instead be an important destination to explore what it means to be part of human society. In 1967 an oil tanker sank off the coast of Cornwall called the Torrey […] [Original post on post.lurk.org]

Spotted today in a freezing cold outdoor toilet block that smelled of old cigarettes

SmogOff in the news (only just found out about this from June, but good seeing them out in the wild being used and people taking ownership!) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y8y18m88xo

Set myself up a little printing press out of a slightly modified old pasta machine, kind of works! Not the result you'd get from the tonnes of pressure from the real presses, but still not too shabby :)

Our new studio looking exactly as cosy as it is this evening

Writing an absurd amount of scheme code to simply try and figure out how to continue this pattern I started a few months ago (and after several studio moves) lost an important piece of paper... #weaving #tabletweaving

In September we took over Sheffield's Wintergarden with knots and woven robots with @Khipumancer and @yaxu as part of the @alpaca Festival You could create knot patterns based on Inca/Andean Khipu technology that would program the robots remotely, and […] [Original post on social.thentrythis.org]

I really think that people who haven’t been poor should not give money or frugality advice to poor people. The problem with poor people isn’t money management or knowledge, it’s the insufficiency of money. This goes for anyone who wants to help people on food stamps navigate this situation […]

[uk politics] Somebody I know who clearly reads the Daily Mail dropped a comment the other day about the NHS struggling because of illegal immigration and "all the boats". They then said something like "but it's strange, I never see any of them anywhere". A lot to unpack there, but I wonder […]

Pro VAT tip - printing is zero rated but paper is 20%, so if you send blank images to printers you get the paper tax free #boredwhiledoingaccounting

We had a lucky break in the weather yesterday morning to get out with Cornish artist Libita Sibungu to Nangiles mine with our DIY mineral sound recording rig (contact mics and a electromagnetic sensor). As well a sounds, we collected lots of minerals […] [Original post on social.thentrythis.org]

A bit annoying that free/open source communities are almost all hosted by a closed source platform owned by microsoft AI who use it to IP-wash all those projects by training LLMs.. While also supporting genocide etc.

Burning 1000 tonnes of fossil carbon, or emitting 4000 tonnes of CO2, causes the premature death of a future person from effects of anthropogenic global warming. It follows that for every hour that you fly, you typically steal from a future person: - one day if you are seated in economy class - […]

I hadn't really seen the manosphere stuff as an MLM scheme but of course. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/oct/21/why-the-manosphere-clicked-for-young-men-a-visual-deep-dive

Have LLM's created any new patents? This would seem like a low bar, as genetic programming did years ago.

We've built a special type of loom designed by Peter Collinwood to create the amazing illustrations in his book "The Techniques of Tablet Weaving". This is to help us closely examine the patterns and mathematics behind this weaving technique on the […] [Original post on social.thentrythis.org]

So with absolutely zero singing experience I somewhat rashly joined a male voice choir a couple of months ago (wonderfully named "Many Men Soundsystem"). Last night we finally finished learning a new song (my first song) - a cover of "Chop Suey" by System Of A Down! The moment when it came […]

Organised Atoms Fun Palace 2025! We smashed rocks, found crystals and raved out in the rock lab. Thanks go to the Royal Society of Chemistry for supporting this kind of thing! https://thentrythis.org/notes/2025/10/08/organised-atoms-2025-fun-palace-events/

2006: "Data is the new oil" 2025: "AI is the new microplastics"

I got home today to a package with some beautiful art by @amberfirefly 🤩 Mastodon and #fedi made magic happen and a conversation we had contributed a tiny bit to the conception of these (and a series of others) beautiful artworks.

Does anyone remember the Reinhart-Rogoff affair? The paper that was widely used to justify austerity policies, but where the main result was only an artifact due to the researchers screwing up their Excel formulas? So yeah, can't see how putting the random number generator called "AI" in Excel […]

Pre-pre-pre-announcement that around the end of the year/early spring we'll be announcing some new funded residencies, based at our new studio in Cornwall to run around Aug/Sept 2026. The theme this time is moths and their viruses - as part of a bigger research grant on how viruses and their […]

Had a very convincing scam attempt on our business bank account yesterday. Had one of those fraudulent transaction query answer Y/N texts (with a totally made up payment to Adidas) which I quickly answered because I was out walking the dog. This led to a series of texts saying they were going […]

Is it only me or have Google turned off the comedy AI box of wrong facts at the top of their search in the last day or so?

Kind of amazing that Bryn Jones died in 1999 and we still have Muslimgauze releases happening in 2025

The reason the UK is historically opposed to ID cards when the rest of the EU has them is down to Napoleon, who was so into them the British naturally had to go the other way.

Is there a cure for "neurotypical" people?

Free NHS and paid private covid and flu jabs are open, book 'em up, don't forget 💚

New-new studio so close to being up and running ✨ be nice to see an end to the relentless moving and carrying and shelf building and to be back in the world

Some extreme hotel debugging going down for #alpaca2025 - come along to our public khipu play session with @Khipumancer tomorrow in the Sheffield Winter Garden 1-3pm

Revolution organised on discord https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Nepalese_Gen_Z_protests

The local etiquette section on https://2025.algorithmicpattern.org/sheffield/local-info/ : "People observe bus queues here. If you arrive at an empty bus stop and sit in the middle of the bench, people will still queue behind you, even if the stop serves multiple buses, even if this means […]

Little wood engraving of a shrew. We all share a common ancestor with a shrew like creature that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, so say hello to your great great great great great great great great great great great great shrewmother 💚

Had a quick allotment visit this morning before getting the train to Sheffield for https://2025.algorithmicpattern.org

I've been using git for nearly 20 years, I still only know 3 or 4 commands, and it still makes me feel stupid

First bits in our new spot, welcome to the 'Propagation Studio', it is the nicest place we've ever been

Across Europe, when centrist parties have adopted far right themes and sought to appease far right voters, they go down in flames. Why? Because: 1. They alienate their own base. 2. They tell other voters that the far right is correct. The determination not to learn this lesson is a wonder to behold.

Been nudging bits of my illustration website around including a shameless 'upcoming exhibitions' bit and a gratuitous new 'open for commissions' thing - so if anyone wants a drawing about a thing here I am 💚 https://www.drawingsaboutthings.com/ p.s. why is it so relentlessly painful writing […]

Can anyone tell me why you can have Wifi working well on a Raspberry Pi, then come back a year or so later and it's broken. Update the OS and it works again? It seems like a regular thing that has always been the case but I find it baffling.