I liken my writing cycle to the hydrological cycle. Lots of reading, thinking, doing other things (evaporation) leads to a build up of clouds that have to hit a cold front in order for rain to pour down in the form of words. Which leads to rivers and lakes and seas for more evaporation for others.

I can't get enough screen real estate.

I find it so weird how the media reports death in the present tense. Surely if there's anything less present, it's the fact someone is no more. Hashtag autistic brain.

I'm not getting anywhere. Sadly.

The legendary architect Frank Gehry didn't sadly die. He's just dead at 96.

Global coal generation FELL slightly in the first three quarters of 2025. This drop, combined with rapid growth in wind and solar, meant that renewables have generated more of the world’s electricity than coal so far this year ⚡ #COP30 https://loom.ly/AK3Fn3I

When people do these seminars on failure and call for people to talk about how they've failed, do they actually want people who have overcome failure to succeed? Or genuine down-and-out given-up-all-hope failures who nobody wants to actually hear?

Today, I wrote a letter and posted it in a post box.

Finally writing up my research on 1980s Post-Modern AD and out of the whole circus, Demetri Porphyrios is the most civilised, intelligent, and interesting person. An absolute gent from whom we could all learn a lot.

Today I become the father of an adult. Where did time go?

Everybody's understairs cupboard eventually turns into a vacuum cleaner graveyard.

Theo Crosby: 100 Lives An exhibition about designer Theo Crosby (1925-1994) is on now through 11 December at Osh Gallery, London @pentagramdesign.bsky.social More about the exhibition here: www.oshgallerylondon.com And more about the Crosby archive here: blogs.brighton.ac.uk/brightondesi...

Architecture and I have not yet divorced, but I've definitely moved into the spare room.

Yesterday I was writing in my garden cabin and witnessed at close range a peregrine falcon catch a pigeon, take it to ground, kill it, and devour it over the next hour. The cabin turned into a bird hide and I became an amateur Attenburgh. Quite the most gory but beautiful thing I've ever seen.

When AI can connect to a printer and print something first time without 17 reboots, driver reinstallations and tantrums, only then will I be worried. I think we are several decades away from that.

A really interesting piece about the indebtedness of the University of Chicago and how it is destroying its academic reputation - killing the humanities subjects - so it can finance prestigious buildings by top architects. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

I have a 1979 Selmer Mark VI Soprano sax that I want to sell because I don't play it any more. Anybody know how one goes about selling expensive musical instruments these days? I bought it about 25 years ago!

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(New) #Brutalist #architecture: So, let's remember today Theo Crosby's house and Studio in Hammersmith from the late 1950s, which Stephen Parnell (@stephenparnell.bsky.social) is vindicating as an early example of (New) #Brutalism #BrutalTuesday journal.eahn.org/article/id/8...

The world is full of intelligence, both articifial and natural. Yet people still use [at] and [dot] in their online email addresses thinking that bots won't notice them.

It the Enlightenment was all about establishing knowledge, the Disenlightenment will be about disestablishing it.

I'm as fed up with AI slop as anyone, but I'm even more fed up with HI (human intelligence) slop.

If you think artificial intelligence is bad - wait till you see artificial grass.

Yesterday I was shocked that my daughter told me that Charlie Kirk had been shot. She's 14 and lives in Newcastle, UK and had seen him on TikTok. I had never heard of him until yesterday's news.

Do other languages also feel the compulsion to preface "died" with "sadly"? "tristemente murió", "к сожалению, умер", "leider gestorben"? Perhaps we should just change the English word "died" to "sadlydied" permanently.

Long-lost model shots of Sheffield’s celebrated Park Hill estate dating back to the early 1950s have been discovered by the grandson of architect Ivor Smith

"A book is a machine to think with" (I.A. Richards)

Anyone know anyone who wants to buy over 1,100 books and over 4,000 magazines of C20 architecture history/theory? An instant collection? Some incredibly rare and collectable magazines including Archigrams, Uppercase, Leonard Koren's Wet (the magazine of gourmet bathing), Arts & Architectures etc etc

Shame, but WeTransfer is completely unusable now if this it strue.

Seems a decent alternative to WeTransfer now that it's no longer fit for purpose.

First thing to do on leaving academia - buy a laptop (the last ASUS I bought is now about 15 years old and runs Windows 7).

One of the worst things about academia is its focus on representation rather than reality. It only cares about what you say you do, not what you actually do. I'll just leave that there.

Academia is not for everyone, and it's not for me - today will be my last day. I can't say I'll miss it. The best thing about it has been the flexibility to be present for my children as they grew up. And then the libraries and the access to the world of knowledge they offer.

As a Northerner myself (Sheffield, now Newcastle), I love the way that we treat that there London with such suspicion.

Last 2 weeks of academia!

Last week was York Uni, which I didn't go to so can't really say much but the report was that it was very well orchestrated and they knew what they were talking about. A contender, behind Durham.

Latest on the uni open days for maths/compsci: my very own Newcastle Uni. 17yo was put off by the low expectations. He expects his future tutors to expect high standards, not to be waved through on the minimum acceptable.

I've been a big fan of Adam Curtis's work, but Shifty falls well below the mark. No theories, no voice over, just straight POV history with moving pictures and sounds.

Think what you like about AI but Claude has just taken 4 old academic paper drafts of mine with lots of repetition and overlaps and references/footnotes (35k words total) and consolidated them into a single unified document (12k words) maintaining all quotes, references and my own words/style.

Starting the uni open days with my son, looking at Maths & CompSci. Today was Edinburgh, a fantastic city whose uni has a huge history and reputation in CompSci. But I was sorely disappointed. Just shows that a big research reputation doesn't translate into a good student experience.

Varnelis' 3rd brilliant musing on GenAI. Thanks for writing them, you're articulating ideas floating in my head so much better than I ever could. Collective knowledge, author & authority, public & publication. Using those very ideas, here's a derivative podcast: notebooklm.google.com/notebook/c18...

If, as the article states, the crossing turns out to be "a turning point for our national infrastructure" then surely it will have failed in its fundamental role of being a crossing.

"Social media creators to overtake traditional media in ad revenue this year": www.theguardian.com/media/2025/j... This is important because it shows where young people spend their time. Where they get their beliefs and where they believe authority lies. Which has MASSIVE implications for HE.

After playing with Disco Diffusion for a few months, this was one of the very first midjourney images I generated exactly 3 years ago. Prompt: "Sunderland Civic Centre cable car depot sci-fi vray render"

Interesting that "Erskine" is an anagram of "Eriksen".

Just a PhD panel review, an external examiner's report, a PhD viva to prepare and a couple of PhD students' drafts to feedback on and some essay resubmissions to advise before I'm free to do something creative again ... almost there ...

I am absolutely done in. 6 months of constantly feeding back - dissertations, essays, design studio & reviews, funding applications, peer reviewing articles and books and people, PhD students, panels, exams, external programme exams, various other submissions...

3 things emerged around 2007 that have fundamentally rewired young people's brains: the iPhone, Facebook, and near universal access to broadband internet. We are witnessing this rewire in our undergraduates today. I had a 1st yr student who wasn't used to using a mouse and keyboard - imagine!

It cannot be overstated that making things, whether it’s food or art or a new arrangement of your living room or writing or music, is a huge boost to your mental wellbeing