I recently saw the poet Harry Baker. My girlfriend was the fan and wanted to go, though I had also enjoyed what little I had seen of him.

It was at Saint Saviours Church Hall, St Albans, which is the hippest church I’ve been to. There was kegs of beer, fairy lights and some sofas to the side of the nave. And the vicar had a shaved head, tattoos and wore cargo shorts.

I was a huge poetry nerd in my tormented teen years (14-17). But these days I don’t have much interest – and certainly not in modern poetry. So I wasn’t massively looking forward to a night of non-stop poems.

But the show was great. His poetry is perfect for the modern era. Funny, witty and with a great musicality. The way his voice delivers lines is wonderful. There’s an earnestness to the way he speaks that is enrapturing.

And he didn’t overstay his welcome. I was worried it would be 2 hours+ of non-stop poetry. But it was just the right length, with a break in between where you could buy a book and meet him.

When my girlfriend met him she decided to go down the more casual route. Rather than a “huge fan of your work, you’re my hero”, she went with a simple “hello, how are you?”. He didn’t appear to be expecting such an unassuming greeting and it led to 45 seconds of incredibly uncomfortable awkwardness. The stilted back-and-forth continued painfully as she hurriedly chose a book and he hurriedly got out the card reader. I couldn’t help but laugh.

In the grand tradition of web hostility, SoundCloud has made a bold move.

They’ve decided that your time isn’t valuable. That your experience doesn’t matter.

Want to skip ahead 30 seconds in a podcast? Sorry, you’ll need to sign in for that privilege.

It’s essentially a throwback to the days of linear radio. No control. No choice. Just sit there and take it.

How many listeners will try to skip, hit the sign-in wall, and never return? It’s a textbook example of prioritising metrics over user experience.

I get it. They want more sign-ups. They’re chasing those “monthly active user” numbers.

But in the race for engagement they’ve forgotten the most important engagement of all – the one between the listener and the content they love.

If your sign-up growth strategy involves frustrating users, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

Pipes.digital is a great replacement for Yahoo Pipes. As a keen RSS user I used to love Pipes back in the day. It was good for getting rid of ads and unwanted content from feeds.

You get three pipes for free, or ten for $5/mo. A bit pricey. But hopefully this means it will be able to survive.

Dave Winer has been blogging since 1994. And extensively too. His output is remarkable. And the result of that is nearly everything that he references and talks about from the past has a blog post he can link to. You can see his thinking in real time and get a great deal of context.

And it makes me want to both blog more freely and frequently and also live life more publicly online. And I think that there’s good arguments to be made for writing publicly on a weblog, rather than in offline software.

I’ve used the journaling app Day One for years. It’s been around for a while and now that it’s owned by Automattic I expect it will continue to be around for many years.

But generally speaking, software is more brittle than the web. It often uses proprietary formats and is prone to abandonment. Whereas the web is more open, easier to back up and won’t go away any time soon. In 50 years time I’d be shocked if a HTML/CSS webpage can’t still be shown the average computer still. I doubt Day One will still be around.

And in my 20 years of writing and journaling I’ve used many different software. The end result of that is my writing is all over the place, in different formats and different apps.

So what if that whole time I just used something like WordPress instead? Today my thoughts would all be in one place, nicely tagged¹, easily searchable and with a URL that I could link to.

Then there’s the tricky subject of death. If I die today no one is accessing my journal. A journal that might be interesting to my family. But if my thoughts were on a blog they could see them easily.

Of course there’s privacy concerns with the web. WordPress does let you make posts private or hidden behind a password. But data breaches can happen and things can leak. So that is a downside.

But my whole point is that I want more of my thoughts and life to be public. If I’m honest I’m not one of those people who pours my heart out in my journal anyway.² So 90% of what I write I’d happily make public and that’s my aim.

With clowes.blog I’m attempting to live a bit more publicly. But it still doesn’t come close to what Dave Winer’s scripting.com does. For me to get there I need to share and write more frequently.

So I’m going to try it. I think future me will be glad I did.

No one oversells more than a podcast host pushing a VPN. Apparently it will stop people tracking you, protect you from data breaches, give you free access to every form of media ever produced on Earth, give your dog immortality, cure most forms of gout and you can get 10% off with the code ‘POD10’.

I wrote several post bearish on AI today. But it is simply amazing at helping you remember the forgotten things rattling around at the back of your brain.

The first ever podcast I listened/watched was Diggnation, back in 2005 (nearly 20 years ago!)

If you were a tech geek it was the absolute best. I cannot tell you how excited I was each week to watch it.

Well, the two hosts – Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose – have just done a kind of reunion show! 🥹

I struggled to find a TV show to watch. Tried “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” and “Presumed Innocent”. Both were fine, but didn’t grab my attention.

So on a whim I tried the TV spin-off of the film “Ted”. I mean who asked for this? The poster alone turned me off. But it’s genuinely very good.

A few new posts on my tech blog today, mostly around AI.

• ‘Why AI can’t replace science’
• Companies are cooling on the cloud
• Figma’s pulls its AI tool after it got caught copying Apple’s Weather app
• Meta’s AI image labeling: ‘Made with AI’ becomes ‘AI Info’

Imagine a world where being single isn’t just frowned upon—it’s outlawed. That’s the premise of The Lobster. In this dystopian society adults have 45 days to find a romantic partner. Fail, and you’re transformed into an animal of your choice.

It’s an odd premise and an odd film. When I saw it in the cinema first time around, I loved it. I hadn’t seen Yorgos Lanthimos' work before, so I was surprised and delighted by its weirdness (and he’s now one of my favourite directors).

Its genuinely funny in its absurdity and I love it. It could perhaps have 15 minutes cut from it and its ending isn’t quite strong enough. But this a odd and wonderful film. You’ll probably either love it or hate it.

81%

Find out where to stream it.
Read this review on Letterboxd.

If you’ve got an adblocker Rotten Tomatoes isn’t letting you in anymore. They’ve had this popup for a while. But there was always a button to ‘browse with ad blocker still on’. Not the case anymore it seems.

I despise Putin’s Russia and am totally on the 🇺🇦 side of the Russo-Ukrainian War. But I think their use of drones is horrific and crosses a moral line. Russian soldiers are harassed at close range for often long periods of time, before being essentially executed, and often not cleanly.

I keep on hearing such mixed things about The Bear season 3, it’s insane.

I wouldn’t know. found S01E01 so anxiety inducing that I never watched another episode of it. 🫨

This review is worth it for its Astral Weeks joke alone.

Not the most original artwork by Discovery+ here.

“Brighton FC want to buy Dewsbury Hall from Leicester.”

Dewsbury Hall sounds like it should be bought by the National Trust, not a football team.

This always looked terrible. And the trailer was so bad it became a literal meme. However, this evening I was looking for an easy watch and saw that the reviews are surpassingly high. So I thought I’d give it a go.

Firstly, this is largely a musical. And despite a catchy chorus here and there it’s not especially special. The film is also not really about chocolate and sweets, which I found a bit disappointing. I wanted to see towers of sugar as far as the eye can see. But Wonka as chocolatier could have been removed and it wouldn’t have changed much.

This is directed by Paul King, who did the Paddington’s, and you can tell. They both have a visual charm that I really like. The comedic style is similar too. And it shares a lot of the same actors

However, Wonka ain’t Paddington. Paddington is fun for the whole family. Whereas I’d argue Wonka will be highly enjoyable for the kids, but there’s not enough here for the adults.

The film is rather sweet and watchable. But it just feels weirdly lifeless. I won’t be running back to rewatch it.

48%

(Read this review on Letterboxd)

Me: “Hey ChatGPT, what’s 2 + 2?”

ChatGPT: “I’m not going to answer that. Here’s some Python code that answers it instead.”

Playing Battlefield 1. Probably my favourite game of all time. The graphics, soundtrack and ‘feel’ of the game still remain spectacular, eight years on. I’ve written a bit about my love for it before.

After 20 years, my morning RSS ritual still feels like unwrapping digital gifts. From news to niche tech blogs, it’s my curated slice of the internet and I love it. ☕️📰

Good morning all. It’s currently 18°C where I am ☀️

📖 Morning links:

• Just paying attention to greenery, even in an urban environment, has mental health benefits
• There’s a tradition in Japan where grandparents buy their grandkids a $450 bag when they start school
• A look back at the now dead newsletter service TinyLetter
• The Netflix show “Tour de France: Unchained” is apparently good. With the Tour starting this Saturday I think I might check it out to get me in the mood.

🧍‍♂️Me update:

• 6hr 15m of sleep 🛌
• I have a tiny sore throat this morning. But a happy side effect is that my voice sounds masculine and gravely.
• It’s the last day of hot temperatures in the UK, which makes me happy. I don’t mind a hot weekend. But hate a hot weekday. Give me rain and clouds and cosiness.