Back in 2001 I made a Relationship Evaluation Form™ as PDF you could print and fill out for your ex. Now I’ve recreated it with 100% more web-interactivity! The Relationship Evaluation Form started as an in-joke with friends in Iceland, following a breakup and all the discussions that entails. We were commiserating about love’s unknowns and the transactional zeitgeist.
I spent the last couple fo days to turn it it into an interactive website – the goal was to experiment a bit with AI. I used Claude + mcp to vibe the new page into being: Relationship Evaluation Form • 2026
My database skills are mediocre at best, and I’m excited to see if I/AI have left any gaping security holes in the implementation, but since I’m coming at this from a UX perspective I threw cation to the wind and focused on user flows instead.
I can’t imagine that anyone sane would actually use this for realz with a straight face, but I can imagine someone filling it out while drunk and heartbroken.
Obligatory disclaimer: All LLMs are based on wholesale coerced value extraction of human labour and should be set on fire to remedy this.
I’m starting this post in Ermoupoli, Syros, where Petter and Alexandra kindly has lent us their house. So while people back home are battling rain and freezing weather (“-6°C feels like -12°C” according to the weather app) we’re dipping our toes in the mediterranian sea, drinking wine and eating olives. And of course reading books – so I figure I’ll start yet another post listing what I’ve read this ye ar.
As usual, it’s in chronological order, with abandoned books at the end. And I’ll try to expand on what I did last time around, and add some more thoughts on my reading. There are so many books, and so little time in life, that it’s a shame if what I read only ends up as a diversion. Since at least half of what I read is technical in nature, I’d like to apply what I learn somehow – even if it’s just a richer mental model of the world.
I’m turning 47 this year, and if I manage to live another 30 years I’ll have read about 1000 additional books. That is such an infinitesimal sliver of what has been written, that just selecting what to read gives me slight vertigo. As of right now, I’m still looking for work and am considering to start my own business once again, so much of what I’m reading is with an eye towards “finding my purpose” and such – and since there’s no shortage of books that purport to help you with that, I will have to cull my reading list more aggressively.
This also applies to my social media and email habits. Last two years I’ve subscribed to many news letters and routinely scan social media (Insta, Reddit, 9gag, Linkedin, Discords) with no clear purpose (except Linkedin which is play-pretend work) – but even though that might help me with keeping in tune with the Zeitgeist of the online world, it takes too much mental space and I need to cut back. So in addition to tossing books quicker, I’m going to limit my exposure to social media and the web in general, since it too often feels like wading through a polluted tidepool of mediocre anger and confusion.
Books read
Kim Stanley Robinson: The Ministry of the Future. I’ve read this once before and abandoned it halfway through since it’s exceptionally boring – Robinson really should have had a more agressive editor – but since Petter kept insisting that it was worthwhile to finish the book, and it keeps cropping up as a foundational book in the climate sci-fi (cli-fi) gengre, I persevered this time around, and finished it this time around. The beginning of it is riveting – starting with a mass death weather event – and then we get to follow along as banks, activist, lawyers and politicians navigate a world steadily heating up due to global warming and emissions. Some parts of it read like minutes from a board meeting and just like his red/green/blue Mars trilogy it’s just too preoccupied by the engineering aspects to make for an entertaining read, but it is useful as an example of how you can flesh out a future scenario into a coherent narrative. The ending is a bit too Polyannish, but I can’t fault him for trying to imbue the scenario with some hope – gods know we need it.
Michael Howard: Clausewitsz: A very short introduction. Clausewitz name kept popping up so I figured I’d read a bit about this Preussian 18th century military strategist. His thoughts on the purpose of war (“continuation of politics by other means” is a famous quote) and the division between limited and total war were novel for the time, and seeing as there’s no shortage of conflicts in the world it’s interesting to see how war is presented and pursued today. Russias invasion of Ukraine is close to home, and the way it’s discussed in Sweden – as uncivilized behaviour and poor form – is in stark contrast to how Clausewitz might have understood it – a dedicadet total war in respons to NATO expansion. It’s interesting to try to get in the frame of mind of someone for whom war is a natural extention of human activities, and Howards writing makes for a good and short read.
Ian M. Banks: Consider Phleabas. (Audiobook) The first of the Culture series, and a book much criticized for being a few short scenes strung together rather than a coherent story. Despite this, I like the story of the human shapeshifter Bora Horza Gobuchul alignes himself with the Idiran side in their war with the Culture. He’s on a mission to retrieve an AI (a ship mind) that has crashed on a planet, in order to advace the cause of the Idirian side. In the process he has to use his shapeshifting and cunning to avoid being spaced, killed or eaten, and his thoughts on how the Culture is a homogenizing influence on the galaxy are still relevant today – e.g. cultural imperialism and post-colonial theory. I don’t know how many times I’ve read / listened to the Culture series by now, but it’s a world I gladly revisit.
Ian M. Banks: The Player of Games. (Audiobook) Jernau Morat Gurgeh is a skilled and celebrated player of games, and is blackmailed into helping the Culture out with playing a complex game – Azad – in a newly contacted civilization. The game is used as a civil service exam which decides where in the autocratic hierarchy you rank, so the stakes are high. Artificial intelligences play proper roles in the book, but they still seem to be considered second class citizens if Gurgehs dismissive attitude is anything to go by. If the Culture is a world in which ship minds and drones are given personhood, they are often treated shoddily. Second book in the Culture series.
Peter McPhee: Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life. Is it a sign of middle age that I’m reading biographies? Or does the life and situation of Robespierre just seem too relevant to be ignorant of these days of increasing polarization? A well written book that I blazed through which outlines Maximiliam Robespierres short life – from his start as an almost illegitimate child to a public beheading in the late stages of the French revolution, at the age of 36. Revolutions are tumultuous times, and his increasing isolation left him with few friends at the end.
Marlen Haushofer: Väggen. A relatively recent translation of the Austrian Die Wand. A woman finds that she’s cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible wall – outside of the wall all human and animal life seems to have stopped, and she has to survive on what resources she can scrounge up in her mountainous bubble. Written as a first person reflection on loneliness and what it means to be a human. A friends recommended it saying that “there’s a before and after you read the it”, but I didn’t find it particularly transformative or insightful. Perhaps I need to let it soak in a bit.
Jeff VanderMeer: Absolution. Starting out some 20 years before the events of the Southern Reach trilogy, we get to follow agents of Central as they explore the unreality that will become “Area X.” The book is in large parts written as a hallucinatory stream of consciousness insanity – Area X is manipulating everything and the characters quickly become unmoored from any semblence of consensus reality, stumbling drunkenly through a miasma of confusion. Parts of the book read more like garbled poetry than a narrative, but as long as you allow yourself to let go of requiring coherence, you’ll be good. Being a bit insane and/or feverish helps.
Silvio Lorusso: What Design Can’t Do – Essays on Design and Disillusion. In parts rather dense, but worth slogging through for the many great insights and references – as well as a crap-ton of memes that give a really bleak vision of how design and designers are positioned today. Since I can’t help but to try to position myself in a moral framework – regardless if I’m doing “menial work” or “intellectual work” – Lorussos book brings me back to earth; It’s good to think about these things, but you’re only morally responsible to the extent that you actually can infleunce things:
[The appeal to an ethical conduct] becomes a generic one, one that masks hierarches and relations of authority. It could even be read as a way to please the readership by granting them a potency that they (individually, as designers) don’t have. […] This is not unusual example of self-aggrandisement by over-responsibilisation, an idealised narrative that sees design more as an individual moral framework than a practical philosophy. The logic is akin to that of ethical consumption, where the centrality of individual ethics compensates for design’s subordination. Undoubtedly, the designer affects the world with their work and their choices, but this genrerally happens in unspectacular ways which wouldn’t be worthy of the Spiderverse. Indeed, most designers concur that the quality of their work depends solely on the extent to which the client allow it.
Silvio Lorusso, What Design Can’t Do, p158
Han Kang: The Vegetarian. One day Yeong-hye wakes up and no longer wants to eat meat. She’s had a dream, and now it feels wrong. Her husband is disconserted and her father is abusive. Three short stories of how a family is unravelled by the smallest threads. It’s rather bleak, but there you go – trauma, trauma everywhere.
Theodore Sturgeon: More Than Human. The next level of human evolution has arrived, it’s Homo Gestalt and consists of six people with supernatural abilities that each compliment each other. The book spans three short stories that end on a meditation on how to imbue morals into someone who is alone – if there’s truly only one “Homo Gestalt” then it has no use of morals since those require a society. In parts a bit dated (published in 1954) and too fond of psychotherapy (repressed memories, id) but still a riveting read.
Phil Balagtas: Making Futures Work. A very hands-on book on how to plan and execute futures work as either a consultant or inhouse. A great overview of different models for doing futures work, as well as lists for how to create buy-in, keep yourself honest and accountable, and evaluate what you’re doing. I’ve highlighted so much that I could probably make a small book out of just that. I’m still uncertain where I’ll end up with my mix of UX and futures ambitions, but having Balagta outline what is required to succeed is helpful.
Vyvian Rauol: Advertising Shits in Your Head. A collection of essays about the ills of advertising, as well as how-tos for how to sabotage or take over billboards or those illuminated ad spaces that litter the world. In a time where there are discussions (once again) to put up ads in space perhaps its time to once again actualise this discussion – which I recall was active back in anti-globalisation times.
Greg Brougham: The Cynefin mini-book. Cynefin is a way to visualise problems and break them down into either actionable items or further research. It’s a bit convoluted, but similar enough to impact/cost and Rumsfeldt matrix that I feel it doesn’t add all that much. What it does ad is a certification program and name which requires you to pay licensing fees to use – something which in consulting work I imagine can be helpful. A client knows what they can expect, which ought to help buyin. Bonus: Their visual identity or cross thingy looks like a butt:
Nicole Perlroth: This is how they tell me how the world will end. A riveting story by a cybersecurity reporter at The NYT about how the market for zero-day exploits was created and has morphed over time. Many of the stories that I recall reading about as they happened are given more background and follow-up, and the skullduggery and shenanigans and human rights violations are legion. It makes me even more interested in questions of reliance of modern societies, but given what Perlroth has written that might be a moot point – if the large guns are ever fired in anger, the IT-infrastructure will have been annihilated before the missiles hit their targets.
Virginia Woolf: Jacob’s room. First book of hers that I’ve read, and I love the language and images it evokes, even as I don’t get all the references and societal implications of what is happening. Jacob is a young man with an absent – probly dead – father and a mother that keeps worrying what will become of him. He studies and travels, and breaks a few hearts along the way, and seems angsty and impatient, and the story is told mostly through others thoughts of him. Typographically, it takes some work on the readers part to discern what is said and what is thought, but it makes for a hypnotic read. I finished on evening stairs of our Tokyo lodgings, which made me feel kinship with the travelling and confusion.
Sunlight strikes in upon shaving-glasses; and gleaming brass cans; upon all the jolly trappings of the day; the bright, inquisitive, armoured, resplendent, summer’s day, which has long since vanquished chaos; which has dried the melancholy medieval mists; drained the swamp and bodies with such an armoury of weapons that merely to see the flash and thrust of limbs engaged in the conduct of daily life is better than the old pageant of armies drawn out in battle array upon the plain.
Virginia Woolf: Jacob’s Room
Douglas Coupland: Generation A. I read Generation X as a teenager desperate to belong with the in-crowd of Wired readers, and felt taken by his way of capturing the nostalgia and ennui of my feelings. I’ve read a few of his other works, but apart from Microserfs they didn’t hit as hard, and now Generation A feels like a time capsule of the characters from X. In a near future where bees seemingly are extinct people live in a post-oil very-scarce world, five people around the world are stung by bees and immediately become famous as well as kidnapped by someone who’d like to find out what they have in common. The second half of the book switches to a book-within-a-book meta thing, a Borges meditation on stories and creation of meaning, which is clever but less convincing than the first part, but I’d still recommend it if you’re into Couplands stuff; The language is good, dialogue convincing, and it’s short.
Ann Napolitano: Dear Edward. A story told in two timelines, people onboard a doomed flight, and the life of Edward – a boy of 12 who is the only survivor of the crash. A story about how to rebuild yourself when you’ve lost everything and have to deal with survivors guilt as well as the expectations from all others who lost people in the accident. The scenes during the flight are told through short vignettes with changing first person perspectives, and it’s an engrossing read.
Gillian Flynn: Sharp Objects. A young reporter is sent to her home town to report on a disappearance of a girl which might be related to a previous murder, and she slowly spirals back into a disfunctional family relationsship while previous traumas are unspooled to the reader. I couldn’t decide on what type of story this was supposed to be for the longest time, but finished the book in a day and liked it. Easy and traumatic reading.
Ida Hult: Ärvda Svar. A book recommended by multiple people in the Futures Sweden group here in Gothenburg, about how organisations sleepwalk into the future while only paying lip-service to being openminded and critical. Fits well into my ambitions regarding applied futures thinking, and one of the few books I’ve found that deal with the Swedish context. It’s a bit rambly and preached to the choir too much, but I don’t think I ‘m the intended audience – it feels like people in a managing position ought to read it to get a kick in the butt.
Robert Gottfried: Black Death. A scholarly book about the bubonic plagues that ravaged much of the old world during 14th century. It’s difficult to grasp the extent of misery and change that this brough about, and the author does a great job of summerizing existing research and paint the consequences of so many people dying. The Black Death transformed the economies of all countries that it touched, and in combination with recurring outbreaks for the next hundred years it became a distressing fact of life. Fascinating read!
David Travis & Philip Hodgson: Think like a UX researcher. A great step-by-step manual for doing UX research with applying ethnographic methods in the private sphere. From pitching to stakeholders, to structuring research, to ethics and reporting. I have a whole bunch of notes that I need to collate into my own practice.
Naomi Mitchison: Memoirs of a Spacewomen. In a space-faring future we follow Mary, our translator protagonist as she tries to communicate with non-humans. It’s never explained how, but humans early in their lives can become specialised so that they can tune in different intelligences – it’s not “talking” as humans do it, but where there’s intent to communicate, she is able to discern patterns and establish contact – including terran animals. Some wild ideas about biological systems is combined with a first person narrative where Mary is torn between the non-interference rules imposed on human explorers and her human code of ethics.
Sequoia Nagamatsu: How High We Go in the Dark. The melting permafrost releases an Arctic Plague that ravishes the world. Through a bunch of strung together short narratives we get to experience a world in the throes of adapting to mass death and societal upheaval. Beautifully written and one the best books I’ve read recently.
Mike Monteiro: Design is a Job. Half part a manual for working in design, half a rallying cry for class consciousness and being a moral human. Great read
Design is an investment in infrastructure and keeps the wheels of business running smoothly. Good design equals a more effective product or service. Design means workers get paid, and customers get served. When someone tells you that design is your passion, they are about to fuck you. Design is your job. Jobs are labor. Labor gets paid.
Mike Monteiro: Design is a Job
Bill Buxton: Sketching User Experiences. A bit dated by now, but still a well argued book on why sketching is an important activity. He differentiates between sketching and prototyping in a way which I found helpful, and the book is full of clever nuggets such as “I hate the term “low-fidelity” prototype or interface. Why? Because when the techniques referred to are appropriately used, they are not low fidelity; rather, they are at exactly the right fidelity for their purpose.” The book is not confined to just sketching on paper, but he uses “sketching” to describe the fastest way to present a consideration. Another book that I took copious amounts of notes from.
Susan Weinschenk: How to get people do do stuff. Seven drives to human motivation as well as 140 strategies of how to get people to do what you want. It feels manipulative as all heck, and some of the strategies seem more gimmicky than useful, but it’s helped me think of my own and others behaviour in a different light. We can’t help to behave in some way, and some people are using these techniques consciously while others are naturals, and I’m having fun trying to discern who is doing what why.
Emanuel Svensson & Ulf Bokelund Svensson: Eget Aktiebolag – Praktisk handbok. One of three books from the Björn Lundén publisher on how to run an LLC. Just like the other books I read on the subject – Pål Carlsson: Företagets ekonomi, handbok för icke-ekonomer, as well as Pål Carlsson & Björn Lundén: Budget, handbok för småföretag – it’s complete garbage and not worth the paper it’s printed on. These are not first edition books – Eget Aktiebolag is on it’s 12th edition! – yet they’re still written with very little regard to a presumed beginner reader. Some words are explained, others not; Some concepts are reasoned, others are left without an explanation. Perhaps it’s a testament to the insular nature of the field, but the books leave me feeling as confused as I was before I picked them up – in addition to making me feel even more stupid and frustrated that I can’t grok how it all hangs together. Avoid and go watch some Youtube tutorials instead.
Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi: The Centre. A Pakistani translator en England gets together with a man who seemingly can learn languages overnight and she wants in. A lot of thoughts on language and culture and belonging. An unreliably narrated story of identity, and I felt kinship with her thoughts on Urdu – it mimics how I view my Polish:
When I speak in Urdu, I change. I’m not sure how exactly. Sometimes, it feels like I become more honest. More real. Other times, I wonder if I become more childlike. This may be due to the limitations of my vocabulary. Since I speak Urdu mainly-slash-only to my elders, and the Urdu novels and films that I consume tend to be very PG, maybe my Urdu has never properly … adulted.
Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi: The Centre
Christian Madsbjerg: Sensemaking. A call to arms for thick data in a world of A/B tests and automated quantification. It’s a bit bloated and doth protests too much at times – but if you skim the repetetive parts there’s still insights to be gleaned. His take on Design Thinking as a “bullshit tornado” is fun albeit a bit of a strawman – it’s presented as agnostic method with no regard for actual knowledge – but at least he presents a way forward in a world that seems to have grown tired of the overpromises of “design” as a synonym to “problem solving”.
Emily St. John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility. A weaving tale that jumps in time and narrative. The voices of the different protagonists are convincing, and the story is good. Worth reading!
Martin MacInnes: In Ascension. There’s a new abyss that has formed in the ocean, and Leigh is one of many junior scientists that go explore. It’s slightly mysterious and what they discover will lead to surprising discoveries on the topic of space, time and origins of life on Earth. The book has some interesting ideas but succumbs to navelgazing psychodrama too often. It’s a smash-up between the Southern Reach trilogy and JG Ballard, but not in a good way, and ends up being all over the place. I still finished it, but just barely.
Dan Abnett, Xenos. Warhammer 40k is big in the Internet world. It’s a grimdark fascist future where war never ends etc etc. Since it’s so popular and the world-building is so extensive (starting out with tabletop games, RPGs, computer games, books, whatnot) I wanted to check it out and asked an AI for the least crappily written books. Abnetts Eisenhorn trilogy popped up as the most literary stuff, and I forged ahead – through the dark miasma of flaccid metaphor and dark thoughts poorly embodied – to see if it’s something for me. It’s not. It’s just grimdark military words strung together.
Maud Woolf: Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock. A replica of a famous person – the titular Lulabelle Rock – is awakened with instructions to kill the other replicas. It’s unknown why and the replica (here called a Portrait) is struggling with finding her feet. A quirky novel about identity and meaning of even the strangest of lives.
Roger Williams: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. A post singularity tale where death no longer exists but pain does, and for some people sadism turns out to be the only experience worth anything anymore. Written in the ’90s but feels very relevant today with the AI discussion. It’s well into Torment Nexus territory and it’s also one of the more disturbingly written books I’ve read in a while – reminded me of the afterlife as described in Iain M Banks Hydrogen Sonata, but with no punches pulled for the torture.
Torment Nexus meme – something which feels very relevant these days.
Adrian Tchaikovsky: Service model. A robot valet murders its master and goes on a journey through a post apocalyptic world to understand what’s wrong with it to do something so illogical. Lot of allegories to Dante and Kafka, and well written.
Books abandoned
The older I get the faster I abandon books. If the language is just too meh, or the character descriptions are the flat, or characters only manifest their personality through their haircut or exposition on whisky, I will close the book after a few pages. I only have a couple hundred books left to read in my life – not much time to waste.
N.K. Jemisin: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. (Audiobook) Gave up after half an hour. It’s a coming-of-age / heroes journey with too much exposition for my taste. Big difference in writing compared to her later stuff which I love (Fifth season trilogy, short stories).
Spider Robinson: The Stardance Trilogy. Didn’t buy the grizzled protagonist nor the attempts at describing the indescribable qualities of a dancer.
David Baldacci: The Fallen. Just no.
Nalo Hopkinson: Falling in love with hominids. Didn’t get into it.
Dean Koontz: The Crooked Staircase. I know that describing weapons is what gets many thriller-fans excited, but I just can’t abide.
Multiple author anthology: The End is Nigh. I know that it might be unfair to judge an anthology just based on the first story, but how can I not assume that it reflects the taste of the editor? First story reads like YA and I’m not YA anymore.
Pablo Bacigalupi: The Doubt Factory. I loved Water Knife and especially The Windup Girl, so this was a disappointment. I didn’t know this was YA when I picked it up – but I’m still not sure that YA needs to be this much on the nose.
Tara Isabella Burton: Strange Rites. An exploration of contemporary spirituality through the lens of fandoms and originally secular cultural expressions. Interesting premise, but not interesting enough.
Max Brooks: World War Z – an oral history of the Zombie War. It’s a collection of stories from around the world a decade after a worldwide zombie outbreak. Supposedly told to an etnographer travelling around the world interviewing people for the UN. Good enough idea, but poorly written: I don’t buy that someone who has the mandate to travel the globe and have all this access would be such a poor interviewer, nor that the stories he’s told are so flat. Easy read, but I gave up halfway through.
Today is my first day renting a desk in a co-working space. I’m sitting among other entreprenourial hopefuls and figured that my first point of action should be to catch up on my browser tabs and write a blog post. Y’know, really start with a clean slate like.
The company is named Matepo Research AB and as of this writing I’m offering 1) usability studies, large and small, and 2) foresight workshops, especially targeting the Design Fiction Kit that I localized to Sweden under the Hintlab name. I have a few months runway before I need to get a regular paying job — I’m throwing so much stuff at the walls that I’m afraid I’d not getting the deposit back, had there been one.
As so much these days there’s a lot written about AI – especially how it affects *waves hand all around.* I thought Frank Chimeros essay was a worthwhile attempt:
What surprised me wasn’t the AI hype, though, but the lack of solidarity that came with it. Faced with the story of AI labor displacement, our first instinct as technology workers wasn’t to protect one another, but to search for ways to use the tools to replace our collaborators.
I’m not particularly convinced of his analogy of GenAI use and different approaches to music, but it’s an honest attempt at finding some sort of peace with how the AI worls looks today — oligarchs and all. One sentence in the essey resonated with me:
When the system is designed to respect artists, scale becomes a tool rather than a threat.
This was a good articulation of a dissonance I’ve had for a while: I really don’t mind people using AI as such for whatever purpose, but it’s too easy to do create too much mediocre and intellectually lazy crap, which has the added consequence that it’s drowning out people whose work — ironically — all GenAI has been taught on.
Even if the current AI scene wasn’t a 100% value extracting scam by a few oligarchical players who ought to be strung up and flogged, the signal-to-noise ratio is defeaning. This problem will sooner or later come out in the wash where new services, a revival of “auteurship” or whatever else will happen when people get bored of AI generated Halloween scenes from Friends, but it still doesn’t have to be a problem in itself: Noise can make artful points, but when everyone’s shouting it’s just a waste of breath.
So, I started a company again: Matepo Research AB. My services on offer right now are a mix between what I’ve done with Hintlab — i.e. foresight and design fiction workshops — and what I learned during my two years at ITHS, i.e. UX and accessibility.
As per the name, I’m more into the “research” bit than I am into the UI bit when it comes to design, and I’m extending my ambitions to encompass service design as well as usability. As far as I’m concerned they’re similar enough in method — albeit different in scope — that I feel confident that I can do that as well.
When I posted this on Linkedin a lot of people thought I’d been employed. Which I found childishly funny.
I have a six months long runway to start making money, after which my funds will have run dry. I’m looking to supplement the consulting work with other breadwinning work, and expect that I’ll have to do that for a while.
I’m having a heck of a time trying to find clients though: I’ve never been a good salesperson, so I have a blockage when it comes to selling a value proposition regardless of how good a fit I believe it might be. My thinking has always been that I’d rather work than sell the work, but the point is of course that selling is part of the work and I just have to get with it.
I’m torn between sending emails cold to companies and agencies (I know times are lean and everyone is scrounging for work, so what’s the point in makework by adding to the noise) and on the other hand coming up with a more gimmicky campaign (perhaps similar to the newspaper portfolio I did a while back) to stand out from the crowd. The benefit of a gimmick is that it’s fun to do and might give some leads, the drawback is that it might just be procrastination on my part, will cost money and will eat up what little runway I have left to make a go at this.
To sum up, althought I’m excited about the possibilities in running my own company (again) and I’ve received a lot of moral support from some nice senior people in the buisiness, I’m somewhat nervous about the “business” aspect of running a business.
The first time I used the Plano F0 sketch pad was when I was studying in Karlstad, if I recall correctly. That was back in 1999, and even though I occasionally switched out of necessity, I always got back to it if I had the option. Together with the Shachihata 204 FAXBLAC 0.4 pen it was a perfect combo, and it’s my reference for how writing on paper should feel. I bought a whole bunch of Plano blocks a while back, but I’m on my last block and wanted to order more.
Unfortunately, Plano was run by one man – and the man died with no-one to take over the business. So the F0 block I have now is the last one. Unless someone has a supply stashed away somewhere I’m going to have to either manufacture a similar block myself or find something close enough.
Regardless, I will miss the quirky logo and the feeling of continuity that it gave me. I appreciate well made tools, and the apparent simplicity of pen and paper made me think I’d always have access to it – one purchase away. But someone died and now it’s no longer made
The other day I had a chat with an AI – as one does these days – asking for suggestions on how to build a robotic platform to exterminate the slugs that are infesting our garden. It suggested electro-shocking as means of murder and either a stationary platform with an arm, or a mobile hexapod roamer. As a result I’m starting to look into computer vision and robotics solutions – here’s a similar Hackaday project – to complement my own low tech extermination efforts.
This is new: I’ve previously refrained from killing slugs – I couldn’t consolidate a “minimize pain” approach with killing slugs directly. I’ve gone as far as spreading iron phosphate pellets, reasoning that it gives them a sporting chance not to eat the stuff, and a painless death otherwise. Weak approach, I know.
But this year I planted 40-something tobacco plants which I’m hoping to turn into cigars, and even though I waited as long as I could before putting them in the ground, the fucking critters decimated them. I had hoped that the nicotine would keep the pests away – it seems to keep insects and deer at bay – but one night I plucked over 150 slugs from just one group of tobacco plants. One hundred and fifty! And that’s when I lost my patience with the slimy things and started going after them with a guillotine. But this is a losing proposition – the number of snails in the surrounding areas is so great that for evey one I decapitate, two more show up to take its place.
So next year I’m going full defensive and put up an electric fence around all things I’d like to keep, as well as agressively pursue slugs. Be it with pellets or a robot with a death laser.
The four plants in the greenhouse have managed the best and some leafs are nearing 70cm.
Side note: I’m growing four kinds of tobacco. Two traditional Swedish types – Alida & Per-Pers – as well as Havanna and Monte Calme. I can’t say that I see all that much difference between the plants, but I’ll try to keep them apart when I dry them so to see if I (or more likely Sara) can taste a difference. I got them from tilbudet.se.
Me and my brother travelled to Japan in May 2025, primarily to visit the Expo2025 exhibition in Osaka, but we also made a detour to Tokyo. As usual I shot a bunch of video, and above is a chronological cut.
As is so often the case with my videos, it’s mostly observational and rather detached – as it happens, that’s also rather fitting for Japan: it’s difficult to penetrate the surface of both Osaka and Tokyo. The cities are huge and sprawling and the press of (polite) people will guide you along the path of least resistance to do a lot of shopping and eating.
I like to travel light – I had a less-than-full carry-on with me.
We flew from Stockholm to Osaka via Helsinki, and didn’t bother buying stow-away luggage on the outbound trip. We did figure we’d shop a bit while there though, and the only option was to buy 2×23kg each, which seemed excessive. For some reason, it was cheaper to buy a return flight from the same city rather than from Tokyo.
Most airlines avoid flying over Russia these days, so we took the long way aroundThere is no coherent colour, style or scale to the urban space – neither in Tokyo nor Osaka – which gives rise to some odd buildings and skyscrapers jostling low shotgun housingSmoking has been increasingly banned in Japan, which was a total surprise to me – growing up watching Japanese movies, it seemed everyone smoked all the time. Not so much any longer, only designated areas or some restaurants with fewer than 20 seatings allow smoking. Annoying for a cigar smoker such as I.
There are a lot of arrows and instructions all over the place. The “less is more” approach to information hasn’t won much ground here, and in addition to boxes, arrows and lanes, there are people in uniform every 50 meters that keep announcing to “stay left” or “move along” – I’m assuming that’s what they were saying, since my Japanese is nonexistent.
The most impressive part of the Expo2025 was the giant wooden walkway they’d built around the whole area. Even though we were there in the middle of the week, the queues to get in to any pavillion were prohibitive, often requiring booking using arcane websites.
The Expo website is a complete mess and Reddit is replete with people complaining about their difficulties obtaining tickets or even knowing how to buy the proper ticket. It blows my mind that an event which has required years of planning, millions dollars and international collaborations galore, can screw up something as important as their main platform for selling tickets and informing visitors.
Missing and wanted people on a noticeboard
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to end up in one the many shopping districts. And you will find blinking noisy machines enticing you to grab toys with janky claws. I swear these machines are rigged to drop the stuff on purpose.
In most bathing facilities (Onsen) you’re not allowed to enter with a tattoo. At our hotel you had the option of covering it up if it was small enough, but anything larger and you’re barred and can be thrown out. This seems to be changing though, and we saw a few young Japanese sporting larger sleeve and leg work.
Roof view from APA hotel & resort near Namba, Osaka, with a view over the city
Finding vegan food proved really difficult, which is a shame since Osaka is famous for its cousine. Even when I managed to order some noodles with tofu, they slapped a slice of ham on top of it as garnish. I’m not a picky eater so make do with whatever, but when so much of the culture is centered on sharing food, I miss out on a lot by not partaking in it.
Adorable vegetarian / vegan place – Oko Oko – run by one upbeat woman. One of the few times I ate my fill.
Just like in Poland 20 years ago, a good option for finding vegan food is to look for places with a “healthy” profile. Here we’re in a small restaurant near Kitazawa, close to our apartment in Tokyo.
Don Quijote is a chain of discount stores all over Japan, with the larger ones having dedicated floors for electronics, books, toys and what have you. It wasn’t as cheap as all that, probably because they make a mint off of overwhelmend tourists who appreciate having everything in the same place, but it’s great fun just browsing and buying stuff based on packaging. If you’re looking for bargains, I’d recommend the second hand chain BookOff – especially if you’re looking for toys or clothing.
I have a hard time getting my head around the sexualisation of girls in Japan, and to my eyes it just looks profoundly fucked up. From the old men who rent (seemingly barely pubescent) girls as coffee dates, to kids in bunnysuits luring you into bars, to the really young streetwalkers in some areas, there’s a fetish of childlike girls that’s just straight up pedo. I’m sure one could read up on it and see nuance in the phenomena, and perhaps I’m just ruined by too many years on the uncouth side of the Internet, but it was jarring.
Most interesting places need to be sought out – this cigar bar was two flights of stairs up an anonymous building, and had only place for six. Many places are one-person run shops, which gives a very entreprenourial vibe to the city. Wherever there’s a small space, someone will start a buisiness.
Underground pipes and such marked out on the street – perhaps to aid planning or prevent accidentaly digging through the infrastructure?Colourful manhole cover in Osaka, Japan. These were all over the place, with each municipality or ward springing for their own. The sense of local and community pride really shines through in things large and small.
Shinkansen was a great to experience, but in the end it’s just a train. A fast train, mind you, but a train nonetheless. And I don’t know why I imagined that it’d be noiseless – I probably had it mixed up with a maglev – but it made noise just like trains back home. Comfy and fast though!
Both cities have their power go through the air, which is incongruent with how orderly the street level is. Where each curb and colour on the pavement seems accounted for, the aerial wiring looks choatic and improvised.
One conspiracy theory we were proffered by way of explanation was that when Tokyo wanted to put the power underground, the concrete companies bribed the politicians to keep them in air – since the utility poles were made of armored concrete. And so it has remained.
Once you learn how to navigate the subways, you’re one step closer to be comfortable in the city. Instead of buying a period card we bought single tickets – this was more expensive, but it also made sure that we exited the right way when trying to leave a station, since if you don’t have the correct ticket it won’t let you out. (And if you’ve paid too little for your trip, there are machines that easily allow you to pay the difference by the exit.)
But even if you’re comfortable navigating the metro lines, the stations are still giant by any standard and take time to traverse. The Tokyo metro system handles 6 million passangers daily, and is dimensioned accordingly. Ridiculously large – and if you add some remodelling, repairs and rerouts to the mix, you end up staring at Google maps a lot.
A Hintlab sticker near Shibuya CrossingTomasz wanted to go clubbing so we ended up in The Womb – it was a slow night and mostly tourists, but I’ve never heard a soundsystem sound so good in a club before.Instructions for unpacking a seaweed-wrapped rice snack from a 7/11. These saved me many times over, and I’ve never eaten as much rice as during this trip.
We spent 10 days or so in Japan, split between Osaka and Tokyo, and my reaction was similar to the one I had when visiting New York: It felt like I’d been here before, as if I was an extra in a movie.
If I ever go back to Japan I’d love to make plans to actually do something or learn something. Perhaps a design project of some sort? A documentary work? I need a mission to guide my travels – I’m a pathetic tourist – and I’d make sure to learn more than “thank you” in Japaneese. English is not enough, and Google Translate can only take you so far.
Song is Man, by Appetite, Free Music Archive (CC BY-NC-SA)
I recently got back after short of two weeks in Japan, where me and my brother first went to Osaka for the Expo 2025, and then Tokyo. I ended up buying a whole bunch of stuff, and most of it I bought just cause it was so darn pretty!
The colours, mascots and logos all over the place are really on a different level from what I’m used to, and our trip was spent trying to navigate beyond the facade of consumerism. Which we failed. Still worth the trip though.
Half of Sweden has been coughing since last fall – whatever virus the aliens have release is really doing a number on us. Dry coughing is the new normal, but last week I came down with something more serious, and this past weekend has seen me violently coughing up enough lung tissue to feed a small family, and I’m so fatigued that just walking up the stairs is taxing.
It’s not as bad as back when I had Covid but according to my sportswatch my SpO2 dipped well below 80% some nights, and my average is hovering under 90% – during the pandemic the recommendation was to seek a hospital if you went to 92% so my blood oxygen levels are really shit. I mean, they are shit even in normal circumstances given my asthma, but this weekend was truly a giant pain.
And as much as I have hated hacking and spitting all day, I can only imagine the panic if I’d become too weak to even cough up the garbage that the infection is producing in my lungs: I’d literally be drowning in it. So: despite having torn my throat raw and given my abs the most intense workout in years, I’m thankful that I’m in good enough shape to be able to cough.
As a side note, this ordeal got me motivated to finally read the Kurzgesagt book Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive and we truly are made up of an aweinspiring collection of mechanisms. I can recommend the book if you’re looking for an easy introduction to the human immune system – it’s accessible and pedagogical, just like their videos.
Crossposted at Linkedin, which is my most active community outside of NFL and Reddit.
The increasing polarization of both international relationships as well as intra-national politics has a radicalising effect. As expected, much of it is generated by the perfect storm of power politics and the dismantling of multilateralism that the current US administration is enacting:
The point of the report is not that their short-term predictions are prescient, but that human short-sighted focus on current risks – very real and dangerous as they are – hides the long term problems we should address: global warming, pollution and biosphere depletion, increased national and interantional polarization, the super-ageing societies reliant on immigrants that become second-rate citizens or guest workers.
So perhaps by looking closer to home, and looking further ahead, we could start to discuss not only what we are afraid of today, but what we gives us hope for tomorrow in our societies? Becuse I dearly want to feel more hopeful, and rather than doomscrolling and complaining, is there something I as a UX designer and futures studies practitioner can do to make you feel better?
