Glyn Cannon

Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa Or: How Africa is building the future by skipping the past

open.substack.com/pub/climated...

A printed poem which reads: I hav for breakfast Weetabix I hav for lunch some meat I have for tea 2 sosajis and thats enuf to eat Peter Hazel, 5

On National Poetry Day, the greatest poem I have ever read

Batman’s aff his nut Have you seen the way he cuts aboot Dressed up as a mad fuckin bat Batterin guys I was lit at: “Mate, I’m worried aboot ye I know your ma and da died But everybody’s ma and da dies And we’re no aw runnin aboot Hookin muggers and Kickin psychopaths in the baws.” And that was when Batman went “Aye, but do ye ever feel like it? Do you ever look at the world and feel like it? Like having a big mad base under your hoose? Do you ever feel like drivin a big mad motor that turns intae a tank? And leatherin fuck oot of guys aw night? Scarin the fuckin shite oot of them?” And that’s when I was lit at: “Aye. Fuck it. Ah dae.” And that’s the Secret Origin of Robin And everyone else.

And this is Batman's Aff His Nut by Robert Florence, which, in my opinion, is easily the greatest Scottish poem ever written about Batman...

That’s a bit of a coincidence that you’ve been using something called Sidekick and that’s also your name?

I have to say, in terms of productivity I do feel like I’m hurling a lot more into the void these days.

For my sins I actually was a bit tuned in to who he is and it’s mind-boggling. A very on-the-nose quote about how some gun deaths are worth it to protect 2nd amendment rights. This could go v bad v quickly.

I mean just think of all the idioms in English that Shakespeare alone came up with and we use today without a single thought or idea of where they came from….

But being machines they can quote, misquote and misattribute it better than we can! I do recommend getting into the nitty-gritty of how LLMs work cos for writers especially the concepts have fascinating implications (outside of all the copyright threats).

They’re essentially boiling down all the text in their sources to patterns and sequences, so that some of those sequences can re-appear wholesale, especially if their training gives higher value to NYT articles than obscure stuff. Just like we can learn poetry and quote or misquote it.

Now it might be that they’re not spatially conceptualising the shoelaces in a way that we might be, still just regurgitating a process. But to suggest they’re running a huge search each time is missing the whole point of machine learning.

Pretty much. That’s the whole point of training them on sets of data which they then discard, just like the wheels. They’re not referring directly to that data when you run a query, and even have the capacity to run web searches to pull in new information. That letter is alarmingly wrong.

I'm trying to think about how I would have reacted if shown this headline five years ago

There is nothing like trying to look up an historical item of clothing to realise how absolutely screwed internet search is. It’s crazy, mankind build the most beautiful repository of knowledge and documents then buried it in the basement of the biggest shopping mall full of crap it could imagine.

On the Adam Curtis grumbles: yeah, his style is easy to parody we got that ages ago. And yes his analysis is often infuriatingly bonkers, we got that too.

But he’s a miner, not a refiner. The discarded Iraq and Soviet Union footage he trawled through is alone worth the price of entry to the ride.

A painted portrait of a woman head slightly bowed

Forgot to post this the other day - my friend Rohini, #portrait in #acrylics on canvas, 610x508mm

Switched to phthalo blue in my palette and it just dominated the underpainting more than I wanted, but I’m v glad it did

Has he been under house arrest or something?

Yeah, I'm not interested in making pretty paintings. You may like this one- The Year She Became Invisible. Oils on canvas.
#painting #oilpainting

Omg did you murder their parents or something?

Painting of a bearded man sat in the corner of a room with the window open, sunny day outside

Painted this recently, a #portrait of a good friend of mine I visited on a sunny end-of-winter day in Gloucester.

‘Gently Does It / Tassos’, 2025, #acrylic #painting on wood panel, 495x725mm

Omg I had not realised how dead #vimeo was now. How disheartening. Where are all the decent short films now?

Painting of a large modern room with aluminium rafters set up for a yoga class with one figure lying alone on his phone

New painting, ‘No Yoga’ #acrylic #paints on wood panel, 495x725mm, basically I spied a technician having a cheeky phone break in a room like this, and there you go… #scenic #painting #art #yoga

Rough painting of a bearded man showing broken teeth and a cut cheek

Self-portrait after bike accident,
2025 - I did this one before but wanted to do something quick with only a couple of brushes and felt like indulgently re-visiting my injuries.... #acrylicpainting on #canvas 254x305mm #portraiture #painting

As 1st year undergrad I was way to meek to correct a 3rd year in my halls who cheerily greeted me as ‘Dave!’ for a whole year. Then I got myself convinced he’d be furious to find out I’d been letting him call me Dave. So the obvious course of action was… letting him call me Dave.

Quick pencil line drawing of a woman leaning on a stool, head down

Colour ink drawing of a woman leaning on a stool head down

Model at #lifedrawing a few weeks ago did a nice one minute pose so we asked her to do it again for 20 minutes - and this is they: 1min / 20min #ink #pencils on paper

Painting of a woman with light on her a face, holding a green mug to her chest, striped jumper

Slight crop of a new #portrait #painting, Isobel, #acrylics on canvas, 420x596mm

And suddenly the sweetest music filled the air…..

And it went-

NAH - NAHNAH NAH - NAHNAH NAH NANA NAH

Drawing of a USB stick taped to a lemon

A #drawing, USB Stick Taped to a Lemon, with #ink pencils and #graphite on paper board, 260x160mm, because

Historiography cartoons ftw

Now that it has received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short, a reminder that @billmorrison.bsky.social's urgent, devastating film INCIDENT is available to stream at @newyorker.com.