Im resonating sympathetically to the vibe over at The Moody Warlock’s Ember Keep (you can check out their photography of quiet corners here.)

A greyness has fallen. The line between what passed for normality and what now passes for global insanity blurred sometime in the last few years. It’s hard to remember. But the crises have been building for at least a few decades – the expansion of the security state post-911, the global financial crisis, Covid 19, the rise of authoritarian movements and grievance politicians cashing in hard on people who are listless and confused, ai grifting, manosphere grifting, and the climate crisis and the continued inability of corporate owned governments to do anything meaningful to address it.

Maybe I’m depressed? Maybe we all are? I know I’m not the only one feeling heavy. There’s a palpable level of anxiety around the place. Art feels more like an escape and a retreat from our times. Painting and making music and writing while the world burns – as though art is no longer a genuine expression of the self, but rather a woozy nostalgia-laden pursuit that closes out the grey world briefly.

And just when I think I have stabilized my soul and rekindled my muse, another ball of technological enshitification rolls down from ahigh to greyscale my day.

I own an LG smart TV, and this video (which, to be honest, I cannot bring myself to watch all the way through) takes a deep dive into the invasive (to the point of being creepy) technology that has been firmware-update baked into these devices.

FFS.

Cognitively violated, I pad down to the kitchen to make myself a coffee… careful not to give voice to my capitalist grievances lest the kettle is listening.