Sunday Edition #13 - Co-Composting Collaboration

Also: Exit Through the Casino, Protocol Futurology, and new Big Wild Album

Welcome to the Sunday Edition where I share interesting articles and links alongside what I’ve been up to!

LLM-Native Media + Co-Composting

Did a co-composting collab with

Octopusyarn

about what kind of media is best for generative (LLM) AI.

Already received a good response. Thanks for reading! I also really enjoyed “co-composting” as a form of collab. Essentially, we got on a call and gamed out things we want to potentially write about. Landing on AI-native media, we then take a week or two, to co-research asynchronously, dropping links, research, and ideas into a shared Google Doc. Then, with another call, we discuss the research. Then, breaking off again, we write our own interpretations of the research with separate blog posts, before giving feedback to each other and then publishing it (I’ll share their version once it’s published).

I’ve generally struggled to digitally collaborate when there aren’t great async tools or processes available. What works well here is that it’s primarily async co-research and there not being only one piece of work/output that you have to argue/deliberate about. You can likely expand this to 3+ people too. Co-research together, take/pick/remix what you want, and then write in your voice what you believe is the most important part and then cross-link.

I’m definitely inclined to continue doing this!

Protocol Futurology

Over

Protocolized

, Timber wrote a great set of six rules of how to think about protocols in fiction. In general, it’s a great set of rules for futurology in general. How do we imagine the future, especially in a time where we’ve seen rapid technological process? The six principles are:

Principle #1: Define the future with a system of rules, not events.

Principle #2: Bundle classes of futures based on media.

Principle #3: Choose non-human continuity characters.

Principle #4: Look for the constants of history.

Principle #5: Do not make or let things go extinct.

Principle #6: Don’t assume that starting perspectives will be persistent.

The most interesting one for me is principle 5.

Nothing is ever eradicated for good. If something is headed for extinction, efforts should be made to save it.

It’s an interesting prompt: what are potentially unexpected and benign systems today that can become load-bearing unintentionally in the future? Things that, if we were to attempt to remove it, we’d actually realise how important it is/was. One example could be emojis, something that the world might not feel is truly important, but if it were scrapped, realise how much load-bearing intent lay behind a 😅.

Exit Through The Casino

Jay is one of my favourite linguistics wranglers, coming up or arriving at terms which so neatly encapsulate concepts or ideas. Like power fandoms or cultural fracking. In reference to Coinbase’s UK ad, he used the term, “exit through the casino” as a play on Banksy’s “exit through the gift shop”. The latter is/was a play on how cultural spaces grew to funnel people towards ending at a retail experience. That consumerism became increasingly intertwined with our cultural institutions.

While the Coinbase ad acts as satire against the relative economic stagnation of the UK, its implied solution is *also* dire:

‘Gambling it all on hyper finance’ is, in my opinion, one of the only avenues of perceived agency that people have to escape the rot economy they find themselves in.

“If you want out, you need to exit via the casino.”

…and

The Coinbase campaign is effective because it’s speaking to the public’s justified anger, and explicitly names the rot that we have all been told to ignore: a nation that’s been economically frozen since 2008. But it channels us away from collective political questions and towards individual financial risk.

As good as “Everything is Fine” is, the ad’s satirical despair is basically a marketing funnel for its preferred solution: “exit through the casino.” It reframes systemic failure as an opportunity for a personal gamble.

As casino culture becomes more and more mainstream, and the government validating it as a legitimate escape route, the crucial question becomes: what happens when this bet fails for the majority?

What are we going to do when the ‘exit through the casino’ proves to be a revolving door?

It’s a great encapsulation on where many neoliberal democracies are finding themselves in lately. A sense of malaise about the stagnation such that the only seeming solution out of the mess, is to gamble. It’s a sad indictment about the state of affairs (of not just the UK).

What I’ve Been Up To

📺 Watching - Eddington (2025)

I’m glad someone made a film about covid + 2020. It definitely veers into quite wild territory, leaving you as the viewer unsure how to feel about what’s playing out. It takes some stances that satirise those times that I wonder how people would feel about it. It’s gets stranger as it progresses and in part, I felt, that was the key point. The meta narrative about the film is about the algorithm and the algorithm isn’t your friend. It can be confusing doomslop, each one trying to bait you into further rabbit holes. And then everyone loses in some way except those who seek to truly manipulate.

Touch grass. Go outside.

🕹 Gaming - DK Bananza

I’m struggling to continue playing tbh. There’s not as much variety as I hoped and it’s not generally as challenging as some of the other excellent Nintendo platformers. I’m considering shelving it for now.

✍️ Writing - Novel #2

Before I continue with querying another batch of agents, I’m still revisiting the first 10 to 50 pages. I’m enjoying it and it’s been a great learning experience because some of the scenes do feel quite contrived a few months out from having finished the second draft. I think this can particularly be the case in the first act when you’re trying to subtly do exposition through show and not tell. It’s magic if done right, but it can also be far worse than a simple tell if done poorly.

🏃 Running - Taper Time!

2 weeks out from a half marathon and I’m *very* excited. I’m feeling the strongest and fittest I’ve ever been. So, touch wood, hoping to run a new personal best for the half. :)

📚 Reading - A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A great novel (yes, I see it as a novel, not a short story collection). At its best, its excellent. Some of the prose is incredible and definitely inspirational as a writer for me. Overall, the book deals with an ensemble of loosely (and not so loosely) connected characters over multiple generations, jumping forward and backwards in time and places. It’s not a novel setup, and these kinds of stories where it attempts to make you feel something about life, time, and our place in it is a hard genre to get right. But, it succeeded for me, for two reasons: 1) most of the characters are messy and most struggle against prioritising the short term against the long term, and 2) it’s about music and the music industry. Music has a keen ability to punctuate time and helps carry that feeling.

🎶 Listening - Big Wild - Stardust

Speaking of music. The new Big Wild album is out and it’s great. A favourite is Stardust.

Enjoy!

Hope you get to enjoy a lovely sunset this week, friends. See you next week.

Simon