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Hello from out here on the Thames Delta. Quickish note this week - what was supposed to be a week of working on personal projects turned into anything but. The list of this week’s bullshit included having to arrange new photo ID, which is a complete faff, and, let me tell you, the UK government’s digital initiatives are just as broken as you would expect them to be. But, if I’m very lucky, I have a new passport on the way. Just in time for everyone to run out of jet fuel. I haven’t been on a plane since 2019, but I miss Europe, and I’m feeling ready to wander again. (AJ Brady will read that and mutter “I told you so” to herself.)

Anyway, I’m lining up some new stuff for next week, as Orbital Operations slowly turns another corner, my days are changing shape, life is good, and here’s some things I did and saw last week.

THE WORLD SERVICE

Chinese humanoid robots now run as fast as Usain Bolt.

Device that can induce smells using only ultrasound.

The Earth is currently flying through an asteroid debris field.

Masha Foya:

OPERATIONS

The daytime temperatures are lifting - not that they stayed low for long, this winter - and the heavy clothes are being put away. This is a clear signal to the world that it will snow next week. The sun’s out. I’ve broken out the dark indigo midweight denims, with a boat-neck long sleeve Breton, old Julbo Sherpa shades that they don’t make any more, and actual blue suede shoes. Apple and cherry blossom are happening. Warm today. Glass of wine in the garden with a cigarillo. The mancub is laying on his back in the grass playing with insects. 

Main life hack: buy clothes out of season. I am terrible at spending money on myself, generally, and am berated and mocked for it constantly. However, buying my winter clothes in summer and my summer clothes in winter is so much cheaper that it’s mad not to. Another couple of months and I’ll be looking at new winter clothes, which will mostly be trousers because I am having to punch new holes in my belts in order to keep my current ones up and I am not yet at the point where I am going to buy braces. If I’m going to wear braces then I may as well say fuckit and buy those old-geezer high waisted trousers that you wear just under your man-boobs so that your paunch fills the crotch.

Working on episode 5 of PROJECT BORLEY this week. I had what sounded to me like a great idea, ran it past the artist, who loved it, and three hours later I sat down and realised it was going to be horribly fucking difficult to write. So I have done this to myself. You won’t see it for probably eighteen months. I will probably be complaining about this piece for weeks.

Pages incoming on PROJECT MACHU PICCHU and PROJECT SHANKILL. These are both projects for this newsletter, as OO’s delayed pivot begins. 

I am a whisky man, as you all know, but I cannot ever pass up a good vodka martini before dinner.

The Julianna Barwick/Mary Lattimore gig last weekend in London was very good, as was the support act, Vines.

The venue, EARtH, is one I’d go back to - it’s a rescued Art Deco cinema from 1930, and wonderful, a huge, ragged-edged space with a very intelligent renovation.

As I write this, I’m getting ready to go out to Konsztrukting Soundz - two gigs in eight days! Evening 24 looks fun - click through here to see all the links to the people playing, including the returning Teresa Hackel, whom I mentioned again last week.

Find more Lordess Foudre work at her Instagram and Substack.

ORBITAL

An article on constructed languages, or conlangs, a subject that’s interested me for years. Useful stuff. The trigger for this piece seems to be Cameron’s AVATAR films, which of course contain that linguistic gag that’s always amused me: the name of the alien race in those films, Na’vi, is an anagram of the word “native” with the letters ET taken out.

A message from our supporters this week:

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Try It Now.

Artist, writer and educator Rain DeGrey moved to the wilderness after a lifetime in California and this is the record of her discovery of the land and the seasons. This is her newsletter.

Todd Blackwood is the creator of NOSFERATU: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. See more of his art on his IG.

If you want to work together this year, or if you’re doing something creative you want more people to know about, or if you think there’s something Orbital Operations should be covering, hit reply to this newsletter to shoot a note to the office.

OPS

BOOKS AND MUSIC ETC

After all, one did not write a book for other people. Any more than one wrote it for an already existing self. One wrote it, in fact, to renew one’s own self in the process of writing, and creatively go beyond its previous limits. Or in other words: to transcend oneself. Thus it is not for others that each person transcends himself; one writes books and invents machines that were demanded nowhere.

I’ve resigned myself to the idea that I will read fewer books this year, because the ones in my stack are generally long and difficult. It’s taken me several weeks to get through THE VISIONARIES by Wolfram Eilenberger, which is not as well-written as the other book by him I’ve read, TIME OF THE MAGICIANS, and since both books have the same translator, the busted sentences, tangled syntaxes and wild tonal inconsistencies are all on Eilenberger and his original editor. It is, despite that, full of good stuff. It follows the lives of four female philosophers - Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Ayn Rand and Simone Weil - in the period 1933-1943, showing their intellectual emergence and comparing and contrasting their lives. They didn’t really know each other: de Beauvoir and Weil met once, and de Beauvoir records that meeting:

I don’t know how the conversation got started; she declared in no uncertain tones that only one thing mattered in the world: the revolution which would feed all the starving people of the earth. I retorted, no less peremptorily, that the problem was not to make men happy, but to find the reason for their existence. She looked me up and down: “It’s easy to see you’ve never been hungry,” she snapped. Our relations ended right there.

THE VISIONARIES, Wolfram Eilenberger (UK) (US)

I’ve only read one Robert Caro book, his short treatise on how he works, which was very good. So, since I’m apparently doing long books this year, I decided to pick up one of his doorstops:

This book covers the period immediately before JFK’s killing, the transition and the early period of his presidency. The book is huge, the print is small, the paper seems to drink light rather than reflect it, but Caro is a marvellously readable writer, not at all the dry lecturer once might expect, more like a massively erudite storyteller.

THE PASSAGE OF POWER, Robert Caro (UK) (US)

New Sunn O))) record. Amazon (UK) (US) or just grab it from Bandcamp, like I did, where you can stream the whole thing for free first. If you know Sunn O))), you know what you’re getting. If you don’t, go to the Bandcamp stream, turn the sound up and be immersed in the sound of the abyss.

Last week, I asked you:

How many watches do you own?

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ None - I have a phone, because it's 2026 (175)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ One - why would I need more than one? (197)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 2 - 5 (322)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 6 - 10 (85)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 10 - 20 (27)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I have a sickness (20)
826 Votes

via @beehiiv polls

GOT MORE TIME?

LTD

I keep a digital writer’s notebook and you’re invited to read over my shoulder.

generally: 13apr26

going going: 14apr26

shades: 15apr26

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Car’s here to get me to my gig, so I’m out. Tomorrow I am sowing more seeds, and next Sunday I am going to bring you many new things to look out. Take care, and I hope you sit down with me again in a week.

W