Status: 1 Mar 2023

An off-hand comment from my beloved wife and a weekly vegetable box delivery has sent me down a rabbit hole of experimenting with my method of cooking roast potatoes, looking for techniques I can use to level up my roasties. Yesterday, I experimented with par-boiling the potatoes in slightly acidic water before roasting, then brushing them with a little melted butter to add some flavour as they roasted. The results were deliciously crisp potatoes with a fluffy core when eaten hot, but the texture of the leftovers was disappointing when eaten cold the following day.

Leftovers are important to us, given the haphazard balance between deadlines and spoons that runs our household, so figuring out the perfect tater roast now has a dedicated project page in my bullet journal to track future experiments and their results.

I did a long podcast taping with the PratChat folks last night – my first real “be a writer in public” thing in over a year, and only my second since the pandemic started, and I’m feeling it today. I’ve got a definite out in public hangover today – reserves a low, and largely diverted to wrangling the brain weasels my social anxiety throws my way after any public appearance or teaching gig. There shall be many cups of tea in my future.

GO READ

Cory Doctrow’s recent Wired article on the enshittification of technology spaces is also available to read on his website, and it’s highly recommended reading for anyone working in the arts/publishing/social media space. Indie publishing is often highly enamoured of these spaces and lean into tactics that work best when the spaces are new and not-yet-enshittified, which leads to a lot of folks throwing energy at making things work post-enshittification and wondering why they’re not getting results.

Far better to go in with your eyes open and assume that enshittification is coming. Yes, TikTok was great for organic reach once, but they’re past the period where they’re courting users and starting to figure out how to monetize, and with monetization comes shittiness and the desire to make you pay for reach. This isn’t new either — Amazon and Facebook have both played this game, and coaxed us all into throwing money their way for reach that used to be free — and it’s worth being aware of these things before you go all in on a particular marketing tactic.

And, not for nothing, it’s one of the reasons I’m reverting to the rather outdated technology of blogging instead of leaning into a major social media platform.

Anyway, read Doctrow’s article here.

ON THE DOCKET

Rare day without meetings or commitments, which means I’m diving into a bunch of design commissions and moving them forward. I’m also about to upload some new Brain Jar Press books to various distribution points so we can start marketing the pre-orders next week.

Still wading through two thousand fraudulent orders on the Brain Jar Press store, which means my email will periodically go insane as notifications come through. Thankfully, it seems the orders have halted for a stretch, which is especially useful given a new book launched yesterday and we need to double check every order that comes in.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 83 (with the sword of Damocles looming overhead)

BRAIN JAR INBOX: 14

BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 6