JOURNAL 29 novembre 2025

Je finis mon thé puis je redescends. Il y a beaucoup de monde aujourd'hui, ça sent la fin de l'année scolaire. Les parents viennent voir un peu comment ça se passe ici pour les inscriptions en janvier février...

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Terminé ! olala yaura des inscriptions en février on dirait 😎 Il paraît les enfants et les ados font une super publicité autour d'eux 😅 Maintenant on va enfin aller manger, A, T.san l'ex secrétaire, Yôko qui a officiellement les clés, c’est elle qui va fermer la boutique, ka chan et moi.

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On s'est quittées, chacune repartie de son côté. Restent nous deux, on se paye le love hôtel ce soir, demain matin grasse mat´ avec petit déjeuner de reines et baignoire à remous, on se refuse rien, on est fatiguées on a besoin de se dorloter. Takaichi trouve que les Japonais ne travaillent pas assez. La plupart n'ont même plus de vie privée, le métro le soir est plein de zombies, mais le matin aussi ! On est en train de tous devenir fous. Comptez pas sur moi, je veux pas mourir au travail, et je veux pas que ma chérie meure aussi. C'est dingo que ce soit moi la Japonaise qui la force à ralentir. La France m'a convaincue de ça, une vraie révolution culturelle, mais j'ai intégré. Même si c’est vrai que moi aussi je travaille trop, mais il y a un truc quand même, c’est que nous deux on travaille, oui, mais on fait ce qu'on aime faire, alors c’est supportable. En attendant le bain est prêt, on a une baignoire immense même pour deux !

Hemingway is an app that checks your text for difficult sentences, adverbs, and passive voice. The new desktop version has just landed, and I'm testing it now.

The app highlights readability problems:

• hard sentences (yellow)
• very hard sentences (red)
• adverbs
• simplifiable phrases
• passive voice

If you strive for lean prose, having the problem areas flagged makes editing easier.

It ticks the minimal writing environment boxes. In Write mode, it's just you and your text. There’s Markdown support, live preview, and HTML export. And it has a nice icon, which matters more to Mac users than they'd care to admit.

But I won't be switching to Hemingway just yet. The app is buggy. On a newish iMac, scrolling lags. Misspelled word underlining can be in the wrong places.

Despite my system language being set to British English, Hemingway marks Britishisms as errors. And the licence agreement permits only one user on one machine.

Still, these are fixable problems. What interests me more is a criticism that can also be levelled at the web version: Hemingway can leave text a little limp.

Here's the famous opening of A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Hemingway app scores it at grade 58 — essentially unreadable. Add the 14 full stops Hemingway would like, and you get this:

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light. It was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. We were all going direct to Heaven. We were all going direct the other way. In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Grade 2. Much better.

Is it an improvement? No: Dickens was Dickens. But there isn’t a sub-editor alive today who wouldn’t punctuate the hell out of that sentence.

The edit doesn’t ruin the Dickens. It’s the same words in the same order. But it does drain its identity and its specialness.

The app assumes all long sentences are hard to read. I’m not expert on readability, but Dickens’ introduction isn't that hard to read.

Some adverbs are advisable. The passive voice is occasionally useful. Long sentences can be beautiful.

Its recommendations are perfect for utilitarian text — for which there are many uses. But for creative writing, handle with care. Let your instincts arbitrate.

Plain English doesn't have to be dull. But for the jobbing writer, Hemingway app isn't ready to be first-choice editor—not yet. And if creativity is high on your priority list, it may never be.

#notes #july2014

17 November 2025

Floor 2 still life: In a 1956 interview with James Johnson Sweeney, Duchamp explains that “the danger is to lead yourself into a form of taste,” and this painting feels like it may have been an affirmation of that idea. The tension between that concept and dogged will to repeatedly poke at the personal/familiar is a potentially fruitful gap to widen; a cultivating of the ability to simultaneously self-reflect and self-negate. Relevant to how after being a vagabond for close to four months now, the idea of the familiar has warped. Paintings that are emerging are of consistent concerns popping up in the least consistent of places. They're waypoints, places to slow the senses into thought.

As London wraps itself in autumn grey, I'm back at my desk in the corner, tapping away at a mechanical keyboard by the glow of an upward-pointed anglepoised lamp.

Outside: dinge, drizzle, perhaps a gale. Inside: a favourite cardigan and the consequential satisfaction of lower gas bills.

There's something about putting the clocks back that feels like permission to settle in. The walk to the cafe comes with sodden leaves to kick and to contemplate.

I've always watched the seasons change, but the slow death that is autumn remains the most beautiful.

Spring and summer are for going out, keeping up, being busy. Autumn and winter are for actually doing things. Proper, considered, slow doing.

Autumn is the season of working from home. Autumn is the season for writing.

#notes #october2013

Person Media — Journey To Fix Loneliness!

❞ If you keep gazing at your inspiration, you could become a genius. ~ me

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Yes — that was me staring at a random ad card someone slipped under my door.

Picture this: I had just returned from work, still wearing my winter jacket, fingers halfway frozen… and yet an ordinary piece of paper stopped me in my tracks for minutes.

Not TikTok. Not Instagram. Not an inspirational book.

A card.

But before I tell you why that card shook me, let me rewind a little.

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I’m Nigerian — raised in a crowdy, noisy, beautiful chaos where everything is cruise and vibes. If you told someone you were sad, they’d ask if you’ve eaten. Depression? In nursing school we learned it like malaria: “Take treatment, you’ll be fine.” Simple. Surface-level. Clinical.

Then I left home.

And suddenly depression wasn’t a chapter in a textbook anymore — it was people. Real people. People groomed in loneliness without even knowing.

Traveling and working as a nurse, something hit me hard:

Depression is often rooted in loneliness — and loneliness doesn’t respond to medication. It responds to presence.

And loneliness isn’t just “sadness.” It can lead to suicide. It can break marriages. It can destroy teenagers. It can make a whole city feel emotionally hollow.

You know what shocked me?

People in crowded trains… lonely. People in noisy restaurants… lonely. People married for 10 years… still lonely.

Presence is not “someone else in the room.” Presence is someone with you.

But modern life has turned personal space into emotional walls — and those walls became normal… and the normal became unhealthy.

To fix loneliness, you don’t start with therapy apps or events or endless swiping. You start with Presence → Relationship.

But even those two are not enough. There’s something deeper under them… hiding.

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Let’s talk about social media.

Yes, we have “connection apps.” But do we really connect?

Social media did something strange: It took our human walls, digitized them, and then added an algorithm on top.

So instead of reaching for each other, we reach for screens. Instead of being ourselves, we perform. Instead of presence, we get content. Instead of identity, we get profiles.

Humans became spectators of each other. And the world became lonelier than ever.

So I kept asking myself: If loneliness is this bad… and we have ALL these “social technologies”… then what solution has the world still not tried?

Finland made the question louder for me. A calm, beautiful country — and yet loneliness is everywhere. Even in Helsinki, a crowded city where everyone looks present but feels alone.

Events? Meetups? Apps?

They try. But they miss something fundamental.

I knew we needed something different. Something weird. Something bold. Something out of the box.

And then… the card happened.

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So back to that evening.

On the card, someone listed:

• Home tidying
• Dishwashing
• Errands

But the last item made me freeze:

Companionship.

In Finnish. I don’t even remember the exact word. But the meaning was clear: spending time with someone.

And instantly, something burst open inside me:

“Yes, Paul! This is possible! This is doable! This is what you’ve been trying to articulate!”

I paced around my room like a madman. Not because the card had the answer — but because it exposed the missing piece.

Because my first reaction wasn’t excitement.

It was fear.

Who is this person? Man or woman? Older? Younger? Safe? Unsafe? Can I trust them? Can I let them into my personal space?

And immediately I understood:

The real problem wasn’t loneliness. The real problem was identity.

Loneliness is the disease. Identity is the immune system.

If I don’t know who you are, I cannot let you into my life. Not for companionship. Not for presence. Not even for a 30-minute conversation.

THAT was the revelation.

To fix loneliness, we must fix identity first.

Identity → Presence → Relationship → Time.

Not the social media way. Not the current real-world way. But the human way.

Every system today uses the wrong order: Person → Relationship → Presence → Time.

That’s why “personal space” becomes a wall. That’s why everything feels unsafe. That’s why presence feels risky.

But the natural order — the human order — is:

PERSON → PRESENCE → RELATIONSHIP → TIME

Person = who Presence = what can they do with me? Relationship = what are they to me? Time = what are we becoming?

That’s companionship.

That’s humanity.

And that’s exactly what both the online and offline world broke.

Identity was the missing key. Companionship starts with a person, not a profile. Presence starts with identity, not with content.

This is the real beginning of the journey.

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And that’s why we’re building PERSON MEDIA.

Not social media. Person Media.

Where the medium isn’t content or feeds — the medium is the person.

Our tagline says it all:

Putting the real you with the people that matter.

PUTTING → presence THE REAL YOU → identity WITH PEOPLE → relationship THAT MATTER → meaningful time

That’s the entire blueprint.

And I’m starting with something simple but powerful:

The Presence Calendar.

A living map of human presence:

• Yesterday: mood
• Today: presence
• Tomorrow: companionship windows

A gentle reminder that the world hasn’t abandoned you — it’s just become harder to see.

Person Media is built for:

Identity. Presence. Companionship. Humanity.

The world already has feeds. What we don’t have is each other.

More soon.

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Before you go…

How do you feel about this?

I want to hear your story.

15 November 2025

Image inventory: bathroom with tub that turns into a shower by a single glass panel covering half of of its width, a vinyl sign for development plans zip-tied to a fence showing a digitally-rendered image of an empty white room with high arched ceilings and fluorescent white lighting, the corner of a third floor hotel room ceiling that marks a separation between the gray interior and the blue sky outside, a U.S.A forever postage stamp of a red and green compass torn in half with a black ink stamp of an eagle and the numbers 1776 overlapping it, reflection of the sky hovering over a glass-enclosed hotel toilet, a pillow on a chair as an ill-fitting cushion, a bicycle tire missing the entirety of its hub locked to a bicycle stand with a bicycle lock, a slide on a children's playground in the shape of a tongue extending from an open mouth, the empty interior of a stainless steel reusable water bottle, shadows falling over/into a lined notebook, a headless mannequin wearing three layers of black rain jackets, a small brown house with three windows and a satellite dish, a stained-glass door centerpiece of a green leaf pattern spanning the length of a background that fades from pure white to pure black, a mural of a cactus in the middle of Dalston, a wet medical glove on the ground with its middle finger extended, a reflection of a lamppost in a large puddle, a fox sitting on the edge of a train platform, seven satellites attached to four flat windows, silver curtains, rainbow oil in a puddle of rain.