Plutonic Rainbows

Sample arrived today. I'm not sure. I don't get the cold, church incense feel. I will check it out again in a few days.

I found Absolue Pour Le Soir 2024 to be a bold and challenging fragrance, but not entirely in a good way. The opening hits hard with a sharp cumin note that borders on harsh and medicinal, which lingers longer than I'd like. While the honeyed rose and amber drydown eventually bring some warmth and depth, the initial phase feels jarring and overly retro, almost like something an older relative might have worn decades ago. It lacks the raw, animalic edge of the original, but instead of refining it, the reformulation seems to have dulled its character. I appreciate the attempt to modernize a polarizing classic, but for me, the new version feels disjointed and ultimately disappointing.

I've developed a neuro-inspired language acquisition system that:

• Mimics child language learning
• Uses a tiny transformer architecture (4-layer, 256-dim)
• Trained on child-directed speech from the CHILDES corpus
• Features a web application with:
• Safari auto-launch functionality
• Real-time training monitoring
• Interactive model evaluation
• Cognitive tests like Wug Test and word segmentation
• API-driven interface for researchers

Next Engineering Steps

• Implement biological enhancement phase
• Add sparsity constraints via L1 regularization
• Integrate spiking neural dynamics
• Develop hierarchical attention mechanisms
• Expand evaluation framework
• Introduce curiosity-driven learning
• Establish production deployment pipeline

Future Vision

• Add multi-modal inputs (audio/visual)
• Develop real-time dialogue interface to demonstrate interactive language learning capabilities

Dawn by Frédéric Malle, composed by master perfumer Carlos Benaïm, is a powerful meditation on oud, illuminated by the sacred stillness of early morning. Part of the brand's Desert Gems collection, Dawn evokes the quiet majesty of a new day breaking over the Middle East, where the air is laced with incense, heat, and centuries of tradition. The opening is a radiant burst of pink pepper and Turkish rose, immediately introducing a sense of regal intensity. But it’s the heart — an impossibly rich, resinous oud—that defines the fragrance’s character: smoky, deep, and reverent, like ancient wood left smoldering on a temple altar.

What distinguishes Dawn is its emotional weight and balance. Benaïm tempers the wildness of oud with a warm, golden amber and the sticky, animalic depth of labdanum. The result is less confrontational than The Night (Dominique Ropion’s sibling scent in the same series), yet no less commanding. It wears like a ceremonial garment — formal, imposing, yet unexpectedly comforting in its drydown. Sillage is elegant but assured, and longevity is exceptional. Dawn is not an everyday fragrance; it’s a moment of stillness rendered in scent—timeless, spiritual, and resolutely grand.

I finished refining my general use prompt, optimised specifically for Claude when run with claude --dangerously-skip-permissions as the terminal command. It has taken me about three months to get this just right. I am confident that it will not need any more work now — at least for Opus and Sonnet 4.

Of course, when the next major model arrives, I will need to look at it again.

I ordered two Maison Francis Kurkdjian samples — Reflets d’Ambre and Absolue Pour le Soir. These are essentially re-releases from last year, with Reflets d’Ambre replacing the long-discontinued Ciel de Gum, while Absolue Pour le Soir retains its original name.

Ciel de Gum is the name of a high-end department store in Moscow. Maybe the original name, with its Russian associations was deemed not suitable in the current climate.

Reflets d’Ambre arrived a few days ago, and it does smell quite similar to Ciel de Gum. I’ll need to compare them more closely before deciding whether it’s worth purchasing as a replacement. I haven’t used Ciel de Gum since it was discontinued—thankfully, my bottle is still nearly full.

Demdike Stare & Cherrystones’ collaborative journey into the underworld of sound delivers a masterclass in dark ambient and experimental electronics. Recorded in London and Manchester, the album bristles with scrappy, industrial-noise textures reminiscent of 1970s ECM, Minimal Man, and Conrad Schnitzler, brought together with haunted vocal flourishes from Laura Lippie. This is no casual listen: Who Owns the Dark? unravels like a ritual — merging technoid shrapnel, hyper-compressed loops, and chanted incantations into psychoacoustic mazes that feel both crystalline and corrosive. At once feral and refined, it’s among the most compelling deep-gear drops of the century.

Unveiled by Heat Crimes, Avenir’s archival compendium Primitive Maxi Trial is a time-stamped mixtape of Palermo-based rave relics from 1998–2006. Sourced from CD-ROM pack detritus and MPC/VST experimentation, it refracts hardcore jungle and IDM through a prism of haunted ambient and bent tekno. Tracks jump from the jagged breakcore of CVS Recipes to the acid nods of Just Friends, weaving an uncanny tapestry that feels both deeply nostalgic and strangely new. It’s a vivid snapshot of an era, unearthed and limned with eerie clarity — a sonic archaeology well worth exploring.

Amosphère’s debut album for Hallow Ground, created in meditative isolation over three years, is a cosmic deep dive into the interplay of belief, space, and human perception. Across three generative pieces — featuring vintage organ, handmade ceramics, flute, and bass clarinet — Cosmogonical Ears conjures vast sonic architectures: from frigid organ drones and off‑tuned wooden winds to ethereal flute and church organ reveries. The result is both sculptural and cinematic — you’ll find yourself tracing the boundaries of time, an immersive meditation on the cosmos that feels as intimate as it is infinite.

It opens today — another roar into the modern age. On Saturday, I will see it in Bristol, though not in the same cinema where it all began. That theatre, where I first witnessed wonder, fell silent in the late ’90s — its curtains drawn forever, its magic folded into memory. It was 1993. I was a younger man, sitting in the hush of that darkened room as prehistory stormed back to life. The screen lit up with beasts and awe, and something in me shifted — wide-eyed, breath caught, the future vast and alive. Now, in a different cinema, older, steadier, I return not to recapture youth, but to honour it. To feel the echo of that first thunder, still rumbling somewhere beneath the years.

It’s already dropped online — and the movie has only been out for a few hours. I need to resist the temptation and wait for the full big-screen experience.

In a time when the world shimmered with optimism and edge, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren reigned as icons of the late nineteen-eighties, their adverts capturing more than clothes — they captured desire. Calvin’s vision was athletic minimalism: clean lines, sun-bleached denim, and the suggestion of motion even in stillness. Ralph, ever the storyteller, spun Americana into elegance, all polo fields and windswept hair, his models cast like Gatsby’s heirs. These brands didn’t just sell garments — they conjured a lifestyle, one of convertible drives along coastal highways, glances exchanged on tennis courts, and the promise of summer stretching endlessly ahead.

Each campaign was a window into a dream, printed across glossy magazine pages with grainy textures and radiant light. The faces, the fabrics, the fonts — they spoke of youth, confidence, and aspiration dressed in linen and ambition. Even now, decades later, those adverts hum with nostalgia: a soft-focus reminder of when fashion felt mythic and a slogan could make your pulse race. To revisit them is to time-travel, not just through style, but through feeling—back to a golden hour of elegance where image became legend.