Hello from out here on the Thames Delta, where I celebrate one full week of whatever this fucking plague is.  Someone in London was harbouring something utterly fucking medieval and breathed it on me and now I've got something that used to kill entire villages five hundred years ago. It's a miracle I'm even alive.

(Or it's man-flu, but fuck you for even thinking that. Oh yes. I can see you. I know what you're thinking. I'll have you know that I've survived the bird flu and the swine flu in the past, and even, one time, survived motor neurone disease that absolutely was not a hangover caused by drinking all the free whisky at the WIRED UK launch party. I know what I'm talking about.)

So, I am sick. And have spent a lot of the week laying around fighting off death and reading the news. Which has been fun, as you can imagine. And fielding messages from friends and acquaintances asking if these are, in fact, The End Times.

I mean, if you're in Ukraine, it probably doesn't look like the Happy Times, right? And if you're in Poland or Belarus you're a little more nervous than you were on Friday, given recent stories. If you're in Turkey you're wondering what the fuck's next. There are plenty of places where it looks literally like hell, too. If you're here in the UK, you're dealing with a ruling class exposed as being entirely made of racists, opportunists and stark idiots by looking into things like sustainable farming and googling "how to obtain gold coins."

These are not the End Times. This is the Warning. It's a hell of a time to be alive.

Please do always bear in mind that I'm probably completely mad and that my friends shouldn't ask me these questions.

So watch a video of Jackie Chan having his day made, and then get up.

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Since I was a good boy and I paid my tax bill from my deathbed, I decided to treat myself to an el cheapo tablet device. A wifi only thing called an Amazon Fire HD 8. I prefer to only read or listen to news - television news seems kind of broken to me. But the eyes ain't quite what they were, and magazine type is often very small, and I don't always have the strong light I need. I already have some magazines auto-subscribed to my Kindle Paperlight, but that device lives in the bedroom, and, already being somewhat invested in the Amazon ecosystem, I thought having a cheap object that gave me access to my entire digital library there might be interesting. 

I mean, yes, the entire object is a sales-enabling device. That's why it's so cheap. But I was curious to see how it worked.

The thing that immediately hits you is that digital magazines really did strike a hard wall. Even before Amazon and their magazine partners figured out how to reformat magazines properly for tablets.  They mostly don't even reflow text to fit the screen. Luckily, The Wire magazine, which is now unreadable for me without strong light, already flows its text in columns, so you can just zoom up what are basically jpg shots of the print magazine.

I went shopping, and picked up World Policy Journal, which turned out to have a Molly Crabapple cover. And, thankfully, can be made readable. HUCK magazine reflows quite well, too.

(I already read the London Review Of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and Foreign Policy on the Paperlight as subscriptions.)

When I ran my podcast list last week, several people commented that I had no comedy or entertainment programmes on my list, and it was all very serious and topical. Listen, I read for pleasure most nights and I have Netflix. I have music podcasts.

Terrible speakers, as you'd expect, but surprisingly strong wifi aerials. No need to add social media connections to it. You can just grab your reading material. or download your AV, and then get offline with it if you want to. Its "screensaver" is always an ad - but so easy to ignore that it's pretty much pointless. On its basic settings, it's a device that doesn't really talk to you. It's Amazon - it expects you to come to it. If you don't, it'll just sit there until you decide you want something. Which is a remarkably peaceful experience.

Look, we all had fun in the superconnected era. I know I did. But Kindles appeal to me, because they're quiet devices that are really just for reading, with simple network affordances that bring you the best of promised consumer futures - any book or magazine within (often reasonable) limitations, immediately, to your hand, and nothing else. No toxic cacophony of bullshit. Calm technology. 

• My friend Cory Doctorow has finally written a new novel for adults, WALKAWAY, and you can pre-order a signed copy already!  The book sounds like a lot of fun, and I'll be getting it.
• Hey, I'm also going to want a copy of Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley by Jenna Sutela, which is apparently forthcoming this year, but I cannot find any way to pre-order it anywhere. If anyone knows how I can lay my hands on a copy of this book, please drop me a note. 
• Ed Brubaker, purveyor of fine crime fiction, has a newsletter, which goes out every couple of weeks. And it seems like nobody knows about it. So get in now.   tinyurl.com/edbrubaker-list
• New album by Clara Engel already - ARCTIC POPPIES. If you read TREES, you'd get why that title would immediately appeal to me.
• INDEX ON CENSORSHIP has a newsletter now.

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I'm appearing at the North London Literary Festival on March 16.  (FB event page)

Being interviewed onstage, talking about NORMAL, Brexit, dystopia and all the other cheerful stuff you'd expect me to be asked about in this, the year of the abyss gaze.

Unusually, this will not be my own British appearance this year. Or even before the end of March.

Additionally, I've been told to expect an announcement of one of my more unusual upcoming works on Wednesday.

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I'm reading DARK MONEY by Jane Mayer right now, because Kelly Sue told me to, and I almost always do what Kelly Sue tells me to. I imagine I will report on that next week. Next week's letter is likely to be very very long and full of new things. But now, I'm rolling this up into a short note rather than an epic rant, just to say hello, and to see how you are, and to tell you to keep going, because, even though you're there wherever you are, and I'm out here on the Thames Delta, I'm right here with you. Hold on tight.  Wherever we're headed, we're headed there together. I've got you. Hold fast.