Horizontalism is a trap. And I want to emphasize rather strongly that this is not some academic point. As an unnamed Egyptian revolutionary puts it: "In New York or Paris, if you do a horizontal, leaderless, and post-ideological uprising, and it doesn't work out, you just get a media or academic career afterward. Out here... Continue Reading →
This from the novel "Bad Timing" (based on a script for a controversial film starring Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Denholm Elliott and Harvey Keitel, directed by Nicolas Roeg. I found myself thinking that if I couldn’t seduce some hyper-intelligent professor from New York then I didn’t know New York, or academics, never having met a... Continue Reading →
Items discussed Doctorow, C. 2024. We may not know what’s in the box: but we can tell if it’s been damaged in transit. March 25 Tkacik, M. 2024. Suicide Mission. The American Prospect, March 28 Davies, W. 2024. Anti-market. London Review of Books, vol 46, no 7 These three articles will, separately and especially together,... Continue Reading →
So, I have a page on this site called "vocabulation", and a gdrive spreadsheet of the same name. To each I add words (neologisms, foreign, obscure, whatever) that I did not know. No, I am not a bit strange at all. Why do you ask? Anyhow, here's the latest list to be added. Aasvogel -... Continue Reading →
No names, but this: On my two hour pre-work walk along the canal tow-path to feed moorhens/ducks/swans/all-the-birds-in-the-hedges I listened to four whole podcasts. One was about carbon capture and storage and it was okay I guess, but really didn't drill down (see what I did there) into the history of it all, or talk about... Continue Reading →
I won't mention the name of it, but I just listened to an unusually vacuous podcast by Important And Serious People. No gory details, but this - in the discussion of whether 1.5 degrees target was dead, they didn't even have the wherewithal to look at the history of it as a target (let alone... Continue Reading →
Two great (imo) quotes from two novelists. Laing is doing an Acker-cosplay (and doing it well. Actually, I am being a bit unfair/dismissive. There's more to it than that, but you need to know your Acker (and I don't) to get all the gags). Hartmann's book, which I read maybe 15 years ago is a... Continue Reading →
Someone my age just went to Dignitas, the assisted dying place in Switzerland. It concentrates the mind, of course. She had stage 4 bowel cancer and things were about to get seriously unpleasant. There's an interview with her in the Guardian, conducted the night before she did the deed. Asked about the dangers of people... Continue Reading →
This is an “ideal type,” as in Your Mileage May Vary etc. It’s loosely based on the hype cycle, for what that’s worth. I wrote about this in the context of Strategic Action Fields a few years ago, it never got published. I should dig that out. Whatever. The Honeymoon Phase The Honeymoon ends The... Continue Reading →
You know when you properly encounter a new idea and then you "see" its applications everywhere (and you overuse it/misuse it). To riff on a good saying - "when you've got a new shiny hammer that feels good, every problem looks like a nail" (1). Well, that's me and Wilfred Bion's idea of the work-group... Continue Reading →
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