Dashed off thoughts again because busy af. Feeling more-than-usually maudlin because it's obvious to me now (and always was, but I used to want to/was able to pretend to think otherwise) that voluntary groups can't sustain themeselves to keep on keeping on. They decay. They then either die or shamble on, incontinent and incompetent zombie... Continue Reading →
Meso-aggressions: sassy, feisty, “proles can read? well done you” etc.
Very quickly - People like me (white, middle class, cishet male, all the other privileges) usually don't get - long-term - how exhausting it is to be constantly reminded of your place in the "pecking order" (blah blah Aristotle Great Chain of Being etc). The word "sassy" - aimed at young black women. The word... Continue Reading →
Riding the Rocket Ship to Mars – the surprisingly old elite dream of escape from climate change
"The common man (sic) "must not come to see nature as a mine and his future salvation as a rocket ride to Mars..." So came the warning in 1968, in an issue of Nebraska Law Review The Necessity to Change Man's Traditional View of Nature" by Earl Finbar Murphy, 1968 I don't know what particular... Continue Reading →
Dolphins want you to do capitalism better
You read it here first. Or second, if you get the FT Weekend and say the advert in "FT Money" on August 27th. (It may be one they have been running for a while). Got your sickbag ready? No, seriously, this is your first and last trigger warning. I could insert something here about how... Continue Reading →
Doomers, brightsiders, all missing the point: who is this “we” who can fix things/are all going to die.
There's a bunch of people on climate twitter knocking lumps off each other. (What's new). The two lump-knocking I have seen over the last few days amount to this. a) "I am no longer supporting XR because self-identified XR folks keep telling me I am a denialist for believing that optimism is good/valuable and that... Continue Reading →
Words we will need for the Anthropocene #01: “thermokarst”
Dan Savage, the advice columnist, often tells people with problems because of an impasse with their significant other(s) [too much sex, not enough sex, the wrong kind of too much sex, whatevs] that they should 'use their words.' It's good advice, and doubtless the Habermasians in the cheap seats will heckle something about Gricean maxims,... Continue Reading →
One day, civwilling, I hope to say “I haven’t missed the red mist.” Or “kiss my cathARSEis.
Uggh. I think of all the people I’ve annoyed/hurt and (because I am not a saint) the opportunities I’ve squandered/never had because one of my more obvious flaws (there are several), namely anger, lack of anger management. In the word asshole the a is surely for anger (and one of the esses is for sanctimony,... Continue Reading →
Reddit and weep – of #climatewhiplash and how things are going…
Someone pointed me at a reddit group where people swap links about the pending ecological debacle (no longer pending, actually, has solidly arrived). In it was this heart-breaker of a comment, entirely accurate. https://www.reddit.com/r/environment/comments/wb41zu/comment/ii6gczm/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 "We are solidly on the RCP 8 path and I have to work hard to not freak out about it often.... Continue Reading →
Michael Connelly’s Rene Ballard and the issue attention cycle. No, seriously
Sometimes I write about how popular culture either directly - see this one about punk singer-songwriter TV Smith - or indirectly is 'about' how the world works/policymaking. Recently I've been bingeing on the "Rene Ballard books by Michael Connelly (better known for his Harry Bosch and Micky Haller novels - Ballard is in the same... Continue Reading →
Planet of the planet-trashing apes, and I am scared af
I read this tweet. https://twitter.com/MrMatthewTodd/status/1557288961135067137 And I think about how worse-than-useless our education system and media systems are (for lots of reasons, some of them probably pretty intractable, not that we ever really tried to tract them). And how we are not joining the dots between the energy and food crises and just how bad... Continue Reading →
