Count your blessings, obviously (I've lived a life of undeserved privilege and luck. That can change, obvs we all live under a sword of Damocles) but being grateful for what you've got, and trying to contribute meaningfully are apparently solid ways not to be a miserable douche. This particular maundering comes from the fact that... Continue Reading →
Letter in MEN: You like authoritarianism, go live in North Korea
So one way that anyone to the left of Genghis Khan is baited, when they suggest even the mildest of social democratic reforms is "you like communism so much, go live in Russia". In this letter I thought it might be fun to riff on this. TURNING a blind eye - refusing to look for... Continue Reading →
Kenneth Rexroth – “Facing Extinction” (August 18, 1969)
Kenneth Rexroth was a poet, translator, thinker. Wikipedia page here. I have been reading his essays in "The Elastic Retort" and enjoying them enough to have bought another earlier collection (please don't tell Dr Wifey - she thinks I am addicted to books). There's also a bunch of Rexroth's essays online, and this one, from... Continue Reading →
Patriarchy persists – what’s a man to do?
On opposite sides of the world, women and not-enough-male allies are rightfully and righteously angry about the failures of state actors to act – at all or enough – around women being raped and murdered. The facts of the UK case is relatively straightforward. On March 2nd a young white woman, Sarah Everard, was kidnapped... Continue Reading →
Don’t budge from the budget. The responsibility of intellectuals yet again
We need to put front and centre the fact that we've blown our (carbon) budget. “We're massively off target we're massively behind.” We know that those who run official events are not going to say it front and centre (at absolute best they might mutter it under their breath while making sure that their microphone... Continue Reading →
OODA loops and cat belling: of Jason Bourne, climate activism and the end of the world
Two of my favourite mental tools are OODA loops and the fable of cat belling. I'm going to describe both and then put them together as best I can. Why? Because I think it reveals something useful about "activism", such as it is. OODA loops are an insight developed by an American fighter pilot, John... Continue Reading →
Which Deus? From which machina? Or ‘Can “the state” save us? From what? Under what circumstances?’ #climate #transitions #sustainability
Marc Hudson reflects on two academic events, and wonders if the right questions are being asked, or if "we" are pootling along happily in our comfort zones, slouching towards tenure (well, he's not) and apocalypse (well, all of us are). Over the last 24 hours I've "been" to three online seminars. The one in the... Continue Reading →
How online meetings can be done brilliantly. Ro Randall on #climate anxiety, for @centre_alt_tech
Organisations get stale. People get old, and even if they used to walk the walk, now just talk the talk. It happens. TV Smith sings "all my heroes died, while they were still alive. They were dragged down to the hole, where the blood and money flows." Not. Yesterday. Not with Rosemary Randall bringing her... Continue Reading →
White nationalist myths- who sees them, who’s “allowed” to say anything (aka “Typical Church ‘leadership’ cowardice”)
Back when white nationalism was more mainstream (I mean before the Trump resurgence, I mean, back in the period up to the partial moral awakening that was the 1960s) there was a phrase for people of colour who didn't know their place. "Uppity..." well you can fill in the rest. "Uppity" - as in -... Continue Reading →
Amnesia is the price of admission
In the same way that when you enter a prison as a cop, you have to give up your weapon. Well, when you enter the prison of the institutions, you have to give up your memory, as well as your spine. Or you can keep the memory but people will look askance and be a... Continue Reading →
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