Quick half-formed (but hopefully not half-baked) thoughts. The last post I put up on this site was a photo of a wonderful letter Noam Chomsky wrote to me in 1995, in reply to a "how do you keep your hope alive?" plea. It got a lot of traction on Twitter, with lots of likes and... Continue Reading →
One of the advantages middle-class people often have, and one that they are often blind to, is multiple opportunities to fail (because they goofed around/weren't quite good enough first time round etc). Obviously even in their lives there are chokepoints, but not as many, not as consequential as for people without the cushions of money/cultural... Continue Reading →
Just got a lovely Twitter reply - Marc. I’ve decided I’m going to get into your stuff on climate movements. Where do I start? What has worked, what doesn’t, what’s needed next. That kind of thing. Especially anything practical at city level. This request sounds lazy but I’m very time poor. Thanks! So, this is... Continue Reading →
James Baldwin was a very smart guy. For the purpose of this blog post, the key insight is from a January 1962 New York Times column, in which he wrote "not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." And so on to the UK climate... Continue Reading →
Have gotten back into the habit of long (3 to 4 hour plus) walks along the canal, feeding moorhens, ducks, swans and now even geese. There's only so much talking to himself a man can do (into a dictaphone), so podcasts have become the Way Forward. Below are some recommendations from me, but also I... Continue Reading →
I just read an article on a newspaper website about a New Politics that is apparently coming. The article came recommended by people I (still) respect, and was written by a commentator who is sincere, diligent and intelligent. And you know where this is going.... The article was, if not actually pants, then, well, pants-adjacent.... Continue Reading →
Marram. This is a new word to me, thanks to Sarah Moss, in her rather excellent 2018 work Ghost Wall. According to Wikipedia... Ammophila (synonymous with Psamma P. Beauv.) is a genus of flowering plants consisting of two or three very similar species of grasses. The common names for these grasses include marram grass, bent... Continue Reading →
This is good. Maybe you can try writing to your MP, but there doesn’t really seem to be much point doing that unless you happen to collect headed paper with some rote spiel dismissing your concerns printed on it. Props to Tom Whyman - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/18/britain-diy-tickets-illnesses-services-society See also Viable Democracy by Michael Margolis
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 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 →
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