At some point in the mid-late 1980s (I think), I read a novel written in the 60s or 70s (I think) about submarine warfare. This was pre-Tom Clancy stuff, not technoporn. More the gritty, sweaty industrial stuff. Anyway, in the book in question (Event-1000?) a submarine is damaged (I forget if due to hostile action,... Continue Reading →
Staring into Buridan’s ass hole
Yesterday I met someone formally for the first time (we’d crossed paths a couple of weeks earlier). And he told me some background about the person in charge of a current campaign that helped me see recent events in a new light. Without getting into libelous details, suffice to say that sometimes people are using... Continue Reading →
Pilate-Lite –Frank Hardy, “The Dead are Many” and drowning in AI slop
John 18: 38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. I did not buy a copy of Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory (that’s a lie). I did not spend a... Continue Reading →
What am I even doing here?
I met up with an old friend recently. Right at the end she asked if I wanted feedback on blog posts I had sent her. I knew roughly what was coming, because I have heard it once or thrice before. The main problems (before you get to the content) are around even understanding what the... Continue Reading →
Policy entrepreneurs and giving the ideal speech community a nudge (a fictional example)
Thanks to a rather brilliant writer (Beejay Silcox, since you ask), I read an 'Outback Noir' novel, by Garry Disher. It involves a cop (bent? Seems not, but who can tell and what is bent anyway) exiled from the bright lights of the (checks notes) big "city," Adelaide to - as the Americans say -... Continue Reading →
“There’s a hole in my movement, dear Liza…” (aka “caught in a trap, can’t walk out…”)
A good friend recently pointed me at a very good (imo, ymmv obvs) article "education for democratic resilience." It's full of quotable bits but for now Imma riff on this - "I believe one reason is that too few Americans understand the nuts-and-bolts of associations. An initial meeting often draws many concerned people, who may... Continue Reading →
How will “the Establishment” respond to the Greens? What other challenges do the Greens face? (InstaPunditry)
In the end, it was not even close. The victory of the Green Party in the Gorton and Denton bye-election is, I think that much abused word “historic.” But history has different meanings. In five years we might look back on this as the "moment that Labour changed"; unlikely when I narrated the vomit draft... Continue Reading →
Staggering depths of depravity: Tuskegee Syphilis study
Tl:dr - A US government-funded study allowed African American men with syphilis to go untreated, long after cheap effective treatments were available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study I knew about this one (EVERYBODY should know about this one). But Natasha Tidd’s excellent book “A Short History of the World in 50 Lies” has a great chapter on this. In... Continue Reading →
Ressentiment, white rage and… Samuel Johnson?
Hardly a new observation, but I just quote posted this on Bluesky in response to someone who had copped flak for writing an obituary of a talented black female scientist, Gladys Mae West. "Nothing drives sexist racists more wild than evidence that there are women of colour smarter than them, who achieved more than they... Continue Reading →
Useful dystopian fiction about US breakdown – ideas? (I have three)
UPDATE - three suggestions by a whip-smart friend... Well, fiction can help us make maps of the way the world is/might be going (1). Given the long-gestating but finally arriving proper shitshow in the USA (2), it seems like a good idea to get together a fiction reading list. Without further adieu (3) they are... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 