In 2002 I got some weird-ass bug, probably from having been in Cambodia. I ended up in a lot of pain (probably as much as in my life) and on a hospital gurney. And then they gave me some morphine. Holy mother of God that stuff is the shit. You just... the pain just... you... Continue Reading →
What next for XR? Gazing dimly into my crystal balls #oldfartclimateadvice
Tl:dr Hard to see radical granular climate action in the UK continuing beyond early 2021 at the latest. But I could be wrong. Firstly the disclaimers: Disclaimer the first: Who the hell knows? Who the hell knows anything anymore? Disclaimer the second: In cosmic scheme of things it doesn’t matter- we are a dead species... Continue Reading →
The emotacycle- what it is, why it matters, what is to be done?
The article first explains the emotacyle and its four phases, then what its consequences are. Given that these are (on the whole) negative, the obvious question ‘why does it persist?’ is next addressed. Finally, the all-important ‘What is to be Done?’ question receives a response, albeit an anemic and incomplete one. What is the... Continue Reading →
Of Greta, misogyny, patriarchy, technology and shattered dreams
On Twitter right now (in my stream anyhow) people are talking about why Greta Thunberg, Jamie Margolin and AOC are triggering such incandescent (old, white) male rage. I've written a bit about this here and here, but here's a recap/short0version. This, in my opinion, goes back way further than August 2018, when one Swedish girl... Continue Reading →
Of cargo cults, social movements and accelerating transitions. #magicalthinking
Imagine tribespeople in the South Pacific. Sure, lots of trading, and contact with Europeans (good and bad). But what happened in 1942 and 1943 must have blown their minds. Giant white men who could fly arrived in big metal birds, with chewing gum and coca cola. And then, as quickly as they came (with the... Continue Reading →
Karma does what karma does.
About 15 years ago I went on a training day (it didn’t work – I stayed a douche). It was union steward training. Mostly those days were death by powerpoint, info-deficit tosh. This one thing I am about to describe, though, it stands out. It was a card game/exercise. Each individual was given a card... Continue Reading →
Desolation angels
She had been asked to attend a shit meeting, at which one of the blithely ignorant assholes the electorate seems to love was talking among his friends. She was sent on an intelligence-gathering effort, for an environmental pressure group. And she told me, fighting back the tears, that it had been a truly awful, traumatising... Continue Reading →
The need for/inevitability of magical thinking
We can laugh at the people buying their Make America Great Again hats (made in China) and chanting at Trump rallies for the return of a mis-remembered past. It’s easy to see that they want something that is difficult (impossible) to deliver and that they want it with no particular effort on their part, beyond... Continue Reading →
Why we are doomed: of meetings, ghosts and the QWERTY keyboard
So, I wrote this over a year ago. Nothing I have seen from the "new" organisations on the scene gives me any cause to revise what I wrote back then. I am less prone to flounces and resentment grenades, but only marginally so. There's a much shorter (and life is short, so read that instead?)... Continue Reading →
Perm or Perineum? Of social movement emotions, retronyms and… sexism.
We’re all going to die. And we’re all going to die in large or small (1) part because social movement organisations run on emotion rather than anything approaching strategy. And they spend all their time trying to get the next hit (2), rather than getting folks to do the long, slow, boring work of social... Continue Reading →
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