How it could have been (Starting on time instead of fifteen minutes late) Having someone clearly identified as welcome/way of making sure people who don’t know anyone know where to come to etc. Having a note taker Introductions Pairwise. "Sit with someone you don’t know. You are going to find out their name and what,... Continue Reading →
12 years a slave to the rhetoric
[Update 13 Jan 2019: hmm, this blog has been put somewhere on facebook and had some click throughs. Could someone share the link in the comments? Curious to see what/if any comments. ALSO, this latest post on this site may be of interest- "Infiltration and environmental movements - what is to be done?"] It's... Continue Reading →
Ehre heads. On the (f)utility of theory
Short post but hopefully not a shitpost. Went to a thing recently. There was a good 'sweeping overview' history of the twentieth century around Keynesianism/neoliberalism (though it undersold the importance of ICT and containerisation for my taste). Halfway through I scrawled to a colleague "Five quid says he says nothing/has nothing to say about 'what... Continue Reading →
Anthroposcenic Anthropological gits and shiggles. #moraledrain #oldfartclimateadvice
IMO, we need a new word: The Anthroposcene. Defined as: the space (scene) where everyone who uses the word Anthropocene unself-consciously (without finger-wavy ‘air quotes’) gathers to exchange book recommendations, memes, attention, credibility etc. And where everyone who has just woken up – thanks perhaps to the IPCC’s 1.5 degrees report – to the fierce... Continue Reading →
Will #ExtinctionRebellion end up as #chugging for Friends of the Earth?
So, sitting with two very clever friends this morning, spit-balling ideas of where the whole Extinction Rebelliion thing might go, this came up: It's possible that Extinction Rebellion, if it keeps the same set of repertoires (blocking roads, disrupting meetings etc), may end up not moving beyond the students and retired who seem (I have... Continue Reading →
Dear ‘new’ #climate activist. Unsolicited advice, #oldfartclimateadvice
Dear ‘new’ climate activist, Thanks for your efforts so far and "welcome" (or of course “welcome back”). You find the “climate movement” in the UK in a pretty dismal state, to be honest. There’s a fierce battle going on about fracking, but elsewhere the Tory government has been able to get away with stripping support... Continue Reading →
Book Proposal – “Anthropocenism, or the Ecological Logic of it’s-later-than-you-think Capitalism”
Went to a reading group. The article under discussion was Jason “Capitalism in the Web of Life” Moore's 2014 article on the End of Cheap Nature.. It got a bit of a kicking from a couple of people (me, I thought it was okay). The convenor of the group introduced the paper and pointed out... Continue Reading →
Is Capitalism unsustainable? The jury’s out-ish. Is ego-fodderfication unsustainable? Sadly not/hell yes.
I don’t know how much rethinking economics is actually going on (I have my suspicions, but no hard data). I do have a good idea of how much rethinking politics/academia/civilsocietying is going on, and it’s not much at all/zero. The latest piece of hard data came tonight, at the University of Manchester. The debate/discussion was... Continue Reading →
More apocalyptic word salad
A species corsuscating on thin ice, Snap, crackle, pop. Faster faster (or else), kill (the) pussycat. How I wonder what you’re at. Kill them all Let the gods we kept creating in our own image sort them out. A fetish for fish, a fetish For bondage, human bondage. Ah, a sondage would show -has... Continue Reading →
Event: “The Resilience of Unsustainability: Cultural Backlash, Authoritarian Reflex and the Great Regression” #TransitionImpossible
After last night’s keynote, tonight it was the turn of Professor Ingolfur Blühdorn, Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, WU Vienna to deliver a talk. His title was “The Resilience of Unsustainability: Cultural Backlash, Authoritarian Reflex and the Great Regression,” which is academic-speak for “Dudes, lemme say, we’re, like, totes fubarred” This blog post gives... Continue Reading →
