So, I have memorised that Phil Larkin poem "This be the verse." Next up, this little beauty by Tom Hardy. " Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,And pay a million priests to bring it.After two thousand years of massWe've got as far as poison-gas. Hat tip to the late great Joe Brodsky, whose... Continue Reading →
Everybody knows (or chooses not to). On climate denial, Trump’s tariffs and what links them…
Another slapdash post (fixing a transcript of a great interview, but there's only so much you can do before you get, er, slapdash). As per that song by Leonard Cohen "everybody knows" - that we're heading for 3 or 4 degrees. That's been clear to numerate people with even a cursory understanding of how the... Continue Reading →
Degraded infrastructure of dissent – four examples
Well, it's not looking good for our species, is it? (And not so hot for most of the other species we 'share' this planet with - those microbes that eat sulphur in the deep ocean might make it through unscathed, but as for the rest of it...). Here I am going to bash out -... Continue Reading →
In the Kingdom of the Biters, the …. thick-skinned? are king?
Holy cow this is a must-read. The thing about the Trump regime(s) is that allows people to express their worst impulses. It gives permission to the atavism, the id, the sadism. And, as per the article, it allows deeply inadequate people to wield power (or, rather, strength) and get vengeance for the perceived (and actual)... Continue Reading →
Timing is everything – of spine-eels, climate change and having no idea what you are into
There's a scene near the beginning of the third (and best?) Bourne film. Bourne (Matt Damon) is meeting a journo (Paddy Considine) at Waterloo, with men with bad intentions all around. Considine is asking questions and Bourne says "you have no idea what you are into here." Which turns out to be rather - and... Continue Reading →
The most eco Doctor Who story ever? Take a bow…. Logopolis; IAM, CVE, it’s all the same
Doctor Who, the looooong-running TV show I used to be obsessed with, was ecologically-minded from the start. In the second story [broadcast from December 21, 1963] the Doctor (a Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey, though we didn't know that at the time) and his companions land on a planet that has had a nuclear... Continue Reading →
Of “open letters” about #climate -cry me a river
Short post - supposed to be decluttering my pigsty of a study [Take This(1) Seriously, dammit, Marc]. Yesterday some "elders" put out a letter about how the COP process was no longer (sic) fit for purpose and had lost its way blah blah blah. Shoot me now. I had a reaction that I suspect is... Continue Reading →
Tom Lehrer as the first great song-writer of the Anthropocene
The 37 or so songs of American satirist Tom Lehrer (1928- ) should all be part of the vocabulary of, well, everyone. They are dirty (Smut, I’m a market they can’t glut), sick (I hold your hand in mind and “Be Prepared” - “don’t solicit for your sister, that’s not nice; unless you get a... Continue Reading →
“When the stresses get tectonic” – brilliant guest post about ‘What is to be done?’
A couple of weeks ago Australian novelist Tim Winton wrote a really provocative piece called Our leaders are collaborators with fossil fuel colonialists. This is the source of our communal dread, which I would strongly recommend. I wrote a response called Winton, Fanon and what is to be done: On climate, capture, Cesaire…, which got... Continue Reading →
Seeing things that aren’t there (yet): “The promise and peril of sociotechnical visions of the future”
A Looting the Ivory Tower on Sovacool, B. 2024. The promise and peril of sociotechnical visions of the future. Nature Reviews Physics. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00774-5 Not all academic work is self-serving word-spinning helpfully quarantined behind paywalls and verbiage walls. I wouldn’t want to hazard a percentage, and it varies from a) field to field and b) taste to... Continue Reading →
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