Will admit that I am losing the will to ... write the same thing over and over. This occurring long after others have lost the will to read the same thing over and over. And yet we plod on (or I do). There's a two page comment in the latest Nature Climate Change (an academic... Continue Reading →
There is abyss-staring and then there is abyss-staring. I am struggling to finish an overdue book. It's running in quicksand. And part (only part) of the problem is I just want to say "why are ANY OF US taking this seriously?" I mean, you really have to be very wilfully and enthusiastically ignorant to believe... Continue Reading →
Someone, with good intentions, DMEd me this clip from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I think in response to my "what's beyond the edge of tomorrow?" post. https://twitter.com/RealTadzioM/status/1723347798324642139 The thing that enrages and exhausts me is that the repertoires of what counts as "fighting" are so narrow and (usually) doomed to failure. And that there is... Continue Reading →
Marc Maron has a line I like "And don't misunderstand me, I have no hope. I think if you have hope, what are you f---ing seven?." Yes, yes, Sarah Connor and "no future but what we make." But we "make" the future under the constraints - "not in the conditions of our own choosing" - of what has... Continue Reading →
Climate Twitter is lighting up over the "in the pipeline" article. Quick, quick, pick a side - are you a Mann-ite or a Hansen-ite? All I want to know is how soon we will know (and how) which team won. Five years should be enough, I'd guess... Not sure exactly what the metrics would be.... Continue Reading →
What if you need not to defer your own gratification (the Marshmallow Test and all that) but someone else's? But what if doing that causes you so much grief you have to stop? Damned if you do, damned if you don't etc - something akin to what Gregory Bateson had in mind with his concept... Continue Reading →
So, a couple of pieces in the Grauniad about the criminalisation of dissent (here and here) and the use of facial-recognition technologies. It turns out (and you may be wanting to sit down when you read this) that all that talk about civil liberties, the importance of democracy etc etc is, well "public relations theory... Continue Reading →
If you don't know the song Ignoreland, by REM, here you go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03gauuHIgME Here are the lyrics. It's about the "Reagan Revolution" - the successful attempt to weaponise race-hate, anti-feminism, anti-environmentalism, by creating the appearance of a grassroots counter-Sixties movement. The then-new technology of direct mail marketing (started by Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern and... Continue Reading →
Trying to finish some overdue work. Have many ways of deferring, procrastinating.Meanwhile, things are unravelling (or, from another perspective, the pre-1945 norms of violence and horror are reasserting themselves, now that social democracy is in its grave. It depends how you want to look at it). I don't know how things would be re-ravelled, tbh.... Continue Reading →
Learnt a new word today, via one of those Special Ops memoirs I bought in a charity shop between bouts of writing. rumint (uncountable) (US) "Information of dubious veracity, particularly when grounded in rumor." And of course, rumint is addictive, while also not being so great for building shared situational (or shituational, as I prefer it)... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 