So, as per my recent Conversation article, the climate scientists have been attacked for (more than) thirty years. The UNFCCC is a hopeless case (see slightly-less recent Conversation article). It is easy to talk about how everything is fubarred, and what am I against. This below expands on the theme of attacks on climate scientists,... Continue Reading →
If you suck at designing and facilitating meatspace meetings, then - everything else being equal - you are probably going to suck big hairy dog's balls at online meetings. Is it just me? (1) Am I the only one who has been in several really painfully bad online meetings during this lockdown? Where the organisers... Continue Reading →
Think in systems, dammit. When I am frustrated (i.e. always) with the "left" endlessly reheating and repeating the same things ("wasn't 1970s social democracy great?", "the main problem is we don't have enough diverse voices" (1) ) through truly wretched online events that are every bit as stultifying and wrist-slashingly excruciating as their meatspace equivalents,... Continue Reading →
The tl:dr - six more articles, each with something of use for scholars or activists (and sometimes, for both). You should know the drill by now (one, two, three). Edwards G (2008) ‘The Lifeworld’ as a resource for social movement participation and the consequences of its colonization. Sociology 42(2): 299–316. Horton, J., & Kraftl, P.... Continue Reading →
There are other blog posts I need to write. A review of an extraordinary book about Norfolk, the Stone Age, incumbency, patriarchy and sociotechnical transitions (no, seriously it's all that and more. Staggeringly good)) Something about the intellectual work behind the job I just was interviewed for (accelerating sociotechnical transitions. Or sociomaterial transitions - or... Continue Reading →
Those who know me will put two and two together, but the rest of you can wonder why and what. This. There's a story about the beginnings of Operations Research, I think from De Landa's War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, which goes like this: trying to figure out what bits of bombers required... Continue Reading →
Right now there's a lot of politicians flapping their meat in Madrid, at the 25th "Conference of the Parties" to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Late next year they will be flapping their meat in Glasgow. It will be the first COP to be held in the UK (though there was 1994's... Continue Reading →
First I will treat you as ego-fodder. You will sit in rows, or in a circle,and you will listen to me drone on and on about my hobby-horse du jour. I don’t care what you know about the topic. I don’t want to take time away from hearing my own voice to hear your perspectives.... Continue Reading →
Hi everyone, there's a lot of us in this room, and the tables aren't really helping. I know it is gonna take a minute, and the "Elf and Safety" types may be upset, but I want to spend one of our precious 57 remaining minutes stacking the tables against the wall and making a circle... Continue Reading →
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 →
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