I was sat recently in a room as white as Cumbria. It was full (80ish) of white people who sincerely believe that the revolution will only come when the last capitalist is strangled with the intestines of the last racist. There were three women of colour present. I was sat next to one, a friend,... 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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Lunch with a smart friend with whom I often disagree (politiely). This time it is different, maybe, he says (in response to my point that we've known about the essential unsustainability of techno-accelerationist consumerism since the late 1960s - Earth Day, The Limits to Growth, Blueprint for Survival in 1970, 1972 and 1972: I can... 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 →
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 →
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 →
Easy it is to see the dynamics playing out in people we don't like. Easy it is to see how the complexities, ambiguities and downright extra-messiness of Modern Life can lead people to reach for simple(minded) "solutions" and slogans like "Make America Great Again" and "Take Back Control." Not so easy to spot it, or... Continue Reading →
marchudson.net 