There is that quote by Alex Carey, the Australian wicketkeeper social scientist about three big developments in the twentieth century being - well, let me google that for me. "The 20th century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of... Continue Reading →
Essential Poem- “Against Entropy” by John M. Ford
via here The worm drives helically through the woodAnd does not know the dust left in the boreOnce made the table integral and good;And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;The names of lovers, light of other daysPerhaps you will not miss them.... Continue Reading →
Taylor Swift, cathexis, Zizek and (oof) black boxes
I came to the podcast Ordinary Unhappiness very recently while on a Wilfred Bion binge (blog post abt that stuck in development hell). The shtick seems to be that three very well-informed-on-psychoanalysis young(ish) East Coast Americans (two seem married, to each other I mean) will have a topic (Bion and groups, the 1967 film The... Continue Reading →
Who stands for an anthem? Australia from the 1970s to the 2020s
I remember going to sporting events (athletics meets, cricket) in the 1980s in a sleepy country town in South Australia (Adelaide, its capital). Most of the time no anthem would be played - everyone I knew (obvs not a random sample) regarded Advance Australia Fair with either 'no opinion' or some derision. Plodding, vacuous, nowhere... Continue Reading →
Thomas Hardy vs Christianity, via Joseph Brodsky
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 →
A late 80s vibe to the Arrived Ecological Debacle – on Signal/Hegseth and amour propre
As the t-shirt goes "it's weird being the same age as old people." You remember the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union under Mickey Gorbachev tried to shake itself from torpor with "pereistroika" and "glasnots" - or rather, Gorbie thought he could make that happen. But it didn't turn out like that, for short and... Continue Reading →
“‘Be aware of contingencies?’ Is that all ya got??”
In a spiral . Attending online events just to reassure myself that we are well and truly fubarred. On Thursday I attended one because someone has a New Book out. I put my question in the Q&A and it was resolutely ignored by the compere until they had no choice (there were no other questions... Continue Reading →
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