Another week another tedious attack on “wokery” in the New York Times. This is by the conservative David Brooks, but I’ve seen it endorsed by “class-struggle” anti-wokists. Anyway, Brooks helpfully lists the characteristics of wokery in bullet-points, enabling some immediate commentary: “We shouldn’t emphasize what unites all human beings; we should emphasize what divides us.” […]
Academia
My favourite ever podcast, Literary Friction, is finishing after ten great years of monthly episodes interviewing authors and talking about books. I’d begun to guess something was up when, over the past few months, its hosts – Octavia Bright and Carrie Plitt – remarked several times about how long they’d been going. Still, when they […]
1. Ideology Silicon Valley’s ideology is this: Libertarianism for me. Feudalism for thee. In more detail: • Surveillance, manipulation and coercion; at first, just for profit, later by necessity, and ultimately for the hell of it • Disruption and capture, not competition; monopoly or at least duopoly in each industry it envelops. • Oligarchy to […]
I’ve been posting on Armistice Day ever since I started blogging back in 2002, arguing against war and lamenting the disaster of the Great War which has cast a shadow over all of our subsequent history, including the terrible wars that afflict the world today. This year, I’m too depressed to say anything more, except […]
Not the greatest of photographs, but I thought I’d continue with a bird. When I was looking at this one I was approached by some French retirees who asked me if there was anything interesting to see. Not knowing the French for egret, I said “Il y a un héron”, only to get the slightly […]
(14 Nov update) I got this badly wrong. Johnson followed the same path that doomed McCarthy, passing a short-term fix with Democratic votes. It’s hard to see why the Republicans went through all these contortions to end up where they started. Government shutdowns, and threats of shutdown, have become routine in the US, with the […]
I’ve not done much bird photography. It is actually pretty hard, since they move fast, change direction, disappear as soon as they see you, and are generally uncooperative subjects. But I’m resolved to do more and I’ve started to figure out some of the technical issues. There’s something serendipitous about this one, as I was […]