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As always, if you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can get it in your inbox or read it on Patreon, the content is the same. (And just in time for the holidays, gift subscriptions are now available.) Also, don’t forget to visit the TMW store for all of your holiday shopping needs (as long as they are extremely specific and limited)!

Each quarter, Patreon Plus supporters can ask Michael questions. Here is a transcript of the most recent one, just in time for our next Q&A this Thursday. Please support Michael’s work via his Patreon page. Karl Fitzgerald: Alright, let’s get into it. We’ve got lots of good questions. Welcome, everyone. My name is Karl Fitzgerald. Continue Reading

The post China the Change Agent – Patreon Q&A #3 first appeared on Michael Hudson.

‘I can feel the ground crumbling beneath my feet’: a son honours where his father’s turbulent life has taken them both

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

In the dark, sylvan villages of medieval England, people named places after the birds that filled the night with music

- by Michael J Warren

Read at Aeon

Update on the Parliamentary amendments The Online Safety Bill is back in Parliament. It had been stalled for five months whilst the government made a few changes. A Parliamentary debate on Monday (5th December) revealed the shift in policy direction for the first time. It’s relatively small change, with big implications. According to the government, […]

“Even if you prefer the sexiness of radicalism or the glory of revolution: you need boring, work-a-day normal conservative philosophy.” Yesterday, J. Dmitri Gallow (Senior Research Fellow at Dianoia Institute of Philosophy) tweeted out a thread on the value of what he labels “conservative, normal philosophy.” Finding it interesting, I asked him to turn it into a brief blog post for Daily Nous, which he very kindly did. In Defense of Boring and Derivative Philosophy by J. Dmitri Gallow I often hear papers, talks, or projects dismissed as “boring” or “derivative”—contrasted with philosophy that’s “novel” or “insightful.” This dismissive attitude is usually directed at (a) work that’s conservative, rather than radical (in a sense I’ll explain below), and (b) work that’s normal, rather than revolutionary (in the sense of Thomas Kuhn). I think the dismissive attitude underestimates the value of normal conservative philosophy. Below, I’ll introduce these distinctions and defend normal conservative—and therefore, boring and derivative—philosophy.

The Australian PM has finally talked about Julian Assange ... and while distancing himself from Assange’s well-motivated actions, has said he has raised it with representatives of the US administration.

The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books… SEP New:       Saint Thomas Aquinas by Robert Pasnau. Revised:         Divine Providence by Hugh J. McCann and Daniel M. Johnson. Margaret Lucas Cavendish by David Cunning. Risk by Sven Ove Hansson. Nonexistent Objects by Maria Reicher. Relative Identity by Harry Deutsch and Pawel Garbacz. Epistemology in Latin America by Diego Machuca. IEP           ∅ NDPR         ∅ 1000-Word Philosophy         ∅    Project Vox     ∅ Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media   John Venn: A Life in Logic by Lukas M. Verburgt is reviewed by Cheryl Misak at Times Literary Supplement. Dream, Death, and the Self by J.J. Valberg is reviewed by Scot English at Patheos. The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan is reviewed by Jane Haile at The New York Journal of Books. On the Emergence of an Ecological Class: A Memo by Bruno Latour and After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis by Bruno Latour are reviewed by Jeremy Harding at London Review of Books. Not Thinking Like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss is reviewed by Richard Eldridge at Los Angeles Review of Books.

December 12, 2022 The U.S. government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets. Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets – The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL – published a series of revelations in cooperation with Wikileaks that made the headlines around the globe.

After a bit of a delay, we’re resuming the Article Spotlight series, in which the authors of recent journal articles are invited to write brief posts here about them. As noted at the time of the first installment, the articles featured will tend to be ones judged to be of interest to a wide range of philosophers. An article’s inclusion in this series should not be construed as an endorsement of its argument or agreement with its conclusions, but rather as a way of saying, “this might be interesting to discuss.” In this month’s post, Joshua Glasgow, professor of philosophy at Sonoma State University, discusses his recent article, “The Ordinary Meaningful Life,” which appeared earlier this year in The Journal of the American Philosophical Association—the official version should be publicly available; if you can’t access it, there is a link to a preprint here. [Originally posted on December 8, 2022] The Ordinary Meaningful Life by Joshua Glasgow We celebrate being important. Why? In particular, why should you care about whether you are especially important, or great, or significant?