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Notice about Harry’s father, Sir Tim Brighouse

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/12/16/notice-about-harrys-father-sir-tim-brighou…
Created
Sun, 17/12/2023 - 02:34
I know many Crooked Timber readers will want to mark the passing of Harry’s father, Tim Brighouse. Harry has sometimes written here about his father’s pedagogy and influence, and more obliquely at his singularity and sheer loveliness. Today’s Guardian newspaper carries an obituary: “Teachers and education experts this weekend paid tribute to Sir Tim Brighouse, […]

Get Serious. No, Really.

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/16/get-serious-no-really/
Created
Sun, 17/12/2023 - 02:30
Can we “match the level of in-the-streetsness”? Moonstruck Cher GIFfrom Moonstruck GIFs “I can’t seem to get out of my own way,” my best friend from college used to complain. By that he meant that all his smarts and cleverness were stumbling blocks to getting what he wanted out of life. Which was another way of saying he thought too much. Democrats and lefty allies have the same problem: stubbornly insisting this is a survival-of-the-smartest world when it isn’t. Anand Giridharadas the other night issued a warning about that. First he notes that while lefty anger is dialed up to 11, our actions do not reflect it. Are we serious about stopping fascism or what? Do our actions “really match the level of in-the-streetsness” we saw in the 1960s, Giridharadas asks. Just as I’ve argued before: Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills. At some point, you have to play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes.

Improvise Or Perish

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/16/under-resourced-non-improvisational/
Created
Sun, 17/12/2023 - 01:00
On Democrats fighting the last war Trying to teach Yellow Dogs new tricks sometimes seems pointless. With few exceptions, Democrats always seem to be fighting the last war because that’s the one they learned on. Brian Beutler sees it too. Beutler perceives that social media has fundamentally shifted our political ground: When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 on the strength of a media feeding frenzy over emails, it dawned on me that either my intuitions about partisan politics had been wrong, or something fundamental had changed. With the benefit of hindsight, I soon came to see the 2014 midterm campaign as a precursor. Republicans back then turned a closely fought election into a blowout in the final stretch by fanning a different media feeding frenzy—this one over a far-off outbreak of Ebola. […] All of this happened because Republicans situated themselves to win an information war in 2014, then situated themselves to win another information war in 2016. I had simply been underestimating the effectiveness of their antics.

Can Platform Cooperatives Help Revive the Left?

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/12/can-platform-cooperatives-help-revive-the-left/
Created
Sat, 16/12/2023 - 21:17

In this decade, left-wing publishing is awash with works on technology. With ease, you can find a wide array of discussions over technology, how socialists should approach the platforms which govern our digital lives, and the dizzying potential of tech workers to build utopias of the future and transform existence as we know it. Life […]

A Binder Full Of Secrets

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/15/a-binder-full-of-secrets/
Created
Sat, 16/12/2023 - 10:30
What happened to all the missing secrets? You may remember Cassidy Hutchinson saying that Mark Meadows took a binder full of information about the Russia investigation home with him during her January 6 Committee testimony: According to transcripts released by the Jan. 6 committee last year, in closed-door testimony, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee she was “almost positive” the binder went home with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  “I don’t think that would have been something that he would have destroyed. It was not returned anywhere, and it never left our office to go internally anywhere. It stayed in our safe in the office safe most of the time,” Hutchinson said, adding that she realized the binder was no longer in the safe on her last day at the White House.  CNN has new reporting on what went on and the enduring mystery of the missing binder continues.

There’s No Delusion He Won’t Try To Sell

https://digbysblog.net/2023/12/15/theres-no-delusion-he-wont-try-to-sell/
Created
Sat, 16/12/2023 - 09:00
And his cult will probably believe it. I don’t know how many of you are watching the Trump videos on his web site but almost all of them are terrifying. But among the atrocities are a few comic gems. This is one of them: Former President Donald Trump on Friday proposed building up to 10 futuristic “freedom cities” on federal land, part of a plan that the 2024 presidential contender said would “create a new American future” in a country that has “lost its boldness.” Commuters, meanwhile, could get around in flying cars, Trump said – an echo of “The Jetsons,” the classic cartoon about a family in a high-tech future society. Work to develop vertical takeoff and landing vehicles is already underway by major airlines, auto manufacturers and other companies, though widely seen as years away from reaching the market. “I want to ensure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility,” Trump, who announced his third bid for the presidency in November, said in a four-minute video detailing his plan.