Back in the day, there used to be a lot more arguments across blogs. Perhaps we’ll see more of it happening again as Twitter continues its collapse into a dwarf star composed of degenerate matter. To get things started, this seems to me to be a quite wrongheaded claim by Tyler Cowen. In a […]
Academia
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.” […]
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 […]