Breathing calmed down so went for a short walk to the corner shop with Kid A where he bought a can of baked beans with his own cash. Then we walked around the long block talking about how those beans are now his beans, what would happen to the beans if I reimbursed him with a bank transfer, what he could do with a bottomless backpack, the striking similarity between the Chinese lion adorning a neighbour’s drive wall and the Chinese lions outside the Chinese restaurant in Spilsby, and how Lime bikes are taking over the world.

Retreated to the relative safety of the bedroom where I’m finding solace with Radiohead and OK Computer on a loop. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } An airbag saved my life

BYE BYE BIDEN

Some highlights and thoughts from Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden by Branko Marcetic 📚 Against Biden’s best efforts, disaster had been averted. (p. 127) This seems to sum up his career neatly. Far from the popular public image that he has cultivated and that the media have happily gone along with for the most part. Foreign policy “I’m not going to start World War Three for you!

Overcome space and all we have left is here. Overcome time and all we have left is now. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach 📚

JON BATISTE'S TINY DESK CONCERT

Jon Batiste, like Alicia Keys, is a supremely talented musician and performer. This is another must watch Tiny Desk concert from 2019. This is another video my little kid enjoyed watching, singing along to (before he could talk), and dancing to with his big brother (before falling asleep). Don’t it make your soul shake? .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .

ALICIA KEYS' TINY DESK CONCERT

If you haven’t seen and listened to Alicia Keys' Tiny Desk concert (Feb 2020) then I highly recommend that you do, even if - or especially if - you think she’s not your thing. This is a video my little kid loved to sing along to before falling asleep for a mid-day or afternoon nap. We all just wanna be shown some love .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.

Always look as far ahead as possible

The more his curiosity took over, the less control he had

PEOPLE DON'T CHANGE

People don’t change, but they can make good decisions. This is a quote, or the gist of a quote, from an episode of Person of Interest, a TV show I watched avidly for two and a half seasons before rapidly losing interest after the scriptwriters killed off one of the only characters with a fully functioning sense of empathy (who happened to be a black woman) and which therewith descended into a cliched, repetitive, and all-too predictable (yet surprising) slapstick parody of itself.

Finally feel like I’m getting my breath back after four days of having trouble breathing in, wheezing and feeling like I’m emphyseming.

WFH SAVED MY LIFE

I’ve worked from home since the end of February 2020. I transferred all my work and systems online to do so, and while I’m still part-time, in practice I’m now available 24/7 for every conceivable administrative emergency (“Hi David. Please order me some large coloured post-it notes and have them delivered to my home tomorrow” or “Hi David. Please bring £200 in cash to my house this morning so I can pay for my lunch meeting today.

Factional right-wing neoliberal think tank “Labour Together": The Budget is a Winner with Tories

Noel plays his guitar as if he’s scared it will break, and Oasis’s funkless, sexless plod is always carefully pitched below the velocity at which fluid dynamics dictate that you might spill your lager. I like some Oasis stuff, the early stuff. I like some woke stuff. This quote and picture are true enough and funny, though.

Labour’s self-imposed, arbitrary and “binding” “fiscal rules” are the same as the Tories' Austerity policies. Political choices. The same choices. So much for change. Original link to the article from 11 years ago:

I used to be funny.

“Zionism is rooted in trauma and fear. It’s about survival and love for the Jewish people. But like any other ethnic nationalism, Zionism establishes a hierarchy: It’s about prioritizing our safety and well-being, even at the expense of others. It relies on an alternate historical narrative that justifies the occupation and rationalizes the status quo. And it cannot produce a just peace on its own.” Via Zionism cannot produce a just peace.

WHAT MARXISM TEACHES US

What Marxism teaches us is simply to approach questions of society from a material basis: how does human life persist? Through production of the goods and services needed to live. How are these things produced under capitalist society? Through exploitation of the labor of the working class, that is, by requiring one class of people to sell their labor as a commodity to another class to produce values. What is the result of this system?

Zack, 35, says: “I got pretty disillusioned after I found myself consistently matching with anti-Zionists, even when I set it to ‘Jewish only’.” Zack put an Israeli flag emoji on his profile to rectify the situation. “It’s annoying because the more creative personalities I normally go for tend to be more anti-Israel.” Now he’s having fewer awkward conversations about the conflict, but the people he’s matching with are “less interesting”.

This is the story of how I got there. A chronological curriculum vitae. (Need to get around to completing mine….) Writing a web-first resumé werd.io

The agenda now is all-Israeli: There is no one else but us. Only our disasters, our suffering, our sacrifices – and everything else can burn for all we care. We have become as monsters. Not only in our actions, but above all in our apathy. Gideon Levy via Hippy Steve

WHERE'S DADDY?

We have AI that can decide who is a terrorist and then track their every movement so we can wait until they’re home to drop a bomb on their whole family. But the 3 successive precision air strikes on #WCK aid workers coordinating with and following route instructions from the IDF was just a ‘tragic mistake’ because it was night time. Hippy Steve

Back cover image of the dec 1975 issue of “issues in radical therapy” (via danielle carr on Twitter.)

After more than three weeks of Israel’s “targeted” bombing of Hamas in Gaza, Starmer claims that a ceasefire now “would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capabilities to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October 7.”

Finally got around to watching Our Friends In The North. ‘None of the issues the show mines so brilliantly – from inequality, deindustrialisation and the parlous state of Britain’s housing to homelessness and the corruption of our public officials – have gone away.’

‘…according to research by the London Tenants Federation, we are demolishing more social housing than we are building. Economics makes that inevitable.’ www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opin…

‘All we see is broken homes here and poverty, ‘Corrupt government officials, lies and atrocities, ‘How they talking on what’s threatening the economy, ‘Knocking down communities to re-up on properties.’ Little Simz - Introvert

Dreaming of: a future in which ordinary people would be valued and able to live happily, safely, cooperatively and with dignity. Currently reading: The Death of the Left by Simon Winlow 📚

KIDS' STUFF

I have successfully replicated this study at home, and can attest to its reliability and validity. An ethnographic study in Madrid charted the gradual “take over” by the child (accoutrements like toys, furniture, and special foods, and the removal of “dangerous” or breakable items) of the domicile, leaving less and less “adult” territory (Poveda et al. 2012).' The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings by David F. Lancy 📚

…trying to capture the essence of your life in a form that can be experienced by another, is one of the most interesting technological challenges in the world. Venkatesh Rao

“Mum, passing me a small parcel wrapped in Xmas paper: ‘I didn’t get you anything for Xmas.’ Me: ‘What’s this then?’ Mum: ‘Oh, just socks.'”

Wife: “I don’t like the words. I don’t like the music. You sound like a hooligan. I couldn’t care less about fucking Jimmy Carter.”

Wife says we should have named our cat Bjork. Because she’s small, cute and makes funny noises.

Any mention of ‘baboon’ always reminds me of Stephen K Amos’s hilarious skit. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }