[A Pleasurable Headache] we can remember that for you wholesale
Apologies for this one. A system snafu means I am reconstructing this edition of the newsletter mostly from memory after the last version was swallowed up by chaos and circumstance.
Links
We Can’t Cancel Ourselves Into a Better World
An adapted excerpt from Ben Burgis’ new book which argues that the left should concentrate more on building a movement than getting involved in infighting and online ‘pile ons’.
The Memex Method
https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46
Cory Doctorow on blogging as long-term memory. I’ve been thinking recently about the next iteration of this newsletter. The more I think about it, the more some kind of return to blogging seems like the answer. Pieces like this do little to dissuade me.
At the moment, there is no real way of searching through the numerous posts and editions of this newsletter. A return to blogging, as Doctorow indicates, would help with this.
The invention of whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea
The concept of race, in the grand scheme of things, is a fairly new one. Its origins may surprise you (okay, they probably won’t).
“Still, with only slightly exaggerated precision, we can say that one of the most crucial developments in “the discovery of personal whiteness” took place during the second half of the 17th century, on the peripheries of the still-young British empire. What’s more, historians such as Oscar and Mary Handlin, Edmund Morgan and Edward Rugemer have largely confirmed Du Bois’s suspicion that while xenophobia appears to be fairly universal among human groupings, the invention of a white racial identity was motivated from the start by a need to justify the enslavement of Africans. In the words of Eric Williams, a historian who later became the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, “slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery”.”
The Obsolescence of The Hero’s Journey
https://litreactor.com/columns/the-obsolescence-of-the-heros-journey
Gabriel Hart on alternative narrative structures beyond the usual Campbell-ian monomyth. Includes mention (and spoilers) for S.A Cosby’s excellent Blacktop Wasteland.
You ever think about how Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC”
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388238/asus-eee-pc-netbook-laptop-line-linux-ipad-pro
My Asus Eee PC was a beaut. My first real ‘writing machine’ and something that introduced me to the wonders of Linux. RIP netbooks.
We’re Not Alone in the Universe
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/05/were-not-alone-in-the-universe
Another week, another Current Affairs piece by Nathan J. Robinson, this time on the concept of other life in the universe.
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I am off to introduce a more fool-proof method for ensuring these things don’t disappear into a memory hole.