staying in touch
Ian Crawley - Here we go - 1997
Haven’t given news in a while but I felt like doing it now. Probably shame.
A newsletter a month could be a good rhythm for me or it could crumble as a new work regimen imposes itself. Who knows ? I never thought I could hold onto any rhythm, nothing was ever decided, I have to stop apologising when I make good on my promises.
I hope you’re treating yourself and your loved ones (as well as those you pass by and probably won’t see ever again) well.
Anything seen has no say in the matter, but that which is touched always touches back.
I’ve been in a situation that I can’t disclose publicly that has put me in isolation for a while only to come out of it with people waiting for me on the other side, not only that but people actively trying to find and help me.
It’s a strange feeling to be sought after, longed and then cared for, it’s even stranger when it’s not out of base need or on the basis of monetary transactions but out of genuine compassion and comradry, I’m having a hard time putting it into words even now. Not that I thought the possibility of human connection impossible, simply that there was a gap between my intellectual guesses and my lived experiences. I knew this was possible, not that it was probable or would happen.
This links to other experiences/thoughts of mine, namely the fact that I was an anticapitalist and a slacker before I even got a job, enduring all the “you’ll see when you’re older, you’ll see how the world works” blabber, only to get a job and realise I was right all along : it’s a fucking scam.
Ron Wimberly and hist team have a new LAAB issue in the works.
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Cory Doctorow’s “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism”
Currently finishing reading the text. I disagree on the notion of an “authentic self”, sustainability and movement would be a better framework to look at what surveillance does to a mind, and to minds in general, but this is a great piece(s?) of writing: concise, clear, straightforward. I’m always up for some Big Tech skepticism :
“All day and all night, our pockets buzz, shattering our concentration and tearing apart the fragile webs of connection we spin as we think through difficult ideas. If you locked someone in a cell and agitated them like this, we’d call it “sleep deprivation torture,” and it would be a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.”
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Remembering all the instances of orientalism that emerged out of the US electoral scene and how sinophobia during the covid crisis was quickly swepped under the rug when death tolls started to climb and state-control proved more efficient than capitalist laissez-faire. (also remembering everyday life instances of sinophobia in my local context where asian people in general are not very visible.)
With the rise of China in the general public consciousness as the “competent rival” to western powers, there should be more public appreciation and reverence to state capitalism and surveillance economy measures. A tension between the narratives of necessary evil and outside influences will complicate “ecological” policy-making and lobbying.
I’m expecting to see sinophobia getting more and more visible (not just normalised but enacted more often out in the open), both in the Northern nations and in African countries, as Chinese capital secures its interests on the continent.
“technorientalism” and sinofuturism. Stories spinning fast.
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Charlie Stross: “the 21st century has rendered a whole slew of 20th century plots obsolete”
Related to the fact that there are so many period pieces or speculative fiction set in the past or adopting aesthetics of the past coming out in the “mainstream” right now. Coping nostalgia feels more and more damning, to me at least. The refusal to think the present and the projection of current feelings onto images of the past. Critique is needed more than ever towards all the attitudes and modes of the past, there’s no retreat.
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Another piece from strelka on carbon-capture, infrastructure building and keynesian pyramid schemes.
The scale of these projects/visions always seem to imply some form of state or corporate funding, in aesthetics/language.
Think tank socialism, appealing to the sensibility of what feels like “serious political proposals”. It’s interesting even though I often feel like a peeping tom intruding on a boardroom meeting when i read one of these.
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We is me, are you here with me, as we ?
We’re certainly in deep shit. Fertilising moments, if we can move the right things at the right place we could grow so much more than what is decaying around us.
The thing about being pulled out of the world for a short time is that you are never really away from it. Even within a bubble, away in a closed room, things are still moving. There’s just a delay to your experience of the world of people. You won’t escape what’s happening. And if you have ties to it, your absence will be a weight of its own, bending the fabric and attracting objects to its position.
“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
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