TV
A new Curtis lands
So there's a new Adam Curtis film out. It's 8 hours long over 6 chapters and in it he attempts to explain, or outline a theory explaining, how we have gotten to where we're at at this moment in time and why the world
Pete Ashton
Socialism
Exeunt Corbyn
Waaay back in 2000-whenever-it-was, when the world made a smidge more sense, I joined the Labour party to vote in the leadership election. You could call me an entryist, but I'd pretty much always voted Labour and been on the cusp of joining for a while. I voted
Media
Thoughts on The Social Dilemma
So there's this new documentary, The Social Dilemma, which goes into great detail about how terrible the social media industry is for its users and for society in general, ultimately concluding that unless something changes we could see the end of democracy as we know it. Netflix bought
Socialism
Heritage Socialism – a working definition
I'm working on a piece where the key concept is something I've called "heritage socialism", a term I like but which I've struggled to explain. So I'm going to have a go here. According to the Wikipedians, "cultural heritage
Woodworking
Dome Up
Last year I bought a geodesic dome connectors kit, Hubs, and a load of wood. We built a dome in the back garden, purely because I've always wanted to build a geodesic dome and had given up on waiting for a reasonable excuse to come along. Here'
Capitalism
Economics and Epidemiology
The pandemic has shown us how a lot of things we took for granted actually work. From the economy to handwashing, stuff we thought we'd got our heads around turns out to be significantly more nuanced once a couple of the pillars that prop up our specific variation
1972 Project
Revising the 1972 Project - Mrs America and Chernobyl
After making my video last Autumn, The 1972 Project has stalled somewhat, thanks to something that happened around March. It's also mutated because it comes from my brain, and my brain responds to circumstances, and circumstances have changed. The project was an attempt to make sense of the
Racism
History is constantly being "erased", and that's OK.
That Boris Johnson is a fool hiding under the cloak of intellectualism is not in dispute, but sometimes he utters a nonsense that is actually worth interrogating. Take his defence of statuary and condemnation of the very concept of maybe removing some of them. We cannot now try to edit
Racism
Marching against racism in Birmingham
I've seen some comparisons of the Black Lives Matter protests with the tumultuous events of 1968, some wondering if we're witnessing the start of something similarly historic. While comparisons can threaten to diminish rather than strengthen, it might be empowering for those marching to make some
Media
We need social media literacy or the fascists will win
Get off the Internet I'll meet you in the street Get off the Internet Destroy the right wing Le Tigra, 2001 Fiona was telling me about an acquaintance who has build up a reasonable five-figure social media following which augments their business in an "influencer" kinda
The Weird
Walking Weird Britain
In reviewing the first issue of Weird Walk, I survey the British "New Weird".
Photography
Good composition is ideologically fraught
Last weekend I was running a Photo School Composition Workshop for the first time, meaning I'd been immersing myself in "good" photography and thinking about what that means. On the morning of the class the story about Vanessa Nakate being cropped from a group photo of