Okay, I knew I was going to do these on the Facebook page, but I haven’t done that, and I’m under a great deal of time pressure right now — I had to get a replacement phone yesterday, and in 12 days begin my first class intended to be a completely online class. So…yeah. Let’s jump in to the seventeen books I’ve read thus far this year.
Read MoreThe art work is, however, an act – it is an action, performed by an artist, that persists through time, the medium of its transmission into the future as a vehicle for the artwork. They are the means by which it becomes accessible to other people, and the vector along which it travels through time.
Read MoreAs of the time you read this, we have slightly less than 87,500 hours to fix climate change. If you’re in the United States of America, you have slightly less than 7,344 hours until the polls open and you can cast a vote for the next president. I, personally, have about 300 hours from the time you read this to plan my class for this coming semester, because I’m going back to that 5AM grind I was so happy to escape from.
Read MoreThe system, which supposedly generates prosperity for everyone to an unprecedented degree, doesn’t. We’re told that it works, we’re told that doing all of these things should help, and we internalize this narrative. It becomes a subconscious mantra, the way that an Orthodox monk is encouraged to say the Jesus Prayer in time with his heartbeat. You see: we’ve been sold a fantasy that does not map on to reality. Human beings are smart enough that you don’t have to actually give us the reward. You just have to convince us that the reward is there.
Read MoreOn Page 20 of Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher wrote “With the triumph of neoliberalism, bureaucracy was supposed to have been made obsolete; a relic of an unlamented Stalinist past. Yet this is at odds with the experiences of most people working and living in late capitalism, for whom bureaucracy remains very much a part of everyday life. Instead of disappearing, bureaucracy has changed its form; and this new, decentralized form has allowed it to proliferate.” What can be done?
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