High summer is rolling in to Kansas City. The weather is hot, and I am again working day in, day out to water trees so that there will one day be enough shade around here. Can’t do anything about the humidity, though: we’re just going to have to live with it feeling like we’re nestled deep in Pantagruel’s armpit. Reading in a cool room, though, is just about the best thing in the world.
Read MoreIf you don’t have the ability to bleed off excess pressure – if you don’t have that safety valve, if the exhaust can’t escape from the gas engine, whatever – then what you have is a very different machine: a bomb.
Read MoreOnce again, I find myself hoist by a petard with my name on it, in the midst of another year for the fucking history books at only two months in.
Read MoreThere’s a lot of reason to feel gloomy about the world. It feels like we’re back where we started. This summer has been unprecedentedly hot and unpleasant in some parts of the world (the heat wave in the pacific northwest has been terrible, obviously – but some parts of Russia above the arctic circle recorded temperatures as high as 48 Celsius. That’s 118 degrees Fahrenheit.) What we see is that, throughout the world, but especially in North America and Western Europe, there is a dwindling of state capacity. We can see this in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, we have seen this in regard to climate change.
Read MoreI call this “the social zamboni.” It is something that smooths out the rough edges and fields of intensity. I do not think that this particular social formation is one that was designed – such thinking would be conspiracism – but one that has gradually emerged to make the environment in which it occurs more stable.
Read More
