Made a pot of beans, did two loads of laundry, cooked lunch, cooked dinner, shoveled the driveway. First day of 2025. Here we go.
Morally abhorrent
Our elites have not suddenly become morally abhorrent; the financial globalization that [Martin] Wolf championed has allowed them to remove themselves from democratic accountability, state regulation, and communities of obligation. It has also decimated countervailing powers such as organized labor, working-class political parties, and capital controls. The market never was “permeated” by the values of duty, fairness, and decency: it was constrained by nonmarket forces. Wolf has spent his career arguing that reason and freedom demanded the removal of those constraints. And here we are.
Trevor Jackson (2025, January 16). Never Too Much [Review of the book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, by Martin Wolf]. The New York Review of Books.
The shape of a pocket
“The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the New World Economic Order. …our exchanges strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening in the world today is wrong, and that what is often said about it is a lie.”
John Berger, from the back cover of his book The Shape of a Pocket (2003)
At The Door
On the speakers right now:
From Jack Prather’s Autumn 2. Full album here
Recently read and watched
A few things that I’ve been spending time on:
Currently playing: Black Mesa Blue Shift
Working my way through the new release from the Black Mesa: Blue Shift team.
HECU Collective just released Chapter 5 “Focal Point”
and I’m enjoying replaying the first four chapters and seeing Chapter 5
for the first time. The screenshot above is from Chapter 5.
Recently read
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Shea and Wilson). I took about two months to finish this. There is a lot going on in the book and I kept getting bogged down and found myself going back and rereading sections.
The Soft Machine: The Restored Text (William Burroughs, edited by Oliver Harris). I enjoyed this a lot more when I started reading it out loud and imagining Burrough’s voice. Definitely not a traditional storyline.
The KLF: Chaos, Magic, and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds (John Higgs, 2012/2024). This was the book that got me to finally read The Illuminatus! Trilogy. I had read that the KLF were intertwined in some ways with the Trilogy (for example, the classic “Kick out the JAMs” line is taken from the book, as is “The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu”, albeit with a typo…) so I decided to read the Trilogy before reading the KLF book. I am very glad that I did. I’m also glad that I have some knowledge of Robert Anton Wilson’s work, and Alan Moore’s work, as they both feature prominently in the KLF book.
Recently watched: Gladiator (2000) and Sicario (2015).