James C. Scott and the Art of Resistance The late political scientist enjoined readers to look for opposition to authoritarian states not in revolutionary vanguards but in acts of quiet disobedience. By Nikil Saval New Yorker April 7, 2025 Some books: The Moral traditional societies of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (1976) … [Read more…]
Pluralistic: Machina economicus (14 Apr 2025) Arguably, we do live in the shadow of such modern demons: we call them “limited liability corporations.” These are (potentially) immortal colony organisms that treat us fleshy humans as mere inconvenient gut flora. These artificial persons are not merely recognized as people under the law – they are given … [Read more…]
In The Guardian, an essay on recent findings of historian Hannah Durkin showing the arrival of slave ships in Cuba as late as 1872. Historians have generally assumed that the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1867, but it actually continued into the following decade, according to new research. Dr Hannah Durkin, an historian and former … [Read more…]
Non-fiction Finished the 524 pages of “The Dawn of Everything, A New History Of Humanity” by Davids Graeber and Wengrow. A challenging book, well written and somewhat academic in tone, both authors are professors at their respective British schools, Graeber of economics and Wengrow of comparative archeology. The authors propose that there were actually few … [Read more…]
Last half of “Bleeding Edge” by Thomas Pynchon 01/06/2023 – Done – enjoyable. Checked out “Rising : dispatches from the new American shore” by Elizabeth Rush from the library – good account the present impact of rising seas on a few areas in the world and a cautionary tale about the future. She’s an excellent … [Read more…]
Trump, Musk and Kanye Are Twitter Poisoned The New York Times, Opinion Guest Essay, Jaron Lanier, Nov. 11, 2022 ‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity, The Guardian, Edward Helmore, Sun 27 Nov 2022. Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist who pioneered research in virtual reality and whose … [Read more…]
The New York Times obituary of Gwendolyn Midlo Hall tells a fascinating life of someone we should have heard more about when she was alive. Dr. Hall led a colorful early life as a civil rights activist and spent the bulk of her academic career at Rutgers University, where she taught Latin American history. … [Read more…]
San Francisco Call, 6 January 1919 1918 LYNCHINGS ACCORDING to the records compiled by Monroe N. Work, in charge of Records and Research of the Tuskegee Institute, there were 62 lynchings in 1918. This is 24 more than for the year 1917. Of those lynched, 58 were negroes and 4 were whites. Five of those … [Read more…]
From the Washington Post – Feb. 26, 2021 Government agencies increasingly are accessing private information they are not authorized to compile on their own By Drew Harwell Feb. 26, 2021 at 1:55 p.m. PST U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have tapped a private database containing hundreds of millions of phone, water, electricity and other … [Read more…]
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation is a NY Times photo essay by Richard Frishman. At far right, the onetime “Colored” window at Edd’s Drive-In, in Pascagoula, Miss. After being tipped off by a contributor to a website called Preservation in Mississippi, I verified the history of the window at Edd’s Drive-In with … [Read more…]