week 30 / 2026: here and elsewhere
In this episode: contemplating the end of the Western cosmopolitan urge; hanging with the New York neoLuddites; and Silicon Valley’s highly selective readings of science fiction. Plus, G K Chesterton!
politics
week 29 / 2026: protocols and performances
In this episode: Scott Smith on “protocol communities”; the face as the site of surgical interventions into reality itself; and another look at “body futurism” as dark enantiodromia.
week 22 / 2026: fathers and sons
After the hourglass has been overturned, there is a period during which the sand must resettle itself before the flow of time can become regularised once again. We are living through just such a period.
week 21 / 2026: empire and multitude
I’m pleased to announce a new publication: you can read a short story by yours truly in the just-released RISCS anthology! Meanwhile, feel free to hang around and discuss the shaky foundations of the USian technopoly, and the possible fates of the nation-state...
week 20 / 2026: regimes and revolutions
If “AI” is a revolution, as its ideologues would have us believe, then they might want to consider how unpopular revolutions tend to end. Are they sincere in their beliefs? I argue that it doesn’t really matter, but that we should nonetheless treat them as if they are.
week 17 / 2026: city and country
It’s not that there isn’t a problem with migration in Europe; it’s that the migration doing the damage is domestic rather than international. Plus: reframing the fear of death as a vital ecological dynamic, and refusing software the franchise of personhood.
week 15 / 2026: cynicism and credulity
As the months pass, the surprise is no longer that hype and outright fiction are made to pass for truth, but rather that everyone seemingly already knows, and has made some sort of peace with it—whether resigned or enthusiastic. But how much longer can cynicism and credulity prevail?