A central obsession of Ballard's late novels was that the anomic life of our capitalist present was generating a boredom so profound that it would invoke a fascism to enliven it. I'm telling you, this is Ballard's world.

Welcome to Ballard's world: In 2004, JG Ballard expressed his worry that the USA was turning into "a theocratic state run by right-wing political fanatics and religious moralisers".

A new Star Trek show about: a school, relationships, coming of age stories, loads of diversity, using existing characters, doesn’t have a focus on exploration, takes many elements of plots & species we’ve seen before, a villain with a connection to someone’s mother. Welcome to Deep Space Nine.

NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY DROPPED There is a LOT here, but omg NATO allies are going to seethe at this paragraph www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

I mean this is straight up white supremacy:

I really forget how many of the hyper-confident accounts on here are just rich people

People keep saying the present is the one Baudrillard predicted but to my mind it's all very JG Ballard

Did some good reading today but holy cow I need to learn to stop being on phone so much. I'm sure this is a moral failure on my part and a broader trend

people may think im being hyperbolic when i say this but among other things this isnt just racist - it's also specifically anti-Scottish

I think this is the point of diagnoses. They aren't simply representational descriptors, but pragmatic instruments that help organize experience, shape identity, determine treatment options, and connect us to—or modify our relationships with—various institutions. Diagnoses are machines.

Sometimes I think I should get very into the philosophy of mental health, given my job. But whenever I look at it I get upset that 90% of it is asking if illness is even real.

Thinking back to a friend (autonomist) in my undergraduate years who always complained that I (anarchist) was a liberal. Nowadays, I (not an anarchist) increasingly think he was right.

We are where we are now because people have been bemoaning 'liberal excess' in the UK in right-wing *and* left-wing commentary since about 2006. It's been a long and gradual process, but those outriders have finally got what they wanted – and it's shit.

I always forget that many of the people I interact with on here are autistic and that precise wording actually does matter quite a lot. This is a genuine post, I really do think a lot of needless disagreement stems from this exact discrepancy.

Some overdiagnosis by time-pressed GPs doubtlessly exists, but most of the increase in illness is real. The world is harder, less stable, more hopeless, & we've all been locked-down & exposed to a novel pathogen with known neuropsychiatric effects, etc. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Interesting paper that reports that many degrowth policies are popular with the public, especially when degrowth isn't named. This is an important finding as much in the degrowth world seems to be obviously necessary—whatever your preferred politics.

People always say we're living in a cyberpunk dystopia but it's pretty clearly a JG Ballard collection. This example comes from The Subliminal Man

For some reason I might listen to @bloodwork.show—almost as if I'd been subject to some form of subtle messaging

I just watched Train Dreams and it's a wonderful and quietly beautiful film. It could only have been improved by the absence of the voice over.

Went to listen to a river and accidentally heard the moon

I read so slowly they call it a close to death reading

I think this is right but in my view it's in large part because anti-immigration sentiment functions as a compensatory control and significance bolstering mechanism among both elites and the base. The need it addresses is psychological; policy is ultimately incapable of fulfilling it.

The UK really is just gangsterism at this point: Nice liberal democracy you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it. Hey, nice health service, nice Institute for Women. It’d be unfortunate if they got all fucked up, because someone senior refused to do as they were told. Every day.

Why did I sell all of my shares in that Hermitage Estate Agents firm?

According to @thetimes.com, people leaving Christianity in the UK are now more likely to become Pagans than converting to any other faith: www.thetimes.com/uk/religion/...

Wife's away. Son's away. Okay boys, let's go wild. *Cracks open Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations*

Fascist parties often seek to merge with existing conservative once to increase their legitimacy among the national elites

Tonight F picked Excalibur (1981) and I can see why a fifteen year old Zach Snyder loved it. To be fair, I thought it was pretty good. Very nice to look at if a bit overlong.

Writing notes on facial expressions and note down: "I see a face set thus, and I see anger or happiness, humiliation or orgasm, or joy." Ah yes, the five basic emotions.

I find I barely have time to read the philosophy and literature I want to, so obviously I'm going to add in some history books

lmfao www.ft.com/content/7dd2...

"Are you psychoanalysing me right now?" I am not a psychoanalyst.

"immigration has to go up for our growth goals, but our policy is to bring it down" uk politics in a nutshell

BBS—Behavioural and Brain Science—sounds like a category of pornography.

"What we should avoid is relying too much on the simplistic picture of fast-thinking (stupid?) citizens who are unable to understand what good policies are and fall prey to the sirens of populists. Fast-thinking, ignorance, and irrationality are not enough to understand contemporary populism."

I'm actually pretty uncomfortable with saying this aloud. I'm not sure I mean it when I say 'he had a point'. I still think he was wrong—perhaps I mean that he was wrong in a way that's valuable for thinking about crises we aren't so. . . immersed in

I had been very critical of Agamben's denouncing the lockdowns at the time. From our position of time and distance, I now think he had a point. It can be no coincidence that support for eco-Lenin reached an apogee in the pandemic.

Saw a clip from Yorp conference in which Zarah says she wants to nationalize the entire economy

Think I might do a books thread this year to encourage me to spend less time on phone

I'm spending too much time on the phone

Of course austerity politics moralizes economic conditions, but always with condemnations of dependency. The moral crime is always vulnerability, an ineliminable fact of animal existence and social life. There's a necessarily eugenic logic at work in this moralism.

I post a lot about my son driving me mad but you have to understand that I love him deeply and he drives me mad

I've just been informed I'm watching a film called Kamikaze Girls after the last few hours reading Beckett and listening to Monk. I'm sure there won't be any whiplash

There's a saying in texas. Ever tried? Ever failed? Fail once and I can't get failed again.

Reading Beckett and listening to Monk like an insufferable bourgeoise

Does Zarah Sultana know who the swp are?

I take this proposition very seriously. But the drivers were in place already. Berardi argues that relentless stimulation, competition, and precarity overload our nervous systems, producing widespread psychological distress and chronically overactivated nervous systems. COVID was a force amplifier.

I feel like one of the most underrated explanations for what's happening right now in global politics is that almost everyone has lost their minds.

A thing that's genuinely underestimated is that young people now grow up with near constant exposure to doom cycles.

We used to do "cinema days" at our house for our son. We'd set it up and then go for a walk "to the cinema" (our flat). One of us, me or my wife, would go home before the other two, and man the ticket booth where we'd sell tickets and snacks.