"The right word to describe this reliance between discrete yet deeply interrelated beings is 'solidarity'." Timothy Morton

"Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not ... there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself." Emma Goldman & Max Baginski

'Three Days of the Condor' is a Xmas movie - trust me on this; just watched, very fine: mubi.com/en/nl/films/...

@tobytram.bsky.social just shared my favourite BSky photo of 2025, with barely hours to go ... this kicks off my mood-board for 2026:

The AI industry is in a 'race' ... to make itself so embedded (in daily life, education and government) that, before it goes bust - it has become too 'big' to fail, and is then bound to be bailed out (a proven business model, since 2008).

If in Laon (Aisne, FR); such a pleasure to visit l'Ètoile Noir: www.kropotkine02.org/category/bib...

A bold, intriguing, thesis: "... le capitalisme débridé a refait sa 'selection' des structures psychiques qui lui conviennent." [Unbridled capitalism has redone its 'selection' of the psychic structures that suit it.] www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2026/01/LORD...

Stephen Laub. smile support, 1970 [seasonal mood]

I also love books and often buy books that I don’t read right away. I always end up feeling a bit guilty. Umberto Eco, who owned 50,000 books, had this to say about home libraries:

Low light, long shadows, time and space enough for ambling and musing:

Bonnes fêtes a tous!

Amsterdam, can look pretty, I'll give it that:

Credit to the Goethe-Institut, here in Amsterdam, for hosting this searingly honest, sadly essential, event last night - rich and brave contributions from each of the speakers: Dr Nawal Mustafa, Dr Shahin Nasiri & Ghayath Almadhoun; thanks: www.goethe.de/ins/nl/de/ve...

It's a comfort; just the hope, and the continuing fact, of pocket books on big ideas; this new from @laviedesidees.bsky.social is an exemplary tour-de-Deleuze:

"The fact that no one believes that nouns refer to an actual reality means, paradoxically enough, that there is no limit to the numbers of them." Jorge Luis Borges #doubt

Knitivity; quite reassuring, in such a messed-up England:

Urban windmills, why not?

First proper overnight frost; shifting back to older ways:

Keys found embedded in jam sandwich. Apologies.

'With the pace of change accelerating by the year, the world appeared ever less God-like ... ever less eternal, impervious, intractable. It assumed instead an ever more human form, becoming more in 'man's image' - protean, fickle and flickering, whimsical and full of surprise.' Zygmunt Bauman

Oh my, the Lage Lund Quartet ... at the Bimhuis; fits & starts & leaps & bounds; most excellent - special dues to Danny Grissett on piano:

Left behind, not forgotten #1 - Jimmy Raney "Guitaristic" (1963 but unissued till 1974); just a blinder, unreal chops.

What he said👇; moved to tears at times, cutting edge: @maryhalvorson.bsky.social

"... it is not, after all, really a question about whether you can know the unknown, arrive in it, but how to go about looking for it, how to travel." Rebecca Solnit #lostness

"Perhaps the role of the philosopher, the role of philosophy at present, is not to be a theoretician of totality, but the diagnostician, if you will allow me to use this word, the diagnostician of today." ― Michel Foucault #BookSky Raymond Aron & Michel Foucault, Dialogue.

Unknowable

CFP: “Embodied Knowledge Practices in the Early Modern World” Conference at the University of Amsterdam Monday, 15 June 2026 How do material conditions shape how & what we know about the natural world? #earlymodern #C18L 1/6

Woven with joyous startles; such a deft & soulful player: @marcribot.bsky.social at the Bimhuis, here in A'dam:

It is essential, in days like these, to rip into political parties who claim to be 'left' whilst swinging hard-right; Zack Polanski leads the way:

“I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak. ... The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, ‘What is your stance on AI?’ And my answer was very short. I said, ‘I'd rather die.’” 🫡

Well this is wonderful ... and not available on easy stream (via Platenzaak, Eindhoven):

Things are not as easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe. Most happenings are beyond expression; they exist where a word has never intruded. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet [The First Letter], 1903

Dear diary - today I went to Eindhoven, it was very tidy. #dutchdesignweek

One for the hive mind, no prizes just gratitude: I helped this little fella today, when he knocked himself out on a plate glass window - a finch?

Doubt is unsettling to the ego, and those who are drawn to ideologies that promise the dispelling of doubt by proffering certainties will never grow. In seeking certainty they are courting the death of the soul.~James Hollis

Diane Keaton | Interiors | Woody Allen | 1978.

Looks like a hare to me:

Solidarity from Amsterdam : #RodeLijn

A lesser-taken path towards restored faith in humankind: #doncherry #jazzsky

This one goes out to @wendyo.bsky.social ... 'Compleat Imbiber' spirits glass by Frank Thrower for Dartington Crystal ... so 1972:

"Aristotle was profoundly right ... ethics is concerned with how to live and human happiness ... this sort of 'practical knowledge' is ... wider than the sphere of 'science' ... and a cultural necessity if we are to arrive at a sane and human view of ourselves or of science." Hilary Putnam (1978)

"Instead of being left behind, old evils return under new names ... human beings are no more reasonable than they have ever been." John Gray (2018)

In other news ... the Sunday morning concert at Concertgebouw in Amsterdam was not sh*t; Brahms & Strauss were actually rather wonderful:

Medium becomes toxic substrate; internet search is now a bare-faced raft for product placement; obviously, AI will also distribute embedded ads.

Bluesky reminds me today ... Arvo Pärt is 90; when I was drowning, as a young lawyer, the sure stillness of his music was so what kept my head up:

"Although we are well aware that we know much that earlier generations did not, we are much less conscious of what they knew that we do not." Peter Burke (2024) #doubt

Deeply moving; I have no Arabic, but unsurprised that she sings of 'Ruins'; thinking of Gaza, and the arrant, callous, cowardice of England's goverment: open.spotify.com/track/2eAiSx...

"This is why we stay with poetry ... from forest to city, from story to computer ... we know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify." Edouard Glissant #doubt

"Any account of science which does not explicitly describe it as something we believe in, is essentially incomplete ... a false pretension .... a claim that science is essentially different from and superior to all human beliefs which are not scientific ... this is untrue." Michael Polanyi (1949)

And the award for 'Ravishing Book Cover' goes to ... Luis Blackaller of @cartoondistortion.bsky.social for '999 Years of Peace' by James Kaelan: