Lent

How hard would it be, I wonder, to never (knowingly) put money in a billionaire's pocket again ... is there an app for boycotting greed?

If you follow me on here but are also still on the HellSite, please don't - just unfollow me! ... I don't feed fascism.

“Hated school, dropped out at 11, can't read, can't write. But I can do this!” 💥💡 That's real feedback from one of the participants in a #prison #philosophy class funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. Find out more about our work in prisons: royalinstitutephilosophy.org/news/how-phi...

Whoopsie-daisy jazz night (at Cafe Alto, Amsterdam):

If in Rotterdam: an engrossing exhibition, profiling the strikingly fresh creativity of Iris van Herpen: www.kunsthal.nl/en/plan-your...

When I visit England, in the rural North, the conversation can turn quickly to 'stopping the boats', largely thanks to the BBC upping a 'migrant crisis'. This is utter bollocks. The huge English crises are, as ever, poverty & illiteracy.

Woke up thinking with Taleb; AI frenzy is a 'white swan', we see a bubble & know how such stories go (Nortel etc); the $ looked 'anti-fragile', but such in-fighting (in a G7 country) has no precedent - a 'black swan' takes flight?

There's still joyous stuff out there; Mozes Rosenberg & Anton Goudsmit - so much soul, fun & stylish technique: @bimhuis.bsky.social

25 January 1935 | Dutch Jewish boy, John Groenteman, was born in Amsterdam. He was deported to #Auschwitz from #Westerbork in September 1942. He was murdered in a gas chamber after the arrival selection. --- Children at Auschwitz: 🎧 Podcast: https://youtu.be/aYKx_zpLSqA

"Europe is the site where violence and bourgeois complacency meet." Henrike Kohpeiß (2023)

What do you feel is the biggest threat to our national security right now? The UK Joint Intelligence Committee has released its report on the threat of biodiversity and ecological collapse on national security. Its a chilling read: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0e...

A future for Venezuela, Gaza & Greenland is being drawn up in golf-club bars & then declared in hotel lobbies; the UN has been back-watered, while EU leaders stay polite:

Yesterday, at my local grocery in Amsterdam: Me: I won't shop here any longer, now that you are selling Israeli fruit. Shop: I sell what people want, I also sell products from the US, and from Iran. -- that bracketing is so apt:

America is in real-time talking itself into being unbankable, in front of an audience of all the major financiers in Europe.

Checking my pension fund this week ... making sure to dump US bonds; US shares gone already - EU citizens can so turn on these bullies:

Standing ovations all round - Karina Canellakis conducted an exuberantly crisp Mahler 5 this afternoon at Het Concertgebouw, whilst Manchester Utd walloped the neighbours at footie; yay! Surely some linkage ...

"The idea that we can still claim access to truth without being dependent upon interpretation presupposes that knowledge of objective facts is enough to guide our lives. Within this transparent realism, warnings are cast off as unfounded, contingent, and subjective ...". Santiago Zabala (2025)

nocturne

“Poverty, great wealth and democracy are ultimately incompatible elements in any society…either poverty will use democracy to win the struggle against property or property…will destroy democracy” Nye Bevan, 1952

These days every, even the mundane, kindness is vital:

'USA withdraws further from the international stage' - front page news, here in the Netherlands; not a good look, so petty and selfish:

Eerily quiet in A'dam: near closure of the airport, absences many tourists; green puddles in pristine snow, presences many dogs:

A couple weeks until this event at @housmansbookshop.bsky.social on Jan 21st – I'll be chatting to @katrinanavickas.bsky.social about her fantastic new book *Contested Commons* (@reaktionbooks.bsky.social). Really looking forward to it! Get your tickets here: housmans.com/event/book-t...

AI should be regulated, or shunned, just like GMO food. #epiphany

Bye-bye, full moon days ... weary from your beck & call:

Habemus ... sneeuw! A morning fit for Breugel:

Announcing: On Philosophy, Winter 2026!! All events are free, Mondays at 2pm ET / 7pm UK (except March 2nd is 30 min later, and March 9th is 3pm ET) featuring Angie Hobbs, Yann Allard-Tremblay, Fannie Bialek, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Kaitlyn Creasy, and so many more! #Philosophy #PhilEvents

"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?

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: