adamgreenfield

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Do you have any real sense of how recently chattel slavery was (formally) outlawed in the United States? Two not-overlong human lives ago, stacked end to end. That’s it. It’s not at all inconceivable that someone now in their eighties knew, in their childhood, someone that had been born into slavery. I often sit with this fact. I recommend the practice – it’s sobering.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Maybe things would’ve turned out better if we’d reposed MASSIVE SOCIETAL POWER in the hands of nurses or teachers rather than, y’know, software engineers.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Ayo, anybody want to work on researching physical/digital “hybrid cities” with my friends at #LSECities here in London? It’s a good opportunity to inject some sense, and decent politics, into what might very well otherwise be just another outcropping of blandly technocratic top-down liberalism. Tell ‘em I sent you! (Share as widey as you please.) https://www.lse.ac.uk/cities/join-us/vacancies

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Suuuuuuperniche, mega-local question: is anyone else on here also a member of the Mildmay Club (“radical since 1888”)? Feel free to boost. #northlondon #sizzlington

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

If your politics are hierarchical and you believe in elites, I suppose you can be as arcane as you please in your writing. But for the love of all that is holy, if you are in any way committed to egalitarianism, or the ability of ordinary people to organize themselves and determine the conditions under which they exist, please share your thoughts in something like natural language. I cannot tell you how dispiriting it is to encounter helpful ideas expressed in activist cant or theoryspeak.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Often imitated, never bettered. swoon https://open.spotify.com/track/6SEMWLEAQs90K4XSacidwM

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Here’s a sneak preview of the book, BTW – this here’s a passage about #Rojava, from Section 3 on “Collective Power.” The sentence structure here could still use a tweak or two, but in general I’m not displeased with the way it reads.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

UGH the Children’s Health Defense/RFK Jr. people have just reached out to me, asking if I’d be interested to serve as an “expert on smart cities.” It’s the exact same vibe I got when approached by the Spiked!/Battle of Ideas Festival lunatics and the similarly conspiracist “Architects for Social Housing” guy: I feel soiled that they’d think of me as someone sympathetic to their worldviews. What am I doing wrong?

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Become ungovernable. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/jul/11/crows-and-magpies-show-their-metal-by-using-anti-bird-spikes-to-build-nests

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Hey kids: this time it’s for real. I am severely under the hammer writing-wise, and with apologies, am canceling and/or turning down all other commitments for the remainder of the month. Please assume that I have not seen and will not see any messages, comments, posts, etc., intended for me until at least the 1st of August. Enjoy your summer. 👊

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

"It could be argued on very sound theoretical grounds that this growing blanket of carbon dioxide, by intercepting heat radiated from the earth into outer space, will lead to rising atmospheric temperatures, to a more violent circulation of air, to more destructive storm patterns, and eventually to a melting of the polar ice caps (possibly in two or three centuries), rising sea levels, and the inundation of vast land areas.” Give it up for Uncle Murray: this was written in 1964.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to food

I wish I knew how to quit you, Mastodon! Anyway, this is me popping up again, when I should be working, to share this, because I think a bunch of you heads would find it interesting. It’s essentially Smaje’s book-length refutation of George Monbiot’s credulous #ecomodernism & advocacy for the application of SV techniques/mindset to mass food production, and a call for “agrarian localism" instead. Anyone concerned with where we’re going to get our #food in the Long Emergency should read it.

adamgreenfield, 10 months ago to random

Popping up real quickly with an urgent request: For my book, I’m interested in hearing a firsthand description of the current situation in #Rojava, including accounts of how it has evolved since the Turkish incursion of November 2019. This state of affairs is dynamic, complex and confusing to outside observers, and I’m bound to get some things wrong, but I want to be as accurate as I possibly can be. Your help is vital, and hugely appreciated – please do share. #AANES

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Dudes, I have lived in the UK near enough ten years now, and am well adapted to it in many ways, but one thing I’ll never, ever get is the festival thing. “Glasto”? Pay hundreds of pounds to stand around in filthy conditions, getting sunburned with a hundred thousand munted strangers, to see mainstream schmaltz I’d pay twice that much to never have to hear again?? Are you fucking insane? No and never.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Spent a decent chunk of yesterday with food justice activists mostly in their twenties and thirties, and was struck (and moved, and saddened) by the common structure of feeling among them. Their language turned, consistently, to the trauma and violence they felt the state and the market had inflicted on their communities, and on their bodies as well. I had to sit with it for awhile.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

New Swans. Not sure about this, on my second full listen; Gira’s not in full voice, the songs feel thin & have yet to click. “Paradise Is Mine” has something of the old feel to it, but tbh it makes me sad when a band comes out with something in a novel direction & the best thing you can say about it is that it reminds you of their old work. I want to believe, though.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

So, uh…what’s really going on in Moscow? (You may speculate, but please indicate that you’re doing so, and please do cite sources for any assertions of fact you make, thanks.)

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Learned about this organism this morning, courtesy of @abolisyonista: it’s a myxosporian endoparasite that may have originated as an endogenous cancer, and which – uniquely among the known varieties of Earthly life! –does not use mitochondria or aerobic respiration to power its metabolism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henneguya_zschokkei

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Such is the ability of federation to screen one from unpleasantness that I’d actually forgotten there are real live crypto True Believers right here. There’s something faintly unreal about interacting with one of these sorts in current year – generally the higher cognitive functions seem to have twigged that WNGMI, but the reptile brain just keeps motoring on.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

So this is something I’ve just tripped over that tickles a certain part of my mind, that I also think a whole bunch of you would be interested in & probably have not heard of – it seems like it might be useful in mapping out the distributed functions and institutions of a local #solidarityeconomy or #circulareconomy. http://valueflo.ws

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Happy solstice, beloved.

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Burying the lede, quite literally in this case: “The inquiry saw internal documents that revealed how in 2019, 16 separate pandemic preparation projects were ‘stopped’ or reduced as a result of planning for a no-deal Brexit.” This needs to be in the headline, at the beginning of the headline, all of the headline. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/20/covid-inquiry-britain-remains-wildly-under-resilient

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Ahh, some of you heads asked for the full quote from "Invisible Cities," which is so apropos to our moment it hurts: “And Polo said: 'The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it...

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Feeling like trash garbage today, psychophysically and emotionally. Throw some horns for me, utter arcane formulae of benediction, send cat pictures. 👊

adamgreenfield, 11 months ago to random

Calvino, on how to survive a time of fire: “Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” (h/t to @moleitau for reminding me of this exquisite framing.)