The Cyclical Nature of Chores
Emma Wilkins' excellent piece "On Housecraft" in The Philosopher, discusses Helen Hayward's book, Home Work: Essays on Love & Housekeeping in such a compelling way as to provoke some thoughts…
human nature
Disappearance of the Rule of Law
Charlie Angus talked about Canada-US relations on Meidas Touch: "We're thinking, if we go down the road with this regime, we're talking about the disappearance of the rule of law,…
What Seems Impossible Can Become Inevitable
George Monbiot talked with journalist Rachel Donald of Planet Critical. In a nutshell, Monbiot has many views in common with Chomsky: People with the money have become the people with…
Culture of Uncare or Pandemic of Inhumanity
Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe coined the term “culture of uncare” to explain intentional efforts to sever links from one another and from the environment. She calls it “severing links,” but the…
A Laughing Matter
I got laughed at in the grocery store today. That hasn’t happened in a while. Cases of hospitalizations/day are at their lowest since December 2021 right now, which is fantastic,…
What Went Wrong? Hubris.
Mario Possamai, senior advisor for the SARS commission, was interviewed in an hour-long video from ISPR Respiratory Protection back in July 2022. Here’s a summary of his talk with some…
Our Duty to Others IS Love
In my class recently, we were asked to get into groups to get a reading down to one key word. The passage was on Confucius, and it was about human-heartedness,…
The John Snow Project on Spooky Masks
The John Snow Project has the singular goal of cleaning the air in public buildings the way its namesake demonstrated the link between cholera and contaminated drinking water, and eventually…
On Being a Bad Person
I forgot to post this from last month – my monthly posting at 3 Quarks Daily: A student asked, “How many bad actions does a good person have to do…
Next Steps: Violence? Policy? Adaptation? Acceptance?
Ezra Klein wrote a compelling piece about Andreas Malm’s book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. We’re not doing enough to stop the trainwreck we’re driving, but is violence the…
What are the Chances We’ll Learn Anything from This?
It’s fascinating to watch behaviours now that we’re stuck together in limbo. In my little house, we are all perfectly healthy; we’re just more together. This should be a piece…
On Manne’s "Down Girl"
With thorough argumentation and heavily footnoted facts brought to the table, Down Girl, by Kate Manne delineates misogyny from sexism and hopes “to offer a useful toolkit for asking, answering,…
Is This Really Something To Be Proud Of?
I find myself these days thinking about the beasts that have been unleashed upon society. In the United States, of course, it is Donald Trump who has made it acceptable…
On the Necessity for a Public Takedown
When, a couple months back, I read Katie Way’s depiction of a date between “Grace” and Aziz Ansari, at first I felt badly for him to be outed as such…
On Shame, Honour, and Vulnerability
I was forwarded this 47 minute podcast with Brené Brown on 1A, and some of the ideas she has are remarkably similar to Timothy Snyder’s views in On Tyranny (e.g.…
Inconceivable! His Dinner with Chomsky
Wallace Shawn sat down for a chat with Noam Chomsky, and here’s what they talked about – slightly abridged and loosely quoted (for clarification purposes) with links. It’s a great…
On Boyden’s Questionable Ancestory
It’s hard when we find our heroes as fallible as the rest of us. Boyden, the prize winning indigenous writer found to be not so indigenous, is taking a hit…
On Boyden’s Questionable Ancestory
It’s hard when we find our heroes as fallible as the rest of us. Boyden, the prize winning indigenous writer found to be not so indigenous, is taking a hit…
A Shift in Values
Further to my last post about the current values and the boundaries of the social imaginary that prevent us from making any significant and necessary changes in the world, George…
A Shift in Values
Further to my last post about the current values and the boundaries of the social imaginary that prevent us from making any significant and necessary changes in the world, George…