Society

By “defy convention” and “democratise ocean exploration,” it turned out that Rush meant “use cheap materials” and “sell trips to the bottom of the ocean to rich chumps.”

The narrative itself is based upon a widely-accepted misunderstanding of technological progress which renders the current shittyness of any technology irrelevant.

With that sort of political firepower – controlling the allocation of billions of pounds of public funds – on its side, one might anticipate that Ely would be booming. After all, if such powerful political figures cannot even look after the people who elect them, then what good are they?

This is the great unsung success of modern imperialism in its “stakeholder capitalist” disguise… it has completely neutered its opposition, even to the point of convincing its non-opponents that in some way it is on their side…

The transformation in the Labour Party’s fortunes was staggering.  In the spring of 2021, a Tory Party which had been in office for 11 years stood a good chance of extending its lead in the once unassailable “red wall.”  By the autumn of 2022 – the year of two monarchs …

I was in my teens when I came across the idea that “cool” was a bell curve.  You’re at a party, for example, and some guy picks up an acoustic guitar and gives a rendition of the latest hits… that’s cool.  Add a harmonica and you’re getting toward “peak cool” …

In Part One, we looked at fake news as a simulacrum – something so many stages removed that it has no connection at all with the real world.  This is not simply a matter of bias or propaganda, but something which calls into question everything we think we know and …

When it comes to the origins of the term “fake news,” people fall into two broad camps.  The first holds that the term was coined by former US president Donald Trump to dismiss critics in the establishment media.  The second, smaller group, insist that the term has been around for …

Humanity faces a bottleneck of crises which threaten the collapse of industrial civilisation.  Of these, most people are only aware of climate change, which most believe can be solved via electrification and a range of simple changes to our lifestyles. But climate change is just one of myriad crises, including: …

It has been called “America’s Chernobyl.”  In short, following the failure to maintain rail side detectors, a freight train containing several tanks of vinyl chloride – a precursor of PVC – experienced an over-heated axle causing a train fire and a derailment close to the town of East Palestine, Ohio.  …