#money
Not now
For the past few months the days have been long and dark. Somewhere in the middle there it snowed and it stuck for a couple of weeks, slowly hardening into sheet ice. We're through most of it now. Last week, in the courtyard behind the apartment the trees started to bud, and now there's sun enough to catch the green rippling along all their branches. Spring, maybe. In the dark months I kept my head down and worked. Ugly, stupid work. Pointless work. Now just as spring comes I'm sick. The other day I was in the office and I...
It's enough to make you crazy
The world is enough to make you crazy. The city is enough to make you crazy. The building is enough to make you crazy. The way lint builds up on the desk right in front of you, given enough of everything else, is enough to make you crazy. I've deliberately contracted in the past couple of years. I've tried to become less of a jangly ball of reactive nerve endings. I think I used to be a gaping maw that inhaled current affairs from near and far and exhaled analysis and anxiety. I try to do less of that. Touch...
Links, November 2023
Right now I am in England. It's the first time I've been back since we moved away to Germany and being here has immersed me back in some old themes... like the British class obsession. A little while ago I read Bright Young People, about a certain set of upper class enfants terribles who were the first of a kind of person that is now splashed all over Hello magazine. One of that set was Evelyn Waugh, who wrote a send up of the whole gang that I've just finished reading: Vile Bodies. The book is full of social climbers,...
Links, February 2023
Well, we moved to Germany (we know!), so I've been correcting some of my gaps in recent German history by reading the lengthy Wikipedia page on German reunification. In terms of online life, that's the only real giveaway that I've moved in the real world. The rest of the anglophone media roar rolls along as before with two notable edits. I've completely cut out the very high volume Westminster insider newsletter I used to read first thing every morning (why?) and I've generally reduced my intake of UK news to a minimum. In other non-English news, AI has been used...
Cinema unlimited
Moving to a new country with a new currency, one of the things we've been thinking about is, "is it cheaper?" It's a very intangible thing. I'm too stupid to do quick currency conversions in my head, I'm earning a different amount of money (is it more, is it less, yes!), and different kinds of costs work out very differently. Recently we had an incident with an outrageously expensive (or was it?) iceberg lettuce from Lidl, a budget supermarket, 2€! Unlimited metro usage is 29€ a month (until it possibly doubles in a couple of months, or doesn't). We're getting...
This is not the apocalypse you were looking for
— This is not the apocalypse you were looking for, Laurie Penny in WIRED
Local power and the social order
— American Genry, Patrick Wyman in Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future