IN THE GLORY DAYS of blogging there was a grand blog, Marrickvillia, which coined some incredible phrases, including 'gut-n-smeg' (for the process by which an existing house with outdated fixtures is updated with new kitchens, bathrooms, and a new rental price). The greatest of these neologisms however was Fedeterranea:
These homes are found in every street in Marrickville. They're mostly owned by people who came to Australia from Italy and Greece in the 1960s and 1970s. A mix of Federation and Mediterranean aesthetics, they are a striking hybrid of architectural styles. Columns, stone lions, statues, terracotta tiling, palm trees and/or clipped conifers, olive & citrus trees, variations on the "Marrickville aegean blue" paint, arches, brick cladding... have all been added to the facades of sedate early twentieth-century homes that feature (or featured once) tuckpointing, coloured window glass, tesselated tiling, agave plants & camellia hedges.
232. Not everyone is called to engage directly in political life. Society is also enriched by a countless array of organizations which work to promote the common good and to defend the environment, whether natural or urban. Some, for example, show concern for a public place (a building, a fountain, an abandoned monument, a landscape, a square), and strive to protect, restore, improve or beautify it as something belonging to everyone. Around these community actions, relationships develop or are recovered and a new social fabric emerges. Thus, a community can break out of the indifference induced by consumerism. These actions cultivate a shared identity, with a story which can be remembered and handed on. In this way, the world, and the quality of life of the poorest, are cared for, with a sense of solidarity which is at the same time aware that we live in a common home which God has entrusted to us. These community actions, when they express self-giving love, can also become intense spiritual experiences.
Either this cosy arrangement of mates, backhanders, off the books work and quiet words is the reason that nothing gets done in this town. Or … it’s the method by which everything gets done. If we want to think of an international analogy, do we look at some post-Soviet backwater where nothing gets done without blat, or some rapidly modernising part of China where everything gets accelerated by guanxi?
Relationships of patronage and support, which are other names for corruption and nepotism, reward other virtues and talents than the ones our society values. Older, crookeder systems reward qualities like loyalty, attention to the needs of the institution, a strong sense of collective identity and goals, staunch support within groups and teams, talent-spotting and career development by superiors and bosses, protecting one's mates, and task orientation (just 'getting things done') as opposed to process orientation (making sure things are accountable). Those things aren't to be sneezed at either.
City of Sydney (Sheilds), 1845. City of Sydney Archives. (https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1709347)
JAMES VINCENT WROTE IN the LRB about the meaning shifts behind the cardinal points.
Brotton ends his survey by noting the year the reign of the compass finally expired: 2008, which saw the launch of the iPhone and the creation of the blue dot, the constant marker in map apps by which we now orient ourselves. ‘In this our digitised century,’ Brotton writes, ‘there are now five directions – north, south, east, west, and the online blue dot: “You”.’ Paper maps have given way to the dot, which is now ‘pre-eminent, superseding compass directions which, for many, become irrelevant. Eyes glued to that jerky little blue ball, we spend less and less travel time observing the physical terrain through which we move.’
OS9 and Word 5.1. A more elegant weapon for a more civilised age.
IT OCCURRED TO ME some months ago, in a thread of toots I think is worth reproducing here and now, later, as a blog entry, as I waited the usual three or four minutes for Word to open my document, that the basic tasks most people use PCs for (browsing file systems, opening documents and working on them, email) have barely improved or changed since the early 2000s. And have not sped up or become in any way more productive.
I HAVE FINALLY UPGRADED the theme and CSS of this blog to something that is actually workable and viewable on a phone. Once in every decade seems about right for that kind of thing. Gentium remains an incredibly cool typeface and you should use it. Also updated is the About page which has additions accruing on top, hiding the old, an archaeological stratum on top of another, like a midden pile slowly growing over a mound of generational garbage, and that is an image I think as appropriate to this website as any there'll ever be.
In other words, this story is not merely a jibe on the megalomania of the emperor. It’s raising the question of how the autocrat impacts on the traditional structures of the state, any state. Nero, after all, didn’t declare himself victor. He was declared victor by the usual authorities. What does that say about us, we should ask? Who dares to stand up to the emperor and say he hasn’t won?
Any adversary of the United States can very easily see—like Brasidas once did—that the entire imperial project that the Trump Administration is engaging in could collapse in on itself by the clever act of peeling off our allies from us with nothing more than the promise that they could be free.
THE DRINK IS AROMATIC, not just in terms of volatile esters, but in terms of nostalgia for its early twentieth century origins. It's a cafe drink, from a forgotten world unlike ours of today. It recalls Ezra Pound before he went full fash and had to be put in a cage, Ernest Hemingway talking loudly over the top of him and everybody else about his leftist credentials, Gertrude Bell drawing arbitrary lines on maps in the Middle East, Europeans watching the Russians suspiciously, Americans withdrawing from the world, the financial markets crashing, like I said, nothing like today. Why not make a cocktail and enjoy the ennui?
THE IDEOLOGICAL BASIS TO the American tariffs, and to whatever else the hell they seem to be doing to their economy and society, has a long-standing history.
THE LIBERAL CANDIDATE FOR Whitlam in this Federal election believes that women should not serve in combat roles in the ADF. This is at the obvious level just evidence that the man is a gronk. His views about women are backward, creepy, juvenile, and most importantly, wrong. At a grander level though this man's views aren't about women at all but about manhood and masculinity, part of the Triumph of the Operator:
