NOBODY UNDERSTANDS WHAT PRODUCTIVITY is and nobody cares. Yes, sure, you might think you know the macroeconomic definition, that it's a ratio of economic inputs to outputs, but you, in 2025, would be wrong. You have the notion that measures of economic activity actually lend themselves to interpretations about the real world, but like the characters in Spufford's Red Plenty you are trapped, ideologically, in a fairy-tale past where such conceptions did matter, and now, they don't. Sorry.

Ned Resnikoff, You'll Never Think Alone Again:

What I’m really worried about is less an active plot than the terminal erosion of those habits of mind and cultural practices that sustain a mass democracy. We’ve arguably been in real trouble on that front since before Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death. We wouldn’t have gotten Donald Trump and the present crisis without televised infotainment’s anti-democratic properties and potentialities. But reality TV and cable news look primitive when compared to devices that promise to fully replace your internal dialogue.

John Plotz, Public Books, 'Lying in Politics': Hannah Arendt's Antidote to Anticipatory Despair

In the face of deliberate deception—engendering self-deception and leading to full-on defactualization—we can still offer appeals to shared human frailty, and a belief in the durability of truth. Arendt reminds us that even would-be authoritarian lies, with their utter disregard of reality, do not last. It is that disregard of truth, that phoniness, that makes them inherently unstable. By describing the ways in which America in the 1970s (as again in 2025) fell into a crisis, she reminds us that the strong fabric of laws and a palpable American commitment to human equality and diversity are still present, albeit muted and obscured beneath the blanket of lies.

THERE IS A BRIEF and fascinating article on a group of people involved in toppling and vandalising statues:

For a year-and-a-half, this anonymous group from Melbourne has been going after colonial statues – toppling, breaking or defacing them in the night. While there has been more than one group going after these statues, this one is the most active.

THE TEALS HAVE AN accomplishment-based ideology, and each one of them prizes their achievements, of which, to be fair, they have a large number. Monique Ryan was a doctor and hospital administrator. Zoe Daniel was a prominent journalist. Zali Steggall was a barrister and led NGOs, and oh yes, won an Olympic gold medal. That accomplishment-mentality leads them to meritocratic thinking; they work hard, they achieve, they win, and not unexpectedly, they make the logical leap that they win because of their accomplishments and all that hard work; the just reward of effort and aptitude. They contrast themselves against the major Parties (and Greens), who, by contrast, stress collective effort and solidarity, and have a fundamentally different sense of power. The essential truth of meritocratic thinking is that you can't share wins.

LIKE MANY CONTEMPORARY INTERNET users I subscribe to the newsletters of people whose writing I enjoy. These drop into the inbox of my email with a satisfying regularity. In a sense each of these fulfils the same niche as blog entries once did, with a bit more formality, each being a self-contained piece of writing by a single author generally on a theme or interest basis. Each invites me to subscribe, like, support. Are they novel?

Timothy Burke, Dispatches from the AI front:

The punishing accumulation of bullshit work processes within the academy and the disconnects between them and the core labor of faculty. Visions of austerity slamming into teaching and scholarship while administrative ranks grow seemingly without end. It all has led to many students at large universities feeling as if the university and its curriculum is little more than a credentials pinata to be whacked until it gives up the candy, and GPT is only the best and biggest stick ever provided for that purpose.

Ferdinand Mount, LRB, The Tongue Is a Fire:

We need, I think, to get some feel for the pre-modern landscape of public speech to understand the huge distance we have travelled. The pre-moderns were painfully aware of the potency – and the perils – of unguarded speech. ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity,’ warned the Apostle James. ‘The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.’ Dabhoiwala points out that the saying ‘while sticks and stones may break my bones, words can never hurt me’ is first recorded only in 1862, but the contrary sentiment, ‘the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones,’ is found in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

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.

Dan Davies, Corporatism with a flat cap:

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?

Me, in this blog, earlier:

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.

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.’