Category Quick Posts

• Theme

  THE BLOG HAS A default theme for now, by popular demand.

  Posted 10 March 2025 · Author Liam Hogan

• Language Models

  THE POINT OF MAINTAINING a blog is a fundamentally personal and political one, shared with almost all writing that matters. Now, certainly, this blog will never ever matter; but that infinite irrelevance is even more reason I feel to think out the politics of maintaining it.

  Here is my policy: I don't like AI, and will never use it for writing.

  Posted 5 February 2025 · Author Liam Hogan

• What I'm reading: Commonweal vs. Branko Milanovic

  A Sick System: On the killing of a health insurance CEO, by the editors, Commonweal

  Americans are suffering too much, dying too soon, and going broke in order to prop up a completely unnecessary but very profitable industry. The time has come for us to begin phasing it out. The only questions should be how fast to do so and by what means: we could add a public option to Obamacare’s individual insurance market; we could gradually lower the eligibility age for Medicare or allow people to buy into Medicaid. But until we change direction, the problem will just get worse, leading to more despair and to more acts of rage. It is right and necessary to condemn such acts, but we no longer have a right to be surprised by them.

  To be young, perchance to dream by Branko Milanovic, on Vojinović's The political ideas of the Young Bosnia

  'A feeling of pride and fear mounted in him. Then another commotion, more yelling, disorder, running: nothing has happened they were shouting now: his Majesty was unharmed, a fiendish and dilettantish attempts on his life has failed. People began to slowly trickle back home. He thought of doing the same. But perhaps it was not good to be seen running away right now. It may be suspicious. He walked into a pastry shop. Should he take a baklava or a millefeuille? He decided for the latter even if it was more expensive. He realized that the money was in the same pocket with his pistol, moved a little away from the crowd and carefully took out 12 hellers. He counted them one by one. He had very little money. Like all 19-year olds he liked cakes. Somebody yelled again; cries became stronger and closer. He left the millefeuille after the first bite and walked three or four steps out of the store. There right in front of him was a stopped car, with His Majesty and the wife, berating the driver. He touched the pistol as if to make sure it was still there. Then he took it out…'

  Posted 6 January 2025 · Author Liam Hogan

• The Cheapo Stuff Wins

  DEAR EDITORS,
  “WHY IS Everything So Ugly?” (Issue 44) was a pleasingly dyspeptic essay about something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately: the unremitting ugliness of life in early 2020s America. But since the editors were more preoccupied with describing the ugliness than explaining it (a few references to supply chains and global capital aside), I thought I’d try to actually answer their rhetorical question by looking at the economic transformations of the post–New Deal era that led us here. I see us as the victims of four interlocking phenomena, tackled below in no particular order.

  Letters to the Editor: The Cheapo Stuff Wins (Nplusone)

  Posted 9 October 2023 · Author Liam Hogan

• Locations

  TWITTER HAS BEEN BOUGHT, and will become, presumably, Elonian, meaning heroic, disorganised, and centred on the self-image of its owner above any function. As it, and other highly-centralised social media ‘places’ appear to be at inflection points of utility, perhaps we can find other smaller and disaggregated places to be.

  I post at aus.social, put pictures up at flickr, and at instagram (though rarely). And I aim to blog here more frequently…

  Posted 31 October 2022 · Author Liam Hogan

• Try It For A Change

  MODERN WAR, IN ITS present shape, calls for the sort of initiative that arises from democracy. That is, I believe, the principal meaning of this book...

  ---Tom Wintringham, 'English Captain', 1939

  Posted 1 March 2022 · Author Liam Hogan

• Building classes

  THE BUILDING CODE OF Australia categorises all buildings into one of ten classes. The buildings mentioned in Ike and Tina Turner’s Nutbush City Limits can be allocated the following categorisations:

  Posted 19 October 2021 · Author Liam Hogan

• Cardboard record player

  THE SIMPLE CARDTALK RECORD player was developed to play phonograph records without electricity.

  (In the spirit of the web log I am going to post more things that I read)

  Posted 13 May 2021 · Author Liam Hogan

• Rain

  Posted 22 March 2021 · Author Liam Hogan

• The Manual

  IN 1988 THE KLF published The Manual, or How To Have A Number One The Easy Way. Like the band’s music, it’s both instantly dated and completely timeless. It might be one of the most significant manifestoes of the 20thC or it might be a worthless cynical PR pamphlet. A fan has transcribed it into plaintext and hosted it.

  Money is a very strange concept. There will be points in the forthcoming months when you might not have the change in your pockets to get the bus into town at the same time as you are talking to people on the telephone in terms of tens of thousands of pounds. Some of the following might seem contradictory but in matters of money they often are. We spoke earlier of how being on the dole gives you a clearer vision of how society works. What it doesn’t do is give you a clear idea of how money works…

  Posted 12 February 2021 · Author Liam Hogan