Election anticipation

January 7, 2024 by Leave a comment

So, only a week into the new year, and already one of my 2024 predictions has turned out wrong, as Rishi Sunak seems set to delay the general election until the autumn, rather then gambling on a spring poll as I forecast. His strategy to avoid certain defeat seems to be limited to hoping that something will turn up, though for good measure he is evidently planning another round of harsh austerity, presumably calculating that reducing potential Labour voters to a state of immiserated despair will sap their motivation to turn up and vote the Tories out.

At least the US presidential election is hotting up, with just over a week to go until the Iowa caucuses. The broad outlines of the campaign are fairly clear already – Trump will double down on 2020 election denialism and associated conspiracy theories, while Biden will run partly on his record, but mostly as a defender of democracy. (If I was in charge of the Democratic media strategy, every ad would simply feature a picture of Trump, with ominous music in the background, and the caption “Seriously – this fucking guy?”) Of course everything could be upended if the Supreme Court follows the Constitution and bars Trump from the ballot, but that seems like an unlikely outcome, since the Justices are presumably reluctant to be held responsible for the mayhem that would follow.

I’m still optimistic, perhaps delusionally so, that the end result of the electoral process in both countries will be relatively sensible centrist government, which may not solve any long-term problems, but will at least be a break from the immediate madness.

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Modest predictions

January 1, 2024 by Leave a comment

If there has been an identifiable trajectory to my existence over the last year or so, it has been towards living in the moment. My sense of time has subtly but definitely shifted. The past has blurred into an achronological continuum, to the extent that I am often shocked to discover that events which are fresh in my memory actually occurred decades ago. I have been finding it increasingly difficult to think about the future in anything other than the most abstract terms. Only the present seems to have any tangible reality.

I am somewhat ambivalent about this development; I have a nagging feeling that my lack of attention to forward planning will come back to bite me at some point, but, on the other hand, my life at the moment is generally agreeable, and it seems a shame to dilute my enjoyment of it by dwelling on the past, or worrying about the future. My instinct, for the time being at least, is to lean into it, and savour the ride.

This is a rather roundabout explanation of why I am going to limit myself to the vaguest possible forecast of events for the year ahead. I would probably prefer to avoid making any predictions at all, but even a semi-detached observer like myself can see that 2024 is shaping up to be fairly momentous, so I feel honour-bound to lay down at least a few markers.

It is sadly safe to say that war will remain a feature of international relations for the foreseeable future, but the exact course of the current active conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan, and Palestine is harder to predict.

I suspect that a de facto armistice will occur in Ukraine; there seems to be no appetite in the US or EU to supply the Ukrainian army with the materiel needed for a successful offensive, and Russia has more or less realised its original objective of annexing the Donbas and securing a land bridge to Crimea, so the hostilities may settle into a pattern of occasional exchanges of drone strikes.

The Sudanese civil war had seemed to be moving towards a similar stalemate, but recent fighting has seen the paramilitary RSF make gains, so an upsurge in violence may well be on the cards.

Meanwhile in Palestine, the Israeli government seems determined to continue pursuing a strategy of maximum destruction, but I can’t see how Netanyahu will be able to maintain external or internal support for such an obviously illegal and ultimately self-defeating policy, especially if a second front opens up on the northern border, so some sort of ceasefire seems likely to materialise, though it may still be months away.

Whatever happens on the battlefields, it’s certain that civilians will continue to endure unimaginable suffering, and that, along with the demise of any pretence that we live in a rules-based international order, will be something the world will have to grapple with for years to come.

Significant elections will take place this year, on both sides of the Atlantic. The timing of the UK poll is as yet uncertain, but my guess would be late spring or early summer. It’s hard to imagine any outcome other than a landslide Labour victory, but the campaign will be brutal, and the victors will inherit a country in a desperate state, so even if, as seems likely, Keir Starmer puts together a technically competent administration, there will still be many difficult days ahead.

The situation looks even less promising in the US. Several highly divisive questions need to be resolved before we can even think about the vote in November. Will the conservative justices on the Supreme Court lay aside their originalist principles and allow Donald Trump on to the ballot, despite the 14th Amendment being clear on the matter? Will Republican primary voters abandon Trump as his legal woes mount? Will the GOP establishment unite behind Trump if he does become the nominee? My guess is yes, no, and yes. It seems a little more certain that Joe Biden will be the Democratic candidate, barring any health-related problem, and I’m sure he would prevail in a fairly contested general election. Whether the poll will proceed smoothly is somewhat less certain though. One might expect that Biden’s control of the Federal government would ensure a level playing field, but Republican lawmakers in state governments have already taken steps to disenfranchise potential Democrat voters, and Trump may incite his followers into more overt election interference, before, during, and after the vote. Despite all this I have enough faith in the good sense of the American people, and the robustness of their institutions, to believe that Biden will be sworn in for a second term.

So, it turns out I can still conjure up some opinions, if I put my mind to it. The process has left me kind of bummed out though, so I’ll switch to a lighter topic for my final forecasts.

Ever since my last trip to California in 2022 I’ve been daydreaming about moving to San Francisco, or at least organising an extended stay there. In lieu of actually doing anything to turn that wish into a reality I’ve been vicariously experiencing the Bay Area lifestyle by reading restaurant reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle, and following the fortunes of the local sports teams.

Over the summer I had high hopes that the Giants would make the World Series, before a late season slump saw them miss out on even a wild card spot. They hired a new manager, Bob Melvin, but failed to sign Shohei Ohtani, so I don’t think they’ll do much this year.

The Warriors at least reached the playoffs last season, but this season they’re 15-17, and looking very ordinary, so I doubt they’ll get to the postseason.

But the 49ers! I thought they were incredibly unlucky to lose to Philadelphia in January, and this season they’ve been (almost) unstoppable, if you discount a late October blip, and an off day against Baltimore. So my 100% confident, bet the farm on it, can’t lose prediction for 2024 is San Francisco to win the Superbowl.

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2023: The year in review – Part 2: Blogging

December 31, 2023 by Leave a comment

This year hasn’t been one of our more productive; we just about managed one post a month, and a fair number of those were fillers pushed out at the deadline to keep the streak going.

I hinted at the reason for this in one of my rare insightful pieces in the summer; the disconnect between the objectively terrible state of the world, and the largely carefree nature of my personal existence. Things have only gotten worse since then, both internationally, with genocide in Palestine, fascists coming to power in Latin America and Europe, and the abandonment of even the pretence of action on climate change, and domestically, as the rabble of spivs and fantasists that passes for our government fight amongst themselves while the country slides into oblivion. Still my life trundles on, more or less agreeably. Add in the fact that advancing age has deepened my predisposition towards existential rumination, and it is perhaps not too surprising that composing light-hearted missives on culture and politics sometimes seems more than a little pointless.

Despite the paucity of new content we still get a surprising amount of traffic; not so much that I could call myself an influencer, but enough to keep me from giving up altogether. Of course it’s more than likely that most of these readers are actually bots intent on scraping our archive to compile a training set for the next generation of Artificial Intelligence; if so, at least I can console myself with the thought that I have made some contribution to the education of our future robotic overlords.

Anyway, here are our top ten most-read posts of the year:

  1. There is no land beyond the Volga
  2. Change don’t come easy
  3. How ’bout them Cubs?
  4. Virtual alchemy
  5. Trumpocalypse now
  6. Guiding Light
  7. Tom Verlaine RIP
  8. Comfortably fungible
  9. They were defeated, we won the war
  10. Summer torpor

Of these only our brief note on the passing of Television frontman Tom Verlaine is from the last twelve months; the rest are essentially random picks from as long ago as 2010. My favourite post of the year, from a limited field, is this one about the crypto implosion.

One disappointment has been the contraction of our international appeal; 87% of our traffic now comes from either the UK or the US, with the remaining 13% split between another 25 nations, quite a change from the days when we had readers in over 100 countries. Here are the top ten:

  1. United Kingdom
  2. United States
  3. China
  4. Canada
  5. Hong Kong
  6. New Zealand
  7. Portugal
  8. Finland
  9. Singapore
  10. Germany

So that was 2023. This time last year I suggested that we might start posting more Second Life-related content, since I had just downloaded the SpeedLight app, which promised access to the grid via my iPhone, but sadly it turned out to be a bit rubbish, so I never really got into it, though I did renew my SL subscription when it fell due in October. An official Linden Lab mobile viewer is reportedly set for imminent release, so I guess it’s possible that we might have some more metaverse news to report in the coming months. Failing that I expect we will keep turning out infrequent dispatches of lightweight political and cultural commentary, to a more or less completely indifferent world.

I’m off to meet some friends and ring in the New Year, so all that remains is to wish our readers a happy and prosperous 2024.

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2023: The year in review – Part 1: Culture

December 31, 2023 by Leave a comment

Here we are at the end of December, time to look back on the year that has just passed. I’ll summarise our blogging output, such as it was, in the next post, but first up a run through of some of my personal cultural highlights of 2023.

Television – after a peak during the pandemic, my TV-watching has reverted back to being practically non-existent. The only new programme I took in was the third season of Only Murders in the Building, and even that I binge-watched over a couple of evenings. I do occasionally dip into back episodes of comedies like Arrested Development, or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but otherwise the medium is essentially dead to me. I’m not sure if that will change in the year ahead, though I’ll probably keep my various streaming-service subscriptions going just in case something good comes out.

Film – I did make much better use of my membership of our local art-house cinema this year, going more or less weekly for a spell, though that did tail off a bit more recently. Highlights included a Wes Anderson season ahead of the release of Asteroid City, anniversary revivals of classic films I just about remembered from the first time around, like Variety, Dazed and Confused, Gregory’s Girl, and Stop Making Sense, homage to the noughties NYC music scene Meet Me In The Bathroom, and of course summer blockbuster Barbie (though I skipped Oppenheimer, which I was not in the mood for at the time; I guess I should try to catch it before the Oscar nominations come out). My favourite film of the year was Anatomy of a Fall, an intriguingly ambiguous exploration of whether it is ever possible to really know another human being.

Books – My top read during 2023 was Richard Ford’s original Frank Bascombe trilogy, particularly The Sportswriter; the story of a middle-aged white guy navigating existential uncertainties unsurprisingly struck a chord at this point in my life. Other fiction I enjoyed included some more volumes of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, Nathanael West’s lurid LA nightmare The Day of the Locust, and a re-read of Sacher-Masoch’s classic Venus in Furs. In non-fiction there was Haruki Murakami’s Novelist as a Vocation, various works by Bertrand Russell, and, balanced somewhere between philosophy and fiction, Benjamín Labatut’s meditation on the implications of Artificial Intelligence, The Maniac.

Music – I finally got with the times and signed up for a Spotify account this year, and I’ve been relying on their algorithm to supply my general background soundtrack. I’m still undecided on whether this is a good or a bad thing; it has introduced me to a few new artists, but mostly plays my old favourites. I do still read the music press, and listen to the radio, which I hope is enough to steer me towards some fresh albums; here are my top ten from 2023:

Compiling this annual retrospective, and comparing it with entries from previous years, I’m unable to escape the conclusion that the breadth of my cultural horizons is inexorably shrinking, in terms of the absolute number of books, movies and records that I consume (as enumerated in our Tumblr), but also in my willingness to look outside of my habitual preferences (which were probably always more fixed than I cared to admit). In my more pessimistic moments I consider this an inevitable consequence of advancing age, but every now and again I feel a spark of enthusiasm for some new experience, which is enough to reassure me that I’m not ready for the scrapyard just yet. Perhaps 2024 will be a year of personal renaissance, I guess we’ll see.

So much for my internal world; what of my engagement with external reality through the medium of this blog? Read our next post to find out…

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No crypto

November 5, 2023 by Leave a comment

In a development which won’t have surprised anyone who had paid even passing attention to the case laid out by the prosecution, a jury in Manhattan took only four hours to convict Sam Bankman-Fried, erstwhile CEO of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, on all seven charges he faced in connection with the scandal, encompassing wire fraud, money laundering, and, for good measure, securities and commodities fraud. Bankman-Fried reportedly faces more than 100 years in federal prison, and still has another trial on related charges to look forward to next year.

What’s interesting is that, despite his reputation as a DeFi genius, SBF’s crimes were spectacularly low-tech; he took the money entrusted to him by credulous depositors, and spent it on stuff. The crypto veneer added nothing, other than some distracting stardust, and a rationale for registering his company in the Bahamas, thus avoiding US regulatory purview. Even without such oversight it’s hard to see how SBF thought he could get away with it, unless he had become so intoxicated by his own publicity that he believed he really could spin gold out of digital straw.

The FTX debacle, along with various other blockchain-related fiascos, seems to have dealt a fatal blow to the NFT market, a development so predictable that even we managed to see it coming at the peak of the frenzy in 2021.

Despite all this Bitcoin is still doing relatively well, presumably because, unlike pictures of jaded simians, it actually has a use value, albeit one that appeals mainly to criminals looking to transfer funds clandestinely, though even that is not foolproof.

None of this is new of course, as we wrote way back in 2010, apropos of the blog-related scams prevalent in those days:

Persuading people to suspend their disbelief by invoking some magical new paradigm must go back to the days when enterprising cavemen extracted shiny pebbles from their gullible fellows by promising to share the secrets of how to generate revenue using that new “fire” thing that everyone was talking about.

So I think I’ll continue to pass on crypto, or whatever incomprehensible tech-based get-rich-quick scheme comes along next, and stick to old-school working for a living.

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War in Palestine

October 30, 2023 by Leave a comment

I guess it’s a sign of how long I’ve been following world affairs that the current conflict in Palestine seems to me like a repeat of a horribly familiar story. There is no reason to believe that this round of bloodletting will end any differently from previous chapters; when the smoke clears and the bodies are buried there will be no resolution of the injustice suffered by Palestinians displaced in 1948, and consequently no hope of a lasting peace in the region.

One might think that, even if humanitarian concerns carried no weight, simple realpolitik would dictate that a ceasefire was in the interests of all parties. It is difficult to see what Israel has to gain from committing troops to a prolonged ground war without an obvious exit strategy, though perhaps easier to perceive how Benjamin Netanyahu might see an advantage to such a course of action as he tries to evade responsibility for the disastrous failure of his security policy.

When one does take the humanitarian situation into account, then the case for a ceasefire is unanswerable. It cannot be denied that those responsible for the atrocities committed during the Hamas incursion into southern Israel should be brought to account, but inflicting further suffering upon a trapped civilian population, in clear violation of international law, does not bring that goal any closer.

Is there any cause for optimism? There are some indications that Israel, perhaps under pressure from the US, is limiting the scale of its operation in Gaza to something less than a full occupation, which may not immediately make the situation better, but might avoid making it much worse. Qatar is reportedly negotiating a release of hostages, aid is trickling over the Egyptian border, and the UN Security Council is working on a resolution calling for a ceasefire. This may be just enough to steer the region away from catastrophe in the short term, but a durable solution will require a resumption of serious negotiation, and there is little sign that either side is willing or able to countenance the necessary compromises in the foreseeable future. When the guns do fall silent this time around it may not be for long.

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Burning dilemma

September 4, 2023 by Leave a comment

There was a period back in the mid-00s when I harboured a desire to attend the Burning Man Festival, but the logistics always defeated me, and in the end I sadly accepted it was never going to happen, consoling myself by taking in the Second Life version instead.

More recently, as my life has progressed and I have become somewhat less encumbered by responsibility, the thought of going has entered my mind again, and when I read last month that tickets were more available than usual this year I wondered if I should drop everything for a quick transatlantic trip.

Predictably enough I didn’t get my act together, and just as well, as it’s turned out fairly grim. (Though not by all accounts; some people seem to be having a fine time). In any case I would probably have felt a bit conflicted by the inflation of my carbon footprint consequent on such a frivolous excursion, as well as the environmental cost of the festival itself, not to mention the morality of lavish expenditure in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Perhaps I can recreate the vibe on a more sustainable scale by getting stoned and lighting some garbage on fire in my own backyard this weekend…

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Retrumped

August 31, 2023 by Leave a comment

Looking through our extensive archive, I see that our first mention of Donald Trump came back in 2007, in a post about the Second Life real estate market, where he is referenced in his capacity as an archetypal successful tycoon, though even at that time there was a cartoonish element to his public persona.

Trump next turns up in late summer 2015, when we note in passing that his popularity is rising. Into 2016, and his name features more frequently, as we first dismiss the possibility that he will be the Republican nominee, then assure readers that he has no chance of capturing the Presidency.

(In defence of that latter prediction I would point out that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, which in any normal country would have given her the job, but we reckoned without the vagaries of the Electoral College).

Unsurprisingly, the antics of the Executive Branch provided material for plenty of posts over the next four years, culminating in the tragicomedy of the Capitol riot.

I’ll admit that at that point I thought Trump would cut his losses and retire to the lucrative lecture circuit, a career move which would probably have kept him out of jail, since, notwithstanding high-minded rhetoric about nobody being above the law, the US doesn’t really see itself as the sort of country where you can be locked up for losing an election. However, for whatever reason, he’s decided to run again, exposing himself to legal peril, and pitching us into a rerun of the GOP primary of eight years ago, but this time without the laughs.

Where will it all end? My track record of forecasts on this topic is obviously abysmal, but I’ll hazard a guess that Trump will be the Republican candidate in 2024, and that Joe Biden will beat him again. His various trials will be postponed until after polling day, but his misdeeds will eventually catch up with him.

Will Trump attempt another coup when it becomes obvious he has no chance of a legitimate win? He may, but if it’s anything like the laughably amateur affair detailed in the Georgia indictment, then it seems very unlikely he will succeed, and the heavy sentences being handed down to the would-be insurrectionists of January ‘21 will deter all but the most deluded of his followers from joining in.

That’s how I see things today anyhow; my opinion is subject to change as events unfold. If nothing else, the renewed Trump Show should inspire me to post a little more frequently over the next few months, which may not entirely make up for the chaos he could unleash, but will at least keep me amused.

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July daze redux

July 30, 2023 by Leave a comment

If I wanted to excuse the infrequent nature of my posts since the start of the year by claiming that I’ve been paralysed by existential anxiety, I wouldn’t have to look too hard to find plausible reasons for despair; take your pick from accelerating climate breakdown, attritional wars on multiple continents, the predicted rise of killer AI, unaccountable oligarchs hoarding wealth while the young slide into financial precarity, the resurgence of Donald Trump, rumoured extraterrestrial incursions, general government mendacity and incompetence… and that’s just this week’s news.

In truth though, I’ve been largely silent for almost exactly the opposite reason; the last few months have found me in a state of unfocused contentment, which hasn’t exactly been unpleasant, but has left me with a nagging feeling that I should have some stronger opinions about what’s going on, and should be taking every opportunity to share them.

There’s only so much angst anyone can take though, and I reckon I’ve done my share of agitation over the years, so I’m going to forgive myself for lapsing into a period of blissful denial, until the end of the summer at least. Assuming that ever comes…

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Midsummer musing

June 22, 2023 by Leave a comment

So here we are at the longest day, which seems like a good point to take stock of the year so far, and anticipate developments in the months ahead.

Or it would be, if this blog was anything other than moribund. Since the start of the year I’ve mentally composed multiple posts, but the few I’ve gotten around to actually writing have been somewhat underwhelming.

I had a vague idea about shaming myself into productive activity by listing a few of the sort of topics that anyone claiming to be an engaged member of society should really be able to formulate an opinion on, with the expectation that I would compose something about them in the not too distant future, but when I actually wrote them down – artificial intelligence, the war in Ukraine, UFOs, UK politics, US politics – it looked rather obvious and dull. An alternative strategy – spontaneously reacting to whatever is in the news – has led to some of our best pieces in the past, but feels like it would require more energy and enthusiasm than I can muster at the moment.

So I don’t know. I guess these things go in cycles, though of late the intensely creative periods seem to have been getting rarer, if indeed they ever existed at all. Still, life is always a matter of hope triumphing over experience, so I’ll press on…

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