What does green mean?

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Moved before art

What is required, in order that we may be moved? It’s election season, and so getting voters to bother in order to get a candidate over the line, defeat the fascists, save what needs saving are all familiar. Or become familiar again – we always need refreshing and reminding, suggesting that we,  or at least a great majority of us, default to an unmoved state. Why this is so and clearly observable is interesting on its own – savvy, cynical, overindulged, entertained to boredom? – but not the point here and I trust there is one.

A thing less caused by duress that might conjure our being touched, stirred, triggered in the parlance, toward some deep, emotion reaction, speaks more to the missing element than a threat’s reminder. We cultivate a different relationship with perceptions of things (or people) as marginal, that keystroke which leads to indifference. We become acquainted to those, perhaps to the point of even preferring them as an antidote to feeling or being bothered; confessions about this analgesic effect on our psyche readily reveal the why and how of pharmaceutical and entertainment industries designed for succor and we are presently dropped back into a chicken-and-egg debate itself designed to go not further.

Separated into special trips to the museum,  objects within them become otherwise monuments to their impossibility, especially so the impossibility of encounters with them as art that moves us. A painting or sculpture in the wild – a photographer friend once installed an entire show in a deep woods, precisely and only for those who might accidentally discover it – is not after all in the wild or naturally occurring. Yet it is deliberate, as is our maintaining of preference for engaging with it. We do these things on purpose not once in a while but on the regular, cultivating in a true sense our own power to be moved, keeping it limber, flexible, not in need of fury though neither beyond it. Far less effort than remaining unmoved, the sway of a leg or reach of a perfect hand should stir us with instantaneous, ready fascination – that is, we promote and prioritize that possibility within us. Daily, if we can; hourly, if we’re lucky.

Marginalization of sensual effects upon leaves us reeling in the face of those who temp, scare, or frighten us with the artificial, which should hold far less sway over us than it does. But we struggle with the demigods of artificiality, as if any of their product worthwhile upon our senses, our capacity to stir, and be stirred. Figurative language was the first to be born, proper meanings the very last to be found. Provocation on this continuum should be the bare minimum.

Now don’t forget to vote.

Image: From the aforementioned forest photo show by Shaman.

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Trends and allegations

Imagine a can opener an economy driven by consumption:

AI fears came roaring back, with Nasdaq futures pointing to a reversal of yesterday’s gains in tech shares. Data-center company Elice saw its stock plunge 32% on its trading debut in Seoul, underscoring the worries about whether the AI boom can justify the billions being poured into the industry. Attention in the tech world now turns to Netflix, which is due to report earnings today. The streaming giant is under pressure to show it can produce hit movies and TV series again after a recent drought.

From the daily Bloomberg email a couple of days ago– again, only the messenger – but the shell game on display in the pivot presents a mid-stream snapshot of the shell game very much in progress. The crowding out of housing, retail, public infrastructure, education, healthcare… any other sector, in favor of hyperscaler AI build out that shows very little demand but on which the stock and bond markets are tied like pretty ladies to the track, quickly gives way to pressure/hopes for another fount of leprechaun gold. What’s that sound? Oh, not to worry – that’s way over there in France:

Four years after the invasion of Ukraine, France is the European country that has bought the most Russian liquid natural  gas since the beginning of 2026.

The threats are piling up between Moscow and Brussels, but our money continues to cross the border. We’re financing the two camps of the same war.

That money going to Russia and the Gulf states doesn’t stay in our country to renovate schools and support the most disadvantaged.

Basically, the high cost of living that filled the streets on Saturday is, first and foremost, a deep-seated divide.

My translation of an IG post from yesterday. Added note on a weird-ish development: I’ve been following the protests in France only through social media – videos, writing, and narration from individuals on the ground, in the street, commenting on the government’s response, as opposed to any American or British media outlets. It’s just a thing I noticed myself doing, and requires added vigilance to read/listen to subtext and signals from these unknown (to me) interlocutors. As the far right tries to assert itself in the chaos, posts are potentially potential mis- or disinformation, so you have to read all the way to end, and think about how you’re being to told what, and who is being blamed. In an otherwise little-noticed development, the onus falls on me to figure out whether I am being manipulated.

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What do green cards mean?

It is fortunate how incompetent Musso-lazy the preznit and his ‘team’ are at the margins – they do plenty of damage between the lines. People with know-how need not apply, one-way loyalty visible from space, and good help always being hard to find all add up to a thick stack of not understanding how to avoid things like catastrophic wars and spiraling debt pushing up interest rates.

Maybe this will discredit the notion of government as business [ed. Oui, je sais: sweet summer child]. But fascism also wrecks the ordinariness of difficult times and turns them into nightmares, even and especially with a regime that has introduced difficult times on stilts for ordinary people:

“DHS is NOT arresting U.S. citizens by mistake.” “There are no ‘indiscriminate’ stops.” Allegations of “racial profiling are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.” “The pattern is NOT of law enforcement using force.” “ICE does not zip tie or restrain children.”

But that is precisely what is happening, and at a far larger scale than previously reported.

ProPublica has tallied and cataloged more than 500 cases of immigration agents holding citizens during the current administration. Imagine, and it’s not so hard to do, so many fellow citizens going about their daily routines now with escape plans, alerts, and hiding places as part of their stress portfolio. What does that do to people? If you answered which people, that’s a good place to start.

 

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Deconstructing the status quo

There’s more to that than we think we know.

Passing observations from NYC Climate Week,  but from the Natural Resources Defense Council power panel I attended at NRDC on Thursday, Reimagining Science for All of Us: From Vision to Design

Luminaries on the panel featured leadership of the Environmental Defense Fund, Working Group Vice Chair of the IPCC, and the Founder/CEO of Stand Up For Science. Serious people who say things such as, “The climate movement is deeply unserious about a serious subject.” Shared in the context of ignoring indigenous expertise on climate threats. Accomplished, committed people who have thought long about climate issues, unabashed about equity and justice. Enough? No. But they speak frankly about blowing past 1.5º C of warming. That’s more than something. The subject of the panel opened up criticism of scientists, the careful language, fidelity to being experts not activists though knowledge is not inherently neutral. Scientists need to get political. Many won’t like this; none of their universities will.

But back to the status quo. It needs to be unpacked. En bref, after WWII, the U.S. was full throttle. You saw Oppenheimer (You did see Oppenheimer. C’mon. at least pretend. To keep up.) After that, we could do anything. It was the pre-advent of big budget Hollywood filmmaking in the shape of scientific discovery. Research on a massive scale, Cecil B could only dream. An army of extras, except PhDs. Just throwing money at a lot of things. And we did. We went to space. Silly. But okay.

But it was so successful, no one ever had to think much about it. We celebrated Ted Williams, not Jonas Salk. Batting 400 vs. polio? What. Poli-what? Look at how he rounded the bases, hopping like that. Did Jonas Salk round the bases? Did Polio? Yikes – we have measles again. Polio on line 2. No Don Draper, no “It’s Toasted.” No one knew. Multiple diseases fell in the woods and… don’t say it.

Without a need, science never developed a political machinery. Sounds cynical but it needed one, from the outset [remember, we’re de-constructing]. It’s a form of hubris, yes. But it’s hubris of all of ours. Did we just expect to defeat disease and move on to golf courses? Don’t answer that.

There is a need to talk about science to people who never think about science. The pHarmA (whatever) nonsense brand names aren’t helping either. Stop it. Start it.

 

 

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Whither Philanthropy?

Uncomfortable proximity to double entendre notwithstanding, the heading of philanthropic fundraising and grant-making is very much in question, if not doubt. As we barrel into the climate crisis while finding out just how much representative democracy we can do without, who is funding what and how?

I spoke with Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund last week following the fund’s announcement that it would spend down its endowment to zero in the face of urgent societal challenges. She hits many great points – among them, what is perpetuity in a burning world?

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Relationships of interest

French philosopher Simone Weil was many things at once – mystic, factory worker, activist, militant, social thinker and moral psychologist. Over the course of a very short life, she devoted great attention to the actual existence of people. The incisive trajectory of her thinking and attention produced that rarest of commodities: durable insights that have aged well.

Today’s reading is from Oppression and Liberty, a collection of essays mostly written in the 1930s that deals with sociopolitical issues that reach back to the time of the French Revolution. It may ring a bell.

Every human group that exercises power does so, not in such a way as to bring happiness to those who are subject to it, but in such a way as to increase that power; it is a matter of life and death for any form of domination whatsoever. As long as production remained at a primitive stage of development, the question of power was decided by armed force. Economic changes transferred it to the plane of production itself; it was in this way that the capitalist system came into being. The development of the system later restored war as an essential means in the struggle for power, but under a different form; superiority in the armed struggle presupposes, nowadays, superiority in production itself. If the free play of competition is the final object of production in the hands of the capitalists, its final object in the hands of technicians organized into a State bureaucracy would necessarily be preparation for war. Besides, as Rousseau had already understood, no system of oppression is interested in the welfare of the oppressed; it is on their miserable condition that oppression can rest the more easily the whole of its weight.

As for the moral atmosphere that a régime of bureaucratic dictatorship can bring about, we can realize here and now what it can be like. Capitalism is only a system for exploiting productive work; if we leave out the proletariat’s efforts at emancipation, it has given full scope, in every branch of activity, to initiative, free enquiry, invention and genius. On the other hand, the bureaucratic machine, which excludes all judgment and all genius, tends, by its very structure, to concentrate all powers in itself. It therefore threatens the very existence of everything that still remains precious for us in the bourgeois régime. Instead of the clash of contrary opinions, we should have, on all subjects, an official opinion from which no one would be able to deviate; instead of the cynicism characteristic of the capitalist system, which severs all bonds between man and man in order to replace them by mere relationships of interest, a carefully cultivated fanaticism, calculated to make poverty, in the eyes of the masses, no longer a burden passively to be borne, but a sacrifice freely consented to; a mixture of mystical devotion and unbridled bestiality; a State religion that would stifle all individual values, that is to say all real values. The capitalist system, and even the feudal system, which, through the disorder which it involved, allowed here and there individuals and collectivities to develop in an independent manner, not to mention that blissful Greek system under which the slaves were at least employed in seeing to the wants of free men—all these forms of oppression appear as forms of a free and happy existence when compared with a system that would methodically destroy all initiative, all culture, all thought.

Image: Street art image of philosopher Simone Weil in Berlin Kreuzberg, via wikimedia commons.

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Privacy Gear Checklist

Paper, notebook, pencil. The stealthy thrill of being a resistance fighter when you whip out new-fangled technology at the supermarket – a shopping list. Pre-planning a menu with specific meals you’d like to prepare optional but highly recommended.

Take the joyous route around nonsense, no software required.

The near-constant piracy privacy invasions sweeping up everything we do and all we think we want to know, primarily on our insistence of sharing, uploading, making things visible [he writes on a website], requires a kind of slow acceptance endemic to the tools. During the heady decades of the Cold War, school children would regularly have drills for what to do in a nuclear attack, so no surprise about what we can become socialized to. It’s akin to what dating apps are doing to interpersonal relations – the apps are not designed to help you find the love of your life, but to keep you using the app. Reflecting on the difference produces amazing results in less than a week.

Information intake. Reading books, for one; listening to records, for another. Sure, I have dogs in this fight. But whatever you’re reading or listening to, you can talk about it or not. I do talk and even write about some of what I read, because I am sometimes asked. But I don’t have to. Even conversations you have about what moves you can be privately maintained. They might even get more interesting. A note of caution here about building intrigue. But only a note. You’re worth it.

Can you we practice privacy? Certainly, especially while you still know how. This goes for so many things, obviously, but get this: you can also purchase bound books full of empty pages, on which you can write ideas or jokes or scandalous stories, or draw things. It sounds crazy but most paper will stand up to watercolor. Spend some time and update your own software. In order to bring the phrase ‘playing it close to the vest’ back into common parlance, some people must wear vests.

 

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Missed opportunities

So, this is clear as mud.

All the discussion amid the smoking ruins of the U.S.-Canada trade relationship (conceding how few people think about this, even as it’s happening, so deeply is it without cause or sense) the whole concept of the U.S.-backed global order provides a kind of backdrop. What was it? Why was it?

The U.S. has been a great power by various definitions for more than a century. It was one of two for most of the latter half of the 20th century and the sole one starting in the final decade of the 20th century.

To understand this now-receding era, we must recognize that U.S. power functioned differently with the relatively wealthy states primarily in the global north and those poorer states mainly in the south. Its power was based largely on two key alliance structures: One based in Europe (NATO) which is really the western fringe of Eurasia and another based on the littoral and island fringe of East Asia — Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, et al.

We don’t have to believe, nor should we, in the idea or reality of the U.S. as a beneficent global hegemon. But as JMM points out, its terms were generous; getting other countries to go along with you is a team sport, much more arguable for when they and their people benefit. It’s the positive sum dynamic and makes a great deal of sense while also being the golden key to soft power, the whole boring concept of pulling together to benefit everyone. You can make that argument when you’re putting your money down and can point to improvements in societies not your own.

We can and should talk about all the ways the current administration doesn’t understand military or economic power, that if you want to see the limits of either, just begin using them imprudently as they have.

But to pan out even a bit wider, though not to take away from damage being done by our current Know Nothings, the Cold War itself and its era began the unraveling process of this global order long before it actually happened. Before 1991, the collapse of the USSR or the Berlin Wall, the focus of the bi-polar (yikes – was not expecting that bit of convergence) order had begun to decay. Corporate engagement in domestic politics has long been part of the dynamic, with this or that shadow government advocating for against certain actions. Behind-the-scenes influence to protect the bottom line is as American as Apple Baseball, and these influences can be as nefarious as they are [much too infrequently] positive. However, when the corporate line is the guide, appeals to societal benefits are useless, perhaps even senseless. Like prohibiting horses from playing chess.

In my messy little history, as the focus of the global order disintegrated, multi-national business was quick to give it order, even as media and some more than few politicians crowed about the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. So quaint.

Corporations had better ideas, had identified new threats. The 1970s energy crisis was one rallying cry for better solutions and even presented a possible, new focus for the global order. By the time Jimmy Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof, the global warming denial complex had gone to college, found a sweetheart, married, had kids and gotten divorced.

Exxon, Shell, Texaco, few even have the same names now. But even as they try to shirk responsibility for those now-adult children, it’s important to imagine a better, different path for global prosperity and security. Because it can all seem so fore-ordained, but it wasn’t. Even into the 1980s, the nascent environmental movement provided a powerful organizing principle for a new global order, as outgunned as it was. Why it was outgunned is important for us to understand now – not just about the money but grappling with the shortsightedness itself. It’s less an alternate history than the beginnings of a new next, because the lack of a new global focus brought us exactly to the results of a decayed one.

I interviewed a DJ from Johannesburg a few years ago, a wonderful person as well as a super sharp journalist. After we wrapped and as I drove him back to his hotel, he remarked with some wonder as we passed a sign for Baldwin Street. He thought it remarkable that a prominent street had been named to honor the great author James Baldwin; I smiled as I explained that in fact, the street was named for one of the most important white supremacists of the 18th century. A small town with a street named after James Baldwin would be in an altogether much different country.

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On inference and statistical significance

Friday rabbit hole caveats be damned healed, a reference to p-values in my readings this week struck a chord for ready digression.

I interviewed a statistics researcher [podcast versions] a few years ago who served as an co-editor on special journal issue dedicated to the (mis)use of statistical significance in research, particularly psychology research and specifically the phenomenon know as p-hacking:

a little more explanation of the null hypothesis and how it relates to other flaws in the typical way psychology researchers have handled statistical analysis over the past several decades. Roughly, our research often comes down to finding differences between groups of participants on some variable of interest (Are boys better at math than girls?) or correlations among two or more variables (Does suicide risk rise as poverty increases?). The null hypothesis is the assumption we then make that there are no such differences or correlations in the populations from which our data were drawn, and we compute the probability that we would have found data with differences or correlations as large as we actually did if the null hypothesis were true. If that probability (called a “p-value”) is less than some specified value, typically .05, then we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the differences or correlations we found are probably real. This is known as a statistically “significant” result. If the p-value is greater than .05, then we fail to reject the null hypothesis, for lack of convincing evidence otherwise.
Research that fails to reject the null hypothesis rarely gets published in scientific journals. Likewise, research that merely replicates rejections that were found in earlier research rarely gets published. As a consequence, there is a high professional premium on testing questions that have not been previously published, and on rejecting the null hypothesis.

The widespread adoption of these customs has unintentionally encouraged a whole series of inadvisable research practices, which have led to trouble. For instance, because most studies that do not find significant effects go unpublished, we don’t know whether the findings of the published research are real or just the mistakes that our chosen p-value allows to slip through (the “file-drawer problem”). This problem might be attenuated if we published efforts to replicate previous findings, but that kind of research is rarely accepted by journals.

Note the generosity embedded in the term ‘inadvisable.’ Hmm.

 

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Turnabout, meet Fair Play

On the question of which armaments are appropriate for which fight, one of the most odious of congress-critters seems to have been taken down by the renewable energy group Invest in Tomorrow Coalition PAC. Via TPM:

The group’s ads did not mention clean energy, instead targeting conservative voters with advertisements that boosted Hatcher’s right-wing credentials and chided Ogles for missing votes. The PAC deployed a similar playbook against Texas Rep. Chip Roy in his unsuccessful attorney general bid and South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, who lost his campaign for governor.

“The clean energy industry’s political muscle is only getting stronger and more intimidating,” said Invest in Tomorrow Coalition co-founder Michael Brune, who previously led the advocacy group the Sierra Club. “Our hope here is that clean energy will go back to being a bipartisan issue, and maybe one of the few issues that all Americans can agree on. But before we get there, we’ve got to continue our retribution tour and take out a few more members who have voted the wrong way.”

— Lawmakers like Ogles, Roy and Norman drew the ire of industry last year when they pushed Republican leaders in Congress for a quick phaseout of renewable energy incentives in what became the One Big Beautiful Bill act. Chris Larsen — the PAC’s top backer, who has contributed $6 million of its $6.8 million — has called its advocacy “political warfare.”

It’s about timely.