potemkin villages (seen from cummings' car window as he drives to barnard castle)

on the closure of the last blast furnace at port talbot

good arguments are being made here in the first half of the program by a welsh labour guy about the need to avoid decarbonisation by de-industrialisation (and the offshoring of dirty carbon intensive processes rather than their full replacement). 

but horsemouth is clear that we need to get on and decarbonise as soon as is possible. (this is very much horsemouth - he just wants to get on, he has no patience with the niceties). 

horsemouth is continuing to celebrate the occupation of centre point 50 years ago but his celebration will end at 3pm on the 20th - roughly the time at which the occupation ended. there were some protestors who did not wish to leave and were forced out by the police. 

'dostoyevsky and nietzsche remain the two best people to read to understand contemporary politics and the pathologies of the dominant moral-political perspective of insiders. it may seem odd to say people writing in the 19th century wrote more perceptively on today’s san francisco/SW1 elites than today’s media but it’s true...' - dominic cummings, snippets 12, 19th january 2024. 

dear god we are really in for it aren't we. horsemouth supposes it is a step up from his endless deployment(s) of potemkin villages (seen from cummings' car window as he drives to barnard castle). instead of cheap astroturfed scenery of social policy success we have a psychological diagnosis of 'the insiders' (as is cummings isn't himself an insider). 

the combination of minard's infographic and tolstoy's war and peace is a powerful one but it doesn't make it true (merely persuasive). one could of course apply a similar infographic to cummings' own career and credibility - 'the retreat from highpoint of the referendum vote' being essentially similar to the retreat from moscow.  

cummings has gone all goodreads, book-tock and penguin classics. why not go the whole hog and cite erofeev and konvicki?  

here's another golden glow mix by howard from 20th january 2019 -as he puts it 'ambient chilled relax work whatever. it's just good to have in the background and features some of the best from 2018' seems to be some alice coltrane in there about 46 minutes in.