Given what we know about Palantir – its carefree devising of remote, automated murder – that it should be associated with the UK health service is truly mind-numbing. Palantir is not to be trusted, And now the UK Labour Party is complicit in this dark enterprise.
Drowning in words
I set out to write a book review this evening, my reaction to Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I’ll do that later, (follow the link to ‘Reviews’ on the blog title page) but I got sidetracked by the fact that I could recall only a vague outline of what that story was about until I read it for the second time in order to write a review.
So here’s a short (draft) essay about the challenge that our online cultural conduit presents to those of us, like me, who still like to read in preference to listening to podcasts or watching youtube vids. (Reading isn’t better or worse than those media, it’s just that reading is what I have grown up with).
Of course I read this book. Twice. The first time when it appeared in 2021 and then more recently when the film version was announced. I found that, honestly, I could not remember much of the story when I picked it up for the second time. I was a little alarmed that I had read a 400 page sci-fi novel but retained only the sketchiest notion of how the story went.
On a sidenote this is partly a symptom of the new times we live in where the deluge of reading content has become so very great. Not so long ago, back in the 1980s or so, this was already a theme of literary criticism – that so many novels were being published that it was impossible to read more than a tiny fraction of the output of a thriving publishing industry (as it was at the time).
It seems to be generally reckoned that by the end of the 1700s there was only a small number of enthusiasts for the printed word who were reputed to have read just just about every book that had been published. Personally I suspect that this threshold was crossed much earlier than that (perhaps 1650ish) but certainly by the end of the C20th it was impossible not merely to read every published book but even to keep track of them outside the more organised panopticon of a national library.
My point is only to excuse or justify my poor recollection of the book I want to review. It may be that my memory is not as good as it was (I am somewhere on the older side of 50) and what with wonky eyesight and fatigue it is so much harder to read with focus and with absorption in a culture, specifically our online culture, where books of all kinds are both rapidly made available for purchase or piracy and also advertised, often more than once, as worthy of one’s attention through the streamed transmission of review‘formats’ of many types. (Not so long ago, around the beginning of the C21st, a great deal of print was devoted to the topic of the ‘attention economy’, a topic that is now, itself, drowned in the ocean of digital content).
This vast undergrowth of literature puts a premium on filtering, not merely as a technical operation – setting computer rules to restrict what feeds show you – but also cognitive control, rules-of-the-mind that enable one to ignore some things.
Yet even this does not really control the flow for it simply keeps coming as if filtering itself increases both the relevance as well as the quantity of what ‘comes your way’. The only true solution is to turn it off, or at the very least develop a monomaniac trait, a ‘one track mind’, look at just one type of content and wilfully ignore the wider contexts in which those things that demand my attention are embedded.
The digital medium has no natural ‘walls’ in the way that print used to have. Back-in-the-day I would go on holiday and take at most two or three books with me and then only if there was carry-room in my baggage. Today I take my e-reader, lightweight and no bulkier than a small A5 notepad on which I carry over 30 books some of which in print form would be 800 page doorstops!
My e-reader has storage space for a couple of thousand more if I wanted them on hand (as it were) without adding any physical bulk or weight to my travel baggage. I wouldn’t do that of course, because even a small library of 30 books simply imposes the same kinds of demands on my attention. I’m on holiday after all! (And that also raises the seriously problematic issue of how e-readers are designed in both soft and hardware to enable managing, searching, or annotating texts … but that is another essay!)
Tech History
EdTech
Just a reminder of where we are at:
“Far from the promises of educational enhancement, ed-tech has created educational dependencies – bureaucratic dependencies and now, with “AI,” cognitive ones. This is not some weird fluke; this is by design.”
(Audrey Watters)
Creeping fascism
I can’t help but see this as ‘creeping fascism’:
It’s not merely the injustice here but the bureaucratic laziness, a wilful torpor, the refusal to even ask the question ‘is this right?’ The willingness to cause hurt; and of course the impact, which is major, on the poor, the powerless victims of indifference (the sort that is encouraged by the likes of Farage and his stoolies) built into the very systems that are supposedly there to provide support.
The Labour government under Starmer is of course where the proverbial buck stops. I always assumed, it turns out naively, that the civil service acted in accord with the government, indeed, was strongly directed by elected policies and strategies, but clearly not. Instead it is a self-serving, covert power centre of weasels. (I am trying to avoid the idea here of a ‘covert state’ – or, as the BigBaby in the Amerikan White House calls it, the Deep State – but it sure feels like an independent hub bureaucratic power.
20 Feb 26
Dunkelflaute (dark lull) – a useful/fun word? Not too significant but tells you about Germany’s situation with respect to energy supply (specifically its reliance on wind power) and from there is its lack of a nuclear energy infrastructure (versus nuclear weapons,which it isn’t contemplating, except indirectly):
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-02-18/germany-has-a-simple-nuclear-decision-to-make
— ⁂ —
Palantir: earth devil
Palantir is the ultimate symbol of techno-evil on the planet. Absolutely blood oriented, servile to conquerors and dictators everywhere, greedy and spendthrift.
https://www.ft.com/content/92c3beda-3cb9-4a3b-8563-f869c32bce59
Yes, It’s Fascism
From Jonathan Rauch, 25/1/26
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/
Rauch has reached a point where it is clear that fascism is at large in America. Not so long ago people might have pooh-poohed the idea. It was still avoidable, but not now – there is an ID parade and what the MAGA mob is doing matches the surveillance pictures.
Writing a year ago, I argued that Trump’s governing regime is a version of patrimonialism, in which the state is treated as the personal property and family business of the leader. That is still true. But, as I also noted then, patrimonialism is a style of governing, not a formal ideology or system. It can be layered atop all kinds of organizational structures, including not just national governments but also urban political machines such as Tammany Hall, criminal gangs such as the Mafia, and even religious cults. Because its only firm principle is personal loyalty to the boss, it has no specific agenda. Fascism, in contrast, is ideological, aggressive, and, at least in its early stages, revolutionary. It seeks to dominate politics, to crush resistance, and to rewrite the social contract.
He puts forward a list of 18 characteristics, a ‘constellation’ or features. Some or all might be present. He believes they are all present in the political life of the US (from the UK here it looks that way too).
For all of us the question is how many do you need to be living in a fascist state? In Amerika it seems clear that to some degree or other most if not all are present. In the UK we do not yet reach a threshold although the attempt by Labour to designate Palestine Action was one step on the road. Thankfully that has now been ruled unlawful by the High Court. The UK is dithering and although there are proto-fascists hanging around in the wings they do not yet have the kind of power that might be needed to ‘set things rolling’.
Here is his list. Fill in the blanks:
1. Demolition of norms
Trump: Mocking, insulting, demeaning etc.
“Fascists know that what the American Founders called the “republican virtues” impede their political agenda, and so they gleefully trash liberal pieties such as reason and reasonableness, civility and civic spirit, toleration and forbearance.
2. Glorification of violence
Violence is enabled, embraced, encouraged. Trump openly talks about physical violence, executions dissenters, facilitates mob violence (e.g. Jan 6 22; ICE)
3. Might is right
The humiliation of Zelenskyy, threats of military interventions etc.
4. Politicised law enforcement
ICE! Trump flouts his ‘absolute immuncity’ immunity and ignores all due process
5. Dehumanisation
Look at the ay Trump talks about immigrants; if he could get away with it he would talk in the same way about African American, Native Americans etc. (Perhaps he will!)
6. Police-state tactics
ICE!
7. Undermining elections
Currently attempting to ‘federalize’ elections procedures (even though States are constitutionally responsible managing elections in their own regions). Also, Trump will not shut up about the 2020 election.
8. What’s private is public
For example interfering in University education, demanding that DEI policies everywhere are deleted …
9. Attacks on news media
So many examples …
10. Territorial and military aggression
Venezuela, Canada, Greenland, Iran, Gaza (watch this space).
11. Transnational reach
Alliances with right wing governments, deference towards Puin
12. Blood-and-soil nationalism
Immigration and the revocation of birthright citizenship. ‘Heritage’ Americanism
13. White and Christian nationalism
Christianity!
14. Mobs and street thugs
ICE! Control over school libraries. Gun laws
15. Leader aggrandizement
Ballrooms; Kennedy Centre; third person self-referencing
16. Alternative facts
A hangover from 2016; the deletion of science as process and content; habitual lies and distortions.
17. Politics as war
Saving the nation, a ‘lie and death battle’ (Michael Anton); (the Volk)
18. Governing as revolution
See all of above … !
New additions (mostly mine)
19. Revisionism
This covers the entire attempt to ‘rewrite’ the broadly accepted history of the US and the rest of the world. Issues such as the removal of reference to slavery; the revival of deprecated Civil War combatants, The erasure of social-called DEI policies (i.e. ‘woke’)
Examples: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/18/constitution-museum-philadelphia-jeffrey-rosen
Geoffrey ‘Hinton-Midgeley’?
Geoffrey Hinton’s (very dark) Nobel Speech …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f5WQAk3dYo
Might he (Hinton) become a modern Midgley? A pioneer who turns away from his key work. He developed one technology only to be depressed about tis effects and then developed another, which in the end proved to be equally flawed After all he is one of the great pioneers of the technology he is warning us about.
Or he is more like Oppenheimer – swept up into creating an invention that he realised was too dangerous to exist and spent the remainder of his life resisting it … (unsuccessfully)?
Thomas Midgley discovered the usefulness of lead in petrol engines. Great!
But, the story goes, the serious harm to public health caused by lead additives (to himself and widely) shocked him. To do better he went on to develop improved refrigeration methods using CFCs …
…he didn’t live long enough to see how well that turned out!
6 Feb 2026
This is one of those fantasies that won’t disappear. The design of ‘cities of the future’ is a techno-fantasy, i.e. the intensive embedding of technology in urban infrastructure. It is usually presented as a hybrid of ‘enhancement’ as well as a ‘solution’ … but people don’t live like this – we like the ragged and the quirky, the private and the park … and above it all is the phenomenon of ‘desire lines’ …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/messy-cities-planning-for-an-unplanned-city/
§
They, and their lackeys, just won’t stop their cruel appropriation …
https://theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/04/florida-ban-west-bank-schools-state-agencies-bill