Spring ahoy!
I’m so fed up with the Cambridge weather at the moment that I’m constantly on the lookout for signs of spring. Which is why these crocuses stopped me in my tracks yesterday.
Quote of the Day
”Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
- Erich Fromm
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Gerry O’Beirne | When You’re Gone I Say Your Name
Long Read of the Day
Inventing Tradition
Arthur Goldhammer’s delicious demolition of Marco Rubio’s meretricious speech to the recent Munich Security Conference.
JD Vance went to Munich in 2025 to offend; Marco Rubio went in 2026 to make amends—up to a point. He tried to reassure Europeans stung by Vance’s insults that the United States criticized Europe “because we care deeply.” He invoked his European ancestors from Seville and Sardinia so as to claim consanguinity with his audience and thus solicit its trust. And he insisted the the U.S. and the countries of Europe were bound by “the deepest bonds that nations can share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage.”
It was an artful portrait, slyly conceived to obscure crucial features of that “shared history,” which consisted of “centuries” indeed of bloody internecine warfare; of a “Christian faith” marked by schism, sectarian bloodletting, and intolerance…
I’m always baffled by references to “European civilisation”. This is the continent, after all, that was responsible for the two bloodiest wars in history, not to mention the Holocaust. Those who forget history may indeed be condemned to repeat it.
Books, etc.
This is one of the most important books I’ve read in years. I read it fitst in Kindle format when it came out, but I’ve just bought the paperback because it’s relevant for something I’m writing and I need to be able to scribble on, and annotate, it. It’s “the kind of book,” one reviewer wrote, “from which you look up to find the world suddenly more comprehensible.” It also provides the most readable account yet published of the work of the cybernetician, Stafford Beer, and explains why cybernetics provides an insightful lens for examining our current predicament(s).
My commonplace booklet
The Epstein files
The huge trove released by the US Congress contains millions of documents. But it also includes lots of videos and audio recordings made by Epstein or his associates. Some enterprising researcher has collected them in on JeffTube. I scrolled briefly though the gallery and came on one showing the Harvard whizkid Steven Pinker sitting across Epstein in his private jet while a girl in the background is heard asking “where are you taking us?” My question: what the hell was Pinker doing there?
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