Sunset over the Hall
Quote of the Day
”Whether it was a good idea to print the prefaces in a single volume is a moot point, since they were not designed by their author to be encountered in a block. Together they cast much light on what James thought of his own work, on the art of fiction, and on how towards the end of his life he thought about his earlier career. But the process of reading them one after another, without the intervening joys of the fiction, is a bit like being forced to eat a roll of linoleum thickly spread with jam (to make it a little more digestible), while being overseen by a nostalgic nanny who repeatedly attempts to recall the precise origins of each splodge of jam, and of the fruit from which it was, meticulously and with much boiling and concentration, originally confected.”
- Colin Burrow, reviewing The Prefaces by Henry James (CUP, 2024) in the London Review of Books.
Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news
Wailin’ Jennys | The Parting Glass
This came to mind as I watched the athletes gathering for the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games last night.
Long Read of the Day
Richard Nixon: My Part In His Downfall
Nice memoir by Lawrence Freedman of his youthful participation in the 1972 Democratic convention.
In July 1972 I was 23, and on my first visit to the United States. As a political junkie – I’d been active in student and Liberal Party politics – I was keen to experience American politics at first hand. Having spent time protesting against the Vietnam War my natural affinities were with the McGovern camp. So a week after arriving in New York and then meeting up with family in New Jersey I took a Greyhound Bus to Miami, itself something of an experience.
On Monday 10 July 1972 I wrote to my parents from the Doral Hotel telling them that I was working as a McGovern volunteer and able to watch was happening behind the scenes. Having been unable to find my relation’s friend who was supposedly a big shot in the campaign I saw a sign which said ‘Volunteers for McGovern: Accommodation Provided.’ As I had nowhere to stay close to the Convention I duly volunteered and was soon filling envelopes with campaign material. This is the sort of thing volunteers often do though it is not very exciting. But I was diligent and keen and when an opportunity came to do something more interesting I took it…
Great read. But to get to understand why the title of the essay (kind-of) makes sense, you have to read to the end!
What opposition to delivery drones shows about big tech’s disrespect for democracy
Yesterday’s Observer column:
Tech determinism is an ideology, really; it’s what determines how you think when you don’t even know that you’re thinking. And it feeds on a narrative of technological inevitability, which says that new stuff is coming down the line whether you like it or not. As the writer LM Sacasas puts it, “all assertions of inevitability have agendas, and narratives of technological inevitability provide convenient cover for tech companies to secure their desired ends, minimise resistance, and convince consumers that they are buying into a necessary, if not necessarily desirable future”.
But for the narrative of inevitability to translate into widespread general deployment of a technology, politicians eventually have to buy into it too. We’re seeing a lot of this at the moment with AI, and it’s not clear yet how that will play out in the long run. Some of the omens are not good, though. One thinks, for example, of the toe-curling video of Rishi Sunak fawning on Elon Musk, the world’s richest manchild, or of Tony Blair’s recent soppy televised conversation with Demis Hassabis, the sainted co-founder of Google DeepMind.
How refreshing it is, then, to come across an account of what happens when the deterministic myth collides with democratic reality…
My commonplace booklet
Think before you post At last, maybe the UK Crown Prosecution Service is getting serious about prosecuting people who make threats on social media. I’ve never understood how, Twitter/X male users who threaten female politicians with rape are not prosecuted. In related news, Irish police have arrested a guy who made online threats about the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and his family. So maybe the democratic worm is beginning to turn.
Linkblog
Something I noticed, while drinking from the Internet firehose.
- ‘It made me cry’: photos taken 15 years apart show melting Swiss glaciers Intriguing (though depressing) story in the Guardian.
A tourist has posted “staggering” photos of himself and his wife at the same spot in the Swiss Alps almost exactly 15 years apart, in a pair of photos that highlight the speed with which global heating is melting glaciers.
Duncan Porter, a software developer from Bristol, posted photos that were taken in the same spot at the Rhône glacier in August 2009 and August 2024. The white ice that filled the background has shrunk to reveal grey rock. A once-small pool at the bottom, out of sight in the original, has turned into a vast green lake.
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