Category: Blog

Notes of Covid as approach end of 2021

“The development of a safe, effective and cheap vaccine, however, is only a first step towards community-wide control. Epidemiological, economic and motivational issues are at least as important as technological ones.” Nature, 1985 Vaccine implementation defines the efficacy of vaccines role in influencing a pandemic. How, when, to whom, by whom, where, why, timescale are…
Introduction to Regenerative Agriculture

“In just over a decade regenerative agriculture has garnered a lot of attention with land-use stakeholders in the Global North. Especially in the food, farming, and environmental sectors. The concept of ‘regenerative’ has also grown beyond reference to agricultural systems and is seen as being the concept-in-waiting for upgrading ideas of sustainability and resilience (Wahl).…
How To Count

A short extract from my thesis on Hunting in Northern Cyprus, pages 155-162. Whilst I talk here about counting hunters and hunting, the same approach to critical and analytical thinking used below can be used when counting populations of anything or anyone from potatoes to dragonflies, from patients to priests. I was sitting opposite Hasan,…
The Plutocratic Platform State

The new concept needed is the Platform State. Take England. A year of pandemic lockdowns, exacerbated by a failed test and trace system and an underresourced NHS. For those of you who pay attention to the inherent logic of political narrative in England and how its plays out on the ground, you will be most…
Nayland Rock

It was the summer after the pandemic first hit. We had been told to only meet outside. I lived in Margate. A coastal town sprawling across the northern shores of the long lost Isle of Thanet. My friend Joe had responded to the news of needing to meet outside by inviting me to learn to…
Capital 4 People: Dissolving Capitalism through Democratizing Capital

Back in January 25, 2018 I published this blog on ‘How can everyone take over the world?’ and ‘Where can I ethically invest?’ An idea that emerged through conversation with Prof. Mike Fischer in 2017 and in reply to Laura BC’s questions. In light of the amazing developments of reddit users vs hedgefunds I thought…
The Mazdoor-Kisan-Strike in India and what we can learn in the UK

Over a quarter of a BILLION people are taking part in the Worker and Peasant Strike in India. That’s almost 3.5% of the world’s human population, the number often quoted (albeit problematic) by XR needed for #systemchange. What has this got to do with the UK? If you want to keep up to date with…
PART 3: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

The Necropolitics of Care My main interest in the aforementioned work of Scoones is in exploring how ‘uncertainty’ is dealt with through modelling. An epic industry that stretches far beyond academia into insurance giants and risk management in all sectors of life. A recent book by Frederic Keck explores the question of uncertainty in disease…
PART 2: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

Where Care Meets Social Context Starting with Adia Benton’s webinar that initiates thinking about ‘ (i) What kind of powers are granted in any kind of emergency; (ii) Needing to reimagine our international institutions; (iii) Needing to consider epidemiological and clinical concerns in the context of different social and economic realities; (iv) COVID-19 has revealed…
PART 1: My COVID Reading List from March/April 2020

Some weeks ago I listened to Eben Kirksey’s webinar in relation to COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). It was a tad of fresh air in comparision to the dogmatic perspectives on biological phenomenon so many of us are schooled in. For me however, the webinar was very light going having studied genetics and being an anthropologist foucssed on…
Without considering the scale and context of UBS/UBI they will fail or go colonial. It’s possible to avoid this.

If you spend your time exploring the possible implications of ideas if they were played out in a potential non-alienable but anticipatable future one of many observations that emerges is as follows, or as Gramsci’s put it you assess ‘the whole field of action’: UBS or Universal Basic Services (and UBI’s to a lesser degree)…
Should we not all be dreaming of a world without more police?

Last year in light of the ‘London Bridge’ attack and a General Election, the Labour Party argued for more and better-equipped police. There was talk of the police having been spread thin and having ‘lost control of the streets’. There was talk of increasing the number of police jobs and putting more money into centralised…
Definition: To Waste

…practices that do not attempt to understand the technical, social and ecological dimensions of what they are engaging in. …’To waste’ is a colloquialism that means to kill, seriously injure or manufacture ‘dead matter/bodies/waste products, as a method of demonstrating ‘social’ control over a space. It is an assertion of legitimacy over the lives of…
The Defining Myth of Food Systems, Agriculture and Land use

In my experience the defining narrative that creates problems in understanding the environmental impact of food production is that of scarcity and the idea that humans need to grow more food. The narrative is we need more efficient ways of extracting more food from land. As most land use scientists will tell you then, the…
The Beginnings of a Hypothesis on How to Build Better Robots

The industry of developing computer intelligence, machine learning and artificial intelligence is largely embedded in a particular version of cognitive science. This computing-industry often takes it ideas for memory, learning and development from the brand of evolutionary theory from a particular version of cognfitive science. This brand of evolutionary theory has at its heart an…