No.19 - City Of Quartz, A Locus Of Care, Who Remembers Proper Binmen?, Effective Altruism, Shrinkflation
City Of Quartz
Described as a “fiercely elegant and wide-ranging history of L.A.’s Dickensian extremes and Pynchonesque conspiracies”, here is simply a link to Verso’s series on Mike Davis who passed away in October. His iconic ‘City of Quartz’ in which Davis ‘excavates the future’, exemplifies a wunderkind pattern recognition across theory, pop-culture, and grassroots history.
A Locus Of Care
Some memories of the Life and Work of Bruno Latour, who also passed away recently. This piece redeems and remembers Latour as a ‘philosopher of choice’, seeing him shift from an early career skeptic via narrativity and post-modernism into late-career concerns about our post-truth society.
Who Remembers Proper Binmen?
Exploring the popularity of nostalgia groups among an ageing first-wave of social media users through the lens of the ‘proper binmen’ meme - itself a cypher for the changing meaning of work, class dynamics, and national culture. A wonderful article that carefully treads through the archives of collective memories and ponders the moral value of suffering as a form of ‘humanist libertarianism’ without too quickly connecting Binmenism with rightwing tendencies. A reminder of the power of nostalgia to analyse progress.
Effective Altruism
Among the reflection pieces on FTX’s collapse and the brittle mania behind Blockchain / crypto businesses - the connection between SBF and the EA movement is fascinating to unpack. Questions about the degree of complicity or obfuscation; the parallels between piety / charity with new forms of capital; and the relationship between profit and values.
Effective Altruism And The Problem Of Complicity
Shrinkflation
Edgar Dworsky is a former lawyer and market researcher who is now a prominent expert on shrinkflation. At his website mouse print.org he catalogues differences in consumer goods that have been downsized. A profile of an exacting and obsessive consumer advocate. Highly vindicating if you feel those products became smaller, because…they likely did.