Recording Surface

Received over the transom, a couple of updates on activist innovation in Austin: (more…)

From Rosi Braidotti’s essay “Affirming the Affirmative: On Nomadic Affectivity“: (more…)

Shortly after watching the video of Mostafa Tabatabainejad getting Tasered five times at the UCLA library (posted by Matt), we left town for a weekend in Houston, but the forces of antiproduction, particularly police authority and mechanisms of surveillance, seemed to pop up everywhere I went. Probably only more aware of it because of the disturbing video (not to mention the frightening pro-police students and commentators), but that’s the point, isn’t it? (more…)

I didn’t vote in the midterm elections this year, though my abstention was very much not intended as a statement nonvote. I feel as little desire to make democratic protests of democracy as democracy does to register my protests. Instead, my guiding principle this year–and my (feeble) shelter from the storm of people who insisted that I vote–was this: The state doesn’t need my input on how it runs its affairs. (more…)

I know the source is dubious at best, and yes there’s the whole the fungibility and randomness of clocks thing, but I still like this:

The Clock Denationalized (Temporarily)

How wonderful for an early riser to have the former War Savings Time ended, at least for a while, and the clock returned to normal. This totalitarian intervention began in 1917 for Wilson’s war. Thanks to popular opposition, Congress repealed it in 1919 over Woodrow’s veto, but as you might guess, FDR brought it back for his war, and today, we think nothing of the leviathan state handing down its time edict twice a year.

Reasons of war and state aside, as someone who loves the night, “standard time” feels much better to me. Something about being enclosed in darkness earlier feels both safer and more adventurous, anonymous and open to experimentation.

From a couple of posts on the muscular assertion of executive power and the impotence of the legislative branches in the Anglo-American world (masculinist language very much intentional): (more…)