Blakey French

arc-m.uva.nl/content/even... If you are in or near Amsterdam, please join us for the launch of "Merchants of Migrant Domestic Labour: Recruitment Agencies and Neoliberal Migration Governance in Southeast Asia". Please register to attend in person or online #migcitsky #IRsky #polisky #gendersky

Yesterday I listened to people praising “national identity,” as if humans were tidy textbook entries rather than unfinished creatures who never quite match themselves — which makes all those wars “for identity” look absurd before they even start.

Introducing Terrestri(e)alism Terrestrial Realism for an Earthbound Future

Introducing Terrestri(e)alism
open.substack.com/pub/terrestr...

bsky.app/profile/anot...

A black & white photo of Amsterdam families sitting in the street in 1943, with luggage, whilst neighbours look on, fine china tea cups sit on a foreground window sill - with the title 'departing Jews'.

I despise all this fevered talk about who 'belongs' where; in the city archive here there's a public copy of Bianca Stigter's 'Atlas of the Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945) - with shocking reminders of such banal evil:

Book cover on a Xmassy bar table; Jorge Luis Borges 'Fictions' from Calder Jupiter in 1965, with a portrait of the author (by Sewell).

"The fact that no one believes that nouns refer to an actual reality means, paradoxically enough, that there is no limit to the numbers of them." Jorge Luis Borges #doubt

'Earned Settlement' is a shameful, unsocialist, way to create non-citizen, in-limbo, precarious, 'guest' workers - such a foul shift in England:

Orangey blue winter sunrise

Colours of winter sunrise

A Dutch bar table tableau, with Irish tweed cap, Belgian beer and mystery books map-wrapped.

If you decide, on waking tomorrow, that you are not going to act like an a***hole ... that's activism:

Book cover for 'Deleuze aujourd'huu' (PUF 2025) by Camille Chamois & Thomas Detcheverry; buff minimal & pencil.

It's a comfort; just the hope, and the continuing fact, of pocket books on big ideas; this new from @editions-puf.bsky.social is an exemplary tour-de-Deleuze:

My book The Philosophy of Isabelle Stengers is now available for pre-order from @EdinburghUP.
30% off with code NEW30.
(This edition is priced for libraries and institutions. A more accessible paperback will follow.)
edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-phi...

I think the elephant gives the room a certain textured, earthy vibe.

Special Marxists in the Netherlands Unite! Back to class. Marxism in the Netherlands today.

A new network of scholars, activists and organizers influenced by Marxism in the Netherlands @marxism-nl.bsky.social wil be launched on Dec 3 at an event at Pakhuis de Zwijger.

This is the website of the network
marxism-nl.org/en

This is the event on Dec 3
dezwijger.nl/programma/ma...

Dr. Yasmin Haddad (Postdoctoral Fellow at UQAM) continues our online speaker series with the talk "When imprecision is a bad thing: the case of ancestry" on December 2nd. You can register to attend via zoom here: hugera.org/lecture-seri...

A (very) skilfully hand-knit nativity scene, in a mullioned stone and leaded-lights olde English window.

Knitivity; quite reassuring, in such a messed-up England:

Bowland Brewery beer-tap for Boxer Blonde, graced with a line-drawn sprightly hare; hence an obigatory post.

England's gone beserkers, but there's still pints & hares:

And there I was, silly me, thinking my 'rustic pottery' might have been a spark of inspiration: bsky.app/profile/blak...

A grey old day in Amsterdam; boat glides on a canal past a windmill, framed by urban sprawl.

Urban windmills, why not?

💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥

We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes.

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The well-curated shops have lots of great jazz in the €5 crates, when Discogs says that's the going rate ... for unfashionables (it's so cheap to be a Mel Tormé fan!)

Not difficult, if in Amsterdam; there's City Records, Concerto, Rush Hour & Record Mania ... each heaving with essential gems.

Works well with cornflakes, so an ex-colleague told me.

A lit candle, drips much wax onto, an old pewter candlestick; squatting a magazine advert for an ersatz electronic sort of dim light.

First proper overnight frost; shifting back to older ways:

Checking out, standing up - this eidos appeals to me: bsky.app/profile/thir...

CFP: Order and Disorder in Global Intellectual History

There are a few travel bursaries for those who need it.
👇
fass.sabanciuniv.edu/tr/ISIH

Keys found embedded in jam sandwich. Apologies.

A tunnel of shimmering autumn leaves, giving the lie to hubris.

'With the pace of change accelerating by the year, the world appeared ever less God-like ... ever less eternal, impervious, intractable. It assumed instead an ever more human form, becoming more in 'man's image' - protean, fickle and flickering, whimsical and full of surprise.' Zygmunt Bauman

Trans People Deserve Better "Gender critical" feminism doesn't help women but it does help the far right

This piece was greenlit and then killed by a British newspaper, so I’ve decided to publish myself instead.

Trans People Deserve Better.
"Gender critical" feminism doesn't help women but it does help the far right

open.substack.com/pub/wellread...

Dear [my MP’s name], As the Home Secretary prepares to announce sweeping changes to the UK’s asylum system, I see it as both my duty as a citizen and responsibility as a migration expert to do all I can to urge policymakers to oppose the proposals—not only for what they will do to refugees, though that is the first concern, but also for what they will mean for all of us and the future society we live in.  That is why I am writing to you as my MP. This letter explains why I consider the need to oppose the Home Secretary’s proposals urgent and, at the most fundamental level, in the national and your constituents’ interest. I was born in Germany, a country whose history taught me how quickly societies can go down dark paths; how quickly our leaders can fail in the choices they make. But the history of the displacement of people that the Nazi regime was responsible for also shaped my understanding of why refugee movements occur—and why our response to any of them can never compromise what are, and must always be, universal human rights. Which is why what is happening in the UK now is so deeply alarming. A manufactured crisis As of June 2025, there were 42.5 million refugees globally. Over 70% of them are hosted by low- and middle-income countries; most of them immediate neighbours. Overall, five countries—Colombia, Germany, Türkiye, Iran and Uganda—host a third of the total number of refugees; Germany is the main host in the EU, hosting 2.7 million. The UK hosts 548,000 refugees; that is 0.78% of the UK population. About 110,000 people are in receipt of asylum support; that is 0.15% of the UK population.

🌍 42.5m refugees
Over 70% of them are hosted by low- and middle-income countries.

🇬🇧 548k refugees
= 0.78% of the UK population.

It is not refugees who tear our country apart, it is the mainstreaming of far right policies. And that’s a risk to all of us.

My letter to my MP.

#asylum #Mahmood

🧵

A jazz quartet on stage; piano, bass and drums take a breather, whilst the guitarist throws shapes.

Oh my, the Lage Lund Quartet ... at the Bimhuis; fits & starts & leaps & bounds; most excellent - special dues to Danny Grissett on piano: