Philip R. Conway

Trump wants critical minerals. So do Cornwall’s MPs. Global leaders are going head to head over critical minerals and national security. For some U.K. lawmakers, it is chance to grab both investment and votes.

World powers are deep in a fight over critical minerals.

But for a clutch of lawmakers in Britain's quiet Cornwall, they mean something else:

Votes.

New piece for @phenomenalworld.bsky.social, written with @jacktaggart.bsky.social and @tomchodor.bsky.social! It's an attempt at grasping the dismantling of multilateral global governance, in light of intensifying geopolitical rivalries, resurgent state capitalism, and hegemonic crisis. Link below:

There’s this big yellow thing in the sky that’s making everything hot. What the hell is it?

“Lynn, idea for Farage meeting. Jim Davidson hosts the 9 o’clock news. Stop migrants taking taxis.”

It’s difficult to express in words the contempt with which the McSweeney cabal deserve to be regarded, but Ian does a good job in approximating.

Why is every scandal existential for Starmer? Because he has actively worked to eradicate his own support base. And that, along with the Mandelson decision, can be laid at McSweeney's door iandunt.substack.com/p/starmers-m...

TL;DR: The left needs to read Machiavelli.

Easy to say with hindsight, sure, but there were people saying these things at the time.

In any case, this is what I think we should really be taking from Mandelson's downfall:

These are the ghouls you will have to slay if you are to gain any scrap of power in this country. This is the job.

When Corbyn became Labour leader, he needed to do two things:

1. Purge the party of ratfuckers like Mandelson.
2. Hold the institutional door open for a new generation of political talent.

He was never the guy for either of these tasks. It was only a matter of time before the apparatchiks got him.

It's tempting to look at the recent revelations and say "it's nothing we didn't know before," it's all about structures not individuals, etc., but I think that's a mistake.

The point is that this is what you're up against when you deal with these people.

bsky.app/profile/jomi...

‘Where r u? I miss you’: how vivid new Epstein emails sealed Mandelson’s fate The latest revelations and reaction to them may mean he has finally encountered a scandal he is unable to outrun

He's finally done. They'll hang him out to save themselves, now.

But I think it's important to emphasise that Mandelson had and kept power *because* of being a creepy, corrupt spittle-licker. That was his job, and he excelled at it.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Sorry, off to pun jail I go.

It's just me-dia.

All of which is, of course, not the besmirch the masterpiece of cyberpunk silliness that is Hackers (1995).

Have to say, I’m getting such Hackers (1995) vibes from our political class these days. They haven’t got the faintest idea what’s actually going on, but they’ll believe whatever some billionaire in a leather jacket tells them. So desperate to be seen to be on the cutting edge. The perfect mark.

On martyrdom and masculinity The United States is a martyr machine and it isn’t going away

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The great political contradiction of Trump: he gets a knee-shaking ego-thrill from posing as a callous, imperturbable tough guy, but he also deeply, viscerally needs his people to like him.

Obligatory BlueSky™ Caveat: Which is not to say, of course, that naively unstrategic left-liberal moralism—the grain of truth around which the anti-“woke” panic crystallised—hasn’t been a problem. It is to say that those who participated in said crystallisation need to get a grip or get in the sea.

Every day it becomes clearer and clearer that the actual political convictions behind what became demonised as “woke,” from 2020 onwards, were pretty much spot on, and those Very Serious People who participated in its demonisation owe us all a series of grovelling apologies.

Caught up with the last season of The Righteous Gemstones: Utterly bonkers (indeed, Bible Bonkers). Large parts make absolutely no sense. The satirical edge is dulled with sentimentality. And, I repeat, it’s bonkers. But when you’ve got John Goodman doing John Goodman things, anything seems possible

I guess Nature publishes Yelp reviews now.

Don’t remember if the word seminal was used, but those vibes.

The creepiest culty thing I’ve encountered at a European philosophy conference is where a presenter spent a full five minutes telling us how their paper arose from a special, private seminar with the famous French philosopher who was its subject, and how important said philosopher was.

This is also my experience in political/IR theory. The thin-skinned arsehole factor has greatly outweighed Liam’s rational actor model, in practice. Or maybe I am just better at riling people up?

I’m doing this. It’s fun.

Write Like A Person: prompt post #3 Everything happens so much

open.substack.com/pub/lauriepe...
My new writing seminar is really picking up. And current events are making an appearance.
Because creative work isn’t about shutting out what’s awful and overwhelming in the world. It’s about taking charge of your reaction to those things.

Glasgow City Council criticises George Square Thatcher 'party' Glasgow City Council urges people to stay away from the city's George Square after hundreds gathered to mark the death of Baroness Thatcher.

I know this doesn’t help anyone in the here and now. All I’m saying is that, one day, we will have the opportunity to experience the same energy as residents of Glasgow did in April 2013, but on a global scale. Let’s look forward to it.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scot...

One day, perhaps in the not so distant future, this man’s heart will give out, under the weight of McDonald’s hamburgers and narcissistic malice.

There will be dancing in the streets, people will hug their children, and his name will go down in history as a byword for all that is pathetic and base.

How many op-Ed’s will be written on “here’s the solution to the male loneliness epidemic: protecting neighbors from ICE”

Also, he enjoys palling around with rich people.