Pat Kane

Watching the magnificent Catherine Connolly, and considering her radical predecessors as Irish Presidents, makes you dream fondly of a Scottish President in a Scottish republic. But can we unplug from the Windsors as Head of State? My @ScotNational col www.thenational.scot/politics/255...

No doubt SNP happy(ish) about this poll. But as for the overall health of the Scottish polity… *that* many Scots embracing an anti-immigration, anti-net-zero politics? Despite its gurning leader? We need to ask deeper questions about disempowerment… archive.is/oveK4 archive.is/oveK4

Couch-bingeing on deep state tv thrillers like #thediplomat and #slowhorses is its own kind of citizens’ passivity. But the geopolitics of Indy are at the heart of the former—& it certainly focuses the mind on our maritime defence. My @ScotNational col www.thenational.scot/politics/255...

New edition of @AlterGlobal21’s Alternative Weekly out mailchi.mp/9589dff6bf23... - editorial on a vision for our current wave of protest; “groupcore” for creatives; energy from Heaven; bringing offshore wind home to Scotland; events and more. News also from spring.site

So many China-related stories this week—their Scottish locus pretty prominent. But the rough beast that stalks the discourse of security chiefs & challenged competitors—is that the whole story? Some different voices heard, in my @ScotNational column today www.thenational.scot/politics/255...

Hey Gerry! Didn’t know you were coming

Radiation leaks in Scotland—from collapsing old reactors, decrepit nuclear sub bases…We need Indy, just 2 clean up the place. But can we also make a virtue out of decentralised renewable power, as a positive alternative energy system? My @ScotNational col www.thenational.scot/politics/255...

New Alternative Weekly out from @AlterGlobal21 mailchi.mp/93f31dc80583.... Editorial on how to beat hopelessness—posts on @audreyt, @KateRaworth, Tim Jackson, Jane Goodall, engaging w/ Reform, the digital “Eurostack”. As well as stories from spring.site. Enjoy, support!

“We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology” (EO Wilson). Only an explicit “peace culture” will correct this picture

It’s just the utter fragility of our everyday lives it induces. But also the massive challenge to the human capacity for ingenuity—how can we so misapply itr? What culture do we need that it can be safely applied? Iain M Banks our outlier and prophet…

Modernity is a dark joke. A 112 min movie that examines the 20 mins response time to a rogue nuke fired from Asian landmass. “Nice interview, Ms Bigelow! Next, the Booker Prize!”🤯Remains basis of my support 4 Indy: it’s 1 small step away from annihilation www.metacritic.com/movie/a-hous...

As one myself, I enjoyed #TheHack’s story of heroic journalists revealing their own profession’s phone hacking. But what of the widespread resentment & powerlessness that produces the appetite/demand for these star-toppling stories? My @ScotNational col www.thenational.scot/comment/2551...

Super upload of my open-access @ScotNational Saturday columns. Richard Holloway’s Last Words, handling the Nomad Century, technology both motherly & surveillant, Indy strategy, & cosmology for the soul… Enjoy, support! patkane.substack.com/s/pk-in-the-...

New edition of Alternative Weekly out mailchi.mp/4818b7814af8... - crossing a 7th planetary boundary, drones and the sky, soul-enhancing video, the mirrorball of Glasgow’s poets—& an editorial on the clash of youth uprisings. See www.spring.site also. Enjoy, share, support!

“Papers, please!” It’s the opening line from Casablanca—& it captures the fears that an national iD system is a tool for coming tyranny (and/or Starmer’s anti-immigration pandering). Can Indy be an opp to build systems a lot better? My @ScotNational col www.thenational.scot/politics/254...

Latest @AlterGlobal21 newsletter - Editorial gets clear on techno-futures, 16-17 year olds curious about new parties (political ones…), renewable energy’s Scottish power plays, hard imagination & new biology, and more. See also www.spring.site
mailchi.mp/b6e90dd98158...

The US-UK Tech Prosperity deal—and its scores of billions—is an intimidating display. But there’s an Indy-minded version of these investments in data-centres. We can use nation-state sovereignty to model a “healthy computation”. My @scotnational column www.thenational.scot/politics/254...

This week’s @AlterGlobal21 newsletter features an Editorial on the “woke right”, and blogs on: grief as THE political emotion; using citizens media to save the Amazon; a new map of the regenerative paradigm; & more. & latest spring.site news mailchi.mp/11620970432e...

It was the grimmest newsday—Charlie Kirk, Gaza, Mandelson, Putin in Poland…& then, possible life on Mars! Even the slightest move in that cosmic direction generates headlines. Can we turn this yearning into a politics? I think so. My @ScotNational column www.thenational.scot/politics/254...

Some front page. If Mars shows the ubiquity of organic life in the universe, then Fermi’s Paradox sharpens. Where *are* all these alien civilisations? Or do they blow themselves up/tear themselves apart b4 they get off-planet?

& Do we *look* like we’ll get past The Great Filter?

My column this week dwells on the @ScotNational’s series, “Refugees Welcome”. Even the UN acknowledges how deeply Scotland has prepared for the age of mass migration, & the good stories that generates. How do “climate refugees” fit into this picture? www.thenational.scot/politics/254...

Been engaging with Richard Holloway’s tumultuous work for 30 years, so I don’t quite believe these are his “Last Words”. It’s a beautiful working-class memoir—& he’s still wrestling with the God-idea, in a world “saturated with pain”. My @ScotNational col www.thenational.scot/culture/2541...

There’s been much dumping on the newest ChatGPT-5 chatbot from @OpenAI. A “PhD level assistant” that counts 6 fingers on a hand? But use it as a thought-starter or prototyping tool, & it’s amazingly powerful and generative. My @ScotNational column www.thenational.scot/comment/2539...

Here’s a month of my @ScotNational columns, open access and fully research-linked patkane.substack.com/s/pk-in-the-... Voters at 8, not just 16; what the Brewdogs in the street know; preserve modernist Scotland; plasticles in your testicles… Enough to satisfy. Share, support, thanks!

There’s plasticles in your testicles… & micro- and nano-plastics everywhere else in your body. Huge Plastics Treaty currently being forged—but the Qs are deep. How to resist pollution when it’s already (& ineradicably) inside you? My @ScotNational col www.thenational.scot/comment/2537...

Good news that Bernat Klein’s textile studio has been saved from ruin. It’s a modernist classic—& Scotland is full of them. But they’re rendered as “eyesores”, rather than hopeful & ambitious. Can we tap into that spirit again? My @ScotNational column www.thenational.scot/culture/2536...

The Constitute #4: Behind the doors of computation, new realities And do we need some punky new left parties to harness its powerful benefits?

Return of The Constitute—my omnipedia of links and indicators, forging pathways through the current craziness… patkane.substack.com/p/the-consti... Clip below on why a left party may be needed to harness sci-tech’s extraordinary power, in computation & chemistry

New Alternative Weekly out @AlterGlobal21 mailchi.mp/778e5c1b5dc1... Editorial says plurality is better than singularity. Also: fungi beats carbon, improve yr economic stories, universities reckon with slavery, note the “Free Festival” in Edinburgh—& much more. Support, share!

Even the BrewDogs in the street can see the Scottish hipster beer makers are in trouble, closing 10 pubs this week. But their whole shock-tactic, “punk” business model cuts against our anxious, demanding times. My @ScotNational column www.thenational.scot/business/253...

Today’s Alternative Weekly from @AlterGlobal21 has an Editorial on reverse mentoring (young to old), Cynthia Erivo queering Christianity, local solar solving South African probs, Edinburgh festivals of Repair, DJs vs climate change. & more! Share, support! mailchi.mp/6330d4fe48e3...