James Vincent

High-Agency Individuals | James Vincent The exhortation to “just do things” is in part a response to the specter of automation.

I wrote about whether or not you can really "just do things" —  a meme that responds to a world in which institutional power is increasingly sclerotic and individual agency under threat from AI
thebaffler.com/latest/high-...

Macron remarks are notable- some quotes: "We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies."

on a different tangent, it made me think of Jan Švankmajer's work. in Švankmajer's films, faces are malleable rather than sources of stable identity. this is uncomfortable, but also offers opportunity for connection as we smushed the sacred into one other youtu.be/EbbNuGkHO_0?...

Facial Recognitions - The Ideas Letter Davies traces the political history of the human face, showing how it has become both a weapon and a site of contestation—from far-right mobilizations fueled by viral images to the…

fascinating piece here on the face as a particularly contested site in contemporary politics. this focus is overdetermined: a response to facial recognition and biometrics, to masking by protestors and police, to a video culture that prizes human response
www.theideasletter.org/essay/facial...

In her lunch with the FT the OnlyFans CEO says her company pays more tax than the entire British fishing industry. Quite a stat.

my cheap bluetooth earphones often disconnect in one or both ears and it’s annoying but also kind of pleasing. it makes the invisible connection something almost physical, that i “untangle” in 3D space by moving my phone or waggling my head like I’m dislodging water from my ears

strauss parsed socrates for hidden truths; online rw'ers celebrate when their favourite towelboy meme shows up in a DHS fashwave video.

Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk and the Claremonsters Meet the philosophical cabal remaking America

good piece on the heritage of leo strauss and the claremont institute. made me think about how the concept of straussian eso/exoteric readings and hidden truths fits (in a degenerate fashion) online meme culture www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/1...

Kofta kebab recipe in England c. 1660. Amazing find!

you do have to admire OpenAI's chutzpah for holding a gun to the global economy, stacking dubious deal on dodgy evaluation, and telling the world: this is going to work or we're taking you all down with us

California cops confused after trying to ticket Waymo : Don't tell Elon, he'd have Tesla's Robotaxis going ludicrous speed

"Police in a Silicon Valley suburb were flummoxed last weekend after pulling over a self-driving Waymo robo-taxi for making an illegal turn, then finding no driver they could issue with a ticket." www.theregister.com/2025/09/29/c...

I hope people understand just how horrifying this is as a trans person.

You could just be getting in with your life, not doing anything to hurt anyone - and suddenly you find yourself dragged into a horrible legal case where the press is painting your going to the toilet as somehow predatory.

can't imagine one of these beetle-bots making it over blackfriars bridge during rush hour without causing trouble. i still get pissed off at the tourist trikes which make passing impossible

interesting: doordash plans to put its new autonomous delivery robots (pictured) in US bike lanes. could this be good for cycling infrastructure? it could create pressure to expand lanes to manage more traffic (or they might just be clogged up) www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

there's no real explanation for why these subjects share space, but it's irresistible to note that pillows present an awakening: the head and hand are prepatory sketches for his 1493 self-portrait, considered to be one of the first independent self-portraits in western art

looking at Dürer's pillow studies this morning. on the recto, a self-portrait, hand, and pillow; the verso, six more pillows. these are, i think, just sketches - drapery studies - but the juxtaposition of self and pillow seems symbolic. the ruffled pillows as the imprint of the dreaming imagination.

10/10. no notes

i got so mad i walked out right after!!

hahah i won't deny there's a certain useful bleakness that prompts one to ask "is this all there is"

thinking of tony harrison, it's impressive how many top flight poets we've got from yorkshire. harrison, but also armitage (huddersfield), hughes (hebden bridge), andrew marvell (hull), and we'll claim auden (born in york) and larkin, too (an honorary; born in coventry but made for hull)

Though my mother was already two years dead Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, put hot water bottles her side of the bed and still went to renew her transport pass. You couldn't just drop in. You had to phone. He'd put you off an hour to give him time to clear away her things and look alone as though his still raw love were such a crime. He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief though sure that very soon he'd hear her key scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief. He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea. I believe life ends with death, and that is all. You haven't both gone shopping; just the same, in my new black leather phone book there's your name and the disconnected number I still call.

RIP tony harrison - "I believe life ends with death, and that is all. / You haven't both gone shopping; just the same, / in my new black leather phone book there's your name /and the disconnected number I still call."

The age of the distracted mother There is a child. There is a phone. And there is an endless struggle with the bonds of love

"In a technical paper Winnicott described the “primary maternal preoccupation” upon the birth of a child as a specific post-partum state, so hypnotic and total that it “would be an illness were it not for the fact of the pregnancy."" www.ft.com/content/a248...

Tom Johnson · Supereffable: Mysteries of the Pearl Manuscript Any book made by hand is unique, but the Pearl Manuscript’s claim to uniqueness is unparalleled: the manuscript...

"Any book made by hand is unique, but the Pearl Manuscript’s claim to uniqueness is unparalleled: the manuscript appears never to have been copied or circulated, nor to have been known to anybody except the people who owned it." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

"Mark Rowley, the head of the Metropolitan Police in London, wants to go further. At a conference in Westminster this month, he said facial recognition would be integrated into officers’ phones so they could switch it on to “confirm suspects’ identities on the street more efficiently.” Authorities are also testing affixing permanent facial recognition cameras in certain areas of London."

missed this: the Met promising to put its facial recognition tech onto officers' phones to be used on the spot. how long until every conversation with the police involves getting your face scanned? www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/t...

all i can say is that your attitude of assuming others are operating in bad faith is one that will only create the world you ostensibly dislike and oppose - good luck out there

i'm not sure if you're "ok buddy"ing me or if you think me posting about this is endorsing it. if you are, please consider that your knee-jerk response to see others sharing information as an opportunity for a condescending response is itself quite annoying

the overlap in these factors is a increased sense of individual sovereignty and diminished sense of communal obligation. the rest of the world exists to provide the individual with content and no-one's word is to be trusted. the war of all against all, live-streamed from a point between your eyes

ubiquitous personal recording is being normalized by a few factors: 1) content creation as an aspirational career for kids. 2) content creation as a popular tool for marketing and brand reputation. 3) increasing social fear and distrust, with video seen as a guarantor of one's safety and/or rights