Ian Glendinning (@psybertronian.psybertron.org) Bsky

We need to talk about Donald The increasingly incoherent and volatile president is much easier to understand if we come to terms with one thing

See also:
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/...

2 days ago 10 4 2 0

There’s only one book we know for sure that Trump has read, and that was a collection of Hitler’s speeches. He’s famous for not reading anything else. Leavitt is the biggest clown in the Whitehouse.
newrepublic.com/article/1335...

www.thelist.com/1611200/ivan...

www.newsbreak.com/atlanta-blac...

1 week ago 3 1 0 0

True, but misguided / wrongly-directed activism is dangerous too.

1 week ago 1 0 0 1

'Cos Texas has so much available space on land?

1 week ago 1 0 0 0

Importance of Music Just a short to illustrate a point. I signed-off my brain dump yesterday (day before?) to give me space for the writing (again), before next week's distraction of another conference(!). I was still finishing of my review of Mark Solms' (2026) “The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing“ - it really is very good and deserves to be read widely - so I owe him a coherent review.

Importance of Music

Just a short to illustrate a point. I signed-off my brain dump yesterday (day before?) to give me space for the writing (again), before next week's distraction of another conference(!). I was still finishing of my review of Mark Solms' (2026) “The Only Cure: Freud and the…

3 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

Brain Dump Whole string of domestic distractions mean my main writing project(s) have stalled almost entirely for several months and before the end of March I have another conference away from home. Just need to unload recent diary entries to have bandwidth to work. [Ultimately this is another music review post, but for now ...] As well as my mother's death over Christmas, and all her healthcare issues prior to that and dealing with her estate since, we'd also started a landscaping project in our small garden, to make it low-maintenance as well as more useful, almost there now, but still unfinished.

Brain Dump

Whole string of domestic distractions mean my main writing project(s) have stalled almost entirely for several months and before the end of March I have another conference away from home. Just need to unload recent diary entries to have bandwidth to work. [Ultimately this is another…

3 weeks ago 0 0 0 0

Solms’ Latest I've mentioned I've been reading Mark Solms' latest since early Feb, before the birthday holiday break, disrupted because I lent out the physical copy of which I'd only read and annotated about 20%. Was already loving it, which is why I'd been carrying it around not wanting to miss opportunities to read. I've since acquired a Kindle copy and I'm now about 60% through.

Solms’ Latest

I've mentioned I've been reading Mark Solms' latest since early Feb, before the birthday holiday break, disrupted because I lent out the physical copy of which I'd only read and annotated about 20%. Was already loving it, which is why I'd been carrying it around not wanting to miss…

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Divided Europe My only previous mention of Katya Adler was her 2021 introduction to Dante. Later, early in 2025, she did a 2-parter on "The Balkans: Europe’s Forgotten Frontier" which I loved and shared thoughts with others on social media, but I didn't blog any reference here. A must watch for anyone with opinions about the boundaries of European politics. So many historical divisions between east and west, and more.

Divided Europe

My only previous mention of Katya Adler was her 2021 introduction to Dante. Later, early in 2025, she did a 2-parter on "The Balkans: Europe’s Forgotten Frontier" which I loved and shared thoughts with others on social media, but I didn't blog any reference here. A must watch for…

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Islamophobia or Secular Freedoms? A long-standing issue I've been wanting to address, when the time is right, when the atmosphere is less feversish, but that time never comes. Now of course it's a mainstream media topic again, whilst Israel and Iran are also lobbing ordnance at each other, so here goes a first draft, a placeholder. Many parts of this topic have already featured here, but I've not pulled together the whole before.

Islamophobia or Secular Freedoms?

A long-standing issue I've been wanting to address, when the time is right, when the atmosphere is less feversish, but that time never comes. Now of course it's a mainstream media topic again, whilst Israel and Iran are also lobbing ordnance at each other, so here…

1 month ago 0 1 0 0

Nothing New Under The Sun Something of a "Wow!" reading experience. We'd already noted Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" was an explicit inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. For Big Brother we had No.1. For Room 101 we had Cell 404. I just read Darkness in 3 sunny-afternoon sittings in the shade on a short vacation in the sun, as an escape from our cold, wet and windy UK winter.

Nothing New Under The Sun

Something of a "Wow!" reading experience. We'd already noted Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" was an explicit inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. For Big Brother we had No.1. For Room 101 we had Cell 404. I just read Darkness in 3 sunny-afternoon sittings in the…

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Nice to see our paper debunking claims of a link between autism and the microbiome among Neuron's "Most Read" articles... 😊 www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

1 month ago 80 20 2 1

Philip Ball: "Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought" YouTube video by Giant's Shoulder

I had a great chat with Evan at the wonderful The Giant's Shoulder about How Life Works.
youtu.be/9SseGx0R0fY

1 month ago 22 6 2 1

Our Place in the Complex Whole Just an excuse to capture some images old a new that attempt to describe the filed of interest. In response to this summary diagram on LinkedIn, clearly focussing on their own "Systems Innovation" (yuk) branding ... Dave Snowden responded with this older but much more complex and comprehensive version "not without controversy" ... Frankly, I'm not concerned with branding of any particular solutions, methods or frameworks, and have always been happy to refer to the whole field as "Systems Thinking" or "Cybernetics" and accept that it has evolved and grown over time.

Our Place in the Complex Whole

Just an excuse to capture some images old a new that attempt to describe the filed of interest. In response to this summary diagram on LinkedIn, clearly focussing on their own "Systems Innovation" (yuk) branding ... Dave Snowden responded with this older but much…

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Just Write What You Need To Write! "Just write something!" was the psychiatrist / psychotherapist's advice to the 33 year old - then clinically insane - Robert Pirsig, creator 12 years later in 1974 of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (ZMM) . One of countless points along the madness<>genius spectrum in the history of the creativity in human thought and action, throughout historical time. "It is not written" opined T E Lawrence to his Arabian & Levantine friends before helping them write - enact - their own chapter of history together.

Just Write What You Need To Write!

"Just write something!" was the psychiatrist / psychotherapist's advice to the 33 year old - then clinically insane - Robert Pirsig, creator 12 years later in 1974 of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (ZMM) . One of countless points along the…

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

Conceptual and methodological flaws undermine claims of a link between the gut microbiome and autism Claims that the gut microbiome causally contributes to autism regularly appear in the scientific literature and popular press. Mitchell et al. critically examine influential studies underpinning these...

All cited here:

cc @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @deevybee.bsky.social

2 months ago 7 4 0 0

Small World – Everything’s Connected Reinforcing my need to switch off and "just write something", is that everything I read (or listen or watch) triggers connections between existing and new source materials, adding to that never ending reading list. This happened in microcosm in the last few days. My immediate previous post, was a reference to Arthur Koestler, of whose "The Sleepwalkers" I was already a fan…

Small World – Everything’s Connected

Reinforcing my need to switch off and "just write something", is that everything I read (or listen or watch) triggers connections between existing and new source materials, adding to that never ending reading list. This happened in microcosm in the last few…

2 months ago 0 0 0 0

The thing about Moby-Dick is that all of American modernity is prefigured in it. The Civil War, Jim Crow, civil rights, BLM? In Moby-Dick. The Manhattan Project, the cold war? Yep, Moby-Dick. Trump, the battle of Minneapolis, the Epstein files? Baby you'd better believe that shit is in Moby-Dick

2 months ago 21 4 0 2

Arthur Koestler I make quite a few references to Koestler in the last decade or so. I was a big fan of his 1959 "The Sleepwalkers" for my #MoreThanScience agenda, so most of my references are back to this and to other second-hand quotes by others - including Peter Corning in our Systems Thinking space. [First mentioned Sleepwalkers here, and…

Arthur Koestler

I make quite a few references to Koestler in the last decade or so. I was a big fan of his 1959 "The Sleepwalkers" for my #MoreThanScience agenda, so most of my references are back to this and to other second-hand quotes by others - including Peter Corning in our Systems Thinking…

2 months ago 1 0 0 0

More Snowden and Jackson Just a holding post for a dialogue I just don't have the bandwidth to engage right now. I admire the work of both Dave Snowden and Mike Jackson in the wider "Complex Adaptive/Anthropic/Critical-Systems Thinking" space. Known them and their work back to the origins of my Psybertron work, but first referred to the both in the same breath here a couple of years ago.

More Snowden and Jackson

Just a holding post for a dialogue I just don't have the bandwidth to engage right now. I admire the work of both Dave Snowden and Mike Jackson in the wider "Complex Adaptive/Anthropic/Critical-Systems Thinking" space. Known them and their work back to the origins of my…

2 months ago 1 0 0 0

Noem and Miller seem like pure psychopaths. No humanity at all. Just dead inside. Unfeeling, amoral, manipulative, revelling in violence. How did we end up with these monsters having power over decent people?

2 months ago 40 8 4 0

Socialism – What’s in a Label? David Harding is a long-standing member of the Pirsig community who has recently posted on his blog: Power Thrives on Rigid Labels. Democracy Thrives on Values. How an amoral metaphysics enables social power to influence shared cultural dialogue in an untold number of ways. Thankfully there's a solution. His focus here is explicitly the labels<>values contrast, and I have some questions to ask about his use of labels, but first I need to affirm my agreement with the central point in his sub-heading.

Socialism – What’s in a Label?

David Harding is a long-standing member of the Pirsig community who has recently posted on his blog: Power Thrives on Rigid Labels. Democracy Thrives on Values. How an amoral metaphysics enables social power to influence shared cultural dialogue in an untold number…

2 months ago 0 0 0 0

Today couldn’t get any madde…

…oh sorry no:
breaking news 👇

2 months ago 6 2 1 0

We don't know what genes are with Philip Ball Join leading science journalist Philip Ball in this this exclusive studio interview that challenges some of biology’s most entrenched ideas. Ball argues that familiar ideas - the genome as a blueprint...

When I was at the How The Light Gets In festival in September, I talked about How Life Works and the complexity of life. (But not exactly the "undoing of the central dogma", which I don't think needs undoing.)
iai.tv/video/the-un...

3 months ago 11 2 2 0

Where we can do something about it, you mean?

3 months ago 3 0 0 0

"monadic pan-proto-psychism" I would say, but no disagreement with your point :-)

(The stuff of minds, rather than minds per se.)

3 months ago 1 0 0 0

Opinion | Trump Is the Jan. 6 President

Again and again, Mr. Trump dares the system to stop him. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/o...

3 months ago 4 2 0 0

Wikipedia is truly one of the greatest things on the Internet. It is absolutely incredible, and must be preserved at all costs.

3 months ago 114 24 3 3

Celebrating Human Rights Day Human Rights Day offers the opportunity to reflect on what an enormous human achievement ‘human rights’ are and on the commitments they entail, from the empathy which underpins them, to the rule of…

77 years ago #OnThisDay 'men and women from every country and every culture, every religion and worldview, came together to agree that some values were shared and should forever be protected as rights for all.' @andrewcopson.bsky.social #HumanRightsDay2025

andrewcopson.com/2024/12/cele...

4 months ago 66 28 3 2

A Nuclear Future I'm reading "Going Nuclear" by Tim Gregory on the recommendation of my brother having seen him give a talk on it. To be clear it's written for not just a general science audience, but a completely general lay audience - even explaining units of measure and metric prefixes of scales of measure, as well as the basic physics. So, as an engineer in the capital facilities industry, including power of all kinds - as well as non-power nuclear applications - I'm not really his audience.

A Nuclear Future

I'm reading "Going Nuclear" by Tim Gregory on the recommendation of my brother having seen him give a talk on it. To be clear it's written for not just a general science audience, but a completely general lay audience - even explaining units of measure and metric prefixes of…

4 months ago 0 1 0 0

A Nuclear Future I'm reading "Going Nuclear" by Tim Gregory on the recommendation of my brother having seen him give a talk on it. To be clear it's written for not just a general science audience, but a completely general lay audience - even explaining units of measure and metric prefixes of scales of measure, as well as the basic physics. So, as an engineer in the capital facilities industry, including power of all kinds - as well as non-power nuclear applications - I'm not really his audience.

A Nuclear Future

I'm reading "Going Nuclear" by Tim Gregory on the recommendation of my brother having seen him give a talk on it. To be clear it's written for not just a general science audience, but a completely general lay audience - even explaining units of measure and metric prefixes of…

4 months ago 0 1 0 0

Posts by Ian Glendinning