great piece

“How the World Declared War on America”

In the wilderness of America, JG Ballard foresaw the gangster imperialism of Donald Trump

By Mark Blacklock ( @drblacklock.bsky.social )

archive.ph/8T8qc

"How the World Declared War on America" In the wilderness of America, JG Ballard foresaw the gangster imperialism of Donald Trump

“How the World Declared War on America”

In the wilderness of America, JG Ballard foresaw the gangster imperialism of Donald Trump

By Mark Blacklock

I dread opening my institutional inbox because it is just jammed full of the rational. Irruptions of the irrational would be welcome.

Just read your blog post Toby. Strong agreement. I only ever really knew that Birkbeck and can't help but feel nostalgic for it. I shifted into teaching CW p-t in 2018 and have been there ever since. Because that's where the students are. MACCS felt in good health back then. All happened quickly.

well quite. And “a background in compensation claims“ translates as “holds sovereign citizen beliefs.”

What Nigel Farage will say for money The Reform UK leader has a lucrative side-hustle sending paid-for Cameo messages. But an analysis of more than 4,000 of them show they include videos for a neo-Nazi group and a rioter. Henry Dyer repo...

Fantastic video podcast with @helenpidd.bsky.social and the Today in Focus team talking about Farage on Cameo. Really brilliant editing and presentation of the material we’ve analysed.

www.theguardian.com/news/video/2...

Banksy has been unmasked (again). But does this major Reuters investigation actually tell us something new? British street artist’s ‘real’ name reported after an investigation stretching from Ukraine to New York and London. Kelly Burke explains all to Nick Miller

whenever these stories come around i wonder what my former editor Jo lamb thinks. We identified Banksy in Bizarre magazine in 2001 in a piece by Jamaican snapper Peter dean rickards. @admiralbooth.bsky.social will back me up on this www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

@direthoughts.com has a rare gift for deadpan reporting which I think warrants special mention here. The “deez nuts” line really tickled me.

“Nine of Farage’s Cameo videos appear to have been recorded on Christmas Day. Four were seemingly recorded on the day of the queen’s funeral, including one produced for a stag do, and another in which Farage made a vulgar sexual reference to “shenanigans” in a cabin and “Deez Nuts”.”

Guy Debord and Asger Jorn
Mémoires, 1959

Famously wrapped in a détournement of sandpaper to rub any books near to it, up the wrong way.

Robert Smithson's secrets of the ambulatories....

This was my absolute favourite from the last issue. I walk the dog sometimes across the river Wharfe from Heselden's estate near to Boston Spa. I had heard of his unfortunate demise, but had no idea of his amazing life. What a mensch.

What Anthropic's fight with the Pentagon tells us about the politics of Silicon Valley Trying to make sense of the conjuncture

Fascinating insights to the ideological and biographical rumblings in the background of Anthropic/Hegseth fight from @maxread.info open.substack.com/pub/maxread/...

pipeline from @thefence.bsky.social to guardian going strong

An Alboniad, by Offal Industries 2 track album

A bandcamp debut!
offalindustries.bandcamp.com/album/an-alb...

Overnight Eurostar to Bourg st Maurice. The door was next my head and incessantly swooshed and stchtumpfed open and shut; a cadre of “lads” were pulling an all-nighter; and a harassed nanny was trying to console a teething baby while the parents slept peacefully in a different carriage. zero zeds.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood citing the work of dystopian cyberpunk author William Gibson to justify more facial recognition vans

looks ace

Nigel Farage’s shifting answers on school-days racism claims – a timeline Reform UK leader’s responses to allegations of racist and antisemitic behaviour at Dulwich college have varied over time

Updated again: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Offal #31 – Lubricate Reality With Dreams (A Finale) In the archive of glitched intentions, beneath the floorboards of your browsing history, we found your secrets— wrapped in greaseproof memory, flickering in the dying…

New episode of Offal. Support underground cloning and pirate AI slop. Macca and Linda, Kenneth Williams reads Richard Milward, Antichrist clone circle jerk plus Manning, Rickman, Burton. All the greats. Keep it locked. steady.page/en/offal/pos...

Train journey to town with the beloved to go see The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and onto drinks party with auld pals means 2 hours with @thefence.bsky.social and the joy of a @williamasclarke.bsky.social quiz

There is not one, but TWO nominations for The Fence in the @financialtimes.com's list of articles of the year!

www.ft.com/content/72d0...

The Fence is extraordinary - funny, brilliant, couldn't be dull if it tried, and read by tastemakers and senior pols alike. I've been very lucky to have pieces in its pages. A sub makes a great xmas present, and this draw has banging prizes.

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/fences-fig...

I mean, isn't this what informs all the attention algorithms and creates people like those kiwi dickheads who did "boomer memes" for the Leave campaign? And obviously a century more sophistigated than Gustav le Bon, but isn't it broadly the same ideas weaponised for platform capitalism and nudgers?

Following a long email discussion with a devotee of popular behavioural science, who invokes left- and right-brain, and talks of cut-through, opposing emotions to facts, I'm left wondering: has this branch of psychology essentially wound back the Enlightenment? Paging @thatneilmartin.bsky.social

Walking into disaster: the narcotrafficking scandal that blew up the BVI The long read: When the new premier of the British Virgin Islands said he needed an armed security detail, his chief of police knew trouble was on its way

“This will not be business as usual, but rather business unusual, business unconventional,” said the BVI premier at the start of his tenure. But no one knew quite how unusual it would turn out to be.

Today's Guardian long read by @edsiddons.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Sent to Coventry Some more Mitford mania

Stand by for a dose of Mitford Mania, as Rory Macneish meets Ben Treuhaft, the son of Decca, a piano tuner living between Edinburgh and the West Midlands. But does he share his mother's politics?

www.the-fence.com/sent-to-cove...

On a purely factual point, Trevor Phillips’s column in the Times misrepresents our reporting in casting doubts on claims that there were more boys called Patel than Smith at Dulwich in 1980 (we did not report 1976 as the year it occurred). 1980 roll shows 13 Patels and 12 Smiths.