Cuttings: November 2024

The Powerful Density of Hypertextual Writing – blog post by Jason Kottke, referenced in John Naughton’s Observer column.  "The NY Times has had a difficult time covering the 2024 election in a clear, responsible manner. But I wanted to highlight this short opinion piece from the paper’s editorial board, which I’m reproducing here in its entirety. 'You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.’ What makes this piece so effective is its plain language and its information density. This density is a real strength of hypertext that is often overlooked and taken for granted. Only 110 words in that paragraph but it contains 27 links to other NYT opinion pieces published over the last several months that expand on each linked statement or argument.“

My friend has embraced conspiracy theories and I’m fed up with it – Philippa Perry's advice column in The Guardian. The question: "I’ve had a good friend for more than 30 years, but since Covid he has become a conspiracy theorist. He only sources “alternative news” from the internet. He quotes hard right, conspiracy narratives. He supports Trump and Putin. He claims he is an anarchist and won’t vote. He becomes arrogant and insulting because I disagree with him.... Is there any hope?" Philippa's answer: "During ... turbulent times, many individuals feel lost and fearful. It’s a natural response to crave solid ground in an effort to gain a sense of clarity amid the chaos. Historically, this craving for certainty has often led people to seek out leaders and ideologies that offer simple, definitive answers.... Your friend’s embrace of conspiracy theories seems to be a modern manifestation of this same desire for certainty. By aligning himself with right-wing narratives, he has constructed a worldview that feels predictable and ordered. His admiration for figures who present themselves as 'strong', decisive leaders will be tied to his need for clear, unambiguous answers.... Trying to push against his beliefs deepens his defensiveness. Think of him like a car in a skid, you want to take the wheel and switch direction, but the car has too much momentum and it will carry on the same path. However, if you take hold of the wheel and steer into the skid, then there is a chance you can steer out of it. This means putting yourself in his shoes, understanding that his fears were triggered by the pandemic and how – for him – it was much less frightening to imagine that Covid was not a horrible freak of nature, but caused by a group of bad people. For him to then make those people his enemy, and attack that enemy, makes the ground feel safer under his feet. This is how you handle children who believe in monsters under the bed, you ask the child to tell you about the monsters and then you empathise and the child feels comforted. Then, and only then, will it be possible for the child not to believe in the monsters. Such an intervention could work with your friend, but it is a long shot. You deserve relationships where your voice is heard and respected. It is not selfish to seek out friends who enrich your life rather than drain it. If steering into the skid doesn’t work, I’d call it a day and move on."

Off-White, The Truth About Antisemitism by Rachel Shabi: racism by any other name – review by Natasha Walter in The Guardian. "As [Shabi] writes: 'The left has ceded the space on antisemitism… and the right has smartly and strategically filled that void.'... It has been hard to talk about this for a long time, for fear of detracting from what feels like more pressing anti-black racism. But now, when charges of antisemitism are being used by defenders of Israel to head off criticism of horrific crimes against Palestinians, it often feels pretty much impossible. Still, not dealing with it is not doing anyone except racists any favours, and many of us will feel grateful to Shabi for stepping out into this maze.... There is no simple truth here, but rather a host of interconnected and complex stories. Shabi, who was born in Israel to Iraqi Jewish parents, and whose previous book explored the experiences of Israeli Jews from Arab countries, is a good and careful guide through many of these thorny paths.... She is sharp on the ways that antisemitism differs from other kinds of racism, and how that can make it difficult to confront.... As other writers have also pointed out, ... Jews [are] both white and not white – as the title has it: Off-White – depending on the situation. But antisemitism can be as harmful as any other racism, and spawned the genocide whose trauma still echoes down the generations. Shabi is honest that, while she doesn’t personally share this sense of trauma, she recognises that for many Jewish people it is still present, and the assumption that they should see themselves as 'white' 'can flatten out the sense of paper-thin conditionality that feels ever-present for many Jewish people'. As a Jew brought up in a family still dealing with the ghosts of the past, I would agree that leftwingers need to do better at accepting this all-too-real sense of vulnerability, 'without dismissal, disbelief, or bad faith'. For sure, the Holocaust is currently being weaponised to head off criticism of Israel, but we don’t get past that simply by denying the reality of Jewish anguish. As Shabi says at one point: 'There has rarely been a more urgent need for us to stretch our compassion, to hold Jewish trauma even while a savagely catastrophic war is inflicted on Palestinians in its name.'”

A Beginner’s Guide to Dying by Simon Boas: what makes life worth living? – review by Blake Morrison in The Guardian. “You’re diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 46. How do you react? In all likelihood with rage, grief and self-pity, especially if, like Simon Boas, you were told it was only acid reflux, and cancelled scans and bureaucratic cock-ups further delayed treatment. You love your wife, you have a great job, you’re addicted to cheese fondue and muscadet, and death will take all that away. A nightmare, it seems, but far from bewailing his lot Boas tells us how insanely contented he feels and ‘how lucky it is to have lived at all’…. Be kind and grateful, he urges. ‘Feast and laugh and voyage and sing!’ His positivity, conveyed in breezy exclamation marks, is a slap in the face for those of us who are afraid of death and who feel entitled to threescore-and-ten. Boas wants people to smile when they remember him and to ‘think of me as a book they are glad they’ve read’. Why should he complain when he has lived longer than most humans in history and when his experiences as an aid worker, in war zones and shattered communities, have taught him how privileged those of us in developed countries are? ‘Cheer up you buggers’ is the message. Enjoyably self-deprecating, he doesn’t claim to be a philosopher but offers cogent reasons for equanimity in the face of death. Acceptance offers perspective, he says, and is better than pursuing miracle cures.“

‘It does not have to be this way’: the radical optimism of David Graeber – article by Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian, from her foreword to Graeber's The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. "David Graeber was a joyful, celebratory person. An enthusiast, voluble, on fire with the possibilities in the ideas and ideologies he wrestled with.... He insisted, again and again, that industrialised Euro-American civilisation was, like other societies past and present, only one way of doing things among countless options. He cited times when societies rejected agriculture or technology or social hierarchy, when social groups chose what has often been dismissed as primitive because it was more free. And he rejected all the linear narratives that present contemporary human beings as declining from primordial innocence or ascending from primitive barbarism. He offered, in place of a single narrative, many versions and variations; a vision of societies as ongoing experiments, and human beings as endlessly creative. That variety was a source of hope for him, a basis for his recurrent insistence that it doesn’t have to be this way.... He was often credited with coining the Occupy Wall Street slogan 'We are the 99%', but he insisted on paring his credit down to having contributed the 99% part to a phrase so compelling that 'the 1%' remains a widely used description of the uppermost elite. 'The 99%' is a hopeful phrase, in opposition to the old layer-cake description of the working, middle, and upper classes. It’s an assertion that the great majority of us are working, and often financially struggling or precarious; that most of us have a lot in common – and a lot of reasons to oppose the super-rich... We have to recognise that ideas are tools that we wield – and with them, some power. David wanted to put these tools in everyone’s hands, or remind them that they are already there. Which is part of why he worked hard at – and succeeded in – writing in a style that wasn’t always simple but was always as clear and accessible as possible, given the material. Egalitarianism is a prose style, too. Our mutual friend the writer, film-maker, and debt abolitionist Astra Taylor texted him: 'Re-reading Debt. You are such a damn good writer. A rare skill among lefties.' He texted back that August, a month before his demise: 'Why thanks! Well at least I take care to do so – I call it "being nice to the reader," which is an extension of the politics, in a sense.'”.

'It will renew your faith in humanity’: books to bring comfort in dark times – article by Francesca Segal in The Guardian. "'Life is short and the world / is at least half terrible,' observes the poet Maggie Smith. But which are the books to reach for when the terrible half is in the ascendant? I’ve come to treasure a particular category I’d define as the literary comfort novel: elegant and beautifully written stories that renew our faith in humanity, that leave us better than they found us, that work – and thus expand – the muscle of the heart. Lately, I’ve come to realise that I want to read one story: despite everything, it is going to be OK.... The novels that bring most comfort to writer Sathnam Sanghera all share landlocked settings, as a reader 'both from the Midlands and with heritage from the Punjab'. He’s comforted when the world of the novel feels safe, and cites fellow Black Country writer Jonathan Coe as his ultimate comfort read because 'there’s so much warmth to his characters'. Also Possession by AS Byatt, which is 'a book about books, and therefore safety within safety'.... Everyone by now has read the wonderful Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus: funny, poignant, unbelievably satisfying. I loved it – and in a similar vein, have you also read Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple? The two have in common a gifted woman resisting the role in which she has been cast; losing and then triumphantly finding herself.... For the novelist Naomi Alderman a literary comfort read should be 'a pep talk in the corner of the boxing ring of life', and her own favourites are Susanna Clarke’s magisterial Piranesi, 'which is really a book about surviving a long illness, but somehow also about how it’s OK to be changed by life, by hard times, by the world; that being changed can be a power as well as a wound'. And George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, 'about a man facing the worst possible thing, the death of his child, and having to haul himself together to save his country. It’s a book that’s rich and tender, and so full of clear-eyed love for humanity – the belief that, with all our rough edges and unsavouriness, we are still worth saving.'”

Far-right leaders are winning across the globe. Blaming ‘the economy’ or ‘the left-behinds’ won’t cut it – article by Richard Seymour in The Guardian. "Why does the far right keep winning? Is it 'the economy, stupid', as James Carville put it during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential run? The idea that far-right voting reflects a protest by the economically 'left behind' is quite popular. There is a kernel of truth to this: the state of the economy was the single biggest motive for Trump voters in 2024.... Yet this narrative barely scratches the surface.... The political effects of economic misery are more indirect... Economic shocks are mediated by the existing emotional currents in society. The middle-class and more affluent workers can identify with the rich and resent the poor, migrants and 'spongers' who threaten their lifestyle. Mostly resentment results in impotent complaint. Hit by shocks, most people are ill-placed to confront their causes and tend to withdraw from politics. Today’s far right offers a different answer – what the political theorist William Connolly calls a 'politics of existential revenge'. It replaces real disasters with imaginary disasters. Trump warns of 'communist' takeover and amplifies the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory. His supporters rail against 'white genocide' and satanic child-molesting elites. Instead of opposing injustice, they vilify those who threaten social hierarchies like class, race and gender. Instead of confronting systems, they give you enemies you can kill. This is disaster nationalism."

The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe: a blue murder mystery – review by Alex Clark in The Guardian. "The Proof of My Innocence – proof as in both demonstration and correctable copy, and innocence as in both lack of guilt and naivety – is a more serious examination of literature’s power and limitations than the mixture of whodunit and political chronicle in which it is wrapped at first suggests. That outer wrapper is itself diverting and instructive. Revolving around the murder of an investigative journalist at TrueCon, a rightwing conference held in a crumbling stately home in the early days of Liz Truss’s premiership, it features an exploration of how and why things fell apart, a deft tracing of the history of American conservatism and its arrival in the UK, and a white-haired, hard-drinking detective called Pru Freeborne (or, of course, Proof Reborn).... As ever, Coe’s study of the way we live now is underpinned by his interest in nostalgia, its personal allure – the lullaby half-remembered, the Morecambe and Wise sketch – and its larger dangers. In the aftermath of the pivot from collective responsibility to individual aspiration licensed and extended if not created by Thatcherism, we are nostalgic for 'that brief postwar moment', a time 'when our bowler hats may have got run over by steamrollers and our song-and-dance routines may have gone comically wrong but at least we could depend on each other, at least we had each other’s backs'. Where the novel sits in times like these is one of Coe’s questions, and if asking it involves deploying secret passages, treacherous hairpin bends, burned manuscripts and, naturally, a villain hiding in plain sight, then so be it. As he might observe, you have to move with the times."

‘Have your bot speak to my bot’: can AI productivity apps turbocharge my life? – article by Victoria Turk in The Guardian. "Generative AI has been eagerly adopted in the productivity tech space... I’ve generally been sceptical of such products,... But with a new generation on the scene, I wondered if my workflow couldn’t benefit from an AI boost.... I approached NotebookLM with caution, noting the disclaimer at the bottom of the screen: 'NotebookLM may still sometimes give inaccurate responses, so you may want to confirm any facts independently.' As a journalist, I’m wary of AI’s tendency to 'hallucinate'. But NotebookLM differs from text generators such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini in that it only works with the information you provide. ... I tried uploading notes and interview files for a story I was working on, then asked the 'Notebook guide' – an AI assistant – to produce a briefing doc based on their content. I immediately saw the appeal. The brief summarised key points raised from hours of audio and drew links between my sources. It even pulled out key quotes. Using the AI chat function, I interrogated the material further, asking which findings were most surprising and posing specific questions about the content. Rather than trawling through my transcripts to remember which interviewees had made a particular point, I simply asked: 'Who spoke about [X topic]?' and got a detailed summary of who said what – along with footnotes directing me to the exact wording in the original material. It’s the restriction at the core of NotebookLM – using only the information you provide – that makes it so useful. I could see it being adopted by students and knowledge workers of all stripes."

How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world – article by Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian. "... 2 Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. ... Journalists, publishers, writers, academics are always in the first wave. Doctors, teachers, accountants will be next. Authoritarianism is as predictable as a Swiss train. It’s already later than you think.... 4 If that sounds scary, it’s because that’s the plan. Trump’s administration will be incompetent and reckless but individuals will be targeted, institutions will cower, organisations will crumble. Fast. The chilling will be real and immediate. 5 You have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. But we’re not. If you’re a US institution or organisation, form an emergency committee. Bring in experts. Learn from people who have lived under authoritarianism. Ask advice. 6 Do not kiss the ring. Do not bend to power. Power will come to you, anyway. Don’t make it easy. Not everyone can stand and fight. But nobody needs to bend the knee until there’s an actual memo to that effect. WAIT FOR THE MEMO.... 7 Know who you are. This list is a homage to Yale historian, Timothy Snyder. His On Tyranny, published in 2017, is the essential guide to the age of authoritarianism. His first command, 'Do not obey in advance', is what has been ringing, like tinnitus, in my ears ever since the Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris. In some weird celestial stroke of luck, he calls me as I’m writing this and I ask for his updated advice: 'Know what you stand for and what you think is good.' ... 15 Remember. Writer Rebecca Solnit, an essential US liberal voice, emails: 'If they try to normalize, let us try to denormalize. Let us hold on to facts, truths, values, norms, arrangements that are going to be under siege. Let us not forget what happened and why.'"

The climate crisis and all the evil in the world drives me to despair – Philippa Perry's advice column in The Guardian. The question: "I am finding it ever more difficult to be in this nasty world. Everything that I cherish is being destroyed and there is nowhere to go to find solace." Philippa's answer: "I cannot offer you the false balm of easy answers. What I can offer, however, is this: the world has ever been thus. The great and the small, all have trampled on one another in their greed, ignorance and pursuit of power. In the end, Voltaire decided, we are left with but one solution: to cultivate our own garden. I do not mean this literally,... though your love of nature might lend itself well to such a task. I mean, rather, that you must focus on what is within your power. The world, with all its evils, is vast and terrible, but there is a corner of it that you can tend, that you can preserve with your heart and your mind.... I urge you, like Candide, to find your own way, to act where you can and to care deeply for those who share your values. The world will continue to be absurd, but you, with all your passion, your intellect, and your sorrow, can still make your corner of it more bearable. What if you sought a relationship not out of fear, but out of a desire for shared strength in facing the future? When you meet others who share your values and concerns, those relationships can become sources of resilience. In this world, we must cultivate our garden. And if we all do that, the gardens might add up to make a difference."

A caring Thomas Cromwell makes good TV, but beware the ‘yes’ men who enable tyrants – article by Kate Maltby in The Guardian. "Thomas Cromwell is back, and this time he’s a romantic. In Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, the latest BBC TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novels, we see Henry VIII’s chief facilitator turn 21st-century empath, offering a listening ear to half the young women of the Henrician court.... This is not the real Thomas Cromwell. It is true that the Tudor politician was a strategic, careful and self-taught Renaissance man. He was also a killer who rewrote a nation’s constitution and bullied its parliament into submission in the service of an impulsive dictator. Now, as Donald Trump returns to the White House, we need to be clear-eyed about the men who enable tyrants. When we whitewash Cromwell’s legacy, we blind ourselves to the warning he offers us.... Mantel always understood that Henry VIII was a tyrant; TV writer Peter Straughan makes him a psychopath, played by a cold-eyed Damian Lewis.... Whether or not Henry was a psychopath, Cromwell was a familiar figure, the legal officer who facilitated the human rights abuses of a despot in the highest office. Tudor monarchs aimed to bend the law to their will, but they were always constrained by its basic principles. Cromwell made a career of finding legal excuses for Henry’s diktats. This makes him a poor role model for our times. Last week, Trump unveiled his own list of Thomas Cromwells: the yes men and enablers who will frame US law to fulfil his wishes. First on the agenda is Trump’s promise to deport the full undocumented population, thought to include 11 million migrants.... Mantel’s original novels are more morally complicated. The Mirror and the Light, as a text, was never an exoneration of Cromwell but a Faustian narrative in which our unreliable narrator slowly comes to realise his own moral decay. In the most revelatory chapter, he is confronted by his betrayal of the Protestant William Tyndale. The TV series, so far, has missed this point. In an era which demands that we each examine our political conscience, that is an unforgivable mistake."