"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

"Black Swan" / I'm Losing My Edge

The perhaps inevitable counter-note to the previous upstroke post: another week finds me contemplating my history in the arts and more generally on "the edge" of what people do, feeling — as I put it in a blissfully forced condensation on Twitter — "out of shape and uncool."

And so naturally references to LCD soundsystem and the latest Oscar winner from Aronofsky.

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Do Unto / "Cognitive Surplus", "The New Capitalist Manifesto" and "Cloud Atlas"

I took a bunch of books with me on vacation — facilitated while traveling light thanks to the Kindle (that's my one and only plug; I'm aware opinions are mixed) — and over the past three weeks I managed to get through five volumes. Today I'm going to write a little about the two non-fiction works, Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus), Umair Haque's New Capitalist Manifesto and David Mitchell's novelly-structured novel, Cloud Atlas.

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"Red Mars" / Life is so Uncertain

Reading Red Mars, sociological sci-fi, gets me thinking about life in all its rich variety and how we never really know what's coming. The patterns that have led me to where I stand now, the wider world around me, and where I (and it) go next.

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"The Big Short" / I Preach a Dark Future

Starting a new tag, "Things I Consumed," I'll tell you about the things that I read, ate, watched or otherwise consumed, but more what they made me think. First up is The Big Short, Michael Lewis' exploration of our latest financial bubble via the lenze of those who saw the end coming and had the balls to invest in collapse.

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