Our new research shows UK winters are becoming significantly wetter due to a rise in global temperatures. Rainfall is increasing around 7% for each degree in warming. So we're experiencing rainfall levels 20 years ahead of predictions - enough to fill 3 million Olympic size swimming pools a year.
![Towards the end of high school, I read Biedermann und die Brandstifter (Biedermann and the arsonists) by Max Frisch. It was a compulsory text for our German class and a book that has stayed with me all my life. Primarily, I think, because at some fundamental level, it terrified me, articulating a basic truth about our capacity to blindly walk into a catastrophe. Despite our intelligence and ingenuity, reasoning and rational calculation, fantastic imaginings and foresight, the play shows just how reluctant we are to acknowledge what is readily apparent if it challenges what we want to believe. Written in 1958, the play centres on the activities of two arsonists disguised as itinerant salesmen who convince people to let them stay in their house only to burn it down. In the play, Biedermann is fully aware of the arsonists. He sits down to breakfast and obsessively reads reports about them in the local newspaper; yet, when they knock on his door, he can’t bring himself to think that the cordial Schmitz and, later, the candid Eisenring are the criminals his town is being terrorized by. Consequently, he lets them in.
As Schmitz and Eisenring make their preparations to burn down Biedermann’s house, he watches them take barrels of gasoline up the stairs. When Biedermann asks what they are doing, they tell him they’re going to burn down his house. He laughs, still unable to believe the two ‘salesmen’ are really going to do what they are so clearly now doing. Finally, he even helps measure the fuse and then gives them the matches to start the fire. Frisch was, of course, at pains to make it clear that Biedermann was not unique in his inability to see what was really happening. The German word bieder means ordinary or conventional but also has connotations of conservative and upright. Biedermann is, thus, the worthy everyman who believes his own sense of propriety makes him immune. [See alt text in next image]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qzzr73476v4g46avt5qdgbih/bafkreib2kr3odmesbnc65lo2rydjjmaczln2mwlkmg27wvtuiecybtmeti@jpeg)
Towards the end of high school, I read Biedermann und die Brandstifter (Biedermann and the arsonists) by Max Frisch. It was a compulsory text for our German class and a book that has stayed with me all my life. Primarily, I think, because at some fundamental level, it terrified me, articulating a basic truth about our capacity to blindly walk into a catastrophe. Despite our intelligence and ingenuity, reasoning and rational calculation, fantastic imaginings and foresight, the play shows just how reluctant we are to acknowledge what is readily apparent if it challenges what we want to believe. Written in 1958, the play centres on the activities of two arsonists disguised as itinerant salesmen who convince people to let them stay in their house only to burn it down. In the play, Biedermann is fully aware of the arsonists. He sits down to breakfast and obsessively reads reports about them in the local newspaper; yet, when they knock on his door, he can’t bring himself to think that the cordial Schmitz and, later, the candid Eisenring are the criminals his town is being terrorized by. Consequently, he lets them in. As Schmitz and Eisenring make their preparations to burn down Biedermann’s house, he watches them take barrels of gasoline up the stairs. When Biedermann asks what they are doing, they tell him they’re going to burn down his house. He laughs, still unable to believe the two ‘salesmen’ are really going to do what they are so clearly now doing. Finally, he even helps measure the fuse and then gives them the matches to start the fire. Frisch was, of course, at pains to make it clear that Biedermann was not unique in his inability to see what was really happening. The German word bieder means ordinary or conventional but also has connotations of conservative and upright. Biedermann is, thus, the worthy everyman who believes his own sense of propriety makes him immune. [See alt text in next image]
![Among the many interpretations of this story, the most popular is as an allegory for the ease with which the German people enabled the rise of Nazism. In our current political context, it is therefore an especially relevant literary work given the current resurgence of populist nationalism, neo-fascism and white supremacism that is threatening to overturn the international, liberal democratic consensus.
The threat is most evident in the rise of Donald Trump, a man with deep authoritarian tendencies who loves strong leaders like Putin, Erdogan and Duterte; he boasted that he’d like the American people to listen to him in the way the North Koreans listen to Kim-Jong Un and constantly refers to [2] mainstream media as ‘the enemy of the people’. Aside from these dictatorial aspirations, Trump exemplifies the problem because he rose to power on a racist, white nationalist ticket that included the demonization of Muslims and Mexicans. This agenda was signalled prior to the election through Trump’s promotion of Birtherism, the racist conspiracy theory about President Obama’s place of birth, and then confirmed by early nominations to his administration that included Jeff Sessions as the attorney general. This is a man known for his attempted prosecution of civil rights activists known as the Marion Three and whose last act as the attorney general was ‘to sabotage the legal instruments of federal civil rights enforcement’, which will have a disproportionate effect on black communities across the United States (Bennett and Takei 2018). There was also the short-lived appointment of Michael Flynn as the National Security Adviser, who proposed that ‘fear of Muslims is rational’, and Stephen Miller, whose portfolio includes the Muslim ban and the policy separating migrant children from their parents. This politics was also signalled through the appointment of Sebastian Gorka as a security adviser and a man fond of wearing medals with a connection to Hungarian Nazis.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qzzr73476v4g46avt5qdgbih/bafkreidwvudbyqb6zkie4tfvrpq3yv4cupbsqhbp3hycblm7h2p5lfm22y@jpeg)
Among the many interpretations of this story, the most popular is as an allegory for the ease with which the German people enabled the rise of Nazism. In our current political context, it is therefore an especially relevant literary work given the current resurgence of populist nationalism, neo-fascism and white supremacism that is threatening to overturn the international, liberal democratic consensus. The threat is most evident in the rise of Donald Trump, a man with deep authoritarian tendencies who loves strong leaders like Putin, Erdogan and Duterte; he boasted that he’d like the American people to listen to him in the way the North Koreans listen to Kim-Jong Un and constantly refers to [2] mainstream media as ‘the enemy of the people’. Aside from these dictatorial aspirations, Trump exemplifies the problem because he rose to power on a racist, white nationalist ticket that included the demonization of Muslims and Mexicans. This agenda was signalled prior to the election through Trump’s promotion of Birtherism, the racist conspiracy theory about President Obama’s place of birth, and then confirmed by early nominations to his administration that included Jeff Sessions as the attorney general. This is a man known for his attempted prosecution of civil rights activists known as the Marion Three and whose last act as the attorney general was ‘to sabotage the legal instruments of federal civil rights enforcement’, which will have a disproportionate effect on black communities across the United States (Bennett and Takei 2018). There was also the short-lived appointment of Michael Flynn as the National Security Adviser, who proposed that ‘fear of Muslims is rational’, and Stephen Miller, whose portfolio includes the Muslim ban and the policy separating migrant children from their parents. This politics was also signalled through the appointment of Sebastian Gorka as a security adviser and a man fond of wearing medals with a connection to Hungarian Nazis.
The first page and a half of Hate In Precarious Times. This passage was written in 2018/9 but published 2021. We have known since 2016.
My new book ‘The Public Brain’ is actually now an object in the world that I have and can hold - which is nice.
Thanks mate - old in both senses 😆
New book by an old colleague and friend.
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-br...
My new book, “The Public Brain: Ideology and the Neuroscientific Turn From the Polis to Platforms”, it’s now available in the UK from Bloomsbury.
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-br...
The Public Brain It is also published and available in the USA
www.bloomsbury.com/us/public-br...
My new book, “The Public Brain: Ideology and the Neuroscientific Turn From the Polis to Platforms”, it’s now available in the UK from Bloomsbury.
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-br...
My new book, ‘The Public Brain’ has been published in the UK today. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-br...
My new book, ‘The Public Brain’ has been published in the UK today. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-br...
Finished proof reading ‘The ‘Public Brain’, and it is now available to pre-order on the Bloomsbury website - I think the cover looks great. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-br...
Finished proof reading ‘The ‘Public Brain’, and it is now available to pre-order on the Bloomsbury website - I think the cover looks great. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/public-br...
national demo UCU in Newcastle - 11 June
Come down to Newcastle, come up to Newcastle, come across to Newcastle — join the NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION in Newcastle on June 11th. Everyone who thinks HE needs to be supported and accessible to all is welcome! For your agenda's: 11 June, 12-2pm, Newcastle!
Sheffield UCU took part in the Workers Day of Action on Trans Rights from our picket lines today! The UK Trade Union movement stands behind our trans siblings
#tradeunionists4transrights
Another day on the picket line at Newcastle Uni today - 18 days of strikes to defend jobs & conditions. I’ve been around the block a few times and this feels exceptionally cruel, with redundancies looming over us since January.
External shot of a crowd being addressed by a speaker
Trade Unions 4 Trans Rights event this morning @newcastleucu.bsky.social
The production process of 'The Public Brain' is moving on nicely - copying editing done, cover done (I'm really happy with it and excited to get the book out there in the autumn). It will be coming out under the Bloomsbury Academic imprint, since Bloomsbury have now acquired Rowman and Littlefield.
Now moving onto the production phase for my new book, with the full title agreed as “The Public Brain: Ideology and the Neuroscientific Turn from the Polis to Platforms”, next comes the copy editing, likely published in US in October then Jan in UK.
I deleted all my social media quite some time ago, amongst other reasons to try and help me finish a book. Now it’s done I thought I may as well pop my head up and see what’s going on.
