Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Sunday Walk

Flowers everywhere, and yet you can feel the coiled energies ready to fully spring into an explosion of delirious technicolor madness. Walked to the Rose Garden after brunch at our diner, and the roses are just getting ready to put on their show. In two weeks' time, I'd say, it will be a sight to see. A repeat of Friday's lecture for my undergrad crit survey more or less awaits tomorrow, finishing off Debord and Naomi Klein before reading William Burroughs and beginning to discuss Arendt and biopolitics as well. It's a lot, but everything is easier with spring pulsing everywhere around us...

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Saturday, March 30, 2019

Grading, Grating

Just finished a pile of papers, and was shocked to find I have just a couple of stragglers to cajole for once. These days, that's a good day.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Teaching Day

A beautiful turn in the weather yesterday commuting into the City to lecture about Guy Debord and Naomi Klein and Hannah Arendt. The worst thing about these last couple of years in the rather demoralized and depressed aftermath of the one-two punch of 2016 and my health crisis and the Trumpist crisis is that it can be hard to be interested and hence interesting about theory at a time when so much theory feels trivial or rationalizing. My students help me connect back to the time when theory was a vital space of self-creation in which I came into my queerness as well as (and of a piece with) coming into a wider awareness and understanding of the world's complexity, distress, and possibility. Teaching is pretty hard for me these days. My depression and anxiety make leaving the apartment pretty hard for me these days, frankly. But in the teaching itself, however hard, I find the only resources (well that and Eric's love, Penny's shenanigans, and hundreds of episodes of Doctor Who) out of which I am pulling myself, little by little, out of this long exhausting despondent night...

Friday, March 29, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Mulling Presidential Bid...

Should be prepping for tomorrow's lecture, but since I am an old white guy I find myself mulling a bid for the White House instead. Apparently, it is the thing we do.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Today's Random Wilde

A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Nnedi Okorafor Developing Octavia Butler's Wild Seed?

Can such things be?

Impeachment Status Quo

I've always thought he should be, I've never thought he would be, I still say:

Mariame Kaba On Justice In America

Justice in America interviews Mariame Kaba. If you are interested in the topics of prison abolition and restorative justice, this is a nice overview and point of departure (key figures and canonical texts are also mentioned should you want to explore further). I've been teaching Angela Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete for years now -- I've been foregrounding abolition and RJ ever more as a way of maintaining sanity and mobilizing resistance in Trumpmerica -- but Kaba has been truly inspiring to me lately at a time when few otherwise have been. Her book recommendations are wonderful. Her "Hope Is A Discipline" has really gotten me through on more than one occasion this last year especially.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Sick Day

Skipping work (grading papers, that is) and my workout today, and taking it easy. Wondered why I felt so muzzy all day yesterday, now I know. Re-binging Who's eleventh season (I'm a fan, fuck the haters) this afternoon under a blanket with my cat and echinacea.

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Friday, March 22, 2019

Spring Break...

...nearly broke me this year! I think I've worked harder catching up with reading, grading, and lecture prep this week than I have done the last couple months of teaching. Truly need a post-Break break.

Today's Random Wilde

I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One must eat muffins quite calmly, it is the only way to eat them.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Today's Random Wilde

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Today's Random Wilde

He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.

Pre-Silly Season Pre-Silliness

Really feeling Elizabeth Warren these days -- these early, early days -- feeling enormously impressed with her daily deliveries of policy substance while the flashbulbs flash for Beto's latest listicle celebrating artisanal microbrews or whatever... If forced to declare early (and of course I can change my mind should Harris stumble, say, or Booker unexpectedly soar, and of course I'll vote for any Democrat over any Republican in this Nazi/apocalyptic-enabling epoch of Trumpublicanism) but I guess I am presently hoping for a Warren/Harris ticket, while also hoping this sinking feeling we'll be getting a Biden/Beto ticket instead is just depressed Trumpmerican-epoch queasiness...

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Short Documentary on the Green New Deal

Monday, March 18, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Friday, March 15, 2019

Teaching Day

Off to the City under blue skies... Guy Debord and Naomi Klein today, Spring Break begins tomorrow... Things are looking up (so long as I don't look at the headlines till I get back home no doubt).

Thursday, March 14, 2019

Wannabe Dictator In Plain Sight

via PolitcalWire:
President Trump appeared to threaten potential violence against his political opponents, telling Breitbart [find it yourself] that “it would be very bad, very bad” if his supporters were provoked into getting “tough.” Said Trump: “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump -- I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough -- until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
No, I'm not "surprised" -- I'm disgusted, enraged, and as righteously motivated to expose and defeat Republican authoritarians (and their enablers) as ever, thanks.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Today's Random Wilde

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Monday, March 11, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Sunday Rain Check

Handfuls of icy rain but also, and much more to the point, scattered hailstorms and rumbling thunderclaps of my midwestern upbringing have curiously migrated to the East Bay where they are the rarest and weirdest of occurrences... and that means no Sunday walk and brunch again this wet unwarm winter. Probably for the best: still reading a very fine if sprawling thesis by one of my grad students in preparation for her final review tomorrow. That and lecture prep more than fill this day with work and worry -- relaxation later, spring break is just one week away now. Just in time.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Saturday, March 09, 2019

Today's Random Wilde

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Friday, March 08, 2019

Teaching Day

Off to the City. A few more words on Adorno and then it's Barthes' Mythologies and then Daniel Harris' more recent (but by now classic, at any rate for me) mythologesque essay "The Futuristic." Bad night after a few better ones means I'll be pushing past bleary throughout the three hours I'm lecturing, which is never my favorite. Plan to prep, and ideally find some pep, on the train and then the bus to and through the City to our Fort Mason grad campus sprawled out over the Bay...

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Thursday, March 07, 2019

Today's Random Wilde

But what is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Wednesday, March 06, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Wildthyme

Reading Paul Magrs's Phoenix Court quartet as I fall deeper down this literally lifesaving Whovian fanhole that has sustained me and re-invigorated me since last summer, at this point extending to every Doctor, across the Sarah Jane Adventures, through Elizabeth Sandifer's Tardis Eruditorum essays (I've bought three of the books and await re-issues of the later ones) and still chewing through volume after volume of About Time. It's an old and familiar strategy, when I was bullied and battered as a kid I retreated into Tolkein and Herbert and Heinlein and Star Trek, and now coming out of the panic and depression and rage of my health-scare and then this whole Trumpmerican fiasco I find the insanely rich ramifying worlds of Whovian fandom to roll around in and fall in love with falling in love with again. Thank the billion billion goddesses for sfnality.

Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Monday, March 04, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily (And Sometimes Belatedly)

Saturday, March 02, 2019

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daiy