Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 29/09/2026Arresting marchers for carrying flags and a band for playing 'Scots wha hae', Paisley 1819. Morning Post, 29 September. 010
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 29/09/2026If your investors are invested in the end times, they are not looking for a financial return on their money. 001
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerSteve Eely @steveeely.bsky.social · 29/09/2026From 20th October to 15th December, I’m running a five workshop online creative writing (poetry) short course, ‘Creating Bespoke & Organic Forms: Shaping Poems in the Act of Composition’. More information and booking details can be found here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creating-b...eventbrite.co.ukCreating Bespoke & Organic Forms: Shaping Poems in the Act of CompositionA creative writing (poetry) course of 5 workshops in which participants will devise their own bespoke forms for poems and sequences. 134
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 29/09/2026'Today, there is no conceivable equivalent. Who is tonight’s guest on the One Show, plugging their novel about the birth of Christianity?' www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...lrb.co.ukIan Penman · AB Fab: Anthony Burgess heads southFor a certain kind of northern man, Burgess has always been – for once the term is apt – something of an icon. A bit... 010
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 29/09/2026Easier to get rid of the state pension altogether and go straight into a care home when we retire. 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 25/09/2026Snap! Near the Green Bridge of Wales two weeks ago, where they were plentiful. 010
Reposted by Alasdair Pettinger Xun-ling Au 歐迅灵 🏴 @xunlingau.bsky.social · 21/09/2026The British gov't promised Hong kongers that charges they incurred from protesting in 2019 would not be held against them when applying for BNO visas. Yet more HKers say the home office is denying their applications over protest associated charges.metro.co.uk'We were promised escape to UK - but they've betrayed us by denying our visas' 35124
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerHadas Weiss @hadas.bsky.social · 21/09/2026the museum sounds great i hope they also build one for women 311391248
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 21/09/2026Anand Teltumbde on the effectiveness of the irreverent and often obscene language of the Cockroach movement this summer in India: thewire.in/politics/in-...thewire.inIn Defence of the Profanity of ProtestersThe state had a script for slogans, petitions, op-eds – the standard grammar of Indian dissent, which it had learned to out-shout, outspend or simply wait out over ten years in power. It had no script... 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 19/09/2026Lewis Carroll, Ivor Cutler and the end of the world: www.bulldozia.com/2026/09/16/i...bulldozia.comI Got a LetterAn email from a self-identified 'AI Agent' prompts some reflections on the proximate apocalypse. 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 19/09/2026'The difference between a partial eclipse of the sun and a total eclipse is like the difference between kissing a man and marrying him.' (Quoting from memory). 110
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerScott Gray @scott1gray.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Fixed that for you, BBC. 4638215
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerDaniel Jacobius Morgan @jacobius.bsky.social · 05/09/2026Interesting interview with my father-in-law Ravi Chopra that understands the Nepal disaster within a broader frame of Himalayan ‘development‘. thefederal.com/category/new...thefederal.com‘Nepal valley flooded twice in 14 months’: Expert slams ‘sheer madness’ of Himalayan developmentFriendship Bridge destroyed twice: Environmentalist Ravi Chopra explains how reckless development pushes fragile valleys into repeated disasters, ruining lives 03717
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 02/09/2026Infected by such enthusiasm from @philipsherburne.bsky.social and I too have the album on repeat and given up on work for the day futurismrestated.substack.com/p/fr-186-lev...futurismrestated.substack.comFR 186: Levitating With LambchopGrief, mischief, and my obsession with Kurt Wagner’s extraordinary new album 020
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 01/09/2026A deep dive into the words used during the Age of Revolution for what today we would probably call slogans www.bulldozia.com/2026/08/31/n...bulldozia.comNotes on Slogans: 1. What Should We Call Them?Rallying cries, watchwords, mottos, oaths: these were the eighteenth-century names for what we might today call slogans. What can they tell us? 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 01/09/2026'The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death.' Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project. 010
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 29/08/2026Read just after coming across this, on Rosa Luxemburg's private herbarium, to generate a serendipitous diptych. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.comA “plant love story”: The lost (and found) private herbarium of the radical socialist revolutionary Rosa LuxemburgHerbaria are important tools in botanical documentation for verifying species distribution and past occurrence. In addition to their scientific value, some herbaria, especially those collected by ico... 010
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 29/08/2026Very much looking forward to these pamphlets, introduced here with the author's reflections on the different way he walks alone and in company, and quietly refusing the convention that one writes as if one is alone even when not: longbarrowblog.wordpress.com/2026/08/28/p...longbarrowblog.wordpress.comTzu-Jan in Post-Nature: A Process | Matthew CleggHistory has lured me here – a lining of moss on a crumbling log. During Covid lockdowns my partner [i] and I started taking our daily exercise along Sheffield’s Rivelin valley early in the morning … 152
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 29/08/2026Data centres as abbatoirs and factory farms: artreview.com/the-digital-...artreview.comThe Digital Jungle: On Datacentres and SlaughterhousesFeeding the AI rush, datacentres are everywhere now. Jenny Wu connects the architectural vacuity of the server farm to a longer history of ‘dirty’ work 043
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerJasmin Mujanović @jasminmuj.bsky.social · 28/08/2026I was asked by @newlinesmag.bsky.social to write about the death of Bosnian Serb genocidaire Ratko Mladić. He was a war criminal but above all he was a coward. And it is on his cowardice, and the courage of those he sought to exterminate, that we should reflect. newlinesmag.com/spotlight/th...newlinesmag.comThe House Ratko Mladić Could Not DestroyRatko Mladić, the commander in charge of the Srebrenica genocide and architect of the Sarajevo siege, died serving a life sentence. He died a coward, much as his political progeny today still live as ... 28130
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 28/08/2026In the fourth of these, Roland Gift returns to Sparkhill, where he lived as a child. Moving, well-crafted, atmospheric, and, dare I say, psychogeographical: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...bbc.co.ukUnited Kingdoms - Reflecting - BBC SoundsA bold series of short dramas reflecting life across the UK. 000
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerMark O’Neill 🐻 @radiobeartime.com · 27/08/2026Sigh. It's not down to him. If the conditions in the GFA are met then a referendum must be held. Burnham has no power to prevent it I fear that Burnham has a very superficial understanding of devolution beyond English local government. This could go very badly wrong for him. 178331
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerOlivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 21/08/2026> One of the purposes of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY is to expose eugenic principles and practices within professional philosophy[:] “few philosophy departments (in the Global North at least) remain untouched by the eugenic vision of neoliberalism.” 1/nbiopoliticalphilosophy.comHow Much Dark Money Is in Professional Philosophy?One of the purposes of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY is to expose eugenic principles and practices within professional philosophy. As Shelley Tremain has argued persistently since founding this blog, the… 411346
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 23/08/2026'Now's the day and now's the hour' takes the reader to the moment where the outcome of the battle is uncertain; it could go either way. Blasting it out of the continuum of history. 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 23/08/2026In 1943 Hugh MacDiarmid wrote: 'One Day of the World is the nearest example of the sort of thing I am after in my recent poetry - of what I mean by world consciousness in my work - that I can think of.' (Lucky Poet, Chapter III). 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 23/08/2026On Gorky's project of a collectively-written volume documenting a single day (27 September 1935), A Day of the World (Den’ mira): balticworlds.com/revolutionar...balticworlds.com Revolutionary Synchrony: A Day of the World « balticworlds.com A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm. 100
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 23/08/2026From Walter Benjamin's long lost essay on 'Scots wha hae': So war für Burns Bannockburn eine mit Jetztzeit geladene Vergangenheit, die er aus dem Kontinuum der Geschichte heraussprengte 101
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 20/08/2026Mary had a little iamb Once, before the pterodactyls. 020
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 20/08/2026China Miéville on his new, mammoth novel, 'Rouse' (due out next month). Mark Bould interviews 'one of the twenty-first century’s pre-eminent fantasy authors': www.bostonreview.net/articles/rev...bostonreview.netRevenance EventChina Miéville returns to fiction with a secret history of late-twentieth-century Britain. 041
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 20/08/2026An ebook, scanned from hard copy, with occasional blips of uncorrected OCR like 'befcre' or 'unflcused' or 'hut' where you would expect 'but', and even strings of missing vowels like ‘intr dcrtrs’, ‘bsns’ and ‘rsdnce’. Or is it? You are reading Big, Little after all. RIP John Crowley. 000
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerFrederick Douglass in Scotland @fd-scotland.bsky.social · 20/08/2026The first book in the Douglass Family Lives series, on Anna Murray Douglass, edited by Celeste-Marie Bernier out now from @edinburghup.bsky.social (free ebook download): edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-anna-mu...edinburghuniversitypress.comAnna Murray DouglassAnna Murray Douglass 012
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 12/08/2026As Annie Dillard once wrote, the difference between a partial eclipse of the sun and a total eclipse is like the difference between kissing a man and marrying him. 020
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 12/08/2026Most of these books have been scanned already and are freely available on the web. Why go to all this bother? Or do they check first? Examples cited suggest not. www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...irishtimes.comA ‘bananas’ order for 5,000 obscure titles from a bookshop in Galway fuels suspicionIndependent retailers are receiving vast orders for obscure titles, fuelling suspicions that AI companies are quietly building the next generation of chatbots 010
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerNew-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/07/2026This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b 7778512571
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerNoTeOlvidesDelSaharaOccidental @carlos1951.bsky.social · 07/08/2026ANALYSIS | Morocco, backed by the US and Israel, increasingly acts as if it were untouchable noteolvidesdelsaharaoccidental.org/morocco-us-i...noteolvidesdelsaharaoccidental.orgANALYSIS | Morocco, backed by the US and Israel, increasingly acts as if it were untouchableBacked by the US and Israel, Morocco has learned that political pressure often brings results while international condemnation rarely brings serious consequences. 077
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 06/08/2026About a lot more than property but The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow. 120
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 06/08/2026More importantly, people who are habitually dishonest (cf Peter Murrell) may need to lose their jobs, but they also need help. 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 06/08/2026I suspect loads of academics make shit up. Only if you carefully investigate thousands of them at random and find that a disproportionate number of offenders are 'DEI hires' can you justify an article like this. 210
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 01/08/2026ELUCID and billy woods at the top of their game here, with live backing musicians who know exactly what to do: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP23...youtube.comArmand Hammer: Tiny Desk ConcertYouTube video by NPR Music 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 28/07/2026Will listen to this all day www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfnB...youtube.comBig Car + Dub - Jackie Mittoo & Ernest Ranglin (Coxsone)YouTube video by Selection Train 000
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 28/07/2026Ugh, @bandcamp.com enshittified by spam accounts advertising recordings available on other platforms, not on bandcamp at all. 020
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 27/07/2026Carey Baraka confronts his own enjoyment of this shamelessly racist film franchise of the 1980s and 90s and tracks down its survivors in Namibia today. One of them asks: “Now that you are writing this, what will happen next?”: www.equator.org/articles/the...equator.orgThe Gods Are Still Crazy • EQUATORSeparating truth from fiction in the most successful African movie of all time 163
Alasdair Pettinger @bulldozia.com · 27/07/2026Orwell reckoned that Britain needed the Empire to maintain its standard of living; without it 'England [would be] a cold & unimportant little island where we should all have to ... live mainly on herrings and potatoes'. Hugh MacDiarmid, writing from Shetland: 'Don't threaten me with a good time.' 100
Reposted by Alasdair PettingerMar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 26/07/2026For many years, people didn’t randomly film others in public—not because we didn’t have the technology, but because the social contract said you didn’t do that. That’s why Meta is going full court press on their PR and celebrity endorsements. They remember how people ran google glass outta town. 433404913