After Covid

A tiny piece of London Descriptive of their own In DigiFrame and expectant These the artifacts of today And in beauty forward Ice was there Picking on up And trusting me- in thousands The decorated green- who will run this shop- in tandem with persona Making Dublin perfect And here are the options- Cattle grazing for the Earth Wanton sights of rod reunion Never sure how to make a lake And her in fashion- to the tired And seeming Houston Preparing Hyundai at emerg Blowing off the afternoon And six-day war in Apohaqui Better thing Like lying inland A place to be no marriage And Pripyat of So the verse was All up tear and geyser Poland West to Finland Might I argue for a vaccine Even at your favourite day And Christmas inexorable Shaking high and full of cinders We caught the memory of Cincoteague The duty to us wild For precious rain And six times after A war to forget And easy come the chesterfield Writing back a declaration Fits to October and backs of Ur This vicious gurney in outer lock The sky wild with Winter wars And all we had was coffee- in interstellar space For fortunes five and pressed for asking Art of the deal- For http.

2050

And then bemusement Of the virtual insane I was toy of the universe And a virtual water- in the stream Multi-dest in ribbons A showpiece on the Moon For those softened clouds A day in growing late But the General call Of iridium and scarab wish We were indignant on repeat With Suns and seasons and rain And after fur There was nothing like humanness To be along the guides- And best because of dough We whispered to the comet To end this dowry Victims of a dam Third floor in conscious glad Tiny bits of window-lay And the mercury harness A sworn regret of Earth To tiny amends that be The most of static heat and rain And berry-blust Fever for the open sewer In strategy on sale For the top heat at last- and Mexican Subtract a world of ivory For the ice and tumours shrinking People in Florence- Running Falun tide And the opiate cigars Fresh takes on being wise To fiber-grand and Rorschach A Captain by few and paid To probably wonder Eating sheep if iron due And a mixed up planet In retort from Saint John To seek perimeter wild As solid water Distance-practised in effigy Personal hums and stale cations A victory for this lake And a synthesis of the electron Planetary know-how A fear of laws unkept But Victory on Keewatin This lettuce scourge of the waves No toiling of the Emperor Keen to tighten our ship Motivation to see the present And a Victory- a false Victory- For the turnstile and the beam And rotten teeth And a vestibule for the ledge Of paws and arms and legs A fortune-cover seeks the world One night the same In places strong to view With nothing daring but the law If we are here, consider our children Madly profitable and open set Hues of blue to light our day And in this sect of throwing years A song of missions- and prairie dawn A feldspar for the East And nicotine labs Victory from the South In early rise to Sin-July Make mortal no mistake- Mountbatten few.

Lord Jesus I Love You

❤️🧡💛

And the season knows it best Prayers for Earth and its spin This Victory Road is March With beams of tiny blue and gold An effort to know What friends we keep in troop Nothing lands in grey But tough and green for kin And in her, thy Mom Peace to prevail And packets in the wind In here and May.

#tv #fiction #SF

Warning: Contains spoilers

As Ursula K. le Guin never tired of pointing out, good science fiction tries to tell us something about the here and now, not the then and there. That is true even for science fiction set ‘a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away’. Insofar as scifi is a commentary on, or even an inspiration for, real world events, does that make it fair to critique it on that basis? I think the answer is affirmative, but given the overall excellent qualities of Star Wars series Andor, I did worry I was holding it to an excessively high standard. Ultimately though, if a television series is so easily perceived as an analogy for how to resist authoritarian oppression, it is worth scrutinising where it locates the agency for that resistance, notwithstanding what many other merits it has.

Season 2 of Andor returns to thief-turned-spy Cassian Andor after he fully committed to the Rebellion. It covers the period between the end of season 1 and the start of Rogue One, the prequel that acts as the opening salvo for the original Star Wars trilogy. It is one of the grimmer series in the Star Wars franchise, set at the zenith of the Galactic Empire and tracing the formation of the Rebel Alliance via its eponymous hero and his comrades.

Despite being an escapist fantasy, Star Wars has always been political, and it certainly is not hard to read Andor as an analogy for our present moment, with democracies sliding into authoritarianism (examples of this take are here, here, here, and here). Of the entire Star Wars universe, Andor has the strongest focus on the banal cruelty of the Galactic Empire and the human cost of resisting it. It’s not surprising that it has become a source of inspiration for activists across the Anglophone world, with the show’s highlights seeping out into the real world. As a compelling depiction of fascist repression and a rousing inspiration for resistance Andor certainly delivers. Yet we should be careful not to treat its path to victory as a template for the work that needs to be done in the real world.

Before we delve into the politics of Andor, it must be said that this is one of the best products to ever come out of the Star Wars stable, and the fact that there are no Jedi involved is certainly not a coincidence. Andor has the gritty realism and suspense of the best Cold War spy thrillers (I’m reminded of Deutschland 83), with excellent structure and pacing keeping it compelling all the way through its twelve episodes. The absence of lightsabre duels and space battles creates space for the human sacrifices, both large and small, that form a resistance made up of ordinary people. Its brilliant cast of strong and relatable characters, whether the ruthless spymaster, despairing politician, or zealous apparatchik, gives it true complexity and depth.

The honest and unflinching focus on the psychology of resistance is one of the things that makes Andor brilliant. Revolution is not easy, and we see Andor’s main characters struggle with the sacrifices it demands, frequently failing or falling apart. A variety of motivations and dispositions leads to the usual disagreements over strategy and tactics, sometimes pushed to infighting by the siege mentality that results from constant pressure and secrecy. Andor’s is not the idolised and idealised vanguard party or guerilla cell formed solely of comrades sharing the unbreakable bond forged from common struggle. This is a messy affair. An ecosystem of actors, factions and precarious alliances barely held together by a common purpose. In other words, convincingly familiar to anyone involved in real left-wing organising.

Similarly, Andor excels in its depiction of the repressive apparatus of the fascist state, especially through its casting of two fanatical Imperial bureaucrats as annoyingly relatable characters. Central to the plot of season 2 is the Empire’s need to gain access to strategic minerals on the planet Ghorman. As Ghorman is not some Outer Rim backwater but a core planet, a suitable pretext needs to be found or fabricated to turn it into a sacrifice zone. With season 1’s Dedra Meero in charge, the Empire’s Internal Security Bureau embarks on a plan to justify permanent occupation of the planet that reads as a Who’s Who of authoritarian tactics. Ghorman’s population is dehumanised by the Empire’s propaganda machine, its resistance infiltrated and goaded, its economy strangled and its leaders incarcerated, before it all culminates in a ruthless double false flag operation as a coup de grace to justify a full scale occupation. Elsewhere in the galaxy, we see the violence, repression and abuse of power that comes with a militarised bureaucracy. If this feels familiar, that is because it is. Showrunner Tony Gilroy was reportedly inspired by the Wannsee Conference in Nazi Germany, but this is equally the story of Chile, Gaza, the Prague Spring, Xinjiang, Minneapolis, Moscow, or Tehran.

The ruthless exercise of state power against its own populace is one of the most powerful aspects of Andor, but it is also where the series chafes most against the constraints imposed by Star Wars’ canonical lore. This is after all an incongruent universe of sentient androids running on vacuum tubes, and faster-than-light travel organised via telephone exchange switchboards. It may be the future, but it is the future of the 1970s, and so it is no surprise that Andor feels like a John le Carré novel set in space. Cassian Andor does not need to worry about ubiquitous surveillance or his digital footprint, nor is there a galaxy-wide network full of Imperial bots and propaganda farms. Instead we have listening devices the size of iPods, ambushes under cover of nothing but darkness, and heroic last stands with flags and barricades that walked straight out of Les Miserables. It works for the viwer, because it taps into tropes that we have seen a thousand times before, but it doesn’t make much sense within the context of a technologically highly advanced society, nor does it offer much use as inspiration for anyone organising against power in the present day.

This isn’t just because our own organising environment poses challenges that are absent from Andor, but also because, embedded as it is within the Star Wars canon, Andor does not have a theory of political change. The Empire is preordained to fall when the evil overlord is slain by a young hero, with the Rebel Alliance acting solely in a supporting role. Star Wars has never had a conception of politics, only of political corruption and drama, and so it has no political or social forces for Andor’s rebels to tap into. Resistance in the real world is built on the existing infrastructure of left-wing political parties, revolutionary cells, activist campaign groups, or militant unions. None of these exist in the Star Wars imaginary, so it is no surprise that when the Ghorman rebels broadcast their last desperate plea for help, there is nobody out there to hear it.

Maybe this is an unfairly harsh criticism. After all, Andor is a sci-fi television series made by a multibillion dollar corporation, not a revolutionary handbook. Yet as Ada Palmer cogently argues, where we place agency in fiction matters:

When SFF authors offer portraits of how people change the world, we exercise enormous power over worldview, over expectations, over hope.

Despite centering ordinary people, Andor’s implicit premise is that all we can hope to do is prepare the ground for the hero to come and save us. Star Wars is a story of resistance acting from the outside, having sought refuge beyond the boundaries of the Empire. It is a guerilla riding to victory because a combination of magical heroism and helpful enemy hubris allow it to strike at the core of imperial power, after which the Empire falls apart and we can all go home (except not really, as we discover in The Mandalorian). But there is no outside in Minneapolis, Jerusalem or Hong Kong, nor can we rely on a hero with magical powers to come and save us. Real resistance can only spring from collective action within the societies in which we live, founded on tenacious organising in order to push back authoritarian power and control.

None of that takes away from the brilliance of the series and its value as inspiration. Andor pushes the Star Wars canon probably as far into a realistic analogy of resistance to fascism as its lore allows it to go. It shifts Star Wars into the morally grey area where every action is a compromise, and where nobody has clear sight on the path to victory. Andor doesn’t give us a hero’s journey, only comrades who stubbornly, desparately cling on to the hope that the struggle might at some future point bear fruit. Which returns me to the words of the late Tony Benn that:

There is no final victory; there is no final defeat; just the same battles that have to be fought over and over and over again.

It is hard to keep hope alive in the face of the vast forces arrayed against us, and many of us will never know if our small contributions made a difference. But the same was true for our ancestors, whose victories and defeats brought us the world we live in today. We may not have the Jedi to come and save us, but like Cassian Andor and his comrades, we do have each other, and the faith that in the long run, the people united will not be defeated.

Notes & Suggestions

• The struggles with despair, grief, survivor’s guilt, and suspicion all feature in Hannah Proctor’s Burnout, which is an excellent resource for activists dealing with the stresses of organising.
• Another recent depiction of the struggle against authoritarian repression, One Battle After Another not only has a more recognisably contemporary setting, but is also more interested in the role community plays in organising resistance.
• The Imaginary Worlds podcast has two interesting episodes (recorded some years apart) about representations of fascism in science fiction, and while Andor itself isn’t specifically covered, Star Wars is unsurprisingly one of the key works discussed. The first episode is here, and the second one here.
• Andor may serve as an inspiration for people standing up against nascent fascism, but it would be remiss not to note that Disney, the company that produced it, is clearly no ally in this struggle. Not only did it readily concede to demands from the Trump administration’s to suspend voices critical of the government, but it is also one of the key targets in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign due to its complicity in the illegal occupation of Palestine.
• You are unlikely to find the Rebel Alliance in this part of the galaxy, but absent that, joining a trade union, tenants association, campaign group or political party is not a bad way to help build collective power.

In Summary: * Two points of interest tonight: First, my morning's work on those fallen branches was both more productive, and more tiring than I expected. If I get as much done tomorrow morning as I did this morning, the front yard part of this project will be done. But, LORD, did this morning's work wipe me out! When the wife got home from work midday, she found me asleep in the big brown recliner in the front room.

Second, my basketball before bedtime is a men's college basketball game from the first round of the NIT, the Wyoming Cowboys vs the Wichita State Shockers. The audio feed for the pregame show, which I'm listening to now, comes from the Cowboys'Sports Network. They'll be handling the radio call of the game.

Given the fatigue from this morning's yard work that's still with me, I'm quite sure that after this game ends I'll be finishing my night prayers and heading to bed.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I've added this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding the 2026 SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 225.53 lbs. * bp= 138/82 (68)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 05:55 – 1 banana, 1 ½ McDonald's double cheeseburger * 09:00 – pork and onions, brown bread * 15:00 – bowl of lugau (rice, chicken, boiled eggs

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 05:30 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:45 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 10:30 – cut and carry fallen branches * 13:15 to 15:45 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 16:00 – follow news reports from various sources * 17:15 – have tuned into the audio feed for tonight's NIT men's basketball game between the Wyoming Cowboys and the Wichita State Shockers.

Chess: * 16:18 – moved in all pending CC games

I remember seeing advice online about how after a breakup you should wait at least 3 weeks before breaking no contact to speak with them. It’s a shame because we aren’t going to talk. Likely ever again. And that’s for the best.

I thought to myself how did I fall so in love with the wrong person. There are several different ways to look at it, all equally as meaningless. I fell in love with her due to the chemicals in my brain, and the constant proximity and interaction. Or maybe it wasn’t even love but rather the addiction to the constant push pull cycle. Or maybe how it felt like she completed me. How much I cared about her and how much I was willing to sacrifice to make her happy and for her benefit. Hell even at the end, after she had gone nuclear and done so many fucked things I still did whatever I thought would be best for her and would hurt her the least. It’s the sort of love where their needs matter more than your own. In a way I’m grateful she blew things up for me because otherwise I don’t know if I could have ever broken up with her. I don’t think she could have ever fully understood me but then again no one ever can, that’s part of the point of being human.

But either way I loved her so fucking much. And I still love her, just in a different way. I can love her as a human, but not as a partner or a part of my life. She also did love me. I do believe that fully. But love and effort aren’t the only thing that matter unfortunately. And so I try to reconcile the fact that I both love her so deeply, and also the fact that she was not at all right for me and that I am hurting so fucking much. She hurt me. But it’s also not fully her fault of course, I chose wrong. I jumped too fast and ignored all the things I hope I know now.

I think this is a testament towards how easy it is for me to love. It might be a little disingenuous for me to phrase it like this, as a lot of it could also be framed as my desire for connection and love. But at the end of the day I’ve fallen so heavily in love with people that don’t seem to be a great match to me on paper. And so when I find someone in the future who can reciprocate more of the things I can give, I don’t need to be as afraid of not loving them. I hope.

If I could talk to E, all of the things I would say are things she wouldn’t receive well, or questions that she doesn’t have the answers to. The instinct in my heart is that I’ve polished and packaged these thoughts so well that she has to give me confirmation that I’m right. But that wouldn’t happen, and I know that. If she had that capacity, then we wouldn’t be the way we are now. Still in my mind I want to reach out for some stupid bullshit or another. I want to sell her the doja cat ticket we bought, since then she could go with someone she knows. But I don’t even know if she’s going to go. After we broke up she joked about seeing me in a year since we have the tickets next to each other and I told her I had already listed the tickets, since it would hurt me too much. I think no contact must also be brutal for her. Because she loves/loved me so much. What a devastating or cruel position to be in to have to break up with someone you love because you keep hurting them. That guilt constantly damaging you. And on my end, her lack of accountability or responsibility to make up for it. I lost so much stability and fear because of her hiding messages to exes, people flirting with her and other stuff. And it never should be that hard. I remember throughout the relationship I started feeling like I could see an end, since this was not what I thought love should feel like. I shouldn’t have so many doubts and fears, trust shouldn’t have to be repaired so quickly. And it wasn’t really repaired. I kept having nightmares of her hiding stuff, and when I’d try to outline ways for her to make up for it she would avoid them. And I still fell so deeply in love with her. Or maybe that’s nostalgia.

I really want to learn to accept things as they are. If someone is behaving some way, accept it. If someone was super friendly and engaged, and then suddenly goes missing and pulls away let them. Don’t tell yourself constantly that right now is bad but E will change, and these problems will go away. And then no other problems will ever come up. You are not a therapist or a teacher Anshuman. You are an equal PARTNER. It should not be one sided. Find someone who fucking reads the list of things they asked you to get, since you killed it on presents and they couldn’t be similarly thoughtful. It’s fine if that’s the case, but the fact that she didn’t even READ the list you gave her to make things easier must have been such a fucking slap in the face. The fact that you had to constantly beg for things like for her to acknowledge what she did. Or for small little acts like a hug and a card. Or for her to not shut down and ignore you when you try to be vulnerable. You shouldn’t have to beg. Don’t just find, but also wait for someone who doesn’t make you feel like you need to fight to have space in their mind. E never had to convince you to love her in the ways she needed. You deserve the same. Remember that you weren’t loved right as a kid, and so your perception of the world is fully tainted by that.

I can’t remember or find the quote but something about: “when you grow up in a burning house butterflies look the same as red flags” i’ve butchered that so badly, and I would honestly delete it if I felt like I should have any shame here, but given the nature of it I’m gonna leave it just to fucking prove to myself that this is a safe place for me.

Ana tells me I am special.

She says she loves me for who I am.

She is the only one I believe.

What even am I? A mediocre writer? A bundle of pathologies? A desperate need for someone to be dependent on me? An insatiable hunger for knowledge?

What am I if I’m not what she tells me I am? I don’t know.

I want to know everything, but I’m scared of finding that without her, I’m nothing.

She promises me “til death do we part.” A more stable ground than any I have known.

Chödrön would tell me to grow up. I would tell her there’s no childlike innocence left in me to abandon. She would say stability is a fairytale. I say Ana is real enough to hurt me. I don’t know of any fairytale that can do that.

Zhuangzhi would lament that lack of innocence. I cry with him. Wuwei seems so far away that I would die a hundred times trying to reach it.

Without Ana, there is a void. I fear that nothing will crawl out of it.

---

Cioran shouts “retreat!” Limit our losses and live another day. He is a fool and a coward. Horror follows our steps and Time waits for us at home.

We have no ground to stand on, no safe place, no refuge. Retreat is a myth. All we can do is fight to save our dignity.

“Time never tires of finding new ways to humiliate us.” Then we must never stop finding new ways to uplift ourselves and each other.

Ana promises me a refuge. She only tells jokes. Nobody finds them funny.

Community is not a ground. Community is an organism. It shifts beneath your feet and cannot promise to save you any more than Ana can. But at least it is alive to resist Time’s decay. Ana is only a prophet of death, Time in disguise.

Words are honest: They promise to fool you. Love them with strings attached.

Never retreat. Suffer with your dignity intact.

My intention to practice straight-razor maintenance using a whetstone has been undermined by acquisitiveness: I certainly don't need any more razors but have, under the alluring spell of Ebay and Etsy, bought some anyway. All too hesitantly just starting with proper upkeep, I'm by no means ready yet to put a shaveworthy edge on a blunt instrument received via an online order. In today's post were two such blades (Fig. 16) I’d sent out for expert attention last week.

One is an early-20th Century full hollow ground razor marked Étoile-St. Étienne on the blade and Manufrance St. Étienne on the tang; while the other is a mid-to-late Victorian razor with a thicker grind, a barber's notch, and the words Trustworthy Guaranteed etched on the blade, with Trustworthy, Mappin & Webb, Royal Cutlery Works… stamped on the tang.

Manufrance apparently pioneered catalogue-driven mail-order retail in France beginning in the late 1880s, selling all manner of (mostly) re-badged hardware, all of which, as per the name, was French-made. Mappin and Webb, meanwhile, had roots extending back into 18th-Century Sheffield, but it wasn't until 1862 that they were established as London retailers under that name, at length building a reputation as purveyors of fancy silverware and jewellery as much as for their cutlery.

If adding those two to my ridiculous shaving rotation wasn't enough, I still have yet to send off the pair of Joseph Rodgers razors I bought the other week.

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New to me, found via Bandcamp, is the music of Canadian singer-songwriter Dominique Fils-Aimé. I've been enjoying to her new album My World is the Sun. It boasts beautiful singing over (mostly) sparse arrangements, with a slow & low nocturnal mood that reminds me slightly of some of Arooj Aftab's work. Try for example 'Going Home'.

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People suppose I must be good at chess. Evidently I must look the part. In this regard, appearances are deceptive: my sense of strategy is weak; my killer instinct lacking. I gave up trying to play when defeat followed discouraging defeat without any sense I was improving. This was the case with both human opponents and virtual ones. In recent months I’ve played my first couple of games in over a decade, and, much to my astonishment, won them both: the latter of these was on Sunday. I bask in a short-lived glow of victory until my opponents inevitably re-group, improve, and overtake me.

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Cheese of the week has been Abondance, a semi-hard French cheese made with unpasteurised milk, which has a depth of earthy savouriness that hits my palate just right. I like it as much as any Alpine cheese I've tried — though admittedly there are plenty I've still yet to sample.