Dave Pollard's chronicle of civilization's collapse, creative works and essays on our culture. A trail of crumbs, runes and exclamations along my path in search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.
my own chart of collapse being a multi-stage, centuries-long phenomenon, with no Hollywood moments or endings There is a phenomenon in psychology called creeping normality which asserts that often changes occur so subtly and gradually that we don t even notice Continue reading
China s provinces and administrative territories; map from wikimedia, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Until about a decade or so ago, I bought the whole western line about China — that their governments were ideological and oppressive, that they kept millions of Uyghurs in Continue reading
This is a work of fiction. image by AI; my own prompt I shield my heart from tragic news, From warnings of what’s soon to come, And lock away compassion’s fire — It’s safer now to just be numb. I Continue reading
image by AI; my own somewhat hyperbolic prompt Reconnaissance The ravens come to feast upon the deer. Their talons are too dull to tear like claws. They smartly team with wolves, as hunting peers And point the way to road Continue reading
Image of wildfires in Montana comes from rawpixel.com, and is labeled Public Domain. The media are full of explanations (opinions) about what is going on in the world. What is Trump thinking. What does country X want . Why is this Continue reading
AI image, my own prompt; text screenshot from the website of Soundraw music software. All music lovers who perform others work are constantly walking a line between plagiarism (stealing music from other artists without acknowledgement) and appropriate use (eg singing Continue reading
In a recent interview by Chris Hedges, XR founder Roger Hallam, recovering from a series of imprisonments for protest activities in increasingly repressive and struggling post-Brexit Britain, talks about what we can do, and what we are likely to do, Continue reading
This is #56 in a series of month-end reflections on the state of the world, and other things that come to mind, as I walk and hike in my local community. Two teenagers, possibly a younger brother and older sister, are sitting Continue reading
This is a work of fiction. “So there’s no self, no ‘I’ or ‘you’, just bodies conditioning each other. And those bodies ‘decide’ everything we do, based on that conditioning. And then our brains get to work, after the fact, Continue reading
Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the seventeenth of a series of articles on some of Continue reading