Archive (Page 2) • Open Mode • Buttondown

lil update and link dump

September 17, 2025

Greetings frenemies, I hope you're getting what you deserve (you know what you are!). In addition, I thought I'd send you an Open Mode post, a fate no one...

Letter to Long Haul in reply to Paul Buhle

September 2, 2025

I’m excited about the recent publication Long Haul (https://longhaulmag.com/about/) which describes itself as a "quarterly magazine of worker writing about...

moral agnowhatsits and aesthetic somethingsomething?

August 14, 2025

Some thoughts at the confluence (shaken loose by the resonance?) of a couple three strands of my interests... I feel like I’ve only really dipped a toe into...

Situating concrete aspects of social murder and response to it within capital's circuits

August 2, 2025

I want to try something. Specifically, I want to try to situate harms generated by capitalist society, and more specifically, means of responding to those...

The Future of Revolution, book review and response

July 16, 2025

You should read Jasper Bernes’s recent book The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising. In what...

Marxism is good for you, eat your vegetables

July 8, 2025

Hello good people! And the rest of you!I hope you’re all maintaining. I’m feeling careworn myself. (I relate to some of the title track to the newest...

Moral economy struggles once again

June 22, 2025

Hey gang, I hope you’re hanging in. Apparently the US is bombing Iran now. Add another atrocity to the long list I guess. Fuck. I was in a bad mood before...

ranting about how shit's fucked, Brecht and big feelings, plus some recs and self promotion

June 14, 2025

hey everyone, I hope you’re maintaining in the dumpster fire. Feels like shit’s real fucked right now. I’m finding it hard to keep that thought in my head...

last night a DJ held my hand

May 23, 2025

Weird one this time, probly stupid, I dunno, sorry gang. (The Sorry Gang is the name of my crew. It’s a crew of one. Just me, wandering round the bar...

ranting about how paperwork is a labor of barbarism and whatnot

May 7, 2025

I have to get to a work thing soon but had a half thought or two that I want to plant and water, here goes. Antonio Negri somewhere says something to the...

from the cutting room - ranting about Iowa stuff

April 25, 2025

hey all,I assume none of you live in Iowa and fair enough (“can you call this living really?”) so this might not be of any interest, and again, fair enough!...

Quick note (I mean it for once) on two things I wrote

April 5, 2025

Hi everyone,I figure if you follow my little blog/newsletter thing that’s because you’re interested in or at least willing to tolerate the mention of things...

half-baked analogizing about opposition to the Iraq War and thinking about covid politics

March 21, 2025

It does what it say on the tin! I read another paper by the international law scholar and Marxist theorist Robert Knox and wanted to jot down some thoughts....

quick (?) note on the f word

March 17, 2025

Since 2016 or so I’ve repeatedly been struck by usages of the term fascism to characterize the Trump administration. This may be me equivocating or being...

And now for something completely different...

March 15, 2025

One way to describe my little blog is that it’s basically me going ‘hey taste this, it’s terrible’ and once in a while going ‘no for real this one’s...

notes toward grasping the politics of state responses to social murder

March 11, 2025

I’m in a bit of a rush so going to try to go fast here here. Two books I’m a huge fan of: Tony Smith’s Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism and Jack Copley’s...

Quick (?) note on social murder as stigma-generating

March 4, 2025

I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned this on here before or not, I have an article where I very briefly lay out my understanding of disability as social/as...

situating the actions of the ghouls in relation to the operation of the death machine

March 2, 2025

Ey up me duck, (sorry, been watching lots of dark and gritty cop shows set in the dark and gritty north of England - it’s basically the midwest with less...

Note on Raymond Williams's cultural typology, the working class and its representation

March 1, 2025

It’s my custom to begin a post with a bunch of throat clearing and jokes and stupid shit like that but this time to keep things fresh I thought I’d jump...

Can the concept of capital fit in their overalls? Practical consciousness and different kinds of liberal egalitarians

January 26, 2025

Okay well none of us expected me to be back again so soon but here I am again darkening your screen, because apparently the Mode is Open temporally too (what...