no writing update - kitchen sink drama, sorry

January 14, 2024

Hello there good people, and the rest of you as well, I hope you’re all warm and well. Here in Des Moines we’re in an intense cold snap and snow fall. It’s...

writing update (no kitchen sink drama, sorry)

January 12, 2024

Hello again friends, comrades, and enemies, I hope you’re all weathering the world alright, not too hellworn. I’m alright. Honestly I’m very good personally...

thinking out loud about Simon Clarke and public health

December 27, 2023

Happy holidays all. I bet it'll be next year before we communicate again. I hope to remember to make a stupid 'wow a whole year ago' joke and more...

my talk from the capitalist state book event

December 17, 2023

Thank you to everyone who came to the book event today for the capitalist state book I have a chapter in. I thought all the presentations were great and the...

Bigger aspirations than system-compatible politics?

December 15, 2023

I assume everybody reading this thing already reads Abby Cartus’s newsletter. She’s got a great new post now about social murder and Søren Mau's book Mute...

one whole book

December 10, 2023

I hate to brag but I just finished a novel. Reading one I mean. That's right, one whole book. [Smirks, dusts hands] I read it sort of like chainsmoking in...

And so passed the time given to you (come here me speak!)

December 8, 2023

Hola, amigos, I know it's been a minute since I rapped at ya but I've been busy staring in horror, deleting work emails, and trying to remember how it felt...

Our deaths don't alarm them / rationality in bad contexts

November 30, 2023

Tonight I saw someone who works on climate policy say something like the following: ‘you’re painting a dire picture of where the environment is at and that’s...

Too big to fail, comrades but not peers, etc etc

November 23, 2023

I had a thought or three while washing dishes that I wanted to write down - or really, I glanced down at the dirt and caught a glimpse of what might be the...

Help, I watched some movies and felt some feelings!

November 18, 2023

Our dishwasher was always a bit shit and it’s been busted for ages. A combination of laziness, cheapness, and not wanting to fuck with having a new one...

RSV immunity debt's fake and misfortunes hunt in packs

November 18, 2023

A friend sent me this paper arguing that covid contributed to the big rise in RSV cases and hospitalizations last year (covid infections suppress the immune...

partial knowledges and the limited perception of social murder

November 16, 2023

Hi all, I hope you’re holding up alright. This newsletter/blog/thing’s been dormant lately. My energy’s been dissipated by work (I’m teaching three new...

favor request from people with library access

October 31, 2023

hi all, I hope you're keeping on keeping on despite [waves arms wildly] everything. I'm busy and tired from teaching and staring in horror and whatnot so...

"Industrial Medicine and the Work of Normalizing Violence"

October 21, 2023

Hey everybody. I hope you're all hanging in there. I had the thought tonight that this might interest some of you so I figure I'll pass it along in case so,...

Kettell and Kerr continued

October 17, 2023

I put up some notes on an article by Kettell and Kerr last time (https://buttondown.email/nateholdren/archive/depoliticization/). Here are the rest of my...

depoliticization

October 15, 2023

I’ve slowed down on my little blog because my semester’s gotten in full swing so I’ve less time and attention and am also just more tired, and nightmarish...

Brecht and some scraps

October 13, 2023

Hey everybody, I tried to write tonight and it felt more like an object lesson in inadequacy the more I typed so I decided abandon it and just send a link to...

a note on determinism and conflict

October 11, 2023

To a significant degree I think it was a foregone conclusion that covid and the social and political management of the pandemic was going to bring about lots...

something liberal egalitarians something something moral economies

October 5, 2023

By the way, I noticed the formatting was all fucked up in this post - https://buttondown.email/nateholdren/archive/facilitative-bloodlessnesslaundering-...

open marxism excerpts link

October 2, 2023

I’ve mentioned on here that I think the Open Marxism tradition has important insights on how to think about capitalist society, the capitalist state, and how...

thinking out loud at tedious length (naturally) about capitalism and crisis (again, still)

October 1, 2023

The pandemic isn't just a biological event, it's a political event, the social mediates the biological, as Abby put it someplace, it's a set of social...

'vulnerability is disqualifying'

September 30, 2023

For a while now I've been saying something like 'vulnerability is disqualifying' and while I still think it's a good shorthand, I wanted to think this...

Pyramids, dynamism, surplus population

September 28, 2023

The Industrial Workers of the World famously depicted capitalism as a pyramid (google “pyramid of capitalist society”) with the working class at the bottom....

Experts in the common good

September 27, 2023

Capitalism generates catastrophes and conflicts, and often those work to sustain rather than undermine the system. (Theodor Adorno says somewhere that...

Capitalism and Catastrophe/Emergency/Crisis

September 25, 2023

Covid’s a catastrophe and the policy response is a clusterfuck, one that serves as feedback loop through which catastrophe intensifies itself. Catastrophe...

two quick thoughts

September 23, 2023

Two quick (gotta stop saying that!) thoughts I wanted to capture on this fine fall-feeling saturday afternoon. One, Max Harris sent me a note (hi Max! and...

Facilitative bloodlessness/laundering violence

September 22, 2023

Some more covid zero zealot marxist (CZ2M) thoughts real quick (eh, I mean, I hope, I’m tryna get in a run by the river today, plus I got more email to...

Unpicking a mistake about social and moral imagination; notes toward a theory of covid minimizers as appallingly ordinary

September 22, 2023

Getting started on my covid zero zealot marxist agenda (CZ2M)... Throat cleared I hereby undertake a third beginning for this blog, this one intended as more...

The answer to the question no one has been asking - why "open mode"?

September 22, 2023

I thought I’d jot down some thoughts on why this thing’s called ‘open mode,’ if nothing else as a throat clearing exercise. First off, I miss blogging. I did...

why I set this up

September 14, 2023

I set this up because I want to think more in a general style of thinking that’s allowed to be open-ended and which is serious in the sense of highly...