Archive (Page 2) • Open Mode • Buttondown

Brief notes on Bristow’s American Pandemic plus my usual handwaving (social murder and memory-culture)

November 2, 2025

As an academic-leaning leftist/left-leaning academic who went to college in the late 90s and grad school in the mid 00s I had some formative experiences and...

further thoughts on recent rants

October 30, 2025

I was ranting on here the other day using Don Hamerquist’s discussion of ‘epistemological breaks’ as he uses the term (basically, people who inhabit forms of...

A letter on epistemological breaks, morality, and the current conjuncture

October 18, 2025

Dear comrades and fellow travelers, I wrote this to clarify my own thinking by the writing, and with the hope that it might spark a little conversation which...

Thoughts in response to Fairchild and Smillie

October 11, 2025

I continue to slowly make my way reading around in the history of public health (in the US mostly, at least so far), most recently Amy Fairchild’s book...

thoughts after reading Molina, Fit To Be Citizens

October 7, 2025

I just read Natalia Molina’s book Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940 (hereafter “Fit...?”) and had some thoughts I thought...

letter on deportations

September 29, 2025

hi all,I assume most of you don’t live in Iowa. (Is there life in Iowa? The world may never know.) As such you may not have heard the news about the...

Random thoughts re: sense perception, experience, Hartman's book, etc

September 25, 2025

Couple three quick thoughts, probly lowering the already low standard. Sorry/not sorry/deeply sorry as existential condition. First off, I'm interested in...

More thoughts reading Rosen

September 22, 2025

Like a recurring bad dream - you’re in a waiting room, but why? it smells of sweat and damp, you just sit and hope your number gets called, you awake angry...

public health and real subsumption?

September 20, 2025

Once again I'm typing to find the rest of a thought that I can only see the top of - typing is digging carrots out of the dirt, basically. I'm currently...

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!...