Archive (Page 3) • Open Mode • Buttondown

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...

shameless self-promotion: Lochner edition

January 25, 2025

hi all,I hope you’re all doing as well as can be - getting some amount of enrichment activities, glimpsing just enough of the world outside the enclosure to...

It's the stupidity, stupid! (The economy does in fact suck.)

January 3, 2025

Hello friends,I feel like we haven’t corresponded since last y- [my children rush into the room, wrestle the keyboard from me, pin me to the floor and make...

Structural stupidity

December 15, 2024

Hey there Open Moders, (Open Moders is the nickname I have for you, my many fans, like how Mickey Mouse’s fans are call Mouseketeers, and Elon Musk’s fans...

A mosaic of sorts - liberal egalitarianism, politics of association, etc

December 1, 2024

As ever I know I’ve said some of this before, ah well. (And you know it too, since obviously real readers of Open Mode make sure to read every word in every...

Not Economically Viable

November 19, 2024

hey friends,Sorry for the relative radio silence. I’ve got several posts started for this lil blog o’mine but I’m lazy, busy, and tapped out so I don’t...

"Come up screaming...!" (one to fast forward thru tbth)

October 20, 2024

I got most of the way through writing this and almost deleted it - what's the point really, eh? And what am I even doing here? You're guess is as good as...

The state sides with the virus

October 16, 2024

Social murder and the state on my mind again today. I was in a conversation with some coworkers and stuff related to this came up and I had a thought that I...

Ferment & Rot

October 6, 2024

Hey everyone, I hope you're all keeping well. I'm back to teaching so I've not had much time to think or write (I remembered the other day that I used to...

educating desires/constructing majorities

September 20, 2024

Two phrases echoing in my head lately (my head is a largely empty cave in which the distress and exhaustion feedback, punctuated by these occasional echoes):...

'your sickness is insubordination, pleb!'

August 27, 2024

I wrote this the other day on the alphasmart then lost the cable to get the words off the alpha. Harrumph. I've now ordered like 4 of those cables in hopes...

pointless yet circuitous

August 23, 2024

Hey gang, Not a lot of point here (in general, existentially, it feels like some days, god damn, but I mean this post in particular - even more so than...

What is public health, and to whom?

August 9, 2024

I mentioned the other day that I’ve started Christopher Hamlin’s history of public health in the mid-19th century UK. As I said there, Hamlin argues that in...

Notes on Hamlin's history of public health

August 5, 2024

I started reading a book on the history of public health - Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick, 1800-1854, by Christopher Hamlin - on...

A four cornered impasse? (Politics of 4 kinds; efficacy conditions; etc)

August 2, 2024

As usual at the edge of my peripheral vision I can see a silhouette of what might be an idea and I want to try to get a good look at it here but first I need...

correction! I goofed: 4 things! not 3!

August 1, 2024

Hey gang, I screwed up. In my last post I dropped in 3 things I wrote, efficiently labeled Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3. As it turns out, however, there...

The hits don't start v4: Scraps from the cutting room!

July 31, 2024

Greetings friends, enemies, and acquaintances wavering between amity and enmity, I hope you’re all treading water. Sometimes one keeps doing a thing despite...

unpacking social/labor power reproduction

July 29, 2024

I wrote nearly all of my last post, on Rafael Khachaturian's chapter in the capitalist state book, yesterday. I finished earlier today and sent it out. This...

notes on Rafael Khachaturian's account of the pandemic impasse

July 28, 2024

hey all, I hope you’re maintaining. I’m a little worse for the wear lately (and 1400 bucks poorer between the mechanic and the veterinarian, deep sigh) but...

mediation, fetishism, and social murder (more Marxish nerdery)

July 26, 2024

Lately I get backaches if I don’t walk enough. (I say ‘lately’ in the hope it’s a temporary phase I’m passing through and not a permanent phase I’m aging...