“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Macbeth

 From The New Yorker

This past weekend, a front-page story in the Times discussed which of Shakespeare’s doomed rulers Trump most resembled: Julius Caesar, Richard III, or King Lear..

Wrong. The correct answer is Macbeth: 

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Sunday, December 6, 2020

The Podcast Raised Its First $300

 ...and it's all going to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which if you don't know about, you should look up. It's such an important cause. Join us and tell a friend! There's over 100 of us now! 

Monday, November 23, 2020

Podcast for BLM #MeToo and everything!

 Please do check out my new Patreon page. I've made five podcast episodes since the US election--which is of course still terrifyingly in process. I just can't hold back anymore. 

There's a piece about me for the New Yorker that hasn't come out. There's plans for another series of my BBC show, which will require so much effort to get approved again. There's a Newsnight interview with me that will never see the light of day. And I'm getting desperate to share my ideas without having to wait. There's no time. 

And since the BBC just will not see what they're doing, in their new lite magazine format, putting fascists and fascist notions on air all the time, in a both-sides format that allows its consumers to contemplate fascism front and center...

Since they've been doing that since Trump was elected, actually since Brexit, which is the same thing...I've decided to boycott them. I'm done. 

Patreon requires a subscription. It's a sliding scale so you can pay as little as $1 a month. I'm donating all the proceeds to the NAACP legal defense fund. 

Look it up if you don't know what that is. After George Floyd was murdered, Trevor Noah, who comes from Soweto and is awesome (look him up too if you don't know, The Daily Show) suggested that we donate to it. 

Black Lives Matter and #MeToo are planet scale collective action to create a future that will also be able to accommodate nonhuman beings in a nonviolent; way. I mean it. America exports a lot of shit, but we also export this. 

Monday, May 4, 2020

Take My Summer Class!

You can find out more about it here. We can Zoom together for a too-short month this summer, and I'll teach you for two hours a day, three days a week. Classes are at 8:15am Houston time, which is early afternoon in Europe and a not-impossible 9:15pm in Japan.

You can sign up to audit too.

Tim Morton being weird, three days a week, two hours a day, in your bluetooth speakers or whatever?

I'm not doing any lectures, so this is your chance to see where my mind is at. In addition to talking about ecology I am very highly trained at how to read things, because of my background in literary criticism and theory. Here's why this is important:

“Global warming” versus “climate change.” “Welfare” versus “social security” (which is what they used to call the exact same thing in the UK). Fake news. Tweets. What “they” think. Propaganda. “Science.” “Art.” These are just individual words and phrases and they have so much power. Power over us. This class is designed to help you extricate yourself from the gravitational fields of these words and concepts. By training you from the ground up in how to read any text at all, and how to write (not fancy stuff, but how to understand what you’re learning by doing it yourself), you will gain some immunity from propaganda and fake news and be able to help build a world based on decent sound facts.

A fact is an interpretation of data. The humanities is pre-science, like pre-med is what you take before medical school. In the middle ages, before you got to make scientific facts, you learned how to have facts at all. You learned the basic operating system of meaning (grammar), how to have meaning that was coherent (logic), and how to convey that to others (rhetoric).

Global warming data is way, way scarier than existing scientific facts. That’s because for years scientists were trying to make facts that would appeal to global warming deniers. This was a losing game. They already lost just by trying to play it. They should’ve taken this class.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Here's This Thing I Wrote Six Years Ago with Björk

"I really like your song ‘Virus’. Being alive means being susceptible to viruses and so on. And far more generally, viruses, patterns, appearance, flowers, art--these are all far from useless, they are intrinsic parts of being a thing at all." From This Huge Sunlit Abyss from the Future Right There Next to You

I'll Be Teaching at Sci-Arc in the Fall

Sci-Arc in LA is starting a new "landscape architecture" masters program only it's not called that. It's called Synthetic Landscape, which is a very interesting and I think progressive name. And I've been drafted to help out a little. So...not sure exactly what form the classes will take, what with CoVID-19 and all. But please take a look if you're interested. It will be an honor to work alongside Graham and the rest of the crew!

Here's the page for that.

Friday, March 13, 2020

Architecture Review at Pratt

It was so so good to do this. The Dean established the most amazing form, you'll see.


Friday, January 31, 2020

If You Haven't Seen The Video of The Song Yet

...you are an idiot, or a coward. Or a snob. Or all three. This is a geotrauma love song and I don't care what you think of who made it. This is singing to the whole biosphere and to the one and only beloved being. This is all humans and one human.

If all that I'm on earth
To do
Is solo
Then what a lone, poor shoe
I wanna walk in a two.





Fish fell out of water
Bird stuck on the ground.

My favorite children's book was Fly Away Peter. It was about a giraffe with a long neck and a bird who couldn't fly. And they made friends and helped each other. And it's in Humankind, the final chapter.

Friday, January 24, 2020

I Wrote This Poem

The Customer Is Always Right

So American, how
You tore me open and tossed
Me, a broken toy.