Don Curren 🇺🇦

"#Man today, wearing the mask of a giant, has become a weak, helpless being dependent on the machines he made." Last week's Microsoft outage reaffirms the relevance of #ErichFromm's 1976 critique of #technology in The Art of Being. I blogged about it here: doncurren.blogspot.com/2024/07/book-r…

Great to know a Canadian Conservative MP is acting as Trump’s communications spokesperson back in Canada. We Canadians have a few messages you could pass back to your guy, Jamil. #cdnpoli

@BevansAdvocate … find a much more receptive environment on BlueSky.

@BevansAdvocate These lists of yours are excellent. A comment, not on content but on strategy: consider moving to BlueSky, or at least replicating your lists there. Intelligent, interesting voices like yours will be increasingly drowned out by nonsensical & mendacious content on X, but will …

10 Great Books on Economics as a Discipline 1) Economics Rules - @rodrikdani A robust defence of economic modelling, as well as its flaws. Would recommend to anyone unsure why economists are so obsessed with 'models', and why they matter for policy formation.

@Helenreflects Best of luck!!

If you can’t tell me what the personal and social consequences of a technology are going to be, don’t expect me to welcome it.

@Helenreflects Also, for Canadian content, there’s at least 15 seasons of the Murdoch Mysteries, set in early 1900s Toronto. They can be quite dark and vary in quality, but also quite clever, with strong central characters, and some nice period atmosphere that sometimes veers into steampunk

@Helenreflects I read your post and think I might have misconstrued your request. If it is TV series you’re looking for, Sister Boniface is along the lines of Father Brown, cozy English village setting, etc, and it’s certainly not noir. If anything, it veers too much on the bright side …

Union station #onstorm #toronto

I can’t believe that the @GOP thinks so low of its constituents that they will so PROUDLY put forth a candidate for President of the United States who is a convicted felon awaiting sentencing and who is also charged with more than 50 other felony counts and can’t even get his wife to stand with him at one of the biggest deals in Politics the #RNCConvention . Let alone who had a failed re-election campaign and failed presidency with 2 impeachments , millions dead from a virus and a tanked economy plus more like porn star affairs the list is endless . My my how the mighty have fallen. We are truly in Twilight Zone territory . Down is up and Wrong is Right .

Octavia Butler’s 1993 dystopian novel “Parable of the Sower” begins in July of 2024. Climate change is turning the globe into a hellscape with droughts, fires and calamitous weather events. Racial and class inequities have soared, women’s rights are under threat, and white nationalism and radical fundamentalism are taking hold. In the book’s sequel “Parable of the Talents” (published in 1998), a presidential candidate named Jarret, who wants to purge the country of those who don’t share his brand of militant Christianity, issues this call: “Help us to make America great again.” His opponent, Smith, is right when he calls him out as “a demagogue, a rabble-rouser, and a hypocrite.” But Smith is “such a tired, gray shadow of a man,” that Jarret is “able to scare, divide, and bully people” into electing him and quickly sets about implementing his fascist agenda.

@richarddorset I don’t think I’ve read that one, but my memory in these matters can also be somewhat unreliable. Thanks for out-pointing.

@dbcurren This was good too, I seem to remember.

#ErichFromm wrote a concise and insightful book in the 1970s called The Art of Being that offers a critique of #consumerism and #technology which is even more relevant now than when it was written. I've done a piece on it for my Curren(t) Thinking #blog: doncurren.blogspot.com/2024/07/book-r…

Three books that could be quite useful for the UK's new Labour government.

Blasting this absolute masterpiece on the 84th anniversary of Arthur Blythe’s day of birth.

Please refer to Moriyama Teshima Architects' official update regarding the @OntScienceCtr. #ontariosciencecentre

The book 'Doughnut Economics' opens with the story of Yuan Yang who, as a young economics student back in 2008, was challenging the outdated theory she was being taught. Last night she was elected as the first-ever MP for Earley & Woodley. Huge congratulations @YuanfenYang !

Many #Canadians are watching events in the #US with alarm. We are far from immune to the risks to #liberaldemocracy evident in #America and elsewhere. Read my piece on the "real danger" that we follow the US down the #rightwing rabbit hole. doncurren.blogspot.com/2024/07/canada… #Canada