fortress of solitude

The UK has just minted a new cabinet position for the May government to redress “the sad reality of modern life”: loneliness.
There’s some rather alarming and sobering statistics behind this move which seems an efficient way of countering a whole host of potential (I add this for the misanthropes out there who would need to be persuaded that the cure is worse than the ailment with some random do-gooder popping round to keep you company) mental and physical ills and the office would be comprehensive and multidisciplinary, working across different public spheres to ensure mobility and genuine contact, perhaps even starting early on and pre-empting the pressure to self-segregate in schools not by kind or class but rather by a single-sighted push for competitiveness and modelling resolute and determined quitters—forever seeking out the next big thing. While I agree that it is a mark of maturity to recognise that we’ve moulded our society in such ways as to minimise casual human interaction—even investing more time and money into gadgets, occupations and industries that make actually talking to one another infinitely avoidable and superfluous, with the same party advocating austerity measures that undermined the commons and other civic institutions, I wonder how the work of the ministry will manifest itself. What do you think? I think trying to legislate togetherness and involvement over vanity projects is admirable but I hope the outreach is not through gimmickry—awareness pamphlets and a calendar’s worth of neighbourhood fetes that have just become venues for fly-by-night profiteers—and perhaps rather a bit of the isolating hair-of-the-dog that turns one’s network into a true social safety net.

who are the people in your neighbourhood?

We enjoyed indulging a bit in Quartz’ latest obsession—nostalgia for the early internet before the rise of social media as distilled through GeoCities (previously)—later to be acquired by Yahoo!—as the dominate platform for user-generated content and interaction. We, like the article, had fun speculating on the dilettante nature of the early internet as a cul-de-sac for the weird and lament that loss—as for niche eBay—and wonder how it might have been without unnamed monoliths with too many adherents. How would our on-line landscape look today had secondary web generations never had arisen? Admittedly the decentralised web looks pretty raw and idiosyncratic and perhaps isolated but I still feel those labours of love are preferable to the atrocious and unreadable magazine that you and everyone you know rushes to print everyday.

manifesto

Our antiquarian JF Ptak directs our attention to a 1923 pamphlet from one Mister William Dee of Willimantic, Connecticut that outlines fifty-seven theses on “Things that Weaken the American”—offered mostly without explanation or elaboration.
I am not sure if I could be called a reliable narrator exactly given the adumbration of present rhetoricians but a lot of these snap judgments (and we’re not sure why Mister Dee stopped at fifty-seven—but perhaps there was to be a follow-on volume—or why indeed that none of these enumerated woes actually were threats to America or in fact any nation) had a strangely familiar off-the-cuff ring to them and a few pearls of wisdom bear repeating.

• Love Letter Writing: “Very bad. Marry the girl.” 
• Home Talent Shows: “Utterly ruinous to those who work for a living.” 
• Hard Study: “Avoid as much as possible.” 
• Houses: “They should be small and easy to burn in case they become infected by germs.” 
• Public Opinion: “Bad if against you.” 
• Exercise: “Hurtful to those who are already over-exercised, by a hundred times, from modern efficiency.”

lapse in appropriations

Having been designated as emergency-essential employees, Robert Mueller and the staff of the Special Counsel’s Office are excepted from the furlough (previously) and will be allowed to continue their investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 US presidential campaign. The timing of this failure to reach a fiduciary compromise is rather impeccable, falling on the one year anniversary since Trump delivered his inaugural address and took high office.

franking privilege

A leading pro-BREXIT campaigner chided Royal Mail for issuing a set of commemorative stamps celebrating the career of Pink Floyd, as Kottke informs, whilst refusing to do the same to mark the occasion of the UK’s departure from the European Union. The internet quickly obliged to fulfil that glaring philatelic niche.

℞

Fed up with exponentially increasing prices for staple medication due to the popularity of the rentier business model and supply-chain disruptions that lead to shortages—exacerbating the pricing regime even more—a group of US hospitals and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs have banded together to fight Big Pharma by having their own dispensaries and making their own generic drugs. We applaud them for standing up to heartless greed and doing something to redress the broken healthcare system besides just offering more concessions to drug companies and make the bill the scariest part of any medical diagnosis, but we fully too expect them to be in for a truly heroic battle since they won’t relinquish their monopoly eagerly.