Matt Colquhoun's Blog, page 71
July 24, 2020
The Philosophy and Politics of Accelerationism — Course Out Now!
Following our one-hour promo chat from the other day, I’m very excited to announce that The Philosophy and Politics of Accelerationism, a collaborative course written by James ‘@meta_nomad‘ Ellis and myself is now live at teachable.com.
The course is a two-parter, with James covering the philosophy of accelerationism and me on politics. (I’ll put the full course outline after the jump…)
We’re both very excited to be coming together on this. The course comes in three tiers. Tier 1 (£1...
July 21, 2020
The Philosophy and Politics of Accelerationism — Course Promo
Meta-Nomad very generously asked me to collaborate with him on a course about accelerationism six weeks ago. He suggested that he’d cover the philosophy of accelerationism and I could cover the politics of accelerationism. I thought this was a really interesting idea. The result is a load of content that we’re going to be releasing this Friday (24th July 2020) via his Teachable page.
I don’t want to give away too much — we’ll be sharing more info later in the week, including course outl...
Simulations Like Us @ Turn Us Alias
This Saturday I’ll be taking part in “Simulations Like Us”, something of a conversation between myself, Reza Negarestani and Enrico Monacelli, which is running as part of Turn Us Alias, an online event organised by Saturnalia.
00:00 25/07/20
https://discord.gg/m2KwfZG
voice channels — caffè letterarioFrom the 90s onwards, the idea of a simulated environment has become a pervasive, intrusive thought. From the hype surrounding the Matrix trilogy to contemporary neuroscience, which has transf...
July 17, 2020
Prime Astrology
The current tension between astronomers and astrologers over Ophiuchus sums up 2020 pretty hard. Something this mundane will be the final death of us, I’m sure.
July 16, 2020
Welly and the Polar Bear, Hull (RIP)
With the closure of Welly Club and Polar Bear we're losing 2 pillars of Hull's live music scene – literally generations of Hull gig-goers have seen their 1st gigs at these historic venues. Enjoyed so many nights at both incl. with @steve_lamacq at The Sesh in 2016 pic.twitter.com/W1nZl3FvE6
— BBC Music Introducing Humberside (@BBCIntroHumber) July 16, 2020
The announced closure of Hull venues The Polar Bear and Welly, presumably due to loss of revenue during the Covid-19 pandemic, is truly h...
July 13, 2020
Freed From Desire
I had such a lovely evening yesterday. The wonderful Natasha Eves has moved just down the road from me and, after a few months of strange isolation in the big city, surrounded by people but talking to no one, a developing weekly habit of going round for dinner and drinks has been much welcomed.
Last night we ate enchiladas and talked about music for hours and hours. I was reminded of a brief obsession everyone had in 2017 with GALA’s “Free From Desire” — an anthem for Acid Communism if ev...
July 12, 2020
Beachy Head
We drove out to the south coast to eat ice cream and read on the beach. It was busy and we were still not used to crowds.
Arriving at Birling Gap and Beachy Head felt like ticking off another spot on my Throbbing Gristle map of Great Britain. Poorly recreating an album cover made me very aware of coastal erosion. The beautiful scenery nevertheless felt wholly detached from this spot’s notoriety as a suicide hot spot, just as it does on the cover of...
A Note on the Abuse of Esotericism
I’m still receiving messages about the drama surrounding two of my recent posts (here and here). A few DMs just didn’t get what all the fuss was about. One email said it was all wishy-washy vagueness without any real point or critique made and therefore it was bad philosophy.
It is clear that, as much as the original argument is over, plenty of people are still pushing for further clarification. I’ll simply say this:
If those blogposts were confusing to you, I don’t know what more I can s...
July 10, 2020
A Realism that is Still Speculative: A Comment from Terence Blake
Following my recent post on the waning of the speculative realist blogosphere, Terence Blake has posted a thread on Twitter in response which I think adds some necessary further context, laying fault not at the feet of the bloggers themselves (or their audience) but, perhaps, with the market. Terence writes:
A very interesting thought-and-mood piece by @xenogothic about a feeling of stagnation and disappointment in contemporary philosophy and its online passion-bearers. [1]
I share @xenogothi...
On Grammar
I’ve recently started an online English language course so that I can become a certified proofreader, in the hope that I can stabilise my current freelance existence, escaping this awful city and living a writer’s life cheaply. (Please help me, I keep writing thousands of words on a blog for free but struggle to pay my rent. Please someone tell me what am I doing wrong?) It turns out that the course is a lot more intense than I anticipated.
I imagined my main struggle would be learning all t...
