Politics

Vale Pete Seeger 1919-2014

Some of the first songs I learnt to sing beyond nursery songs & school singalongs were Pete Seeger songs. I have no doubt that my politics today have largely grown from learning and loving these protest songs from an early age.

Bora disappoints (again)

Unfollowing Bora by Dana Hunter at Freethought Blogs summarises all that’s wrong about Bora Zivkovic’s blithe attempt to just come back to science blogging as if nothing ever happened.

There can be no healing at Nottoway Plantation

In yet another example of white feminist cluelessness, Singer Ani DiFranco will hold her annual songwriting retreat this year on Nottoway Plantation in Louisiana. Righteous Retreat Song Camp is billed as a feminist songwriting retreat, and DiFranco’s choice to hold the event at this locale has drawn ire from Black women who note the offensiveness of the location.

Time to End the Valorisation of Ignorance

The federal government is quite open about its plans to interfere with the independence of academic research, and to shut down according to its whim any research they fancy that falls outside a narrow selection of medicine and technology projects. I hope the only reason that this hasn’t been howled down instantly is that we haven’t yet processed what this really means.