New on Skirmishes: I write about Bring Them Down, Zone, and Chopin. Read now please! Read now thanks!! open.substack.com/pub/skirmish...

...playing video games and masturbating?

They gentrified the desert of the real :/

[post on Bluesky] You're a piece of shit.
[post on Substack] Just read Max Weber's 'The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism', which made me think about how you're a piece of shit.

I wrote about Ailbhe Ní Bhriain's exhibition in the Hugh Lane, Susan Sontag, photography, accumulation, and hauntology. Jacques Derrida is mentioned, for which I can only apologise.
open.substack.com/pub/skirmish...

Freud is great. He'll extend a metaphor over 2 pages then go "That was a shit metaphor, but makes you think how difficult this is to explain."

I appreciate that the Internet Archive captures the best bits of library study, namely finding people's notes and marginalia. Someone here's scribbled a chapter summary onto the title page of Civilization and its Discontents.

Tag yourself, I'm 'more guilt'

New on Skirmishes: I wrote about some culture I've been enjoying in July 2025 open.substack.com/pub/skirmish...

I've been running for the past couple of months quite seriously and it feels great. I get to be in nature, I feel my body doing things I didn't think were possible, and I get to have a little chocolate milkshake after for being good.

Decided to post a bit just to feel something (my guts being ripped out by birds)

New on Skirmishes: On a poem from the late Louise Glück.

The bit in The Great Gatsby where Daisy's like "You have such beautiful shirts!" but it's a wardrobe full of hockey jerseys.

Once on a TV broadcast of a rugby game, once in the background of the news at a student protest.

Finally, spaghetti for guys.

Here's the thing: [unintelligible]

Just realised Cornel West is in Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions. Any other philosophers/public intellectuals have starring role in non-doc films?

The latest Skirmishes: thoughts on the interior in the paintings of Vrel and Vermeer.