Large Ess Small Press (2025)

25/06/2025

Hey folks!

I keep saying “non-delusional hope” (even as the tumult of war propaganda screams otherwise on every channel) and I still mean it, despite the heartbreaking stupidity of our moment. Thing is, to start working on non-delusional hope together, in a broad and useful coalition across all tribal lines, we first have to learn to reject delusion. (or at least learn to want to).

Thank you as always for your keen eyeballs and the thoughtful brains behind them. Hope you dig it!
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In order to realize useful change, we’re going to need a culture in contact with reality (oh dear!)

14/06/2025

Hey folks – a much shorter piece today – and an apology. I recorded a great “Conditions Are Always Impossible” show with my dear friend Ian Calvert yesterday, but even while we were ‘taping’ news in West Asia overtook our subject. I will still post that one very soon, but for the conflagration moment of today, I wanted to get a strong clear piece on the board, just before emotional tribalism drowns out all sense and compassion, yet again.
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Denial isn’t going to cut it anymore, then again, disillusionment and enlightenment were always twins!

10/06/2025

The unbelievably reckless recent attack on Strategic forces in Russia is going to provoke a VERY severe response. This is a game of FAFO in which all of our lives are being gambled.
This piece from a year ago about the origin and nature of the war stands up well. I should add that I underplayed the influence of the world’s all time worst “Great Game” players – the UK – who have cost Ukraine more blood than anyone. Also should have mentioned Klausewitz (to explain the steady patient methodical and relentless Russian (attrition not territory) strategy, which is now bearing fruit in the form of steady advance along the entire 1200 KM long line of contact).
Can’t possibly say “enjoy” about a subject like this. But if you want the basic run-down that the news here will no longer give us (because it is, as it is in every period when the rich demand war, in full propaganda mode), I do hope you’ll read and get something from this gathering of history and sources.
For people who think I am way off-base, please at least watch the short Arestovich video, from years BEFORE the war began. It obliterates the Western propaganda so thoroughly (and from the perspective of a Zelensky confidant Ukrainian nationalist), that it is truly required viewing, for any hope of understanding this very frightening WESTERN VIOLENCE CREATED moment.

The west has long killed foreigners who couldn't fight back and damaged countries, without suffering damage. Fighting Russia won’t be like that, China even less so - but they'd rather trade than fight

06/06/2025

Hi folks, a sad one today, but also a rembrance of a long and productive artistic life.

Paul Dutton was so much about performance and direct contact with the people in the room in front of him that recordings and second-hand takes simply cannot do the power of his work justice. But I knew him from the time I was zero, and so felt perhaps there was something on a human level to say about what he found and taught so many, at no small price to himself in struggle along the way.

And yes of course, words for a word master is an extremely daunting standard. I can offer only heartfelt, knowing that alone rang true to him always, all artifice be damned!
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No One Becomes An Artist, Unless They Truly Need To

30/05/2025

Hey Folks!

I’m trying to restrain my publishing frequency to once every two weeks or so, since I’m doing subtantial subjects and under-discussed ideas (signal over noise) and also to keep it from feeling like homework you haven’t finished yet! ;o)

I know the helpful computer tells you this one will take seventeen days to read – NOT SO, I SWEAR!
Seriously, my own piece is just a sliver at the top (but a useful and well-crafted one, I trust).

Below that you get an especially rich festival of links and quotes (more than twenty pages) because the times is crazy, and corporate BigNews (propaganda) bu****it is flying in quite extraordinary density.

Broke it all up though. Chunks, no really. I mean sure, crack a beer, but you won’t need a case, eh?

We Live In A World Where Babies Go Boom – Because Long Long Ago, Boomers Went Baby

16/05/2025

Hey folks – the cynical anarchist with hopeful civics is back (how did I end up here, anyhow?)

Hope is a PLAN – not a complaint to the manager, a disdainful pose or a rude exclusion of a former friend. Starts with reality, shared. And hope is something we make together, or we don’t make it at all.

My friends, we have got to start making it. (and I mean that in every possible way!)
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Real Change is Truly Scary Stuff – Capitulationaries are Much Scarier Still

03/05/2025

Hi folks – here’s some fresh post-tribalism and cross-divide understanding, with a particular eye to more practical hope for young people (a subject which is shamefully lacking, in the west).

I know a lot of people say they root-for the underdog (certainly, many use that appeal to gather resources and skim from them, or use them as a boost to their prestige). But I’m just a lonely waif who was saved by love, and I never forget that the love is an active thing (for which, gratitude is the only right response) nor lose touch with the forlorn kid who is still there inside.

It isn’t a pose for me, or nostalgia - I’ll always be a scamp at heart, grateful to sit by any modest fire.
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The West is now deeply committed to the insane and hopeless – The East and South (that is, humane people everywhere) are sick of our festering murderous bu****it – but there is hope (with breath)

25/04/2025

Hey folks!

Here’s a fresh piece of principle over tribalism (that is, real and shared HOPE over ego (and power) serving factionalist stupidity of every shade and stripe).

We actually can do this, you know? Come out of our shells and forge a real and hopeful future.
We just have to actually, um, do it. (and also mean, rather than merely perform, it)
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We are totally convinced we have a right to cheat – and even more furious that that makes us losers

19/04/2025

Hey folks – spring air and energy is back at last (here in Ontario, anyhow) puts a 10x score multiplier on the simple pleasure of walking (which is my favourite recreation anyhow, even in a blizzard).

Here’s a new piece of way-beyond-tribalism – looking at the question of who and what is really going on, and who and what is in charge, anyhow? Not the citizens, that is clearer and clearer (and surely I’m not the only one who sees vast hope, in that common dissatisfaction, if only we can overcome our spite). TONS of links today (“est reading time” greatly exaggerated) just to catch-up for my down-time.

Cheers to all – go say hi to a flower (and a tree will say hi to you, for that demonstration of courtesy).
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Who is really on top, has never been quite so hard to figure out (nor so lied about)

12/04/2025

Hey folks!

Time for a fresh piece – some economics today (seems ‘the rage’ on an unusual number of levels) ;o)
History too, of course (you know me) and definitely some perspectives you won’t ever get from BigNews.

Believe me, the intensity of my current interest in the link between economics in history quite shocks me (economics used to seem the very definition of boring studies, and arbitrary anyhow) but for whatever reason, I’m hooked – so I did the reading, to save you the trouble of wading through the muck for gems yourself.

Thank you as always, for your keen eyes and thoughtful brains. Sincerely hope you dig it!
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A Few (perhaps even useful) Ideas, Where Many Now Prefer Endless Emoting

04/04/2025

Hey folks – still having computer problems, but my mind was bursting, so I had to break out the old back-busting back-up, to get a new piece out. Still going for more than just the topical madness – and yet also illuminating our current predicament, with what seem like highly relevant clues from the past.

All that, and just a bit of a geek-out this time, for any who are into or curious about microcomputers, but too young to personally remember their still very recent (to old-timers like me) genesis.

Thank you as always, for your thoughtful minds and your time. Sincerely hope you dig it!
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"The way that you do it" is what principle (or lack thereof) is all about!

21/03/2025

Hey folks – hope everyone is getting a kick from this spring weather (there was snow everywhere days ago – and now you can hardly remember what the stuff looks like – and all the birds are celebrating!)

I had a weird realization the other day, that seemed really helpful – everyone (factional) actually is kind of right! But not about who is causing their worst problems (Caitlin J nails that angle, yet again – we blame everyone BUT those we should blame – and that’s the way “they” like it).

The thing that makes this insight seem so fertile and timely to me, is that so many things are breaking down, many are putting their faint hopes of reconcilliation and team-building aside, as “simply unfeasible in the emergency.” But that’s wrong – now is when we need each other (that is, to overcome our egos, to find common cause against a common oppressor) most of all.

Hope is a plan. (best line I’ve written in years, I think).
Let’s start planning – together.
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Modern ideologies are designed to empower the already powerful at the expense of families communities and entire nations – understanding works the other way

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