A new study of the city’s program that sent cash to struggling individuals finds dramatic changes.
— Read on www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/stocktons-basic-income-experiment-pays-off/618174/
Some interventions in complex systems are actually PWH SIMPLE.
(post Wendell Holmes)
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/04/republicans-democrats-politics-homeless
trader culture in politics. Jane Jacobs
Adjacent possibles, brittleness fitness landscape. Stuart Kauffman
Life cycles
Evolution only goes forward, like politicians
All things pass gas (apologies to George Harrison)
#deadoceans
Best how-to I have read in ages.
A very important article.
TLDR: the 5 Ws
“Deepfakes are videos that glue one person’s face onto another’s body, making the former look like they’re saying or doing something that they never actually did—even if it’s something as harmless as Tom Cruise talking to the camera and hitting a golf ball. They’re hard to spot just from watching the video, but here’s the good news: you don’t actually have to watch the video to know you’ve encountered a deepfake.”
— Read on lifehacker.com/how-to-spot-a-deepfake-without-even-watching-the-video-1846397857
Poor minds talk about people,
average minds talk about events,
great minds talk about ideas
-Eleanor Roosevelt
…Systemic minds talk about complexity
-me, just now.
Simplex
Complex
Multiplex
-Samuel R. Delany, The Ballad of Beta-2
TL:DR –black children enslaved by drug dealers because they are outside all the bourgeois systems of survival.
Yeah, the thing you should take from this is ‘complexity’. Not, ooh it’s ‘complicated’, rather, this is ‘complex’— interconnected emergent, evolving… VUCA PICA whatever-acronymity. Yada.
Here’s how to do it…
1. Allow a trader culture to infest the guardian culture of school provision (Jane Jacobs – Systems of Survival)
2. Obsess on exam results (Long-term aim – gaming educational futures at Lloyds – I kid you not, google ‘charter schools and Wall St, the real story’ or whatever, dig deep)
3. allow schools to inappropriately and fraudently deploy commercial confidentiality
4. Allow schools to exclude pupils to improve results.
5. by redefining ‘our pupils’ and focussing only on your ‘bounded container’ (Wassex County Council is a container as is Sizewelldown Unitary, as is Vastco Academy MAAT) the problem goes away.
Now read this and come back…
All the answers to this problem are staring government, councils, agencies, whoever in the face (read my book ‘Navigating Complexity: the essential guide to complexity theory in business and management’, LOL)
But instead, funders want to approve your diversity targets and your theory of change WITHIN YOUR CONTAINER.
“There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
Is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”
Excluded containers.
Do you know what this is, children?
Yes sir, we do, so please stop annihilating our playframe with your bolx teachable moment!
Read this excellent piece by Richard Williams…
“Nevertheless he was responsible for implanting in the mind of this listener the useful idea that the music came from West Africa via slave ships, cotton fields and chain gangs, and that there was a direct line from gospel singing and field hollers to whatever was on the cover of the latest issue of Down Beat. “
BY HAIM BRESHEETH Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
HAIM BRESHEETH
Jennie Formby
The Labour Party
Southside
105 Victoria Street
London SW1E 6QT
11/2/2020
Dear Jennie Formby,
I am writing you in the wake of recent events – the expulsion of Jo Bird and the excellent letter by Natalie Strecker, as I would like to ask you to kindly refer me to the Compliance Unit, for ‘antisemitism’ – for the reasons I detail below.
I would like to tell you about my background, in order to support my request. I am an academic, author and filmmaker, an ex-Israeli Jew who has been active for over five decades as a socialist, anti-Zionist and anti-racist activist. My parents were Polish Jews, survivors of Auschwitz and other camps. They ended forced onto death marches to the Third Reich after the Auschwitz camp was vacated by the SS in Mid-January 1945. My mother was freed by the British forces in Bergen-Belsen, and my father was freed by the US forces in Mauthausen. I was born in a Displaced Persons Camp in Italy, and arrived in Israel as a baby, during June 1948, as no European country would then accept Holocaust survivors.
I served in the Israeli Army (IDF) as a junior infantry officer, and took part in two wars, in 1967 and 1973, after which I turned into a committed pacifist. I came to study in Britain in 1972, and a short while afterwards I have learnt much about Zionism which I did not while in Israel, thus becoming an ardent supporter of Palestinian rights, and an anti-Zionist activist. I was an active supporter of the Anti-Apartheid Movement as a Labour member in the 1970s and acted against racist organisations throughout my life. My films, books and articles reflect the same political views outlined here; these include a popular book on the Holocaust (Introduction to the Holocaust, with Stuart Hood, 1994, 2001 2014), among others, a BBC documentary film (State of Danger, with Jenny Morgan, BBC2, March 1988) about the first Intifada, and a forthcoming volume on the Israeli Army (An Army Like No Other, May 2020) . I have re-joined the Labour Party after decades, when Jeremy Corbyn was elected to the leadership, as I regained hope in promoting a progressive agenda for the party, after years of Blairism.
It is evident that my background qualifies me as an antisemite according to the Labour coda based on the flawed IHRA ‘definition’ of antisemitism, or rather, the weaponised version of Zionist propaganda aimed against supporters of the human and political rights of Palestinians. But I would like to add some more damning evidence, so as to make the case watertight, if I may.
Over the decades, I took part in hundreds of demonstrations against Israeli brutalities and acted against the atrocities committed by of the military occupation, in various countries – Israel, in Europe and the US. I have published articles, made films and contributed to many books and have spoken widely in a number of countries against the Israeli militarised colonisation of Palestine, the denial of any rights to most Palestinians, the severe violations of human and political rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the brutalizing impact of the IDF on Jewish Israeli society. I have also analysed the false nature of the IHRA campaign in a recent article, written from an anti-Zionist, human rights perspective. I am active in a number of political groups affiliated or close to the Labour Party, who support Palestinian rights – Jewish Voice for Labour, and Jewish Network for Palestine, of which I am a founder member.
I am aware that according to the Labour Party rules, all the above constitute what you define as antisemitism.
Personally, it is clear to me that such accusations are false and sickening, but no one asked the members on the adoption of the IHRA definition and its examples. The adopted definition makes Israel the only state in the world which one may not criticise, unless they wish to court accusations of antisemitism. To criticise the British Empire, for example, is not anti-British, and, as we speak, still allowed by Labour Party rules. To criticise the US government for its attacks on Iraq in 1991 and 2003 is not anti-American, and still allowed by US regulations. To criticise Israeli apartheid colonialism is not anti-Israeli, neither is it antisemitic, of course. What is antisemitic and racist are the current regulations of the party, and until they are changed, Jews and others who support Palestine have no reason to support a party which treats them in this way.
The Labour Party regulations are what they are; However, I have no intention of stopping my activities, toning them down, or abandoning my principles in order to satisfy the twisted logic of the Labour Party. I insist on my right, indeed, on my duty as an ex-Israeli, as a Jew, as a citizen, as a socialist and last but not least, as a human being, to openly act against and criticise Israeli Apartheid and injustices, for as long as I am able to. I also believe that as a party member of what I believed to have turned into a progressive political organisation, this should be my right and duty; but I realise that my activities are against Labour Party dogma, regulation and current interests, so am accusing myself openly through this letter, and asking you to refer me to the Compliance Unit, so that justice may be done, and that I would be treated equally to my many friends who found themselves in the same predicament – Prof. Moshe Machover, Jackie Walker, Elleanne Green, Tony Greenstein, Glyn Secker, and many others faced with the Stalinist inquisitorial system developed by the Labour Party. If you are to separate the ‘good Jews’ from the ‘bad ‘ones, please include me in the latter group, as nothing in my academic output, teaching history, publication record, or political activity can support the claim that I am not an antisemite according to your rules. I demand that justice be done.
I trust that my request will be taken seriously and acted upon, with the same combination of dispatch, bigotry and prejudice showed towards other members already accused of this offence. Failure to do so will be tantamount to evidence that the criteria for judging the existence of antisemitism are not uniformly applied.
I am ready to provide all evidence which may be required by the investigators of the Compliance Unit, to prove my guilt. Please do not hesitate to ask for assistance on points which remain unclear.
Regards,
Prof. Haim Bresheeth
https://newrepublic.com/article/160701/operation-santa-christmas-horror-story-american-poverty
Dear Santa, I want one thing. (sic) I been a good girl and I want to ask you if you please get me a power wheelchair. My wheelchair is very old and it does not want to work. I am very sad. Please Santa, bring me a power wheelchair. I don’t want nothing else.
“Dear Santa … My wish is money for my (sic) perents. $100 dollars would help us a lot. They are having a rough time with the bills.”
“Dear Santa, how are you and your reindeer? It must be cool riding a sled in the sky…. this year for Christmas I would really like a couch that is also a bed. The reason I would like a couch with a bed is because I have a[n] apartment that only has one room. My parents sleep in the living room on the couch and they always wake up with back pain. My dad works a lot, so his back pain stresses him out.”
Even prior to the pandemic, the United States lagged other developed nations in child poverty levels. More than one out of every five American children lives in poverty, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data. As the pandemic continues to exacerbate the underlying crisis of American poverty, 45 percent of all children now live in households that have recently struggled with routine expenses, according to a report out this month from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or CBPP. Black and Latino households have been especially impacted by the economic starvation that the mishandling of this pandemic has wrought, and these populations were already disproportionately likely to grow up poor.
This beauteous latinic tintinambulationing reminds me that I have never understood American racism. Maybe it’s jealousy; that might make some kind of sense. But I’m not jealous; instead I’m awestruck. Of course it helps if you know the tune: start with Doris Day’s ‘straight’ version (nothing straighter is available!), then check out Cannonball and Mileses version on Somethin’ Else, then this. Jazz is play, bitches: if they aren’t having fun, and crucially, if WE aren’t having fun, then why the fuck would anyone bother? Watch the video closely to see the magnificent fun being had! Btw, Ahmad turned 90 in July. “We don’t stop playing when we get old, we get old when we stop playing…”
“…fire all the teachers and replace them with cooks and gardeners and artists and woodworkers and scientists, all pursuing their interests in the company of the neighborhood kids who would spend their days pursuing their own.”
Another superb blog from the man in the superhero suit:
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/what-if-everyone-understood-play.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TeacherTom+%28Teacher+Tom%29
Donny knows it’s the inbetween not the things.
The material of playwork is relationships, connections. Between humans and between humans and things. It’s not about things. It’s not about Lou Spartz, it’s about our relationship with them. It’s all just junk if you think it is. That’s what that bloke Gibson is on about: affordances are the possibilities that you can see, observe, grasp.
Who are you when you are alone? Less human. That’s not a judgement, it’s an observation. I nearly wrote ‘just an observation’ as if a judgement is a bigger thing then an observation, which it isn’t. We get bigger, wider, deeper, when we are connected. Which is not to say that alone is less. It’s different.
https://psyche.co/ideas/for-donald-winnicott-the-psyche-is-not-inside-us-but-between-us
These sheep are having a field day. A flock of sheep took over an empty playground in Preston, UK, and hopped on the carousel. Watch as the wooly animals run in place as the roundabout spins in this funny video.
© 2020 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Given how rapidly things get lost on the interweb, it might be helpful if I park these here.
playwork_primer
The Playwork Primer by Penny Wilson (Alliance for Childhood 2009)
The very best introduction to playwork, and what it isn’t.
makingsense-playwork in practice
A lost classic, a companion piece to Best Play, containing some gorgeous stories that really give you a feel for the playworkers mindset.
What play provision should do for children. If your ‘space’ doesn’t do these, it’s not playwork provision, even if it is lovely.
jackieKilvington onThePlayworkPrinciplesPowerpointPDF2.pdf
An excellent overview for beginners
Here they are, and in the poster below. The key one in these endtimes for playwork is #4:
For playworkers, the play process takes precedence and playworkers act as advocates for play when engaging with adult-led agendas.
And finally, for now, some thoughts from Professor Play himself on what makes Playwork unique:
What Is Unique about Playwork? Fraser Brown
The Unique Elements of Playwork
