A. The Guardian does not like the new film sequel Tron: Ares. Here is the film’s official trailer:
I am really enjoying the new Nine Inch Nails soundtrack - whose lead single is called Alive As You Want Me To Be. Here is the official music video:
B. ‘Downtown’ Josh Brown (the wealth manager Joshua M. Brown) - who blogged for many years as The Reformed Broker - is well worth reading. Brown’s latest book is You Weren’t Supposed To See That: Secrets Every Investor Should Know (Harriman House, 2025). His very influential books are Clash of the Financial Pundits: How the Media Influences Your Investment Decisions for Better or Worse with coauthor Jeff Macke (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014) and Backstage Wall Street: An Insider’s Guide to Knowing Who to Trust, Who to Run From, and How to Maximize Your Investments (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012). Brown’s 2022 essay which has become his new book’s title explains why the Substack newsletter boom (facilitated by COVID-19 lockdowns and stimulus cheques in the United States) was only momentary and mirage-like.
C. I have two Masters degrees (an MSc in Strategic Foresight from Swinburne University of Technology and an MA in Counter-Terrorism Studies from Monash University) from academic programs that no longer exist. That’s a personal investment of about $AUD50,000 that gives me a Popperian knowledge base and a Lakatosian cumulative research program - and that is tough for many employers to understand. But at least those two graduate degrees were accredited - some students are discovering that their degrees were actually not.
D. Today, I am reading Ray Nelson’s short story Eight O’Clock in the Morning (1963) (text & audio versions) for John Carpenter’s B-film satire They Live (1988):
E. Today’s MIT OCW free course is on Intentional Public Disruptions: Art, Responsibility, and Pedagogy.
F. The Dark Renaissance (Nick Land: Retrochronic is his latest site) meets Comparative Multipolar Geopolitics (Aleksandr Dugin - The New Yorker coverage) - like the Slavoj Zizek and Jordan Peterson debate this meeting will be a goldmine for Reactionary, Traditionalist, and Dissident Right oriented researchers and for critical discourse analysis methodologists (Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language is highly recommended, and Professor Ruth Wodak & Professor Dr Michael Meyer’s third edition of Methods of Critical Discourse Studies also looks good).
Here is a keynote speech by Professor Wodak on Analyzing Discourse and Socio-Political Change:
Professor Wodak on the Discourse Historical Approach:
Professor Wodak on Discourses and National Identities:
Here is a seminar with Professor Wodak on the book The Politics of Fear: The Shameless Normalization of Far-Right Discourse (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2020):