Alasdair Pettinger
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bulldozia.com
Alasdair Pettinger
@bulldozia.com
200 followers 410 following 140 posts
Words | history | sounds. Author, editor, archivist. Autistic. Latchy student of Gàidhlig, Cymraeg, Kreyòl & stringed instruments. Book: Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846. Researching revolutionary slogans. North Pembrokeshire. www.bulldozia.com
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'P for Relief' using Mamdani meme generator (made by @foone) adapting bodega-style fonts and colour of 'Mamdani for New York'.
November 9, 2025 at 7:03 AM
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Autumn colours, Cambuslang.
Graffiti on the stone parapet of a bridge, barely legible except for 'ACAB' in large, bold yellow block capitals, with the varied autumnal colours of trees beyond.
November 7, 2025 at 8:45 PM
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Sigmund Freud, in Totem and Taboo, might have been talking about large language models. archive.org/details/stan...
Screenshot of part of a printed page, reading: 'There is an intellectual function in us which demands unity, connection and intelligibility from any material, whether of perception or thought, that comes within its grasp; and if, as a result of special circumstances, it is unable to establish a true connection, it does not hesitate to fabricate a false one. Systems constructed in this way are known to us not only from dreams, but also from phobias, from obsessive thinking and from delusions. The construction of systems is seen most strikingly in delusional disorders (in paranoia), where it dominates the symptomatic picture; but its occurrence in other forms of neuro-psychosis must not be overlooked. In all these cases it can be shown that a rearrangement of the psychical material has been made with a fresh aim in view; and the rearrangement may often have to be a drastic one if the outcome is to be made to appear intelligible from the point of view of the system. Thus a system is best [....]'
November 2, 2025 at 3:50 PM
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Constellations of sheep
Black and white photo, with intensified contrast, depicting the distribution of sheep on a hilside.
November 1, 2025 at 1:01 AM
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The old slate quarry.
Colour photograph, with late afternoon autumn sunlight catching a steep-sided slate heap on the right, and the bracken and grass on the left, with the outline of a conifer plantation beyond. In shadow, in the centre of the image is the hollow of the quarry itself, the silhouette of a conifer within just visible. The sky is a pale blue, almost cloudless except for a semi-circle of a cumulus peeping over the horizon.
October 29, 2025 at 11:31 PM
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In their brilliant book, Questioning Humanity, making a strong case for a 'sceptical, provisional humanism' - rooted in a tradition that stretches from Montaigne to Sylvia Wynter - Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose offer a sobering conclusion: www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/que...
'Ours may be the time of a new Enlightenment as to our awesom planetary powers and planetary responsibilities. But it is probably too late for our awareness of the multiple, almost unimaginable chances and contingencies that have not just given rise to life, but to creatures with intelligence, freedom and a sense of moral responsibility, to enable us to save ourselves from extinction. Even if we overcome the forces of greed, self-interest and wilful ignorance that still drive us towards our doom, even if we can see what is coming and know what must be done to avert it, it is unlikely that we can summon the will, the power or the politics to avert it. We may be special - or at least distinctive - creatures, rare and perhaps unique in our universe, and our 200,000 years of existence will leave its marks on the Earth, but while our planet will live on, we doubt whether any future living entity will remain who will be curious enough to excavate the traces we have left, or to try to understand how it was that we brought our end, knowingly, upon ourselves.
October 22, 2025 at 4:07 PM
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#NoKings Barnard Castle 1792. (From the Life of William Wilberforce, Vol II (1838)) archive.org/details/life...
'Considerable numbers in Bernard Castle have manifested disaffection to the constitution, and the words, "No King," "Liberty," and "Equality," have been written there upon the Market Cross.'
October 16, 2025 at 6:51 PM
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#NoKings Perth, 1794.
'Perth bridge was daubed with slogans, "Damn all Kings, God damn the King, Curse all Tyrants. Who would want a King to eat the Bread of twenty five thousand men, Britain must be a Republic, Liberty & equality." P&KCA, PE51/25, Declaration of William Wedderspoon and David Buist, 28 Apr. 1794.' (Val Honeyman, '"A Very Dangerous Place"? Radicalism in Perth in the 1790s,' Scottish Historical Review, Vol 87 No 224 (2008), p. 300)
October 16, 2025 at 2:33 PM
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From a Massachusetts broadside 1779, illustrating a poem by 'a daughter of liberty, living in Marblehead.' archive.org/details/reme...
Woodcut, depicting a woman in what appears to be conventional feminine attire, but with three-cornered hat, holding in her left arm an upright musket, its stock resting on the ground, and in her right, I think, a powder horn. A flag flies from battlements in the background.
October 4, 2025 at 7:36 PM
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The Examiner, commenting on the trial of Henry Hunt, charged with treason after Peterloo in 1819. Sounds familiar. archive.org/details/sim_...
Screenshot of part of a newspaper column: 'Then follows a series of the most suspicious answers and interferences, as the reader will see in the proper place. We have no doubt that the grounds of conspiracy will at last be entirely confined to the inscriptions on the flags, and the pretence of military array; and then there will still remain three baffling points to consider, - First, whether similar flags have not been used on similar occasions with great harmlessness; - Second, whether all large bodies do not naturally fall into what is called military array, *except* when they are merely *riotous*; - and Third, whether the flags and the array, after all, have any thing to do with Mr. HUNT, and whether every man who accompanies, or meets an assembly, or gets up to address it, is responsible for what every other person in it may do.'
September 27, 2025 at 1:17 PM
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Stinking Brittlegill, I think.
Colour photo, close up of single mushroom in pine wood, dappled in afternoon sunlight.
September 26, 2025 at 9:09 AM
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At last, a slogan I can get behind.
Colour photo, close up of external door covered in graffiti, with the following inscription centred: IN MUSH WE TRUST LADDIE in purple, gold and silver letters. 'Mush" replacing 'Musk', I assume, but 'Laddie' earns a chef's kiss. Glassford Street, Glasgow.
September 20, 2025 at 6:35 AM
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Ceci n’est pas un ours
Colour photo of life-size sculpture of Wojtek the bear in the home of its maker, in a hallway illuminated by a standard lamp. The bear is seated, its back leaning against a radiator, looking up at the ceiling, jaws open. A framed print on the wall, a wifi router atop a wooden stand, a rug partially covering a sanded floor.
September 15, 2025 at 7:17 PM
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Experts have long struggled to understand political slogans. The Spencean radical Thomas Preston had a provocative sign displayed outside his shop and delighted in refusing to disclose its meaning to the perplexed authorities.
Among the many, the worthy magistrates of Surry deigned to pay me a visit on the occasion, and seemed very desirous to have the key, the better to decypher the subject. I told them they could contemplate as long as it might prove convenient to them, but that the mottos were sufficiently expressive, and that I had no key.
September 14, 2025 at 10:22 AM
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Among Robert Ayton's illustrations for The Ladybird Book of the Weather (1962) are three or four, images of St George's Crosses atop church towers. A more innocent time? I'm not so sure. Even as a kid I found them weird & implausible. Now, they look ... overdetermined. Englishness with extra menace.
Colour illustration of a menacing, stereotypically English view, taking in rolling countryside, a winding river, half-timbered dwellings with tile roofs, overlooked by a stone Norman church to whose tower is fixed a flagpole flying the St George's Cross.
September 1, 2025 at 11:05 PM
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Thoroughly enjoying this forensic cultural history that tracks the many accounts of the French invasion of 1797 over the two centuries since. @uniwalespress.bsky.social matching the brilliance of their earlier series of books on Wales and the French Revolution. www.uwp.co.uk/book/the-las...
Cover of 'The Last Invasion: War, Women and Memory, 1797-1997' by Hywel M Davies. With colour illustration of women in red mantles, black hats and wielding pitchforks on land, facing the sea where several sailing ships are to be seen clustered on the horizon.
July 2, 2025 at 5:22 PM
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Very pleased to - belatedly - discover the polymorphous poetry of Peter Finch, with @dradny.bsky.social as my guide. The Collected Poems are half-price (code may50) till tomorrow (Wed 28 May) from the publishers - grab the two volumes as a set. www.serenbooks.com/book/collect...
Colour photo of three paperback volumes stacked, fanned out, on a table - the two volumes of Peter Finch's Collected Poems and Andrew Taylor's companion, 'There's Everything to Play For'.
May 27, 2025 at 7:25 AM
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Define chutzpah.
Imposing frontage of 19th century townhouse or civic building. Discreet signage indicates it is now a Wetherspoons pub called 'The Capital Asset'.
January 19, 2025 at 1:16 PM
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Wordle poem
Screenshot of wordle puzzle (not today's) completed in three guesses reading PEACH GONAD DOGMA.
January 18, 2025 at 5:47 PM
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Wordle poem
Screenshot of a wordle puzzle (not today's) completed in four guesses reading DRIVE REACT REPAY RELAX.
January 6, 2025 at 6:34 PM
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Aberystwyth Pier.
Outdoor sign, partly framed by strung red and green electric bulbs, not illuminated, against an overcast sky. The text on the sign is centred, in upper case, and reads: 'BILLARD BAR & / SUN-DECK / COMPETITIVE SOCIALISING / CWRDD I GYSTADLU'. The second line is in red, the rest in black; the third and fourth lines set in smaller type.
December 25, 2024 at 5:02 PM
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Drove up to Bwlch-gwynt for the solstice sunrise. Stunning.
In the middle ground a country road crosses the frame, unfenced on the far side, the higher ground beyond almost entirely obscured by low cloud. From an improvised empty parking area in the foreground you can see the headlights of an approaching vehicle, blurred in the mist. If you squint you could be forgiven they form a single orb that could be mistaken for the first rays of a rising sun peeping over the horizon, the blueish tinge to the enveloping cloud momentarily passing as a clear dawn sky, creating a false horizon. For me, the whole scene has a Hound of the Baskervilles vibe.
December 22, 2024 at 1:19 PM
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#WordlePoem
Screenshot of Wordle puzzle completed in four guesses, reading GHOST LOVER POWER BOXER.
December 15, 2024 at 9:02 AM
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from 'Love's Work' by Gillian Rose
Agoraphobia involves a magnification of space, populated by myriad terrors. Benign sights and sounds acquire a sinister, echoic, persecutory air, mocking your inability to connect signification with the world of objects. “Agoraphobia” is usually defined as fear of wide open space, but the word, more closely observed, is specific. Agora means the market-place, the place of assembly; it implies public, articulate space, space full of interconnections, with which you cannot enter into exchange. You feel as if you are suspended on the sharp rim of the world, of its space and of its signification.
December 2, 2024 at 9:33 PM