Another way of reading this though... perhaps here is a man who like me has been banging on for 15 years about how fucked up "smart"phones are, but has now with infinite weariness, given in to the universal shrug

GNU IceCat is a liberated Firefox fork installable on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
www.gnu.org/software/gnu...

"we better do what Reform wants, otherwise it's only fuel for Reform". Garrulous nicotine-stained wanker outwits Sir Keir Starmer KC at every turn.

I remember when retracting door handles were cited as evidence of his genius... everything he does is a version of this, and it's all of us trapped in the burning car.
hackaday.com/2025/11/26/c...

😭

But there's something just about the imprint of time, & experience. A photograph decays in the particular way it does because of all the thousands of moments it was handled and exposed to light... LPs corrode uniquely with each playing - every particular engagement destroys it a little bit more.

Right... we need a society for protection against restoration. Let ruination take its natural course. Now scanning his monograph; he summarisingly puts it as "[celebrating] fragmentedness and ability to contest dogmatism". It's close to what I was thinking, that beauty is in complexity - in chaos.

And of course, in nature, all life depends on decay.

I think we need to get back to appreciating decay... photographs fade, LPs regress steadily into pure noise. There's something very beautiful about it. (And in fact, come to think of it, didn't Uncle Monty concur precisely on this point...?) There is something unholy & cryogenic about digital media.

there's a wonderful live version of this from the mama cass show. She sings like a blackbird.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nds...

the wonderful detail also that he did 20 mins of Zen meditation every morning and only founded Apple Computer having returned to the US from a fruitless search in India for his guru...

For what does it profit a man, to save the whole world, yet forfeit his Brontë country?

But this is just an excuse not to bother reading or listening to what Chomsky actually said in that interview. The author of the article distorted what he said in order to turn him into a pro-Putin "tankie" & discredit his position. Monbiot repeated that. I expected higher intellectual standards.

well, Alex is actually one of my oldest and most esteemed friends, and I can confirm he's read more Chomsky than I have. I understand the position, I just don't share it exactly, and I think journalistic integrity is now maybe more than ever incredibly important. Disappointed by Monbiot's slurs

I think there's a big difference between saying, of some monster, that Western states have done a lot worse, to saying that, actually, that monster is "moderate and restrained". You might think the former claim is false, but the latter words convey actual praise, which is not what he said at all.

Good point. Why bother listening to the actual words of someone who doesn't share your opinion? Just rely in the interpretations of people who already do. I forgot we're still on the internet...

Yes, indeed, I read it. Those are the words of the author of the article, not Chomsky.