Adam Greenfield / is on Nostr

Not here anymore. Endurance athlete, heavy-music fan, compulsive greeter of cats. My next book is “Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in A World on Fire,” coming from Verso July 9th. #solidarityforever

Last Notes

2024-08-30 10:03:15

I had another run-in with one of those smug, lawyerly, microtome-parsing “but it doesn’t meet the definition of genocide” people. Maybe it’s worth reiterating what I told him: if what Israel is (still, now!) doing in Gaza doesn’t meet the agreed UN definition of genocide then *it’s the definition that’s wrong* and needs to be changed. I thought that would be obvious, but maybe not.

2024-07-09 07:30:57

Today’s publication day, beloved! Those of you who pre-ordered #Lifehouse from Verso should be getting your copies right about now – here again is the link to order one of your own if you haven’t yet. Thanks so much to everyone here for your interest, your support, your engagement. I can’t wait to see what people make of this, now that it’s out in the world! https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2536-lifehouse

2024-06-30 09:26:28

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As disgusting as August can be in NYC and Philadelphia, I am looking forward to those dates like you cannot believe. The soul-restorative properties of a solid slice of pizza, a Wawa hoagie, a real pastrami sandwich, etc. cannot be overstated.

2024-06-30 09:15:42

Here’s your latest list of confirmed #Lifehouse tour dates. Philly & NYC coming soon!
- July 24th: London UK, at good ol' Housmans in the Caledonian Road, with Shiri Shalmy.
- August 1st: Seattle WA, at Elliott Bay Book Company, with Dean Spade.
- August 3rd: Long Beach CA, at the wonderfully-named Page Against The Machine.
- August 6th: San Francisco CA, at Green Apple Books (9th Avenue location).
- August 8th: Portland OR, at Powell's.
- August 19th: Bristol UK, at Bookhaus.
See you soon!

2024-06-26 08:04:01

Beloved, I am begging you: *document your mutual-aid practices*. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my conversations with activists, it’s how much of the practical insight they developed – going back to the 1960s, but as recent as COVID – now resides only in individual memory, and is brought forth only if anyone thinks to ask for it specifically.

2024-06-25 15:05:38

I have seen the #Lifehouse and it is real: Cooperation Town Hub in Gospel Oak, London, a community garden, drop-in living room, free laundromat, bike-repair workshop and cooperative kitchen, located in a disused elementary school.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/112/677/857/511/603/742/original/3446bc5e72d38cc9.jpeg

2024-06-19 08:35:31

Howdy! Just a brief reminder, for folks who are interested in issues around #climate, #mutualaid, #anarchism and self-organized strategies for persevering against the array of ecosystemic threats now bearing down on us, that my new book “Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World On Fire,” can now be pre-ordered directly from Verso. Order now and it’ll ship when it launches in two weeks – you’ll be among the very first to get your hands on it. Thanks for your support! https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2536-lifehouse

2024-04-02 18:13:22

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As an alumnus of the Berkeley Free Clinic’s medic program, I’ve always been in favor of basic community-healthcare training for everyone, and it feels more necessary than ever now. Happy to answer any questions you may have about what I specifically mean by this.

2024-03-26 19:07:46

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Sure, some of this can be accounted for by the deskilling, outsourcing, shoddy lowest-bidder automation and responsibilization that are part and parcel of neoliberal governance/management/governmentality. But much of it feels deep to the culture, in a way that absconds from awareness or visibility. And I don’t, actually, want to bellyache about this state of affairs: I would like to find some ways for us to *do* something about it together. But it’s daunting, “vaster than empires and more slow.”

2024-03-26 19:03:07

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rather slapdash comedy of errors, the result is not improved accuracy or streamlined process flow. It’s a new and supervening set of faulty readings, with its own particular kind of plausibility and authority, that people must somehow summon the energy to challenge and counter. Occasionally, this has literally lethal effects - if you do not live in the UK, prepare to be shocked speechless by the Post Office/Fujitsu scandal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

2024-03-26 18:57:29

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I only observe it. People you rely on for important things lose critical documents. A task that you’d expect to be done right the first time needs to be redone and then redone again. The wrong kind of emulsion is specified, or the financial support is deposited in someone else’s account, or the wrong form is filed, or the referral is lost in the mail. (These are all real examples from the past year of my life.) And when you layer brittle, overspecified and inflexible digital processes over this

2024-03-26 18:52:21

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Here’s what I mean by “low-diligence”: Of the five cultures I’ve lived in as an adult, the American, Japanese, Korean and Finnish in addition to that of the British Isles, the UK is on the lower end of the scale in terms of the care and attention to detail people bring to bear on everyday tasks. As we’ve discussed before, this is true across classes, backgrounds and occupational sectors here. It’s true in the NHS, in the academy, in the trades and above all in business. I can’t explain it –

2024-03-26 18:44:27

In a low-diligence culture like the UK – a term I’ll explain shortly – overlaying digital systems (like these smart meters) over the processes of everyday life results not in efficiency or productivity gains, but in just the opposite: compounded failures that take extra time, effort and resource to correct. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/26/smart-meter-rollout-number-faulty-machines-leaps-great-britain