Matthew Barritt

Tools and Toilets

There is a new screwdriver in town, though apparently I’m the last to find out. It’s battery-powered, with an accelerometer, and it starts and stops automatically in response to movement: hold it to a screw, twist your wrist one way or the other and…

The Weight of Stuff

Evolving opposable thumbs for grasping, and an upright gait that freed our arms for carrying wasn’t perhaps the best thing to ever happen to humans; for we’ve been collecting stuff and hauling it around ever since, constantly confusing who we are…

What Someone Did to Salman Rushdie

This evening I’m thinking of what someone did to Salman Rushdie; stabbing him frenetically because of the stories he writes. Severing the nerves to one of Rushdie’s arms. Destroying one of his eyes. Stabbing his liver. Perhaps killing him,…

Look Away, at Least for a Moment

The astounding spectacle of destruction holds my gaze day in and out. Without apparent compunction, they lie and distort in order to lever division into power — ugly, naked aggression, abandoning what they claim to represent. No norm matters. Honor…

The Return of Lend-Lease

The 1941 U.S. Lend-Lease act has always been meaningful to me as the essential beginning of the U.S. commitment to support the fight against German aggression in World War II, salvaging something of U.S. moral integrity (and rational self-interest)…

The New Sound of the Fourth of July

Fireworks can sound like gunfire, and tonight they do, rolling in waves through my neighborhood like a war only hours after six people were killed in Highland Park in a fusillade of similar sounds. All of which is now too often the soundtrack of…

Thoughts and Prayers — F*** That

This is what runs in my head as I watch the news: They say: “Now is not the time to talk about policy. Don’t you know families are grieving?” I think: Fuck that. They say: “How dare you interrupt community grief with your political grandstanding!” I…

The Return of Lend-Lease

The 1941 U.S. Lend-Lease act has always been meaningful to me as the essential beginning of the U.S. commitment to support the fight against German aggression in World War II, salvaging something of U.S. moral integrity (and rational self-interest)…

The Weight of Stuff

Evolving opposable thumbs for grasping, and an upright gait that freed our arms for carrying wasn’t perhaps the best thing to ever happen to humans; for we’ve been collecting stuff and hauling it around ever since, constantly confusing who we are…

The Spoils of War

The video from the tiny CDEK courier service office in Mazyr, Belarus — a city of 112,000, 30 miles beyond the border to the northwest of Kiev —runs more than three hours; like a long, silent one act play. It has a large, militarily-clad cast who…

On the Violent End of Endless Time

Life, apparently, is cheap, but death cheaper still. War, every war, the war in Ukraine, strips away not just life, but also death; the other death someone would have had. I was thinking about the Chidi Anagonye character from The Good Place being…

Russia’s Economic Royalty

The corrupt “economic elites” faithfully at the edges of Putin’s kleptocratic authoritarian regime (“Russian billionaires” to the media) have become a familiar presence outside Russia as they stash and flash what they have taken of her wealth in the…

Putin and the Death of Svitlana Zhulina

Yesterday I read about the death of Svitlana Zhulina in the Kyiv Independent. Svitlana was a 46 year-old mother who lived in Kyiv with her husband and two young sons. She, one of her sons, and her husband were shot by Russian soldiers as they drove…

Russian Trolls in the Light of Day

I was reading MacRumors.com some weeks ago after they posted their first story about Ukraine asking Apple to pull out of Russia. The comments (now disabled) were immediately populated with posts parroting the official Russian narrative for why, and…

Transparency Landmines

The pattern for Russia denying attacks on civilians in Ukraine is well established: an attack occurs and Russia says that they absolutely do not, and would not attack civilians, and any claims that they do are damned lies (or words to that effect).…

Brown Leggings in Black and White

There were videos the other day — you may have seen them — of men at a cemetery in Mariupol carrying bodies of civilians to a mass grave, throwing them in loose, feet and arms and torsos intwined in a pile. I realized that each end of the trench was…

Democracy Is the Threat

From NATO’s Enlargement topic Web page: “NATO’s ongoing enlargement process poses no threat to any country. It is aimed at promoting stability and cooperation, at building a Europe whole and free, united in peace, democracy and common values.” But…

Homo Sapiens Interruptus

I refuse to be interruptible. I refuse the distracting immediacy of text messages (or phone calls, if one is being old school). Email, or letters, will do, with no expectation of immediate reception or reply. I avoid the Web pulling me one way and…

The Wealthy as Politicians

The wealthy are habituated to choices that perpetuate their own wealth at the expense of others. Despite what they say, this makes them lousy politicians for the rest of us.

Stasi Dreams

I imagine a sustained contrarian protest of ad-supported social media users liking exactly what they don’t like, sharing what they don’t want to be associated with, and quoting precisely what they don’t agree with. I imagine them sharing…