Large Ess Small Press (2026)

19/09/2025

Hey folks!

Sorry for the long wait for a new piece. This is an especially challenging one, but again, a duty-piece (this has to be said clearly from the left, and not just from the right, or else the middle will have altogether too much reason to think there is nothing but a frothing mob, left).

Thank you as always for the keen eyes and thoughtful brains.
Hope, as always, that you dig it!
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Many people who call themselves progressive are now openly demented – and it really really shows

30/08/2025

Hey folks!

I was just saying to Catherine that I actually have no idea how I write this stuff. That is, somewhere along the line my writing muscle started working faster and better than my conscious mind can track-it (editor-head comes back again for a fact-check and beauty pass, but the ‘creator’ is a mystery to me).

Anyhow, I often think of a beautiful quote from John Brunner, talking about the writing of “Stand on Zanzibar”, he said “While I was writing that book, my feet hardly touched the floor for five weeks!”

This one wasn’t that much work of course (nor is the result a devastating and still relevant tour-de-force) but I was absolutely in that – it’s doing me – mode, throughout. These are themes that I’ve been assembling and reassembling since I was a child (itself one of the themes) but the hard earned and oft-scorned understanding I’ve won is much too urgently important for me not to do my best to share.

As always, thank you sincerely for the eyes, and the thoughtful brains behind them.
Sincerely hope you dig it!
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If we knew what was really be happening, we would be screaming (which is why they make very sure we don't)

23/08/2025

Hey Folks

Hope everyone is enjoying the summer as best they can!

I have several fresh pieces underway for you, but in the meantime here’s something strong from last year which holds up.

If we in the west were the ones who were going to fix the environmental problems that we above all others created for the world, we would have spent this century of awareness actually doing that, instead of relentlessly mass murdering innocent people, non-stop (even while we keep claiming we ‘know’ and ‘care’ so much better than all the ‘obviously’ backward people elsewhere).

Morality is just not our thing, people – that we still so casually (and undeservingly) claim it, is itself the clearest form of modern supremacism. (Assuming you accept the definition – that combination of ignorance and arrogance which justifies dehumanization, wholesale injustice and mass-murder).

Rationalized inhumanity IS our thing, sadly. Meaning we abuse reason, just as much as morality.

(I’m not an anti-triablist for fun, folks – I do it because anything else would be betraying my soul)
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Climate change is real and responding to it responsibly is urgent - but modern "Environmentalism" is just the Emperor's new clothing for bloody white supremacy (with a heaping side order of denial)

16/08/2025

Hey folks!

Just a short one today
(skipping ahead of the cue, several grander pieces also underway, art-stuff included!)

This one will feel like a rebuke to some I care greatly about – but this is about truth and deep principle, so I know they will ultimately thank me (even if they occassionally still curse me) for reminding them toward the greater caring which yet guides their inner hearts, despite our modern storm of confabulating tribalisms and propaganda.

Anyhow – the point is – good guys don’t slaughter – hard no, there. So we in the greater West have got a heck of a lot of work to do, before we have any right to claim a moral high-horse – on anything.
(stunningly entitled as we yet feel, to that oh-so comfy saddle).
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So sorry, Opie (and many of my dear friends) but Liberalism has been weaponized, and has become the new death-dealing supremacy, imperialism, Klansman-righteous hubris, and yes, disgusting evil

09/08/2025

Hey folks

Yuck – what a long hot smoggy summer – this is also slowing-down several fun and funky projects I had in mind, in a frustrating way. (But doing an uplifting podcast in urban nature is a hard fail, if you need a gas mask). ;o)

I do have several pieces underway, but I think I’m going to let this weekend pass without pushing myself to finish-off a new one – what the heck, clear skies or not, it is still summer-time, so I’m going to do my best to enjoy myself and relax a bit – (interstellar staycation?).

In the meantime, here’s an especially strong piece from a few years ago that some might have missed, not just another angle on tribalism (and a very practical take on what to do about it) but also surprising perspectives on what to do about the environment (hence, “my favourite fight in so damn long”).

Hope you’re all having the best summer possible, constant tremors and pains, notwithstanding.

Even as an atheist, I’m praying for peace, round the clock, non-stop. And I know I’m not alone.

But hey, this is a no-do-over ride, and it’s freakin’-well supposed to be fun sometimes, too, you know?

Thanks, as always, for your keen eyes and the thoughtful brains behind them.

Sincerely hope you dig it.

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As Opposed to Being Pot-Frogs

24/07/2025

Hey folks

Aren’t you getting tired of being offered a choice between two steaming piles of you-know-what?

This is it – the point where consumerism was always heading, all these decades. Fake products and commodified simulations have replaced almost all real human contacts interactions and appetites.

Huge numbers are still “All lost in the supermarket” bewildered, because they can no longer seem to find their favourite flavour of off-the-shelf self-congratulations available inexpensively, by the pound.

Only one way to break out of this cheezy ad-driven trap – take one step back to community (the humane) so we can take two big steps forward, for humanity (as a beautiful, not a poisonous, thing).

There is no way that we can mindlessly consume ourselves to a state of peace, justice and happiness. Thankfully, the old ways that humans together used to make progress over centuries, learning, organizing, and building things so good they cannot be stopped, are still functional and available to us – and the people around us are just as lonely and restless as we are – good feedstock, in every way.

All we really have to do now is PUT DOWN THE PHONE – look a person in the eye (and smile).
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What we can do depends on how we can think about it

12/07/2025

Hey Folks

Wow – what a weird last few weeks it has been. Rarely have bu****it storms grown so opaque.

Seems like time for an update on some key realities which are almost entirely obscured by the louder and more infuriating games and BS stories, which are supposed to (designed to) fully occupy us.

Friends, you have come to the right place – have I got an update for you!

Thanks, as always, for the keen eyeballs and the thoughtful minds behind ‘em.
Sincerely hope you dig it!
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Even when surrounded by false choices and liars (both the sneaky and the gross) the truth is where it has always been (hint: not ever once in BigMedia – in our entire post-industrial history)

08/07/2025

Hey Folks – new piece should be ready for the weekend – in the meantime, here’s one of the best and most widely read vintage pieces from my original LargeEssSmallPress website. It is also one of my first big history survey pieces, where I try to both add key context for understanding of the human efforts involved (almost all traces of which has been erased over time) and also refute the propaganda big-lies which so often shape matters of huge expense (to flatter the least helpful or ethical, by far the most).
Above all, as a genuine lover of space exploration, creative science and engineering who has been studying the subject my whole life, I felt I had a duty to demolish the standard American triumphalist bu****it – because understanding is always more important than ignorant pride (a failing partisans on left and right always furiously condemn in the other, but still completely fail to ever see in the mirror).

ENJOY!
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Soviet Space Composite (all illustrations by the author)

25/06/2025

Hey folks!

I keep saying “non-delusional hope” (even as the tumult of war propaganda screams otherwise on every channel) and I still mean it, despite the heartbreaking stupidity of our moment. Thing is, to start working on non-delusional hope together, in a broad and useful coalition across all tribal lines, we first have to learn to reject delusion. (or at least learn to want to).

Thank you as always for your keen eyeballs and the thoughtful brains behind them. Hope you dig it!
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In order to realize useful change, we’re going to need a culture in contact with reality (oh dear!)

14/06/2025

Hey folks – a much shorter piece today – and an apology. I recorded a great “Conditions Are Always Impossible” show with my dear friend Ian Calvert yesterday, but even while we were ‘taping’ news in West Asia overtook our subject. I will still post that one very soon, but for the conflagration moment of today, I wanted to get a strong clear piece on the board, just before emotional tribalism drowns out all sense and compassion, yet again.
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Denial isn’t going to cut it anymore, then again, disillusionment and enlightenment were always twins!

10/06/2025

The unbelievably reckless recent attack on Strategic forces in Russia is going to provoke a VERY severe response. This is a game of FAFO in which all of our lives are being gambled.
This piece from a year ago about the origin and nature of the war stands up well. I should add that I underplayed the influence of the world’s all time worst “Great Game” players – the UK – who have cost Ukraine more blood than anyone. Also should have mentioned Klausewitz (to explain the steady patient methodical and relentless Russian (attrition not territory) strategy, which is now bearing fruit in the form of steady advance along the entire 1200 KM long line of contact).
Can’t possibly say “enjoy” about a subject like this. But if you want the basic run-down that the news here will no longer give us (because it is, as it is in every period when the rich demand war, in full propaganda mode), I do hope you’ll read and get something from this gathering of history and sources.
For people who think I am way off-base, please at least watch the short Arestovich video, from years BEFORE the war began. It obliterates the Western propaganda so thoroughly (and from the perspective of a Zelensky confidant Ukrainian nationalist), that it is truly required viewing, for any hope of understanding this very frightening WESTERN VIOLENCE CREATED moment.

The west has long killed foreigners who couldn't fight back and damaged countries, without suffering damage. Fighting Russia won’t be like that, China even less so - but they'd rather trade than fight

06/06/2025

Hi folks, a sad one today, but also a rembrance of a long and productive artistic life.

Paul Dutton was so much about performance and direct contact with the people in the room in front of him that recordings and second-hand takes simply cannot do the power of his work justice. But I knew him from the time I was zero, and so felt perhaps there was something on a human level to say about what he found and taught so many, at no small price to himself in struggle along the way.

And yes of course, words for a word master is an extremely daunting standard. I can offer only heartfelt, knowing that alone rang true to him always, all artifice be damned!
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No One Becomes An Artist, Unless They Truly Need To

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