Experiments with AI September 2024. Phil Hall, using Bing. We Need Modular, Autonomous AI ‘They say, “Sing while you slave” and I just get boredI ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more’ Bob Dylan by Phil Hall Scanning the horizon carefully reveals a divergence in the application of artificial…
Author: Ars Notoria
We are in favour of humane, democratic socialism
Phil Hall
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Save Our Souls: The Fight to Preserve Britain’s Churches, Meeting Houses and Temples
Photograph Phil Hall New data reveals a sharp increase in the number of historic churches, meeting houses and temples at risk, threatening the vital social and economic fabric of Great Britain. by Phil Hall The historical parallel is stark. The dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII did not just…
Amal Chatterjee
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Metropolis
Cityscape. Photograph Phil Hall by Amal Chatterjee When I was a child, I dreamed of aeroplanes, great silver birds crossing continents and oceans, I watched their thin vapour trails draw and spread as they made their way from distant cities to others yet more distant. But now the novelty has…
Football
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Stories of Football and Madness / Cuentos de Fútbol y Locura
In the Maracana Photo by Andre Dantas on Pexels.com by Ulises Paniagua Down the Right Wing The poor child (…) finds in football the possibility of social ascent, having no toy but the ball: the ball is the only magic wand he can believe in.Eduardo Galeano He received the ball…
David Yip
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5. Life in the Sun
by David Yip Aged 32, I am single—my first gay relationship has ended. After lying to myself and others for years and only dating women, perhaps I had too many expectations, but I am devastated. My younger sister tells me to give myself a couple of weeks. During that time…
Poetry
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The President’s Feast
Belshazzar’s Feast Rembrandt, National Gallery, Public Domain Christmas is a time of feasting and self-indulgence for the lucky and powerful. For most of the world it is a time of hardship and starvation. And so it has always been. In the Bible, the story of Belshazzar’s Feast (in the Book…
Arun Kapil
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Diesel, Chai & the Oyster Wind
Briny oysters, shrimp curled like punctuation marks, langoustines, hunks of crab meat and claws piled high with effortless French design. Photograph by Gvantsa Gongadze A punk-masaalchi essay on time, place and the flavours we carry. By Arun Kapil Some moments arrive so clean and sharp you can still taste the…
Bette Davis
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14. Peons By the Pool: Standard Hollywood Contract
Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian in the Adventures of Robin Hood, (1938) Public Domain Wikimedia Commons by Norman B. Schwartz In the old days of the studio system, now long gone, the Big Five, as they were then called – MetroGoldwyn-Mayer, Fox (one day to unite with Twentieth Century…
Humane Socialism
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10. Epilogue
Photograph David Yip by Margaret Yip The 1980s and Thatcher years were not good for Barrow-in-Furness; it remains one of the North’s most deprived areas. Both miners and shipyard workers went on strike during this time. No social housing was being built to replace the rows of dilapidated terraced houses…
Citizens’ Assembly on Land Use and Constitutional Devolution
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EDITORIAL: THE NEW COMMONWEALTH
Photograph Phil Hall A DISCUSSION DOCUMENT FOR A HUMANE SOCIALIST BRITAIN (2025-2040) Great Britain stands at a historical precipice, facing three interlocking crises that demand radical yet grounded change. This document is not a break from our history, but a conscious attempt to revive, complete, and reimagine a great, humane…
Angelo
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Con Rider on Shakespeare’s Play, Measure for Measure
Isabella and Angelo (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 2). Illustration James Fittler, engraving William Hamilton 1994, Public Domain This is perhaps the closest Shakespeare comes to presenting a dogma: “He who the sword of heaven would bear… should be as holy as severe.” Interviewed by Phil Hall Con…
NATO
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Game, Set & Match to Russia
Putin, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Photograph Kremlin Ru, Public Domain …unless NATO carries out a pre-emptive strike by Richard Steinhardt We can all agree that the political situation in the world today is grave. Has the geopolitical situation ever been more precarious? The German leader, Chancellor Mertz, says he…
Alexander Bogdanov
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The Soul of the Human in the Age of Mercury
Statue of Mercury. Photograph by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels by Phil Hall In the spirit of Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794) ‘At that first fair awakening of the powers of the mind, sense and intellect did not as yet rule over strictly separate domains; for no dissension…
Bookshop
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The Bookshop
Immeuble à Boulogne-Billancourt. Photograph Nozav, Public Domain by Amal Chatterjee His mother has gone by the time he wakes up. Kicking the covers to the foot of the bed, he swings himself off. Even though he knows he is alone, he checks his shorts, pulls down his shirt. The habits of…
Isabel del Rio
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Isabel del Rio: Four Poems
Isabel del Rio. Photograph Isabel del Rio On adoptive language speak we should but maywe be spared the blemish ofrepudiating the first syllables uttered, the familiarcooing from those closest, all those wordsthat should have been said but are nowexchanged for extraneous soundsin a separate and sometimes dissenting language, no,there are…
Politics
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SUDEEP SEN: FOUR GHAZALS
Night Jasmine. Photograph by Kamal B Nandasena Monsoon Apertures Each drop scripts a silence I cannot explain —the monsoon writes letters across my windowpane. Your absence is not void, but a humid breath —it stains my shirt-collar like turmeric or rain. Even the wind hesitates before touching me —a lover…
Charles Bronson
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Lo social es humano / The social is human
Charles Bronson (prisoner). Image generated with WordPress Two poems by Ulises Paniagua / Dos poemas de Ulises Paniagua Charles entre nosotros Tú eres Charles Bronson , con la existencia untada de manteca desnudaluchando contra el sistemaYo soy Charles Bronson, ave nocturna que se raja la caraante los derruidos gobernantesÉse que…
Goodly Creatures
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Goodly Creatures
Manish Malhotra in jail. Photograph by Vatsal Bhatt by J. W. Wood Manish Malhotra knew he was going to die. One of three Presiding Judges at the World Court, it fell to him to confirm an immediate order for global lockdown from the World Parliament – but he would…
Algonquin Hotel
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13. Lone Wolverine
Parker, with Algonquin Round Table members and guests Art Samuels (editor of Harper’s and, briefly, The New Yorker), Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, and Alexander Woollcott, c. 1919. Photograph Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Dorothy Parker and Politics by Norman B. Schwartz Of all the New York wags and wits…
Arun Kapil
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I Smell, Therefore I Am
Riley’s Crisp lorry. Credit Arun Kapil All Tastes Are Equal – the Rest Is Theatre By Arun Kapil Back then – long before “scent” – smell was social currency. Curry smell meant immigrant. Chip-fat smell meant working class. Roast beef meant you’d arrived. In the seventies, Britain could be sniffed…
Alex Gordon
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MEETING ALEX GORDON
Alex Gordon giving a class. Copyright Karl Weiss, courtesy Marx Memorial Library ‘Financialisation and militarisation sustain this broken model. We need to advocate for peace and redistribution.’ An interview with Paul Halas and Phil Hall, editors at Ars Notoria Magazine Alex Gordon is a British trade unionist, a leading member…
Chartists
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The Marx Memorial Library: A Precious Universal Resource
A banner featuring Karl Marx, with the Marx Memorial Library building behind him. Photograph Paul Halas An Archive of Ideas to Change the World by Paul Halas Housed in an elegant eighteenth century building in Clerkenwell, the Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School contains a comprehensive collection of books, pamphlets,…
China
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Editorial: Rumours of the Death of Europe have been Greatly Exaggerated
Harold Wilson was willing to defy the U.S. and refused to take us to war in Vietnam. Photograph by Allen Warren, Creative Commons License From an anti-hegemonic, class-conscious perspective in favour of UK sovereignty and European wide solidarity and cooperation, we should have concluded that Europe’s problems are more political…
Politics
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BOOK LAUNCH, AUTUMN 2025
AN EDITIONS and CentreHouse Press… …are launching new titles and paperbacks. The launch will take place on 12th November, 5.30 PM in the Library of the Society of Friends at The Quaker Centre, 173-177 Euston Road, London AN Editions is the publishing arm of the Humane Socialist magazine, Ars Notoria. Launched in March this year, we’re proud to carry on…
3I/ATLAS
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3I ATLAS: Along Comes a Black Swan
Cited from A. Loeb: 3I/ATLAS from the Two-meter Twin Telescope in the Canary Islands, August 2, 2025. It shows a faint jet pointed towards the Sun, extending out to a projected distance of about 6,000 kilometers from the nucleus, The direction away from the Sun (where a generic cometary tail…
Celibacy
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The Gnostic Blueprint
Detail from Gustave Moreau, The Apparition (1876) From Desert Scrolls to Modern Cults by Phil Hall Religions often begin with a core, a simple idea that becomes complicated as it unfolds through history. The art historian Kenneth Clark once observed that Islam was the simplest of the great religions invented…
Art
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MEETING BING SHI
Portrait of Bing Shi by Andy Hall by Paul Halas For all its many faults social media sometimes provides us with gems, and the paintings of artist Bing Shi have for us been one of the highlights on Facebook this year. Working in oils, with bold, sweeping brushstrokes that fail…
OSCAR: THE SECOND COMING
The cover of Oscar: The Second Coming by Dan Pearce Dan Pearce’s Tale of Oscar Wilde Transported to the 21st century by Paul Halas What would Oscar Wilde make of modern day Britain? And what would modern day Britain make of a latter day Oscar Wilde? In this beautifully illustrated…
Capitalism
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THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY IS NOT INALIENABLE
Enforcement of the duties of property ownership is the cornerstone of a good society by Phil Hall Rather than imagining they are powerful citizens, the ultra-rich prefer to believe that they are naturally unconstrained and owe little to individual states. They fantasise they roam the world like Captain Nemo, and…
Dan Pearce
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Depression # 32 by Dan Pearce
Dan Pearce has done editorial work for many magazines and newspapers including New Society, Honey, 19, Oz, The Observer, The Times and Sunday Times, Mayfair and Penthouse. Dan has created book and record covers, political cartoons, comic strips and caricatures and he has written two graphic novels: ‘Critical Mess’ (against the nuclear industry)…
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