[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, tweets … you name it]
[Videos]
“The Dawn of Everything”: David Wengrow & the Late David Graeber On a New History of Humanity [democracy now] – “When you do that in the light of modern scientific evidence, other questions and other possibilities do in fact come to light. For example, questions about sustainable cities, actually it turns out that for many centuries or even thousands of years, we have evidence now of really large-scale densely populated societies which lived in cities that were essentially decentralized in terms of their decision-making processes.”
Playing banjo for a wild fox! He came back for an encore!
KCBR – LIVE LIFE LIKE – KCBRYNOTMAFS
[Music]
@0 | Coldcut & Mixmaster Morris [bandcamp: shortcode must include 'track', 'album', or 'video' param]
“‘@0’ AMBIENT COMPILATION FEATURING NEW RECORDINGS FROM RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, SUZANNE CIANI, SIGUR RÓS, STEVE ROACH, KAITLYN AURELIA SMITH, SKEE MASK, HELENA HAUFF, JULIANA BARWICK, A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN, LARAAJI, AND MANY MORE. ” One comment reads: “Engaging ambient”, works for me.
Michael Jackson x Phil Collins
[Podcasts]
242 – The Dawn of The Dawn of Everything (w/ David Wengrow) [srsly wrong] – “The Wrong Boys are joined by David Wengrow to talk about changing human history (starting with the past) and his new book, co-authored with the late David Graeber, on myths about the origins of human society, why both Hobbes and Rousseau are wrong, and why human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.”
[Twitter Threads]
Viele Leute hatten vor der Pandemie ein Grundvertrauen in die Medizin das fast schon einer Allmachtsfantasie gleichkam. Ein quasi religiöses Vertrauen in die Halbgötter in weiss & die Pharma. Sie dachten sie müssten niemals Angst um ihre Gesundheit haben. Medizin flickt mich.
— αитι. 🐘 (@AntiAll3s) November 21, 2021
[The Must Reads This Month]
»Der Green Pass ist ein reines Propagandainstrument« [jungle.world] – “Die Unterordnung der Gesundheit unter das Profitstreben, die krankhafte Beziehung zwischen Medizin und Markt, die Abhängigkeit der medizinischen und pharmazeutischen Forschung von Unternehmen mit hoher Kapitalkonzentration, die Bürokratisierung und Entpersönlichung der Pflege – das sind, oder wären, alles unsere Themen. Darin kommt eine Unzufriedenheit zum Ausdruck, die wir nie auffangen werden, wenn wir uns weigern, sie zu sehen und diejenigen, die sie äußern, nur als Feinde behandeln. Damit reduzieren wir uns selbst zu Torwächtern des Systems, zu Verteidigern des Status Quo und wir überlassen das Feld den Unruhestiftern und Faschisten.” Excellent Interview with the italian Wu Ming Collective.
Der kurze Weg von der Lappalie zur Cancel Culture [woz] – “Die hiesige Medienlandschaft ist geradezu süchtig nach der Erregung über die Zustände an US-Universitäten. Stanford-Professor Adrian Daub kann sich denken, warum das so ist.” Cancel Culture, what it is not.
[Articles English]
Capitalism Is Making Us All Miserable — Even the Superrich [jacobin] – “Capitalism imposes massive suffering on the poor and working class. But even the detestable superrich are being made miserable by the sadistic things market competition implores them to do to the rest of us.” Also in this article: It’s not necessary to be a psychopath to become superrich, but it certainly seems to help.
The Left’s Covid failure [unherd] – “Amplifying the crisis is no way to rebuild trust” Some good points in here, especially regarding the leftist misunderstanding of neoliberalism.
“Capitalism’s over”: The man who made millions by betting the economy would never recover [new statesman] – “My grand, macro thesis is that real interest rates have to stay low, and that’s because the rich have all the wealth and like saving. Now, no matter how hard you work, how smart you are, if you come from the ‘wrong’ family you’ll probably never own property. That is feudalism. We’re going back into a world of aristocracy. Capitalism’s over.” Yes, this is feudalcapitalism.
BTS Twitter Fan Accounts Targeted By Facebook Troll Group [buzzfeed] – “Team Copyright is always trying to keep cyberspace safe and beautiful,” claimed the group, which spent its time filing fraudulent copyright infringement notices.”
Ai Weiwei on reclaiming art from capitalism [the economist] – “It is characterised by capitalism’s fervent advocacy of individual freedom, its encouragement of so-called “creativity” and the idealisation of unfettered personal development. Its symptoms can be observed in the overwhelming tendency to consider art from a purely commercial perspective, neglecting spiritual concerns in favour of wealth accumulation. At the same time, societal injustices, regional inequalities, exploitation of the weak and unsustainable use of natural resources are ignored. By dodging these questions, contemporary art has become just a form of entertainment, detached from spiritual life. Art’s power to shape self-awareness and assist in the understanding of identity has been compromised. The outlook is dim.” Wrong paper for this statement, kek.
Dave Chappelle’s “Some Of My Best Friends Are Trans” Story Doesn’t Hold Up | Michael Hobbes [substack] – “The comedian says a mob of SJWs bullied his trans friend into suicide. The evidence says otherwise.” Hobbes with usual thoroughness and flair.
Hypnogram – “Create an image from text” Fun to be had.
The Right-Wing Story About Human Nature Is False [current affairs] – “Our default assumption should be to believe in people. Not all people, and not all the time. But on average, humans are a cooperative species. We want to be fair and to help each other. This fundamental fact about us needs to be understood, so that we can move on to the more difficult question of why we fail to uphold our values when we do fail to uphold them. Let us begin with a respect for, rather than a cynicism toward, the average human being.” Love.
A Close Reading of the QAnon Shaman’s Conspiracy Manifesto [literary hub] – “How RFK Jr., Naomi Wolf, and an NYU Professor Ended Up on the Same Page as QAnon Cultist Jacob Chanley” That guy, omg.
Global Climate Report – October 2021[ncdc.gov] – “The global surface temperature for October 2021 was 0.89°C (1.60°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.2°F) — the fourth highest October temperature in the 142-year record. Only Octobers of 2015, 2018, and 2019 had a warmer October. The 10 warmest Octobers have occurred since 2003. October 2021 also marked the 45th consecutive October and the 442nd consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.” It’s still happening.
Global Climate Wall [transnational institute] – “Climate change is increasingly a factor behind displacement and migration. This may be because of a particular catastrophic event, such as a hurricane or a flash flood, but also when the cumulative impacts of drought or sea-level rise, for example, gradually make an area uninhabitable and force entire communities to relocate.” Walls, what are they good for.
Climate pledges built on flawed emissions data, Post investigation finds [wapo] – “Across the world, many countries underreport their greenhouse gas emissions in their reports to the United Nations, a Washington Post investigation has found. An examination of 196 country reports reveals a giant gap between what nations declare their emissions to be versus the greenhouse gases they are sending into the atmosphere. The gap ranges from at least 8.5 billion to as high as 13.3 billion tons a year of underreported emissions — big enough to move the needle on how much the Earth will warm.” COPfail
Israel escalates surveillance of Palestinians with facial recognition program in West Bank [wapo] – “The Israeli military has been conducting a broad surveillance effort in the occupied West Bank to monitor Palestinians by integrating facial recognition with a growing network of cameras and smartphones, according to descriptions of the program by recent Israeli soldiers.” Surveillance state.
What Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari Get Wrong About History [nyt] – “What we need today is another urban revolution to create more just and sustainable ways of living. The technology to support less centralized and greener urban environments — appropriate to modern demographic realities — already exists. Predecessors to our modern cities include not just the proto-megalopolis, but also the proto-garden-city, the proto-superblock, and a cornucopia of other urban forms, waiting for us to reclaim them. In the face of inequality and climate catastrophe, they offer the only viable future for the world’s cities, and so for our planet. All we are lacking now is the political imagination to make it happen. But as history teaches us, the brave new world we seek to create has existed before, and could exist again.” By one of the authors of one of my favorite books of the year, the dawn of everything.
Whose body, whose choice? | Laurie Penny [substack] – “Somehow, we have begun to define ‘freedom’ as ‘never having to put yourself out for other people’. That’s a sad, narrow vision of liberty. It was only ever designed for wealthy white men – and if the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that for some people to enjoy that shabby, self-dealing sort of autonomy, other people have to pay. If we plan to survive the century, we might do well to expand our definition of what freedom means, and whose freedom matters.” Penny argues a bit too authoritarian for my choice, but there is some great thinking as usual.
[Articles German/French]
Wie häufig ist Long Covid bei Impfdurchbrüchen? [spektrum] – “Impfstoffe verringern das Risiko, an Covid-19 zu erkranken, und damit auch das von Long Covid. Aber nur manche Studien sehen einen Vorteil für Geimpfte, die trotzdem erkranken.” We told you so.
Hinnehmen oder durchdrehen? – Linke Konfusion in der Spätpandemie [ajour] – “Viele Befürworter:innen verkaufen das Covid-Zertifikat als Allheilmittel, welche die Rückkehr zur Normalität ermögliche. Diese Position ist gefährlich und befördert – wie man aktuell vor allem in der sozialdemokratischen Twitteria beobachten kann – autoritäre Reflexe. Da werden ausschliesslich die dummen Impfverweigerer und Zertifikatsgegnerinnen für das Fortdauern der Pandemie verantwortlich gemacht und auch mal darüber sinniert, ob Ungeimpfte noch Anspruch auf ein Intensivbett haben sollten.” Don’t agree with everything in this text, but this part is pretty good.
Christian Drosten: “Ich hoffe, dass man nicht wieder Schulen schließt” [zeit online] – “Es gibt im Moment ein Narrativ, das ich für vollkommen falsch halte: die Pandemie der Ungeimpften. Wir haben keine Pandemie der Ungeimpften, wir haben eine Pandemie. Und wir haben Menschen, die noch sehr gefährdet sind, die älteren Ungeimpften. Bei den über 60-Jährigen haben wir nur eine Impfquote von 86 Prozent vollständig Geimpfter, das ist irrsinnig, das ist wirklich gefährlich.” Stupid title, great interview.
[Older articles, still great]
R.I.P.
Astro (UB40, red red wine)
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Header Photo: Just one of the fucking sunsets around here.