[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
Cat Pen Holder Dances Ievan Polkka
Berkeley professor explains gender theory | Judith Butler
“Suisse?” – Est-ce que les Suisses sont forts à la guerre ?
How to Speak with Different American Accents
[Music]
El Michels Affair & Black Thought – Glorious Game
G.G. Quartet “Go Where i send thee” (DF Tram’s heavenly shuffle)
[Podcasts]
AI Hype Machine w/ Meredith Whittaker, Ed Ongweso, and Sarah West [thedig] – “Featuring Meredith Whittaker, Edward Ongweso Jr., and Sarah Myers West on the mundane dystopia concealed beneath the AI hype machine.”
naiv [anarchie & cello] – “Wir werden oft als naiv bezeichnet. Warum das eine Herrschaftslüge und Diffamierungstakik des politischen Feinds ist, erfahrt ihr in dieser Folge.” Und auch Marxist·inn·en sind oft extrem anti-Utopie, dabei braucht es die so stark wie nie.
Hannah Davis: A 360° on Long Covid | Eric Topol [substack] – “Our in-depth conversation, updating our recent review paper” I don’t always agree with Topol, but at least he still seems to care.
No More Police w/ Andrea Ritchie (06/01/23) | Death Panel [.substack.] – “Bea speaks with Andrea Ritchie about the movement to defund and abolish policing, how police budgets sap resources from state and local governments, and how to understand abolition as a core principle that advances the goals of so many other movements.”
Stream Inventing Sexuality | Ben Miller & Amardeep Singh Dhillon [.soundcloud.] – “In this fourth episode of the newly relaunched Verso Podcast, Ben Miller and Amardeep Singh Dhillon join Eleanor Penny for a deep dive on the historical construction and ordering of sexualities into the categories we are familiar with today.”
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: June 29, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: June 22, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: June 15, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: June 8, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: June 1, 2023
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
Anarchy2023 – Renversé – “A propos des rencontres internationales anti-autoritaires 2023 à St-Imier et des tendances libertariennes, validistes, technophiles, réactionnaires, citoyennistes, new age, et effondrementalistes” I have to admit, even i was shocked to read this text. Even despite the nightmare i went through with the organisation team of the RIA, it was a tough read. Sounds like some libertarians are trying to hijack the gathering. The English translation was done by me: here. Feedback welcome, if you find mistakes.
Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “It’s not too late, though. To recover our memory of generations of struggle. To learn from our recent setbacks. To discover ways to help as many of us as possible to survive the inferno that capitalism has become. The State is a machine for controlling and exploiting a society. It has no other function, any more than a car can grow strawberries or make milkshakes.” Agreed, the state can’t ever be the solution.
Pandemic Praxis [scrappy capy distro] – “This zine reflects on the events of the last three years of the pandemic, with a focus on Berlin, and discusses how anarchists have handled the pandmeic and how it can inform us about future crises.” This was published in march. It is a must read though, finally an in-depth examination of the anarchists dismal response (by and large) to the pandemic.
Autoritäre Revolte – Rammstein, Rock und Frauenhass [54books] – “Jetzt haben diese Männer konkrete Feindbilder, bei denen sie glauben, ihre berechtigte Wut herauszulassen und ihr Idol verteidigen zu können. Primär zeigen sie nur auf, was für stumpfe Menschen sie sind, unfähig, sich einer simplen Erkenntnis zu stellen: Lindemann ist kein Genie, Rammstein machen keine subversive Kunst, sie sind bräsige Spießer und ihre Rebellion nichts anderes als infantiler Trotz, ausgetragen auf den Schultern von Frauen.” An in depth look at the cult of the genius (Geniekult).
[Articles English]
There Is Always An Alternative | Cory Doctorow [.medium.] – “The human condition is…not good. We’re in the polycrisis, a widening gyre of climate emergency, inequality, infrastructure neglect, rising authoritarianism and zoonotic plagues.” This over-caffeinated dude nails it.
Introducing Murray Bookchin, the Extraordinary Originator of ‘Social Ecology’ [current affairs] – “Biographer Janet Biehl explains why the late thinker’s decentralized, anti-capitalist, ecological vision remains so important today.” A good primer.
Survival of The Richest? Not So Much, It Turns Out | Jessica Wildfire [substack] – “As the media sits around and wonders why there’s a mental health crisis, we live through a tragi-comedy where the wealthy actively shirk their responsibilities in pursuit of cheap thrills. They say things like “safety is waste,” and promote themselves as misunderstood geniuses. When their brilliant inventions fail, the first thing they do is lean on the government. Recipients of endless bailouts and rescue plans at the expense of taxpayers, these jerks continually show us they can’t even take care of themselves. How are they qualified to lead us?” Eat the rich.
The Pandemic As Spectacle [science-based medicine] – “Though calls for “debates” are made by unserious people, unserious people can do serious damage when they are willing to spread disinformation about vaccines, all because a doctor with principles isn’t willing to play his part in their absurd theater.” Why are the Greater Barrington doctors still practicing?
There’s a Name for What You’re Feeling. It’s Called Moral Injury. | Jessica Wildfire [substack] – “Every day, some sham doctor or corporate flunky writes a column or goes on a podcast show to bash us. They say we’re undermining the economy. They say we’re keeping everyone from making money. They call us mentally ill. Doctors and public health officials tell our loved ones to accept the likelihood of our preventable deaths. If something bad happens to us, it’s our fault.” This is the “genius” of organized abandonment. We are the ones who are getting abandoned, yet somehow this gets turned and it’s all our fault.” I am hurting.
“We Are Not Martyrs” [crimethinc] – “A Message from Serge, Who Survived Attempted Murder at the Hands of French Police” Brave defiance, France has a huge police problem.
Inside the AI Factory: the humans that make tech seem human [the verge] – “As the technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging — and not going anywhere.” AI means someone else does the dirty work.
RFK Jr. Touts Transsexual Frog Conspiracy on Peterson Podcast [assigned] – “Of course, none of this logic should be expected to help dissuade people like Kennedy Jr. who believe that atrazine or other chemicals cause trans identity, because the core belief, that masculinity is under threat by nebulous forces, is not negotioable. Conspiracy theorists start there and proceed by attaching whatever facts or ideas seem to superficially support their idea of masculinity under threat, and no amount of data is likely to have any influence.” Someone listened to Petersons podcast so we didn’t have to.
Relax, Nobody’s Panicking: The Psychology of Reactance | Jessica Wildfire [substack] – “If you try to talk about pandemics or climate change with the gravity they deserve, someone always tells you to calm down. They don’t like your tone. You’re being too honest. When new threats surface, they want you to wait until everyone’s absolutely positive it’s serious. They always forget that by the time everyone’s positive, it’s usually too late. People are already dying.” My favorite writer in these times. Yes, i have said it before.
Danielle Smith’s alternative health proclamations are key to her populist messaging [the globe and mail] – “It only makes sense that right-leaning populists in both the U.S. and Canada get a lot of mileage out of rising health care anxieties. Decades of union-busting, the erosion of social programs, the rise of exhausting gig work, thumb-twiddling while carbon warms the oceans, plus the fragmentation of online life: All of these depress institutional trust and coalition-building. Concurrently, the U.S. alternative health scene, buoyed by rising tides of deregulation, has grown from co-operatively-run health food stores in the 1970s and living-room spirit-channelling sessions in the 1980s to what is now a US$32-billion-a-year industry in the United States.” One dude of the Conspirituality podcast with a poignant analyses on the rise of right-wing populism.
May 2023 Global Climate Report [ncei] – “May 2023 was the third-warmest May for the globe in NOAA’s 174-year record. The May global surface temperature was 0.97°C (1.75°F) above the 20th-century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F). The past nine Mays have ranked among the 10 warmest on record. May 2023 marked the 47th consecutive May and the 531st consecutive month with global temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.” Fuck.
Learning from David Graeber [red pepper] – “We ask a number of activists and academics to tell us what David Graeber’s work meant to them and the salient message it still carries today” Still so sad he died.
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet | Jessica Wildfire [substack] – “Outbreaks of diseases will become so normal that the government stops tracking or reporting them. You’ll be on your own. For those of us who pay attention, it will just be normal to put on a mask when you leave the house and minimize your contact with strangers. Most of us have already realized we’ll probably never eat inside a restaurant again. We’ll never go to the movies again. We’ll never go to a concert again. We’ll never go to a graduation ceremony again.” Sadly, this is what i believe as well.
Gender Subversion Today: A Reprint and a Remix of Our Classic Poster [crimethinc] – “We’ve reprinted our classic gender subversion poster, “For Every Girl/For Every Boy.” To mark the occasion, we’ve also printed a new poster in homage to the original, celebrating collective resistance to the forms of gender fascism threatening us today.” #transrights poster.
First Nations Are on the Front Lines of Canada’s Climate-Fueled Wildfires [truthout] – “There are 17 First Nations that are currently affected by wildfire events and there are 13 First Nations that are evacuated. More than 6,500 people remain evacuated,” said Minister of Indigenous Services Canada Patty Hadju. “Some communities are evacuating as a result of the incredible health risks to people that are already vulnerable and living with a number of health conditions. Chiefs like Chief (Billy-Jo) Tuccaro of Mikisew First Nations spoke about critical infrastructure that they’re losing, including hunting cabins on the land, critical to communities livelihood and self determination in terms of food security.” This aspect of the wildfires needs much more media attention.
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker: ‘These are the people who could actually pause AI if they wanted to’ [the guardian] – “These algorithms are trained on data that reflects not the world, but the internet – which is worse, arguably. That is going to encode the historical and present-day histories of marginalisation, inequality etc. There isn’t a way to get out of that and then be like, “This is a pristine, unbiased algorithm,” because data is authored by people. It’s always going to be a recycling of the past and then spitting that out, projecting that on to the present.” I loved her talk at re:publica, sadly, at least last time i checked, they had uploaded only the synchronized version up.
A shocking number of birds are in trouble [ars technica] – “We know better than ever how to help endangered birds, with notable conservation successes.” ;(
A Virulent Antisemitism: An Interview with Dr. Peter Hotez [momentmag] – “Antisemitism was always part of the far right, and here it manifested in two forms: One, there were direct antisemitic threats against Jewish doctors and Jewish scientists. More commonly, however, anti-vaxxers were invoking Nazi-era imagery and statements…kind of to mess with your head. These people would not only compare vaccines to the Holocaust but would claim that vaccines were a violation of agreements made at Nuremberg, along with requests to see doctors hanged or executed after Nuremberg-style trials. They would compare people like myself or Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele.” Well, even some “anarchists” believe this.
To Smash the Patriarchy, We Need to Get Specific About What It Means [jacobin] – “Of course, patriarchy works in tandem with capitalism as a tool for embedding structural forms of discrimination in our economies and societies, but if we are serious about challenging both systems, it is essential that we begin to target the underlying practices that uphold them both. Both patrilineality and patrilocality allow the nuclear family to become the core institution in capitalist societies that facilitates the intergenerational transfer of wealth and privilege.” Abolish the nuclear family.
The Strange World Of… Crass Records [quietus] – “Anarcho punk chronicler and compiler Chris Low talks to members of Chumbawamba and Flux Of Pink Indians, plus Annie Anxiety and many others to tell the story of one of Europe’s most intransigent and independent labels” Anarcho punk is my jam.
Revolutionary Trans Politics and the Three Way Fight: An Interview with Rowan [igd] – “Our task is to build a radical pole that fights for trans liberation against fascism and capitalism. Let’s think about this as being a politics of revolutionary trans leftism, though it will certainly not include all transgender people and certainly not all leftists. We need to build a politics and practice that doesn’t seek assimilation into this society, but seeks the destruction of patriarchy and heterosexism.” The struggle around transrights remains more crucial than ever.
The Medicare Part D Catch-22: How the U.S. Social Safety Net Fails People with Rare Diseases | Beatrice Adler-Bolton [substack] – “Despite the initial promise of providing drug coverage for elderly and disabled Americans, Medicare Part D was doomed to fail to meet the need of beneficiaries due to several painfully obvious factors. Firstly, the limitations of a market-based for-profit healthcare system inherently prioritize the interests of insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations over those of patients. Secondly, the ideological insistence on market “solutions” for a massive social problem failed to recognize that healthcare is not a commodity that can be bought and sold like any other product. Thirdly, the arbitrary budgetary constraints placed on Medicare Part D meant that cost-saving measures were prioritized over patient care. Finally, the failure of managed care in rural America meant that many patients in these areas were left without access to necessary medications. These factors all contributed to a system that has had severe consequences for those who rely on it for their prescription healthcare needs.” Full solidarity.
Psychedelic-inspired drugs could relieve depression without causing hallucinations [science] – “researchers think they may be able to take hallucinations out of the equation. LSD and psilocin—the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms—can produce an antidepressant response in mice through a molecular mechanism that is completely separate from the one responsible for hallucinogenic effects” Would appreciate this, because for me the come-down is too damn rough.
The Process of Leaving Jordan Peterson Behind [current affairs] – “How one Peterson fan lost his faith, and what lessons we can learn about drawing people away from right-wing ideology.” Some of this is bothsidesy, but still an interesting read, how one guy got away.
Under the Waves | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “Also, jeepers, I’m starting to understand more of what our chronically disabled comrades have been shouting from the rooftops for a long time, that it’s not just the State that requires us to be poor to receive assistance. I’m already dialoguing with an expectation that I should be experiencing this thing from a place of scarcity. This expectation is not coming directly from any of my own friends or comrades fortunately, but still a voice of society creeps through every day and insinuates that just because I’m on the dying/surviving continuum in a new way—a way that is legitimized with attention, unlike the mental health difficulties that almost proved fatal to me several times but is a part of the survival continuum aggressively ignored by our society—I should be preparing for a life of less, I should be tightening my belt, I should not be thinking about abundance and joy.
Fuck. That. Noise.” I so love Peters writing. Even travelling is anarchistic praxis.
[Articles German/French]
Die Hochburg des Anarchismus – Anarchistische Geschichte [megafon] – “Vor über 150 Jahren fand in Saint-Imier das erste Internationale anarchistische Treffen statt. Dieses Spektakel soll sich diesen Sommer, zwei Jahrhunderte später, wiederholen. Was genau spielte sich im Jahr 1872 in dieser kleinen Stadt ab und was ist die Geschichte hinter diesem Anlass?” Yes, let’s see how it goes 150+1 years on.
Big Tech: Zoff um die Zukunft des Fediverse [netzpolitik] – “Ausgerechnet der Meta-Konzern will in die Welt der offenen und dezentralen sozialen Netze einsteigen. Daran entzündet sich nun ein heftiger Streit im Fediverse. Sollte man sich gegen einen gefährlichen Übernahmeversuch abschotten – oder das als Chance begreifen, um kräftig zu wachsen?” Keep Meta out of Fedi.
Vanessa E. Thompson: «Gewalt ist der normale Modus der Polizei» [woz] – “Seit es sie gibt, ist die Polizei Garantin bestehender Macht- und Besitzverhältnisse. Lässt sich die Institution überhaupt reformieren? Sozialwissenschaftlerin Vanessa E. Thompson über die Ursprünge des «Polizierens» und überfällige Alternativen.” Abolish the police.
Boxer, Wodka, Genie – Die Auswüchse des Kunstgeredes [54books] – “Genies sind keine natürliche Erscheinung, Genies werden gemacht. Die Vorstellung, dass überragende Talente existieren, vor allem in der Kunst, die ihr Talent allerdings durch Außenseitertum und fragwürdiges Verhalten bezahlen, ist so alt wie die Moderne, also ziemlich alt. Wo der Geniekult in der Gegenwart weiter existiert, ist er deswegen meistens ein Klischee. Das hält die Medien aber nicht davon ab, weiter fleißig mit den überkommenen Strategien Genies zu produzieren.” Another nice take on the cult of the genius.
Polizeigewalt in Basel: Tatort Tesla [woz] – “Es sind Schilderungen brachialer Gewalt: In Basel berichten mehrere migrantische Menschen, wie sie jüngst von Polizisten malträtiert worden sind. Die Übergriffe sind Teil eines grösseren Problems.” Police breeds systemic violence.
Antimilitaristisches Manifest [gsoa] – “Weltweit treiben Regierungen als Antwort auf die geopolitische Lage die Militarisierung und Aufrüstung voran. Die GSoA ist überzeugt, dass blinde Aufrüstung keine Lösungen für die aktuellen Herausforderungen bieten kann. Um eine nachhaltige Friedensperspektive zu erreichen, brauchen wir eine breite demokratische Diskussion über ein umfassendes Sicherheitskonzept, das auf sozialer und ökologischer Sicherheit sowie einem starken Gesundheitssystem basiert.” Yes.
[Older articles, still great]
The Weaponisation of Labour Antisemitism | David Graeber
Good Crip/Bad Crip! [mssinenomineblog] – “Once freed from servitude to ableism I left its darkness and every pore in my body sucked in the sunshine of support that this community shines free of charge on all who step into it.” Badmeaninggood.
Reappropriate the Imagination! [outside the circle] – “The creative act–the arduous task of seeing something other than the space of capitalism, statism, the gender binary, racism, and other rooms without a view–is the hope we can offer to the world. Such aesthetic expressions must also aim to denaturalize the present, though. And this dual “gesturing at and beyond” will only be possible if we continually interrogate this historical moment, and whether our artworks are working against the grain within that context.” She asked if someone wants to illustrate her great text from 2012.
R.I.P.
Unabomber [current affairs] Not sure if r.i.p is appropriate here, but yeh, he died.
Teresa Taylor, Butthole Surfers [quietus]
Daniel Ellsberg [eff]
Cormac McCarthy[open culture]
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Header Photo: Who we were facing during the Rammstein Protest at the Wankdorf in Bern