[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
how to find a street in 2 minutes
Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution – A Radical Audiobook
Col de la Loze (Méribel) – Final climb of Stage 17 of the 2023 Tour de France.
[Music]
Cypress Hill: Tiny Desk Concert
[Podcasts]
#19 Mehr als Fußball [becker & pfeiffer] – “Große Ereignisse werfen ihre Schatten voraus und das gilt in dieser Woche gleich mehrfach: Die WM in Australien und Neuseeland rückt näher – selbiges gilt für Annikas große Reise. Wir reden darüber, mit welchen Themen vor allem Spielerinnen in verschiedenen Verbänden im Vorfeld des Turniers umgehen müssen und träumen von einer Welt, in der Frauen ihrem Sport nachgehen können, ohne so viele Kämpfe rundherum auszufechten.” In German. Talks about the problems with sexual abuse, power and money issues in the teams playing the women world cup.
Why AI is a Threat to Artists w/ Molly Crabapple [tech won’t save us] – “Paris Marx is joined by Molly Crabapple to discuss why AI image generation tools are a threat to illustrators and why we need to refuse the idea that Silicon Valley’s visions of technology are inevitable.” Molly may herself be in a privileged situation receiving royalties and such. But she sees the problem.
RFK Jr. and The Rise of the Anti-Vaxx Movement [maintenance phase] – “A political candidate has some questions and we have some extremely obvious answers.” Michael Hobbes making mincemeat of RFK Jr.
Health Communism with Beatrice Adler-Bolton [upstream] – “When we think of health under capitalism, it’s easy to go straight to the fight for universal healthcare, and understandably — that battle is one of the most contentious and important in the ongoing class war between the mass of people and those who rule us, the capitalist class.” Beatrice with a more meta view on disability justice and health communism. As usual in the upstream pod the questions often are an embarrassment.
Stream 169, Cindy Milstein, Try Anarchism [.soundcloud.] – “Try Anarchism for Life revolves around a thought experiment: What are some of the many beautiful dimensions of anarchism? In reply, it blends gorgeous circle A drawings by twenty-six artists with Milstein’s words, forming picture-prose that are at once inviting and playful, poignant and dreamy. The pieces encourage us to notice and expand on liberatory practices, especially in a time when so much feels impossible. In depicting how anarchism gifts us lives worth living, this book warms ailing hearts and offers tender succor.” I just love how Cindy thinks and sees connections.
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: July 27, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: July 20, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: July 13, 2023
Pandemic Roundup: July 06, 2023
Another huge thank you for keep doing these roundups, Violet!!!!!1!!
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
What are disability doulas? People provide support through isolating life transitions [19news] – “The community care practice, pioneered by queer women of color, reorients newly disabled people to a different life – a necessity that has grown during the pandemic era.” Doula as a word has a horrible origin, but this is a beautiful re-framing.
‘No one is talking about it’: the cruelty of long Covid in the global south [the guardian] – “As research focuses on richer parts of world, people in less developed countries suffer from lack of awareness and support” Some of us who suffer from LC understood right away that its biggest impact will be in the global south.
“Don’t Be a Buzzkill”: There’s Nothing Normal About What’s Going On | Jessica Wildfire [substack] – “I know it sounds weird to say don’t take it personally, but it’s kind of true. The anger directed at the Covid and climate cautious belies a deep sense of anguish and a larger refusal to acknowledge reality. You don’t have to accept it or even approve of it, but it helps to understand the psychology behind it. You’re not crazy. These days, everyone leverages their own version of normal to push their own agenda. The right has made gaslighting a common strategy against their opponents. Sadly, the left has adopted it.” How the left could have adopted this gaslighting, i will never ever understand. This is wrong on every possible level. From the right-wingers, the centrists, even the moderate left, i expect nothing else. But the radical left uses terms like “mutual aid” and “communal care”, they claim to be inclusive, profess to want to fight ableism. Yet they settled for convenience. When it most counted they went for you-do-you, and as such aping the states propaganda.
COVID Hasn’t Disappeared — But Empathy, Care and Solidarity Have [truthout] – “When one asks for the minimum protections, even the most sensible individuals shrug and say, “but for how long?” Those who ask, those who mask, are made to feel that we are demanding impossible things. COVID has yielded the most stunningly pervasive gaslighting phenomenon in recent history. Willing and eager governments worldwide are abandoning citizens to a debilitating disease by one simple trick: saying it no longer exists.” This article made me cry so much.
[Articles English]
Mastodon is easy and fun except when it isn’t – “I posted a question on Bluesky (link requires a login until the site comes out of closed beta) for people who had tried/used Mastodon and bounced off, asking what had led them to slow down or leave.” Mastodon can be very frustrating, but it still is the best option out there.
Fatigue Can Shatter a Person [atlantic] – “our concept of [fatigue] has been impoverished by centuries of reductionism. As the study of medicine slowly fractured into anatomical specialties, it lost an overarching sense of the systems that contribute to human energy, or its absence. The concept of energy was (and still is) central to animistic philosophies, and though once core to the Western world, too, it is now culturally associated with quackery and pseudoscience.” At least Ed Yong is not forgetting us.
Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape During the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back [open culture] – “Ten years and racks and racks of homemade cassette dubs on my shelves later, music seemed to be doing very well. (Later, by going digital, the music industry killed itself, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it.)” How well i remember this. And how often history is repeating.
I’m a Luddite (and So Can You!) [the nib] – “What the Luddites can teach us about resisting an automated future.” Luddite. But not used as a slur.
The diversity of intimacy – in pictures [the guardian] – “The theme of intimacy produced finalists with a fresh approach to a much-photographed portrait genre, with evident trust between photographers and subjects” Just a lovely, inclusive gallery.
‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come [the guardian] – “[Hansen] said the record heatwaves that have roiled the US, Europe, China and elsewhere in recent weeks have heightened “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response”. “It means we are damned fools,” Hansen said of humanity’s ponderous response to the climate crisis. “We have to taste it to believe it.”” Tell us Hansen. Again. Still. Tsk.
[Let Them Eat Plague] – “The myth that the immune system is like a muscle that needs to be used to stay in shape is as popular as ever, while the complete opposite is true: there is no material benefit to any amount of viral infections, and the immune system stays healthier for longer the less it is engaged. Playing in the dirt as kids was for exposure to probiotics, not viruses. SARS-CoV-2 in particular has been confirmed to cause lasting immune dysfunction in 10-30% of people who become infected — odds that do not improve with reinfection. According to Japanese data, the rate of reinfection since Omicron has become about 3 times a year.” Avoid getting infected. Please.
Let the Platforms Burn. | Cory Doctorow [.medium.] – “The problem with, say, Meta, is only partially that Mark Zuckerberg is personally monumentally unsuited to serving as the unelected, unaccountable permanent social media czar for three billion people. The real problem is that no one should have that job. That job shouldn’t exist. We don’t need to find a better Mark Zuckerberg. We need to abolish Mark Zuckerberg.” Oh we do need to abolish these assholes. Fast.
Scientists Are Decoding Long Covid Immunology [substack] – “One in ten people, according to this review, who get Covid-19 go on to develop Long Covid, a chronic illness. (Other studies put the number at anywhere from 2 in 10 to 7 in 10.) As with Covid-19, Long Covid can be mild or severe and everything in between. Symptoms can be numerous and changing, and might occur anywhere in the body.” A good summary of the paper mentioned bellow.
What is Anaculture? [nonlogs] – “The politicians will not listen to out demands, and this is what permaculture needs to learn from anarchism. That demands don’t work, and this is not a dialogue. This is a war, and there is no neutral position on this battlefield. Being non-capitalist is not enough, we need to become anti-capitalists. Seizing state authority is not enough, we need to become anti-authoritarians. If permaculture is to survive it must be willing to critique and change itself.” I am all for a permaculture with radical politics. But maybe the scene is too fraught with esoteric bs by now.
They’re Cooking The Covid Books | Jessica Wildfire [substack] – “The pandemic isn’t really over, so we shouldn’t be using data from the last two years as a new normal. It’s inaccurate. It’s misleading. It’s immoral. It’s dangerous. This deception matters especially now, given suppressed reports of a possible new variant in Japan and rising cases in the U.S. As Even Blake at WSWS warns, the world is basically flying blind into a new Covid surge. Our decider class has dismantled every tool we had to track and contain the virus.” Thanks for checking their math. Seems like the NYT has committed math murder.
“Climate Optimism” Is Dangerous and Irrational [current affairs] – “Overly-confident math models based on unrealistic assumptions are used to avoid crisis-consistent climate policies and to protect global elite privilege, while abandoning our duties to the planet’s most vulnerable.” More acrobatics with math and its implications.
The Overlooked Student Protest That Changed College Admissions [hyperallergic] – “The Five Demands, now playing in New York, feels more pressing than ever in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action.” A much too often ignored part of history.
We Cannot Trust Their Hands Upon the World | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “Maybe someday soon old accounts will get settled, and owning will no longer be an accepted mode of existence, and people like that won’t be around anymore. Maybe we’ll have to keep working and paying until the end of our days, just like all the generations before us going back to the edge of memory. Either way, we can choose to remember. We know who we are.” If it’s up to me, old accounts will get settled.
Not all therapy is a force for good. I give you exhibit A: the actor Jonah Hill [the guardian] – “We are happy to accept that this interaction – a conversation between therapist and client – is capable of changing our psychology in positive ways, even “transforming lives”. But we don’t extend the logic. If therapy is so powerful, isn’t there a risk it can harm us too?” The therapy shuffle.
What Would a Truly Critical Picasso Exhibition Look Like? [hyperallergic] – “A 21st-century institution cannot center Picasso’s legacy without also foregrounding the global forms, artists, and practices that remain omitted from the Euro-American canon of Cubist and Abstract art. To do so is simply irresponsible.” Critical looks at artists are fine, but actually try to look critically.
June 2023 Global Climate Report [ncei] – “June 2023 set a record as the warmest June for the globe in NOAA’s 174-year record. The June global surface temperature was 1.05°C (1.89°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F). This marked the first time a June temperature exceeded 1°C above the long-term average. The Junes of 2015–2023 rank among the ten warmest Junes on record. June 2023 marked the 47th consecutive June and the 532nd consecutive month with global temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th-century average.” Bamm. And El Nino is only just starting.
The immunology of long COVID [nature] – “Meanwhile, people with long COVID feel neglected and are impatient to see these medical research findings translated into therapeutic trials. In a period where all but the most severe acute infections go largely unreported, the potential for trials into the mitigating effects of antiviral or other treatments in long COVID in this phase appears limited, such that most attention is focused on treatment of the persistent phase.” Lots of progress in research. The main problem: It is not reaching the GP’s.
Why are so many Californians homeless? [pluralistic] – “So how did they end up homeless? It’s depressingly easy. It starts with getting evicted. For leaseholders in the survey, the median amount of notice they had that they would lose their homes is ten days. For non-leaseholders, the median amount of notice was less than one day.” House them. WTF. Housing is a human right.
These 4 Books Inspired Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ [nofilmschool] – “The director took to Instagram to share the four books “that strongly have influenced [Megalopolis]” and his view of the “society we live in.” Let’s take a look at them below.” Curious to watch this movie. At least the sources that inspired it are pretty great.
‘Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis [the guardian] – “Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups – and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating.” Raise your hand if you are surprised.
Capitalism is the Tumor, Solidarity Is Our Medicine [igd] – “At the end of April I had a seizure and after some scans they found a brain tumor. At the end of June I had an operation in which they took out half the tumor and confirmed the diagnosis, glioma, which is technically fatal and generally incurable, but it is treatable. And as far as glioma goes, it doesn’t seem to be growing very fast and has a relatively contained structure, which will make treatment easier.” Fucking hell. Support Peter please, he needs our financial support.
Does the microbiome hold the key to chronic fatigue syndrome? [the guardian] – “Often dismissed by the medical establishment, people with complex illnesses such as ME and long Covid are taking the hunt for treatments into their own hands” I think it does hold the key. Get Kefir grains, make your own. Very helpful here.
Don’t Believe the Hype About Decolonizing Dutch Museums [hyperallergic] – “Leading art institutions claim to champion decolonization, but that’s a red herring. They display a glaring absence of curatorial work that aims to lift the veil of hypocrisy, instead continuing to conceal the colonial violence committed by the Dutch state and private sector.” Don’t believe the hype it’s a sequel.
Donna Summer zoetrope [dj food] – “It’s not every day that you get a text message saying that ‘Donna Summer‘s estate has approved your design’ but that’s what happened a few months back after I designed a zoetrope for the reissue of her ‘Another Place And Time’ album.” Was tempted to order this.
Everest Pipkin on the Utopian Potential of Gardens [hyperallergic] – “Much of my current work has to do with the garden as a site of utopian thinking (as well as dystopian process). I’m interested in gardens as a place of pleasure, even hedonistic pleasure, of consumption that is not inherently extractive, of a give and take of labor and fruiting; in gardens as a site for humans to plant and other non-human interactions; in the construction of community that is trans-human. A site that at its core demands work and gives in return.” Gardens as temples of ecstatic pleasure.
Critics question the backstory of one of Germany’s leading counter-extremists [hyphen] – “Known for his strident positions against political Islam, Ahmad Mansour is a prominent voice in a national movement against antisemitism — but what is his real story?” Context for english-speakers on a highly controversial German public figure.
Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! [substack] – “A ‘reprint’ of David Graeber’s famous essay on anarchism.” Graebers great essay in a beautiful layout.
“Crisis of their Own Legitimacy”: Peter Gelderloos and Tom Nomad on the Recent Trump Indictment [igd] – “This reactionary version of whiteness has always existed alongside a progressive version of whiteness, and both have been strategically necessary for the global implantation of capitalism. But the reactionary, paranoid whiteness has been most effective at motivating settlers to brutalize and conquer new territory, motivating elements of the lower and middle classes to purge society of revolutionary threats, and motivating the proles to go to war against some external enemy. In the current context, however, it only destabilizes the institutions of government while creating an echo chamber that makes it exceedingly difficult for Republicans to change strategy, because currently, the whole map has been conquered, and revolutionary threats are so incipient and lacking in consciousness or historical memory that the Democratic strategy of co-opting them is far more effective.” Peter wrote this shortly before he went into surgery.
[Articles German/French]
Die gewaltvollen Facetten rechten Frauenhasses [antifa infoblatt] – “Rechte Ideologie legitimiert Gewalt und Frauenhass. Trotzdem werden beide Phänomene nicht so konsequent zusammengedacht, wie es angebracht wäre. Misogyne Gewalt von Tätern aus der Neonazi-Szene unterscheiden sich zudem in Bezug auf die Motivlage. Vermeintliche Dominanz- und Besitzansprüche führen indessen zu Gewaltexzessen und Femiziden.” The image they used is from a paste in Bern.
“Sink the rich”: Orcas gegen Yachten [das lamm] – “Vor der Küste Spaniens stoppen und beschädigen Orcas Luxusyachten. Das ist für sie wohl nur ein Spiel, kein Protest. Trotzdem sollte uns der vermeintliche Widerstand der Tiere zu denken geben” Team Orca. Sink the rich is a great slogan.
Pandemie: Umgang mit Covid: »Ich bin krass enttäuscht« [nd-aktuell.de]– “Zu Beginn der Pandemie war gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt spürbar, es entstanden auch Hoffnungen auf ein Umdenken im Hinblick auf andere Krisen. Wo stehen wir heute? Man muss klar sagen, dass sich diese Hoffnungen in keinster Weise bewahrheitet haben. Heute werde ich angefeindet und ausgelacht, belächelt oder beschimpft, wenn ich eine Maske trage. Auf sozialer Ebene ist die Gesellschaft richtig krass kaputt.” I think my trust in doctors, medicine and politics is irreparably broken.
Manifest: Mit Hegel gegen die Familie [woz] – “Die Familie ist nicht einfach ein sozialer Ort, sondern eine Maschine zur Reproduktion des Vermögens. Hier werden Gene, Bildungskompetenzen und ökonomischer Reichtum weitergegeben und Kinder als der formbare Besitz ihrer Erzeuger:innen behandelt. Diese Schranken gilt es einzureissen. Fürsorge ohne Verwandtschaft, Versorgung ohne Privateigentum – das sind die Forderungen von Lewis, die sich auch im Untertitel des Buchs niederschlagen: «Wie wir Care-Arbeit und Verwandtschaft neu erfinden».” Reading her book next. My partner loved it.
«Wer dem KI-Hype verfällt, stärkt die Macht der Big-Tech-Chefs» [republik] – “Künstliche Intelligenz werde massiv überhöht, sagt Signal-Präsidentin Meredith Whittaker. Ein Gespräch über die Agenda der Silicon-Valley-Konzerne und die gefährlichen Pläne der EU.” AI bubble hype bullshit eww fuck off.
Entre la vie et la mort : bilan d’étape [lundi.am] – “La Macronie et les partis qui aspirent à la remplacer sont au service d’un ordre social qui ne cesse de déplacer le curseur vers la mort des libertés et de l’intelligence, la mort des jeunes dans les rues des quartiers pauvres, et des vieux dans les Ehpad paupérisés, la mort de l’eau, de l’air, des insectes et des oiseaux. Entre la vie et la mort : cette expression n’a jamais été aussi juste pour décrire le choix politique auquel l’humanité va être toujours plus confrontée.” The french riots in context.
[Older articles, still great]
Beware: we ignore Robert F Kennedy Jr’s candidacy at our peril | Naomi Klein [the guardian] – “Given the strengths that Kennedy possesses as a candidate, we should expect him to continue to build momentum. Ignoring him is not an option.” RFK jr. needs to be cancelled for real.
‘The poisons are already in here with us:’ framing for ecological revolutions from below | Peter Gelderloos [tandfonline] – “Personally, I think we need to do a lot better with mental health stuff. It’s been hard these last years. You know, so much of the time just wanting to commit suicide and not really being able to talk about that and knowing that a lot of other people have that [feeling] too. And it is actually a pretty healthy, normal response. But we live in a society in which it’s very rewarded to be able to have no emotional complexity and just adapt to monstrosity. And I don’t think that that’s a value that we should really celebrate” A transcript from a talk by Peter Gelderloos in Helsinki before his brain tumor was discovered. Book tour for The Solutions are already here.
What Is It Like to Be a Man? [the hedgehog review] – “As real as I know male privilege to be—and if I forget it for a moment, I have the newspapers to remind me—it is surreal to find maleness, an aspect of my life that I associate mainly with chosen discomfort, equated now, by so many people, with bovine self-complacency.” This is quite a decent article on being a man in a fucked up, patriarchal world.
The Case Against Coddling Anti-Maskers [eugenics ender squad] – “The SARS-COVID genocide is an expansion of eugenics as a social war against disabled people. This period of massacre have its roots in racialized ableist violence, in particular against disabled Black people and disabled Indigenous people, and the brutality has (asymmetrically) expanded to all types of disabled people in the recent years.” And there are other great zines looking at the role of racialized capitalism in the pandemic
R.I.P.
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Header Photo: An image of herbs on a table, basil, oregano, marjoram and verveine