[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
Palestinian Paints Murals on Rubble Amid War on Gaza – “Artist Amal Abu Al-Sabah, 26, paints on houses destroyed by Israel during their war on Gaza.”
The World’s Most Relaxed Rodents – Capybaras – – “The largest rodent in the world is a Capybara – and they are VERY cute. Native to South America, these semi-aquatic gentle giants are known for their peaceful, sociable personalities” How capys came to love hot tubs.
The Surprising Map of Plants – “In this map of plants I summarise all of the different kinds of plants from algae all the way through bryophytes, ferns, gymnosperms, angiosperms, monocots, eudicots, rosids and asterids. I explain how they are related to each other due to their evolutionary history, and the features that make plants so successful, leaves, roots, a vascular system, spores, seeds, flowers and fruits.”
Klee Benally: Full Interview Rest in Power Klee Benally.
[Music]
PC of DJ Food and Cinematic Orchestra in a solo outing. A bit much flute for my taste, but still amazing.
Kim Gordon – “BYE BYE” – An album to look forward to.
[Podcasts]
Le retour du monde magique – “Magnétisme et paradoxes de la modernité. Un lundisoir avec la sociologue Fanny Charrasse” I found that this did challenge the views i have on esoteric healing practices, but her sociological approach is interesting.
Indigenous Action Podcast Ep. 18: No Settler Future An Anti-Year in Review (sorta) – From December, afaik one of the most recent podcasts with Klee Benally, who sadly died late in December.
Other than that, no outstanding podcast this month. Listened to many older ones with Klee Benally. But whatever you do, please do nt listen to season 2 of Things Fell Apart by Jon Ronson, he has now fully turned into a bothsides-ing fence sitter.
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: January 25, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: January 18, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: January 11, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: January 4, 2024
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
COVID Isn’t Going Anywhere. Masking Up Could Save My Life. [teen vogue] – “When I am in public spaces and see most people unmasked either because they think the virus is a hoax, that masking is virtue signaling and a sign of weakness, aren’t thinking about it, or that they simply don’t care, I feel like an expendable burden not worth saving.” We have to read teen vogue for good coverage of this topic among others (also trans/feminism etc.). But that’s where we are folks.
Testimonials of the Collectively Abandoned [rant.li] – “This zine aims to give a voice to the people, forced into continued ‘COVIDing’. By describing day to day situations, concrete problems that might arise, we hope to show what living under these conditions can look and feel like. We hope that this illustrates our demand, as expressed in our previous zine, for a radical left that keeps taking this horrendous disease seriously and is willing to protect ourselves and our comrades.” We made another zine. But sadly just as we were getting ready to finish it, our group fell apart ;(((
I Will Do My Worst, The Anarchik [internet archive] – “The Anarchik first appeared in 1967, a twist on the old caricature of a mad anarchist bomber. Within a few years, the little man with an irreverent grin was starring in a comic strip in the pages of one of Italy’s longest running anarchist publications. Created by Roberto Ambrosoli (with the help of friends like Amedeo Bertolo), his impact spread internationally, producing any number of likenesses, but few translations.” Love this comic book character so much, i will do my worst.
girl culture panic & the failures of feminism. – “It is extremely important to reiterate that most versions of feminism that we have today do not have actually radical aims, even if the people involved are discursively critical of systems like capitalism and white supremacy. It is unsurprising to me how quickly and easily feminism has been co-opted because it’s not inherently interested in interrogating the root causes of systems of domination, especially if we continue to place its origin in a voting movement that occurred in the midst of chattel slavery and not long after violent colonial displacement.” Context on some of the crucial feminist debates.
[Articles English]
Germany entered a recession last year because the average worker needed 20 sick days | The Gauntlet [substack] – “The “kill the vulnerable to save the economy” approach was first favored by the Koch network of shadowy libertarian thinktanks and neatly summarized in the famous Great Barington Declaration. The open letter, roundly repudiated by public health bodies at the time, put forth the argument that abandoning mitigations and fully reopening would exterminate the weak in the short-term, but lead to herd immunity in the long term.” Stop to correlate public health with economic health, apples and oranges.
Italian net closes in on ‘Fleximan’ – vigilante destroyer of speed cameras [bbc news] – “Italy has been gripped by a vigilante who calls himself “Fleximan” and has made it his mission to tear down as many speed cameras as possible.” Amusing, if also a bit blah.
Why Covid Can Never Be ‘Just A Cold’ | Nate Bear [substack] – “The truth is, until recently, coronaviruses had been disproportionally under-studied compared to, say, influenza viruses. One reason for this is that there was a general assumption that the next pandemic would involve an influenza virus, rather than a coronavirus. Oooops.” And yet, we had SARS1.
Antifa Flag Builder – Make your own antifa sticker.
What Would It Mean for Scientists to Listen to Patients? [the new yorker] – “LISTEN (Listen to Immune, Symptom and Treatment Experiences Now) is an ambitious effort to understand Long COVID and similar conditions led by two renowned scientists at Yale: Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist and clinical-outcomes researcher, and Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist who studies virus-host interactions. Krumholz is a longtime champion of “patient-centered research”—the practice of designing and conducting a study in consultation with the people it intends to help” What would it mean for doctors to listen to their patients? Well, for one, they would need to get off their high horse to even hear us.
How Grief Affects Autistic People Differently [the conversationalist] – “These attempts at preparation for future heartbreak, often at the expense of present joy, make sense to me. I read once that autistic people experience all time simultaneously: the past, future, and present, all wrapped up in the current moment. I can’t let myself enjoy the fact that the people I love are here, because I know one day they won’t be. It’s like an unconscious self-preservation.” So familiar with this.
Institutional COVID denial has killed public health as we knew it. Prepare to lose several centuries of progress | The Gauntlet [substack] – “This victory is so thorough that many prominent leftists and progressive organizations remain silent as workers are continually sickened and disabled with zero legal recourse. Speaking to them, you will often hear the above talking points- which came from shadowy libertarian thinktanks- repeated word for word. It’s as if, in the course of four years, leftists suddenly decided they no longer believed in public transit, public libraries, public welfare programs, or public education. Except it’s, you know, way worse.” The pandemic represents a huge failure of the left. Huge. Will cost us years.
The public paid for “Moderna’s” vaccine, and now we’re going to pay again (and again and again) [pluralistic] – “Moderna is quadrupling the cost of covid vaccines, from $26/dose to $110-130. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel calls the price hike “consistent with the value” of the mRNA vaccines. Moderna’s manufacturing costs are $2.85/dose, for a 4,460% markup on every dose” Some of this argumentation gives the vaccines too much credit for protection against infections, but still an important critique.
Naomi Klein: ‘Joe Biden stepping down is the only thing that can stop Trump. He has so enraged young voters by supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza that I doubt he can win’ [el pais] – “Q. Trump achieved a landslide victory in Iowa, at the start of the primaries. Is there anything that could stand in his way to the White House? A. Honestly, Joe Biden stepping down. He has so enraged young voters by supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza that I doubt he can win. Not to mention the Arab voters in key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.” Loved this also: “I wish the left thought more about how to increase our ranks instead of how to purge them.”
‘You will not replace us’: a deadly attack on a Slovakian gay bar – and its link to a fast-spreading racist ideology [the guardian] – “Fifteen months after two men were shot in Bratislava, evidence suggests the killer may have been helped by an unidentified US-based extremist” Shows how the far-right networks can influence young men in all kinds of countries.
Persistent complement dysregulation with signs of thromboinflammation in active Long Covid [science] – “Long Covid patients exhibited increased complement activation during acute disease, which also persisted at 6-month follow-up. The complement system is part of the innate immune system and contributes to immunity and homeostasis by targeting pathogens and damaged cells, among other functions. Interestingly, blood complement levels normalized in Long Covid patients recovering before their 6-month follow-up.” Promising findings, but it’s early days.
Raiding the 20th Century is 20 years old [dj food] – “20 years ago today I premiered the first version of my Raiding The 20th Century guest mix on XFM‘s The Remix radio show. Originally commissioned by James Hyman as a 30 minute set for the evening show he and Eddie Temple-Morris chaired together, what emerged was a 39 minute mini history of the cut up. James had left the show by this time but I visited the studio and sat in live with Eddie as the show unfolded, chatting a little at the end about the mix and why I’d felt the need to undertake such an epic excercise.” One of my favorite dj mixes of all time is 20. Wow.
The Final Stage Of Public Health | Nate Bear [substack] – “By advising an ‘individual assessment of risk’ Kluge is simply, dangerously, applying to public health the same ideological principles that have long dominated other aspects of our lives. The de-engineering of society away from the collective and towards individual concerns and interests. A de-engineering that, in health terms, is catastrophic, because health can never be a property of the individual. It is always a property of the collective. This is never more obvious than in a pandemic, and the last few weeks have once again made this stunningly clear.” We are doomed.
Artists Pledge to Boycott German Institutions Over Stifling of Pro-Palestine Speech [hyperallergic] – “Hundreds of cultural figures have decried the nation’s “McCarthyist policies” equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.” Resistance to the german philosemtiism.
Education is anarchy [freedom news] – “So why has the education system become corrupted? Money, power, and politics is the simple answer. With the mass expansion of higher education, the cynic may interpret that universities are after money from their customers to feed their behemoth institutions and are not driven to recruit and nurture the actual intellectual potential students may have. As a result, the degree has evolved into a form of currency open to market conditions. This elicits the term ‘McDonalidisation’ of higher education, a concept developed by George Ritzer and extended by Dennis Hayes.” A nice enough if brief summary.
The shadow series by Levalet in Paris [streetartnews] – “Here is a collection of images from Levalet’s latest series, an ongoing project that the French street artist is delivering to the streets of Paris. The play between shadow and reality is evident in these life size paste ups, a gap between will and ambition, or simply between present and future of the subjects caught in a moment of their lives. Levalet is not new at all to a critical commentary on our society, over the years he has developed a personal style resulting from an acute observation of reality, while always maintaining a poetic and never cynical gaze.” One of those ideas i wish i had.
“Learning to live with COVID” means upgrading air quality, now | the gauntlet [substack] – “COVID denialism has reached- forgive the pun- a fever pitch. Parents report their children’s continual illnesses and attribute them to a three-year-old lockdown instead of documented post-COVID immune harm. The public notes the spike in cardiac events and sudden death but attributes them to vaccination instead of the novel virus proven to harm hearts. The media cycles through COVID’s pseudonym of the week, the Festival Flu, the Summer Flu, the 100 Day Cough, the ever-popular Mysterious Virus. Tiktok videos emerge of bewildered people reporting never-ending sickness- commented on by thousands more experiencing the same. The word COVID isn’t mentioned.” I gotta a fever, for more fever-pitched jokes.
December 2023 Global Climate Report [ncei]
“The Decmeber global surface temperature was 1.43°C (2.57°F) above the 20th-century average of 12.2°C (54.0°F), making it the warmest December on record. This was 0.30°C (0.54°F) above the previous record from December 2015. December 2023 marked the 48th-consecutive December and the 538th-consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.” This is still fine?
We have a tool to stop Israel’s war crimes: BDS | Naomi Klein [the guardian] – “BDS is a serious, nonviolent movement with an established governing model. While giving local organizers autonomy to determine which campaigns will work in their areas, the BDS national committee (BNC) sets the movement’s guiding principles and carefully selects a small group of high-impact corporate targets, chosen “due to their proven complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights”.” Naomi Klein is a brave human being.
Twenty years ago somebody pulled the trigger | Peter Gelderloos [substack]
“They say
that triggermen get locked up.
That the cops are there to stop these things.
The person who pulled the trigger on my bullet
would have the cops there in one minute if I stepped on his fucking lawn.
The person who pulled the trigger on my bullet
has pulled the trigger on more people than you or I could possibly imagine.
There is not enough hate in the most tormented heart on the planet
to pull a trigger that many times.
There is no heart
just someone
with another kind of reason
to pull a trigger.”
But it is fucking personal!
Long Covid is Rewriting the Final Chapter of My Life [okdoomer.io] – “This is what surrendering to the pandemic means around the edges of the statistics, where people live. It’s not just the broad strokes and the sudden deaths. It’s land mines lying silent beneath the surface of a loved one’s heart or brain or immune system, waiting to be stepped on in a biologically wrong footed moment. It’s whittling away at the already blurry space between functional and disabled, taking away an hour here and a day there from those who don’t lose all the days they had left all at once.” We are lonely. We need friends. We hate it here.
Capitalism and Anti-Natalism | Antonio Melonio [substack] – “‘If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?’ — Arthur Schopenhauer” Worth it for this quote alone.
Long COVID is a double curse in low-income nations — here’s why [nature] – “Not only is the prevalence of the condition poorly understood, but it’s also often ignored by physicians and the wider public.” Yes, LongCOVID will be even more horrible in these countries.
A Philosopher Explains Why It’s Rational to Be Angry [current affairs] – “Love and anger are compatible, and it’s also compatible with being compassionate. And where you find a lot of people who engage in social movements who are doing this all day every day, anger is not the only thing motivating that. It’s not going to sustain you in that way. It’s because you love oppressed people. It’s because you love justice.” I love my anger.
Marxism and Milkshakes | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “I will not, like the world-flatteners, say that Marxism’s more ambitious appendages and the McDonald’s milkshake are products of the same cause. But they do share an affinity, which is a rationalistic preference for reproducibility and a fear of the complexity and chaos of the real world, a world that always has too many limbs for the straitjacket of simplifying frameworks, a world in which any unilineal concept of cause-and-effect proves wholly inadequate. A world that can only be fairly navigated with intuition, compassion, and an ability to hold contradiction.” Big.
[Articles German/French]
Geheimplan gegen Deutschland [correctiv] – “Von diesem Treffen sollte niemand erfahren: Hochrangige AfD-Politiker, Neonazis und finanzstarke Unternehmer kamen im November in einem Hotel bei Potsdam zusammen. Sie planten nichts Geringeres als die Vertreibung von Millionen von Menschen aus Deutschland.” This article inspired huge public protests against the german right wing.
Biden, Trump oder …?: Die Wahl der Rache [woz] – “Liebt eure Feinde, heisst es im Neuen Testament. Ein grosszügiger Fortschritt nach «Auge um Auge». Vergebung allerdings hat sich im Umgang mit rechtsradikaler Politik noch nie bewährt. Wer es mit dem Antifaschismus ernst meint, sollte das «anti» mit Überzeugungen und Aktionen füllen. Die Antwort auf Rache muss demnach ideologiekritischer, robuster, offensiver und transformativer sein.” Hope is poison, though.
Long Covid: Schweizer Forschende finden Ursache [der bund] – “Ein zentraler, aber wenig bekannter Teil des Immunsystems gerät bei Langzeit-Covid-Patienten ausser Kontrolle: Die neuen Erkenntnisse eröffnen Chancen für eine gezielte Diagnose und potenzielle Therapien.” Sounds promising, but hold your horses, please.
Der Bund überwacht uns alle [republik] – “Vor der Abstimmung zum Nachrichtendienstgesetz versprach der Bundesrat: Eine flächendeckende Überwachung der Bevölkerung wird es nicht geben. Doch heute ist die Kabelaufklärung genau das: ein Programm zur Massenüberwachung.” Decent series, but without too many new insights.
Nahostkonflikt: Schneller gecancelt wurde nie [woz] – “Der Debattenraum ist eng geworden mit dem Krieg in Nahost. Vorgänge im Aussendepartement und an Universitäten zeigen eine bedenkliche Entwicklung auf.” Uhm yes, and sadly the WoZ is part of it with some articles they published.
Das laute Schweigen der Deutschen [taz] – “Die Deutschen möchten gerne glauben, sie hätten aus ihrer Geschichte gelernt. Der Rest der Welt hört ihr lautes Schweigen und sieht ihr bewusstes Wegschauen. Er nimmt deutsche Politikerinnen und Politiker nicht mehr ernst, wenn sie von Menschenrechten sprechen. Das hat fatale Folgen: Es untergräbt die Bemühungen um eine regelbasierte Weltordnung und ermuntert auch andere Staaten, auf das Recht des Stärkeren zu setzen.” Finally.
[Older articles, still great]
How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On COVID [levernews] – “The academy is the newest initiative designed to provide intellectual cover to a nearly two-year campaign by right-wing and big business interests to force a return to normalcy to boost corporate profits amid a pandemic that is now surging once again thanks to Omicron. That campaign’s most recent success came earlier this month when Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats joined together to pass a symbolic measure to repeal a Biden administration rule requiring large corporations to mandate vaccines or regular COVID tests for workers. This is the story of how that corporate-bankrolled campaign originally started, and how it has continued to supplant public health experts and hijack the governmental response to the pandemic.” We know who spread the lies, yet even anarchists fell for them?! We are truly fucked guys!?
Radical Resilience – “Radical Resilience is a film for anyone involved in social or environmental change, that aims to spread awareness and encourage discussion about the effects of burnout within our movements, both individually and collectively.” Cute documentary.
Diagnostic of the Future : Between the Crisis of Democracy and the Crisis of Capitalism: A Forecast | Peter Gelderloos [crimethinc] – “The reactionary coalition that was created by Netanyahu—not by Trump—does not represent the only way forward from liberal democracy. But the fact that an important state, followed by a growing body of others, is breaking apart an old and hallowed synthesis—turning the nation-state against universal equality—is incontrovertible evidence that the world system that has governed us up until now is falling apart.” Great analysis, should be redone for 2024. But i am too dumb.
R.I.P.
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Header Photo: Excerpt from the fantastic wimmelbild by fr3nzin3 in our new zine
thank you. for this medley that is grounding, inspiring, informative, fun. Very much appreciate your work seeking out and sharing all this.
Appreciated 😉