[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Found in my archives]
Cafe Mandola Restaurant, Westbourne Grove, London
When i recently tried to remember some of the dishes that i used to eat at my favorite, local neighborhood restaurant in London, a Sudanese restaurant, i found this tiny business card with the menu printed on its back.
Posting it here just in case someone else might be looking for this 😉
[Videos]
DEF CON 32 – Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation | Cory Doctorow – Let’s disenshittfy the internet.
Decolonizing Feminism: “Burning at the Stake” – Peter Gelderloos had this in his link list and it is a very powerful conversation.
Your Top Bird Migration Questions – Answered by Our Expert – Answers five common questions on bird migration. Did you know that birds often migrate at night, because they can see the north-south axis? We should turn off the lights at night.
The Political Economy of Covid – From the #Socialism2024 conference.
From the Ashes: Grief, Care, and Time in our Movements – From the #Socialism2024 conference.
[Music]
SOPHIE – Do You Wanna Be Alive? – The posthumously released album by SOPHIE, who tragically died while trying to look at the moon.
Sculpture – Cross Processor – This video should probably come with an epilepsy warning, but what an awesome animation. The music? Not really my thing.
[Podcasts]
Was macht das Silicon Valley, Adrian Daub? [woz–what’s left] – The Swiss weekly leftist newspaper has a new podcast looking at the political situation in the US. In the episode Adrian Daub (In Bed With The Right etc.) talks about the right-wing radicalization in the so-called Silicon Valley, Silly Conned Valley more like.
Claire: “I ignored it and I believed him because he’s the storyteller” re: Neil Gaiman [Am I Broken: Survivor Stories] – Since the Neil Gaiman accusations are still not talked about enough, here’s a reminder! We did listen to the other series, too, but it is made by a TERF who both-sides the issue. This one is so much better. The left really sucks to #MeToo when it concerns one of their heroes.
“Solidarity, Spirituality and Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back” with Ashanti Omowali Alston [the final straw radio] – Anarchist, author, organizer and former participant in the Black Panther and Black Liberation Army, Ashanti Omowali Alston, with his key note address at the 2024 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville.
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: September 26, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: September 19, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: September 12, 2024
Pandemic Roundup: September 5, 2024
If you can afford it, please support Violet for her amazing work with these roundups.
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
Structural Violence and the Pandemic: An Update on Our Collective Reality | Beatrice Adler-Bolton – “Whether through mutual aid, sharing information and medications, or simply being there for a neighbor in need, coming together in solidarity is an act of radical resistance against a system that prioritizes individualism and competition. So what if it doesn’t solve the whole problem in one fell swoop? This is not a problem that has a silver bullet, as we all have experienced over and over throughout the pandemic’s endless parade of “here’s one weird trick to get back to normal”. Let’s create spaces where everyone feels safe and valued, where we can address our needs together without relying on the very systems that have historically failed us. By embracing community care, we protect not only ourselves but also challenge the structures that perpetuate harm and neglect. Yes we have to contend with the laws and systems which we currently live under, but our work cannot just stop there. Together, only we can ensure that everyone has access to the care they deserve. Let’s commit to a future where our collective safety is in our hands.” Fuck the state.
There’s No Welcome Guide to the World of Chronic Illness – But There Should Be [substack] – “I’ve learned that going to the hospital should be a last resort. It takes a ton of energy and almost always leads to a setback. The risk of leaving the hospital with an infection that you didn’t arrive with is high. There’s always potential for gaslighting, trauma and additional suffering. Once I learned how to set expectations for when the hospital COULD actually help me – I started making real progress towards helping myself. Towards making incremental improvements to my quality of life and leaning into my disabilities.” One of my favorite disability justice writers.
From Class War to Carceral Violence: How Covid Still Shapes our Struggles | Beatrice Adler-Bolton [substack] – “For left movements, the normalization of a premature “end” to the pandemic represents a critical failure to address the class struggle inherent in the ongoing crisis. This normalization process serves the interests of capital by prioritizing economic recovery, increasing repression, and deepening the exploitation of labor over protecting the well-being of the working class and marginalized groups. By downplaying the severity of the pandemic, normalization perpetuates the capitalist agenda of growth at all costs, and places an exaggerated and inflated cost on protecting our communities. If our movements do not challenge this premature and ongoing normalization of mass infection, sickness, disability and death, we will fail each other.” It will go down as my biggest disappointment of this century how “the left”, and yes there is no such thing, has abandoned the disabled and chronically ill in order to pretend it is 2019 again. Can’t wrap my head around that shit.
In Italy, Tourism Is a Cash Cow for a Rentier Class [jacobin] – “The beach operators dispute shows that government support for the tourist sector is not popular. According to polls, 49 percent of Italians favor measures limiting tourism tout court, against 38 percent opposed. It is not as if most Italians benefit: most of them can no longer afford a vacation even in Italy itself, while the number of foreign tourists is rising, and tourism is contributing to increased rent and housing prices in most cities.” Fuck tourism. End tourism. We had plans to travel to Liguria this fall, with ambivalent feelings. To visit Italy already sucked, because of Meloni. But after reading this article, tourism in Italy is officially dead.
[Articles English]
Family Planning [dissent magazine] – “Children, it often seems to me, deserve more than two parents. And we adults deserve space for more complicated, sprawling relationships than the world we currently live in finds legible. We are living through an epidemic of loneliness, which the World Health Organization has declared a public health threat with long-term effects perhaps as bad as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. The truth is that the family, expected to meet all of the needs and desires that we are otherwise denied in the capitalist world, has been breaking down for as long as it has existed.” Contains a great reading list and reviews for books on family abolishment.
Read the JD Vance Dossier | Ken Klippenstein [substack] – “The dossier has been offered to me and I’ve decided to publish it because it’s of keen public interest in an election season. It’s a 271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet now vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable. I’ll let it speak for itself.” You do not *have* to read this, but how interesting is it that this was banned on twitter, the journalist suspended, if you remind yourself of Musk’s stance on the Hunter Biden files.
BBC Rewind – Sound Effects – “The BBC Sound Effects Archive is available for personal, educational or research purposes. There are over 33,000 clips from across the world from the past 100 years. These include clips made by the BBC Radiophonic workshop, recordings from the Blitz in London, special effects made for BBC TV and Radio productions, as well as 15,000 recordings from the Natural History Unit archive. You can explore sounds from every continent – from the college bells ringing in Oxford to a Patagonian waterfall – or listen to a submarine klaxon or the sound of a 1969 Ford Cortina door slamming shut.” What a resource.
California Sues Exxon for Plastics Deception [common dreams] – “The lawsuit cites evidence from a Center for Climate Integrity report released earlier this year that shows how Exxon and other fossil fuel and petrochemical companies have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution to plastic waste management for more than 50 years despite long-standing internal knowledge that it is not technically or economically viable at scale.” Sure. But still do wonder, if it is not better to try to recycle plastic, and improve how it is done, than to burn and dump this toxic shit. Of course, the main goal needs to be to reduce plastic consumption.
Who Asked “What Were the Skies Like When You Were Young?” in “Little Fluffy Clouds?” [polpo] – “Who asked the famous question in the song Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb? TL;DR: it’s music writer Carl Arrington. Read on for more background.” I love this interview with Rickie Lee Jones so much and it contains many more gems. She sounds like she has a cold.
AI Must Be Destroyed [acab] – “Manipulation of the eco/carbon markets is to be expected–it’s how we got the richest man on earth after all. Tesla has made a huge percentage of its revenue from carbon credits, making billions from other car manufacturers that invest in Tesla in order to “offset” their own ecological destruction. All that “green” wealth has been used to turn one of the world’s biggest communication platforms into a nazi propaganda machine to soothe the ego of the world’s most-divorced man.” We recently traveled to Vevey for the Images photo Biennale. 10 of 50 shown works had the warning label “may contain traces of AI”. Dear artist, it does not matter how ironic or meta you are in your AI use, you still contribute in the normalization of AI AND you make yourself redundant.
When You’re Allergic to Everything and Nothing… That’s MCAS [substack] – “An intro guide to Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and how it has fundamentally changed my life. Living under the constant threat of anaphylaxis is hard – but there are ways to make it easier.” This well written primer will eventually be a three part series.
The Politics of Yoga – by Karim Zidan [sports politika] – “Yoga’s global influence has become a powerful tool for India’s soft power. But how is the Hindu nationalist government leveraging this cultural export?” Yeah, way to spoil everything for us, right wing dickheads. But to be fair, yoga already received a weird twist during the ongoing pandemic, when all these yoga new agers went anti-vaxx. I’ll just call it stretching now.
Reflecting on Occupy Wall Street, Thirteen Years Later [crimethinc] – “Horizontal, autonomous, and directly democratic practices were shared across contexts; they made the 2011 movements happen. People had a voice, many for the first time in their lives. The energy and excitement of this was palpable and made new worlds possible. Unfortunately, the squares and OWS were met with many internal and external challenges and they could not address them all effectively. This brings us to a contemporary aim—building more intentional, intersectional, accountable, equitable, and resilient movements.” It’s been thirteen years? I am currently reading the David Graeber book: The Democracy Project about it. Highly recommended.
People can’t make “risk assessments” without knowing the risks [substack] – “anyone who does make the “risk assessment” that catching COVID is unsafe for them is functionally shut out of society. It’s hardly a choice freely made, as the social and economic punishments for failing to “return to normal” continue to intensify. But it wasn’t enough to snatch away free tests, vaccines and COVID treatments, all but eliminate the isolation period for active infections, and push people to view disease control as a personal responsibility. Along with instructing people to make their own “risk assessments” about COVID, our government also downplays, minimizes, and flat out denies the risks of recurrent infections.” I still appreciate Julia’s writing so much, if only she wasn’t such a statist and reformist.
The Former Leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace on Organizing an Anti-Zionist Movement [electricliterature] – “Rabbi Alissa Wise and Rebecca Vilkomerson discuss building a new Jewish world and the lessons they’ve learned from fighting for justice and liberation” Interviewed by Shane Burley, co-author of the must read book Safety through Solidarity.
We’re Getting Sick of Noise Pollution [tomdispatch] – “For decades, the environmental justice movement has been fighting a longstanding American tradition of locating dirty, dangerous industries and activities in low-income, racialized communities. This is a problem that arises with every environmental issue, and noise is no exception. Alex Ross recognized that in his “What Is Noise?” essay when he observed, “Silence is a luxury of the rich… For the rest of society, noise is an index of struggle.”” Noise is not making me sick, it actually hurts me. I mean physical pain.
August 2024 Global Climate Report [ncei] – “The August global surface temperature was 1.27°C (2.29°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F), making it the warmest August on record. This was 0.01°C (0.02°F) above the previous August record set last year, and the 15th consecutive month of record-high global temperatures. August 2024 marked the 46th consecutive August (since 1979) with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.” Is this fine-ish?! Nope!?
A cool flame: how Gaia theory was born out of a secret love affair [the guardian] – “What I discovered, and what has been lost in the years since Lovelock first formulated Gaia theory in the 1960s, is that the initial work was not his alone. Another thinker, and earlier collaborator, played a far more important conceptual role than has been acknowledged until now. It was a woman, Dian Hitchcock, whose name has largely been overlooked in accounts of the world-famous Gaia theory.” But the canon.
Donald Trump: A Post-Mortem [all cats are beautiful] – “If you find yourself supporting any viable candidate for American president politically, you are already pretty lost in the woods. Don’t let the years of rising fascism and desperation obscure the fundamental truth: We must abolish the police, prisons, slums, nursing homes, psychiatric jails and for-profit housing systems that mean so many of our siblings already live and have always lived under fascism. No president will end the ecocidal capitalist world system that America currently steers, in fact the US has become the world’s leading producer of fossil fuels under Biden and Harris.” This fucking election is too fucking important. But it fucking is. I must say i would probably still prefer the lesser evil. I have too many sentences that start with “If Trump gets elected, i will…”.
An Anti-fascist Guide to the US 2024 Election [atlanta antifascists] – “As a militant anti-fascist group, we have never endorsed any electoral candidate, and that will not change with this election. However, elections can impact the growth of fascist movements, as well as the ability of anti-fascists to fight. Furthermore, although grassroots anti-fascist groups like ours have been operating in the US continuously from the 1980s onward, we were rarely in the national spotlight. 2017 changed this entirely, when the existence of “antifa” became a matter of wide discussion and often wild speculation.” Yeah, there is a however this time.
Cohost to shut down at end of 2024 [cohost] – “We have come to the decision to cease operations of cohost and anti software software club due to lack of funding and burnout. As of today, none of us are being paid for our labor1; all of our money in the bank, and any money coming in from people who buy our merch or don’t cancel cohost plus, is going towards servers and operations — paying the bills so we can turn the lights off with as little disruption as possible.” This is too bad, cohost was one of the nicer twitter-clones, even if i hardly used it.
Groundbreaking study uncovers mechanism of blood clotting caused by COVID-19, points to possible treatments [world socialist web] – “Gladstone Institutes reported that 5B8 is already in phase one safety and tolerability clinical trials to assess how humans will react to the new treatment before proceeding with more advanced trials in COVID and Long COVID patients. In support of these developments, Greene said, “The fibrin immunotherapy can be tested as part of a multipronged approach, along with prevention and vaccination, to reduce adverse health outcomes from Long COVID.”” Fucking socialists now have the better information on COVID. He he.
Fighting Like Hell [baffler] – “The temporality and emotional intensity of grieving is anathema to the demands of capitalist workplaces. Grief, like revolution, creates a rupture with what came before and changes our sense of past, present, and future. Jaffe reminds us that although we walk with ghosts, grieving the losses of the past amid the ongoing injustices of the present can nourish and inform attempts to create a more caring society.” Their new book Grief is a Rupture does tempt me.
Dams, Forest Fires and the Hidden Commons – Part I: Social Control and the Ecological Crisis in Catalunya | Peter Gelderloos [undisciplined environments] – “Championing and reinvigorating the commons is our best bet for surviving the ecological crisis produced by capitalism. And if we’re talking about survival, we need to remember that the deaths began a long time ago, many of us have been lost already, and many forms of life and species have already been extinguished. How can we bring back the commons? After all, people didn’t just give up on commoning voluntarily. There was a great deal of State and settler violence involved, all around the world.” This is part 1. Let’s hope i don’t miss part 2.
The death of abolition | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “Abolish the police and prisons without abolishing the State? Seriously? How out of touch do you have to be? The police aren’t just a multiracial gang of highly armed, highly paid sociopaths waiting around to torture and execute people from marginalized and oppressed groups (though they are definitely that). The police are there in the hospitals when the doctors check our gender identity, our education level, our mental health history, our race, as they decide how much to listen to us and how much to treat us like slabs of meat. Prison is present in the school system as they categorize you, discipline you, track you, and it’s definitely present when they haul you into the office and search your backpack after you start questioning the hypocrisy at the center of it all.” Peter had got to be my favorite righteously angry writer! And don’t worry, i am not a fan boy, just pretending.
The Fall | Rupa Marya [substack] – “To learn this kind of medicine, I tuned my ear to hear the teachers who would show me how people live and how they die. Not in the hospital but in the streets, in the alleys, in the railroad cars, in the slums, in the refugee camps and in water stops along dangerous desert border-crossings, in the interstitium of lived experience at the heart of empire. I had to learn to hear the voiceless and see the invisible–the undocumented, the unhoused, the gender queer, the Indigenous, the chronically ill and disabled, the non-English speakers, the Muslim, the Roma, the Traveler, the Black and brown, the imprisoned, the immunes–those in Roman times who were subsumed by the empire, but did not have the same rights as the conquerors. The people who fall in the cracks that were designed especially for them to fall into.” Rupa is getting cancelled, and the word is used correctly here, for her solidarity with the people of Gaza.
“We Have to Diminish the Spaces Between People” [organizingmythoughts] – “Unfortunately – and I don’t think social media helps with this – folks are racing towards the purest ideological position and deriving their political lines from that rather than from the facts on the ground. The reality is that ideology alone won’t save us. We have to actually spring into action on the basis of our ideals, and those actions have to be calculated on the basis of what’s feasible and the material realities around us. We have to keep our eyes on the revolutionary horizon. We should never accept small, incremental changes as the end of our struggle.” Big picture, i agree, small picture, day to day, sometimes it is great to argue and needs to be done. Eg. between the statist and the anarchist left, we need to disagree. Let’s argue better.
As COVID Surges, the High Price of Viral Denial [the tyee] – “Repeated studies show in the bluntest terms that the initial acute infection is only the tip of the iceberg. Even a mild bout of COVID can leave a legacy of blood clots, heart failure, diabetes, decreased brain function (see sidebar), long COVID (now affecting 400 million people worldwide) and immune damage that increasingly makes people more vulnerable to a plethora of infectious diseases and possibly cancers.” Another summary of all the incredible health complications that can and will follow a COVID infection and that everyone happily ignores by accepting infection after infection.
What would an adequate COVID response look like? | Julia Doubleday [substack] – “COVID control essentially came to an utter halt because our system was not designed to control airborne disease. Our governments did not want to pay to do it. Our governments did not want to explain that they did not want to pay to do it. But this is 2024. We have technology we haven’t even begun to deploy in the fight against COVID, all because we’re too proud to admit we’re still fighting. We have not even scratched the surface of what would a pandemic response that acknowledges the airborne nature of COVID could achieve.” Yes, and the conclusion should be, this is states doing what states do. States and nations are the problem. The solution is to build a stateless society. But sure, this is a thought experiment of what a state would need to do to tackle a pandemic of an airborne disease.
MAGA Desperately Claims Russian Propagandists Were the Real “Victims” [the new republic] – “Right-wing influencers like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, and Benny Johnson all worked with Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based firm that the Justice Department revealed Wednesday was secretly funded by Russian state media employees in “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” The indictment charges two Russia Today employees with providing nearly $10 million to the media company that often spouted Kremlin talking points.” The art of DARVO.
‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine [404media] – “Literally, if you have $84,000 then hepatitis C is not your problem anymore,” Laufer said. “But given that there are other methodologies for managing hepatitis C that are not curing it and that are cheaper, insurance typically will not cover [Sovaldi]. And so we’ve got this incredible technology and it’s sitting on the shelf except for people who are ridiculously wealthy.” So Four Thieves Vinegar Collective set out to teach people how to make their own version of Sovaldi. Chemists at the collective thought the DIY version would cost about $300 for the entire course of medication, or about $3.57 per pill. But they were wrong. “It’s actually just a little under $70 (83 cents per pill), which just kind of blew my mind when they finally showed me the results,” Laufer said. “I was like, can we do the math here again?” I admire these guys. But. I don’t think it’s as easy as they make it sound to produce your own medicine. But hack spaces could and should probably get on it.
Massive Attack’s science-led drive to lower music’s carbon footprint [nature] – “After interviewing the band and its production team, holding workshops with industry professionals and crunching numbers on emissions, in June 2021, McLachlan and her team published the Super-Low Carbon Live Music road map for the UK live-music sector (see go.nature.com/3xdyq5j). The 17-page report is one of the first attempts not only to assess the carbon costs of the UK’s live-music industry, but also to suggest clearly defined and measurable targets that the sector could work towards to meet the aim of the Paris climate agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. The road map’s key message is “that super-low carbon practices can only be delivered if they are central from the inception of a tour”.” I hesitate. But why not try.
As a doctor, I’m disappointed in my colleagues for ignoring Long COVID. I made a resource to educate them and the public. [the sick times] – “Sadly, many in the medical profession fall within that group of non and disbelievers.
This is bizarre, especially because of the impact of the disease. One recent review estimates more than 400 million global cases of Long COVID. I am furious that not enough is being done to alleviate this suffering. The injustice of yet another neglected and marginalized chronic illness that disproportionately affects women.” Don’t even get me started in doctors. I distrust them so much now.
Donald Rodney Drew Upon His Sickness to Illuminate Society’s Ills [hyperallergic] – “Donald Rodney saw the world through metaphor. He suffered from sickle cell anemia throughout his life, meaning he endured pain, a difficult treatment schedule, and reduced mobility. Rather than shying away from these elements, he drew upon them as metaphors for the societal ills of racism, inequality, and colonialism in his art.” Disability Justice Art.
The Tragedy of Misunderstanding the Commons [in these times] – “A commons is not a tragedy of resource depletion, not a collective farm, not a relic of a savage past, and not proof of ancient communism. As a form of land, it is neither res nullis (owned by no one, like wild animals or schools of fish) nor res communis (owned by everyone, like Antarctica or the Moon). “The word ‘common’ means ‘together with others,’” wrote the thirteenth-century legal scholar Henry de Bracton. In his world, a commons was an agricultural village in which each household tended its own fields and pasture and made collective decisions about the whole settlement, but commons have taken many other forms as well. At base, it’s a social relationship of the useable Earth that is neither private nor state property but owned and governed by its constituents to meet their specific needs.” More Peter Gelderloos? Here you got. What an output this dude has.
[Articles German/French]
Stop being poor, Girlboss | Jessica Jurassica [substack] – “Feminismus ist nämlich tatsächlich mehr als ein Vibe. Feminismus ist eine Bewegung mit einer Geschichte, die sich nicht einfach so abschütteln lässt. Tatsächliche Veränderung hin zu mehr sozialer Gerechtigkeit bedeutet, dass Männer etwas abgeben müssen, oder ihnen etwas weggenommen wird. Männer werden nie in einem Ausmass von feministischer Befreiung profitieren, wie sie vom Patriarchat profitieren. Ebenso wie weisse Menschen von Rassismus und reiche von Ausbeutung profitieren und dementsprechend wenig Interesse an sozialer Gerechtigkeit haben.” The case of the Swiss, “ultra-leftist” journalist, who was accused by several women of sexual transgressions, and then … crickets. The left really sucks at #Metoo when it concerns one of their “own”.
Long Covid: «Wir müssen Sie zusammenbrechen sehen» [woz] – “Nach der Rückreise zeigen sich Überlastungssymptome: Eineinhalb Wochen kann Brucker nur liegen. Sie leidet unter Kopfweh, Übelkeit, Schwindel, Zittern, Gehirnnebel, Seh- und Wortfindungsstörungen. Für einen zweiten, eintägigen Gutachtertermin muss sie später erneut quer durch die Schweiz reisen. Dort bekommt sie den brutalen Satz noch einmal zu hören, diesmal aus dem Mund einer begutachtenden Ärztin: «Es ist wichtig, dass Sie hier sind, denn wir müssen Sie zusammenbrechen sehen.»” We have to see you collapse. Literally. That sentence haunts me in my dreams.
Digitale Selbstverteidigung: Biometrische Gesichtserkennung abwehren [netzpolitik.org] – “Wer Kameras entgehen will, hat es zunehmend schwer. Dabei genügt ein Schnappschuss, um einen Menschen zu identifizieren. Wir erkunden die faszinierende Welt des Widerstands gegen biometrische Erkennung.” We need better jammers.
Mach Platz, Escher! [daslamm] – “Die Schweizer Industrialisierung und Eschers Aufstieg wären ohne Sklaverei und die Arbeit von Migrant*innen nicht möglich gewesen. Doch eine ernsthafte Debatte um seine Statue blieb bislang aus. Künstlerische Interventionen könnten dies ändern.” The Swiss are very good at making their racist, colonialist history disappear. Thanks for uncovering.
[Older articles, still great]
How This Guy Became The Best Rock Skipper On The Planet – Stone skipping, a how to.
Deaths Pulled From The Future | Beatrice Adler-Bolton [substack] – “Well, all I can say to those on “the left” leaning towards nihilism, is that those of us who are still fighting could really use some solidarity right now. In a society in which our survival has already been so thoroughly commodified, this mass death event has become a multi-billion dollar business opportunity for monopolistic corporations, the wealthy, and the security state. And I’ll say it again: Listen. I do political-economic analysis, and my analysis is that if you have a left politic—now is not the time to disengage on Covid-19. Those of us still fighting cannot do this alone.” This was the article from 2022, that Beatrice wrote an update for.
Ishay Landa: «Der Liberalismus enthält die Option der Gewaltherrschaft» [woz] – “Individualismus wird gewöhnlich als Quintessenz des Liberalismus angesehen, während Bewegungen wie der Faschismus als antiindividualistisch gelten. Der Faschismus, so wird gemeinhin angenommen, wolle das Individuum in der uniformen Masse aufgehen lassen. Von dieser falschen Gegenüberstellung muss man sich aber verabschieden, weil sie sowohl den Liberalismus als auch den Faschismus nicht zu fassen kriegt. Ich unterscheide in meinem Buch zwischen zwei Formen des Individualismus: einem horizontalen und einem vertikalen. Bei Ersterem wird das Recht und das Verdienst eines jeden Menschen betont, jeder als Individuum anerkannt. Das hat egalitäre Konsequenzen, die urdemokratisch und mit sozialistischen Vorstellungen verwandt sind. Es entspricht aber nicht der Vorstellung der meisten Liberalen. Bei ihnen gelten eigentlich nicht alle als Individuen. Dieser Status ist nur wenigen vorbehalten, nämlich jenen, die besonders begabt und erfolgreich sind. Das ist ein vertikales Verständnis des Individualismus, der nur für jene gilt, die besonders talentiert sind, sei dies angeboren oder biologisch begründet.” Liberalism schmiberalism, but yeah, some distinctions here are useful.
What Is Noise? | The New Yorker – “if you elect to hear something, it is not noise, even if most people might deem it unspeakably horrible. If you are forced to hear something, it is noise, even if most people might deem it ineffably gorgeous.” Oh, let me tell you what noise is.
R.I.P.
Rebecca Cheptegei
And way too many in Gaza, the West Bank and Libanon as well as in all the other fucking wars.
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Header Photo: A photo from Vevey Images, a huge sign on a buidling reads LOVE