[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
BLOCK BASF – a film from the Earth Uprisings – “On November 17, 2025, in Saint-Aubin-lès-Elbeuf, 500 people and tractors converged on the BASF industrial site, one of the world’s top four pesticide producers, with the aim of shutting it down.” Gotta love these rad French farmers.
« Faut leur tirer dans la gueule ! » : la manifestation de Sainte-Soline vue par les gendarmes [mediapart] – “Mediapart et « Libération » révèlent des images inédites du 25 mars 2023, filmées par les caméras-piétons des gendarmes. Elles montrent des consignes prohibées et dangereuses données par la hiérarchie, un vocabulaire guerrier et une troublante satisfaction de blesser « l’adversaire ».” Police body-cam footage shows the shocking language French police uses in regards to protesters.
What Really Happened in Portland Before Trump Deployed the National Guard ProPublica – “While federal judges decide whether Portland protesters’ behavior constitutes a rebellion, ProPublica set out to examine the degree to which they were inciting unrest and the role that federal officers played.” Incitement and hyperbole.
[Music]
Zahl am1 live track 1 | Aphex Twin [.soundcloud.]
Gotta love the holiday picture he used.
Little Simz live from Meltdown Festival with Chineke! Orchestra – Is this peak hip hop?
I CANNOT F**KING WAIT UNTIL DICK CHENEY DIES! – Ding dong the devil is dead. Cheney gone, one down.
[Podcasts]
Sapiens | If Books Could Kill – “How do you tell the entire history of humanity in a single book? Whatever you do, do not open a browser window.” The critique of this horrendous book, the bible of liberal centrists, is almost too respectful.
Jaime Grant on What We Can Do Intimately With Each Other [the breakup theory] – “In this episode, Caroline and I talk to the wonderful Dr. Jaime M. Grant, Sex and Intimacy Coach, Researcher, Writer, and longtime Activist. She has recently published Kink for Dummies, after her previous contribution to the series, Polyamory for Dummies.” An all-around wonderful conversation. We miss our poly lives.
No Opinion w/ Lara Sheehi & Sophie Lewis (11/06/25) | Death Panel [.soundcloud.] – “Beatrice and Tracy speak with Lara Sheehi and Sophie Lewis about the role of cultural production in political action, in disrupting genocide, and in standing against hegemonic interests, and about why they worked to organize a boycott for writers, scholars and public figures to refuse to write for the New York Times Opinion section.” Find the manifesto bellow.
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Covid: November 27, 2025
Covid: November 20, 2025
Covid: November 13, 2025
Covid: November 6, 2025
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
The Body Illegible | Beatrice Adler-Bolton [substack] – “The first thing most people ask when you meet them is: What do you do? Not who you love, not what makes you happy, not what kind of world you want to live in—but what your job is. The answer to that question has become shorthand for who we are and what we are worth. A steady paycheck is treated like proof of character, and losing a job is treated like a kind of personal failure. For chronically sick people, this question lands differently: What do you do? can mean… Are you useful? …Do you deserve care? …Housing? …Life itself?” Marxist analysis, anarchist solutions. I am not huge on marxism. But it does offer a compelling analysis on the topic of illness/disability under capitalism.
Of Dungeons and Sleeping Kingdoms | Alison Rose Reed [substack] – “We all have a role to play in dismantling the lie of our separateness, violently enforced by borders, cages, hierarchies, and other ordering technologies of centralized power structures. We can’t wait forever for Daddy State to get his shit together as if Mother Earth is helpless, fearful, and sweet, seeking comfort from her children rather than comforting us. Her undulating waves will sweep up and spit out our debris. While we all exist in the energy field of traumatic undertow, humans are the ones seduced by a dissembling fantasy. Mother Earth is the original Sensual Dominatrix.” I admit it freely, i am such the fan boy of Alison’s writing. Huge. Mind-blowing. Great.
Protect Our Neighbors: The Journey of a Sign | Rebecca Solnit [substack] – “we are not primarily trying to convert those who do not agree with us; we are trying to reinforce and rally those who do. We have enough and more than enough people on our side: the job is not to recruit people to our worldview but to recruit them to action. In the current situation, we – the we who believe in human rights, climate action, justice, science, the rule of law – are the vast majority, facing down a regime that has to try to seize the powers of authoritarianism exactly because it lacks this popular support. Building and reinforcing opposition – active, engaged opposition – is important work.” She lost me at “rule of law”. Okay sure, I understand the sentiment. But it fucking sucks that the radical left has been bullied into defending law and order. Abolish all that.
[Articles English]
You know someone with Long COVID. They need you to ask about it genuinely. [the sick times] – “The act of othering people diminishes our capacity for empathy. This comes with a steep social cost: in one U.K. study, conducted in 2022, 63% of people with Long COVID reported facing discrimination from friends, family, and coworkers after disclosing their illness. At the very moment people’s lives fall apart, when they most need support, the world steps back.” How are you this week?
COP30 Isn’t a Failure — It’s a Farce | Peter Gelderloos [in these times] – “The fundamental question at COP30 and all the previous climate conferences is not, “how do we stop climate change?” The question they are working with is, “what responses to climate change are compatible with state power and growth-based economies?” And the answer they refuse to admit is that effective responses are not compatible with the present system, because this system itself — its acceptable forms of political and economic organization — are the root causes of the crisis.” Capitalism will end up exterminating humans. And i am starting to think, good riddance.
The Real Models for Sustainability in Brazil Are to Be Found Outside COP30 [trutchout] – “The climate conference, though, is far from the front lines in the Amazon, and it has proven a perfect stage for the FUNAI to wash its image. Indigenous empowerment is a principal theme at the COP30, and the FUNAI is hosting media-focused events with Indigenous representatives from around the world throughout the conference. And yet, on the ground, numerous Indigenous communities speak of FUNAI as something between an active obstacle and an unhelpful, bureaucratic burden.” And another article by Peter Gelderloos, who was in Brazil during the COP30 farce.
No Opinion for Gaza: Why we are boycotting the New York Times [newarab] – “To be a working writer is often to feel individualised and powerless to refuse literary platforms. By banding together strategically to deny NYT Opinion the principled voices on which the paper as a whole depends for its fig leaf—thereby endangering its pretence to impartiality—writers are demonstrating that this perceived powerlessness in the face of hegemonic media behemoths is an illusion.” For freelance writers, who depend on getting platformed, this is a brave stance.
I Grow Desperate for Community | Anarchist Jew [substack] – “Chronic pain is a teacher, though a cruel one. It forces slowness. It demands attention. It collapses the capitalist timeline that says every minute must be monetized. In this way, the disabled and the chronically ill embody a radical politics of time. […] The left often talks about revolution in terms of power, but rarely in terms of tenderness. Yet no revolution will last if it does not make room for the fragile, the slow, the wounded.” Another wonderful essay by a wonderful writer.
//cw sex trafficking, Epstein
Jmail – The recently released emails, searchable by names and more. Gross stuff, Joi and Noam.
Then They Came for the Dreamers [mother jones] – “Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers like Gamez Lira took the administration at its word. They entrusted the US government with their personal information and whereabouts in exchange for the assurance that they would be shielded from immigration enforcement. For a teenage Gamez Lira, brought to the country from Mexico as an infant, the program was an opportunity to come out of the shadows, work lawfully, and build a better future.” Never entrust your data to a government. This was their plan all along.
No One Can Stop the Rain [current affairs] – “Assata died free, which is a beautiful thing. We should continue to celebrate and honor that reality—but what did freedom cost her? Her life, everything she ever knew, her family, her reputation. It is easy to paint Assata as an extraordinary woman, which she was. Easy to paint her as a powerful force—which she had the capability of being. But she was a human being. She was someone who did suffer. She was a victim, too. In a world where Black suffering is seen as a normality, the reason why people cheer for Assata is because despite those odds she did not die in prison.” Assata died in September, but it’s never too late for an hommage.
Thank You Alice Wong | Disabled Ginger [substack] – “One of them was Covid. Alice had a tracheostomy which meant she was unable to mask. She was extra vulnerable to Covid infections and when the world rushed ‘back to normal’, society decided to leave people like her by the wayside. She wasn’t willing to accept that. She fought tirelessly for mask mandates in healthcare and clean air standards. She shared stories of being in the hospital and having her disability accommodation requests ignored.” The disability justice movement lost an important voice.
COP30 farce in Lula’s Brazil [freedom news, translated from desinformemonos] – “The illusion surrounding the utopia of reforming capitalism is completed with the final touch to this cake of ashes and fire: weeks before the start of COP 30, Ibama (the Brazilian Institute of the Environment, a federal agency) authorised Petrobras (the state-owned oil company) to investigate the feasibility of oil exploration at the mouth of the Amazon River.” Fuck Lula and his propaganda machine, sadly featured even on Democracy Now?!
How AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time [technologyreview] – “The fantasy of computers that can do almost anything a person can is seductive. But like many pervasive conspiracy theories, it has very real consequences. It has distorted the way we think about the stakes behind the current technology boom (and potential bust). It may have even derailed the industry, sucking resources away from more immediate, more practical application of the technology. More than anything else, it gives us a free pass to be lazy. It fools us into thinking we might be able to avoid the actual hard work needed to solve intractable, world-spanning problems—problems that will require international cooperation and compromise and expensive aid. Why bother with that when we’ll soon have machines to figure it all out for us?” Interesting take to frame AI as a conspiracy theory.
Blood spilled in Sudan can be seen from space. Nobody can feign ignorance about what’s going on | Nesrine Malik [the guardian] – “Sudan’s war is described as forgotten, but in reality it is tolerated and relegated. Because to reckon with the horror in Sudan is to look into the abyss of regional and global politics. It is to see the growing imperialist role of some Gulf powers in Africa and beyond – and to acknowledge the fact that no meaningful pressure is applied to these powers, including the UAE, to cease and desist from supporting a genocidal militia because the UK, US and others are close allies with these states.” I want to see protests against the UAE cycling team next season.
The Authoritarian Stack – “How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next” Reminds me of the website They Rule, but here more focused on specific fascists in the tech bubble.
100 Assignments From Nayland Blake [hyperallergic] – “While these assignments will not turn someone else into me, they will provide the practitioner with a path to the deviations within themselves.” Loved reading some of these ideas. I wish i had an art teacher like Nayland.
Mount Rushmore Is Not My Monument [hyperallergic] – “If Mount Rushmore were destroyed and lost to memory, tribal people would continue unbothered by this blip in history. The Black Hills is our wizípaŋ, a vital repository that holds sites of relational significance. We pray here, we share stories, we build memories on the land. When passing Mount Rushmore, our eyes are trained to see the four awful faces of settler violence. But I still see the Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe and all the non-human relatives that will continue to exist in the region beyond white supremacy.” Land back land back land back!!!! When?!
[Articles German/French]
«Einsamkeit schadet unserer Gesundheit mehr als sechzehn Zigaretten am Tag» [tagi magi] – “Ageism ist sogar verbreiteter als Sexismus und Rassismus und entsteht, wenn wir das Alter benutzen, um jemanden in eine Kategorie einzuteilen. Wenn wir ältere Menschen generell als vulnerabel und innovationsfremd einstufen, alle Jüngeren dagegen als leistungsstark und innovativ. Die Altersmedizin hat klargemacht, wie Ageism in der modernen, rapide älter werdenden Welt ältere Menschen davon abhält, einen gesellschaftlich wichtigen Beitrag leisten zu können.” A shitty title for a pretty good interview on ageism, at the start, then she starts bragging. Fuck Tamedia though.
Gear Porn und die Ästhetisierung des Krieges [gdg] – “Die Ästhetisierung des Militärischen findet eine Entsprechung auf offener Straße. Die Grenzen zwischen Polizei und Militär verschwimmen bereits seit geraumer Zeit in den USA, wenn Polizeibeamt:innen in Ausrüstung patrouillieren, die kaum noch von der eines Elitesoldaten zu unterscheiden ist: ballistische Helme, Plattenträger und militärische Tarnmuster gehören bei vielen Einheiten längst zum Standard. Bereits seit den Vorfällen in Ferguson 2014 sprechen Beobachter:innen von einer „Militarisierung der Polizei“, die durch Maßnahmen wie das „1033-Programm“ des frisch umgetauften Kriegsministeriums befeuert wird, über das überschüssige Militärausrüstung an lokale Polizeibehörden weitergegeben wird. Gleichzeitig wird die Präsenz des Militärs im Inneren ebenso zur Normalität. Aktuell patrouillieren tausende Nationalgardisten in Washington D.C. – entsandt im Sommer 2025 als Teil einer umstrittenen Anti-Kriminalitäts-Operation der Regierung.” Militarized police is meant to make us despair.
Vogel des Jahres 2026 [birdlife.ch] – Eisvogel won! I am happy.
//cw suicide
Tödliche K.I. – Fabulierende Maschinen und fabulierende Menschen [54books] – “Wenn jede produktive Änderung also dazu führt, dass die Anwendungen möglicherweise weniger «Engagement» generieren, ist das Interesse kapitalistisch agierender Firmen natürlich sehr begrenzt. In die Enge getrieben werden sie höchstens durch juristische Schritte. Von Gewalt betroffene Familien versuchen, die Firmen, die die AI-Chatbots herstellen, zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen.” The cynicism of the AI bubble is baffling.
Eine dunkle Vermutung über Corona grassiert – und ist so ansteckend wie das Virus [tagi magi] – “Das ständige Wiederaufwärmen der Laborthese trotz fehlender Evidenz, das bewusste Verdrehen von Halbwahrheiten und die Wiederholung längst widerlegter Unwahrheiten untergraben nicht nur das Vertrauen in die Wissenschaft, sondern lenken auch von den tatsächlichen Gefahren ab: der zunehmend fragilen Schnittstelle zwischen Mensch und Tier. Das Eindringen von Menschen in die Lebensräume der Fledermäuse, durch Verstädterung, Abholzung oder Tourismus, und der unregulierte milliardenschwere Wildtierhandel – das sind reale Risiken für künftige Pandemien. Da sollten wir hinschauen.” I don’t often link to this shitty rag. But this is a pretty great debunking of the lab leak theory and therefore worth sharing. An article you could send to your nutty uncle. The author also points out, in subtle terms, how the problem was always capitalism, stupid.
[Older articles, still great]
How to use the internet, 1995 – “Computer consultant Cory Doctorow predicts video on demand while showing a CBC reporter some of the new medium’s features. Aired on CBC’s The National on June 19, 1995.” Ha ha.
Der Antisemitismus der Antisemitismus-Bekämpfer [jacobin] – “Wenn rechte oder konservative jüdische Israelis diejenigen jüdischen Israelis, die den israelischen Staat kritisieren, als antisemitisch bezeichnen, dann ist das unschön, diffamierend und es unterdrückt eine inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung. Aber wenn eine nichtjüdische Gruppe diese gruppeninternen Diffamierungen übernimmt, dann hat das rein soziologisch die Qualität von Rassismus.” Why can’t the German “left” just read this article and stfu?!
Why Are People Wearing Masks in 2025? [substack] – “False narratives are being used to dehumanize people and criminalize a basic preventative health practice. In reality, most of the people still masking are among the strongest, most self-assured people I’ve known. They are the least concerned about other’s perceptions, the most concerned about others/our collective well-being, are embodying self-care by protecting their health (and mental health), willing to interrogate their choices and motivations, and are committed to accepting and integrating data and new information – even when they want desperately to be wrong about what they learn. They are also among the most alienated, judged, ignored, harassed, invisibilized, and forgotten.” There are so many possible reasons why people continue to wear masks. But people always choose to suspect the worst, incorrect reasons. Which is a bad faith reading.
Who Burned the Bronx? [the new republic] – “Bench Ansfield’s Born in Flames argues that landlords—driven by financialization and the development of insurance “brownlining” in the 1960s and 1970s—are largely to blame.” This book went onto my must-read list.
R.I.P.
This month we lost three important voices in the disability justice and chronic illness community.
Alice Wong
Leslie Lee III
Winnie
Too many in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine and in all the other wars.
The Kessler twins (they left together, love it)
Jimmy Cliff
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Header Photo: Swimming with swans [not online elsewhere yet]