[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
Linking to this video a second time, because it remains so fucking relevant. It’s the aerosols, stupid! (which i should yell at every medical doctor [!] i visit who is wearing a baggy blue mask. Come on guys. WTF)
[Music]
The album is out now.
The Rapture Soundtrack – I enjoyed this BBC series very much and even the soundtrack by Dominik Scherrer worked well while watching, maybe a bit less when listened to it alone.
[Podcasts]
Silicon Valley’s Billionaire Cults Are Coming for Democracy | Kelly Hayes [organizingmythoughts] – "This is a battle of billionaires versus freedom. It’s a fight to defend ourselves against an unprecedented existential threat. We can have billionaires or we can have democracy. We cannot have both. And ours is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And right now, we have a government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. And that’s not all Donald Trump’s fault, by the way. The Democrats were doing this, too. The billionaires just acted a little more normal and polite when the Democrats were in power. But if we do not crush billionaire power in our time, the billionaires are going to crush us." Yes, all true. But we still do need to discuss what Durán means by "democracy". He is a Democrat. And therefore part of the problem.
Teaser – I.P. the Killer w/ Vicky Osterweil – “Beatrice speaks with Vicky Osterweil about how intellectual property has become central to global capitalism, what led the Disney corporation to send lobbyists to defend covid vaccine patents, and her new book The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World.” I really hope this episode will get unlocked soon, because it is a brilliant, wide-ranging conversation!
Boy George’s Very Strange Spiral | A Bit Fruity – “When Boy George released an AI-generated reggae Zionist fight song last month, I was not shocked. That’s only because the 1980s queer pop icon and “Karma Chameleon” singer quietly directed his ire at me (ME!) a few months earlier. How did such a legendary countercultural figure resort to… whatever this is? Today, we’re telling a bizarre story of fame, crime, geopolitics, and artificial intelligence.” Oh Boy! (too obvious?)
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Pandemic Roundup: August 27, 2026
Pandemic Roundup: August 20, 2026
Pandemic Roundup: August 13, 2026
Pandemic Roundup: August 6, 2026
If you can, please support Violet for the ongoing coverage of the ongoing COVID pandemic, which saying it like that should be an obvious topic to keep covering.
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
Indifference engines | Death Panel [substack] – "AI and data centers constitute a kind of double-bind health threat, or a self compounding bodily threat, to all of us. AI as currently constituted operate as a mechanism of social murder. The AI boom is, literally, killing people." A look at AI with the death panel perspective, a focus on health/disability, capitalist extraction and its blatant eugenic components.
Art is a Wobbly Compass | Alison Rose Reed [substack] – "The Manosphere is a new age religion, a haunted hallway of mirrors, a pyramid scheme built on made-up shit grown men spew to other lost men of all ages. They bark winning party banter like Women are the root of all evil! Facts are for losers! No one cares about you or reality! Your dick is supreme and insignificant! They are the aggressor and victim of their own reason." So precise, it almost hurts.
[Articles English]
Trojan horse propaganda thread by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social [bluesky] – "Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that." An excellent thread, love the expression Trojan horse propaganda. Incitement trolling points in the same direction, but maybe works better when shouted down from a podium (by the orange Mussolini, for instance), one-to-many. Whereas Trojan horse is a peer-to-peer tool.
Elon Musk’s xAI used child porn to train Grok models, lawsuit says [arstechnica] – "The lawsuit accuses X of violating federal child pornography laws, as well as Masha’s Law, both of which give CSAM survivors a right to sue on claims of production, possession, and distribution. A lawyer for Doe, Margaret E. Mabie, suggested in the press release that all three are crimes and “xAI did all three.”" Let’s send Musk to Mars already, and then we just leave him there to yell at the endless wasteland of dusty, red rocks.
Apocalypse Early Warning System – "In the event of an imminent nuclear apocalypse, we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers. This site tracks this indicator in realtime. The current emergency level is reported on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being an indicator of a likely imminent apocalypse." The book The Future by Naomi Alderman offers a twist based on this logic, no further spoilers.
The Server Called Paranoia: Defend Autistici/Inventati Before September 25 – "A/I has survived corporations demanding censorship, covert police access, confiscated disks, hostile providers, parliamentary attacks and international investigations. The Trenitalia case produced mirrors and a legal victory. The Aruba breach produced Plan R*. Provider censorship produced redundancy. […] Between now and September 25, preserve the history. Share the story. Build the coalition. Document the isolation. Teach the tools. Prepare a lawful defense. Do not allow the state to quietly establish that building privacy-preserving infrastructure for dissent is itself an act of terrorism." A historical look at A/I servers in Italy, which shows the parallels to similar projects in other countries.
A STATEMENT BY A/I COLLECTIVE ABOUT US SANCTIONS – "Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity." Looking at you now, yes you, liberal-centrist or some such. If this does not worry you, you will have another thing coming. Soon.
The Forbidden Deleuze: For Palestine, Against Genocide [ill will] – "For Deleuze, Zionism emerges as a theological apparatus of reparation. Europe never paid its debt to the Jews; instead, it made an innocent people pay it in its place. As he writes, “The United States and Europe owed reparation to the Jews. And they made a people, about whom the least that could be said is that they had no hand in and were singularly innocent of any holocaust and hadn’t even heard of it, pay this reparation.” For actual reparation Germany should have given the Zionist project Bavaria.
Saul Williams: ‘Resistance fighters need something to listen to’ [nerve] – "resistance fighters need to dance. We need to be energised. I look at art as a kind of alternative energy that fuels and sparks the necessary energy that we need to mobilise. There [have been] tons of moments where horrendous things [have] happened and I didn’t have all the words, I wasn’t leading the charge. This moment with Palestine – I felt it’s my turn." Interview, see the new Saul Williams album above.
ICE's New "Shock Gloves" are Already in American Schools… | Disabled Ginger [substack] – "This is what happens under fascism. Rights become eroded. People are mistreated. Freedoms stripped away. It starts with the most vulnerable and gradually spreads to the entire population. Like the frog in boiling water, many people don’t realize what’s happening until it’s way past too late.” Call me defeatist, but i believe it is too late already. But all my love to everyone who keeps fighting and believing.
Private Equity Is Buying Up the World of Football [jacobin] – "Football confederations revolted against Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup. But the failure of his scheme won’t affect the bigger picture as private-equity firms gobble up football clubs in pursuit of short-term gains." I wish lower league football was more attractive in these parts, because equity football is no fun.
Fire and Forestry | Starhawk [substack] – "What does it really mean to tend a forest? The answer, as is so often in permaculture or any question about living systems, is, “It depends.” It depends on where the forest is, what its condition is, how it was traditionally managed first by indigenous people, later by settlers, colonizers and logging companies, on what resources and options you have and what the land actually needs for healing." Normalize Soay sheep. Everywhere.
A Digital Lynching | Carole Cadwalladr [substack] – "I can’t see any universe in which these titles will hold themselves to any sort of account. Because this is how culture wars work. The cultivation of targets that can be righteously attacked is the business model. " Cadwalladr received blow back for calling it a lynching. But that’s exactly what it was. Started by racists, pursued by racist newspapers. And even the Guardian participated.
A is for Airtight Categories, B for Blanket Statements, C for Cherrypicking | Rebecca Solnit [substack] – "Ideas matter. How we tell the story matters. How good we are at recognizing our own habits of mind, frameworks, assumptions, biases and those of the most powerful storytellers in our society is how good we are at navigating our personal and collective path toward the truth and our aspirations. This is cultural work, the cultural work that shapes our world, because culture underlies politics the way topsoil underlies crops. Understanding the culture, the frameworks, the stories is essential to all the political work we do." The hope lady makes a good point.
Assessing the Global Temperature and Precipitation in July 2026 [ncei] – "Global surface temperatures in July 2026 were 2.12°F (1.18°C) above the 20th-century average, tying with 2024 for the warmest July on record. The past four Julys (2023–26) were the four warmest on record, with 2023, 2024, and 2026 each having a July temperature departure that exceeded +1.8°F (+1.0°C). This month also marked the 55th-consecutive July with a global temperature departure above the 20th-century average; the most recent below-average July occurred in 1971." Move along. Nothing to see.
The antifa terrorism threat the Trump administration describes does not exist [theconversation] – "This is not just an issue of semantics and rhetoric – each action by the Trump administration against a strawman enemy creates risks. And the push to internationalize the antifa threat could have dire consequences at home." You think?
„Palantir is really toxic“ [netzpolitik] – "A few months ago we launched something called the „Palantir Payroll“. It’s a list of all members of U.S. Congress who are getting money from Palantir. People have demanded that their members of Congress cut ties with the company. 12 or 14 people who are up for reelection this year have said that they’re not going to take any more money from Palantir." This seems like a smart approach (if you believe in electoral politics).
ASCII Today – A super-fast ascii title generator.
[Articles German/French]
CW// Sexual abuse of children
Der Engelmacher [srf] – “DER ENGELMACHER erzählt von der bis heute bestehenden Schweizer Glaubensgemeinschaft Methernitha, ihrem Gründer Paul Baumann – Erfinder einer rätselhaften Energiemaschine – und den Mädchen, die ihn wegen Kindesmissbrauchs zu Fall brachten” Shocking.
Invalidenversicherung vor Zerreissprobe [daslamm] – "Dass die Schicksale der Betroffenen hinter Sparvorgaben zurücktreten, hat tiefe Wurzeln. Ab den 1970er-Jahren entwickelte sich ein wachsendes gesellschaftliches Misstrauen gegenüber Rentenbeziehenden. Anfang der Nullerjahre verschärfte die SVP diese Stimmung mit dem «Narrativ des Missbrauchs». Sie forderte eine stärkere Missbrauchsbekämpfung und die Überwachung von Betroffenen." I have a problem when a leftist magazine looks at social safety nets in terms of profit/deficit. As a last resort, a health and disability insurances should not be judged using economic parameters. Other than that, another great das lamm article.
Essay: Das Ende einer Epoche [woz] – "Aber es dauert immer etwas, bis sich die Wahrnehmung mit der Wirklichkeit synchronisiert. Der Mythos Berlin blieb, wie ein schöner, schicker, etwas abgetragener Anzug im Schaufenster eines Secondhandladens. Die Realität zog weiter. Für die, die in Berlin leben, ist es längst eine normale Stadt mit normalen Problemen. Das erzeugt eine Spannung, die mit Melancholie kompensiert wird und der Stadt so etwas seltsam Schwerfälliges verleiht." Berlin hype deflated! After years of regretting that we did not move there in the 90s, i now feel great that we didn’t.
Neurologie: «Hier geht es um mehr als nur das Gehirn» | WOZ – "Diagnostische Kategorien sind häufig Ausdruck der herrschenden sozialen und politischen Ordnung – und verstärken diese zugleich. Das trifft natürlich nicht auf jede Diagnose im Bereich der psychischen Gesundheit zu. Aber es ist wichtig, den soziopolitischen Kontext immer mitzuberücksichtigen." Then why the disclaimer? I think all psychiatric diagnosis are an expression of the current social and political order.
[Older articles, still great]
LES DEVIANTS Ep 29 : LE PATRIARCHE (Lucien Joseph Engelmajer) – I still can’t believe that i managed to get clean in this organisation, even if i already noticed many instances of corruption and transgressions. But here we go, for me it was the prefect place to end my heroin addiction, all those many many years ago.
The Interracial Cuck Porn Theory of Everything – "The modern right is very weird. They go into hysterics when Cracker Barrel decides to change their logo. They’re obsessed with declining birthrates; to the point of encouraging teenage girls to get pregnant. They’re convinced of a Jewish plot to include mixed-race couples in “Stranger Things.” They can’t stop calling their opponents cucks. It’s impossible to spend any time analyzing online right-wing politics without tripping over some bizarre psychosexual hangups." Trust me, this article offers quite the “theory of everything”.
A Code Red Warning about TESCREALism [truthdig] – "The danger of secular apocalyptic cults is that, when members believe that the promises of utopia are about to be shattered, they may resort to extreme measures to keep those promises alive." People smoke too much pot, is all.
R.I.P.
Way too many in Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, Nepal and in wars and catastrophes all around the world
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Header Photo: A fox checks out the scenery half hidden in the underbrush.