[A monthly link list of recommended articles, videos, podcasts, photos, toots … you name it]
[Videos]
Militarized Policing and the Imperial Boomerang | Julian Go
Watch A Musical Indictment of the Harris County Jail in “Criminal” [the new yorker] – “Robe Imbriano’s documentary short uses music and animation to illustrate the grave injustices taking place at Houston’s notorious jail and in the cash-bail system at large.” The fantastic look & feel, animation, music, of this documentary almost distracted me from its horrific topic.
Lego Pancake / Stop Motion Cooking & ASMR
The Onion Investigates: Jeffrey Epstein
[Music]
Yasmine Hamdan – I remember I forget بنسى وبتذكر [bandcamp: shortcode must include 'track', 'album', or 'video' param] – “Memory is the most extraordinary force. It shapes, and perpetually remixes, our sense of self and surroundings. It is somehow both elusive and irresistibly persistent. On I Remember I Forget, the eagerly anticipated third album from Beirut-born, Paris-based singer-songwriter and producer Yasmine Hamdan, this force is ever present and always transforming.”
Savlonic : Silent Faces [Ultraviolet Album] I think the animation (by Weebl) beats the music.
[Podcasts]
Sophie Lewis & Lola Olufemi: Enemy Feminisms [london review bookshop] – “In Enemy Feminisms (Haymarket Books), described by Judith Butler as ‘honest, brutal, historically comprehensive, and brilliant’, Sophie Lewis provides a field guide to the reactionary stereotypes that have affected and distorted feminisms past and present, and propounds a paradigm for a feminism that is inclusive, anticolonial and truly liberational.” Still my book of the year.
« C’est leur monde qui est fou, pas nous » [lundi.am] – “Ce samedi 11 octobre se tient la première Mad Pride autonome. Pride pour fierté, évidemment et Mad pour « fou » et énervé. S’il y a bien une question qui est systématiquement dépolitisée, c’est celle de l’inadéquation psychique au monde ; ceux qui nous gouvernent parlent de « santé mentale », Emmanuel Macron en a même fait la grande cause nationale de l’année 2025. Il s’agirait de prendre en charge ce qui déborde, de faire rentrer dans le rang ceux qui déconnent. Mais que disent-ils tous ceux-là ? Les fous, les traumatisés, les déprimés, les dépressifs, les fêlés, les bipolaires, les toqués, les psychotiques, les dingues et les maniaques ?” If you understand French, this describes the positive development of how the mad pride made it to France.
Collateral Damage [intercept] – “Collateral Damage is an investigative podcast series examining the half-century-long war on drugs, its enduring ripple effects, and the devastating consequences of building a massive war machine aimed at the public itself. Hosted by Radley Balko, an investigative journalist who has been covering the drug war and the criminal justice system for more than 20 years, each episode takes an in-depth look at someone who was unjustly killed in the drug war.” They fill the prisons with people who commit consensual crimes, but let the filthy rich continue to perform their atrocious economic crimes.
Comment devenir fasciste [lundi.am] – “La thérapie de conversion de Mark Fortier” If you understand french, this is an inspiring and hilarious conversation on how to become a fascist (not really).
[Toot Threads]
[Pandemic Roundup]
Covid: October 30, 2025
Covid: October 23, 2025
Covid: October 16, 2025
Covid: October 9, 2025
Covid: October 2, 2025
[The Must Read[s] This Month]
Political struggle in film: an overview of pitfalls & traps | Xander Dunlap [rupture press] – “Film is frequently employed to advance a political agenda. Even explicitly revolutionary or radical films often have defeatist narratives or secondary pacifist messages designed into them. This article seeks to encourage media literacy, but also academic awareness of how films portray struggles and the type of messages that condition our politics and actions.” The same goes for science fiction movies. When will we finally start to see adaptations of UK Le Guin novels (among others), with an utopian instead of a dystopian outlook?
Another way out: How denying reality aids fascism | William C. Anderson [prismreports] – “Liberals have assumed that baiting right-wingers into dialogue and beating them in debate will change conditions, and it didn’t, and it still won’t. Liberals’ nonsensical “marketplace of ideas” approach legitimized fascism by reducing it to a difference of opinion and the right to “free speech.” Now, the same liberals who validated the absurd myth of “cancel culture” so that the right could openly talk about exterminating and imprisoning their enemies will be targeted by that which they helped facilitate.” Love the anecdote (mentioned elsewhere) when Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, invited Russell to a debate, but Russell declined and replied “nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us […] every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterized the philosophy and practice of fascism.” That’s how to respond to right-wingers who seek to “debate” you.
COVID-19 is “Airborne AIDS”: provocative oversimplification, emerging science, or something in between? [ajpmfocus.org] – “While SARS-CoV-2 does not cause HIV/AIDS, its ability to induce immune dysfunction—including T cell depletion and dysfunction, increased susceptibility to infection including opportunistic, accelerated biological aging, neurological, and systemic damage provide parallels in terms of AIDs in the broader immunological context. The virus’s subacute and chronic persistence, vascular pathology, immune evasion, neurological impacts, systemic damage and contribution to population-wide immune dysfunction pose a significant long-term public health threat. Addressing these challenges requires sustained infection control measures, research into treatments and biomarkers for persistence, cumulative infection burden and naivety. Hygienic, informed, evidence-based and compassionate patient care, support for the patients and updated definitions for chronic SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 sequelae are essential. Applying lessons from older pandemics is of vital importance – especially as long as causal and curative treatments remain unavailable. Without decisive action, the long-term consequences of unchecked SARS-CoV-2 infection—like those of HIV-1—may continue to undermine global health for decades.” I think with this level of nuance the debate is now settled. Or is it?
When Will the Lion Concern Himself | Julia Doubleday [substack] – “Disabled people, and people with Long COVID, have been calling ourselves canaries in the coal mine for a reason. We may have been harmed first and worst, but we are warning you that COVID is dangerous because our bodies are made of flesh and blood – hearts and brains- just like yours.” Greet your local, friendly canary.
[Articles English]
No Kings, Just a Lot of Puppets | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “The opposite of nonviolence, at least the one I advocate, is an ecosystem of revolt in which there must be room for many different creatures, many forms of participation, and even room for different methods that are contradictory, that enter into conflict. An ecosystem of revolt has an unavoidable need for healers, for teachers or storytellers, for peacemakers and mediators, for translators and singers and builders, as much as it has need for fighters. But, listen up: in the present world, the acts of fighting, of sabotaging, of destroying, of seizing ground, have unique importance and need as much support as possible. The reason? Because an ecosystem needs room to flourish, it needs contact with the earth and the water, and that’s not possible in a world covered in concrete and sewer tunnels (both metaphorical and literal).” I can’t believe that we still need to discuss the long-settled question. But there we go, aye.
Solutions for Sleep [cfsselfhelp] – Sure a quiet environment would be awesome for someone who is struggling with sleep. But how do you “create” a comfortable and quiet environment, when your direct neighbors are assholes, who keep you awake every night, even after you tried talking with them, or in fact even more so since then? While moving is a huge stress factor, that makes me suicidal, when i even think of it.
ICE Enforcement May Be A Mass Disabling Event | Disabled Ginger [substack] – “No matter what, it’s important we recognize the power we have as a community. There are more of us than there are of them. If we work together, develop strong safety plans and commit to protecting the most vulnerable, we can and will make a difference. We must refuse to do the fascists dirty work for them. Refuse to see anyone as ‘less than’ or ‘expendable’. Refuse to leave anyone behind.” That’s the plan.
I Am One of 20 Million in US With Long COVID. RFK Pulled the Rug From Under Us. [truthout] – “We must come to realize that if we live long enough, every one of us will experience disability. Instead of viewing those with disabilities or chronic illness as unproductive or no longer useful, we must fight for a society that measures its health by how well it cares for those who need the most. When we build a world that cares for the most vulnerable, we build a world that finally cares for us all.” Finally another article about the ongoing pandemic and Long COVID in a radical leftist magazine, but then again, this article is not too convincing.
Invasion Metaphors in Conservation Biology Pose Real-World Risk [undark.org] – “Most problematic of all for the analogy’s scientific and ethical validity: Humans consist of just one species. Comparing the arrival of different populations or communities — distinguished perhaps by economic status, skin color, language, or citizenship — is a fundamentally different exercise than assessing the impact of a new species on an existing biome, food web, or ecological niche.” This article offers much needed nuance in this debate. Kernel of truth.
Weaving Paths to Ecological Revolution – “In Belém, they’re exploiting workers and cutting down parts of the Amazon to get ready for the COP30, the yearly UN-sponsored climate summit. For 30 years, government leaders, scientific institutions, major NGOs, and corporations from around the world have been claiming to address the issue, but the problem is only getting worse. It’s no surprise, because the institutions trying to monopolize the solutions are the same ones causing the crisis, destroying our ecosystems, exploiting us, cutting our healthcare, and endangering our access to food, housing, clean air, and water. We don’t have the luxury to trust them for one more day.” I keep wondering why activists need to fly to Brazil for the COP, thereby contribute to pollution. Or in other words, let’s focus on finally finding other ways to protest. But sure.
From breakdown to breakthrough [substack] – “it would mean forming actual community. Not just like going to an activist meeting one day, but creating actual communities of care where we’re all in it together, where we’re living not just for ourselves but for each other, where we’re helping our neighbors, where we’re ensuring that they have what they need and are collectively envisioning what a life could look like in a more equal and just society. It’s not as simple as just getting together with your friends and neighbours but I think that’s actually the first step — to get together with them and figure out ways to live in a more communal configuration, essentially. We have to do it together.” I enjoyed this far ranging conversation about personal drug use and mental health. But this quote is where the systemic critique is most poignant.
‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’: Virginia Giuffre on her abuse at the hands of Epstein, Maxwell and the king’s brother [the guardian] – “In an extract from her posthumous memoir, Virginia Roberts Giuffre remembers the day an ‘apex predator’ recruited her from Mar-a-Lago, aged just 16; how she was trafficked to a succession of wealthy and powerful men – and how everyone knew what was going on” The horror, what Virginia and so many girls had to go through. Release the damn files.
Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face” [aftonbladet] – “Beating, kicking, and threats of being gassed in cages. Greta Thunberg and several others from the flotilla are now sharing details about their five days in Israeli captivity – and how Swedish Foreign Ministry staff left them without help. Aftonbladet’s investigation shows how the Foreign Ministry downplayed the abuse in its communications.” Greta hesitated to talk about the abuses she experienced, because she did not want to make it the story. The problem is, she did experience it and the Israeli abuses needs to be addressed.
Charlie Kirk and the Free Speech Hoax | Shane Burley [in these times] – “Free expression is a talking point the Right uses when it wants to indict the Left for criticizing bigoted speech, but it has never taken the implications of free speech seriously. To do so means creating a society in which rights are uniform and accessible, where access to the media infrastructure is not only accorded to the wealthy, and where people feel fundamentally safe to be their own unique self.” When the right-wing demands free speech, what they really demand is freedom from accountability.
While the perpetrators of Gaza’s genocide pose as its saviours, survivors return home – to a wasteland | Nesrine Malik [the guardian] – “Of course you would rush to Sharm el-Sheikh if you were representing a government that provided arms, restricted protest and refused either to endorse declarations of genocide, or to observe the rulings of the ICC when it issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. Peace in Gaza represents an opportunity to forget; to erase from the collective consciousness an era in which some western countries took a bludgeon to international norms and institutions, and indeed their own domestic politics, in order to force through the destruction of Gaza.” The Israeli military has since breached the “ceasefire” many times.
Weaving This Thread Together | Rupa Marya [substack] – “how do we tell stories that heal? How do we tell stories that allow remembrance, in ways where we can hold each other in tenderness, utter shock and terror, until we come to the other side, metabolizing our individual and collective grief as we compost empire, so that we can walk together on this one planet in another way? How do we remember things we were forced to forget, the ways our ancestors knew how to bring people together in common purpose, to allow our culture to evolve with our changing circumstances, rather than remain recalcitrant, fixed to a static notion of self or nation that never existed, except in the oppressive imaginary of colonialism?” Marya, after being forced to leave California to now work/teach in Ireland.
The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act | Natasha Lennard [intersept] – “The language of the law is vague — a gift to a president with dictatorial aims. It grants the federal executive power to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”” Too many loopholes, no checks and balances, and the democracy, that never was one, was sunk.
Football Shouldn’t Be a Billboard for the World’s Dictators [jacobin] – “From Rwanda’s Paul Kagame to the Emirati monarchy, some of the world’s most brutal regimes have chosen to use soccer as a promotional tool.” The article focuses on football, but in cycling it is almost as bad, with sportswashing teams like UAE and Israel Premier Tech or the recent World Champs in Rwanda. I feel embarrassed that i watched the worlds. But i for one will boycott the football world cup in the US next year.
Cat’s Cafe – Finally… – FWOSH!
Explicit Content [the point magazine] – “In Empty Moments, the film scholar Leo Charney argues that “drift”—the inability to hold onto a stable present—is the defining feature of modernity. Violent spectacle jolts us into momentary contact with something that feels real, however horrifying it might be. Social media, like Edison’s cinema of attractions, doles out violence as a stimulant. By discarding context and moral frameworks, the violence is aestheticized and reduced to slop—slickly produced yet strangely hollow, gesturing at importance without actually achieving it. What matters most isn’t what the violence means or why it was perpetrated, only that it draws attention. Its shallowness invites viewers to project their own interpretations—or just enjoy the show.” Sure, but why re-trigger us with Haneke?
[Articles German/French]
Militant, vernetzt und erfolgreich [woz] – “Die Antifa von Portland macht nicht erst seit Donald Trumps jüngstem Angriff auf die linke Stadt immer wieder Schlagzeilen. Begegnung mit einer Bewegung.”
„Ich verstehe Science Fiction inzwischen als rhetorische Strategie“ – Geschichte der Gegenwart – “Ökonomische Strukturen sind so selbstverständlich geworden, dass uns die kritische Sprache dafür fehlt. Dies ist das Ergebnis aktiver neoliberaler Orthopraxie, die den Menschen an die Märkte anpasst, statt umgekehrt. Oft wird die Meritokratie als alternativlos vorausgesetzt, aber die Bedingungen sind für Menschen je nach ihrer sozialen Herkunft extrem unterschiedlich, und dies wiederum führt zu Ressentiments, wie man sie bei MAGA-Anhänger:innen und ähnlichen Bewegungen sehen kann. Mark Fisher spricht in diesem Zusammenhang von „capitalist realism“ – und meint damit die Vorstellung, dass keine Alternative zum Kapitalismus denkbar ist.” From TINA (there is no alternative) to TAMARA (there are many and real alternatives).
Die Skandal-Demo, die keine ist [republik] – “Die Gaza-Demo vom letzten Samstag in Bern sorgt landesweit für Schlagzeilen. Doch was passierte an diesem Tag genau? Unser Reporter hat die Ereignisse des Tages entlang von 13 Fragen und Antworten rekonstruiert.” This is a proper investigation, shame on the media in general, including the WoZ.
Miserable Berichterstattung zu Palästina-Demo [das lamm] – “Auf die Demonstration in Bern folgte ein Medienspektakel, das sich lieber über Sachschäden empört, statt über Genozid und Schweizer Beteiligung zu berichten. Gleichzeitig forderten bürgerliche Medien harte Massnahmen gegen Antifaschist*innen und legitimierten Polizeigewalt.” Das Lamm with the much needed media critique.
Die Zerstörung Gazas und die Prozesse der Komplizenschaft [gdg] – “Die weiterreichenden Auswirkungen auf die israelische Gesellschaft sind tiefgreifend. Wenn innerhalb militärischer Strukturen attraktive wirtschaftliche Möglichkeiten bestehen und wenn militärische Operationen das für die Stabilität der Mittelschicht notwendige Einkommen generieren, löst sich die Grenze zwischen zivilen und militärischen Strukturen auf. Wenn das Wohlergehen der Zivilbevölkerung direkt von militärischen Operationen und den damit verbundenen Kriegsverbrechen abhängt, entsteht eine Gesellschaft, die strukturell in die Fortsetzung krimineller Politiken involviert ist.” This is what is so fucked up. The genocide is supported by a large percentage of the Israeli population.
[Older articles or videos, still great]
Götz Aly über Hitlers Politik wie auf Speed: „Jeden Tag ein neuer Feind“ [rnd] – “Ein wichtiges Prinzip von Hitler, Göring und Himmler lautete: jeden Tag ein neuer Feind, jeden Tag ein neuer Sieg, eine neue Vergünstigung für die Bevölkerungsmehrheit. Goebbels sagte: „Tempo ist die Mutter des Erfolgs“, und es kam ihm darauf an, das Volk in „ständiger Siedehitze“ zu halten. Mit derart aktivistischer Überwältigung lassen sich Menschen relativ leicht gefügig machen, sie wissen dann kaum noch, wo hinten und vorne, oben und unten ist. In weniger dramatischer Form als bei Hitler kann man diese Herrschaftstechnik aktuell am Beispiel von Donald Trump beobachten.” To overwhelm us is the point.
Another Art World, Part 1: Art Communism and Artificial Scarcity [david graeber] – Re-read this series of essays and continue to love them.
Another Art World, Part 2: Utopia Of Freedom As A Market Value
Another Art World, Part 3: Policing And Symbolic Order
Bella ciao performed by a Kurdish women’s choir from Italy and #Carnival4David – We are in this 😉
R.I.P.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
Too many in Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine
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Header Photo: Fuck people who leave their rubber gloves in the forest