[Videos]

Hito Steyerl – Friction

The Elements of Mutual Aid | Chapter 1: Fire

[Music]

Boards of Canada – Flexi/Hexi disc – 177 Giraud’s Mirror (Bonus track Inferno)

Boards of Canada – Inferno

KNEECAP – Irish Goodbye (Short Film) ft. Kae Tempest

Boards of Canada – Introit / Prophecy At 1420 MHz

[Podcasts]

The Tucker Carlson Problem (with Naomi Klein) – “Tucker Carlson has emerged as one of the most influential voices opposing the U.S. relationship to Israel. He’s also anti-Trump. So is he your friend now? Today, the inimitable Naomi KIein makes her A Bit Fruity debut to explain the Right’s burgeoning realignment, why the Republican successor to Trump could be so much scarier (sorry), and how an inept Liberal establishment made the rise of an antisemitic nationalist movement inevitable.” Ugh.

Health Fascism and the Anti-State State (Re-Air) [.soundcloud.] – This episode, originally released for patrons only, is now freely accessible, and it’s still excellent.

[Toot Threads]

[Pandemic Roundup]

Ebola – Hantavirus – Covid: May 28, 2026a>Ebola – Hantavirus – Covid: May 21, 2026
Hantavirus – Covid: May 14, 2026
Covid: May 7, 2026

[The Must Read[s] This Month]

The fight against AI data centers isn’t just about tech – it’s about democracy | Astra Taylor and Saul Levin – “The anti-datacenter movement, in other words, isn’t just about the future of a novel technology. It’s about the future of democracy. It’s about who controls the economy and whether regular people have a say in the decisions that affect them. Given how we’ve all been denied a voice in this technological upheaval, everyone should be cheering the movement on. Or better yet, joining the fight.” The opposition to data centers and big tech could turn into an interesting development.

The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon – “Fallon presides over his rituals of play like a vampire, feeding not on blood but on enthusiasm. He doesn’t really converse with any of his guests; they all know what they are there for. Rather, he extracts. He demands “relatability” from them, draining the authenticity from the interaction until only the husk of a “viral moment” remains. The horror lies in the repetition: the feigned shock, the hysterical laughter at unfunny mishaps, the relentless “Golden Retriever energy.”” Fallon has always been a milquetoast fence sitter.

[Articles English]

Drag queen Pattie Gonia fights trademark lawsuit by Patagonia [bbc] – “If Patagonia wants to celebrate Pride Month this year by taking a queer climate activist to federal court, then I'm here to fight for myself” Whatever rode Patagonia to even consider this lawsuit?

FIFA Should Be Banned From the Game [counterpunch] – “If money didn’t rule sports and sanity did rule US politics, both of these men [Infantino and Trump] would be either in prison or on their way to prison for the swamp of corruption they both wallow in and celebrate. While I appreciate the game known as football in most of the world, I have nothing but intense disgust for the capitalist carnival the World Cup has become.” Fuck FIFA. I sure hope i will be strong enough to boycott the upcoming world cup. I will hate every minute of it.

Trump’s New National Strategy Labels ‘Left-Wing’ as Terrorists, Akin to ISIL and Al Qaeda [unicorn riot] – “The White House’s newly released national counterterrorism strategy identifies the “left-wing,” “anti-fascists,” “anarchists” and “radically pro-transgender ideologies” as terrorist threats equivalent to al Qaeda and the Islamic State.” Horseshoe theory now official policy in the United States of Assholes.

Mold exposure can trigger and worsen chronic illness. Climate change will increase the risk. [the sick times] – “Mold exposure is a complicated and little-understood phenomena, with limited and largely untested treatments available. More research is needed to figure out the connection between different species of mold and the health impacts of exposure.” In my case, i have had mold allergies for decades. Long COVID only made it worse.

The Movement We Need | Starhawk [substack] – The entire book, written by Starhawk chapter by chapter on substack, is now done and available for your reading pleasure.

‘Petro-masculinity’ is destroying the planet. Can eco-masculinity help save it? [theguardian] – “Coined by political scientist Cara Daggett in a 2018 paper, “petro-masculinity” describes a pernicious fusion between fossil fuel use, climate change denial, and defense of authoritarian white patriarchal masculinity. Noting how fossil fuel extraction and consumption are coded “masculine”, while environmentalism and green technology are coded soft, weak and “feminine”; it tracks how insecure men are increasingly leaning in to a petro-masculine identity in order to assert traditional masculine authority in the face of climate change, threats to traditional extractive industries, and changing social norms.” Turn patriarchs into fossils.

COVID Consciousness as a Subculture[substack] – “The empowerment found in looking after each other is the empowerment of all good movements – there is no need, ever, to leave a single soul behind. Good movements sustain themselves with big imaginations for good now’s and good futures – and being part of the COVID Conscious Community, signaling my belonging to the group in any and every way I can, is my message to the world that I don’t want to go back in time, I know we can do better, and that a good future is coming. We will make it so.” Don’t get me wrong, i loved reading this. But it made me so sad, because the movement, i thought i was a part of, dropped me like a dead fly as soon as i got ill.

taken. – “You opened this page. It already knows the following.” Creepy stuff.

Kim Gordon’s Capitalist Realism [jacobin] – “In Capitalist Realism (2009), Mark Fisher writes of how Kurt Cobain’s suicide marked the end of a certain utopianism in rock music, which was already being overtaken by hip-hop. In both instances, authenticity was integral to their creativity — a feature recognized and commodified by the corporate music industry.” I can highly recommend Kim Gordon’s latest album Play Me.

[Articles German/French]

Demo­kra­ti­sche Selbstsorge? [gdg] – “Was wir heute infolge der zerstörerischen Politik von Trump oder Putin beobachten können, hängt zwar mit diesem Grundparadoxon von Demokratie zusammen, hat aber bereits eine neue Stufe erreicht. Es geht nicht mehr darum, aufgrund von einem realen Schutzbedürfnis demokratische Rechte teilweise einzuschränken, sondern bereits darum, diese Achillesferse demokratischer Gesellschaften gezielt anzusteurn, um Demokratien gegen sich selbst zu mobilisieren.” Whenever i read takes like these i always want to ask, what democracy are you talking about? But sure, the author quotes Foucault and stuff, so it must be good.

Slopaganda: Was ist Slopaganda? [woz] – “Anders als gewöhnlicher Slop nutzt «Slopaganda» die Mechanismen sozialer Medien nicht allein zur profitablen Aufmerksamkeitsgenerierung, sondern zur politischen Einflussnahme. Von klassischer Propaganda unterscheidet sie sich nicht zuletzt im Hinblick auf Menge, Geschwindigkeit und Reichweite: Generative KI erlaubt die schnelle Massenproduktion von Content, der sich über soziale Medien rasch global verbreiten kann. Aber «Slopaganda» ist kein bloss quantitatives Phänomen. Sie ist auch verteilte, partizipative Propaganda – Propaganda zum Mitmachen.” Weekly column about slopaganda.

Long Covid und ME/CFS: Heilung in drei Tagen? [woz] – “Die Methoden, die der Podcast vorschlägt, sind unter anderem als «Brain Retraining», «Mind Body Medicine» oder «neuroplastischer Ansatz» bekannt. Die Idee dahinter ist, dass chronischen Schmerzen oder Fatigue – wie sie typisch sind für Long Covid – keine körperlichen Schäden zugrunde liegen würden. Das Nervensystem verharre in einer Art falschem Alarmzustand und löse so Symptome aus, obwohl die Ursache, etwa eine akute Covid-Infektion, bereits ausgestanden sei. Dank «neuroplastischer Verfahren» könne man diese Symptome wieder «verlernen». Wenn man dem Gehirn mit positiven Botschaften, Meditationen und verändertem Verhalten vermittle, dass keine Gefahr mehr bestehe, lerne es mit der Zeit, sich durch Symptome nicht mehr bedroht zu fühlen, was zu einer Genesung führe.” I link to this because of the critique it makes, but i must also warn that one of its authors is a pro-zionist Antideutsch proponent.

Mark Fisher, la techno et la virtualité du futur – « Rien n’est présent, tout est fantomatique » [lundi.am] – “Presque dix ans après son suicide en janvier 2017, qu’est-ce que le théoricien de la culture Mark Fisher penserait de l’état actuel de la musique techno ? En dix ans, la techno a conquis le monde, mais en même temps, elle s’est transformée en machine nostalgique et apolitique. La techno a-t-elle « annulé le futur », comme dirait Fisher dans son livre Spectres de ma vie ? Et si oui, comment le réactiver ?” I am getting so tired of reading these long ass, intentionally obtuse articles. But if i understood this one right, it offers an interesting analysis and an optimistic outlook for techno music.

Tax the poor, feed the rich [daslamm] – “Der Bund begründet das EP27 damit, dass die Kürzungen den finanziellen Engpass des Schweizer Staats ausgleichen und Spielraum für die geplante Aufrüstung der Armee schafft. Ob die geplante Aufrüstung tatsächlich politisch geboten ist, sei dahingestellt. Tatsache ist, dass der Bund 2025 1.1 Milliarden Franken über dem Budget abschloss, und der Schweizer Staat trotzdem weitere Kürzungen plant.” Austerity is no longer about saving money, it’s about oppressing and also scaring people into submission.

[Older articles, still great]

Charlie Kirk: The Man Who Broke Politics

My Octopus Girlfriend | Sophie Lewis – “Capitalism, as I have already suggested, is definitionally anti-erotic (which is to say queerphobic). As a way of organizing nature, it has not only subjected us all to the domination of work; it also generated the novel coronavirus—meaning that the ruling class have fucked the planet to the point that billions of us now have to stay in our (also ecocidally built) houses and refrain from going outside to flirt with the trees.” I so often wish i was gay. Or trans. Probably if i was 20 now, i would be.

R.I.P.

Valie Export
Ben Morea

And way too many in Sudan, Congo DR, Iran, Ukraine, Lebanon and Palestine, and all the other stupid wars.

[If you care to receive more regular updates, please follow me on raindrop or on mastodon for an edited selection]

Header Photo: A fox is looking for food in a freshly mowed field

DOWNLOAD: Your Noise Is My Slow Death – Part 3 | Slow Death [186.2 MB – 01:13:12 – 320kbs]

TITLE: Your Noise Is My Slow Death – Part 3 | Slow Death

//cw: mention of death wish and suicidal ideation

“How can I speak of sensitivity when so many are pushed toward bare life? Is this really a time for picking up signals, for listening to those who perceive subtle shifts? Isn’t it all a blaring alarm?”

~ Eleni Stecopoulos – Dreaming in the Fault Zone (as are all other quotes unless stated otherwise)

I’m the first person to admit it. What i am doing here is pretty strange. To write an essay about silence, noise, sensitivity, hyperacusis and the pain, anxiety and suicidal ideation associated with it. And to then accompany it with a mixtape. In other words, with more noise. What an absurd idea!? But there you have it. I must be pretty strange.

Why do i even bother to publish my desperate plea? I am well aware that this blog has (almost) no readers. I am also certain that by now (almost) everyone thinks of me as a whiny loser, as someone who keeps complaining about their first world problems.

I have no clue why i do it. But i can’t not do it (and end up wasting tons of time on it).

But this is the end of this series. Promise.

What i will say is this. That my suffering is real, existential even (first world problem or not). That i lack the stoicism to suffer in silence (ha!). And that by posting more whiny crap online i only add noise to the noise (ha!).

The internet, already a noisy place, is where my plea for support goes to die.

#@@$$%$$@@#

So anyway. In parts 1 and 2 of this strange essay/mixtape series i attempted to lay out the problem i have with noise and noise pollution. How Long COVID has made my preexisting hyperacusis exponentially worse. Furthermore i hope that i was able to show how this is not only my problem. Up to 40% of humans suffer from (some degree of) hyperacusis, with several well known thinkers and philosophers affected. Many of the other species of animals, with whom we are supposed to share a planet, suffer because of all the noise we humans impose on them.

In the third part of the series, i try to look at possible solutions. Ask the questions, who is going to support us–the noise sensitive—with this structural problem? Is noise sensitivity even a topic getting discussed? The short answers: (almost) no one will support us. And nope, both noise sensitivity and noise pollution are non-starters and in many ways almost taboo topics.

In my lived experience as someone who is bothered by noise, (almost) everyone finds me annoying. They think of me as a party pooper or, in the best case scenario, ignore me.

In short, a person who suffers from noise is on their own.

Done.

You can stop reading now.

#@@$$%$$@@#

In reality things are much worse. Belittling or ignoring me would be harmless reactions, compared to what actually happens. In reality i get gaslit, shunned, ridiculed, shamed, and, increasingly so, provoked or trolled. I hesitate to add the word tortured to the list, even if i could make the case. Some of my current neighbors know full well how much they make me suffer, deprive me of sleep, prevent me from healing etc. Yet they continue to inflict their noise on me, with gleeful sadism.

What everyone, and their dog, keeps telling me is that i should “just be more tolerant”. As if there was a magic button somewhere to help me achieve this feat. As if i simply messed up my “tolerance” settings. As if i wasn’t already yelling the same thing at myself. All. The. Fucking. Time. “Just be more tolerant. Ignore your suffering, your lived experience. Put on a brave face. Don’t be so pathetic. So goddamn weak” on and on and on and on. The self-gaslighting is strong.

However, their idea of tolerance only ever cuts one way. I am expected to be tolerant of them, of all the noisy people around me, and never once complain about it. In return no one is meant to be tolerant of me and my needs (for more quiet and consideration). It is not helpful that i struggle to keep my problem a secret. Which makes me an easy target, a freak, someone who ends up getting blamed for everything. They sure seem to enjoy to make me suffer. No really, you should see the smirking expressions they make. They love it, the passive-aggressive fucks.

It drives me into utter despair.

#@@$$%$$@@#

“Poet George Quasha has called healing “radical listening.” Public health calls for acute perception of differences in the effort to remake a society where all thrive. This is how aesthetics matter to equity.”

Whenever i have this type of a problem—one where personal meet structural issues—i turn to my (former) radical leftist comrades, in the hopes of finding some support from them, or at least some understanding, solidarity.

After all, considering how many people suffer under the noise (which late stage capitalism imposes on all of us)–the disabled, neurodivergent, chronically ill, elderly, and many others–it would be easy to understand noise pollution/sensitivity as yet another discriminatory issue, one almost on par with racism, sexism, classism etc. To not address such a systemic issue—that effects everyone, by the way, whether they are aware of it or not—surely must be read as a form of ableism.

But the radical left does not give one flying fuck about this issue. Worse yet, in regards to noise the radical left not only has an enormous blind spot, they are also some of the worst offenders, when it comes to ridiculing those of us who are disturbed by their noise, and who dare to voice it. They try to shame us into smithereens. With arrogant glee, motivated by their able-bodied supremacy.

Sadly this is no surprise. In the ongoing pandemic the radical left continues to display their most disgusting ableism (at least here in Europe). My former comrades were among the first to rip their masks off, to plan superspreader events. They continue to be among the worst, when it comes to protecting vulnerable comrades. And some “anarchists” even went as far as joining nazis at the anti-masking protests. They joined the enemy in their puerile anti-state stance.

Nope. No support to be expected from that side. Radical leftists are no longer a reliable network for someone like me. There are too many ableist assholes among them.

#@@$$%$$@@#

If you are chronically ill, and/or maybe old, disabled, neurodivergent, and you crave (or for health reasons even need) more peace and quiet in your life, forget about it. You should never even mention it. Because if you do people, will turn around and blame you instead. For not being “tolerant” enough.

As if tolerance was even an issue at play here. Since when am i meant to be tolerant towards someone who inflicts pain and suffering on me? What kind of twisted logic is that?

Of course we need to show tolerance for people. Of course we can never discriminate against others based on their gender, skin color, sexual preference, class, provenience or whatever. Of course we aim to create intersectional movements. But speaking of which, where is the tolerance for the disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent and our special needs?

When they tell me to “just be more tolerant” what they really mean is “be more tolerant of our noise and our inability to act in consideration”. When they tell me to “live and let live”, what they really mean is for me to “live and soak up all their noise, like a sponge, and never once complain about it. Or get shamed, shunned or ridiculed”.

As such, tolerance has been turned into a weaponized term. Tolerance for who? To protect who? Why? When? How? These are the questions that we should ask. But very few do.

As a weaponized term, tolerance only ever protects the loud people, the brutes, the reckless. So you can fuck right off with that kind of “tolerance”. What we need is solidarity, a willingness to care for, to protect the most vulnerable. Including those who suffer under the capitalist noise imperative.

Hold on, before anyone huffs themself up, of course there needs to be a time and a space for loud, raunchy, nihilistic fun, for party, for noise. I used to love those as well. But i am convinced that it is possible to organise wild, and even loud parties in ways that are not an imposition on those others, who for whatever reason do not want to (or cannot) join.

In cities there could be designated party areas, maybe surrounded with noise protection. Apartments in that area would only be rented to work-related units. At night, it’s party time. I might even join, should i ever find the spoons again to do so. Or what about headphone parties?

Okay, this clearly needs more thought. But i think it’s possible.

As it stands people throw their noisy parties anywhere they want, in forests, on beaches, in every corner of the city. They do not give one damn about the people that this might disturb, rob of their sleep. They dish their noise out, anywhere, no matter what surroundings. Many make money throwing these parties. How sleepless neighbors deal with their noise? Somehow not their problem.

How is that a sustainable model? How can it be fair that only those who are insensitive to noise deserve a good life or a good night of sleep? How can it be acceptable that i lay awake every weekend, kept awake by techno beats from somewhere, or other, in the vicinity?

The main reason why it makes me suicidal to even thinking about these questions is because i see no way how this might ever improve. The situation is out of control, and only getting worse.

Bluetooth speakers are everywhere. On remote beaches. In nature. River rafting. Hiking. Hoping to find some quiet in nature? You can be sure to encounter some asshole with a bluetooth speakers in their backpack, who thinks that blasting loud music into the landscape is acceptable behavior. And if you dare to address it, they will laugh in your face (i have tested this for you).

#@@$$%$$@@#

How about practical solutions?

Some people might be tempted to ask “have you tried …”.

Yes. Of course i have tried every*fucking*thing. In fact i have spent lots of money on white noise machines (that i like), on noise cancelling headphones (that i hate, because they make me claustrophobic, plus i hear my tinnitus better) and on a number of other devices, gimmicks or what have you. It’s an entire industry by now. There are apps, gadgets, miracle cures. Most of it bullshit.

Not only do these items cost money to purchase, that i am somehow meant to front, energy to run, at yet more cost for me, but they are not an actual solution. At best they are “a technical solution for a social problem”.

What would make an actual difference is dialog. Consensus-building. A veto-right. But forget about that.

In the hyper-individualised world that we have created, people prefer to act out their every whim and shame those who ask them for consideration. By doing so they pander to a tried and tested blame-shifting mechanism. For all systemic issues, individualise the responsibility. Neoliberalism is now everywhere.

A bit more consideration from my neighbors and I wouldn’t need to fire up the white noise machine every fucking night, not waste so much fucking energy, which makes me feel guilty. But as it stands i need to do it in order to find at least some sleep. Sleep-deprivation is still a form of torture.

Another technical solution would be pills. Which sometimes i do indulge in. But pills come at a price. They have side effects, can lead to addiction, yadda yadda. And big pharma is rubbing its greedy hands.

The flow of the seasons could also be helpful. A loud summer, when people want to spend more time outside, would be made bearable, if it was followed by a calm winter, when people stay indoors. But our neighbors scream at each other on their balconies all year long. No down time ever, and it’s only getting worse. My trusted white noise machine will soon run out of settings.

In short, some technical solutions can indeed help. A bit. But why should they be needed? Why can’t there be mediation and compromise instead? Why can’t we create a society where everyone can thrive (and not only loud brutes?)

#@@$$%$$@@#

“To hear one must be silent”
~ Ogion to a young Ged in The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Recklessness makes me angry. But where am i meant to go with this anger?

In this clusterfuck of a predicament, in a hyper-individualised, capitalist, consumer culture, what i am meant to do with my anger is to swallow it. I am meant to play it cool. Never show any weakness. Because any weakness will get exploited. Trust me. The trolls have moved offline as well.

Every once in a while my frustration gets the better of me and i act out a little bit. I slam a door or let out a frustrated howl. But that only backfires. Their acting out gets worse after, because they now feel justified.

This is why i restrict myself. I never listen to loud music, avoid making any noise, tiptoe around the apartment, close windows and doors as quietly as possible. Because if i don’t—and i am speaking from experience here—neighbors will use this as their excuse for revenge noise.

I try to set an example, hope to inspire some people to behave with more consideration. But that never happens.

To be honest, in my opinion loud brutes are egocentric assholes. But it goes far beyond that. They are anthropocentric supremacists.

Anyone who has ever been in nature knows this. Let’s say you enjoy a quiet moment observing the birds or other animals. But the birds go quiet, the foxes disappear, the beavers dive under the water as soon as the loud people (with their dogs) approach. Nature goes into hiding. They hide from the brutes that we call humans.

Only in a civilisation, where meat is sold in the supermarket, wrapped in plastic, can the human species behave like this. I hate to sound like an anarcho-primitivist here. But humans, who behave like loud brutes in nature, only show that they have lost all connection to and all respect for nature.

#@@$$%$$@@#

I feel petty writing this. That’s by design. Shame is the tool that keeps people like myself silent. My internalized gaslighting is a constant. But this goes beyond me and my personal experience. It’s a cultural thing. In our hyper-individualised world no one is willing to tone down their noise for, say, a sick, suffering neighbor. They pay rent or own the place, so they think that they can act out however they want. Never mind that i, next door, can’t live the way i want.

All this leaves no space for people like me. If i think about this problem in terms of individual freedom, it feels impossible to solve it. Because certain attitudes are mutually exclusive. My individual preference for peace and quiet gets cancelled ten fold by the loud people around me.

Loud assholes dominate every conceivable situation. It’s the survival of the loudest (a variant of the “survival of the fittest”) out there.

The only solution is to go deaf (which is what my noise sensitive mother has recommended to me).

Or to die.

Death will be peaceful.

Your noise is my slow death.

“Sensitivity is suspect to a masculinist society that mandates constant productivity and disembodiment.”

A quick note on the music: As you may have noticed, this series of mixtapes featured lots of tracks by Boards of Canada. The covers (that my amazing partner designed) are also inspired by a BoC aesthetic.

I decided to do this, because after more than twelve years without a new album, i started to give up hope. I wanted to create an hommage, or maybe a farewell, or maybe an invocation, by using some of my favorite tracks.

Little did i know, that since then BoC has announced their new album Inferno, WHOOPEE. I can’t wait to hear it. Exiting times. I hope i can somehow survive until release day.

So there it is.
I hope my mixtape can offer a brief escape from all the noise.
If this is the case, please tell a friend

[Please consider supporting these artists, by following the bandcamp links (if available) below]

TRACKLIST:

1. EL-P – Marooned
2. billy woods – Born Alone
3. anaiis – Deus Deus
4. Tenashee – Tell Me Something ft. Gaia Weiss
5. Boards of Canada – 1969
6. Joni Mitchell – Woodstock
7. Stevie Wonder – Ai No Sono/Seasons
8. Fingathing – The Garden
9. MF Doom – Dead Bent
10. Boards of Canada – Kid For Today
11. Fingathing – Head To Head
12. MF Doom – Bonus Beat (Dead Bent/Doomsday)
13. Raye – Genesis
14. Wrongtom presents Dubstack – An EKO In Space
14.1 Girl In The Year Above – Teardrop (from OST Peaky Blinders – The Immortal Man)
15. Emeka Ogboh – No Counterfeit
16. Fugees – Ready Or Not (Handel’s Yaard Vibe Mix)
17. Palomo v. Los Socios Del Ritmo – Llorar
18. ViVii – Savant (gOld On gOld Remix)
19. billy woods – Golgotha
20. Goldie – Dragonfly (Dengue Dengue Dengue Remix)
21. Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares – Prituri Se Planinata
22. Little Simz – Backseat
23. Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – Purple Afternoon
24. Eartheater – How To Fight
25. “Tepeji 21” (from OST of Roma)
26. Mira Calix – In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country (Original by Boards Of Canada)
27. Modeselektor – Blessed Speed
28. LILA SOVIA, Lena Stoehrfaktor – Lesbisch Aus Prinzip
29. Baby Volcano – Swiss Anxiety
30. Salomé Käsemodel – Helvetia
31. Siriusmo – High Together
32. Modeselektor – This Track Kills Fascism
33. Anne Clark – Our Darkness (Marc Romboy Respect Mix)
34. Lie Ning – Utopia
35. Barry Can’t Swim – Machine Noise For A Quiet Daydream ft. Séamus
36. Sir Mantis – Sorry Not Sorry
37. Kim Gordon – Dirty Tech
38. Bushwacka! – V.O.A.T.
38.1 DakhaBrakha – Dytyatochko
39. Detroit Grand Pubahs – Sandwiches
40. Steff La Cheffe – Stoff
41. clocolan – Waiting for the End of Something

SAMPLES:
Joey Gluten – Self Care, Patience.s02e02, Josh Johnson, Train Dreams.2025, For All Mankind.s01e10, Alan Chadwick Garden Song Interview Outtakes, The New Alchemists.1974, Death Panel – Lifemaking in the Margins of Urban Space, I’m Yer Son And I’m Yer Dad, Down Cemetery Road.s01e04, Peaky Blinders – The Immortal Man.2026, Emeka Ogboh – ‘Lagos is a City That is Never Silent’, Fela Kuti – Fear No Man.e12, John Butler – Silence is never boring, ixi – Boards of Canada Tape 05 emergency reactionalysis, The Capture.s03e03

COVER: Created by the wonderful Fr3nzIn3 thanks a infinitelovillion.

SUBSCRIBE:

This link will pick up all my mixes and the occasional mp3’s that I link to from my blog.

COPYLEFT:
All music and audio is borrowed with the utmost respect for its creators. I consider this to be fair use. The material is created purely for fun and to share with my online friends. There is no commercial transaction involved.

All rights remain with original right holders. this mix makes fair use of copyrighted material. this mix is distributed non-commercially only.

[Videos]

The Secret Plan to Cover the World in Herbicide – Find the article bellow.

Here Where We Live Is Our Country: Molly Crabapple w/ Naomi Klein – the book is on my list.

[Music]

Inferno, by Boards of Canada – Can’t wait for May 29, hope to still be alive by then.

Massive Attack / Tom Waits – Boots on the Ground

Boards of Canada Tape 05 emergency reactionalysis – I just love their excitement. They also recently analyzed Tomorrow’s Harvest.

Boards of Canada – Tape 05 – Boah.

[Podcasts]

Legacies of Colonialism in Public Health [public health is dead] – “Public health has been used as a tool of empire for centuries. Keeping settlers healthy enough to maintain colonial control over land, resources, and capital is a part of public health’s history. It’s also part of its present.” Public health will always be a tool of empire under the current system, capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal etc. But public health will also be needed under the coming system.

Lifemaking in the Margins of Urban Space w/ Kate Brown | The Death Panel [.soundcloud] – “Beatrice speaks with Kate Brown about the history of mutual aid agriculture projects in the US and Europe after the enclosure of the commons, how autonomous community agriculture has historically been met with expulsion or co-optation by the state, and her book Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City.” I learned a lot about the history of urban gardens and allotments. Does not improve my feelings for gardening on one.

[Toot Threads]

[Pandemic Roundup]

Covid: April 30, 2026
Covid: April 16, 2026
Covid: April 9, 2026
Covid: April 2, 2026

[The Must Read[s] This Month]

Is AI the greatest art heist in history? | Molly Crabapple [guardian] – “Artists too are fighting for a way of life. And if we are too disorganised to triumph, that will be everyone’s loss. AI companies’ inappropriate scraping may have started with the work of illustrators like me, but it has grown to encompass everything else. It extends to the billions of dollars that these companies squander each year, to the carbon they burn, to the rare minerals in their chips, to the land on which their data centres sit, to culture, education, sanity and our very imaginations.” AI will try to make us redundant. If we don’t make it redundant first.

Finding the Cattle Queen | Rachel Ossip [n+1] – “The poster seems to have struck a chord with the feminists, and it continued to pop up at protests. Sheila Paige’s short documentary Testing, Testing How Do You Do? (1969), filmed at the following year’s pageant protest, opens with a long pan down the length of the poster. It shows up again a few years later, in 1971, at the first Women’s Liberation Demonstration in London, edited with paint to read “break the dull mis-steak habit.”” Quite the twisted tale from sexist advert to feminist icon.

[Articles English]

XOXO Archive – “XOXO was an experimental festival for independent artists and creators from the internet.” Was *snif. Sad to have never attended in person.

We Are Bombarding America’s Forests With Roundup [motherjones] – “I then show him a 2020 EPA report that concluded glyphosate harms 93 percent of endangered species and 96 percent of the critical habitat they rely on—creatures including the Sierra Nevada red fox, gray wolf, and spotted owl, all protected in Lassen. Nickerson says he’s never seen the report. Fair enough, but do its findings make him think twice about using Roundup?” Trump and his asshole cronies hellbent on killing us all.

We need masks in healthcare. Now. [the sick times] – “I find it challenging to put my faith in healthcare workers to give me accurate and reliable medical advice when they are choosing to not protect themselves or their patients. Many healthcare workers do not understand how COVID-19 is spread or that many infections are asymptomatic. On average, it takes 14 to 17 years for new medical knowledge to become common practice. In the meantime, patients are left on our own to educate the experts we are expected to trust, on top of the power imbalance.” This, so much this. And then this again. WTF is wrong with a medical system that forces the most vulnerable to beg their doctors to wear masks, and if they agree they only wear shitty ones?! Everything is wrong!?

Palantir’s social media manifesto is a blueprint for technofascism [thenerve] – “The most troubling part is that this vision is not hypothetical. Palantir and its political allies have already partly implemented it. Predictive policing tools shape how law enforcement allocates resources. Immigration systems rely on AI to track and categorise individuals. Military operations increasingly depend on real-time data fusion platforms and AI is used to select targets for air strikes. Palantir’s software is a central part of this ecosystem. It’s used by the US government and Israel, but also by law enforcement in the EU and UK, and in Britain’s NHS. When the company describes a world organised around these capabilities, it is not imagining the future: it is describing the present, just extended and intensified. The contracts are signed. People have been detained. Bombs have fallen.” I can only hope that we can somehow stop this bullshit. But it does not seem likely.

“We Don’t Know Most Things”: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on Curiosity and the Cosmos [organizingmythoughts] – “Elon Musk is not some kind of technical genius. If he’s good at anything, it’s surrounding himself with people who are good enough at technical stuff to carry him along. In that sense, he is simply an inferior villain to a morally bankrupt J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was actually technically highly proficient. In both cases, they had substantial social and economic capital, which made it easier for them to succeed in their endeavors. But even if someone wants to debate me about Musk’s scientific skill set, the main point is that being really good at something doesn’t make you a really good person, or a person with good values, or a person with the nerve to live those values.” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein seems to have written an interesting book for anyone who wonders how science can become ethics-driven AND exiting again.

When (and Why) Exactly Did Elon Musk Make His Hard Turn to the Right? [lithub] – “In the Western tradition, Haraway observed, “the relation between organism and machine has been a border war.” For Muskism, this border war had to be waged in such a way as to erase some lines while hardening others. Humanity should merge with the machine—so long as it remained segmented by gender, race, and class. Call it cyborg conservatism.” A tl;dr summary of the Slobodian/Tarnoff book Musiksm can also be found here: pluralistic.

Steven Pinker Doesn’t Know Anything About Marxism [current affairs] – “There’s also a larger issue here, beyond the particular case of Karl Marx. For a long time, establishment-beloved centrist intellectuals like Pinker have been able to coast along, confidently assured of the truth of their self-evident principles and often lavishly funded by the grateful rich. In the increasingly dark political time in which we live, that is no longer going to cut it.” Is Pinker the epitome of the radicalized centrist cuddling with fascists? A veritable showpiece, indeed.

How Covid Quietly Rewires The Brain [asrn] – “The picture that emerged was of a slow shift playing out beneath the surface of entire populations: a rise in cognitive problems, subtle declines in functional capacity, and lost independence. And although the medical implications are troubling enough, the economic ones are beginning to register too. If Covid is quietly accelerating cognitive aging or impairing decision-making in working-age adults, the consequences will ripple through workplaces and health systems for years.” Hate to say, i told you so. But i did.

I developed Long COVID while practicing medicine. The system had no place for me. [the sick times] – “For months, I had been managing symptoms I attributed to stress and burnout from the pandemic’s first wave. But at that moment in 2020, I understood that I had become the kind of doctor for whom our medical field has no infrastructure.” Imagine that. You worked you ass off for a system that then drops you as soon as you would need its support.

Facebook and Instagram Tighten Censorship Rules for Saying “Antifa” – “Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta changed its speech rules to add new restrictions around posts including the word “antifa,” according to documents reviewed by The Intercept.” Oh do fuck off, Zuck

Select all images with doctors [b3ta] – Almost impossible to solve.

Austerity creates fascism [pluralistic] – “Fascists thrive in these conditions. Fascists come to power by mobilizing grievances. By choosing a scapegoat, fascists can create support from people who are justifiably furious that the services they rely on have collapsed. So when you can’t get shelter, or health care, or elder care, or child care, or an education for your kids, you become a mark for a fascist grifter with a story about “undeserving migrants”; who’ve taken the benefits that should rightly accrue to ‘deserving natives’.” Yes, but no one needs to turn fascist. We can’t give them an out.

FBI recovers deleted Signal messages from iPhone notification database [lynnwood times] – “Federal investigators extracted copies of deleted incoming Signal messages from a suspect’s iPhone by accessing Apple’s internal notification storage, even after the encrypted messaging app had been removed and its disappearing messages feature used, according to court testimony in a Texas terrorism prosecution of Antifa militants.” Apple fixed it now, but what a royal fuck up.

Global Climate Report | March 2026 [ncei] – “Tying with 2024, March 2026 was the second-warmest March in the 177-year global record, with a surface temperature 1.31°C (2.36°F) above the 20th-century average. Only March 2025 recorded a higher temperature, surpassing it by just 0.01°C (0.02°F). All March global temperature departures ranking in the top 10 during the period 1850–2026 have occurred since 2015. This month marked the 50th consecutive March with a global temperature departure above the 20th-century average; the last March to rank below the 1901–2000 mean occurred in 1976.” We good.

Stop talking about AI – start talking about techno-fascism [freedom news] – “There can be no compromise with techno-fascism. There is no baby and no bathwater here, as the ‘benefits’ of AI are mostly irrelevant. We are getting techno-fascism as a whole package and it is inadmissibly naïve to think that we can pick and choose and ‘regulate’.” Kill the entire thing. With fire. Is what we should do. But convenience.

Exarcheia: Political Life Suffocated by State Surveillance [unicorn riot] – “Exarcheia has long been home to anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian groups. It is both a political space and also a hub that reveres intellectual atmosphere and authenticity. It has often been coined as the anarchist neighborhood in Athens, with popular discourse reflecting the rebellious character of the area.” Some recent history.

[Articles German/French]

Carnaval antifasciste : encore des violences de l’ultra-gauche – “ON SE FAIT ATTAQUER AU CARNAVAL ANTIFASCISTE DE LAUSANNE??!!!” Is a satire warning needed?

Rechts­extreme Hilfs-Sheriffs [republik] – “Die Berner Polizei hat unverpixelte Bilder von mutmasslichen Straftätern an der Gaza-Demo veröffentlicht. Im Zeitalter von Gesichts-Suchmaschinen hat das gravierende Konsequenzen – und verstösst gegen rechts­staatliche Garantien.” This is beyond fucked up. I hate these assholes. Which is why i always timestamp my posts 13:12. Or is that childish?

Trump plant internationalen Anti-Antifa-Gipfel [nk-aktuell] – “Die Trump-Administration plant einen internationalen Gipfel zur Bekämpfung »der Antifa« und anderer linker Gruppen. Das berichtete Reuters am Dienstag unter Berufung auf drei mit der Sache vertraute Quellen. Die Konferenz ist für Juni oder Juli dieses Jahres angesetzt. Sie richtet sich an Regierungsvertreter*innen verschiedener Länder, um Strategien gegen »die Antifa« zu erörtern.” WTF, we already had 86 reasons to hate 47.

Wie der Bund dein digitales Leben seziert [das lamm] – “In der Schweiz ist die totale digitale Überwachung keine Dystopie, sondern seit über zehn Jahren Rechtsnorm. Wie der Staat das Puzzle deiner Metadaten zusammensetzt und wie du dich dagegen wehren kannst.” If only we could do something about this.

[Older articles, still great]

The Peoples Want – “The Peoples Want manifesto brings together the lessons and analyses that we have drawn from the last two decades of struggle and from our exchanges at the four previous internationalist gatherings we’ve organised. It sets out our vision for a revolutionary internationalism for the 21st century.” Another well-meaning manifesto, even if there is no lack of those.

The Psychedelic Rise and Fall of Two Sonoma Communes [sonomamag] – “Experience the days of free living and free love in Sonoma County” I lived so close to these two farms, icons of hippies history, but completely missed them. Feel ashamed now.

R.I.P.

Too many in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Ukraine and all the other wars.
And i am sure some famous people died as well.

[If you care to receive more regular updates, please follow my diigo (feed: rss) for all of my saved links or mastodon for an edited choice of them]

Header Photo: Antifascist Carnaval in Lausanne

[Videos]

A Mother’s Escape: A Langur’s Dangerous Climb – “TEH CUTEST BABIES EVER”

[Music]

Big Hairy Dog | Weebl Stuff

Telepathic Fish: Early 90s Ambient 15th March 2026 [nts] – “Essential ambient techno and chillout tracks from the seminal South London ambient music party Telepathic Fish, hosted by the late Chantal Passerman aka Mira Calix.” Linking to this For Mira.

De La Soul: Tiny Desk Concert

[Podcasts]

« Plutôt voleurs de poules que voleurs de vies » – Antitsiganisme, État-nation et éthique de la révolte [lundi.am] Un lundisoir avec Ritchy Thibault – “Pour comprendre d’où lui [Ritchy Thibault] vient une telle énergie et pourquoi elle ne se départ par de beaucoup d’humour, il faut livre son dernier livre : Voleurs de poules, combattre l’antitsiganisme (Libertalia). Cette irréductibilité au pouvoir autant que cette disposition au coup d’éclat, on ne peut la comprendre qu’à partir du récit historique et éthique qu’il fait de l’antitsiganisme et de la guerre livrée depuis toujours par l’État contres les populations Roms, Sinti, Manouches, Gitans, Yéniches et Voyageurs. Des formes de vie, qu’il a toujours fallu surveiller, contrôler, réduire et même éradiquer tant elles incarnent ce petit caillou dans la chaussure d’une civilisation qui ne peut tolérer qu’elle-même.” I so hope they won’t break Ritchy.

88. Subtext: Anthony Kiedis: Backstage Behavior – “For over 40 years, Anthony Kiedis and his band, Red Hot Chili Peppers, have been the soundtrack for frat parties and music festivals with their brand of funk influenced alternative rock. However, behind the music is a dark history of sexual assault, drug abuse, and a lack of accountability.” The vibe was clear, but the extent of his abuses were still shocking to hear.

[Toot Threads]

[Pandemic Roundup]

Covid: March 26, 2026
Covid: March 19, 2026
Covid: March 12, 2026
Covid: March 5, 2026

[The Must Read[s] This Month]

How the Covid Disinformation Ecosystem was established [substack] – “But as the science got clearer, disinformation and the development of an alternative narrative became more coordinated, the media platformed these contrarian voices with false equivilence and created a space for conspiracy theories to thrive. Its important to understand that there was a coordinated campaign to undermine public health in the midst of a pandemic even when the bodies were piling high in January 2021, and it has led to antivax sentiment becoming a fixture of the radical right.” This is crucial analysis, disinformation doesn’t just spread, it gets manufactured.

I Wrote a Movie Review. Cops Took It From A Protester’s Home to Make the Case That He’s a Terrorist. [intercept] – “It seems, though, that the FBI didn’t read beyond the cover of what it calls my “booklet. That was the description of my review-in-zine-form when it appeared in an itemized receipt for seized property, alongside cellphones, computers, weapons, and other bits of technology — for the sole reason that it is willing to throw anything, no matter how absurd, at anti-ICE activists to paint them as vile terrorists.” Imagine zines tuning into grounds for persecution. Yet here we are. Imagine you wrote one of those zines.

The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all | Taylor Lorenz [the guardian] – “Over the past year, more than two dozen countries around the world have proposed bans on social media use for vast swathes of their public. These laws, often proposed under the guise of “child safety”, are ushering in an era of mass surveillance and widespread censorship, contributing to what scholars have called a “global free speech recession”.” This debate carries all the characteristics of a moral panic.

[Articles English]

The Epstein Class [dissent magazine] – “Presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hold the powerful to account, we are teetering on the edge of lunacy. Yet the real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world. It’s that there is a billionaire class. The moral of the Epstein files is that nobody should be that rich.” We should eat the rich. No seriously. Should we not?

Persistence of Post-Acute COVID-19 Sequelae (PASC) symptoms in healthcare workers four years after ancestral SARS-CoV-2 infection: a prospective multicentre cohort [springer] – “PASC symptoms persisted up to four years after aSCV2 infection in a substantial proportion of HCWs.” 60% of the healthcare workers in this study have at least one persistent symptom up to four years after initial COVID infection. What more information do we need to take COVID serious again?

Progressives need to take up COVID fight [hamilton spectator] – “Governments modelling abandonment and cruelty in a time of crisis signal support to fascist, eugenicist and Nazi logic. This follows past research showing pandemics can give rise to fascist political economies. People and groups fighting for equitable democracy must challenge COVID minimization. Challenging this status quo isn’t easy, but things worthwhile can take time, and events like Long COVID Awareness Month/Day can help.” They need to, but they won’t. Because progressives are just as defined by convenience as anyone else. [insert screaming fit]

Iran war shows how AI speeds up military ‘kill chains’ [conversation] – “The embedding of AI into military kill chains intersects with other alarming developments. After years of inaction, the US military spent more than a decade developing an infrastructure to avoid civilian casualties in war, but it has been almost totally dismantled under the Trump administration.” AI may be a hype, but it will have this type of RL consequence.

Donald Trump’s Racism Mirrors Jeffrey Epstein’s [counterpunch] – “Epstein built (or at least tried to build) ties and develop friendships with some of the most notorious eugenicists and White nationalists around the globe, including Nobel Prize laureate and geneticist James Watson, political scientist Charles Murray, and artificial intelligence researcher Joscha Bach, among many others. He also circulated posts from White supremacist websites that promoted bogus, supposedly genetically-based intellectual differences between the races.” Joscha Bach gets a brief mention. How was i ever impressed by them?

Billiards Master Sequencer – Sequencer made with real billards samples.

Persistent SARS-CoV-2 Spike is Associated with Localized Immune Dysregulation in Long COVID Gut Biopsies [biorxiv] – ” We confirmed the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 Spike transcript and protein in the gut tissue of all LC cases and controls tested.” A small study for the viral persistence cohort.

“The Zionist movement has become a death cult” | Annabel Ross [substack] – “For the past two years, writer and dance music historian Tim Lawrence has been an unusually clear and uncompromising voice in support of Palestine, speaking out publicly about Israel’s genocide in Gaza at a time when many in dance culture have stayed silent. In this interview, he discusses his journey from a Zionist upbringing to anti-Zionist activism, the backlash he has faced since October 7, the influence of Edward Said, and the connection he sees between protest movements and the dancefloor.” Anti-zionist jews can lose so much by taking a stance like this.

Serious Threat to the First Amendment as Trump Admin Wins First Antifa Terror Charge [common dreams] – “When the villain is a made-up boogeyman then the target becomes ‘anyone who disagrees with Trump’—and this is the result.” This is so scary. But also, those who are against antifa are fa.

Long Covid Awareness Day 2026 | Disabled Ginger [substack] – “They run from any reminder of the pandemic, and sadly those with Long Covid are one of the starkest reminders there is. As a result folks with Long Covid and related chronic illnesses slip away. Quietly disappeared from people’s lives. Ghosted, ignored and forgotten.” Yup, gaslit and forgotten, ridiculed and overlooked.

Bubble Sorted Amen Break by Vee – So satisfying.

History Is Repeating Itself [crimethinc] – “Those of us in the diasporas can make the link between the authoritarianism of Israel and the authoritarianism of Iran without equating the two. This is crucial, because we need to be sensitive to the experience of those who are victimized by both regimes. To a Palestinian in Gaza, it could sound offensive to say that Iran is as bad as Israel, and vice versa to the Ayatollah’s victims in Iran. The absence of such nuance makes it easier for those—including parts of the Iranian diaspora—who promote the idea that Israel will liberate Iran.” Yes, but people also need to be allowed to vent.

The COVID-19 pandemic at 6 years: Mass death, debilitation and media silence [wsws] – “Six years ago this week, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared the global outbreak of COVID-19 a pandemic. In the six years since, the pandemic has killed over 30 million people worldwide, left more than 400 million suffering from Long COVID and inflicted incalculable damage on the social fabric of every country on Earth. It is one of the most catastrophic events in modern history—and it is not over.” These tankies were one of the few outlets to commemorate six years of COVID.

Global Climate Report | February 2026 [ncei] – “In February 2026, the global surface temperature was 1.18°C (2.12°F) above the 20th-century average, ranking as the fifth-warmest February in the 177-year record. The 10 warmest Februarys on record have all occurred since 2016. This month also marked the 47th-consecutive February with an above-average temperatures.” La niña effect?

The Broligarchy's First World War? [substack] – “Gaza is the blueprint for everything we are seeing right now. There are no words to describe what happened there. And yet, it’s happening all over again.” Is there an overton window for war policy?

Tinnitus Is Somehow Connected to a Crucial Bodily Function – “Our findings indicate that deep sleep may indeed help mitigate tinnitus and could reveal natural brain mechanisms for modulating abnormal activity," said Milinski.” Sure, i need deep sleep. But how can i get it surrounded by asshole neighbors who keep me awake, wake me up and bully me after i try to talk to them.

Neurodiversity beyond the social model [freedom news] – “Everything won within this system can be taken away by this system, because none of it touches the underlying reality. that our survival depends on our economic usefulness to others, and that makes us permanently subject to their judgement of our worth. So long as that’s true, we will be measured, assessed, found wanting, and accommodated conditionally or not at all. Diagnosis becomes a bureaucratic process to determine eligibility. Inclusion becomes a performance. And we remain supplicants, asking permission to exist on terms set by others. So long as that’s true, we will be measured, assessed, found wanting, and accommodated conditionally or not at all. Diagnosis becomes a bureaucratic process to determine eligibility. Inclusion becomes a performance. And we remain supplicants, asking permission to exist on terms set by others.” System change.

Francesca Albanese, Gaza, and the Military-Propaganda Nexus Behind the US-Israeli War on Iran [counterpunch] – “Francesca Albanese has incisively corrected the record and debunked Israel’s denials and justifications for genocide so often repeated in the Western Press. It took her one eloquent sentence to expose media’s role in facilitating Israeli attacks on the enclave when she wrote, “Israel has written one of the darkest pages of human history and the world is still holding the pen.” The world participates with glee.

Statement following Saturday Night Live – “THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. Mocking a disability is never acceptable. It would not be tolerated for any other condition, and it should not be tolerated by people with Tourette’s. Tourette’s is a complex neurological condition, of which there is no cure. It is not a joke. It is not a personality trait. It is not a source of entertainment. It is a condition that can be extremely debilitating, causing pain isolation and huge amounts of discrimination. Mocking a disability is never acceptable. It would not be tolerated for any other condition, and it should not be tolerated by people with Tourette’s. Tourette’s is a complex neurological condition, of which there is no cure.  It is not a joke. It is not a personality trait. It is not a source of entertainment. It is a condition that can be extremely debilitating, causing pain isolation and huge amounts of discrimination.” After the Baftas and ensuing mockery.

Temporarily Embarrassed Sex Criminals | Laurie Penny [substack] – “Women’s sexual power over men is the only power men are permitted to chafe at. The power, specifically, to withhold sex and everything that is supposed to come with it: pleasure, care, intimacy, validation, belonging, status, self-respect. Sex – specifically straight, penetrative sex and the social capital to command it – is supposed to replace everything late capitalism strips from you if you weren’t born rich. Everything that you are, in fact, entitled to. Entitlement and frustration are utterly reasonable things to feel. Patriarchy takes care to translate that feeling into the key of misogyny.” Can we just give up though? It can’t just be a temporary embarrassment.

[Articles German/French]

No pasarán! [woz] – “Nur Faschisten haben Angst vor der Antifa – das stand auf einem der vielen Plakate, die uns bei der Arbeit an diesem Heft begegnet sind. Als US-Präsident Donald Trump im September 2025 «die Antifa» zur Terrororganisation erklärte, begannen wir, eine Reise zu planen. Eine Reise zu fünf Schauplätzen in Europa – und durch hundert Jahre antifaschistische Geschichte. Sie führte uns von Madrid über Reggio Emilia, Brüssel und Berlin bis nach Budapest. Den Spuren einer Bewegung nach, die heute so notwendig ist, wie sie es seit ihren Anfängen immer war.” A timely magazine. With incredible graphics.

Trumps Maga-Faschismus: Der Körper als Waffe [woz] – “Im Inneren, und das ist besonders unheimlich, werden zugleich tiefere Triebstrukturen, Gelüste und Begierden deutlich, die im rationalen Weltentwurf der Demokratien verdrängt sind. In der Demokratie regiert, der Theorie nach, der Beste, nicht der Stärkste. Der Faschismus hebelt diese Rationalität aus: durch eine emotionale Energie, die stärker ist, archaischer auch und mit Stolz primitiver als die Raffinesse der Demokratie.” Theweleit light. His book is rather wordy.

Aktivismus und Kritik: Welche Linke darf es denn sein? – “Die, die uns am nächsten sind, kritisieren wir am härtesten. Nachvollziehbar, aber der guten Sache nicht dienlich. Von denen, die die wenigsten Ressourcen haben, verlangen wir oft am meisten. Perfektionismus hält alle davon ab, überhaupt mit der Arbeit zu beginnen. Im Kampf gegen rechts können wir uns das nicht leisten.” Yet critique is crucial for a pluralistic left.

Wer will, dass Medien die Demokratie stärken, muss zuerst die Medien demokratisieren [daslamm] – “Im Kapitalismus ist es nicht nötig, Budgetentscheidungen offiziellen politischen Organen in die Hände zu legen, um politisch Einfluss zu nehmen. Da die allermeisten Medien als gewinnorientierte Unternehmen in Privatbesitz aufgebaut sind, geschieht politische Einflussnahme auf ökonomischem Weg: Die Redaktionen produzieren Medien aus der Sicht ihrer Besitzer*innen, deren übergeordnetes Ziel es ist, ihre Profite zu steigern. Gleichzeitig können sich extrem reiche Personen Medien kaufen, um so ihre ideologischen und politischen Interessen zu verbreiten.” Again, the problem is the system. As it stands public service media is not much of a service when they keep pushing capitalist, euro-centrist, racist, sexist, ableist, ageist etc. narratives.

Rüstungsexporte nach Israel: Die fatale Lücke [woz] – “Mitten im Gazakrieg bewilligte die Schweiz über hundert Exporte von Dual-Use-Gütern nach Israel. Alles gesetzeskonform, sagt das zuständige Staatssekretariat für Wirtschaft. Genau das ist das Problem.” Swiss neutrality has been a joke for ages. Don’t believe the hype.

[Older articles, still great]

Mothering against motherhood – Sophie Lewis [zinelibrary] – “As I understand it: mothering is simply care labour; motherhood, an institution of private property. So, the fundamental question thrown up by both Heti and zuchinno could be formulated as follows: does (1.) automatically make you (2.)? Conversely, does doing (2.) entail having (1.)? Is momming identical to being a mom? If not, why not? Should momradeliness simply be comradeliness (but then, comradeliness vis a-vis whom)? Does it only apply to persons who happen to have procreated – or legally adopted – progeny? Or is pulling one’s weight with regard to the so-called reproductive labours of life the only meaningful definition of comrade in the first place? Can a comrade be called a comrade if they are not a momrade? What, in that case, of people like my late mother, a sometimes-left activist who had children, owns legal papers to prove it, but does scant caring- or reproductive labour for those children, let alone for the movement?” A very personal and powerful essay by one – checks notes – Sophie Lewis. [Pretending not to be a fan boy]

R.I.P.

Habermas

[If you care to receive more regular updates, please follow my diigo (feed: raindrop) for all of my saved links or mastodon for an edited choice of them]

Header Photo: An overhead shot of the carnaval populaire et deter 2026 in Lausanne, more photos here.

[Videos]

Why Hives Turn Against Their Queens

[Music]

Africa (Toto)…but it lists every country in Africa

Kim Gordon – "DIRTY TECH"

[Podcasts]

Another Way Out w/ William C. Anderson [the fire these times] – “This idea that we’re going to be better off if we continue to be better liberals, and be truer and more dedicated to believing in this country, is still very much in place. As long as that’s there, people are not going to see and overcome and get out of this situation in the ways that they need to. It’s there for a reason: to keep people in this situation. It’s not tied to one party or the other; a lot of this is getting lost in, The Republicans are really bad, and if they were gone this wouldn’t ever happen! But all the stage-setting for this situation has been bipartisan.” Never forget. Obama was instrumental in the expansion of ICE and border control.

MF DOOM: Long Island to Leeds [bbc sound] – A podcast about the favorite rapper of your favorite rapper, presented by the least favorite podcaster of your least favorite podcaster (yours truly).

Épisode #241 Camarade violeur [audioblog] – “Quand c’est les "camarades" qui violent, on fait quoi ? Cette semaine, dans Minuit Décousu, on essaie de tirer des fils pour y répondre avec des brochures, des archives autonomes allemandes, des squats non mixtes, le st-grâal de la justice transformatrice, des milieux qui implosent, une archive d’entretien du collectif Bagarre sur la brochure "Ceci n’est pas un call out" et une interview de Emeline Fourment – chercheuse sur la question des VSS dans les milieux libertaires.” A look at the complex situation when sexual abuse occurs in radical leftist circles, which it does. But where we do not want to involve any cops or judges, at least in theory.

[Toot Threads]

[Pandemic Roundup]

Covid: February 27, 2026
Covid: February 19, 2026
Covid: February 12, 2026
Covid: February 5, 2026

[The Must Read[s] This Month]

Reasons to mask in 2026 – A wonderful comic by Gillian Levine explains it all. You have no more excuse now.

Why Are You Building Overrides for Systems That Keep Me Alive? [substack] – “It feels like every time I have been told “you are being too sensitive, you are too much, you are being dramatic”—only to discover, once again, that my body had been right all along.
We choose a different world.
[…]
A world where sleep is sacred — the deep, uninterrupted time the body needs to finish its stories and restore itself.
Where grief is held in warm community, given all the time it needs, until the heart has reorganized around the absence and can open again. Where anger is met with presence, because a boundary that is honored keeps the self intact. Where love is the quiet, daily co-regulation of living nervous systems choosing each other, growing stronger together.” This article blew my mind. I hope i didn’t fall for an ai-generated article here. Fuck, why is everything so suspicious now? Was that the point?

We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world [substack] – “Epstein has given us an extraordinary portal through which we can now see how hostile state influence, criminality and the impunity of the billionaire class are intimately enmeshed. That’s the piece I still want to write. But we can’t understand any of this until we realise that Epstein isn’t just a doorway, he’s also a mirror.” It’s the capitalist system that inevitably leads to this type of influence and impunity.

[Articles English]

The Line Between Affinity and Conspiracy [jewish currents] – “Faced with this old antisemitic trope of a wealthy, sexually perverse Jewish cabal that controls the interlocking worlds of finance, media, academia, and politics, we can bring a corrective clarity by pointing instead to capitalism itself as the conspiracy; we can also locate Epstein within a much broader and not distinctly Jewish elite network that is bound together not by a shared identity but by a deep misogyny and desire to protect powerful men from accountability for sexual misconduct and crimes. What’s less clear, however, is what to make of the many banal markers of Jewishness that run through the story Epstein and his friends told about themselves. One can recognize a nostalgic, almost kitschy relationship to Jewish identity that plenty of ordinary Jews tend to indulge in.” A brave look at how Epstein instrumentalized his Jewish identity, while the article keeps a clear distinction from antisemitic stereotypes.

Abuse is still rife in dance music [substack] – “In an ever-commercialising scene, protecting revenue is often the immediate and strongest impulse among those with the most to gain financially. This is why we often see festivals deciding not to take action without “proof” and clubs continuing to book popular accused abusers. It isn’t that every allegation should be accepted at face value without scrutiny, but multiple unrelated accusations should be taken very seriously, and in these situations the safety of patrons needs to be prioritised.” Sadly it’s not only in the DJ-techno scene where Metoo did not change all that much.

Six years in, mental health care providers are still uninformed on Long COVID. And it’s making the crisis worse. [the sick times] – “Six years into the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many people living with Long COVID still aren’t getting the mental health support they need. […] People living with Long COVID are twice as likely to develop anxiety and depression compared to those who recovered from a SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to a 2025 population-based study published in the journal Discover Mental Health. And a 2023 study published in BMJ Open found that people with Long COVID can experience worse quality of life than those with other diseases.” You’d think after six years we would not be stuck there.

Don’t Talk Like That | Peter Gelderloos [substack] – “even in the absence of an open war, the smothering of a language is a brutal thing. And it’s a brutality that cannot be imagined by those who only speak a language that is not in danger of disappearing, a language that thrives today because it has a powerful state that backs it, a nation-state that, in the interests of power, has destroyed a dense network of diverse languages in order to build a monoculture. Easy to rule, easier to surveil.” Language as a vector in state building.

Hazardous substances found in all headphones tested by ToxFREE project [the guardian] – FFS!

Forget Maga. Welcome to Mega: Make Empire Great Again | Mehdi Hasan [the guardian] – “In Munich, in Germany of all places, Rubio delivered an encomium to five centuries of the west’s “missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers, pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe”. He lamented the “contracting” of the “great western empires” in the wake of the second world war. He decried the “godless communist revolutions” and “anti-colonial uprisings” which, for the record, helped free 750 million people across 80 former colonies since the founding of the United Nations in 1945.
And the response to his remarks? Europe’s elites gave him a standing ovation, as if he’d just announced a cure for cancer rather than the literal return of empire. And in doing so, they made themselves shamefully complicit in the Trump administration’s rewriting not just of US history, but European and world history too.” Also watch this great summary by somaya.

The Siren 4 – Issue 4 of The Siren is out. Comic to the rescue.

The billionaires' eugenics project: how Epstein infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities, and preached master-race science [thenerve] – “Jeffrey Epstein’s favourite intellectual salon – was sold as a gathering of the world’s finest minds. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-long project that cloaked eugenics, race science and sexual misconduct in Ivy League respectability” The crucial role of Joi Ito in all this. Joi was one of the main inspirations for me to start this blog in 2002. May all my heroes fall.

The Children of Dilley [propublica] – “ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.”

Bringing the “functionally extinct” American chestnut back from the dead [arstechnica] – “thanks in part to trees planted in areas where the two fungi don’t grow well, the American chestnut isn’t extinct. And efforts to revive it in its native range have continued, despite the long generation times needed to breed resistant trees. In Thursday’s issue of Science, researchers describe their efforts to apply modern genomic techniques and exhaustive testing to identify the best route to restoring chestnuts to their native range.” Chestnuts rule.

Assessing the Global Temperature and Precipitation Analysis in January 2026 [ncei] – “January 2025 ranked as the fifth-warmest January in NOAA’s 177-year record, with a global surface temperature 2.02°F (1.12°C) higher than the 20th-century baseline. All 10 of the warmest Januarys on record have occurred since 2007, with the most recent five years (2022–26) among the top 10.” Consider how many will say “fifth-warmest” is a sign that it’s getting better.

Proto-Politics in Purgatory [ill will] – “We are not winning. The lie that we are serves as an understandable, yet nevertheless compensatory fantasy, forged under truly heartless conditions of daily abductions and abuses, alongside the unremunerated drudgery of a resistance which we desperately hope will pay off. This copium of the masses, in which we all can't but indulge to varying degrees, offers a brief respite from facing the unbearable reality that resistance as we've been conducting it has not only failed to push ICE out, but even to keep them from killing our patrollers, while exposing many of us to the same risk.” I love the expression copium.

Get Ready for This Year’s Undemocratic, Debt-Ridden, and Mobster-Infused Winter Olympics [the nation] – “With so much money swirling around, it is no surprise that corruption allegations abound. The Italian government’s Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate found that “the Winter Olympics represent a significant event…for criminal syndicates interested in gaining a foothold in the tender awarding procedures.” “Open Olympics 2026” successfully fought for the creation of a portal to track costs related to the Games, but the group notes, “the portal does not indicate who is paying for the cost increases, because financing sources are missing.” This opens the door to “mafia methods” such as extortion, strong-arming, intimidation, and blackmail.” The title kind of says it all, makes me proud to have boycotted this farcical “sports” event. Unpaywalled.

Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Epstein and the Politics of Betrayal [substack] – “[Noam Chomsky] is, arguably, our greatest and most principled intellectual. I can assure you he is not as passive or gullible as his wife claims. He knew about Epstein’s abuse of children. They all knew. And like others in the Epstein orbit, he did not care. From the email correspondence between Epstein and Valéria it appears she particularly enjoyed the privileges that came with being in Epstein’s circle, but this does not absolve Noam’s acquiescence. Noam, of all people, knows the predatory nature of the ruling class and the cruelty of capitalists, where the vulnerable, especially girls and women, are commodified as objects to be used and exploited. He was not fooled by Epstein. He was seduced. His association with Epstein is a terrible and, to many, unforgivable stain. It irreparably tarnishes his legacy. If there is a lesson here, it is this. The ruling class offers nothing without expecting something in return. The closer you get to these vampires the more you become enslaved. Our role is not to socialize with them. It is to destroy them.” This is how it is done, and Chris Hedges is/was a personal friend of Noam.

At the Speed of Human Being | Alison Rose Reed [substack] – “As we sustain commitments to the collective struggle and insurgent caregiving in our local communities, in Minnesota and all occupied lands, we must remember to pause for deep belly breaths. To have a laugh, or give someone you love a lap dance. Or both at once. Ride high at dawn, whatever that means to you. Go wild. Be a little silly. Do it for the sake of the new world we’re all building in the ashes of the old. Do it for the sake of pleasure.” Is this copium?

Trump’s Imperial Fantasy Begins With Gaza [jewishcurrents] – “Some commentators have suggested that Gaza is now under “international trusteeship.” But it’s worse than that. It’s under Trump’s individual trusteeship. The Board of Peace authorizes him and his cronies to plunder the Strip for personal gain. What is emerging in Gaza may resemble less Mandatory Palestine between 1917 and 1948, which was ruled by the British government, than the Congo between 1885 to 1908, which was the personal property of one man, King Leopold II of Belgium.” Historic context paints everything in ever darker colors.

Our Zine About ICE Surveillance Is Here [404media] – “We are very proud to present 404 Media’s zine on the surveillance technology used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. While we have always covered surveillance and privacy, for the last year, you may have noticed that we have spent an outsized amount of our attention and time reporting on the ways technology companies are powering Donald Trump’s deportation raids.” PDF.

Narwhals become quieter as the Arctic Ocean grows louder [arstechnica] – “If concrete measures are not adopted to limit the impacts of vessel traffic, underwater noise will continue to hurt whales, as well as other marine life, including fish and crustaceans, Lancaster said. Indigenous communities that rely on these marine ecosystems for food security may also be harmed.” I must be a narwhal.

[Articles German/French]

Steff La Cheffe – Stoff – This month Steff la Cheffe (one of the best female rappers in Switzerland) announced on Insta (sigh) that she is suspending her career, the release of her next album was weeks away, because her body and mind need a rest. This is sad news. It sounds like either a burn out or Long COVID. All the best to you Steff. And this song Stoff makes me crave more.

Palantir klagt gegen die Republik [republik] – “Recherchen zum Unternehmen Palantir, die von der Republik und dem Recherche­kollektiv WAV gemacht wurden, haben internationales Medien­echo ausgelöst. Nun klagt das US-Unternehmen gegen die Republik auf Gegen­darstellung. Der Fall liegt beim Zürcher Handels­gericht.” Fuck Palantir. Love the Streisand effect.

Credit Suisse verheimlichte Nazi-Konten [daslamm] – “Die von der UBS übernommene Bank Credit Suisse soll jahrzehntelang Konten der Nazis während der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs verheimlicht haben, zeigen neue Untersuchungen des US-Senats. Eine laufende Untersuchung habe Hinweise auf 890 Konten mit potenziellen Nazi-Verbindungen ergeben. Darunter befänden sich Konten des wirtschaftlichen Arms der Schutzstaffel (SS), die für zahlreiche Verbrechen der Nationalsozialisten verantwortlich gemacht wird, sowie einer deutschen Rüstungsfirma.” Swiss banks are nazi-collabos.

Wissenschaftskritik: Zeit, den Oligarchen die Stirn zu bieten [woz] – “In «Zeit der Oligarchen», spürbar geprägt vom Horror der US-Atombombenabwürfe über Hiroshima und Nagasaki, warnt Huxley vor der Machtergreifung einer Handvoll Techoligarchen, die im Stil von Gangstern eine Welt regieren werden, in der sich das Kapital in den Händen weniger konzentriert und Politik zum Faustrecht des Stärkeren verkommt, begleitet vom primitiven Gedöns nationalistischer Parolen. Wer da nicht gleich an die USA seit dem Amtsantritt von Donald Trump denkt, hat das vergangene Jahr womöglich unter einem Stein vergraben verbracht.” Huxley’s historic essay seems to be written for our time.

Krasse Links No 77 [mspro] – “Die gesamte amerikanische Elite ist mit Kacke bespritzt und so verschiebt sich die Balance richtiung Aufklärungsinteresse, denn die meisten, die in den Files stehen, werden keine Verbrechen nachgewiesen werden können. Sie alle wissen, dass sie sich von dieser Shitshow nur „reinwaschen“ können (so richtig wird das natürlich nie gelingen), wenn alle Files released, am besten alle Verbrechen aufgedeckt und alle Täter benannt und gefasst sind.” An overview of the recent Epstein files release.

Acht Jahre Haft für Antifaschist*in Maja T. [daslamm] – “Dank euch begreife ich, es lohnt zu bleiben, es lohnt zu hoffen, und ich fühle dort Sicherheit, wo ich an eurer Seite stehe, dort wo es notwendig wird, dort wo kein Zögern bleibt. Und ich weiss, dort ist ein Ort, prachtvoll und lebhaft wie eine wilde Blumenwiese, da ist ein Ort jenseits der Verliese und weit weg von all der Gewalt, an dem du und ich Mensch sein dürfen unter Menschen.” Antifascist Maja T was convicted in Hungary, this is from her manifesto.

Vers une société des devenirs : – penser la neurodiversité au-delà de l'inclusion Régis Cortesero [lundi.am] – “Cette perspective invite à penser les situations neurodivergentes non plus comme des identités minoritaires à protéger (perspective inclusive) ou des capacités à restaurer (modèle médicale), mais comme des devenirs à promouvoir et des agencements à rendre possibles. Ce n’est pas simplement une manière d’être autre dans une société injuste à laquelle il faudrait arracher des aménagements : c’est un rapport au monde, aux autres et à soi qui invente d’autres voies de subjectivation. La neurodiversité y devient un principe actif de reconfiguration des milieux de vie et non plus d’aménagements de modalités de fonctionnements dérogatoires à l’intérieur d’une normativité dominante.” Proposes a much more revolutionary stance than the fight for more accessibility ever could.

[Older articles, still great]

CITY LIGHTS LIVE! Miranda Mellis with Eleni Stecopoulos – Miranda Mellis discussing her novel Crocosmia with Eleni Stecopoulos.

Metaphysical Activism – WILD12 Resolution – “Conventional activism has had undeniable value in progressively helping to mitigate or resolve said crises. Yet those crisis situations continue to worsen in nature and degree, indicating the urgent need for a radically different approach.1
From the perspective of many [Indigenous Peoples], and a growing number of awakening and awakened non-[Indigenous] populations, these predicaments are seen as largely symptomatic of a fundamental underlying crisis, i.e. a crisis of consciousness, or of the spirit of a critical mass of humanity (which for the purposes of this resolution We shall call a [metaphysical] crisis) – both in terms of the cause, and people’s capacity to respond to remediate the situation.” This manifesto was mentioned by Miranda (above).

R.I.P.

Dominique Grandjean (1944–2026) – The Campari Soda dude.

[If you care to receive more regular updates, please follow my diigo (feed: rss) for all of my saved links or mastodon for an edited choice of them]

Header Photo: It almost snowed

DOWNLOAD: Your Noise Is My Slow Death – Part 2 | Noise [146.6 MB – 01:00:00 – 320kbs]

TITLE: Your Noise Is My Slow Death – Part 2 | Noise

On this day in 1993 i had the fantastic fortune to kiss the most beautiful woman that i had ever seen.
And 33 years later we are still together.
Meaning she still puts up with this grumpy, fussy and irritable sod.

So i made another mixtape for her.
OMG, how embarrassing.

This one is for you honey.
Well, they all are. But on this special occasion even more so.

#$$$@@@$$$#

“Sensitivity signifies an exception that might be assigned value as social power, sacred dispensation, or creative gift. It can also lead to vulnerability, disablement, and condemnation. Sanctified and stigmatized. Asset and liability.”
~ Eleni Stecopoulos – Dreaming in the Fault Zone

//cw mention of death and suicide

In 1851 Arthur Schopenhauer published a short essay called “Ueber Lerm und Geräusch” (literally On Noise and Sound, it gets usually translated to “On Noise”) in which he laments:

“Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will smile at this, because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought, poetry or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain tissues. On the other hand, in the biographies or in other records of the personal utterances of almost all great writers, I find complaints of the pain that noise has occasioned to intellectual men. For example, in the case of Kant, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul.”

The elitist and biologist (if not eugenic) undertones in this quote sound horrendous today. But when i first read this essay by Schopenhauer, it must have been sometime in the 80s, it did put me at ease somehow, to know that i was not the only one and that even some great writers and thinkers suffered from all the noise. The reverse of his elitist claim is of course easily disprovable. Not all people who are sensitive to noise turn out to be great writers, or even thinkers, which anyone will notice who reads this clumsy attempt at writing a coherent text.

Compared to the noise pollution that is imposed on us today, it seems almost quaint to read how for Schopenhauer the most “disgraceful” of all noises was the whip used on horse carriages. “It deprives life of all peace and sensibility. Nothing gives me so clear a grasp of the stupidity and thoughtlessness of mankind as the tolerance of the cracking of whips. This sudden, sharp crack which paralyses the brain.” Makes me wonder how Arthur would fare in our time, with leaf blowers as one symbol of the omnipresence of the internal combustion engine?

In 1908 Theodor Lessing published “Der Lärm – Eine Kampfschrift gegen die Geräusche unseres Lebens”. In this a much longer manifesto, or diatribe, he writes:

“All this terrible rioting, this incessant roaring, booming, whistling, hissing, snarling, hammering, rattling, knocking, shrieking, screaming, and raging, with which man [sic] tends to accompany all actions, arises, just like language and music, from a vital necessity. Therefore, any struggle against the noisy side of life would not advance us one step further if we did not first probe the psychological underpinnings in which all this noisy roar of life is necessarily anchored. For the most beautiful music as well as the most terrible noise, the purest religiosity as well as the most incomprehensible mysticism, the poetically transfigured love as well as vulgar sexual obscenity – they all have their roots in the very same place, in the same profound depth of the human soul. Only the rescuing, nourishing layers of soil through which these spiritual root forces burst forth from the same seed, color and transform, dull or purify their essential nature, so decisively so that in the end, in one place in life, a delicate, otherworldly heavenly flower emerges, while in another, a disgusting, shameful hermaphroditic plant rises up.”

Lessing goes on to puzzle about Mozart and John Stuart Mills, who both apparently were able to work unperturbed by noise. Which sounds similar to John Cage (whose quote i used in part 2 of the mix series), who claims to love silence, but associates silence with the sound of traffic. All i can think is, good for them, i guess, to then alongside my pal Lessing continue to suffer from the disruptive and at times disabling force that is unnecessary noise. Towards the end of his Kampfschrift (there is no satisfying translation for this) Lessing offers a despairing inventory of the way noise gets treated in the law–which would be a statist solution for a social problem (which i, for one, would not want this problem to be solved by repression).

Lessing ends his pamphlet in quiet despair:

“In short, I don’t know what will happen, nor how it will be. But there will certainly be noise [how right he was about that]. I will no longer resist, but will turn toward the wall, and leave no other request in my will than that no firecrackers will be set off at my grave.”

Fuck. Maybe this is all that is left for me to do as well?! Turn toward the wall. Crank up the white noise machine even further. Wear the noise cancelling headphones even longer, who cares if they make me claustrophobic. And hope that it doesn’t get even worse, somehow. Which i am sure it will.

In real life Lessing went on to form the “Anti-Lärm-Verein” (anti-noise-association) and founded a magazine called “Der Anti-Rüpel” (the anti-brute). He continued to fight noise (and fascism) until 1933, when he was one of the earliest victims killed by Nazis in Marienbad. The brutes did won in his case.

Many humans suffer from noise, many get sick because of noise, most without even knowing. But let us also not forget all the other species we share this planet with, who can suffer greatly under all the noise that we humans impose on them on this small planet, nonstop and with escalating intensity. I want to mention the narwhals, one of the most beautiful animals in existence (dubbed the unicorn of the sea), who go quiet as the oceans grow louder. Or the capercaillies in the pinewoods of Scotland, one of the most elusive and gorgeous birds, by now pretty much extinct, who would need some peace and quiet in order to survive. Or much closer to home, think of all the dogs hiding under the sofa when humans “have fun” with their lame fireworks.

I admit it. I have chosen quite an accusatory title for this series of DJ mixes. This title claims that “your” noise is “my” slow death. I do mean this in a literal, but also in the metaphorical sense. Slow death being the self-explanatory expression, often used by disability justice activists, to show how a mixture of organized abandonment by the state, hyperindividualism under late stage neoliberal capitalism and structural ableism results in disabled and chronically ill comrades slowly dying.

By the way, i love/hate the German expression “ein Tod auf Raten” a death by installments. Sums it up, really.

I mean this title in a literal sense, because my need for peace and quiet goes much further than a simple preference, or maybe a silly sensitivity, much further than something that could be resolved with ease. For me it is an existential issue in the sense that it is the noise (among a few other factors), that prevents my body from healing. The noise from our downstairs neighbor is quite literally responsible for my not finding enough sleep and relaxation, not enough the peace and quiet that i would need in order to start my healing process, or to at least improve or stabilise this awful chronic illness.

I mean it in a metaphorical sense, because of course i understand it as a symbol. Of course i see the bigger picture here. It is a sign of how end times capitalism whips (quick shout out to Arthur) humans into an alienated frenzy, where no one has the time, nor the energy, to consider the sensitive people next door, who suffer. It is the constant noise that leaves me no other choice, than to either hope to die soon or else to betray my true personality by drowning out the noise in my desperate effort to shield myself a bit. The creative or healing potential (“social power, sacred dispensation, or creative gift” writes Stecopoulos, quoted above) that my sensitivity might or might not have, lost by the wayside.

“Sensitivity is suspect to a masculinist society that mandates constant productivity and disembodiment.”
~ Eleni Stecopoulos – Dreaming in the Fault Zone

Ever since 2020 at the start of the ongoing!!! COVID-19 pandemic, when i developed Long COVID, my hyperacusis has escalated to the point that it is by now almost unbearable. It was always the case that i had trouble to un-hear noise once i had clocked it. Which might be the neurodivergent part of me. Maybe my tinnitus makes me prone to this. But Long COVID has made my hyperacusis so much worse. My weakened, debilitated body no longer simply craves, no, it now needs!!! peace and quiet. If i noise was an annoyance before, it now feels like pain.

Noise now hurts.

True, my sensitivity does have a history. Like others, i think that i was born HSP (highly sensitive person). HSP might be a snappy acronym, that does ring true. But at the same time the phenomenon can just as easy be explained with being introverted or neurodivergent. Others have argued, better than i ever could, that we do not need a new label for this phenomenon. Let’s just call it what it is, a form of autism. Hyperacusis also presents itself as a syndrome. Instead of as a fixed condition, it also needs to be placed on a spectrum.

Since Long COVID i am no longer sensitive to noise alone. Bright lights, smells, vibrations can also be too much to handle. All my senses, my entire apparatus of perception, are in constant fight or flight mode. My entire body feels like an open wound. Like a peeled egg. All sensual perceptions are impacting it, in brutal rawness. But never mind these other sensitivities for now and focus on the fucking noise, the most invasive among them (alongside smell), which has always been the biggest challenge for me and presents itself as such a burden when living during the cynical and noisy capitalist era.

So here’s why i think noise is my slow death. It’s never an easy task to express bodily sensations with words. But ever since Long COVID i feels like i am lacking all (not just some) of the filters that protect so-called healthy people. Any perception can turn painful, in its raw and unfiltered form. It often feels like i am “all ears”. My hyperacusis may well have been building up over the years, it may be an expression of my neurodivergence. But it was COVID-19 that has thrown me over the edge. Many of my early Long COVID symptoms have gotten better since the start, if only because i learned how to pace myself. My baseline remains in a fragile balance, any stress, like lack of sleep, can bring on a crash. At any moment.

To maintain the baseline of my health i discovered that it is necessary for me to keep quite specific routines, most crucial for my sleeping patterns. But my next door neighbors have different ideas. They keep me awake. Or wake me up. With their banging. Their door slamming. With their washing machines and dryers at all hours (even though we begged them not to use them at night). With their loud voices on balconies. With music and barking dogs. With whatever.

Quick interception: Consider how sleep deprivation is used in torture. Food for thought.

Lack of sleep deteriorates my health. So that is how noise leads to my slow death. That’s the brutal truth. That’s how “your” noise is “my” slow death. Yes. I mean you. I mean you, in general sense, the capitalist fucking system that imposes all this shit on us and our animal friends.

The capitalist system must die, so that we can live. So that everyone receives all the care that they deserve. So that everybody receives everything.

“I write deliberately about sensitivity associated with an inspired state—overlapping with intuition, talent, skill—together with sensitivity as a toxic state—a chronic assault, not being able to tolerate exposure to this world, or somehow not being of this world. Partly because I don’t want to create a hierarchy between the culturally sanctioned and the demeaned, and partly because they often come bundled together, and being rewarded for one can sometimes aggravate disbelief about the other, not least the internalized disbelief that comes from living under patriarchy and capitalism. I won’t separate them, because I want to reduce suffering.”
~ Eleni Stecopoulos – Dreaming in the Fault Zone (a much recommended book)

So there it is.
I hope my mixtape can offer a brief escape from all the noise.
If this is the case, please tell a friend

Look out for part 3 in a few months, maybe.

[Please consider supporting these artists, by following the bandcamp links (if available) below]

TRACKLIST:

01. Simon & Garfunkel – Sound of Silence
02. ÄTNA – Number One
03. Underworld – Capa Meets The Sun (To Heal)
04. Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise If You Can See
05. De La Soul – Day In The Sun (Gettin’ Wit U) ft. Q-Tip & Yummy Bingham
06. Kista – Computer Rock (Future Shock)
07. Little Simz – Free
08. Smith & Mighty – Odd Tune For Piano
09. Soulwax – Dshungel
09.1 All Saints – Pure Shores
10. Wagon Christ – Acid
11. Public Enemy – Contract On The World Jam
12. No$shu – Punch A Nazi
13. keiyaA – Be Quiet !!!
14. Laid Back – White Horse
15. Drexciya – Andreanen Sand Dunes
16. A1 People – Do It (Metamatics Remix)
17. Marie Davidson – Y.A.A.M. (Soulwax Remix)
18. Sigrid – Sucker Punch (Four Tet Remix)
19. Mr. Ozio – Flat Beat
20. Björk – The Anchor Song (Black Dog Remix)
21. Miss Kitten & The Hacker – You And Us
22. Saul Williams – The Noise Came From Here
23. Jonny Greenwood – Trust Device
24. Chris Morris – Morton Interview
25. Gorillaz – The God Of Lying ft. IDLES
26. Chris Roe – Nueve Cuerpos
27. Milenia Patagônia – Dijaspora Baby
28. Silance – Amore Dai
29. Smith & Mighty – Down In Rwanda (More Rockers Remix)
30. Anthony Rother – 65 Million Years
31. Little Simz – Gorilla
32. Siriusmo – Lehm ft. Erobique
33. Jonny Greenwood – Dark Streets
34. Mira Calix – I’m In Love With The End Of The World
35. Marshall Jefferson – Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation (Joakim’s Horizontal Remix Instrumental)
36. anaiis – Freedom Dreaming (Adrienne Maree Brown’s Interlude

SAMPLES:

John Cage on silence, Gangaji – The search for silence, The psychology of people who love staying at home, SNL, The Responder.s02e03, Beastie Boys – Fight For Your Right (Revisited), Benediction.2021, The Card Counter.2021, Antlers.2022, A conversation with Ricky Lee Jones, Lee.2023, Peaky Blinders.s06e06, Bowie – The Final Act, The Hack.s01e06, Downtown Abbey – A New Era, Blue Lights.s03e05, Clipse – Chains & Whips, Eddington.2025, Josh Johnson – 23andMe, Good Luck To You Leo Grande.2022, A Complete Unknown.2024, The Offer.s01e03, Tha 4orce · Wan-Cee – Make Some Noise (Acapella), Beastie Boys-Make Some Noise (Acapella), Silver Haze.2023

COVER: Created by the wonderful Fr3nzIn3 thanks a silentforcetrillion.

SUBSCRIBE:

This link will pick up all my mixes and the occasional mp3’s that I link to from my blog.

COPYLEFT:
All music and audio is borrowed with the utmost respect for its creators. I consider this to be fair use. The material is created purely for fun and to share with my online friends. There is no commercial transaction involved.

All rights remain with original right holders. this mix makes fair use of copyrighted material. this mix is distributed non-commercially only.

DOWNLOAD: Your Noise Is My Slow Death – Part 1 | Silence [144 MB – 01:00:00 – 320kbs]

TITLE: Your Noise Is My Slow Death – Part 1 | Silence

“Sensitivity is popularly regarded as an individual aberration or personal choice but will be increasingly understood as environmentally modulated. Charged by the energy of the protest. Leaving the room because of what’s in the air. I see sensitivity as a way of living that can be cultivated, not just borne—an ethos that will gain importance as our relationships to earth, other species, and each other shift.”
~ Eleni Stecopoulos – Dreaming in the Fault Zone

//cw mention of self-harm and suicide

So uhm, i created this mixtape, because i have been trying, and failing, to write an essay with the same title for many, many months (since March 2025 to be precise). In the essay i try to show, how our culture continues to protect the loudest people, the bullies, the extroverts, and how i understand this as a form of structural ableism. How the meaning of the terms “tolerance” and “flexibility” has been twisted to only ever cut one way, to the point that both of these terms now are getting weaponized in defense of hyper-individualism, and are used to gaslight the part of the population that suffers under the noise. How noise is a constant factor in the world that we have made. And how a fight to oppose this permanent onslaught of noise–that, mind you, we are subjected to without ever having given our consent–could conceivably turn into an anti-capitalist, mutual aid, communal care, bottom-up and many other beautiful ideas *deep breath* revolution.

If the permanent exposure to unwanted noise is understood as one oppressive element, among several others, of course, imposed on us by a hostile system, what’s not to oppose?

But sadly I failed to write about these topics in a coherent manner. I will continue to try, but for now, here’s a mixtape dedicated to the topic. Why am i experiencing writers block now? It might well be due to a lack of personal distance in regards to noise, a distance that can be required to tackle certain issues. But the main reason must be that it fills me with shame to admit to this. I hate having to be the partypooper, who begs everyone to please keep the noise down. That’s even more absurd, because noise really does dominate my life. I even go as far as saying that noise tortures me. Every single day. However, nowadays to admit to a sensitivity is seen as weakness. It makes one vulnerable, and who wants that?! Part of my shame might even be justified. Compared to all the extreme suffering that we witness in our world–wars, famine, repression, fascist thugs killing people in the streets, etc.–my problem with extreme noise sensitivity feels like such a first world issue.

“Just be more tolerant”, i yell at myself inside my head. With that i chime in to the gaslighting that comes at me from every angle. Or “just wait until old age will degenerate your hyper-acute sense of hearing”, which is the advice my mum gave me. Maybe this noise sensitivity does run in the family. My mum used to be highly sensitive to noise. It’s no longer the case since she is in the process of losing her hearing. My late aunt wrote about my late uncle, who died much too young: “He never found life easy. It was accompanied by an inner restlessness, a constant search for possible answers to philosophical and theological questions, a need for periods of absolute peace and quiet, and the fear of not getting them or not being able to claim them for himself.” Sounds familiar.

Listen, i even hesitate to talk about it as a “sensitivity”. To me it feels less like i am sensitive to noise and more like i crave quiet. Maybe i even deserve some peace and quiet, which would help me heal. If it is framed as a sensitivity the blame gets shifted, in not so subtle ways. “Oh, he’s just too sensitive” declares me as the faulty entity, belittles and others me. I prefer to say that i have hyperacusis. Which describes a potentially debilitating condition that might even deserve some compassion.

Think about it. Is it really me, who is to blame, who is too sensitive to noise? Or is it maybe the world that is too damn noisy?

At the very least it’s a bit of both. In the world that i would like to live in, high sensitivity might be considered a commendable trait, and who knows, maybe even a super power. Or at the very least something that is “welcome, unusual, helpful” as someone recently told me. As it stands my condition gets treated as something to be ashamed of, as something that makes me difficult to be around, as something that justifies me getting ridiculed and bullied.

Every hyperacusis questionnaire that i ever took came back with the same result. That i have a very severe form of hyperacusis. But when i tell my doctor about it, she answers, oh, that’s so difficult to diagnose. No. It fucking isn’t. Just listen to what i have to say, how i describe my symptoms, and it becomes fucking obvious. Dude.

It is estimated that somewhere between 10 to 40% of people suffer from some form of hyperacusis. That’s up to four out of ten people. A shitload. It is understood as a spectrum (and what isn’t) from mild to severe. But because it is based on self-assessment, as such not measurable, medicine laughs it out of the room, bans it into the woo woo field of psychosomatic or hysterical conditions.

Medical doctors make me so fucking angry.

*Deep breath*

Look, i never chose to have this condition. It chose me. I might have made some choices in my life that made it worse. Being a club DJ for almost ten years certainly didn’t help. At least it explains the tinnitus, often an underlying cause in hyperacusis. I feel terrible for being such a weak, pathetic, whiny asshole mess loser. No really, i do. But again, is it really just me?

Take a moment to listen to what is going on around you. Doesn’t it seem that the permanent noise in the world is getting out of hand? Don’t we have enough studies that prove that noise makes people ill–or makes existing illnesses worse? Why is everyone pretending that it doesn’t bother them? Why is everyone nuking their senses with nicotine, alcohol, drugs or distracting themselves with home entertainment? Shouldn’t we instead fight for a less noisy world?

For someone like myself denial is not an option. Try as i might i lost my ability to ignore the noise. The reality is that noise makes me suffer to the point that i contemplate suicide several times per week, often every day. For the simple reason that i am exhausted and don’t see a future for myself in a world where the sensitive, the introverted, the quiet people–and maybe the neurodivergent, chronically ill, elderly–are meant to act as a sponge, to soak up all the noise, that gets imposed on us by the reckless behavior of the loud, brash, inconsiderate bullies, who no longer seem to possess any shred of impulse control.

Under the toxic influence of end times capitalism and neoliberalism, hyper-individualism has only gotten worse. People are only getting louder in their incessant obsession to broadcast their lives, screaming about nothing of importance, at the top of their lungs, to no one in particular. These same people also enjoy it, when they can make others (me) suffer. It makes them feel superior to see people like myself wince under their auditory assault. The trolls have come offline.

Well, for me there’s no way around it. I am one of the people who suffer under this noisy situation, a situation that has only gotten worse and worse and worse. It has turned me so bitter, that i might well come off as a rude, unfriendly asshole. But that has not always been the case. In theory i try to be friendly towards new neighbors in the building. Initially i try to accommodate and welcome them. But then they start to impose their noise on me with their inconsiderate and frankly shitty attitude, which makes me suffer, and i start to hate them. In the end i can almost no longer greet them in the staircase.

Your noise is my slow death.

I understand full well how this is not a healthy arrangement. We live next door to each other. We all pay rent to the same assholes. But my neighbors get dominate my life. Whereas i don’t have a right for peace and quiet? Their noise wakes me up at all hours, or keeps me awake, which is poison for someone who is chronically ill. Somehow i am just meant to soak it all up. There really should be a dialogue between us, the direct neighbors, to try and find a compromise that works for everybody, not just for the loudest among us. But the capitalist assholes, that we pay our rent to, the landlords, real estate agents and other hyenas, do nothing to accommodate such a process. They only care about us paying rent. That’s it. Pay your rent and shut the fuck up. Suffer in silence while your neighbors trample all over you.

The bullies always win.

Surely this is not fair.

#!@@&@@!#

It’s been a while since David Graeber has spilled the secret. That “the ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently”. If we accept his premise (which we should) and then proceed to investigate the world that we have made from various angles (political, economic, ecological, spiritual, etc.), we can only come to one conclusion: We have done a shitty job. The world that we have made is a shitty place. And a noisy one.

If you are a person, like myself, who craves quiet–or who maybe even needs quiet in order to heal from a chronic illness (doctor’s orders)–well, guess what, then you are shit out of luck. Because in the world that we have made, quiet has been turned into a rarefied commodity. Quiet is something that only filthy rich assholes can afford (by buying an entire city block or an island. Eww). For the rest of us, in the world that we have made, noise rules.

Internal combustion engines–running on fossil fuels!–are everywhere and they are too damn loud. Take your pick between the noise of cars, planes, helicopters, industrial noise, weed whackers, leaf blowers, tractors. But it goes beyond that. Between construction sites, church bells, cow bells, barking dogs, screaming babies, loud neighbors screaming on their balconies, Bluetooth speakers everywhere, all night techno parties in the forest–the noise never fucking stops. There is never a quiet moment to be had.

I believe that most people are sensitive to noise, to a varying degree. I just happen to find myself at the extreme end of the spectrum. If you, like myself, are an introvert or shy, maybe a neurodivergent person and/or maybe just someone who enjoys quiet moments, you are shit out of luck in the noisy world that we have made. If you are a person who enjoys to talk to others at room volume, maybe while trying to find a consensus that accommodates the needs of everyone, then this world is not for you.

In this world that we have made—and continue to make—the loudest, most ruthless, the most brash people, they rise to the top. In the cynical, life-negating system that we have implemented, the bullies always win. Under our current system the biggest liars, the rudest assholes and the loudest bullies end up ruling the world. Ableism is baked into this arrangement.

A demand for more quiet, for less noise, for more mutual consideration, for the best care for everyone, might therefore well be a revolutionary position.

Meanwhile, all i can do is meditate in the hope of discovering the silence with the silence and the silence within the noise. Go.

[The essay is much much longer. (Help, i need an editor). But for now this is what i feel comfortable to share. Maybe at some point in time i will manage to finish it]

So there it is.
A mixtape can offer a brief escape from the noise.
I hope this is the case.
In case you do, please tell a friend

Look out for part 2 in a few weeks, maybe.

[Please consider to support these artists, by following the bandcamp links (if available) below]

TRACKLIST:

01. David Bowie – Blackstar
02. Emlyn Ellis Addison – Remains of the Quiet
03. Chris Roe – Nine Bodies
04. Leoni Leoni – Jungle room / Easyjet
05. Eartheater – Scripture
06. Siriusmo – Every Tree Needs A Friend
07. Gonjasufi – Your Maker (Anna Wise Remaker)
08. Barry Can’t Swim – The Person You’d Like To Be
09. SebastiAn ft. Charlotte Gainsbourg – Pleasant
10. Sheldon Agwu – Meditation Ribbon Dance (ft. Ylenia Tilli)
11. Mira Calix – Silence is Silver
12. Bashy – Blessed ft. Skrapz & Haile
13. The Chemical Brothers – Galvanize
14. Little Computer People – Friends Are Not Electric
15. Dropshadow Disease – Fototienda (Plaid Remix)
16. Daniel Wang – Black Boots & Sine Waves
17. Underworld – Peggy Sussed
18. Bill & Ben – Mr. Sequin’s Encore
19. Lily Allen – Dallas Major
20. Siriusmo – Koko
21. Marie Davidson – Push Me Fuckhead (Soulwax Dub Mix)
22. Charli xcx – House ft. John Cale
23. Seal -Silence
24. PJ Harvey – Silence
25. Portishead – Silence
26. Alanis Morisette – All I Really Want
27. Amanda Lear – Le Silence
28. Linton Kwesi Johnson – Two Sides of Silence
29. Maximum Joy – Silent Dub
29.1 David Bowie – Sons of the Silent Age
30. Kevin Richard Martin ft. Dis Fig – Silent
31. Boards of Canada – 5.9.78
32. Simon & Garfunkel – The Sound of Silence

SAMPLES:

Country Strong.2010, Patti Smith – Millionth Heaven, David Bowie – The Final Act, Clipse – All Things Considered, The Changeling.s01e07, The Sarah Silverman Podcast – Threesomes, Night Bras, Laura, Gangaji Podcasts, A Conversation with Ricky Lee Jones, HPI.s01e06, Prisoner 951.s01e01, DakhaBrakha – Kozak, Gangaji – The Silence of the Silence, ixi – I finally listened to Geogaddi

COVER: Created by the wonderful Fr3nzIn3 thanks a noiselesstrillion.

SUBSCRIBE:

This link will pick up all my mixes and the occasional mp3’s that I link to from my blog.

COPYLEFT:
All music and audio is borrowed with the utmost respect for its creators. I consider this to be fair use. The material is created purely for fun and to share with my online friends. There is no commercial transaction involved.

All rights remain with original right holders. this mix makes fair use of copyrighted material. this mix is distributed non-commercially only.

[Videos]

Tech Billionaires Want Us Dead | Taylor Lorenz

Trump clearing his throat for 90 minutes – If that’s your beat.

Programmierte Kriegsverbrechen? | 39c3 [media.ccc.de] – A brave talk in Germany, home of the anti-antisemites.

[Music]

Carsie Blanton – Elon Musk

An extended re-release.

First song of the new album.

DakhaBrakha – Ptakh – Technically from December 2025, but.

[Podcasts]

All about “reactionary centrism” [volts] – “Why do so many influential voices spend their time policing the manners of the left while the right dismantles democracy? In this episode, Michael Hobbes — cohost of the much-celebrated “If Books Could Kill” podcast — joins me to discuss the “reactionary centrist,” a type of commentator who believes that both sides are to blame for everything and demonstrates this by spending every waking moment scolding Democrats” Anything with Michael Hobbes will be amazing, fast-speaking fun, even if concerns such a sucky topic. How does he do that?

Dispatch from Occupied Minneapolis w/ Melissa Gira Grant | Death Panel [.soundcloud.] – “Beatrice is joined by Melissa Gira Grant to discuss what’s happening on the ground in Minneapolis, the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the broader currents of fascism nationally producing the context for the battle going on in the streets of the twin cities.” There have been a few “from the ground” reports, but the way Beatrice and Melissa frame it seems the most relevant.

Health Fascism and the Anti-State State [substack] – The excellent end of year #DeathPanel episode, Health Fascism and the Anti-State State, now no longer paywalled and also fully transcribed.

I also listened to THE WORST PODCAST EVER this month, but i won’t mention which one it is. Not streisanding it.

[Toot Threads]

All Eyes On Rojava
Riseup 4 Rojava

[Pandemic Roundup]

Covid: January 29, 2026
Covid: January 22, 2026
Covid: January 15, 2026
Covid: January 8, 2026
Covid: January 1, 2026

[The Must Read[s] This Month]

The Disconnected Present: Neoliberal Fascism and the Politics of Erasure [counterpunch] – “What we are witnessing is not simply a return to older forms of authoritarianism but the consolidation of neoliberal fascism as a pedagogical project. This project does not rule primarily through persuasion or democratic consent but through the management of consciousness, the normalization of cruelty, and the systematic dismantling of the public imagination. It educates people to disconnect, to see violence as inevitable, to accept militarism as common sense, normalize racial cleansing, white Christian nationalism, and authoritarian cruelty. It replaces political agency with fear, historical memory with amnesia, and solidarity with atomization.” Miller, Vance and Trump must all have books by Goebbels on their night stands.

Public health collapsing as COVID pandemic enters its 7th year [wsws] – “The assault on public health must be understood within the broader framework of class rule under capitalism. From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the decisive priority of governments was not the preservation of life, but the protection of profit, financial markets and corporate interests. This orientation was articulated openly in calls to “reopen the economy” even as mass death unfolded.” It continues to make me sad that the best reporting on the ongoing pandemic comes from the fucking socialists. But hey, too many anarchists do not seem capable of this kind of meta-analysis.

The Left-Wing Propaganda Machine: Ridicule, Minimization, and the Normalization of Risk During COVID [substack] – “The brutality is in the deception. Vulnerable people face mockery or isolation for basic self-protection, while evidence of excess deaths, overwhelmed Long covid clinics with no treatments, and immune harm gets sidelined. Let me remind you; these people laugh believing they are untouchable, but recent studies have found T cell loss of about 10 percent in normal people at least for 22 months, and over 80 percent loss of T cells in cardiac patients.” The article makes one major error, in the headline. Stewart, Favreau, Oster and Tufekci were never “left-wing”, but belong to the reactionary and radicalized centrist clusterfuck. Other than that, a decent analysis on the eugenic turn we have witnessed from that crowd.

[Articles English]

‘Suicide rightism’ and the penguin [substack] – “Fascism is a literally suicidal ideology, one obsessed with purging the body politic to the point of total self-negation. What’s funny about Suicide Rightism is how direct it is about all this. You don’t need some big theoretical analysis; there’s no level of abstraction to move through. It’s just pretty straightforwardly pro-suicide. I don’t think you have to be a professional psychologist to understand why dramatic, attention-grabbing suicide might be appealing to semi-employed guys who spend 14 hours a day watching Asmongold or whatever.” The not so subtle shift from death-cultism to suicide-ism.

Antifa used to unmask neo-Nazis, now it’s exposing ICE: ‘Predators don’t get anonymity’ [the guardian] – “Following in a long American tradition of identifying fascists, a network of leftists has set out to name and shame Trump’s immigration agents” Hear me out, but it’s a different ball game when state employees get doxxed instead of neonazis in the sticks.

Vitamin D & Omega-3 have a larger effect on depression than antidepressants [ncase.me] – “So, Vitamin D & Omega-3: possibly high reward, for low risk. That’s a positive “expected value” bet! These supplements are safe, cheap, over-the-counter, and have positive side-effects (on Covid & cognition). As always, “ask your doctor”, show them the peer-reviewed papers cited in this post.” That’s the way to frame this type of information. It all depends. Find out what works for you.

General Strike: Before Killing, Minnesota Showed a Way Forward [intercept] – ““The general strike is the name for when the riot, the strike, and the commune all happen at once,” late theorist Joshua Clover said in a 2024 interview. Community care, militant disruption, working class refusal. “That’s what the general strike really is. And that’s the day, the week, or the year where there will be a role for everyone.” There is a role for everyone, because that time must be now.” I mostly link to this for some of the quotes on general strikes.

Canary in the Coal Mine: Long Covid in Fiction [whoevenreads] – “The ongoing pandemic is affecting authors just as it’s affecting everyone else. We’re not supposed to talk about it, and we’re treated with disdain if we take precautions to prevent infection. Just the same, authors are not supposed to write about it. We see the tension in this emerging, as fiction writers quite commonly draw from their real lives, and thus this would seem a natural subject. If up to one-third of people who contract Covid-19 also acquire some form of Long Covid, this is something quite a lot of authors are dealing with.” Did i ever tell you that i am also trying to write a pandemic novel. It is very hard. And no worries, i am fully aware that it sucks. It will never get published.

Capitalism Without Humans [in these times] – “As new technologies (not immigrants) replace human labor, “machine breaking” as a tactic of rebellion is taking on a renewed vitality.” Motion to rename Silicone Valley into Dystopia Valley.

Being “Peaceful” and “Law-Abiding” Will Not Stop Authoritarianism : A Message from Germany [crimethInc] – “In the long term, it’s better not to compromise, not to let oneself be pacified and disarmed, whether literally or figuratively. Being uncompromising and taking risks is often safer than restoring the status quo.” Erm, sure.

Billionaire wealth jumps three times faster in 2025 to highest peak ever, sparking dangerous political inequality [oxfam international] – “The collective wealth of billionaires last year surged by $2.5 trillion, almost equivalent to the total wealth held by the bottom half of humanity – 4.1 billion people.
The number of billionaires topped 3,000 last year for the first time, while the richest, Elon Musk, became the first ever to surpass half a trillion dollars. Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people. The $2.5 trillion rise in billionaires’ wealth would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.” The WEF came and went. We yelled a bit about inequality. Nothing changed.

Not All Women | Dayna Tortorici [nplusonemag] – “What do we call our political enemies whose feminist bona fides aren’t really up for debate in the eyes of the public?” A powerful review of the Sophie Lewis book Enemy Feminisms, a must-read book.

Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds on U.S. Citizens [propublica] – “Chokeholds: We found over 40 cases of agents using chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die,” said a 16-year-old citizen. Banned Tactics, No Punishment: There is a federal ban on chokeholds and similar tactics. But there is no sign of punishment for officers who’ve used them.” They get trained to perform illegal chokeholds.

Bandcamp’s Mission and Our Approach to Generative AI [bandcamp: shortcode must include 'track', 'album', or 'video' param] – “Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.” Nice gesture, buddy.

Assessing the Global Temperature and Precipitation Analysis in 2025 [ncei] – “2025 ranked as the third-warmest year since global records began in 1850. The annual global surface temperature was 2.11°F (1.17°C) above the 20th-century average, falling behind the record-setting year of 2024 (by 0.22°F/0.12°C) and the second-warmest year, 2023 (by 0.04°F/0.02°C). The 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred since 2015. Additionally, 2025 exceeded the pre-industrial (1850–1900) average by 2.41°F (1.34°C).” And this in a La Nina year.

We’re Thinking About Addiction Entirely Wrong [jacobin] – “There is nothing intrinsically morally wrong with using drugs. […] there are many, many cases of drug use, both in addiction and apart from it, where absolutely nothing is done that is morally wrong. Remember, caffeine and nicotine are drugs. Alcohol is a drug. Many of the drugs we find on the streets are pharmacologically identical to the drugs used in hospitals and for medical purposes. It is simply a mistake to think that drug use is intrinsically morally wrong, however deep in our history the mistake goes.” The book sounds interesting. But i would like to ask the author how their theory differs from the self-medication theory.

Venezuela and the New Division of the World [ill will] – “Although the experience of popular organization that emerged from the Community Councils and Communes, as well as from mass protests against hunger (as in 2014), could hypothetically be reactivated to address the organizational and self-defense needs of the Venezuelan proletariat, it would be ridiculous to refer to this as a unified and conscious subject. The conditions of subsistence they face have severely deteriorated their capacity for action and divided their ranks. At the same time, Chavismo has done everything possible to eliminate every form of organization independent of the state, through “blacklists, the assassination of union leaders, the dismissal of state workers disloyal to Chavismo, and the manipulation of union elections.”” The nuance we need in the case of Venezuela. Even if the ultimate goal is of course to weaken Cuba.

“A World Governed by Force” : The Attack on Venezuela and the Conflicts to Come [crimethinc] – “As autocrats lose their hold on power, they become more dangerous and unpredictable. Netanyahu’s maneuvers to stay ahead of his corruption scandal—including his readiness to sacrifice hostages in order to continue perpetrating genocide—are instructive here. When crisis threatens them, such rulers create additional crises to distract those they rule. Any effective opposition should remember to keep the spotlight on what Trump is trying to conceal. That is what he fears most.” More of that.

Long COVID advocacy is incomplete without sex workers [the sick times] – “Long COVID and disability advocates must support efforts at sex work decriminalization, a public health response to the very AIDS epidemic they cite while white-washing a radical history of Black queer activists. And they must resist neoliberal frameworks like the SWERF, or sex worker exclusionary radical feminist, movement.” This is crucial.

The Post-American Internet [pluralistic] – “On December 28th, I delivered a speech entitled “A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet” for 39C3, the 39th Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg, Germany. This is the transcript of that speech.” For those who have not listened to the congress talk.

How to Eat Weeds [substack] – “We’ve heard a little bit about foraging. As it turns out, you can eat a relatively wide variety of common weeds. Most of them aren’t super high in calories, but they do contain a lot of nutrients. They could boost any kind of diet considerably during a longterm emergency. They can save lives, or just lower your grocery bill. So, I’ve been digging in.” A cute, brief guide to foraging weeds, one of my favorite activities every spring.

We need to reassess our relationship to digital tech [tech won’t save us] – “there is a stronger argument forming with every passing month that rejecting the technologies being sold to us — and even going back to physical and analog alternatives — is the right move in the present. Maybe not everything has to be digital or digitized, maybe the internet shouldn’t be inserted into absolutely everything, maybe we shouldn’t be constantly connected in the way we’re now expected to be, and generative AI certainly does not need to be forced into every facet of society.” We should boycott US tech. But to be honest? It mainly feels neoliberal to shift the responsibility to us, the consumers, yet again. And it feels almost impossible.

[Articles German/French]

Das Patriarchat ist zu Ende… und es ist nicht zum Lachen [gdg] – “Die Stärke dieser Denkerinnen ist es, Feminismus nicht auf eine Ideologie, eine soziologisch vordefinierte Gruppe oder eine bestimmte Aktionsform zu reduzieren. Feminismus ist für sie ein unvorhergesehener Bruch mit der patriarchalen Ordnung, die von ebenso unvorhergesehenen Subjekten auf stets unverhoffte Weise vorgenommen wird.” Feminism as a prefigurative practice. I like the approach.

Die Globi Diaries II: Memes of Production | Jessica Jurassica [substack] – “In der lokalen leftist Meme Bubble haben eine Weile lang durchaus progressive Vibes geherrscht. Es gab einige Accounts von FLINTA*-Personen, von queers und people of color, die jahrelang mit einer klaren Haltung gegrindet haben, die auch beim leidenschaftlichsten Shitposten durchdrang. Die meisten davon sind nicht mehr oder kaum noch aktiv, der Peak der linken Schweizer Meme-Szene war sowieso spätestens nach dem zweiten Pandemiejahren vorbei und geblieben sind vor allem manosphere Vibes.” Thank fuck i never followed the Swiss meme bubble. It always felt like a poor copy of a poor copy of a copy, many years late.

Ob ICE oder Schweizer Polizei: der Staat zeigt seine Autorität mit tödlicher Gewalt [das lamm] – “Diese unkritische Berichterstattung schützt und unterstützt das Narrativ und die Gewalt des Staates und dessen verschiedenen Arme. Vor allem Polizeikritik findet sich – trotz nachweisbarer struktureller Probleme – in bürgerlichen Medien wenig bis gar nicht. Das übergeordnete Ziel ist es, einen Konsens in der Gesellschaft herzustellen, damit der Staat weiterhin das tun kann, was er will – egal, wie gewaltvoll seine Praxis ist.” Never underestimate the role of the media in normalizing state overreach and violence.

Blut und Spiele – Mixed Martial Arts als reaktionärer Code [gdg] – “Dieses Jahr sind erstmals Mixed-Martial-Arts-Kämpfe im Weissen Haus geplant. Angekündigt als „UFC White House“ zum 250. Jahrestag der Unabhängigkeitserklärung, finden sie jedoch nicht am Fourth of July statt, sondern an Donald Trumps 80. Geburtstag. Damit festigt die Kampfdisziplin ihre Funktion als antiliberaler reaktionärer Code.” I just puked.

linksunten.indymedia.org: Durchsuchungsanordnungen wegen des Archivs waren rechtswidrig [netzpolitik] – “Im August 2023 durchsuchte die Polizei Wohnungen mehrerer Personen, die angeblich das Archiv linksunten.indymedia.org betrieben haben sollen. Doch es gab weder einen ausreichenden Anfangsverdacht noch waren die Maßnahmen verhältnismäßig, entschied nun das Landgericht Karlsruhe.” A bit late for that.

Als in Zürich ein Schloss knackte und in Chiapas der Aufstand begann [daslamm] – “Vor 30 Jahren besetzten in Zürich Aktivist*innen ein leerstehendes Haus, zeitgleich erhoben sich in Chiapas die Zapatistas gegen die mexikanische Regierung. Zwei Bewegungen, weit voneinander entfernt, doch verbunden durch dieselbe Frage: Wie widersetzen wir uns dem Neoliberalismus?” The causal link in the lead is erm misleading, the article does not go there.

[Older articles, still great]

David Graeber / Music Library – i spent way too much time digging through David Graeber’s music archive.

R.I.P.

Sly Dunbar

Way too many still in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and all the other wars.

[If you care to receive more regular updates, please follow my diigo (feed: rss) for all of my saved links or mastodon for an edited choice of them]

Header Photo: Dramatic colored sky over a mountain range with the city of Bern in the foreground

Another year, another time lapse video to represent the year that just passed.

This year, once per week we took photos. @fr3nzine of a small, green pond in the Bremgartenwald and i of a hill overlooking the alps and another one in the Lörmoos, a lovely marsh in a forest near Bern.

fr3nzin3 turned the photos into an animation.

The music is: Doxent Zsigmond – Kaaistoep released under a cc-license.

Happy 2026 to everyone!

Enjoy.

And please tell a friend

[Videos]

The Psychology of People Who Love Staying At Home

The Vanity (Completely) Fair Photoshoot | Josh Johnson

Cory Doctorow – Rescuing the Internet From “Enshittification” | The Daily Show

[Music]

De La Soul – EN EFF featuring Black Thought

[Podcasts]

Why Nicki Minaj Threw It All Away For Fascism | A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein [podbean] – “When Nicki Minaj stepped on stage in Phoenix, Arizona, with one hand clasping Erika Kirk and the other waving to a crowd of white supremacists, even I was shocked. We’ve known the Queen of Rap to be many unsavory things: an insecure egomaniac, a steadfast defender of predators, an obsessive poster (she has my solidarity on that one). But “fascist propagandist” I did not see coming.” The right podcast to treat this topic.

Bad Press: How the media manufactures consent in the age of COVID – “This episode tracks how the media has contributed to the alarming decline of public health and played a role in blocking meaningful understanding and action on COVID. What is reported and how it’s framed can have a huge impact on what people think and how they behave. And if public health leaders are the ones sending foggy messages through unquestioning journalists, it becomes difficult to address collective health threats—now and in the future.” Manufacturing consent to keep the capitalism machine purring, that’s the *job* of the media.

Health Fascism and the Anti-State State | Death Panel [.soundcloud.] – “Beatrice and Artie discuss the damage done by the first year of Trump’s agenda to “Make America Healthy Again,” how the state’s relationship to health is changing, and what it means for political movements today.” A fantastic episode, but so far only available as a teaser if you are not a patron.

Elon Musk | If Books Could Kill [podbean] – Looks at the soft ball biography of Musk by one, checks note, Douchebag Isaacson, part 2.

[Toot Threads]

[Pandemic Roundup]

Covid: December 25, 2025
Covid: December 18, 2025
Covid: December 11, 2025
Covid: December 4, 2025

A huge thank you to Violet Blue for another year of continued coverage on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

[The Must Read[s] This Month]

SARS-CoV-2 Leaves a Lasting Mark on the Immune System [john snow project] – “1. Stop pretending COVID is over
2. Air quality is immunology
3. Prioritise high-risk groups for monitoring and protection
4. Invest in Long Covid and infection-associated chronic illness research
5. Communicate honestly with the public”
As we have been saying … But it is of course great to have this groundbreaking study that proves beyond a doubt that COVID infections can leave lasting marks on our immune systems and our cognitive abilities and and and and and.

#39c3

freiheit.exe – Utopien als Malware [media.ccc.de] – “”freiheit.exe“ ist eine Lecture über die ideologischen Rootkits des Silicon Valley. Sie schlägt den Bogen von den italienischen Futuristen zu den heutigen Tech-Feudalisten, vom Akzelerationismus zur Demokratieskepsis der Libertären, von Tolkien zur PayPal-Mafia. Basierend auf den Recherchen zu meinem Theaterstück “freiheit.exe. Utopien als Malware”, in dem journalistische Analyse auf performative Darstellung trifft.”

Persist, resist, stitch [media.ccc.de] – “What does knitting have to do with espionage? Can embroidery help your mental health? This talk shows how the skills to create textile art have enabled people to resist and to persist under oppressive regimes for centuries. And it offers ways to keep doing so.”

Digital Independence Day – “Jeden ersten Sonntag auf die gute Seite wechseln! Unser digitales Leben befindet sich in der Hand weniger Superreicher. Mit der Monopolstellung ihrer Unternehmen bestimmen Menschen wie Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos oder Mark Zuckerberg weltweit, wie wir uns online informieren, wie wir diskutieren, kommunizieren oder handeln.” The first DID is planned for January 4th 2026.

Cables of Resistance | Berlin, Germany | April 10-12, 2026 – Save the date for this conference on climate activism and antifascism in Berlin. “We are movements and anti-capitalist activists who practise various forms of resistance against big tech. We want to bring together interested people, activists and movements, network and connect local struggles.” Mark your calendars.

https://okstupid.lol/ – “Welcome to okstupid.lol, the only place where one person’s questionable life choices meet the tragicomic world of far-right online dating.” Kartoffel-Karte.

[Articles English]

Divestment December – “It started with this photo. The leaders of the world’s biggest tech companies, standing together at Trump’s inauguration. Waiting patiently and performatively for their chance to kiss the ring. It feels like looking at a black and white picture of Germany in the ‘30s. But I’m grateful for it: that picture woke me up. The fact that these fucking guys are chumming around at the dawn of the new dystopia they’ve aided and abetted? It was time to cut these fascist collaborators out of my life.” Jim Munroe describes how he got off Google, Spotify and more.

Hey Jon Stewart, Jokes About Wearing Masks Aren’t Funny [motherjones] – “First of all, asking people why they are masking is invasive behavior. No one randomly owes you information about their health, their loved one’s health, or, understandably, just wanting to avoid Covid, which is the only way to prevent Long Covid.” Fuck this guy, no seriously, fuck Jon Stewart. What a cynical asshole he has turned into

At the Turning of the Tide : How to Fight Our Way out of the Trump Era [crimethinc] – Now also a zine. (See bellow)

Something gnawed your oak tree? Sink hole in your road? How Zurich’s beaver hotline is reassuring residents [the guardian] – Loved this article on the beaver hotline in Zürich, Switzerland. But it omits the important context that the Swiss federal council permits beavers to get shoot down, just like wolfs. And that the commendable hotline exists in one canton only (of 26).

Paid Informant and Social Media Posts Lead to ‘Turtle Island Liberation Front’ Arrests [unicorn riot] – “Federal agents made a series of arrests last week that revealed targeted surveillance of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, a leftist organization based in southern California. Through an informant, at least one undercover agent, and online and physical surveillance the FBI tracked the group before intervening in what it calls a conspiracy.” Entrapment machine FBI.

Hanukkah 5786: Making Diasporic Room for Ourselves in a City with Few Jews | Cindy Milstein [outside the circle] – “It should be such a simple thing: to light Chanuka candles facing outward—bright beacons to show we are still here, still creating sacred spaces of life against death machines, still fighting whatever fascisms rear their ugly heads. It should be such a simple and sweet thing: to commune together outside for Xanuka in temporary, do-it-ourselves “temples” that feel more holy than any fixed building—with stars above mirroring our candles below, with songs leaving our lips to fill the night sky.” Beautiful yet upsetting descriptions of how a few anarchist Jews celebrated Hannukah in Athens.

Antifa Everywhere | Alberto Toscano [in these times] – “Putting antifascist solidarity at the core of opposition to Trump and his cronies can make explicit how the fight against the politics of fear, hierarchy, privilege and domination is always grounded in an alternative vision and practice of collective life — one in which our security and well-being is not based on the insecurity and deprivation of others.” It’s a possibility that our solidarity can mount an opposition. But they hold all the guns and all the surveillance tools.

Why Palantir is becoming a risky bet for Switzerland [swissinfo.ch] – “Zurich serves as a hub for US tech company Palantir’s business relations. The Swiss foreign ministry now has the company in its sights, because of its controversial role in Gaza.” A shorter write-up of the longer reports on Republik, see bellow.

At the Turning of the Tide : How to Fight Our Way out of the Trump Era [crimethInc] – “Countless people on the receiving end of Trump’s policies experience a daily emotional reality of rage restrained by terror, in which the fear of state violence mounts at a pace that only barely keeps up with their fears for the future. Should cracks appear in Trump’s control—for example, if a movement emerges that can consistently outmaneuver his forces—it could unleash a tremendous amount of pent-up energy. Whoever can bring people together on that basis will open a path that millions will rush to tread.” Fight. And don’t listen to me, a despairing old fart

Giddyup, artists, there’s no time to waste | Andiliano Bichlbauma [substack] – “Figuring out how to join up with others to make needed change will put you in truly excellent company, and will help you to find lifelong community, artistic and otherwise. It’s going to be a very interesting few years, during which huge changes will happen, and it’s going to be a great privilege to be part of making those changes a good thing.” I loved this speech by one of the yesmen. But also wondered if it is cultural appropriation. Which says more about me and the times we live in that about anything else.

#sgtpepper2025 – It’s a lot this year

Russia’s justice ministry brands Pussy Riot ‘Extremist Organization’ [artnews] – ““If you’re labeled an extremist in Russia, your property is seized by the state. Sometimes your family’s property is seized as well,” Tolokonnikova said. “Russia has no issue evicting elderly parents from their homes or opening criminal cases against your friends for being in contact with you. Most active Pussy Riot members are now outside Russia, but we spent most of our lives there, and we have people we care about back home. Now they are under serious threat.”” Free Pussy Riot!

Surrealism Against Fascism | Naomi Klein [equator] – “Fascism is roaring back in the twenty-first century and, in a sickening twist, it is rhetorically claiming that mass censorship, high-tech surveillance and extra-judicial detention are necessary to protect the victims of twentieth-century fascism. Until, of course, even that flimsy façade is dropped in favour of a purer white nationalism with no need for Jewish cover. That evolution is already well underway, with unreconstructed antisemites on the far right – such as Nick Fuentes, helpfully amplified by Tucker Carlson – seizing upon widespread revulsion at Israel’s carnage, and the suppression of voices opposing it, to open the floodgates of Jew hatred, updating the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the Jeffrey Epstein era.” [https://archive.ph/UcuCm#selection-267.0-271.29] A bit of a stretch. But fine.

Monthly Climate Reports [ncei] – “November 2025 ranked as the third-warmest November in NOAA’s 176-year record, with a global surface temperature 1.18°C (2.12°F) above the 20th-century average. The ten warmest Novembers have all occurred since 2015, with the most recent three years (2023, 2024, and 2025) comprising the top three. This month marked the 49th-consecutive November with above-average temperatures.” The reports are back. For now.

A fentanyl vaccine is about to get its first major test [arstechnica] – “Fifty times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine, fentanyl was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1968 as an intravenous pain reliever and anesthetic. Its potential for abuse was recognized even then […] Cheap to make and incredibly addictive, fentanyl is now found in street drugs and counterfeit pills, because it boosts their potency and cuts costs. The drug is the biggest driver of overdose deaths in the United States and the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.” Fuck Fentanyl, heroin’s bastard child.

Ready for War Is – Nick Fuentes the successor to Charlie Kirk? [thebaffler] – “Since Kirk’s death in September, the New York Times has run more than half a dozen news stories and opinion pieces on Fuentes and his followers, including a piece by Michelle Goldberg that positions him as the clear successor to Kirk. In a Times profile, Trump administration officials refused to comment on Fuentes “out of fear, they said, of inviting online attacks from him and his zealous followers.” He now commands a viewership of over half a million—and his reach is only growing.” Fuck Nick Fuentes (boy, am i constructive this month)

Was the Pentecostal Boom in Latin America a CIA Psyop? | Colten Barnaby [substack] – “What makes all of this chilling is that it worked. By the 1990s, liberation theology had been sharply weakened. The Vatican, under pressure from conservative factions and geopolitical concerns, disciplined liberation theologians. Meanwhile, Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity had become the fastest-growing religious movement in Latin America. Today, Pentecostals form one of the strongest voting blocs for right-wing and authoritarian politicians across the continent.” For this very reason I absolutely hate it every time i see these Brazilian footballers showboating their faith on camera.

[Articles German/French]

Ungerechtfertigter und exzessiver Einsatz von Polizeigewalt [amnesty] – “Auf der Grundlage von Zeug*innenaussagen und eigenen Beobachtungen hat Amnesty International Schweiz einen ungerechtfertigten und übermässigen Einsatz polizeilicher Gewalt gegen die Gaza-Kundgebung am 11. Oktober in Bern dokumentiert, auch gegen friedliche Demonstrant*innen. Eine verhältnismässige Polizeintervention hätte durch die Gewalthandlungen einer Minderheit der Teilnehmer*innen gerechtfertigt werden können, Amnesty Schweiz ist jedoch besorgt über den strafenden Charakter des Polizeieinsatzes und fordert eine unabhängige Untersuchung.”

Wie hartnäckig Palantir die Schweiz umwarb [republik] – “Das umstrittene Tech-Unternehmen Palantir liefert Überwachungs­technologie an Militär und Geheim­dienste. Bei hiesigen Behörden und der Armee aber blitzte es ab. Interne Dokumente zeigen nun weshalb.” Part 2.

[Older articles, still great]

Become an Anarchist or Forever Hold Your Peace [crimethinc] – “Anarchists propose to build our collective capacity to act on a horizontal and decentralized basis, rather than entrusting our agency to leaders. We seek to create a lattice of overlapping participatory and voluntary associations that can meet people’s material and spiritual needs. Rather than hoarding resources for ourselves the way the billionaires do, we seek to abolish all of the mechanisms that impose artificial scarcity, to create commons that benefit everyone. We seek to generate abundance, not profit” Now available as a zine

20 Theses For Liberation [znetwork] -“This is a place for all who strive for the wellbeing of people & planet to come together around a unifying & dynamic organizing strategy towards mutual aims & collective action. We invite you to consider the 20 Theses for Liberation as a living document to engage with in a continued, collective process.” In the wake of the Epstein files and the unflattering role Chomsky plays in it, the 20 theses were circulated again. They still make sense.

Framework for managing the response to pandemic diseases [nhs england] – “it will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so” There you have it. We’re on our own.

Let Them Eat Plague! [the red clarion] – “This is not simple negligence on the part of those who govern and shape our society. It amounts to social murder: the establishment of policies that place large numbers of people on the path to an early and unnatural death. You have the right to health, and that right is being deliberately stripped away from you with a policy of mass infection.” It is so unreal what we are going to, abandoned by everybody, even the “health” care system.

R.I.P.

Not that blonde French fascist in St. Tropez *champagne*
Too many in all the wars

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Header Photo: That sky looks like doomsday