sergiosantos.info, blog & works

Ticalc.org account

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000

I discovered that my 22 years old Ticalc.org account is still available online. And that my files are still being downloaded to this day! They had 143 downloads in the last 7 days. 🤯

This was back when I was in high school, learning how to program with my TI-83+ graphical calculator, instead of paying attention in classes. I wrote some simple games and tools to share my friends, plus a programming tutorial in Portuguese.

When the server goes dark, we go dark, too.” — Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark? by …

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:00:00 +0000

When the server goes dark, we go dark, too. We’ve built an entire civilisation on an unthinkably brutal and comically unreliable stack while hallucinating it as literally anything else. We condemn AI today for making shit up, but what about us? We’re building on a fantasy just as brittle, we are just as demonstrably wrong. Yet we pretend a file isn’t just a gesture that can disappear in an instant. We hallucinate that the server is somehow both fleeting and forever.

— Who Will Remember Us When The Servers Go Dark? by Cade Diehm

“The ongoing process of attempting to understand (but never really understanding completely) is …

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:00:00 +0100

The ongoing process of attempting to understand (but never really understanding completely) is absolutely productive. The relentless attempt to understand is what moves a practice moving forward.

— David Reinfurt

Books read in 2025

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 10:46:20 +0000

Oh boy, 99 books this year. I started listening to audio books too, commuting or during car rides alone. I also read more fiction and poetry, one of my goals.

Below are my favourites and the full list of books of this year. You can also check my lists for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Favourites ⭐️

Canto yo y la montaña baila by Irene Solà

La eternidad, cosa ligera. Cosa diaria, cosa pequeña.

A Criação do Mundo by Miguel Torga

Não os prendam. Só quando de todo não puder deixar de ser… Façam-lhes a vida difícil… Façam-lhes a vida difícil… E faziam. Quem não acertava o passo pelo chouto do rebanho, ou apodrecia num calabouço ou morria de fome. A nação inteira era agora uma tumba de silêncio e abulia.

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

sometimes it’s inevitable for the past to be forgotten, especially if the present is no less horrific

Solaris by Stanisław Lem

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?

Internacional de Poesía Anarquista by Samuel L. París

Proverbio antiutilitarista

As mandarinas cómense por algo mais que polas vitaminas.

Refugee Conversations - Bertolt Brecht

This beer isn’t proper beer, although that is perhaps compensated for by the fact that these cigars are not real cigars either – but your passport, that has to be a passport. Otherwise they won’t let you in.

The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie

When I came downstairs and saw the pieces of clothing and lingerie, the shoes, scattered over the tiles of the corridor in the sunlight, I had a sensation of sorrow and beauty.

Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod

I’ve come to realize the only true walk is the re-walk. You cannot know a place without returning. And even then, once isn’t enough. That’s why I’m back. Back on the Peninsula. Walking these roads I’ve walked before.

Full list

Fiction

Pastoralia - George Saunders
The Anthropologists - Aysegül Savas
Como rebolar alegremente sobre um vazio exterior - André Guedes & Miguel Loureiro
Carcoma - Layla Martínez
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters - Ursula K. Le Guin
La Gran Novel·La sobre Barcelona - Sergi Pàmies
Canto yo y la montaña baila - Irene Solà
E se eu gostasse muito de morrer - Rui Cardoso Martins
The Literary Conference - César Aira
A Criação do Mundo - Miguel Torga
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A Hora da Estrela - Clarice Lispector
Nocturno de Chile - Roberto Bolaño
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Deus Tem Caspa - Júlio Henriques
Happening - Annie Ernaux
Uma Abelha Na Chuva - Carlos de Oliveira
R.U.R. - Karel Čapek
Wool - Hugh Howey
Address Unknown - Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
Os Pobres - Raul Brandão
Minor Detail - Adania Shibli
Conversations - César Aira
Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel García Márquez
Short Fiction - Ray Bradbury
We Do Not Part - Han Kang
War with the Newts - Karel Čapek
Burmese Days - George Orwell
Els desperfectes - Irene Pujadas
The Grass Is Singing - Doris Lessing
Childhood, Youth, Dependency - Tove Ditlevsen
Objecto Quase - José Saramago
Solaris - Stanisław Lem
Quando os Lobos Uivam - Aquilino Ribeiro
Habitada - Cristina Sánchez-Andrade
Satantango - László Krasznahorkai
O Banqueiro Anarquista - Fernando Pessoa
Golden Notebook - Doris Leasing
¿Que me queres, amor? - Manuel Rivas
Todos os Nomes - José Saramago

Poetry

Soco e Sono - Inês Morão Dias
Lisbossa - Rafael Vieira
Parole alla finestra - Francesco Navarrini
Luci prese al volo - Francesco Navarrini
Cem Mil Anos para ir à Escola - Paul Goodman
Gasoline - Gregory Corso
Tao Te Ching - Ursula K. Le Guin
Antologia Poética - Miguel Torga
Bèstia - Irene Solà
Late in the Day - Ursula K. Le Guin
Internacional de Poesía Anarquista - Samuel L. París
Notas sobre a Circulação de um Corpo - José Amaro
Jeremias o louco - José Agostinho Baptista

Non-fiction

Software for Artists Book #003 - Zainab Aliyu
On Browsing - Jason Guriel
Count Down - Shanna Swan
A Poetry Handbook - Mary Oliver
The Undercurrents - Kirsty Bell
The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion - Edmond Jabès
A Map of Future Ruins - Lauren Markham
Kin City - Magdalena Taube & Krystian Woznicki
For Health Autonomy - CareNotes Collective
Refugee Conversations - Bertolt Brecht
The Use of Photography - Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie
Salatinas - Rafael Vieira
Doppelganger - Naomi Klein
Mutual Aid - Dean Spade
L’últim recer - Nacho Collado Gozálvez
La Llamada - Leila Guerriero
Bestiário Menor - Eduarda Neves
Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
A Simpler Life - Ryan Bartaby
Canto do Aumento - Andreia C. Faria
O que temos a ver com isto? - Maria Vlachou
A Year in the Art World - Matthew Israel
Escritos de Arte - Jeff Wall
How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century - Erik Olin Wright
On Contemporary Art - César Aira
Anarcosindicalismo - Gaspar Manzanera
At the Café - Errico Malatesta
Teoría de la gravedad - Leila Guerriero
Electronic Civil Disobedience & Other Unpopular Ideas - Critical Art Ensemble
Things Become Other Things - Craig Mod
Fuck Green New Deal - Milvus
Out of the Ruins - Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures - Mark Fisher
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Omar El Akkad
Autonomía y subsistencia - Aurélien Berlan
Prise de possession - Louise Michel
Growing Up Absurd - Paul Goodman
Nueva ilustración radical - Marina Garcés
+KAOS - Austistici/Inventati
The Wave in the Mind - Ursula K. Le Guin
A ditadura portuguesa contra Castelao - Antonio Iglesias Mira
Prospecto - André Guedes
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau
On the Abolition of All Political Parties - Simone Weil
A revolução social e a sua interpretação anarquista - José Correia Pires
A Participação Cívica em Portugal - José Carlos Mota

“But in some ways parties were serious and important too, she thought” — Ghosts by César Aira

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0100

But in some ways parties were serious and important too, she thought. They were a way of suspending life, all the serious business of life, in order to do something unimportant: and wasn’t that an important thing to do?

— Ghosts by César Aira

“It’s equally stupid to say that capitalism is fine but fascism is a step too far. (…)” — …

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:00:00 +0100

It’s equally stupid to say that capitalism is fine but fascism is a step too far. If capitalism had been capable of existing without fascism, fascism wouldn’t have existed. Fascism is supposed to be just an excrescence, or so I’ve read. But a person suffering from a certain type of excrescence known as cancer is prone to die even if he is otherwise perfectly healthy. The idea of a peaceful capitalism is lunacy. People think this is how it works: everything is ticking along quite nicely, peace reigns, but then there’s a disruption, an unfortunate incident: war. It’s like with fattening pigs! Every day someone brings you a nice meal; you get washed, flattered and photographed; but from time to time an unfortunate incident occurs and you get slaughtered.

— Refugee Conversations by Bertolt Brecht

Teevee by G.E.K.

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:30:00 +0100

Faculty Of Perception by G.E.K.

First heard at Meio Dia Meio Noite #22 on Radio Alhara.

we will not cancel us by Adrienne Maree Brown

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:00:00 +0100

We hurt people.

But we will not cancel us.

Canceling is punishment, and punishment doesn’t stop the cycle of harm, not long term. (…)

We will not cancel us. But we must earn our place on this earth.

We will tell each other we hurt people, and who. We will tell each other why, and who hurt us and how. (…)

We will not cancel us. If we give up this strategy, we will learn together the other strategies that will ultimately help us break these cycles, liberate future generations from the burden of our shared and private pain, leaving nothing unspeakable in our bones, no shame in our dirt.

Each of us is precious. We, together, must break every cycle that makes us forget this.

— we will not cancel us by Adrienne Maree Brown

Books read in 2024

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:00:00 +0000

I spent a good deal of 2024 reading books. Below are my favourites and the full list of books I read. You can also check my lists for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

As a focus for next year, I plan on reading less North American writers, more fiction, and more women writers (only 17 of 81 books this year).

Favourites ⭐️

Raised from the Ground (Levantado do Chão) by José Saramago

a fome é uma boa razão para roubo, quem rouba por precisão tem cem anos de perdão, bem sei que o ditado não é assim, mas devia ser, se eu sou ladrão por ir roubar bolota, ladrão é também o dono dela, que nem fabricou a terra nem plantou a árvore e a podou e limpou

How Music Works by David Byrne

It can often seem that those in power don’t want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they’d prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.

A Fortune-Teller Told Me by Tiziano Terzani

This is one aspect of a reporter’s job that never ceases to fascinate and disturb me: facts that go unreported do not exist. How many massacres, how many earthquakes happen in the world, how many ships sink, how many volcanoes erupt, and how many people are persecuted, tortured and killed. Yet if no one is there to see, to write, to take a photograph, it is as if these facts had never occurred, this suffering has no importance, no place in history. Because history exists only if someone relates it. Every little description of a thing observed one can leave a seed in the soil of memory - that keeps me tied to my profession.

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

In 2014 there was a transit strike when London’s mayor threatened to close perhaps a hundred London Underground ticket offices, leaving only machines. This sparked an online debate among certain local Marxists about whether the workers threatened with redundancy had “bullshit jobs” […] Asked to respond, I eventually referred my interlocutors to a circular put out by the strikers themselves, called “Advice to Passengers Using the Future London Underground.” It included lines like these:

Please ensure you are thoroughly familiar with London Underground’s 11 lines and 270 stations before traveling . . . Please ensure that there are no delays in your journey, or any accidents, emergencies, incidents, or evacuations. Please do not be disabled. Or poor. Or new to London. Please avoid being too young or too old. Please do not be harassed or assaulted while traveling. Please do not lose your property or your children. Please do not require assistance in any way.

[…] What tube workers actually do, then, is something much closer to what feminists have termed “caring labor.” It has more in common with a nurse’s work than a bricklayer’s. It’s just that, in the same way as women’s unpaid caring labor is made to disappear from our accounts of “the economy,” so are the caring aspects of other working-class jobs made to disappear as well.

Teaching As a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman

It is not uncommon, for example, to hear “teachers” make statements such as, “Oh, I taught them that, but they didn’t learn it.” There is no utterance made in the Teachers’ Room more extraordinary than this. From our point of view, it is on the same level as a salesman’s remarking, “I sold it to him, but he didn’t buy it”—which is to say, it makes no sense. It seems to mean that “teaching” is what a “teacher” does, which, in turn, may or may not bear any relationship to what those being “taught” do.

Beyond powerlessness (Sair da Nossa Impotência Política) by Geoffroy de Lagasnerie

If we want to escape from our situation of powerlessness and anxiety, we must re-examine our relationship to the political, and strive to produce new types of political practice.

Full list

Fiction

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter - César Aira
The Plains - Gerald Murnane
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan
How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu
Levantado do Chão - José Saramago ⭐️
Até Amanhã Camaradas - Manuel Tiago
A Noite - José Saramago
Accidental Death of an Anarchist - Dario Fo
Nós Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso - Luís Bernardo de Honwana
Cousas - Alfonso Castelao
Stories of Mr. Keuner - Bertolt Brecht
Niebla - Miguel de Unamuno
The Ministry for the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson
Human Acts - Han Kang
The Invisible Ones - Nanni Balestrini

Poetry

Par de Olhos - Inês Morão Dias
Eu Índice N - E.M de Melo e Castro
Trabalho Poético 2 - Carlos de Oliveira
Queda de Neve nas Terras Altas - Rui S. Magalhães

Non-fiction

No Time to Spare - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Creative Act - Rick Rubin
The Art Collector’s Handbook - Mary Rozell
Unreasonable Hospitality - Will Guidara
Management of Art Galleries - Magnus Resch
Contro l’automobile - Andrea Coccia
Sonic Life - Thurston Moore
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - Ursula K. Le Guin
Diálogos de Colecionar - Adelaide Duarte
How Music Works - David Byrne ⭐️
The Curator’s Handbook - Adrian George
Trabalho Capital - Paulo Mendes
Utopía no es una isla - Layla Martínez
A Fortune-Teller Told Me - Tiziano Terzani ⭐️
Arquivo e Intervalo - José Maçãs de Carvalho
In Praise of the Bicycle - Marc Augé
The Abolition of Work - Bob Black
The Communist Manifesto: Insights and Problems - Murray Bookchin
Bullshit Jobs - David Graeber ⭐️
Textos escolhidos - Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles
A Escola Infinita - Eva Gonçalves
Practical Anarchism - Scott Branson
FIRE com Obrigações - Dama de Ouros
Teaching As a Subversive Activity - Neil Postman ⭐️
Terra de Catarina - Margarida Fernandes
Sad by Design - Geert Lovink
Botânica - Vasco Araújo
Privacidade 404 - Filipe Cruz
Sair da Nossa Impotência Política - Geoffroy de Lagasnerie ⭐️
O Coleccionador de Belas-Artes - Sara & André
Os Galifões e a Luta Contra a Praxe na Coimbra dos Anos 70 seguido de Os Quentes Anos 70 em Coimbra - M. Ricardo de Sousa & F. Carmichel
Lisboa Clichê - Daniel Blaufuks
The New Nihilism - Peter Lamborn Wilson
Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art - Brandon LaBelle
Entrevistas Corsárias - Pier Paolo Pasolini
The Year of Dreaming Dangerously - Slavoj Žižek
Inland Journal - André Cepeda e Eduardo Matos
Cúmplice dos Artistas - Alexandre Melo
I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette
Las comunas - José María Carandell
Lágrimas de Crocodilo - Susana Lourenço Marques
Two Cheers for Anarchism - James C. Scott
Sobre o Combate contra a Mudança Climática - António Cândido Franco
Carta de Florença - Ana Mata
A Exposição como Parcela de Tempo - Hugo Canoilas
Portugal, Povo de Suicidas - Miguel de Unamuno
A Arquitectura é um Gesto - Maria Filomena Molder
Scorched Earth - Jonathan Crary
Nem obedecer nem comandar - Francesco Codello
Copenhagenize - Mikael Colville-Andersen
Bad New Days - Hal Foster
Ghost Image - Hervé Guibert
All Art is Ecological - Timothy Morton
The Right to Be Lazy - Paul Lafargue
Lifehouse - Adam Greenfield
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Care where no-one does - Freek Lomme
Wrong Way - Joanne McNeil
O Dogma da Não-Violência - Rolando d’Alessandro
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma - Claire Dederer
Bookshops - Jorge Carrión

“I need you to realize that most people are not like you and are actively victimized by the tech …

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0100

Even if you’re technologically savvy, you’re still dealing with these problems — fresh installs of Windows on new laptops, avoiding certain websites because you’ve learned what the dodgy ones look like, not interacting with random people in your DMs because you know what a spam bot looks like, and so on. It’s not that you’re immune. It’s that you’re instinctually ducking and weaving around an internet and digital ecosystem that continually tries to interrupt you, batting away pop-ups and silencing notifications knowing that they want something from you — and I need you to realize that most people are not like you and are actively victimized by the tech ecosystem.

— Never Forgive Them by Edward Zitron