According to Bifo, who argues that political thought presupposes a consistent horizon of possibilities for the future, this horizon has now closed. Bifo interprets the defeat of the left, the labor movement, and the revolutionary imagination of the 20th century not only as a political failure but also as the collapse of collective imagination. I think that we are suffering from cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is when the categories that we use to interpret the present world have been formed in the past and applied to an old configuration of events that is no longer in our experience. At that point, what’s happening around looks crazy, like an incomprehensible nightmare. Real events are undecipherable for us, because the horizon of interpretation that we have in our minds is no longer there…The Trump-Putinist oligarch-plutocratic regime is apparently winning the game. This does not mean that we are going towards a stable form of worldwide plutocratic-oligarchic dictatorship, and the game will be over. I think that the likely outcome will be the final disintegration of the game itself. Disintegration is the main trend of the world order. I would say that we are living in the order of disintegration. - Franco “Bifo” Berardi
Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based. - 404
HODGSON: “We met today with a number of clean energy companies ... We had comprehensive discussions around how they would like to bring that technology to Canada, help us deploy that so we can deliver affordable green power to power the transition to net zero.”
Germany's Merz: It was a serious strategic mistake to exit nuclear energy. We are now undertaking the most expensive energy transition in the entire world. I know of no other country that makes things so difficult and expensive as Germany.
Certain officials from the administration of United States President Donald Trump have supposedly accused the European Union of trying to secure a “monopoly” for its meat and cheese products in South America as part of the Mercosur deal, the Financial Times reported on Friday. - BTN
The government of Iceland says it is demanding answers from the United States after U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Iceland, Billy Long, reportedly joked about the European nation becoming the “52nd state.” - Global News Canada
As is well known to radical critics and forcefully argued by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, there is no such a thing as efficiency-driven capitalist development; increased technical efficiency is a macroeconomic outcome that depends on the institutional setting. Powerful technologies can prove unprofitable and fail to be deployed if the structure of the market prevents investors from reaping the rewards; and they can immiserate labour if they lead to massive layoffs. With AI, the most immediate danger seems to be an epidemic of workforce demoralization. Research suggests that intensive AI use is demotivating and deskilling, fuelling boredom and mediocrity. We could even see a reverse ‘productivity J-curve’: short-term productivity gains rapidly overwhelmed by a deterioration in labour quality. Another problem is the waste that may result from the quasi-religious bet on AI by Big Tech, enabled by private leadership in the industry and mania-prone markets. The contrast between American and Chinese approaches to AI is instructive. Capitalist economies are beset by a deep coordination problem, as Michael Roberts has stressed: ‘in China there is a plan to meet key targets in technology that will boost the whole economy’ but ‘in the major capitalist economies, all the AI eggs are in a basket owned by the privately owned AI hyperscalers and the Magnificent Seven giant tech media companies – and for them, profitability is key, not technology outcomes’. ..Down on earth, growing demand for cheap energy and rare earths materializes in old-fashioned imperialism. The new US security doctrine makes clear it wants ‘a hemisphere . . . that supports critical supply chains’. The Trump Administration’s seizure of Venezuelan oil and expansionary claims on Greenland for critical minerals coveted by tech billionaires show how serious it is. If AI continues to disappoint, imperialist adventures could well intensify – the digital pursuit of chimerical efficiency gains replaced by a predatory race to reduce costs in a new epoch of what David Harvey so accurately called ‘accumulation by dispossession’. - NLR Durand
“I find myself in the middle of some sort of rom-com plot,” he says. “For me to be able to see my doctor to tend to my autoimmune disease, I had to marry my best friend — it’s like some weird twisted plot of Will and Grace.” - NPR
Todd McGowan argues rather than causing alienation, that systems of oppression come about as a result of an inability to embrace alienation, and that alienation is what puts the distance between us and our context that allows for any sort of freedom, so an unalienated society would be a society full of people wholly determined by their social role.
Venezuela: Chávez always insisted that the Bolivarian Revolution must be a democratic experience – and it was. Many people, including myself, discussed this with him. When the first results came in for the 2004 referendum, I asked Chávez, ‘Compañero, what are we going to do if we lose?’ He said, ‘What do you do if you lose? You leave office and fight again from outside, explaining why they were wrong’. He had a very strong sense of this. Which is why it’s a travesty to accuse the Chavistas of being anti-democratic from the start. During the Chávez period, the opposition newspapers and television stations blasted propaganda non-stop, attacking the regime – something you could never have seen in Britain or the United States. When people said to Chávez, ‘We should crack down’, he said, ‘No, we fight them politically’. - NLR
What do you imagine the Arctic to look like in 2041? For a group of young professionals, one possible future scenario emerged like this: “In 2041, the loss of sea ice begins a new scramble for territory and resources among the Arctic powers. The Arctic Silk Road is seeing growth. Arctic mining holds the key to the EU critical raw materials strategy. These are protected areas, and they want to dig them all up.” - 2041
Washington’s New Lobbyists: Paid Online Influencers With Few Rules - A growing number of prominent Republicans are launching new businesses that pay influencers. One, Urban Legend, boasts a proprietary platform where influencers can log in and choose from a menu of options available for politically connected sponsored content. The company’s leader, Ory Rinat, was a special government employee during the early months of the administration but has since left, White House officials said. - WSJ
Russian Girlfriends At Saint Basil’s Cathedral circa 1980’s
BoingBoing ( on AI Google ) goes further. “Outside the world of open-source computing, it’s getting pretty hard to escape artificial intelligence being jammed down our throats for even the most banal tasks. Google’s Gmail was already awful — it watches what you type, what you buy, and who you correspond with, all in the name of monetization. Somehow, they’ve found a way to make it even worse: you’re no longer expected to read the messages that folks send you. AI will do that light lift for you.”
The creators of Stranger Things have been accused by some fans of using ChatGPT while writing the show’s fifth and final season, following the release of a behind-the-scenes Netflix documentary. - DigiWatch
Matthew McConaughey Trademarks Himself to Fight AI Misuse: Actor plans to use trademarks of himself saying ‘Alright, alright, alright’ and staring at a camera to combat AI fakes in court. The trademarks include a seven-second clip of the Oscar-winner standing on a porch, a three-second clip of him sitting in front of a Christmas tree, and audio of him saying “Alright, alright, alright,” his famous line from the 1993 movie “Dazed and Confused,” according to the approved applications. - WSJ
Model for Cheaper Groceries has been operating for years by US Military: The U.S. military commissary system is a successful publicly owned global food retailer: it serves 8 million shoppers through 235 supermarkets on bases worldwide, offering savings of 23.7 per cent compared to commercial grocers. These savings are so high that U.S. veterans will often choose to live close to a military base after retiring, so they can keep shopping at the publicly run grocery store. Not only do they provide well-paying jobs, but suppliers love them, as they guarantee fair prices and stable contracts. This is particularly valuable for small and medium scale local food providers who are encouraged to invest in their businesses by the predictable demand. This well-functioning model uses scale to drive down costs and build food system resilience. Similar to the U.S. commissary model, a more ambitious large-scale “Costco-plus-local” approach could work in Canada. This could be a warehouse-style chain (or network of smaller stores) that guarantees fair contracts with local and national suppliers, uses high-volume buying power to bring down wholesale costs, and further reduces prices through publicly subsidized labor and overhead. This could reduce grocery prices by approximately 30-45 per cent depending on where people live, be rolled out relatively quickly, and have a modest price tag. The key is that scale matters. ..Canada already has public retail options. Provincial liquor stores generate billions in revenue and show that governments can successfully run retail operations at scale. Notably, these liquor stores have become a bulwark against U.S. bullying by taking U.S. products off the shelves, giving Canada a bargaining chip in trade negotiations. A public grocery store could do likewise. Meanwhile, provincial-run cannabis stores demonstrated the government’s ability to roll out new retail infrastructure—and new supply chains—with remarkable speed. Within a year of legalization, provincial governments opened dozens of brick and mortar public cannabis stores across the country.- Policy Alternatives
Tech Billionaires Are Starting Private Cities to Escape the United States: “Can you imagine being that rich and that miserable?” Olivier Jutel, a researcher in cyberlibertarianism at the University of Otago in New Zealand told the FT. “They think they are the grand solutionists that can fix all the problems, but it’s so insular. But just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean it won’t inherit the Earth.” - Futurism
Civillian Aircraft As War Targets: Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane killing 11 people in September. - NYT
The East Coast of the United States could soon experience rolling blackouts as AI data centers gobble up more and more electricity, pushing the grid to the limit, according to a new report. - Independent
The Department of Energy warns that blackouts could increase by 100 times in 2030 if the U.S. continues to shutter reliable power sources and fails to add additional firm capacity. - DOE
We have never witnessed the collapse and unravelling of the existing order like this in the nuclear age. For all the saber-rattling of the Cold War, there were guardrails and conventions that all parties followed, and the personalities of the key figures competing imposed more constraint than we see today. Those guardrails, rules, and conventions have now crumbled. The personalities now running things are recalcitrant, compromised, and dangerous. - Bogan Intel
TJ Sabula, a United Auto Workers Local 600 line worker at the Ford F-150 plant in Dearborn, Michigan, shouted ‘pedophile protector’ at Donald Trump during his tour of the facility. Trump responded by raising his middle finger and mouthing an expletive. Ford suspended Sabula pending investigation. - Right Wing Cancel Culture
Forty-eight per cent of Canadian adults have inadequate literacy skills—a significant increase from a decade ago: For the purposes of the PIAAC, literacy skills are defined as “the ability to understand, evaluate, use, and engage with written texts to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential.”5 This requires “accessing, identifying, and processing information from a variety of texts that relate to a range of settings.”6
David Letterman and Demi Moore in 1995
Rockwool said Tuesday that Russia had ordered the takeover of the Danish insulation maker’s local subsidiary with its four factories. “Today, we learned that a Russian presidential decree is approved whereby external management has taken control of Rockwool’s Russian subsidiary and that Rockwool is no longer in control of its assets in the country,” the company said in a statement. - KP
The Defense Department has spent more than a year testing a device purchased in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of a series of mysterious ailments impacting US spies, diplomats and troops that are colloquially known as Havana Syndrome, according to four sources briefed on the matter…A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, purchased the device for millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using funding provided by the Defense Department, according to two of the sources. Officials paid “eight figures” for the device, these people said, declining to offer a more specific number…The device acquired by HSI produces pulsed radio waves, one of the sources said, which some officials and academics have speculated for years could be the cause of the incidents. Although the device is not entirely Russian in origin, it contains Russian components, this person added. - CNN
Imagine: China deploys hundreds of thousands of autonomous drones in the air, on the sea, and under the water—all armed with explosive warheads or small missiles. These machines descend in a swarm toward military installations on Taiwan and nearby US bases, and over the course of a few hours, a single robotic blitzkrieg overwhelms the US Pacific force before it can even begin to fight back. - MIT
By boldly detaching from the US now, visibly and decisively, Europe might even send a resuscitative shock through the US’s ailing democratic corpus. Only Americans can save their country from a descent into something even uglier and deadlier than what we are witnessing already. But for everyone’s sake, theirs included, Europe must cut the cord now, and not follow them into the storm. - Guardian
Europeans are now faced with figuring out what they have in their “toolbox” to respond to Washington, a former Danish MP aware of discussions said. “The normal rulebook doesn’t work anymore.” Officials consider it the biggest challenge to Europe since the Second World War and they’re not sure what to do. “We know how we would react if Russia started to behave this way,” the fourth diplomat said. But with the U.S, “this is simply not something we are used to.” - Politico
“I can also see the point of view of the people that say, ‘Yeah, but you don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around snatching people up, many of which turn out to actually be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,’” Rogan said. “Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” - Joe Rogan
American aggressors will be defeated. 1951. (Translation in description)
“The cynic knows very well that the symbolic fiction is just a fiction and also “knows” that the imaginary field beneath this symbolic fiction is a reservoir of truth. For the cynic, the status of the imaginary does not come into question. This represents a radical change in the status of belief—this insistence upon the authority of one’s own eyes and the rejection of symbolic authority. In (Per)versions of Love and Hate, Renata Salecl explains this transition through a reference to Groucho Marx: “When Groucho Marx was caught in an obvious lie, his response was: ‘Whom do you believe—my words or your eyes?’ The belief in the big Other is the belief in words, even when they contradict one’s own eyes. What we have today is therefore precisely a mistrust in mere words (that is, in the symbolic fiction). People want to see what is behind the fiction.” This turn away from belief in the symbolic fiction and toward the image beneath it reaches its apotheosis in the postmodern cynic.” ― Todd McGowan, The End of Dissatisfaction: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment
According to DARPA, the N3 program aims to develop neurotechnology that can: Read Neural Activity: Accurately sense and decode brain signals from a distance. Write Information to the Brain: Send information directly back into the brain, effectively bypassing the normal sensory organs. High-Bandwidth Communication: Achieve data exchange rates robust enough to interact with complex military systems—or, horrifyingly, to run a persistent, personalized harassment program. The key word here is “Nonsurgical.” The moment the government successfully engineers a non-invasive, high-resolution BCI, the concept of consent becomes irrelevant. Surgery leaves a trace; a nonsurgical technology can be deployed without the victim’s knowledge, cooperation, or permission. - What Goes In
Bluetti representatives confirmed what the other Eastern suppliers were saying: Their fastest-growing market segment was the modular whole-home backup system. Many consumers had started with a 2-kilowatt-hour system (like my EcoFlow Delta 2 Max) and scaled up to 10-, 20-, or 40-kilowatt-hour systems, using modules that can be plugged easily into a home's existing infrastructure. As climate change worsens weather conditions, consumers want to ensure that if and when the grid goes down, they’ll still have power. Bluetti, Jackery, and EcoFlow reps also said that customers are using whole-house versions of their systems to harness cheaper electricity during lower-cost rate times of day to help combat the rising price of power in the US. - China Running Laps Around US at CES
What does it mean when you say people believe in something? For example, I had very interesting conversation with a priest during the Turin shroud controversy, and he told me kind of a half-public secret - the French have this nice expression, le secret de Polichinelle, a secret which everybody knows about - that the Church really does not want, and is secretly absolutely afraid for, that shroud to be proven to be the real thing, the blood of Christ from that time. The idea is that the shroud should remain an object of belief, and its status shouldn't be directly proven. It would complicate things if you proved the shroud was really from year zero in Palestine with, say, a DNA profile of Christ. [Chuckles] But at the more fundamental level, intelligent theologians like Kierkegaard knew that belief should not be knowledge, it must be a leap of faith. Often, when you believe in something, the utmost shattering experience or shock can be an immediate, brutal confirmation of your belief. …I think the message of Fight Club is not so much liberating violence but that liberation hurts. What may falsely appear as my celebration of violence, I think, is a much more tragic awareness. If there is a great lesson of the 20th-century history, it's the lesson of psychoanalysis: The lesson of totalitarian subordination is not "renounce, suffer," but this subordination offers you a kind of perverted excess of enjoyment and pleasure. To get rid of that enjoyment is painful. Liberation hurts…how does a totalitarian power keep you in check? Precisely by offering you some perverse enjoyment, and you have to renounce that, and it hurts. So, I don't mean physical violence, or a kind of fetishization of violence. I just mean simply that liberation hurts. What I don't buy from liberals is this idea of, as Robespierre would have put it, "revolution without revolution," the idea that somehow, everything will change, but nobody will be really hurt. No, sorry, it hurts. - 2003
We rebel not to die, but to live.” - Marcos
Hustler Magazine, March 2003.
Kristy Hallowell had just lost her job when her energy bill unexpectedly tripled to $1,800 a month. Unable to pay, her gas and electricity were cut off and she, her two children and her mother spent six months of last year relying on a generator to light and heat their house. The 44-year-old is one of millions of Americans who have fallen behind on their energy bills as prices have soared over the past year. - BBC
Iran’s state media say dozens of members of the security forces have been killed during protests against an economic crisis, as the parliament speaker warns the United States and Israel of retaliatory strikes if Washington attacks the country. - AJ
The United States has urged its citizens to leave Venezuela immediately amid reports that armed paramilitaries are trying to track down US citizens, one week after the capture of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. In a security alert sent out on Saturday, the state department said there were reports of armed members of pro-regime militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence that the occupants were US citizens or supporters of the country. - Guardian
Philadelphia Sheriff: “No law enforcement officer may wear a mask. We will arrest those who wear masks to hide their identity. If you come to this city and commit a crime, the criminal in the White House cannot keep you from going to prison.”
Trump, not Putin, may turn out to be the real existential challenge to Europe. Yet, von der Leyen, Kallas and Nato’s European leaders continue to play supplicants to Washington. If Europe continues with leaders like them, the days of the EU and Nato are numbered. - SCMP
Big Tech spared strict rules in EU digital regulations overhaul, sources say. Alphabet’s Google, Meta Platforms, Netflix, Microsoft and Amazon will not face heavy-handed regulations in Europe’s digital rule overhaul, per sources. - The Hindu
Rising repair costs, higher insurance premiums, and repeated infrastructure damage can destabilize housing markets. In areas hit again and again, property values often stagnate or fall. This means frequent extreme weather events can leave families with homes worth less than their mortgages. - Yahoo Spain
THE LONELY ANTI-RACIST: Contemporary racism is without a doubt extremely cunning. It operates within a context that has moved us from feelings of doubt to those of certainty. Whereas one used to wonder about the way in which we were implicated in a system of racial and religious superiority, that is, the precise manners by which it has been internalized, today we suppose ourselves to be anti-racist from the beginning. It is simply a matter of pointing at the other who is racist to confirm this fact. The fear of contending with our own racism is what fabricates for us a social bond based on a logic of ‘we are not that (although we do not know what we in fact are).’ My risk proposing that these techniques are unsustainable, although they are often felt to be urgently required. We must at some point have the courage to face our loneliness directly. - Rouselle
The 26th Parachute Regiment is one of the German armed forces’ most elite units. Made up of around 1,700 soldiers, it has been called upon for foreign deployments and war zone evacuations in countries such as Afghanistan, Mali and Sudan. The allegations first became public in October when a local paper received an anonymous tip-off that some soldiers in the regiment were being investigated for performing Hitler salutes and photographing male and female colleagues in the showers, as well as drug use and wearing Nazi-style uniforms. The army subsequently confirmed that it had been quietly investigating the matter after receiving complaints from female paratroopers, who make up about 5 per cent of the regiment, in June this year. - FT
Biodegradable plastics released more dissolved carbon because their polymer chains are more vulnerable. Designed to break down sooner, they interact more with solar energy, creating an uncomfortable paradox: they chemically pollute faster. - Clouds Made of Plastic
Just months after President Donald Trump first expressed interest in the United States possibly gaining control over Greenland, some of the richest people in the world—including Jeff Bezos, Theil, Altman, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, Trump’s college chum Lauder and others —began making strategic investments in the mineral-rich island. - Forbes
We have not seen this before. Iran’s digital blackout has now deployed military jammers to shut down access to Starlink. This is a game-changer for Plan-B connectivity for protesters and anti-regime activists when domestic internet plugs are pulled…The Miaan Group’s Amir Rashidi told TechRadar “I have been monitoring and researching access to the internet for the past 20 years, and I have never seen such a thing in my life.” Monitoring the sudden drop in Starlink data packets supports reports on the ground that satellite connectivity has been heavily affected. - Starlink Killswitch
The US’ reassertion of influence over the Western Hemisphere, the policy of which can be described as ‘FortressAmerica’, would provide it with the resources and markets required for raising the defense budget by over 50% from nearly $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion like Trump just declared that he wants to do. The US’ drastically ramped-up military-industrial production would then go towards militarily coercing China into submitting itself to the US through the trade-related means that were earlier touched upon. - AKN
Ukrainian authorities have awarded development rights for one of the country’s largest untapped lithium deposits to a group of investors connected to former US President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported on January 9, citing sources close to the negotiations. - BNE
Amid rising tensions between the US and several Latin American countries, US President Donald Trump said the idea of Secretary of State Marco Rubio becoming the “president of Cuba” sounded good to him. He also warned Havana to strike a deal with Washington before it was too late. - Firstpost
Polymarket has not paid out wagers that predicted the U.S. would invade Venezuela—drawing angry reactions from some bettors—as the online betting platform suggested that the raid to capture Maduro did not qualify as an invasion and the resolution of the bet would require the U.S. establishing direct control of the country’s territory. - Forbes
I wonder: has painting become too comfortable? No one says painting is dead anymore. It never will be, of course. But with no ideological objections it isn’t forced to defend itself, to come out fighting. Some of the best painting of the past century was made in times of crisis and reckoning, when artists using paint felt embattled or disenfranchised from the central discourse. - AN
Woman in Minnesota fatally shot by ICE agent during raid, video shows. Mayor says ICE claims incident was self-defense are not true, and tells agency to ‘get the fuck out of Minneapolis’. - Guardian
"I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times, our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars..." - President Donald J. Trump
Trump wants Venezuela to return nationalized assets of U.S. oil companies to the U.S., but Venezuela carried out most of its nationalization in 1976, long before the Chávez era, at a time when it was considered a “normal” Western democratic country. What Venezuela did at the time was seen as part of a process in which nations take control of their own natural resources. Trump’s attack is therefore not only directed against the “extreme left”, but against the global process of economic decolonization. Furthermore, Trump also treats the oil that US companies have failed to pump out as stolen American assets – he explicitly talks about the seizure of “Venezuela’s vast oil reserves”…Let us recall the words of Golda Meir addressed to Israel’s Arab neighbors: “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.” Owen Jones pointed out that Golda Meir’s words “were written on the ruins of Lifta, a Palestinian village whose inhabitants were forcibly expelled by Zionist paramilitaries during the Nakba in 1948.” This “deep” sentence contains supreme hypocrisy: it shifts the blame for our crimes onto our victims. Today’s political criminals go a step further: Netanyahu would never say anything like that about the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and Trump would never say anything similar about Venezuela – both of them do their crimes with direct pleasure, openly boasting about them. Yet in the case of Trump and Maduro, I’m tempted to paraphrase Golda Meir: I may forgive Trump for the act of kidnapping Maduro, but I’ll never forgive him for forcing me to take a stance that may look like support or sympathy for Maduro. The conflict between Trump’s America and Maduro’s Venezuela is simply a false fight, a fight that clouds any authentic leftist perspective. - Zizek
Italian PM Meloni: Should we close American military bases? Or cut trade relations? Should we storm McDonalds? I don’t know what we should do
2024: Brown wants the potential Greenland city to be a bastion of technological experimentation, specifically drawing on the community of young male hardtech founders that have gathered in El Segundo. Imagine, he said, a city that can create rain on demand using Rainmaker technology, a cloud-seeding startup, or a community powered by nuclear technology from Valar Atomics. You’d think convincing Praxis members to move to a desolate, freezing country, rather than, say, the Dominican Republic, would be a tough sell. Brown insisted it’s the opposite. “That is the thing about Praxis members,” he said. “A bunch of people that actually would move to Greenland because it’s hardcore.”…Despite the controversy, the Peter Thiel-backed project recently raised $525 million, with a major asterisk: The startup has the ability to draw down the money as it hits specific milestones in its city-building project.- Techcrunch
“He loved the people just as much as he feared and detested persons.” - Sinclair Lewis It Can’t Happen Here
Mamdani: Today is an incredible win for working people. We’re talking about a $1.2 billion commitment from the state of New York to the city of New York to make universal childcare a reality.
“Whether they’re considering a move or not, nearly all (93%) of American homeowners are concerned about extreme weather and expect it to damage their homes over the next three years, specifically due to a changing climate,” the survey found. - Independent
A posted scholarly lecture on the Virginia Museum of History and Culture’s website tells us that early KKK members wore burlap feed sacks over the faces, donned animal horns and wore white muslin masks to indicate they were “non-human,” including corpses come back to life. Who were these members of the nation’s first domestic terrorism group? The neighbors of the people they hunted? How did they feel about what they were doing? Who knows? It was impossible to read their expressions, because they all wore masks. For those of us not still at grave risk, or on a sport team, in a religious group or on stage, the main reason to cover one’s face is to hide our shame. Our hands instinctively fly up to our cheeks and cover our nose and mouth when we are caught doing something wrong, or embarrassing. So a simple question for ICE agents (both real and impostors), for neo-Nazis, and for today’s white supremacists posting hateful literature on lampposts in small towns across the nation, is this: if you’re too ashamed to show your face, why are you doing what you’re doing? - Rhode Island Current
“Shut up”, Free French poster issued in colonial Algeria in both French and Arabic, meant to discourage careless talk, c. 1943
Just hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed an unarmed US citizen in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance said the agency would soon be going “door to door” across the country to escalate the Trump administration’s mass deportation crusade in the coming year. - Common Dreams
Our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. - Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History
“Communism” (1991)
Mania:...as a result of some influence, a large expenditure of psychical energy, long maintained or habitually occurring, has at last become unnecessary, so that it is available for numerous applications and possibilities of discharge—when, for instance, some poor wretch, by winning a large sum of money, is suddenly relieved from chronic worry about his daily bread, or when a long and arduous struggle is finally crowned with success, or when a man finds himself in a position to throw off at a single blow some oppressive compulsion, some false position which he has long had to keep up, and so on. All such situations are characterized by high spirits, by the signs of discharge of joyful emotion and by increased readiness for all kinds of action—in just the same way as in mania, and in complete contrast to the depression and inhibition of melancholia. We may venture to assert that mania is nothing other than a triumph of this sort, only that here again what the ego has surmounted and what it is triumphing over remain hidden from it. Alcoholic intoxication, which belongs to the same class of states, may (in so far as it is an elated one) be explained in the same way; here there is probably a suspension, produced by toxins, of expenditures of energy in repression. - Freud
Not wanting to come off as pushy is a concern shared by nearly half of single men in the US who grapple with “approach anxiety,” per a 2025 report. Researchers determined that “perceptions of being labeled as ‘creepy’ significantly impacted American men’s willingness to interact with women, and 44% of 1,000 men reported that this fear reduces their likelihood of initiating contact.” It’s an unfortunate trend that seems to clash with what the majority of single ladies actually want. Seventy-seven percent of women between 18 and 30 — and 68% between 30 and 40 — hope to “be approached more,” according to the insights. - NYPost
“As Spivak has observed, the attribution of a unified speaking voice and an authentic native ‘essence’ to the colonized, far from destabilizing imperialistic cultural practices, actually serves to reconstitute the Subject of the West.” - Gayatri Spivak
An invasion of Greenland or Canada is no longer outside the realm of possibility; in fact Trump’s use of military force vs longstanding US allies looks increasingly likely. Will NATO allies defend themselves, or one another? Will American citizens finally wake up and take action? What will be the fallout of these invasions? - Globe and Mail
“It is more interesting, more complicated, more intellectually demanding and more morally demanding to love somebody, to take care of somebody, to make one other person feel good” - Toni Morrison
That the shortage of affordable housing, observed for many years, has developed into a comprehensive supply crisis, affecting even the much-discussed “middle class” and leading to dramatic social upheaval, is no longer disputed by any political actor. From the municipal to the federal level, from the AfD to the Left Party, from tenants’ associations to real estate and business associations, there is a unanimous warning of a “social time bomb” and a demand for swift action. However, the respective proposals for overcoming this crisis differ significantly depending on the interests at stake, ranging from “unleashing the housing market” through tax breaks for private investors and comprehensive deregulation of construction and tenancy law to extensive public housing programs, strict rent controls, and the socialization of the holdings of large real estate corporations. - Hintergrund Germany
Canada has never had an equivalent of Uncle Sam, sternly exhorting its citizens to sign up to fight for their country. That is changing. Jennie Carignan, Canada’s top soldier, is looking for Canadians—whether they are 16 or 65—who will come to their country’s aid in the event of a military attack or calamitous natural disaster. “We’re going to need heavy-equipment operators,” says General Carignan. “We’re going to need drone operators. We’re going to potentially need cyber operators as well.” Call her Aunt Jennie…Canadians seem to be waking up. That is almost certainly due to Mr Trump’s hemispheric ambitions, now demonstrated with force. General Carignan says she is regularly besieged after public appearances by Canadians ready to serve. Before Christmas a senior citizen implored her to deploy him, despite his age. “He said, ‘Listen, I can’t carry a rifle and go to war, but I’m out there scanning the internet. I can help. Let me know how I can help you’.” - The Economist
“For Peace! Get out of the way, warmongers!” - Soviet Poster (1949) - North Atlantic Pact - Western Block
Lacan makes difficult reading. No doubt about it. This, at least, is common ground to sympathizers and detractors of Lacan alike. Clearly, it is an understatement to say that when mathematical science is added to the equation, things do not become any easier. Most of us already feel insecure with the simplest of mathematical statements, let alone references to esoteric-sounding subdisciplines such as general topology or knot theory. When we inquire into the make-up of the universe, all the way from distant galaxies and supernovae to cells, synapses, and quarks, we are not surprised when confronted with a discourse that sounds foreign to us. Scientific discourse is, by and large, opaque and filled with impenetrable jargon that takes considerable time and will to master. People do not expect to understand quantum mechanics and are happy to concede ignorance. On the other hand, when we inquire into human nature, psychic processes, identities and emotions, and the workings of the mind, we expect the corresponding models and discourse to be easily understood. This is because they are supposed to be telling us something about ourselves--something, in other words, over which we each can claim some authority and knowledge. It is a natural expectation that is deeply ingrained. So much so that scientists themselves express frustration at the mind’s reluctance to yield its secrets. So when Lacanian psychoanalysis--which purports to be such a discourse about ourselves--appears to make every effort to thwart straightforward understanding, when Lacan hesitates not a jot in enlisting mathematical science to his cause, this cannot but seem to add insult to injury. When we inquire into the make-up of the universe, all the way from distant galaxies and supernovae to cells, synapses, and quarks, we are not surprised when confronted with a discourse that sounds foreign to us. Scientific discourse is, by and large, opaque and filled with impenetrable jargon that takes considerable time and will to master. People do not expect to understand quantum mechanics and are happy to concede ignorance. On the other hand, when we inquire into human nature, psychic processes, identities and emotions, and the workings of the mind, we expect the corresponding models and discourse to be easily understood. This is because they are supposed to be telling us something about ourselves--something, in other words, over which we each can claim some authority and knowledge. It is a natural expectation that is deeply ingrained. So much so that scientists themselves express frustration at the mind’s reluctance to yield its secrets. So when Lacanian psychoanalysis--which purports to be such a discourse about ourselves--appears to make every effort to thwart straightforward understanding, when Lacan hesitate not a jot in enlisting mathematical science to his cause, this cannot but seem to add insult to injury…No one likes to feel stupid. A very rare person indeed is she who, having struggled to make sense of Lacan’s Écrits, has not entertained such thoughts of vulnerability. This vulnerability is only exacerbated if a Lacanian seminar or essay has been recommended as reading material by a friend or professor whom we respect. It is a vulnerability that can very quickly turn to frustration, intimidation, and even anger. - Postures and Impostures: On Lacan’s Style and Use of Mathematical Science
The Athens Prosecutor’s Office has ordered a preliminary investigation into statements made by MeRA25 leader Yanis Varoufakis referring to drug use during a podcast appearance….Speaking on the podcast, Varoufakis admitted to using ecstasy once in the past, referring to an incident that occurred 37 years ago, in 1989, in Australia. - EKT
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” - Zora Neale Hurston
The unconscious: It is a form of thought exterior to (conscious) thought itself. This is a great description of the Symbolic order. The Symbolic order escapes the dualism between subjectivity and objectivity. On the one hand, it is not reducible to the inner lives of human beings, but on the other, it would not exist if all humans ceased to be. It is some third thing, which is to say that its ontological status defies the binary between interiority and exteriority — neither inner nor outer. A subjective object and an objective subject. - The Dangerous Maybe
It is by no means a coincidence, that now that the symbolic father is undermined in the post-1968 world, we find sprawling everywhere ‘perverse’ fathers, from Jeffrey Epstein to Harvey Weinstein. Of course, these men are “creeps,” but the psychoanalytical question is rather how their public image is overdetermined. We get extremely fascinated and horrified by hearing about their transgressive behavior. Still, the logic here is not so much that the subject is supposed to know, as the subject is supposed to enjoy. Even the horrified spectator of the media reports of these perverse patriarchs of our times, has a sense of relief, a ‘thank god, there is at least one that enjoys.’ They provide a kind of screen through which we can orient ourselves….Sexuality is, as Alenka Zupancic puts it, the opposite of unicorns. We all know what a unicorn is, although it does not exist. With sexuality, we know it exists, but we are not quite sure of what it ‘is’. It is this very uncertainty that makes it ‘sexual.’ - Masculinity
