Marktropolis

I think the Pelosis have enjoyed more than enough insider trading, thank you.

The AI Race to Reboot Feudalism Let's be honest about why they gamble everything

New:
The current “AI race” media frenzy, whether framed as productivity revolution, Chinese competition, or AGI salvation, is either largely myth-making or missing the most crucial point.

So let me challenge that frenzy with a different story.

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open.substack.com/pub/protagon...

Chuck Schumer attending Roy Cohn’s birthday party at Studio 54 in 1979

apropos of nothing, here’s a photo of a young chuck schumer attending trump lawyer & confidante (& joe mccarthy associate) roy cohn’s birthday party at studio 54, in 1979

Fun fact: my mom went to high school with Ms. Oates.

I often think about how the government hounded Aaron Swartz to death for scraping Jstor, yet all these AI companies scraped almost literally all of human knowledge (and continue to do so even when they're told to stop) and have had no criminal consequences.

The cover of The Continent, dated 8 November 2025 (Issue 219), bears the headline “Tanzania’s darkest week” and features a striking political cartoon by Gado that echoes Honoré Daumier’s 1831 caricature Gargantua. At the top, the masthead appears in bold black letters on a beige background. Below it, the illustration dominates the page. It shows a woman seated on a throne-like chair, drawn to resemble Tanzania’s leader. Her mouth is open wide, and a long wooden ramp extends from her mouth, down which small, faceless figures carry large sacks labeled “Corruption,” “Incompetence,” “Fear,” and “Election Fraud.” They march upward to feed these vices into her mouth, while behind them, a long line of weary people stretches toward the horizon, waiting their turn. To the left stands a sign reading “Abductions”, beside a huge pile of skulls — a chilling symbol of death and repression. Below, masked soldiers with rifles shoot civilians on a blood-spattered ground, surrounded by the bodies of the fallen. The entire scene conveys chaos, violence, and fear. The image is a nod to Daumier’s Gargantua, which depicted France’s King Louis-Philippe as a grotesque giant devouring the people’s wealth while rewarding his cronies. Here, that 19th-century metaphor of gluttonous tyranny is adapted to Tanzania’s present moment — portraying a leader who consumes corruption, fear, and human lives themselves.

All Protocol Observed

Welcome to Issue 219 of The Continent

Protests, an internet blackout, and deadly force marked Tanzania’s Election Day. Once online again, 37 readers shared what they witnessed.

Read their stories: bit.ly/219_TC

The ‘Queen Mother’ of the Reparations Movement Gets Her Due A UT-Austin historian tells the under-told story of Audley Moore, “one of the most important activists and theorists of the twentieth century.”

In books: From her roots in southern Louisiana to her years pounding the pavement in Harlem as an organizer for the Communist Party to her reignition of the modern reparations movement, Audley “Queen Mother” Moore’s story offers potent lessons for today’s organizers.

*buns.

It was right there.

This right here.

Just catching up to this. My Sunday has a new purpose.

Preach.

Having flashbacks of visiting the gift shop at the MLK Center in Atlanta (1986) and purchasing a center-branded ashtray.

your timely reminder that AGI is neither clearly defined/described nor amenable to scientific or engineering principles... it remains an ideology that is rooted in white supremacy, racism and eugenics

This is outrageous. It should also be understood in the context that everyday rich private donors also funnel tens of millions of dollars into US police departments through Police Foundations to fund projects that they are personally invested in--mostly high tech surveillance.

If the National Guard is really in D.C. to protect federal
property, they should probably have been at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. two days ago

I find it interesting that we know the monetary value of museum artefacts when they are stolen but not when indigenous communities want their stuff back.

White people pretend they can't pronounce MAM-DA-NI but have no problem pronouncing Krzyzewski. Suspect AF.

YouTube video by The Eddrick Show! Chef Michael Twitty on The Untold History of Southern Food | Recipes from The American South

Help me share to 100 (big number!) You know you want to 😀
#RecipesfromtheAmericanSouth

youtu.be/G71MZynajjQ?...

Maah Xopini Shųųshuke (@mrw1zard) Artificial intelligence is already shaping courtrooms, hospitals, banks, and schools. It's fast. Scaled. Invisible. And it's built on data that leaves Native people out. The story is about what happen...

Al misses land maps. Doesn't know what a tribal business council does. It's not broken. It was never trained to see us. The system works fine. It just works without us. That's not a surprise, it's the blueprint. And it's already running in the background.
substack.com/@mrw1zard/no...

A a teal flyer for the Western Alaska Disaster Relief with a QR code to donate. Text reads: WESTERN ALASKA DISASTER RELIEF Alaska's Western coastal communities are experiencing devastating impacts from Typhoon Halong, with families displaced and villages facing severe flooding and loss. ONLINE FUNDRAISER: Join us in supporting relief efforts. Scan the QR code to donate online. All funds raised will go directly to assisting communities. QUYANA CAKNEQ - QUYANAQPAK - QAGAASAKUNG - TAIKUU - MAHSÌ CHO - GUNALCHÈESH - HÀW’AA - THANK YOU

It may no longer be Indigenous Peoples' Day but this is when and where your support truly matters. We have several Native communities devastated by flooding, families have literally lost everything.

Link to community fundraiser for people impacted by this storm: alaskacf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/c...

Annual reminder that Taylor Sheridan ain't shit featuring @johnniejae.bsky.social

Or, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness— for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps-they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of-and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.

James Baldwin to Angela Davis in 1970, discussing white Americans:

Added to my wishlist. Appreciate you.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor · I do not have to be you: Audre Lorde’s Legacy Lorde never had to persuade her comrades about a strategy, tactic or new idea, lose an argument in order to maintain a...

‘Lorde offered a politics that dealt in the realities of survival as well as the necessity of defiance: she refused to give ground to white feminists or to a Black nationalism that assumed women’s subservience.’

@keeanga.bsky.social on Audre Lorde: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

The judge: it is hereby ordered that you are in fact, not like us

Louder for those in the back.

Front cover of a newspaper called "The Friday Paper". The cover image is a drawing of the central Johannesburg skyline showing skycrapers and beanth the skyscapers are horizontal layers of pastel-coloured rock.

The people behind @thecontinent.org have launched a new paper focused on South Africa called @thefridaypaper.bsky.social and the cover story is about gold and Johannesburg's new gold mine.

You can read it for free here: www.thecontinent.org/_files/ugd/2...

If you’re white, your accomplishments are your own and you can resent and criticize the country all you like, but if you’re black and successful you should be grateful to white people for allowing you in their presence. bsky.app/profile/jess...