This week marked the anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve summarized our thoughts a bit below, but tl;dr: Unfortunately, COVID-19 is still with us, & although we may be tired of hearing about it, it’s extremely important to continue to take steps to protect ourselves & others.
It’s 7 for me - get to watch Feanor stare knives into Melkor’s back, and can turn around to chat with good guy Beleg - window seat means I also get to see Thorondor carrying Milo along next to us outside ❤️
I always love seeing fragments of Tolkien in Le Guin and Le Guin sometimes expanding on and sometimes arguing with them. This is one of the best examples but by no means the only one.
This reminds me of something Toni Morrison wrote.
Today the paperback of THERE IS NO PLACE FOR US is out.
It's arriving in a country once again waging war—a country that can spend tens of billions on bombs without blinking, while millions of Americans are one missed paycheck, one rent hike away from homelessness.
Let's take stock of where we are.
“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”
"Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away...if you truly care about other people, you'll put [a mask] on."
We republished illustrator Gillian Levine's comic, "Reasons to mask in 2026" in @thesicktimes.org. Check it out 👀😷
thesicktimes.org/2026/02/27/c...
Sharing some relevant reflections on AI as an attempt to "square the call center", as described by Mark Fisher as the closest one can get to encountering the centerless system of capitalism, from 'Why We Fear AI':
This is what I think about when people say we need to give people "AI literacy". How do you AI literacy out of this exactly? This shows how absurd the concept is, this is what the goal of AI is for every worker.
Rob Arcane posted the opening of David F Noble's In Defense of Luddism (1993) and damn it's like it was written and hour ago.
You, an individual, cannot "fix" the whole world. You can act at the scale of your life. You should act at the scale of your life.
This is the dehumanizing logic of capitalism: To see people as things with costs and uses (just like all the other things that can be bought and sold on the market).
Those who are buyers, not sellers, on the labor market, naturally cannot help but simply see people through the lens of that logic.
We talk about this a lot on DP and in our book but “waste fraud and abuse” as a rhetorical formulation really has done untold damage both in politics at large and to people’s actual lives/material conditions. The only way forward is to excise this thinking from our politics
bsky.app/profile/tbla...
Really hope people understand these products as an extension of the overall authoritarian project. The goal is persistent surveillance of all public and private spaces. The devices exist to forward that goal.
Just finished reading Late Fascism this morning after having heard Ruth Wilson Gilmore recommend it on a previous episode, can’t wait to listen to this conversation!
Particularly recommend the back half (or the second hour) of this, really generative for something we’ve been working on and you can hear Bea working through that in real time
The fact that managers everywhere have easily deluded themselves into thinking that AI can do the jobs that they're overseeing is, I think, deeply telling about some contradictions between the means of production and the relations of production as they exist today. 1/4
if noted disinformationista & back-to-normal enthusiast jay bhattacharya ordering NIH to deprioritize pandemic preparedness fills you with dread, i urge you to look toward the work of anti-covid & clean air activists, whose organizing has been increasingly essential as denial has become mainstream.
💯 Especially in its Silicon Valley / 🇺🇸 context, AI is the latest 🔧 for capitalist accumulation via lowering labor costs to increase surplus value by:
- deskilling to reduce wages
- concentrating the means of production in the ✋️ of the few
- weakening workers' bargaining power
Who it's FOR matters.
"Agents offer bosses a powerful excuse to depress wages, conduct layoffs, and exert additional control over workers. Where AI is used to augment or gigify labor, managers are able to demand workers accomplish more with fewer colleagues, in less time, and for less stable wages and benefits."
In our latest, @ayeshaasiddiqi.bsky.social joins us to discuss “anti-aging” trends and longevity influencers as symptoms of imperial decline and the role the wellness industry has played in producing this moment of heightened fascism
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Trump's "softening" on the ICE assault on Minneapolis had it's exact intended effect:
The @nytimes.com took any mention of Minneapolis or Minnesota off of its main page.
This article immediately labels @emilymbender.bsky.social and I as "curmudgeons" because we don't think that the spicy auto complete has a concept of the self.
There's a kind of intellectual malaise among a certain kind of socialist that just doesn't understand automation and I think probably comes from not having worked much on or around it.
The prospect of AI as a fantasy capacity to automate labour and free us from drudgery I think corresponds to...
0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself *sad*. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov *fucked him over* personally with his socio-economic theory.
The US cutting off oil to Cuba is truly one of the most depraved acts it is possible to imagine. Hospitals will close, food production will collapse, people will starve. It is urgent for US citizens, and every sane person, to oppose this barbarism with all their might.
During freezing temperatures in Port Arthur, Texas, a 61-year-old homeless man was found dead in his wheelchair outside a convenience store.
He was wearing a hospital gown and no shoes. Authorities say he had been released from a hospital the previous day.
This is a diseased society.
i had imposter syndrome trying to talk about fascism alongside Alberto Toscano, but i'm glad i did coz it was an incredibly generative conversation that helped distill & crystallize my own thoughts about fascism worldwide today & it's differentiations from the past.
www.tni.org/en/article/l...
From Health Communism: “The worker/surplus binary solidifies the idea that our lives under capitalism revolve around our work. Our selves, our worthiness, our entire being and right to live revolve around making our labor power available to the ruling class. …
heartbreaking to see public health people people get as far as “ICE detention is a driver of disease” only to call for increased funding for ICE medical services not “free them all for public health”
