This is a linkblog written by Dante.

By 'linkblog' I mean this is a blog consisting of links to other sites or posts that I find interesting, noteworthy, or generally of interest. Occasionally I'll include my own thoughts on the links as well. You can subscribe by RSS to get all posts including commentary, or get daily, weekly, or even monthly updates if that is more your speed.

All links include comments sections, and you're welcome to leave your thoughts as well.

You can find my main blog here.

Good UX is highly desired and once you get it right, it feels almost natural, intuitive. The current state of news UI assumes that the reader is an adversary to be trapped and monetized.

[...] I went digging for the credits of the Microsoft employees who worked on the user interface back then and found my way to Virginia Howlett, who joined Microsoft in 1985 as the company's first interface designer, and worked there up through the launch of Windows 95.

How Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations.

A thorough analysis of the current DNC method du jour of soliciting money from citizens -- weird-ass spam texts written in all-caps targeted at the elderly. It is a disgusting, shameless tactic and a great example of why the Democratic party is a capitalist dead-end.

The propaganda is often visibly shoddy. But this paradox is resolved once we realise that Israel’s hasbara apparatus does not aim for plausibility. Its mission is expediency, to find something that might introduce a trace of doubt, or give those who wish to look away a reason to do so. [...] But while outfits like the legitimisation cell manufacture these pretexts, the demand for them comes from a Western ear that is desperate to avoid the truth.

I genuinely feel like in some years from now, perhaps a long time but hopefully not so long, we will see the long suffering of the Palestinian people as one of the most glowing, hot-red contradictions of the current American imperialist world order. And, as Stalin said and I am paraphrasing, it is where those contradictions are the sharpest that we can start to see a different future.

Ultimately the problem lies entirely outside of documentation or argument. For Western institutions, the excess of evidence has produced the opposite of a crisis of conscience. Instead there is a saturation that enables the desire to put this all behind us. Bearing witness to everything, registering the horror as it passes through the digital feed, creates a comforting illusion of a debt discharged, of a crisis already dealt with. This is why more evidence fails to move the needle. The Western subject already has the facts; what they require is a disruption that prevents this sense of closure. Even when the evidence compels an admission that genocide is taking place, what follows is too often a passive resignation: an assumption that nothing can be done about this truth, or that naming it is all that is required, while Israel carries on killing and dispossessing. The structure of moral stupidity functions by converting raw evidence into the mere performance of its own absorption. Witnessing is revealed to be an insufficient means of preventing a genocide.
[...]
All of this is designed to prevent a single, shattering realisation: that to truly hear Palestine is to hear a total indictment of Israel, but also of the global order that sustains it. This is a system built on the foundational myth of a “rules-based” liberal internationalism, which is underpinned by the flow of Western capital and weapons, and dependent on a selective and racialised definition of humanity. Moral stupidity is essential to the perpetuation of this order.

The role of the intellectual -- the writer or poet or philosopher -- is also critiqued well here alongside that of the (presumably Western) observer.

The intellectuals of this era did not speak on behalf of the collective; they were continuous with the people, constituted by the same dispossession, and subject to the same erasure. [...] One way to measure this collapse is to ask: can one imagine a writer doing today for the Palestinian Authority what Kanafani did for the PFLP, or what Darwish did for the PLO? The question answers itself.

The intellectual is often, but not always, situated as some part of the more prosperous native classes. This is as true in Palestine as it was in turn-of-the-century Russia, and as such there are contradictions in the ways that the intellectual can support a revolutionary movement. In order to truly "support" such a movement, they must accept that the future they are building may inherently remove their class position (or, at least, shake it critically). This makes the intellectual a complex figure! They can be interlocutors with the greater powers (imperialist, capitalist, whatever) but they are also vulnerable to counterrevolution by their very position -- it would not be unusual for them to side with a counterrevolutionary (or, in the Palestinian case, imperialist) force because that force would allow them to maintain a comfortable position.

This leads to a dangerous dynamic between the national liberation forces -- in this case groups like the PLO and PFLP, and now Hamas -- and the intellectual classes. To be sure, this can be seen even in modern work from Palestinian intellectuals who are well-worth lauding as much as criticizing.

All of this is not to say that "the intellectual" as a figure is inherently counterrevolutionary or inherently a class enemy or anything like that -- but that the position of the intellectual within the national liberation struggle is... well... nuanced! Complex. Fraught with contradictions.

It’s not simply that intellectuals talk while others fight, or that fighters distrust words. The real crisis unfolds when speaking and acting finally meet. When the intellectual takes the logic of their own analysis seriously enough to act on it, they encounter the full weight of the abandonment that the words had been circling around all along.

Also touched on here is the role of Germany, which I do think is worth noting specifically. The creation of Israel as a state -- imperialist outpost as it is -- is inextricable from Nazism.

Some years ago, a German Jewish friend visited me in Ramallah. She walked its streets, observed the settlements that surround the city, met my family. [...] What unsettled her most was not the hills or the walls, but the checkpoint on her return to Jerusalem: an old Palestinian woman struggling to pass while soldiers, with their smirks and revulsion, enacted the routine of humiliation. [...] Shaken, she texted me afterwards: “Now I know why Palestinians blow themselves up.”

Post-war, post-Imperialist-takeover Germany has to align itself with Israel, due to its position in the US-aligned world order. Of course it does! To materially support Palestine would be to admit a fault, to admit a crack in the logic of the current imperialist order. This is, of course, existential for the heirs of West Germany, indebted as they are to the United States power-mad hegemony.

To speak is to risk becoming part of the system that absorbs speech and renders it harmless: to produce, for the Western ear, another document to be acknowledged and archived and acted on by no one. To fall silent is to abandon the field to those whose version of events requires no refutation, and to perform, at the level of the intellectual, the disappearance that the colonial project has always demanded. And to act – to follow the logic of one’s own analysis into the domain where words give way to something else, as al-Araj did – is to be already betrayed by the organisations and formations that should have received his words.

Revolutionary suicide, as Huey Newton put it. To know that to act is to doom you, and choosing to act anyway. The hard part is choosing how to act.

But an L.A. Material review has found that is far from the full story. Organizers failed to lay basic groundwork for the festival, such as obtaining police permits for myriad events. Not a single speaker or panel was formally booked for the “State of Jazz” conference and the overall process was marred by confusion.

🎵 local 🎵 drama 🎵

The international left’s angst and disappointment regarding Venezuela’s retreats is understandable. But the Global South is not about to fulfill the revolutionary aspirations of those living in the belly of the beast. That, it should be clear, is the task for people in the imperial core.

I'll admit, I never considered using old laptop motherboards as the base for a homemade all-in-one PC. This is an intriguing option, even with some obvious downsides.

Did you know one of the first games released by the developers of the STALKER series (GSC Game World) was a Warcraft 2 overhaul where they added aliens and nukes

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

A fun little experiment, comparing a rather average modern apartment with quotations from recent historical eras where the simplest modern conveniences would have been unthinkably rich.

From the beginning of his papacy sorcery and heresy were at the forefront of John XXII’s attention. And, it would be during this period that sorcery would be transformed from sin to heresy, thus forever transforming western attitudes toward magic. But, what was this process and how did John XII transform our understanding of magic and even set the stage for the nightmare of the witch trials?

Loved this video on the Medieval Church, magic, sorcery, and the origins of the modern "pure vs heretical" strains in popular thought.

The proletariat must be educated to the position of affirming what is true in scientific knowledge and seeing what it points to as being the case and why. Materialism is the best defense of the science we need. It is the best because it is true and because politically it provides the simplest defense of science.

NGL some of the philosophical talk in here is way over my head (or more accurately over my head without seriously sitting down and deep-reading the text) BUT i think this final point resonates quite deeply with me.

If scientists wish to be heard, they must organize themselves, and they must make clear that they are not enemies of the people. To make clear they are conscientious seekers after the truth, they must make clear they are responsible members of society, and even better, champions of the working class. Otherwise, do not expect trust; do not expect people to respect your authority; earn it.

The ACP presents itself as a new, ideologically pure group, the sole heir to the Leninist tradition in the United States, uncompromising in its rejection of bourgeois politics. But looking at what the ACP actually says and who it tries to reach reveals a party whose politics and messaging are nationalist, chauvinist, and reactionary.

I have my doubts about the material/populational power of the ACP -- I find them more of an online blowhard community, but if the past few years have taught me anything it is that we should not underestimate the destructive potential of weird niche online hate groups. Just because they are more correct than the modern CPUSA on issues of Russia, China, and anti-liberalism does not excuse their reactionary tendencies around race, gender, and religion. Relating them to the historical recurring scab that is "national bolshevism" is quite apt, imo.

The ACP split from the CPUSA over what it called liberal compromises, yet ended up with an ideology that is more fringe and less coherent than what it left behind. A rejection of left-wing coalitions in favor of far-right ones was intended to expand a base, but instead dramatically narrowed it. Support for far-right bourgeois figures is masked as outreach to the working class, but it is capitulation to the class interests those figures serve.
[...]
The ACP is a movement that cannot be considered communist in any meaningful sense. The closest they get is patriotic socialists, in the same vein as National Bolsheviks, reactionaries pretending to be communists to steal the name of a tradition they have effectively abandoned.

In light of the recent Ceuta massacre, Iker Suárez provides deeper historical context regarding the immigration policies of Spanish social democracy, focusing on the contradictions between progressive rhetoric and border enforcement in a world structured by imperialism.

The Last Museum is a semantic search engine for 5.8 million artworks from the world's great museums. Search by theme, style, subject, or any description you can imagine.

Warning that this feels like LLMs are involved but at least the art is not generated at all. Still, could be useful as a search engine for historical art.

We all crave the kind of justice it seems unlikely we will see in our lifetimes. So instead, we consider it justice when a woman loses her job for stealing a commemorative trash can, or when two cheaters get caught on the kiss cam, or when someone at Pepsi gets in trouble because everyone on Threads read their post in bad faith.

Good final takeaways from an essay that makes me think the author would be someone to whom I would say "you need to maybe log off more" were i ever to meet them in real life.

Even simple equipment failed with slapstick regularity, six workers said. Conveyor belts broke down. Automated carts got lost. Safety gates meant to shut down machines when workers approached did not shut down machines when workers approached. A pipe exploded, spraying water up to the ceiling.

Hilarious article about the USA's super efficient military capitalism. Paper tiger!

“You can’t even go to the mall no more without a parent. You can’t go to the movies no more — they’re asking for a parent and stuff like that,” said Ahmir Peterson, 16, a student at Kenwood Academy High School. “There used to be teen jobs, but those jobs are taken by adults. As a teenager, you are fighting against grown adults with real work experiences that have been working all their life. Everybody is fighting for a living. So it’s way harder.”

I imagine in the next few years and decades we're going to get a lot of writing -- both of the moral panic and the academic varieties -- about these so-called "teen takeovers". The way these kids themselves talk about them is wildly thoughtful, and I think any story that comes out in the next few years that does not include actual talking to kids involved will be a failure.

It is a material and sociological phenomenon that I believe is linked to our decaying cities, our COVID recovery policies, and the material downturn of the USA. All of these things are material, and these kids are reacting to it -- albeit in the chaotic, disjointed way that children often do.

At some point, I stopped thinking about it as a project. It was just a tool, same as the other tools around the shop.

I found this video a really cool example of custom hardware manufacturing. I would love to make something like this at some point -- I think the wave of "cyberdeck" fetishism is a bit goofy, but seeing people actually creating devices that work exactly in the ways that they need them to is so cool to see.

But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists.