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.
“My thing with Jay is he often inverts collective social justice rhetoric for individualist capitalist pursuits,” says Jason England, a former English professor and cultural critic who published a scathing critique of hip-hop on its 50th anniversary. “They killed all our heroes. So we pivoted to people who achieved visibility, acceptance, and financial success. I get it.”
I have such a distaste for Jay-Z and his brand of Black Capitalism, partially because I have to be the asshole at family dinners who points out that this is no more "liberatory" than any white-fronted attempts to sanitize the toxic brand of capitalism. I cannot stand someone this bald-facedly opportunistic.
Once abolition is framed as an abstract proposition that all coercion must vanish forever, it becomes easy to dismiss as unrealistic. Instead of being seen as a strategy for dismantling institutions that reproduce capitalism and racial domination it’s framed as either the fantastical idealism of anarchism or the limited purview of policy reform.
Good piece.
It’s important to acknowledge that this retreat from abolition emerges from a real contradiction facing the socialist movement. The George Floyd uprising was the largest mass rebellion against policing in a generation, and yet it produced few lasting structural victories. It’s reasonable to ask whether the movement’s politics, including the rallying cry to abolish the police, contributed to that outcome. But this mistakes the primary lessons of 2020. The principal failure was not that abolition proved to be bad politics or messaging, but that the socialist movement lacked the durable organization, institutions, mass base, and independent politics necessary to adequately absorb the energy of the uprising and carry it forward once the streets emptied.
An in-depth 1-hour analysis of Lenin's vital text. It's not just history, grasping this overlooked lesson is crucial for tackling today's opportunism & most urgent political challenges.
I've enjoyed this series on the Russian Revolution disguised as Marxist analysis for a while now, I recommend this one if you're looking for a long video essay.
Free film archive of solidarity and struggle!
The definitive oral history of Silversun Pickups’ “Lazy Eye” music video. The band, director, and actors reveal how the 2006 indie rock classic was made.
I was obsessed with this video when it first came out, so neat to see a proper interview about how it came about. We're all old millennials now.
Strong organizations are always taking calculated risks, and to do so, occasionally march into the unknown; they must, if they’re to innovate, succeed, and excel. But we're not calculating the risks.
I am skeptical of the DSA's focus on electoralism, here is another good critique of it.
We can no longer place ourselves in a position of passivity where our endorsed elected officials are permitted to govern exclusive of our involvement after we’ve attached our name to them.
“Donna remembers the names of everyone in the group that gravitated to her 9th Street apartment. I intoned the names with her: ‘Sally, Oak, Billie, Binky, Chris, Jill, Marlene, Lynn, Sharon, Joan, Nancy, Suzy,’” Giannecchini writes in “Alphabet City,” a return to the apartment where 18-year-old Gottschalk lived in 1967.
Thinking about how art and history can move you, can make you feel like you know people you've never met and could not have met.