related tags: #ShortReading

• Odysseus at the End of Civilization by Bret Devereaux (23 July 2026)

The result is a fundamentally conservative, almost Burkean critique: Whatever structural problems society has, its catastrophic collapse comes not from those structural issues but from the violation of long-standing norms of behavior.

This is... very true. It's also a very common theme in Nolan's work, as he always finds ways to have conservative critiques that wrap back around to “the structure is fine, but it is us who have failed.” He never wants to think about how “we” (for it is always “we” and never the people responsible) can so consistently fail as a result of the structure. I wish Devereaux would point this out. Many people have, but it bears repeating.

Anyway, lots of interesting conversation due to the inclusion of history... as expected of Devereaux's writing. His blog posts are far more interesting, though.

• LifeLog was real.

An interesting audio setup discussing LifeLog, which was a system that had been built by the Pentagon to effectively collect evidence about and index everyone's lives. It also connects a lot of what has happened with modern “social” media (e.g., Facebook) and other services (e.g., Google Pay) and how they have operated as surveillance for our whole lives. We've been indexing everything just as the Pentagon wanted.

LifeLog is not a story about a program that died. It's a story about who is allowed to build it.

• [B-Sides: Gloria Steinem’s “The Beach Book”] by Sari Edelstein (29 January 2025)

Found in another post, this was a review of Gloria Steinem's much less known The Beach Book. Despite my many frustrations with her, this is at least in some part adorable. It was found in the next short read:

• Eight theses on Gloria Steinem, because goddamn by Sophie Lewis (7 September 2026)

With Gloria Steinem's death, it's important to hold an actual picture of who she was and what she did in our minds. Sophie Lewis does just that with her theses about Steinem. I do think it is occasionally more polite than I'd justify, but it is among the best pieces to hold a lot of these thoughts in one place.

• Some Like It Hot: Notes from the Marilyn Appreciation Society by Sophie Lewis (2022)

It's an interesting read that holds a lot more space for the complexities of Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe than are ever really present in most places.

• Weird Little Guys (List)

While I think that calling fash and fash-adjacent people “weird” undermines the seriousness of what they do and how they impact communities, it's a decent list of blokes who hold harmful politics and fund others who do (and have power over us).

related tags: #ShortReading

• Charlotte Head: I was sentenced as a terrorist. Now my barrister is on trial for defending me [2026]

A barrister is being prosecuted in the UK for supporting their client, who is being charged as a terrorist for their solidarity with Palestine. You know, the Palestine that is enduring a fucking genocide that the UK is tacitly and explicitly supporting. Discusses all sorts of chilling effects happening.

• Marisa Kabas: Political operative behind Graham Platner's rise accused of sexual assault [2026]

Really unsurprising that where you find one abuser, you find more. (Which is very glib, I recognise, but it's exhausting how often these guys can be told on for a dozen other things... and everyone's like “yeah, they make mistakes.” And then we've got to deal with even more heinous bullshit because their behaviour goes entirely unchecked. Fuck that.)

• Daniel Falcone: The Odyssey Is Facing a Boycott for Filming in Occupied Western Sahara [2026]

More information about what's been happening in Western Sahara. Though the boycott is unlikely to be a success in terms of an actual boycott (sadly), it is a success in that a lot more people are far more aware of this situation today than they had been. Though... Awareness can only do so much, and it'd be nice to see collective action to stop any or all of these injustices in whatever ways possible. (I'm not naive; I know it's difficult to do.)

• CrimethInc: Post Modern Times: Post Mortem

I think there are explicit avenues of analysis that were excluded from this that really need to be addressed (beyond more than a footnote). There is little conversation about the hierarchy within the Post Modern Times, which would've been an invaluable understanding of how they were operating. Were they continuing to operate under a standard service model? If so, why? Were they doing any other activities in the building, adding to the communal atmosphere? Or was it explicitly a restaurant? The latter means that people who come in are unlikely to talk to each other outside of their own groups. This isn't so much a post mortem as it is a speculation that is attempting to not “moralise” despite the fact that the very topic their addressing is primarily around class and race. (Also, what is wrong with moralising? If white people stop going to places because more Black people show up, there is still a component of racism even if those white people aren't doing it through explicit racism. The same is true of how people treat homeless people; there is a component of not wanting to occupy the same space as homeless people, even if it's not explicit anti-homeless behaviour. I think the framing of this is strange.)

related tags: #ShortReading

• USC Annenberg Media: USC Sold dead bodies to US military to train IDF medical personnel [2025]

Absolutely disgusting that the University of Southern California (along with University of California, San Diego; the University of Maryland, Baltimore; and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston) were selling bodies that were gifted to them, giving themselves a profit (on bodies they had largely obtained through donation) while also using the bodies for things that their former owners might actually not have consented to when they opted to donate their body (as most people do so for the training of HOSPITAL medical staff, for the development of new medical techniques, or for the continuance of some forensic learning).

Most people do not consent to freely giving their body, which was donated with a purpose, so that it can be sold to the US miliary and then used in training genocidaires.

• Emily Wilson: An Uncomplicated Man [2026]

Review by Emily Wilson, known for being the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English, on Christopher Nolan's film. Definitely worth a read, I think, even if you don't plan on watching the movie. This kind of highlights a frequent problem in most retellings, but it's understandable that it'd exist in a Nolan film:

Many of the film’s implicit values directly contradict those of Homer’s poem. Deception, warmongering, extramarital sex, cruelty to animals, abusing women and yearning for honour – all perfectly fine in the world of Homer – are, in this version, very bad. This is not in itself a problem, but it is a problem if the film’s own values and vision don’t hang together, and if the characters’ motivations don’t make sense on their own terms.

• Mohamed Sleiman Labat: Christopher Nolan's Odyssey used occupied land as a film set. That feels like a betrayal [2026]

After learning in the above review that this was a thing that happened, a friend sent this article written by a Sahwari man discussing the fuller context to this issue (such as how Sahwari are not allowed to document their everyday life under Moroccan occupation).

related tags: #ShortReading, #GraeberStuff

• David Graeber: Concerning the Violent Peace Police (2012)

A letter that Graeber wrote in response to Chris Hedges misrepresenting Black Bloc. Some interesting bits and pieces. Was suggested in response to critiques around discussions of violence. I may want to come back to this because of my frustration with parts of it.

• Josef Burton: The Modern Passport Has Eliminated Fraud, Forgery, and Heroes Who Can Bend the Rules to Save Lives (2026)

Interesting exploration of the modern passport. It doesn't fully explore the history of passports, but does look at how they've changed over the decades to be hellish creations.

• Noah Hawley: What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos's Private Retreat (2026)

Meh, but it at least has some useful bits. Overwhelmingly, it's annoying that this is about an event from 2018. Took a while for Hawley to, you know, realise some things, I guess.

• Sophie Hurwitz: Gwyneth Paltrow Just Goopified Drone Warfare (2026)

Not long, low-info, but it does provide a good highlight of how the wellness industry works with state apparatuses and also is accepting of laundering reputations of people who should be labelled as war criminals.

• Gigi G: PSL's Top Propagandist Resigns, Publishes Tell-All Letter (2026)

More PSL-internal drama. Highlights known issues of them sweeping abuse under the rug, being authoritarian, and acting as such while pretending to engage in anti-colonial or anti-imperial politics. One funny sentence includes, “[Smolarek] says members caught reading Jacobin... are treated as security breaches.” Considering Jacobin is such a patsoc outlet, I'd also treat them as a security breach... but for a different reason. (This is a joke. But also, I wouldn't read the Jacobin.)

related tags: #ShortReading

• Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their Brains by Emanuel Maiberg [13 May 2026 / 404Media]

I think one of the things that's missing in this is how the labour market is looking and how all this AI bullshit is really going to be problematic for these software developers. Prior to AI, we already had what felt like a surplus of software devs; now we're going to have a whole bunch who are fucked out work because some company is pretending AI is worth anything (when it isn't). Not to mention, this also means that there are going to be a lot more people who cannot eat or pay rent.

This should be showing people that the way the world works cannot sustain us, and it doesn't work. This should be showing unions that they need to be doing a lot more than status quo bullshit and actively doing stuff for an anti-work world. I'm not seeing this; most unions don't want to see their place in the world disappear, and that's a problem. (And most of these people aren't even unionised in the first place. But it's a two-pronged issue.)

• The Bus Is Coming: Trans People, Coalition Solidarity, and the Authoritarian Wedge Strategy by Scot Nakagawa [15 April 2026 / on Substack]

The conversation goes something like this: trans rights, and in particular the specific fights around gender-affirming care for youth and trans women in sports, are polling badly with persuadable voters. The authoritarian project has chosen these issues with precision, not because they represent a serious policy concern but because they are effective wedges, generating visceral cultural anxiety that can be weaponized to separate the LGBTQ movement from potential allies and to make the movement as a whole appear extreme. And some people, some organizations, some funders are wondering whether the rest of the LGBTQ community – and by extension the broader progressive coalition – might be better served by a strategic retreat, by quietly distancing from trans rights, by deciding that this particular fight is not the hill to stand on right now.

I don't like that this article says this is happening “right now.” A lot of the better funded and more national/international queer organisations have been doing this for years, shutting out smaller and more local organisations entirely. You don't see this as often in smaller ones because those folks know each other, and they generally know they're only getting through this shit together. But this is an old problem. It's one that happened with organisations hyper-focusing on same-sex marriage while ignoring every concern that people had with regards to it or the support that we should've been giving to queer people who both didn't want to or could not assimilate.

Trans folks got hit by that shit a lot, and we've never really seen a good coalition for trans folks at all in any major organisation. So... not just “right now.” It's been always, and trans and gender non-conforming folks could easily tell you this.

The targeting of trans people – and specifically trans youth and trans women in sports – is not a policy agenda. It is a strategic operation. Understanding it as policy produces the wrong response. Understanding it as strategy produces the right one.

This is correct, though. It's not policy and never has been, but we've wasted decades acting like it was.

Anyway, decent piece with a few hiccups. Worth a read.

• It's Time to Grow Up by Eli Cugini [3 April 2026]

Lots of good one-liners, and it's correct about Harry Potter. Fuck it and fuck Rowling. Get over it. We're all old enough, and there are better things out there.

As one of the people tied to the train tracks in said artificial trolley problem, I’d like to raise a complaint: It is beneath my dignity to let myself be run over by any trolley, and particularly this trolley, burdened as it is by a cape and a stupid hat.

But adequately stigmatizing Rowling’s weaponization of childhood not only requires personal withdrawal for most people, it necessitates something much more difficult: being a giant fucking killjoy

However, I had to get an archive link to read the whole thing because I guess Defector cuts off older articles? No idea.

• Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz [13 April 2026]

Another one that I had to get an archive for because of all the fucking paywalls. Honestly, what is the point of the internet anymore. Anyway...

“I didn’t know what the fuck was going on,” Hoffman told us. “We were looking for embezzlement, or sexual harassment, and I just found nothing.”

I mean, you could find something near at least one of these. Judges may have dismissed the case for his sister (though she's refiled), but I find it difficult to not believe her regarding him considering... I don't know, I can't fathom why any woman would willingly have to endure this legal and public opinion bullshit if they didn't have to. And it's not an uncommon thing for families to cover up familial abuse. (And any number of these people could actually put the money in to investigate that, but I'm guessing they wouldn't do that at all. Instead, we've just got weird ass Elon Musk trying to pretend Sam's worse than he is.)

One of Altman’s batch mates in the first Y Combinator cohort was Aaron Swartz, a brilliant but troubled coder who died by suicide in 2013 and is now remembered in many tech circles as something of a sage.

Ronan and Andrew, what the hell was happening to Aaron before he died by suicide? Would you like to fucking think about why people view him how they do? (I know they can't add it because the publication doesn't want to allow it and it'd require some degree of fighting, but still. Aaron deserves more than this flippant bullshit, especially in this timeline because the very people ruining our lives are stealing from everyone... including the access of work done “in our name.” But I also don't know that I'd trust Ronan or Andrew to include it, even if they were allowed.)

But, as Altman publicly welcomed regulation, he quietly lobbied against it.

Hey, a common thing among these Silicon Valley shitstains. Ugh. They're also part of the problem for a lot of lobbying around all the surveillance laws that pretend to care about kids.

But Clark, the former policy director, has said, “The system of capital markets says, Go faster.” He added, “The world gets to make this decision, not companies.”

Does anyone want to let these people know that capital markets are not “the world”? Fucking hell, fuck these people.

Long piece, annoying piece, very obvious in a lot of ways (sadly).

related tags: #ShortReading

I want to stop linking to archive.today because of its troubling behaviour, so I won't be providing that link for some sources. I also won't link directly to 404media because they annoy me with their “it's free, but give us your email” tactic. You'd think an outlet writing on privacy would realise how gross that is, but...

I also don't link to Substack because they have knowingly and directly supported Nazis; I wish people would move off and to something like Ghost, but I can't also pretend to know their reasons for staying on the Nazi Blog Platform. I don't think this people are bad, btw; I just think they have another priority, and I don't know what it is. Anyway, I tried archiving via IA, but Wayback Machine throws out error pages that make you look for the relevant post and then click a link in the suggestions... which makes zero sense.

• Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain by Jason Koebler [11 May 2026, 404media]

I will be going about my day reading, watching, or listening to something and, suddenly, I notice that something is wildly off. Quite simply, I feel like I’m going nuts.

I feel this very strongly. I don't normally assume everything is AI, but when it starts hitting me in ways that feel strongly of AI... It makes me feel like I've lost the plot. I also feel very strongly that, even when people tell me they've used the generative AI in certain parts of the development of something... That I find it hard not to question whether they've been using it elsewhere, and it makes me want to not engage with anything else they do.

(Disclosure: Pangram Labs previously advertised on 404 Media).

This is a fun thing to point out because AI detection is shit at detecting AI... and often flags non-AI things as AI because (in a fun ouroboros of shit, AI is trained on non-AI things in order to create the “more human”-sounding AI bullshit). So while I'm glad 404 did disclose this in the article, they also need to not promote people who promote the use of AI in ways where it doesn't quite work.

Other fun things to note:

When I sat down to write this article, in which, to be clear, I did not use AI, I found myself writing the following sentence: “It’s not just in places we’re conditioned to see AI—Google AI overviews, LinkedIn influencer posts, and Facebook feeds—I’ve started seeing AI…” I stopped typing, freaked out, and deleted the sentence. Have I always written this way? I honestly don’t know.

This AI construction is a common way of speaking. Of course you've likely written like this, but it's the frequency. How often do you say “It's not x, it's y?” That's the bigger tell for AI rather than whether a person uses that phrasing or not. Same thing goes for other so-called “tells”: the em dash, semi-colons, and parentheticals. I use a lot of all these things and have for years, but what is the comparison between how much I use them and how much AI uses them? (And in some cases, my use of some things mirrors AI despite the fact that I know I've used them “excessively” and can go back to examples from the 2010s to prove it.)

Last month, the New York Times quoted a teacher who said “They are using generative A.I. to write before they learn how to write.” Teachers I spoke to last year lamented that they are spending their very real human hours and considerable brain power trying to determine whether they are grading essays that are written by humans or robots, and know that they are often giving writing notes on papers that were likely written by AI.

Speaks more to the school system. When kids don't feel they're doing something within their capabilities (like kids who struggle to write in the language of instruction because they're not getting necessary language support) or something that is authentically engaging, you're going to end up with AI work (much like you end up with copied work prior to AI). Also, it's easy to tell whether the work your students give you is AI if you work with them throughout the whole process and also engage them in other things (e.g., note-taking for the process). I know a teacher's job requires a lot (I've done it for 15 years), but I'm seeing a lot of focus on the wrong things and teachers handing out excessive amounts of work.

• I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. by Marcus Olang' [8 July 2025]

This was linked in the above article, but when I opened it and saw:

The replies pointed out something crucial, something that makes this whole debate even more infuriating: Some of us actually had to learn English.

I knew I had to actually read it. Even though I grew up speaking English as my first language (and therefore didn't have to learn English in the same way because it came to me “naturally” as part of the environment I grew up in), I have worked with a number of people who speak a different first language and therefore learned English in a formal classroom setting.

To these detectives of digital inauthenticity, I say: Friend, welcome to a typical Tuesday in a Kenyan classroom, boardroom, or intra-office Teams chat. The very things you identify as the fingerprints of the machine are, in fact, the fossil records of our education.

And even though the people I have worked with are Korean, Slovak, Czech, Polish, Chinese, Ghanaian, etc... They also frequently use the same “AI tells” that Marcus lists because they all learned English in a classroom with varying degrees of strict colonial attitudes built into the curriculum.

Recent academic studies have confirmed this, finding that these tools are not only unreliable but are significantly more likely to flag text written by non-native English speakers as AI-generated. (And, again, we’re going to get back to this.) The irony is maddening: You spend a lifetime mastering a language, adhering to its formal rules with greater diligence than most native speakers, and for this, a machine built an ocean away calls you a fake.

I just love this paragraph, so go read Marcus's piece. I'm not saying more than that.

related tags: #ShortReading

• Anti-imperialism of the Idiots: How Western Campists and Tankies Align with the Axis of Resistance [25 January 2025]

Personally, I don't see a need for the term “campists” when the two camps are effectively the same thing. “Tankies” doesn't allow them to escape the historical complicity that they continue supporting, particularly since these people are continuations of the same political project that would've supported the Soviets sending tanks into Hungary in 1956.

Otherwise, I like this incredibly concise piece because it highlights a continuing issue of Western leftists supporting other authoritarian and imperial regimes in favour of what is largely anti-US politics (because even when they are anti-Israel, that opposition still sits largely with their opposition to the United States and the connection of Israel to the US rather than actually critiquing the problems of Zionism and the inherent colonialism of Israel). I also think that a tankie's opposition to Europe is a mixed bag and highly dependent upon the situation being discussed, whether that nation shares an affinity for similar authoritarian regimes (e.g., Russia), and often seek to obfuscate the imperialism or colonialism of the nation they choose to tentatively support.

• Fergie Chambers Is Heir to One of America’s Richest Families — and Determined to See the U.S. Fall by David Peisner (24 March 2024)

I'm not a fan of the framing of this article, but it highlights a lot of red flags that people will gladly overlook in their supposed anti-colonial or anti-imperial politics, including domestic abuse (a constant thing that is neglected by many people). Probably one of the most honest parts of the article is this:

Chambers’ outsize wealth ensures his outsize opinions have outsize influence. He consistently shrugs off the notion that he’s the leader of any movement, but as Kamau Franklin, who runs Community Movement Builders, a Black-led nonprofit that works on issues of police violence and sustainability and to which Chambers has given multiple grants, puts it, “Because of the resources he has, whether people like it or not — whether I like it or not — he’s deferred to by certain people who are looking to bring him in closer in order to get those resources.”

And also this:

Pushak, one of a few veterans of the Madison compound who moved to Alford, eventually fell out with Chambers. He looks back fondly on their friendship, but says Chambers just didn’t like being challenged. “People are somewhat disposable to him,” he says. “He can buy new friends. I feel like an asshole saying it, but it didn’t feel that way until I was treated that way.”

• Transmisandry Is Not Real by Devon Price (22 January 2024) [archive link]

Devon writes about how the bigotries that trans men face are more often not as a result of being men but because other people do not see them as men. I like this piece for how it highlights where the bigotries are coming from, making it clear that they are part of battles that people are fighting in other arenas.

related tags: #ShortReading

• The State vs. the Emma Goldman Book Club by Sara Van Horn (2 April 2026)

This whole case has been infuriating, but I also don't like giving the first amendment nonprofits any excuse. The ACLU has literally come out in support of Nazis in the past, and they can't handle the fact that there was a gun present in a protest in a state where guns are very legal? That seems like they'd rather pick and choose who gets first amendment rights, despite their claims otherwise.

The above article is a pretty good rundown of the Pairieland trial.

• How the Prairieland ‘Antifa’ Verdict Threatens the Anti-Trump Resistance by Steven Monacelli (19 March 2026)

Same topic as above, immediately after the verdict, and discusses the repercussions of this decision. While I don't usually like engaging with former intelligence dorks (which this article does), they do make good points about what'll happen (that, btw, most people who didn't do any of this to other people... already had made).

• School book banning escalates in the UK as Greater Manchester secondary school censors scores of books by Katie Dancey-Downs (20 March 2026)

Ridiculous use of AI to ban books, but also just a bunch of absurd censorship choices. Children are being weaponised again for “their own safety.”

related tags: #ShortReading

I don't want to take notes on these, but I do want to keep track of and share some of the interesting things that I've read. (I'm not going to bother keeping track of things that felt annoying or awful to me.)

• On The Enshittification of Audre Lorde: “The Master's Tools” in Tech Discourse by Tara Tarakiyee (28 March 2026)

Using Cory Doctorow's usage of Audre Lorde as a jumping off point, Tarakiyee delves into the context and history of Audre Lordes comments on “the master's tools” and how it is utilised in tech. This particular quote is something that I like, and I think it'll stick with me (probably because it feeds into my frustration for people using the work of others as a means to shut people up):

From my perspective, in free software and adjacent communities, the phrase has taken on a life entirely detached from its origins. I myself have probably engaged with it that way, to be completely honest. Micah White described it as “the atomic bomb of discussion enders,” a phrase so potent it can be applied to absolutely any argument about strategy and method, often by people who have never encountered the full speech. White's concern is not with Lorde's argument but with what has been done to it: a revolutionary provocation flattened into a reflexive shutdown. It shows up most often as a thought-terminating cliché: using corporate infrastructure, proprietary platforms, or mainstream legal mechanisms to advance liberation goals is self-defeating by definition. The master's tools. End of conversation.

• The Technofascist Technology Quiz by Catherine D'Ignazio (28 February 2026)

Somewhat useful, though I feel that it is lacking because it doesn't do enough to recognise that even centralising around the government (not just military or law enforcement*) enables technofascism. Seems like it could be a good starting point, but it really needs to engage specifically with governments and not just some of the institutions they offer.

This also includes that she needs to have people think about connections between corporations and other institutions (e.g., Palantir's use in health services).

I feel similarly about the post she wrote previously, trying to figure out how to define technofascism.

• The AI climate hoax by Ketan Joshi (17 February 2026)

Greenwashing is always something I'm reading about when it comes up, especially because it's such a major problem. There's also one on a “green” and “privacy-focused” search engine that added AI, despite the fact that their claims were nonsense.

I don't think regulations are going to save us, so I don't agree with those proposals because it's so easy to undo policy (as we see everywhere). I really do think more direct action and dismantling of these industries and companies is the best way to deal with this.