Seeing that we are heading into another relative meaningless weekend I am hoping that this longer email today will serve up some quality content, reading and viewing pleasure for you good people. As always, if you can and would like to, you can subscribe to this newsletter and help me pay my rent and what have you by hitting the button below.
Let’s kick this off with two documentaries that are equally excellent in regards to their educational value as well as entertainment. The first one is part if CGTN’s “Faces of Africa” series, with this particular episode focusing on Haile Selassie's, modern Ethiopia’s founder, who dared to confront The League of Nations, now UN, pleading for their support in conquering the Italians who were preparing to attack Ethiopia among many other noteworthy actions.
Secondly, a BBC Documentary called “Roots, Reggae, Rebellion” which is a brilliant hour long introduction to the revolution that Reggae was in the broadest of senses. The political and social contribution from this genre is vast and very much worth your time even if you don’t like the music.
In regards to your weekend reading, I wanted to suggest this article that I have been going back to for the last few weeks. It is called: “The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism- Big technological shifts have always empowered reformers. They have also empowered bigots, hucksters, and propagandists” and was written by Andrew Marantz and is the author of “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.”
The above article leads well into this following piece by Vijay Boyapati, who a few years ago wrote one of the best critiques of Bitcoin that up until recently was hidden behind a paywall. You can now read it below, which, if this interesting to you, I can only recommend.
How To Be An Anti-Capitalist in a Capitalist World
We return to this segment with a short talk by the sorely missed David Graeber, whom I have been thinking about a lot lately, revisiting his seminal work “Bullshit Jobs” for some additional takes to include into my thesis. In any case, again, this is worth your time and if it tickles your fancy, by all means, get the above book.
Kicking off the hot shots from the last few days is this most excellent thread about QAnon, or rather some of the top people behind it all, which is something I haven’t had much time to look into. By all means click on the screenshot below to be taken into the darker corners of that scam.
This is also quietly bubbling up in various news services other than the Australian one and I must say it has me extremely interested. I can’t say I know all the details but feel regardless of what is happening that Australians ( and the rest of us ) are once again at the short stick of what appears to be a fight between good old Fuckerberg and the Evil Sith Lord Murdoch. I have linked the tweet because the entire thread is again important to dig into.
That’s all for this week folks. I will be putting together a new book club for the supporting part of this thing over the weekend as well as prepping the last Black Lodges drop for February, until then, stay in trouble.