Roundup #4

The cultural politics of AI-slop, Third American Foundings, Democratic Party politics, and pushing back on disinformation. Here's some of what I've been brooding on lately.

Hello fellow Brooders!

Your boy has been brooding like a maniac this week, so it’s time for a round-up:

• Many, many of you subscribed to the newsletter after reading “Towards A New Playbook for the Democratic Party”: I welcome and thank you! In what is until now my most popular post ever (by far!), I registered frustrations amongst the Democratic Party base with the perceived inaction of their politicians and offered them some blunt advice. This one seems to have touched a nerve, especially on Bluesky. (Welcome, Bluesky friends!)

• I followed that up with a post offering some thoughts on how we can address online polarization, algorithmic bubbles, and fight mis/disinformation in our everyday lives, asking “What Can We Do to Stop MAGA’s War on Truth?”

• In “Notes Towards a Third American Founding” I attempted to draw lessons from history on how we can reverse democratic backsliding in the USA once Trump and his goons finally exit the stage. I argue that it’s time for the American Left to start planning now for some serious policy and Constitutional overhauls—first and foremost, by learning to dream big dreams again.

• Topping off a week heavy in political content, I turned to the recent flood of Studio Ghibli inspired AI-images, including some particularly cruel ones released on the White House’s social media accounts. I read these against Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s popular blog post “Machines of Loving Grace” to try to divine just what these AI-entrepreneurs think they are up to. Far from Amodei’s fantasies of loving grace, I decide these are “Machines of Loathsome Gauche.”

I know, I know; this week’s content has just been way too political. I’m exhausted too.

So for my weekly recommendations, let’s turn the temperature down a notch:

Moody Candle-Light Reading

I’ve been re-reading Kate Chopin’s classic novella The Awakening. Written at the turn of the 20th century (1899), it’s considered a feminist masterpiece of either literary naturalism or proto-modernist impressionism depending upon which literature professor you ask. I’ve been really struck by the way it deals with the inner life of its protagonist, and already knowing the tragic ending of the story makes it a really insightful and moving book to revisit. Highly recommended.

Berlin Local Listening

I’ve mentioned it before, but we have a lot of new friends from far away, so my first suggestion is going to be what is, by my estimation, one of the world’s best radio stations: FluxFM, a German radio station which one can stream via browser or app out of Berlin or Hamburg. I’m listening to it as I pen this. They have a lot of hand-curated lists of different alternative genres by independent DJs. They also play great techno sets on weekend evenings, sometimes live from Berlin’s underground clubs. If you like music and are sick of Spotify, this is a great alternative.

If you also live in Berlin, or even in Germany, you may have come across the Radio Spätkauf podcast, a Berlin news and interview podcast in English. To my mind, this is what podcasts should be: a bunch of friends getting together afterhours in a bookshop or comedy club to interview local experts and discuss local issues in front of a live audience. It is light on the bells and whistles, very authentic in an age of overproduced, celebrity-hosted podcasts. In their last episode, they covered the completely unnecessary A100 highway extension the Federal government wants to run through the last glimmers of Berlin’s legendary club district—and, full disclosure, my backyard. This is a real local gem, popular amongst both native German speakers and expat Berliners alike.

They have also done some really good, well-produced, and often funny investigative and narrative reporting series such as How To Fuck Up An Airport on the Berlin airport construction fiasco, and Rent Freeze, on the attempt to institute a rent cap in Berlin a few years back. If you live in or are interested in Berlin, these are a must-listen.

Take-It-Or-Leave-It Streaming

Sometimes, it’s worth it to reflect on stuff which is, well, just not that good, but still holds some meaning for us. If you’re like me, you can’t seem to escape the evil clutches of Amazon Prime (what can I say, it’s hard to buy certain English-language and scholarly books elsewhere in Germany these days). If you’re also a fantasy nerd, you may have also noted that they’ve been dropping episodes of their Wheel of Time adaptations. I grew up reading this fantasy series by the late Robert Jordan; I haven’t picked the novels up in years so I can’t speak to their quality anymore, but I remember them matching the old-school 1990’s-sized textbooks we had to lug around in our backpacks in size and weight. The show is, meh, worth a gander if you read these books too and need a jolt of nostalgia; but warning, the show isn’t really that good. More of a way to kill time.

That’s all for now, friends! More to come soon. Stay Broody, Everyone!