Si estás leyendo esto, lo más probable es que ya te haya estado dando la lata con el Fediverso. Como no puedo callarme al respecto, y como me veo enviando los mismos enlaces a todo el mundo todo el tiempo, pensé que sería bueno tener una ’entrada de aterrizaje’ a la que poder referir a la gente.

If you read this you have most likely been harassed by me about the Fediverse. Because I can’t shut up about it, and because I find myself sending around the same links to everyone all the time, I thought it would be good to have a ’landing post’ to refer people to.

How is feudalism making a comeback? What exactly makes Google, Meta and Amazon feudal? Why does it matter, and how should we escape?

A Dutch version of this post has been published on doorbraak.eu.

Introduction

In this post I put together some ideas on capitalism, what it is, what it is not, and why it makes sense to recognize that we’re in it.

The reason why I am writing this, is because I feel that the term “capitalism” is often thrown around without too much care. As something that has to do with markets and profits. Or as something that is simply “not socialism or communism”.

Deze post is ook geplaatst op doorbraak.eu.

Met het intrekken van de uitnodiging van Tofik Dibi als spreker bij de herdenking van de Februaristaking begaat het landelijk bestuur van de FNV een grote fout. Het is beschamend om te zien hoe makkelijk ze zich laten misleiden door valse framing.

In het kort: je kan niet op 25 februari Willem Kraan herdenken, en tegelijk de mensen die de overduidelijke lessen trekken uit zijn voorbeeld (en dat van zijn kameraden) wegzetten als “ordeverstoorders”.

A Dutch version of this post has been published on doorbraak.eu.

On 4 November 2025, Science Guide reported on the decision by the rector of University Utrecht, Wilco Hazeleger, to allow the founder of the FvD - Thierry Baudet - to speak at a debate night at the university.

This is simultaneously shocking, and completely unsurprising. It is shocking because the academic community has apparently still - after everything that is happening in the world - not built up the necessary immune response to keep these threats out. It is unsurprising because this moral failure of university management has been with us for many years.

Link to the full (five page text).

In great pain and terror one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is, and formed one’s point of view. In great pain and terror because, thereafter, one enters into a battle with that historical creation, Oneself, and attempts to re-create oneself according to a principle more human and more liberating: one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power, and also changes history.

But, obviously, I am speaking as an historical creation which has had bitterly to contest its history, to wrestle with it, and finally accept it, in order to bring myself out of it. My point of view certainly is formed by my history, and it is probably that only a creature despised by history finds history a questionable matter. On the other hand, people who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.

Next time you have to explain to someone why it’s better to not eat meat, you can tell them that it is to make sure that the next asteroid impact will not prevent electronic life from knowing the universe.

Let James Lovelock be a vehicle for the universe to say crazy things about itself.

Renegade scientist, deranged technocrat

I have always had a hard time making up my mind about James Lovelock. On the one hand, his Gaia hypothesis has really changed the way I (and many others) think about the remarkable equilibria we are born into. On the other hand, the way his ego and his (largely self-acclaimed?) engineering credentials have consistently manifested in confused appeals to technocracy - “it may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while” - has been misguided and dangerous.

In het artikel “Heil Israël” in de Groene Amsterdammer van 30 april 2025 spreekt Ian Buruma zich uit tegen de arrestaties en deportaties die plaatsvinden onder de regering Trump.

Demonstranten als Mahmoud Khalil worden beroofd van hun burgerrechten, zo stelt hij, en dat dit gebeurt onder het mom van fascistische strijd tegen Khalil’s vermeende “internationalisme” en “wortelloze kosmopolitisme” maakt het een vorm van antisemitisme.

Het lijkt me nogal een stretch om hier van antisemitisme te spreken¹, maar dat er ijzingwekkende parallellen bestaan tussen het antisemitisme van de jaren 30-40 en het racisme/ de moslimhaat van onze tijd is wat mij betreft overduidelijk.

A couple of weeks ago, a few kind students warned me about a post on Instagram: link.¹

I am always open to hear how my ideas and positions are hurtful in ways I do not realize yet. And I believe that when it comes to antisemitism, non-Jewish people like me have a special duty to be extra wary. As I have written here:

In the end, the conflict in Palestine knows many monsters, and they all feed on each other. But many of these monsters came from white, Dutch, German, French etc. non-Jewish people, manifested as the genocidal antisemitic and colonial violence committed abroad and at home. And since we cannot go back to fight these monsters in the past, the second best thing is to fight and resist their manifestations in the present, both at home and abroad.