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.

This is the second part of a two-part series. See also this article. Both articles first appeared in a slightly different form on the blog of OpenTech(AUC).

“…if we can’t convince people to take over the means of production when it only requires a USB stick with Linux and a short online course on bash/python, how are we ever going to gain control over (and share the fruits of) other, more material and inert kinds of technology?”

Given the ongoing antidemocratic #coup in the United States and the ensuing increased security and privacy issues, the University of Amsterdam should move away from using Microsoft servers.

In short:

1. No amount of guarantees from Microsoft that our data remains in the EU can prevent US authorities from accessing our data on its servers.
2. The government of the United States is being taken over by fascist criminals.

Readings to support point 1

• “It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds” (Bert Hubert, 23 Feb 2025 link).

The very short version: it is madness to continue transferring the running of European societies and governments to American clouds. Not only is it a terrible idea given the kind of things the “King of America” keeps saying, the legal sophistry used to justify such transfers, like the nonsense letter the Dutch cabinet sent last week, has now been invalidated by Trump himself. And why are we doing this? Convenience. But it is very scary to make yourself 100% dependent on the goodwill of the American government merely because it is convenient. So let’s not.

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

Israel and Hamas have signed a ceasefire: “we” finally have what we have been chanting for.

So what now? Business as usual? Move on with our lives?

Many people are eager to do so, and many are already doing so.

But this is unacceptable.

So what do we do?

The miserable truth is that the worst kinds of injustice can often not be undone: we cannot raise 100,000 Palestinians back from the death.

This post is part of a series about the alleged return of feudalism with the advent of Big Tech.

What is capitalism? What words, ideas and/or concepts would you generally associate with it?

Some might say it is all about “technological development” driven by the “desire to be rich”. Others might say something like “greed” and the “naked pursuit of power”.

But greed, lust for power and even technological development have been around for much longer than capitalism.

This post originally appeared on the website of OpenTech(AUC).

Imagine you’re at a house party, and people are getting drunk. Slowly but steadily, they are raising their voice. And as more and more people do, you are going to have to raise your voice as well. At the end of the night, everyone is screaming in each others’ ears, without being any more audible than when everyone was talking at a normal volume.

When our governments insist with all their propaganda tools that speaking out against Israel is antisemitic - conflating antizionism with antisemitism - we can’t be surprised that some angry teens in Amsterdam - furious about an ongoing genocide - make the same (stupid and dangerous) mistake.

Fighting the latter, implies fighting the former.