Column of smoke seen, loud noises heard in Venezuelan capital (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/loud-noises-heard-venezuela-capital-southern-area-without-electricity-2026-01-03/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260103/p3#a260103p3
Seeing Iran appoint new leaders and continue to fight is seeing the more literal kind of necropolitics in action, as a hierarchical system continues to function while replacing the expendable human parts that it lost. The system is of course changed and influenced (and ultimately was built) by humans, but it has become something undying, or at least almost as hard to kill as an idea, and it maintains a terrible inertia in it's destructive tendencies (e.g., "Morality Police" continue to patrol the streets).
Lest anyone think this somehow expresses approval of US actions, the same logic applies here too: what once had a (thin) verneer of democracy, a system which loudly proclaimed to be controlled by "the people" (but which never was nor was ever intended to be) has lost its paint job, exposing the inhuman machinations beneath. Trump is a symptom, not cause, of an institution built on blood and spoils, whose alignment with the Epstein class (and moreover, their institutions) is ever more apparent with each disregarded law and principle.
Stepping back for a moment, this systems/necropolitics perspective is just a perspective, with its own distortions and blind spots. To paraphrase LeGuin, any institution built by humans can also be changed or destroyed by them. But I think it's very useful to put on the systems goggles in this moment, especially when some are fond of preaching about the dangers of "overwhelmingly powerful systems unaccountable to humans which pursue destructive ends" without actually examining the plethora of existing systems that do just that.
P.S. yes, United Healthcare is another good example of this.
P.P.S. yes I bending the meaning of necropolitics here, but the two are related: these systems would not be so free to profit from human death and suffering if they were more vulnerable to the deaths of their constituent parts. Necropolitics of the standard variety is of course present as companies like Raytheon and Lockeed Martin profit from the carnage. The F-15 caught by friendly fire? Just as profitable for Beoing to replace as one downed by the enemy.
One of the overall most prolific and never-ending enigmas for me is which speakers people think "sound good".
Like you can have the most garbage tinny piece of shit speakers in a TV or on a laptop and the reviews will be "sounds great!".
Or e.g. Sonos speakers—they sound horrific and people go on about how they're the best thing they've ever heard.
These aren't subjective opinions by the way, you can measure the frequency response etc.
How TSMC, Intel, and Amkor are transforming Phoenix into the US' chip hub, investing tens of billions and showing the difficulties of large-scale US projects (Peter S. Goodman/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/business/tsmc-phoenix-fab.html
Trump - who didn't actually end any wars - appears to have started one now.
Venezuela latest: Explosions heard as smoke rises in Caracas
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c5yqygxe41pt?post=asset:90dc6c5e-bbab-4f84-acbc-030fb168d49f#pos…
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@evacide/116003453964958203
OMG, YES, THANK YOU
In two sentences, a torpedo through the heart of both DHS as a racist secret police •and• AI as an accountability sink.
After fifteen months of hacking since our last post on the Hurd, we now present the 64-bit Hurd on Guix. Read all about it in this new post:
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2026/the-64-bit-hurd
[Much of] This work was sponsored by NLnet -- thank you!
As tear gas engulfed the protest witnesses recalled hearing six loud bangs;
a video posted on social media recorded eight,
as well as countless smaller pops.
At least eight arcs of smoke flew far over people’s heads,
as though aimed at the back of the crowd.
“I know they would do anything,
that they would hurt people,
that they’ve murdered people and shot them in the back 10 times,”
said Cassie Broeker, a Portland resident who came to protes…
Steve Cropper - a musician who wrote or played on many of the best American pop recordings of the twentieth century - is no more. Here's a track you may have heard before, co-written by Cropper and Redding. the latter tragically dying before the song's release.
Otis Redding, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" (1968)