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UPDATE 29.11.2021
As the Ghislaine Maxwell trial started today and the UK media remains silent after I sent the below to the press, and Maxwell’s camp tried hard to keep evidence out of court, I re-post this again and again!
UPDATE August 2022
My brief “case study” on Julian Metcalfe, it’s not indepth as I want to highlight something specific: Julian Metcalfe’s Family Line.
.
.
So here I am, minding my own business when I receive an email from an anonymous person with a link to page 38 for a “black book” of none other then convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who some believe may have been “suicided”. As I am contacted by former and current Pret staff, as well as now itsu issues that I pass on to the press, and at times it gets reported on, I get info as my blog is the main link between behind the scenes of Pret/itsu and the public/press.
So, the black address book of Epstein, what names do I see?
Pret A Manger co-“re”-founder and itsu founder, net-worth £215 million, Julian Metcalfe and his former wife Melanie with two addresses and phone numbers.
Of course it’s not a crime to be in a convicted pedophile & sex trafficker’s address book. And to be fair, Metcalfe was married to Melanie between 1992 and 2005. The first allegation on Epstein to police came in 2005, so technically people didn’t/couldn’t know about Epstein’s crimes. But still! Itsu staff have reviewed Metcalfe as sexist, racist, aggressive etc. (see YouTube below). Metcalfe comes from a long line of elite British folk and grew up wealthy and privileged. And in an interview with the Telegraph in July 2021 Metcalfe’s words are headlined with “Only the fittest will survive high street cull”.
This is very much in line with Metcalfe’s words to the Daily Mail last year regarding lock-down and being happy to sacrifice a few thousand very old and vulnerable people for the hospitality industry (again, please see YouTube below).
So, only Metcalfe knows why he is in Epstein’s infamous “black book” that has Ghislane Maxwell shake in her boots! And it doesn’t need to mean anything. But I find it noteworthy to mention after Metcalfe’s own aggressive words to the press (and other words that he deleted after I confronted him on Twitter), and what others say about him.
Quote from the Western Journal: »Epstein employee Alfredo Rodriguez called the list the “Holy Grail” or “Golden Nugget” that would map out the billionaire’s alleged underage sex network. Rodriguez first tried to sell it to journalists; instead, authorities seized it as evidence.«
About the black book via CNBC: The big names in Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Black Book’
.
Page 38:
.
I was sent this because I chased Metcalfe off Twitter last year and put it on a YouTube slide where I explained why Pret can’t be distanced to Metcalfe, after Pret made a statement of distancing themselves when Metcalfe made his appalling “eugenicist” lock-down comments to none other than the Daily Mail tabloid of all papers! Dumb move! After I chased him off Twitter, he’s become a little more media savvy now!
On his 2 day Twitter stint, I posted itsu staff reviews to Metcalfe where he is alleged to be sexist, racist, aggressive etc. Metcalfe continued his dumbness by RT’ing my Tweets to him! I suppose someone from Pret then must have warned him of who I am, as he then deleted his Twitter account the next day after only 2 days there, not knowing I already made screenshots!
I even tweeted at him saying, “will see how long you can hold on Twitter”, never thinking he lasted only 2 days, as other Pret execs ran off Twitter since I exposed Pret there.
His deletedTweets:
I use YouTube as my blog url is blocked completely on Facebook/Instagram even in private messages! But they can’t block YouTube!
Please note, I changed my Twitter handle “LateNightGirlMe to @expretDOTorg, as “late night girl” doesn’t make any sense for new readers. I explain how I came to my former handle in below audio player interview.
Most of his deleted Tweets where he retweeted my Tweets here on YouTibe:
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaqFzx1hKE
.
Little side note: Former Pret CEO Clive Schlee is very close friends and business partner with Julian Metcalfe. And Schlee is on the board of directors and owns half of itsu. But no, Schlee isn’t in Epstein’s address book, I’ve already checked! 😉
And a little piece about one of the phone books, as there is more than 1 it seems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7box15ryvx8
.
.
I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee (a close friend & business partner of Julian Metcalfe who also owns half of Metcalfe’s company itsu). I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review.Please also see the MEDIA page for more.
.
Thank you for reading/listening.©2017 – Present: expret.org
Interview:
.
https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/workplace-bullying-an-intervie-683101e6895da.m4a
.
.
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.https://expret.org/2021/10/18/pret-itsu-founder-julian-metcalfe-in-jeffrey-epstein-black-book/
#GhislaineMaxwell #GhislaineMaxwellTrial #itsu #JeffreyEpstein #JeffreyEpsteinBlackBook #JeffreyEpsteinSBlackBook #JulianMelanieMetcalfe #JulianMetcalfe #JulianMetcalfeInJeffreyEpsteinBlackBook #PretAManger
-
UPDATE 29.11.2021
As the Ghislaine Maxwell trial started today and the UK media remains silent after I sent the below to the press, and Maxwell’s camp tried hard to keep evidence out of court, I re-post this again and again!
UPDATE August 2022
My brief “case study” on Julian Metcalfe, it’s not indepth as I want to highlight something specific: Julian Metcalfe’s Family Line.
.
.
So here I am, minding my own business when I receive an email from an anonymous person with a link to page 38 for a “black book” of none other then convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who some believe may have been “suicided”. As I am contacted by former and current Pret staff, as well as now itsu issues that I pass on to the press, and at times it gets reported on, I get info as my blog is the main link between behind the scenes of Pret/itsu and the public/press.
So, the black address book of Epstein, what names do I see?
Pret A Manger co-“re”-founder and itsu founder, net-worth £215 million, Julian Metcalfe and his former wife Melanie with two addresses and phone numbers.
Of course it’s not a crime to be in a convicted pedophile & sex trafficker’s address book. And to be fair, Metcalfe was married to Melanie between 1992 and 2005. The first allegation on Epstein to police came in 2005, so technically people didn’t/couldn’t know about Epstein’s crimes. But still! Itsu staff have reviewed Metcalfe as sexist, racist, aggressive etc. (see YouTube below). Metcalfe comes from a long line of elite British folk and grew up wealthy and privileged. And in an interview with the Telegraph in July 2021 Metcalfe’s words are headlined with “Only the fittest will survive high street cull”.
This is very much in line with Metcalfe’s words to the Daily Mail last year regarding lock-down and being happy to sacrifice a few thousand very old and vulnerable people for the hospitality industry (again, please see YouTube below).
So, only Metcalfe knows why he is in Epstein’s infamous “black book” that has Ghislane Maxwell shake in her boots! And it doesn’t need to mean anything. But I find it noteworthy to mention after Metcalfe’s own aggressive words to the press (and other words that he deleted after I confronted him on Twitter), and what others say about him.
Quote from the Western Journal: »Epstein employee Alfredo Rodriguez called the list the “Holy Grail” or “Golden Nugget” that would map out the billionaire’s alleged underage sex network. Rodriguez first tried to sell it to journalists; instead, authorities seized it as evidence.«
About the black book via CNBC: The big names in Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Black Book’
.
Page 38:
.
I was sent this because I chased Metcalfe off Twitter last year and put it on a YouTube slide where I explained why Pret can’t be distanced to Metcalfe, after Pret made a statement of distancing themselves when Metcalfe made his appalling “eugenicist” lock-down comments to none other than the Daily Mail tabloid of all papers! Dumb move! After I chased him off Twitter, he’s become a little more media savvy now!
On his 2 day Twitter stint, I posted itsu staff reviews to Metcalfe where he is alleged to be sexist, racist, aggressive etc. Metcalfe continued his dumbness by RT’ing my Tweets to him! I suppose someone from Pret then must have warned him of who I am, as he then deleted his Twitter account the next day after only 2 days there, not knowing I already made screenshots!
I even tweeted at him saying, “will see how long you can hold on Twitter”, never thinking he lasted only 2 days, as other Pret execs ran off Twitter since I exposed Pret there.
His deletedTweets:
I use YouTube as my blog url is blocked completely on Facebook/Instagram even in private messages! But they can’t block YouTube!
Please note, I changed my Twitter handle “LateNightGirlMe to @expretDOTorg, as “late night girl” doesn’t make any sense for new readers. I explain how I came to my former handle in below audio player interview.
Most of his deleted Tweets where he retweeted my Tweets here on YouTibe:
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaqFzx1hKE
.
Little side note: Former Pret CEO Clive Schlee is very close friends and business partner with Julian Metcalfe. And Schlee is on the board of directors and owns half of itsu. But no, Schlee isn’t in Epstein’s address book, I’ve already checked! 😉
And a little piece about one of the phone books, as there is more than 1 it seems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7box15ryvx8
.
.
I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee (a close friend & business partner of Julian Metcalfe who also owns half of Metcalfe’s company itsu). I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review.Please also see the MEDIA page for more.
.
Thank you for reading/listening.©2017 – Present: expret.org
Interview:
.
https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/workplace-bullying-an-intervie-683101e6895da.m4a
.
.
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.https://expret.org/2021/10/18/pret-itsu-founder-julian-metcalfe-in-jeffrey-epstein-black-book/
#GhislaineMaxwell #GhislaineMaxwellTrial #itsu #JeffreyEpstein #JeffreyEpsteinBlackBook #JeffreyEpsteinSBlackBook #JulianMelanieMetcalfe #JulianMetcalfe #JulianMetcalfeInJeffreyEpsteinBlackBook #PretAManger
-
UPDATE 29.11.2021
As the Ghislaine Maxwell trial started today and the UK media remains silent after I sent the below to the press, and Maxwell’s camp tried hard to keep evidence out of court, I re-post this again and again!
UPDATE August 2022
My brief “case study” on Julian Metcalfe, it’s not indepth as I want to highlight something specific: Julian Metcalfe’s Family Line.
.
.
So here I am, minding my own business when I receive an email from an anonymous person with a link to page 38 for a “black book” of none other then convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who some believe may have been “suicided”. As I am contacted by former and current Pret staff, as well as now itsu issues that I pass on to the press, and at times it gets reported on, I get info as my blog is the main link between behind the scenes of Pret/itsu and the public/press.
So, the black address book of Epstein, what names do I see?
Pret A Manger co-“re”-founder and itsu founder, net-worth £215 million, Julian Metcalfe and his former wife Melanie with two addresses and phone numbers.
Of course it’s not a crime to be in a convicted pedophile & sex trafficker’s address book. And to be fair, Metcalfe was married to Melanie between 1992 and 2005. The first allegation on Epstein to police came in 2005, so technically people didn’t/couldn’t know about Epstein’s crimes. But still! Itsu staff have reviewed Metcalfe as sexist, racist, aggressive etc. (see YouTube below). Metcalfe comes from a long line of elite British folk and grew up wealthy and privileged. And in an interview with the Telegraph in July 2021 Metcalfe’s words are headlined with “Only the fittest will survive high street cull”.
This is very much in line with Metcalfe’s words to the Daily Mail last year regarding lock-down and being happy to sacrifice a few thousand very old and vulnerable people for the hospitality industry (again, please see YouTube below).
So, only Metcalfe knows why he is in Epstein’s infamous “black book” that has Ghislane Maxwell shake in her boots! And it doesn’t need to mean anything. But I find it noteworthy to mention after Metcalfe’s own aggressive words to the press (and other words that he deleted after I confronted him on Twitter), and what others say about him.
Quote from the Western Journal: »Epstein employee Alfredo Rodriguez called the list the “Holy Grail” or “Golden Nugget” that would map out the billionaire’s alleged underage sex network. Rodriguez first tried to sell it to journalists; instead, authorities seized it as evidence.«
About the black book via CNBC: The big names in Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Black Book’
.
Page 38:
.
I was sent this because I chased Metcalfe off Twitter last year and put it on a YouTube slide where I explained why Pret can’t be distanced to Metcalfe, after Pret made a statement of distancing themselves when Metcalfe made his appalling “eugenicist” lock-down comments to none other than the Daily Mail tabloid of all papers! Dumb move! After I chased him off Twitter, he’s become a little more media savvy now!
On his 2 day Twitter stint, I posted itsu staff reviews to Metcalfe where he is alleged to be sexist, racist, aggressive etc. Metcalfe continued his dumbness by RT’ing my Tweets to him! I suppose someone from Pret then must have warned him of who I am, as he then deleted his Twitter account the next day after only 2 days there, not knowing I already made screenshots!
I even tweeted at him saying, “will see how long you can hold on Twitter”, never thinking he lasted only 2 days, as other Pret execs ran off Twitter since I exposed Pret there.
His deletedTweets:
I use YouTube as my blog url is blocked completely on Facebook/Instagram even in private messages! But they can’t block YouTube!
Please note, I changed my Twitter handle “LateNightGirlMe to @expretDOTorg, as “late night girl” doesn’t make any sense for new readers. I explain how I came to my former handle in below audio player interview.
Most of his deleted Tweets where he retweeted my Tweets here on YouTibe:
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUaqFzx1hKE
.
Little side note: Former Pret CEO Clive Schlee is very close friends and business partner with Julian Metcalfe. And Schlee is on the board of directors and owns half of itsu. But no, Schlee isn’t in Epstein’s address book, I’ve already checked! 😉
And a little piece about one of the phone books, as there is more than 1 it seems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7box15ryvx8
.
.
I worked at Pret A Manger and survived systemic workplace bullying during bereavement that involved HR, the top leadership, HQ and even the now “retired” former CEO Clive Schlee (a close friend & business partner of Julian Metcalfe who also owns half of Metcalfe’s company itsu). I declined 4 settlement offers if I am silent about my ordeal. But I rather speak out to help others. For an overview of important blog entries of my experience with Pret, please visit “My Ordeal with Pret A Manger”. The little arrow to the right next to each heading will lead directly to the post.
An incomplete list on what other Pret staff say about Pret’s bullying environment: Caught in the Act Bullying at Pret.
I tell my story for the first time verbally in below audio player interview on a podcast by The Adam Paradox, and wrote two articles in the Scottish Left Review.Please also see the MEDIA page for more.
.
Thank you for reading/listening.©2017 – Present: expret.org
Interview:
.
https://expret.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/workplace-bullying-an-intervie-683101e6895da.m4a
.
.
Unless otherwise stated or linked to, this website and all writings within this site are the property of expret.org and are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Reproduction and distribution of my writings without written permission is prohibited.
©2017 – Present: expret.org unless otherwise stated. All Rights reserved. Disclaimer.https://expret.org/2021/10/18/pret-itsu-founder-julian-metcalfe-in-jeffrey-epstein-black-book/
#GhislaineMaxwell #GhislaineMaxwellTrial #itsu #JeffreyEpstein #JeffreyEpsteinBlackBook #JeffreyEpsteinSBlackBook #JulianMelanieMetcalfe #JulianMetcalfe #JulianMetcalfeInJeffreyEpsteinBlackBook #PretAManger
-
1/🧵
Black Book Club meeting last night was great. Lively discussion, good ideas bantered, and a great group of people!I seriously hope we get to come back to the life of Claudia Jones because we definitely did not get nearly deep enough into her life and work.
Last month's book:
Left of Karl Marx❝
In Left of Karl Marx, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915–1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist. Jones is buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx—a location that Boyce Davies finds fitting given how Jones expanded Marxism-Leninism to incorporate gender and race in her political critique and activism.
❞
https://www.dukeupress.edu/left-of-karl-marx#BookClub #BlackBookClub
#BlackHistoryEveryday #BlackMastodon #BlackHistory -
This Cabin on the Sázava River Is a Masterwork of Minimal Architecture — and It Started With Ash
Reconstruction is rarely romantic. But when Mimosa Architects rebuilt a small riverside cabin on the banks of the Sázava River in the Czech Republic, they did something quietly radical: they kept the ruins. The original cabin had burned down. What remained was a stone plinth — scarred, load-bearing, and stubborn. Instead of erasing it, the architects built on top of it. That decision set the tone for everything that followed.
The result is a cabin in the woods that manages to feel both ancient and precise. It sits between a river and a limestone cliff face, framed by pines, and clad entirely in charred larch — a material choice that nods, with a certain dark humor, to the fire that destroyed its predecessor. This is not a vacation home that provides relaxation. It simply is restful. And right now, that distinction matters more than ever.
We are living through a moment when small, intentional architecture is having a genuine cultural reckoning. Demand for off-grid cabins, forest retreats, and minimal riverside structures has surged. But most of what gets built looks like an Instagram set. This Sázava River cabin does not. It looks like it belongs exactly where it stands.
A cabin in the woods by Mimosa ArchitectsWhat Makes a Cabin in the Woods Architecturally Significant?
That is actually a serious question. Most small cabins do not earn critical attention. They function as shelter, maybe backdrop, and that is enough. So why does this one deserve closer reading?
Because Mimosa Architects made every constraint work harder. The stone plinth was not just preserved — it was activated. It lifts the wooden structure above flood level and provides a physical threshold between the river environment and the inhabited space above. Architecturally, this is what I call a Threshold Plinth Strategy: repurposing a structural remnant as a boundary-maker between landscape risk and lived experience. The plinth does not simply support the cabin. It frames your relationship to the river before you even step inside.
That kind of layered thinking runs through the entire project. Nothing in this cabin exists for decoration alone. Furthermore, nothing looks like it was borrowed from a catalog of cabin clichés. The material palette — charred larch on the exterior, spruce panels on the interior, black metal throughout — is deliberately unified. The architects call the interior a “cave.” That is not hyperbole. It is a spatial thesis.
The Cave Interior Concept: Shelter as Sensory Calibration
Most interiors aspire to openness. This one aspires to enclosure — deliberately. The dark tones of natural spruce paneling, the matte black woodstove, the blackened steel staircase, and the charred exterior all contribute to what I am calling the Chromatic Continuity Principle: a single-palette approach that eliminates visual noise and forces the eye outward, toward the only light source — the fully glazed river-facing wall.
This is not accidental. When your interior is dark, and your exterior view is bright, the window becomes the entire painting. The Sázava River, the kingfishers, the boulders breaking the current — all of it is composed and framed by the architectural decision to suppress interior contrast. You do not decorate this cabin. The river decorates it for you.
Additionally, the linoleum floor extends the “cave” logic all the way to your feet. It is durable, natural, and continuous — moving freely between the interior and the raised terrace outside. No thresholds interrupt the flow. No materials change mid-sentence. The effect is a kind of spatial grammar that reads cleanly even if you cannot articulate why.
Charred Larch Cladding — Why Burning Wood Is One of the Smartest Decisions in Contemporary Cabin Architecture
Shou sugi ban — the Japanese technique of charring timber — has been trending in Western architecture for about a decade. However, its application here carries a meaning that goes beyond surface aesthetics or trend adoption. The choice to clad this cabin in charred larch is simultaneously functional, symbolic, and slightly sardonic.
Functionally, charring creates a carbonized outer layer that repels moisture, insects, and rot. The larch beneath does not need chemical treatment. It also, the architect’s note with dry wit, makes the cabin “less appealing to uninvited guests.” That is a real security benefit. A burned-looking structure invites less casual curiosity than a bright Nordic wood box.
Symbolically, the charred facade connects this cabin to the fire that erased its predecessor. This is what I call Material Memory Architecture: using a building’s material finish to acknowledge what came before on the same site. The cabin does not perform grief about the fire. Instead, it incorporates the idea of fire into its own skin, permanently.
From an SEO and cultural standpoint, charred larch cabins in the woods currently represent one of the fastest-growing architectural search categories globally. Queries for “black cabin architecture,” “charred wood house exterior,” and “shou sugi ban cabin design” have grown substantially year over year. This project lands precisely in that space — but with intellectual depth that most trend-following projects lack.
Sheet Metal on the Uphill Side: A Quiet Structural Decision
Toward the slope behind the cabin, the architects switched from charred larch to sheet metal cladding. The reason is purely environmental: water flows down the hillside over the roof edge and along that wall. Larch, even charred, would not hold up under sustained water exposure at that angle. Metal does.
This is Contextual Material Switching — changing your cladding based on the directional forces your building faces, rather than imposing a uniform material language regardless of exposure. It is a small detail. But it is the kind of small detail that separates architects who think about buildings as living objects in environments from those who think about them as photographs.
The Stone Plinth as Architecture’s Deepest Root
Let us return to the plinth. It is the oldest element of this project. It predates the current building, predates the fire, and may predate several iterations of human habitation on this particular bend of the Sázava. Stone plinths like this one are common in rural Czech architecture — they were built to outlast the lighter wooden structures above them, and they frequently do.
Mimosa Architects did not just preserve the plinth. They integrated it structurally and programmatically. Inside the plinth sits a wastewater collection tank. The plinth also provides the cabin’s primary flood protection, raising the main living level above the river’s reach during high water. Moreover, it creates the psychological experience of elevation — the sense of looking slightly down at the river, rather than sitting at its edge.
That shift in perspective is worth considering. When you look down at moving water, even slightly, you enter a different cognitive mode. You observe rather than participate. You slow down. Architects rarely talk about plinths in these terms, but the spatial psychology of elevated observation is well-documented in environmental psychology literature. This cabin deploys it intuitively.
The Full-Height Shared Space: Against the Bedroom-First Logic
Most small cabin designs prioritize sleeping capacity. More beds equal more utility. Mimosa Architects inverted this logic. The main shared space spans the full height of the cabin, connecting the river facade to the cliffside rear wall. The sleeping areas — small, attic-level, just large enough for a bed — are minimized almost to the point of afterthought.
This reflects a specific philosophical position about what a cabin is for. The architects state it plainly: “After all, the purpose of going out of the city is to be together.” I agree with that. Most weekend retreats fail because they replicate urban apartment logic — private rooms first, shared space as an afterthought. This cabin refuses that hierarchy. Accordingly, it forces the social behavior it was designed for.
I call this the Sociality-First Floor Plan: a layout strategy that deliberately compresses private space to expand the quality of shared space. You cannot retreat here. You can only gather. For some people, that will be uncomfortable. For the right group, it will be exactly the point.
The Folding Shutter System: Architecture That Changes Its Mind
The river-facing elevation is fully glazed across its entire length. That is a significant transparency for a cabin in a flood-prone riparian environment. The design solution is a folding shutter — a large wooden screen that folds down over the glazing when needed.
When open, the cabin frames the Sázava completely. When closed, the cabin becomes, in the architects’ words, an “impregnable box.” The shutter system performs several functions simultaneously. It provides sun shading during summer afternoons. It offers security during the week when the cabin sits empty. And it creates a dramatic temporal rhythm — the act of opening the shutter on Friday evening and closing it on Sunday is a ritual that marks the beginning and end of the retreat experience.
This is Temporal Architecture: design elements whose primary purpose is to mark transitions in time and use, rather than simply to manage light or security. The shutter is not just practical. It is ceremonial. That distinction is exactly what separates good small architecture from great small architecture.
Self-Sufficiency as Design Principle
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid. Beyond that, it relies entirely on its own resources. Water comes from an on-site well. Wastewater collects in a tank within the plinth. Heating comes from a woodstove supplemented by electric heaters. There is no gas connection, no municipal water supply, and no dependency on infrastructure that could fail or be interrupted.
This model — minimal grid dependency — is increasingly relevant. Off-grid and near-off-grid cabin design for woodland and riverside settings has moved from fringe preference to mainstream aspiration. However, true off-grid design requires systemic thinking that most architects skip. Mimosa Architects solved it by embedding the utility infrastructure directly into the existing stone plinth. The wastewater tank is invisible. The well is part of the site’s original character. Nothing looks like a technical compromise.
The View Behind the Cabin: The Discovery Architecture Should Save for Last
There is a moment this cabin saves. On the way to the upstairs sleeping loft, the river view disappears. The staircase redirects your gaze. Suddenly, through a rear opening or window, the limestone cliffs that wall the Sázava valley come into view — a reminder of exactly how enclosed this river corridor is, how the water has cut through rock over millennia to create this narrow, intimate valley.
This sequential reveal is what I call Narrative View Architecture: the deliberate orchestration of views in sequence, so that a building rewards movement through it rather than simply revealing everything at once. You earn the cliff view by climbing to bed. That earned quality — that small effort and reward — is what makes architectural experience genuinely memorable, rather than simply visually impressive.
Most contemporary cabins orient entirely toward their primary view. This one gives you two distinct landscape readings that operate in tension: the openness of the river below, the compression of the cliffs behind. Together, they communicate something true about the Sázava valley — that it is a place caught between directions.
Mimosa Architects and the Czech Tradition of Riverside Cabin Design
Czech riverside cabins — chaty, in Czech — have a specific cultural history. They emerged throughout the twentieth century as urban escape valves for city dwellers, particularly in Prague. The Sázava Valley, roughly an hour from the capital, became one of the most densely chatyied river corridors in Central Europe. Most of these structures are informal, improvised, and deeply personal. They are not designed by architects. They grow incrementally over generations.
Mimosa Architects’ intervention on the Sázava engages with this tradition seriously. The cabin does not mimic the vernacular chata aesthetic — it does not reach for the steeply pitched roof, the painted shutters, the garden gnome on the plinth. Instead, it extracts the underlying logic of the chata: compression, self-sufficiency, community, and sensory connection to the river. Then it rebuilds that logic in a contemporary architectural language.
The result is a cabin that is unmistakably Czech in its relationship to landscape and leisure, but internationally legible in its material and spatial intelligence. That is a difficult balance to strike. Mimosa Architects struck it.
Photography by Petr Polák
The documentation of this project was handled by photographer Petr Polák. Polák’s work captures the cabin’s light behavior accurately — the way the charred larch absorbs and holds afternoon light, the reflective quality of the river surface as seen through the full-height glazing, and the textural contrast between the rough stone plinth and the precise wooden frame above it. Architectural photography of this quality is itself a form of critical interpretation. These images do not flatter the building. They read it.
What This Cabin Predicts About the Future of Small Architecture
The Sázava River cabin points toward several directions in which small architecture will continue to develop over the next decade. First, Material Memory Architecture will grow as a practice — especially for buildings replacing structures lost to fire, flood, or demolition. The act of encoding site history into material choices is both ethical and commercially compelling in an era of climate-driven building loss.
Second, the Sociality-First Floor Plan will become more deliberate as designers respond to post-pandemic research showing that people seek shared experience, not just proximity. Compressing private space to expand social space is a testable hypothesis about human behavior, not just a stylistic preference.
Third, near-off-grid design for riverside and woodland settings will stop being a niche specification and become a baseline expectation. As municipal infrastructure faces increasing stress from climate events, clients who once considered grid independence exotic will consider grid dependency risky.
Finally, the folding shutter — and temporal architecture more broadly — will gain critical recognition as a category. Buildings that change their relationship to the landscape over time are more honest about how we actually use them than buildings that perform a single fixed relationship to their site.
The Sázava River cabin is small. But small buildings, when they are thought through completely, have always been where architectural ideas are tested most rigorously. This one passes.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Sázava River Cabin by Mimosa Architects
Who designed the Sázava River cabin?
The cabin was designed by Mimosa Architects, a Czech architecture practice. The project replaces a previous cabin on the same site that was destroyed by fire, retaining and integrating the original stone plinth into the new structure.
What is charred larch cladding, and why was it used on this cabin?
Charred larch cladding is timber that has been surface-burned, typically using a technique derived from the Japanese practice of shou sugi ban. Charring carbonizes the outer wood layer, making it highly resistant to moisture, insects, rot, and fire. Mimosa Architects selected it for both its durability and its symbolic resonance with the fire that destroyed the original cabin on the site.
Is the Sázava River cabin off-grid?
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid for power but is otherwise self-sufficient. Water is drawn from an on-site well, wastewater is collected in a tank housed within the stone plinth, and heating is provided by a woodstove supported by electric heaters. It requires no municipal water supply or gas connection.
What is the folding shutter system on the river-facing facade?
The river-facing wall of the cabin is fully glazed and fitted with a large folding wooden shutter. The shutter closes over the glazing to provide shade during intense summer sun, security when the cabin is unoccupied, and protection during severe weather. When open, it allows uninterrupted views of the Sázava River from the full-length interior space.
Why is the cabin interior described as a “cave”?
The architects used a deliberately unified dark material palette — natural spruce wood panels, black metal elements, and linoleum flooring — to create an interior that absorbs light rather than reflecting it. This enclosing quality suppresses visual noise and directs attention outward toward the fully glazed river view, functioning as a framing device rather than a decorative space.
What is the stone plinth, and what role does it play?
The stone plinth is the surviving foundation of the original cabin that burned down. Mimosa Architects retained and incorporated it into the new structure. It elevates the cabin above flood level, houses the wastewater collection tank, and creates a psychological sense of elevated perspective over the river. It is both a structural and a symbolic element of the project.
Where is the Sázava River located, and what is its architectural significance?
The Sázava River runs through the Bohemian Highlands in the Czech Republic, roughly an hour south of Prague. The Sázava Valley is historically significant as one of Central Europe’s most densely populated recreational river corridors, lined with weekend cabins — known as chaty — that represent a specific Czech tradition of urban escape and riverside leisure culture. Mimosa Architects’ cabin engages critically with this tradition.
Who photographed the Sázava River cabin?
The project was photographed by Petr Polák, whose studio is at petrpolakstudio.cz. Polák’s documentation captures the material texture, light behavior, and landscape relationship of the cabin with precision.
What makes this cabin relevant to contemporary minimal architecture trends?
The Sázava River cabin addresses several of the most active areas of contemporary small architecture: near-off-grid self-sufficiency, charred timber cladding, maximized shared social space over private sleeping capacity, and the use of folding shutters to create temporal shifts in a building’s relationship to its landscape. It also demonstrates how to engage meaningfully with a site’s history without resorting to pastiche or nostalgia.
All images © Petr Polák and Mimosa Architects. Browse WE AND THE COLOR’s Architecture section to find other inspiring projects from around the globe.
#architecture #cabin #CzechRepublic #MimosaArchitects #SázavaRiver -
This Cabin on the Sázava River Is a Masterwork of Minimal Architecture — and It Started With Ash
Reconstruction is rarely romantic. But when Mimosa Architects rebuilt a small riverside cabin on the banks of the Sázava River in the Czech Republic, they did something quietly radical: they kept the ruins. The original cabin had burned down. What remained was a stone plinth — scarred, load-bearing, and stubborn. Instead of erasing it, the architects built on top of it. That decision set the tone for everything that followed.
The result is a cabin in the woods that manages to feel both ancient and precise. It sits between a river and a limestone cliff face, framed by pines, and clad entirely in charred larch — a material choice that nods, with a certain dark humor, to the fire that destroyed its predecessor. This is not a vacation home that provides relaxation. It simply is restful. And right now, that distinction matters more than ever.
We are living through a moment when small, intentional architecture is having a genuine cultural reckoning. Demand for off-grid cabins, forest retreats, and minimal riverside structures has surged. But most of what gets built looks like an Instagram set. This Sázava River cabin does not. It looks like it belongs exactly where it stands.
A cabin in the woods by Mimosa ArchitectsWhat Makes a Cabin in the Woods Architecturally Significant?
That is actually a serious question. Most small cabins do not earn critical attention. They function as shelter, maybe backdrop, and that is enough. So why does this one deserve closer reading?
Because Mimosa Architects made every constraint work harder. The stone plinth was not just preserved — it was activated. It lifts the wooden structure above flood level and provides a physical threshold between the river environment and the inhabited space above. Architecturally, this is what I call a Threshold Plinth Strategy: repurposing a structural remnant as a boundary-maker between landscape risk and lived experience. The plinth does not simply support the cabin. It frames your relationship to the river before you even step inside.
That kind of layered thinking runs through the entire project. Nothing in this cabin exists for decoration alone. Furthermore, nothing looks like it was borrowed from a catalog of cabin clichés. The material palette — charred larch on the exterior, spruce panels on the interior, black metal throughout — is deliberately unified. The architects call the interior a “cave.” That is not hyperbole. It is a spatial thesis.
The Cave Interior Concept: Shelter as Sensory Calibration
Most interiors aspire to openness. This one aspires to enclosure — deliberately. The dark tones of natural spruce paneling, the matte black woodstove, the blackened steel staircase, and the charred exterior all contribute to what I am calling the Chromatic Continuity Principle: a single-palette approach that eliminates visual noise and forces the eye outward, toward the only light source — the fully glazed river-facing wall.
This is not accidental. When your interior is dark, and your exterior view is bright, the window becomes the entire painting. The Sázava River, the kingfishers, the boulders breaking the current — all of it is composed and framed by the architectural decision to suppress interior contrast. You do not decorate this cabin. The river decorates it for you.
Additionally, the linoleum floor extends the “cave” logic all the way to your feet. It is durable, natural, and continuous — moving freely between the interior and the raised terrace outside. No thresholds interrupt the flow. No materials change mid-sentence. The effect is a kind of spatial grammar that reads cleanly even if you cannot articulate why.
Charred Larch Cladding — Why Burning Wood Is One of the Smartest Decisions in Contemporary Cabin Architecture
Shou sugi ban — the Japanese technique of charring timber — has been trending in Western architecture for about a decade. However, its application here carries a meaning that goes beyond surface aesthetics or trend adoption. The choice to clad this cabin in charred larch is simultaneously functional, symbolic, and slightly sardonic.
Functionally, charring creates a carbonized outer layer that repels moisture, insects, and rot. The larch beneath does not need chemical treatment. It also, the architect’s note with dry wit, makes the cabin “less appealing to uninvited guests.” That is a real security benefit. A burned-looking structure invites less casual curiosity than a bright Nordic wood box.
Symbolically, the charred facade connects this cabin to the fire that erased its predecessor. This is what I call Material Memory Architecture: using a building’s material finish to acknowledge what came before on the same site. The cabin does not perform grief about the fire. Instead, it incorporates the idea of fire into its own skin, permanently.
From an SEO and cultural standpoint, charred larch cabins in the woods currently represent one of the fastest-growing architectural search categories globally. Queries for “black cabin architecture,” “charred wood house exterior,” and “shou sugi ban cabin design” have grown substantially year over year. This project lands precisely in that space — but with intellectual depth that most trend-following projects lack.
Sheet Metal on the Uphill Side: A Quiet Structural Decision
Toward the slope behind the cabin, the architects switched from charred larch to sheet metal cladding. The reason is purely environmental: water flows down the hillside over the roof edge and along that wall. Larch, even charred, would not hold up under sustained water exposure at that angle. Metal does.
This is Contextual Material Switching — changing your cladding based on the directional forces your building faces, rather than imposing a uniform material language regardless of exposure. It is a small detail. But it is the kind of small detail that separates architects who think about buildings as living objects in environments from those who think about them as photographs.
The Stone Plinth as Architecture’s Deepest Root
Let us return to the plinth. It is the oldest element of this project. It predates the current building, predates the fire, and may predate several iterations of human habitation on this particular bend of the Sázava. Stone plinths like this one are common in rural Czech architecture — they were built to outlast the lighter wooden structures above them, and they frequently do.
Mimosa Architects did not just preserve the plinth. They integrated it structurally and programmatically. Inside the plinth sits a wastewater collection tank. The plinth also provides the cabin’s primary flood protection, raising the main living level above the river’s reach during high water. Moreover, it creates the psychological experience of elevation — the sense of looking slightly down at the river, rather than sitting at its edge.
That shift in perspective is worth considering. When you look down at moving water, even slightly, you enter a different cognitive mode. You observe rather than participate. You slow down. Architects rarely talk about plinths in these terms, but the spatial psychology of elevated observation is well-documented in environmental psychology literature. This cabin deploys it intuitively.
The Full-Height Shared Space: Against the Bedroom-First Logic
Most small cabin designs prioritize sleeping capacity. More beds equal more utility. Mimosa Architects inverted this logic. The main shared space spans the full height of the cabin, connecting the river facade to the cliffside rear wall. The sleeping areas — small, attic-level, just large enough for a bed — are minimized almost to the point of afterthought.
This reflects a specific philosophical position about what a cabin is for. The architects state it plainly: “After all, the purpose of going out of the city is to be together.” I agree with that. Most weekend retreats fail because they replicate urban apartment logic — private rooms first, shared space as an afterthought. This cabin refuses that hierarchy. Accordingly, it forces the social behavior it was designed for.
I call this the Sociality-First Floor Plan: a layout strategy that deliberately compresses private space to expand the quality of shared space. You cannot retreat here. You can only gather. For some people, that will be uncomfortable. For the right group, it will be exactly the point.
The Folding Shutter System: Architecture That Changes Its Mind
The river-facing elevation is fully glazed across its entire length. That is a significant transparency for a cabin in a flood-prone riparian environment. The design solution is a folding shutter — a large wooden screen that folds down over the glazing when needed.
When open, the cabin frames the Sázava completely. When closed, the cabin becomes, in the architects’ words, an “impregnable box.” The shutter system performs several functions simultaneously. It provides sun shading during summer afternoons. It offers security during the week when the cabin sits empty. And it creates a dramatic temporal rhythm — the act of opening the shutter on Friday evening and closing it on Sunday is a ritual that marks the beginning and end of the retreat experience.
This is Temporal Architecture: design elements whose primary purpose is to mark transitions in time and use, rather than simply to manage light or security. The shutter is not just practical. It is ceremonial. That distinction is exactly what separates good small architecture from great small architecture.
Self-Sufficiency as Design Principle
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid. Beyond that, it relies entirely on its own resources. Water comes from an on-site well. Wastewater collects in a tank within the plinth. Heating comes from a woodstove supplemented by electric heaters. There is no gas connection, no municipal water supply, and no dependency on infrastructure that could fail or be interrupted.
This model — minimal grid dependency — is increasingly relevant. Off-grid and near-off-grid cabin design for woodland and riverside settings has moved from fringe preference to mainstream aspiration. However, true off-grid design requires systemic thinking that most architects skip. Mimosa Architects solved it by embedding the utility infrastructure directly into the existing stone plinth. The wastewater tank is invisible. The well is part of the site’s original character. Nothing looks like a technical compromise.
The View Behind the Cabin: The Discovery Architecture Should Save for Last
There is a moment this cabin saves. On the way to the upstairs sleeping loft, the river view disappears. The staircase redirects your gaze. Suddenly, through a rear opening or window, the limestone cliffs that wall the Sázava valley come into view — a reminder of exactly how enclosed this river corridor is, how the water has cut through rock over millennia to create this narrow, intimate valley.
This sequential reveal is what I call Narrative View Architecture: the deliberate orchestration of views in sequence, so that a building rewards movement through it rather than simply revealing everything at once. You earn the cliff view by climbing to bed. That earned quality — that small effort and reward — is what makes architectural experience genuinely memorable, rather than simply visually impressive.
Most contemporary cabins orient entirely toward their primary view. This one gives you two distinct landscape readings that operate in tension: the openness of the river below, the compression of the cliffs behind. Together, they communicate something true about the Sázava valley — that it is a place caught between directions.
Mimosa Architects and the Czech Tradition of Riverside Cabin Design
Czech riverside cabins — chaty, in Czech — have a specific cultural history. They emerged throughout the twentieth century as urban escape valves for city dwellers, particularly in Prague. The Sázava Valley, roughly an hour from the capital, became one of the most densely chatyied river corridors in Central Europe. Most of these structures are informal, improvised, and deeply personal. They are not designed by architects. They grow incrementally over generations.
Mimosa Architects’ intervention on the Sázava engages with this tradition seriously. The cabin does not mimic the vernacular chata aesthetic — it does not reach for the steeply pitched roof, the painted shutters, the garden gnome on the plinth. Instead, it extracts the underlying logic of the chata: compression, self-sufficiency, community, and sensory connection to the river. Then it rebuilds that logic in a contemporary architectural language.
The result is a cabin that is unmistakably Czech in its relationship to landscape and leisure, but internationally legible in its material and spatial intelligence. That is a difficult balance to strike. Mimosa Architects struck it.
Photography by Petr Polák
The documentation of this project was handled by photographer Petr Polák. Polák’s work captures the cabin’s light behavior accurately — the way the charred larch absorbs and holds afternoon light, the reflective quality of the river surface as seen through the full-height glazing, and the textural contrast between the rough stone plinth and the precise wooden frame above it. Architectural photography of this quality is itself a form of critical interpretation. These images do not flatter the building. They read it.
What This Cabin Predicts About the Future of Small Architecture
The Sázava River cabin points toward several directions in which small architecture will continue to develop over the next decade. First, Material Memory Architecture will grow as a practice — especially for buildings replacing structures lost to fire, flood, or demolition. The act of encoding site history into material choices is both ethical and commercially compelling in an era of climate-driven building loss.
Second, the Sociality-First Floor Plan will become more deliberate as designers respond to post-pandemic research showing that people seek shared experience, not just proximity. Compressing private space to expand social space is a testable hypothesis about human behavior, not just a stylistic preference.
Third, near-off-grid design for riverside and woodland settings will stop being a niche specification and become a baseline expectation. As municipal infrastructure faces increasing stress from climate events, clients who once considered grid independence exotic will consider grid dependency risky.
Finally, the folding shutter — and temporal architecture more broadly — will gain critical recognition as a category. Buildings that change their relationship to the landscape over time are more honest about how we actually use them than buildings that perform a single fixed relationship to their site.
The Sázava River cabin is small. But small buildings, when they are thought through completely, have always been where architectural ideas are tested most rigorously. This one passes.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Sázava River Cabin by Mimosa Architects
Who designed the Sázava River cabin?
The cabin was designed by Mimosa Architects, a Czech architecture practice. The project replaces a previous cabin on the same site that was destroyed by fire, retaining and integrating the original stone plinth into the new structure.
What is charred larch cladding, and why was it used on this cabin?
Charred larch cladding is timber that has been surface-burned, typically using a technique derived from the Japanese practice of shou sugi ban. Charring carbonizes the outer wood layer, making it highly resistant to moisture, insects, rot, and fire. Mimosa Architects selected it for both its durability and its symbolic resonance with the fire that destroyed the original cabin on the site.
Is the Sázava River cabin off-grid?
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid for power but is otherwise self-sufficient. Water is drawn from an on-site well, wastewater is collected in a tank housed within the stone plinth, and heating is provided by a woodstove supported by electric heaters. It requires no municipal water supply or gas connection.
What is the folding shutter system on the river-facing facade?
The river-facing wall of the cabin is fully glazed and fitted with a large folding wooden shutter. The shutter closes over the glazing to provide shade during intense summer sun, security when the cabin is unoccupied, and protection during severe weather. When open, it allows uninterrupted views of the Sázava River from the full-length interior space.
Why is the cabin interior described as a “cave”?
The architects used a deliberately unified dark material palette — natural spruce wood panels, black metal elements, and linoleum flooring — to create an interior that absorbs light rather than reflecting it. This enclosing quality suppresses visual noise and directs attention outward toward the fully glazed river view, functioning as a framing device rather than a decorative space.
What is the stone plinth, and what role does it play?
The stone plinth is the surviving foundation of the original cabin that burned down. Mimosa Architects retained and incorporated it into the new structure. It elevates the cabin above flood level, houses the wastewater collection tank, and creates a psychological sense of elevated perspective over the river. It is both a structural and a symbolic element of the project.
Where is the Sázava River located, and what is its architectural significance?
The Sázava River runs through the Bohemian Highlands in the Czech Republic, roughly an hour south of Prague. The Sázava Valley is historically significant as one of Central Europe’s most densely populated recreational river corridors, lined with weekend cabins — known as chaty — that represent a specific Czech tradition of urban escape and riverside leisure culture. Mimosa Architects’ cabin engages critically with this tradition.
Who photographed the Sázava River cabin?
The project was photographed by Petr Polák, whose studio is at petrpolakstudio.cz. Polák’s documentation captures the material texture, light behavior, and landscape relationship of the cabin with precision.
What makes this cabin relevant to contemporary minimal architecture trends?
The Sázava River cabin addresses several of the most active areas of contemporary small architecture: near-off-grid self-sufficiency, charred timber cladding, maximized shared social space over private sleeping capacity, and the use of folding shutters to create temporal shifts in a building’s relationship to its landscape. It also demonstrates how to engage meaningfully with a site’s history without resorting to pastiche or nostalgia.
All images © Petr Polák and Mimosa Architects. Browse WE AND THE COLOR’s Architecture section to find other inspiring projects from around the globe.
#architecture #cabin #CzechRepublic #MimosaArchitects #SázavaRiver -
This Cabin on the Sázava River Is a Masterwork of Minimal Architecture — and It Started With Ash
Reconstruction is rarely romantic. But when Mimosa Architects rebuilt a small riverside cabin on the banks of the Sázava River in the Czech Republic, they did something quietly radical: they kept the ruins. The original cabin had burned down. What remained was a stone plinth — scarred, load-bearing, and stubborn. Instead of erasing it, the architects built on top of it. That decision set the tone for everything that followed.
The result is a cabin in the woods that manages to feel both ancient and precise. It sits between a river and a limestone cliff face, framed by pines, and clad entirely in charred larch — a material choice that nods, with a certain dark humor, to the fire that destroyed its predecessor. This is not a vacation home that provides relaxation. It simply is restful. And right now, that distinction matters more than ever.
We are living through a moment when small, intentional architecture is having a genuine cultural reckoning. Demand for off-grid cabins, forest retreats, and minimal riverside structures has surged. But most of what gets built looks like an Instagram set. This Sázava River cabin does not. It looks like it belongs exactly where it stands.
A cabin in the woods by Mimosa ArchitectsWhat Makes a Cabin in the Woods Architecturally Significant?
That is actually a serious question. Most small cabins do not earn critical attention. They function as shelter, maybe backdrop, and that is enough. So why does this one deserve closer reading?
Because Mimosa Architects made every constraint work harder. The stone plinth was not just preserved — it was activated. It lifts the wooden structure above flood level and provides a physical threshold between the river environment and the inhabited space above. Architecturally, this is what I call a Threshold Plinth Strategy: repurposing a structural remnant as a boundary-maker between landscape risk and lived experience. The plinth does not simply support the cabin. It frames your relationship to the river before you even step inside.
That kind of layered thinking runs through the entire project. Nothing in this cabin exists for decoration alone. Furthermore, nothing looks like it was borrowed from a catalog of cabin clichés. The material palette — charred larch on the exterior, spruce panels on the interior, black metal throughout — is deliberately unified. The architects call the interior a “cave.” That is not hyperbole. It is a spatial thesis.
The Cave Interior Concept: Shelter as Sensory Calibration
Most interiors aspire to openness. This one aspires to enclosure — deliberately. The dark tones of natural spruce paneling, the matte black woodstove, the blackened steel staircase, and the charred exterior all contribute to what I am calling the Chromatic Continuity Principle: a single-palette approach that eliminates visual noise and forces the eye outward, toward the only light source — the fully glazed river-facing wall.
This is not accidental. When your interior is dark, and your exterior view is bright, the window becomes the entire painting. The Sázava River, the kingfishers, the boulders breaking the current — all of it is composed and framed by the architectural decision to suppress interior contrast. You do not decorate this cabin. The river decorates it for you.
Additionally, the linoleum floor extends the “cave” logic all the way to your feet. It is durable, natural, and continuous — moving freely between the interior and the raised terrace outside. No thresholds interrupt the flow. No materials change mid-sentence. The effect is a kind of spatial grammar that reads cleanly even if you cannot articulate why.
Charred Larch Cladding — Why Burning Wood Is One of the Smartest Decisions in Contemporary Cabin Architecture
Shou sugi ban — the Japanese technique of charring timber — has been trending in Western architecture for about a decade. However, its application here carries a meaning that goes beyond surface aesthetics or trend adoption. The choice to clad this cabin in charred larch is simultaneously functional, symbolic, and slightly sardonic.
Functionally, charring creates a carbonized outer layer that repels moisture, insects, and rot. The larch beneath does not need chemical treatment. It also, the architect’s note with dry wit, makes the cabin “less appealing to uninvited guests.” That is a real security benefit. A burned-looking structure invites less casual curiosity than a bright Nordic wood box.
Symbolically, the charred facade connects this cabin to the fire that erased its predecessor. This is what I call Material Memory Architecture: using a building’s material finish to acknowledge what came before on the same site. The cabin does not perform grief about the fire. Instead, it incorporates the idea of fire into its own skin, permanently.
From an SEO and cultural standpoint, charred larch cabins in the woods currently represent one of the fastest-growing architectural search categories globally. Queries for “black cabin architecture,” “charred wood house exterior,” and “shou sugi ban cabin design” have grown substantially year over year. This project lands precisely in that space — but with intellectual depth that most trend-following projects lack.
Sheet Metal on the Uphill Side: A Quiet Structural Decision
Toward the slope behind the cabin, the architects switched from charred larch to sheet metal cladding. The reason is purely environmental: water flows down the hillside over the roof edge and along that wall. Larch, even charred, would not hold up under sustained water exposure at that angle. Metal does.
This is Contextual Material Switching — changing your cladding based on the directional forces your building faces, rather than imposing a uniform material language regardless of exposure. It is a small detail. But it is the kind of small detail that separates architects who think about buildings as living objects in environments from those who think about them as photographs.
The Stone Plinth as Architecture’s Deepest Root
Let us return to the plinth. It is the oldest element of this project. It predates the current building, predates the fire, and may predate several iterations of human habitation on this particular bend of the Sázava. Stone plinths like this one are common in rural Czech architecture — they were built to outlast the lighter wooden structures above them, and they frequently do.
Mimosa Architects did not just preserve the plinth. They integrated it structurally and programmatically. Inside the plinth sits a wastewater collection tank. The plinth also provides the cabin’s primary flood protection, raising the main living level above the river’s reach during high water. Moreover, it creates the psychological experience of elevation — the sense of looking slightly down at the river, rather than sitting at its edge.
That shift in perspective is worth considering. When you look down at moving water, even slightly, you enter a different cognitive mode. You observe rather than participate. You slow down. Architects rarely talk about plinths in these terms, but the spatial psychology of elevated observation is well-documented in environmental psychology literature. This cabin deploys it intuitively.
The Full-Height Shared Space: Against the Bedroom-First Logic
Most small cabin designs prioritize sleeping capacity. More beds equal more utility. Mimosa Architects inverted this logic. The main shared space spans the full height of the cabin, connecting the river facade to the cliffside rear wall. The sleeping areas — small, attic-level, just large enough for a bed — are minimized almost to the point of afterthought.
This reflects a specific philosophical position about what a cabin is for. The architects state it plainly: “After all, the purpose of going out of the city is to be together.” I agree with that. Most weekend retreats fail because they replicate urban apartment logic — private rooms first, shared space as an afterthought. This cabin refuses that hierarchy. Accordingly, it forces the social behavior it was designed for.
I call this the Sociality-First Floor Plan: a layout strategy that deliberately compresses private space to expand the quality of shared space. You cannot retreat here. You can only gather. For some people, that will be uncomfortable. For the right group, it will be exactly the point.
The Folding Shutter System: Architecture That Changes Its Mind
The river-facing elevation is fully glazed across its entire length. That is a significant transparency for a cabin in a flood-prone riparian environment. The design solution is a folding shutter — a large wooden screen that folds down over the glazing when needed.
When open, the cabin frames the Sázava completely. When closed, the cabin becomes, in the architects’ words, an “impregnable box.” The shutter system performs several functions simultaneously. It provides sun shading during summer afternoons. It offers security during the week when the cabin sits empty. And it creates a dramatic temporal rhythm — the act of opening the shutter on Friday evening and closing it on Sunday is a ritual that marks the beginning and end of the retreat experience.
This is Temporal Architecture: design elements whose primary purpose is to mark transitions in time and use, rather than simply to manage light or security. The shutter is not just practical. It is ceremonial. That distinction is exactly what separates good small architecture from great small architecture.
Self-Sufficiency as Design Principle
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid. Beyond that, it relies entirely on its own resources. Water comes from an on-site well. Wastewater collects in a tank within the plinth. Heating comes from a woodstove supplemented by electric heaters. There is no gas connection, no municipal water supply, and no dependency on infrastructure that could fail or be interrupted.
This model — minimal grid dependency — is increasingly relevant. Off-grid and near-off-grid cabin design for woodland and riverside settings has moved from fringe preference to mainstream aspiration. However, true off-grid design requires systemic thinking that most architects skip. Mimosa Architects solved it by embedding the utility infrastructure directly into the existing stone plinth. The wastewater tank is invisible. The well is part of the site’s original character. Nothing looks like a technical compromise.
The View Behind the Cabin: The Discovery Architecture Should Save for Last
There is a moment this cabin saves. On the way to the upstairs sleeping loft, the river view disappears. The staircase redirects your gaze. Suddenly, through a rear opening or window, the limestone cliffs that wall the Sázava valley come into view — a reminder of exactly how enclosed this river corridor is, how the water has cut through rock over millennia to create this narrow, intimate valley.
This sequential reveal is what I call Narrative View Architecture: the deliberate orchestration of views in sequence, so that a building rewards movement through it rather than simply revealing everything at once. You earn the cliff view by climbing to bed. That earned quality — that small effort and reward — is what makes architectural experience genuinely memorable, rather than simply visually impressive.
Most contemporary cabins orient entirely toward their primary view. This one gives you two distinct landscape readings that operate in tension: the openness of the river below, the compression of the cliffs behind. Together, they communicate something true about the Sázava valley — that it is a place caught between directions.
Mimosa Architects and the Czech Tradition of Riverside Cabin Design
Czech riverside cabins — chaty, in Czech — have a specific cultural history. They emerged throughout the twentieth century as urban escape valves for city dwellers, particularly in Prague. The Sázava Valley, roughly an hour from the capital, became one of the most densely chatyied river corridors in Central Europe. Most of these structures are informal, improvised, and deeply personal. They are not designed by architects. They grow incrementally over generations.
Mimosa Architects’ intervention on the Sázava engages with this tradition seriously. The cabin does not mimic the vernacular chata aesthetic — it does not reach for the steeply pitched roof, the painted shutters, the garden gnome on the plinth. Instead, it extracts the underlying logic of the chata: compression, self-sufficiency, community, and sensory connection to the river. Then it rebuilds that logic in a contemporary architectural language.
The result is a cabin that is unmistakably Czech in its relationship to landscape and leisure, but internationally legible in its material and spatial intelligence. That is a difficult balance to strike. Mimosa Architects struck it.
Photography by Petr Polák
The documentation of this project was handled by photographer Petr Polák. Polák’s work captures the cabin’s light behavior accurately — the way the charred larch absorbs and holds afternoon light, the reflective quality of the river surface as seen through the full-height glazing, and the textural contrast between the rough stone plinth and the precise wooden frame above it. Architectural photography of this quality is itself a form of critical interpretation. These images do not flatter the building. They read it.
What This Cabin Predicts About the Future of Small Architecture
The Sázava River cabin points toward several directions in which small architecture will continue to develop over the next decade. First, Material Memory Architecture will grow as a practice — especially for buildings replacing structures lost to fire, flood, or demolition. The act of encoding site history into material choices is both ethical and commercially compelling in an era of climate-driven building loss.
Second, the Sociality-First Floor Plan will become more deliberate as designers respond to post-pandemic research showing that people seek shared experience, not just proximity. Compressing private space to expand social space is a testable hypothesis about human behavior, not just a stylistic preference.
Third, near-off-grid design for riverside and woodland settings will stop being a niche specification and become a baseline expectation. As municipal infrastructure faces increasing stress from climate events, clients who once considered grid independence exotic will consider grid dependency risky.
Finally, the folding shutter — and temporal architecture more broadly — will gain critical recognition as a category. Buildings that change their relationship to the landscape over time are more honest about how we actually use them than buildings that perform a single fixed relationship to their site.
The Sázava River cabin is small. But small buildings, when they are thought through completely, have always been where architectural ideas are tested most rigorously. This one passes.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Sázava River Cabin by Mimosa Architects
Who designed the Sázava River cabin?
The cabin was designed by Mimosa Architects, a Czech architecture practice. The project replaces a previous cabin on the same site that was destroyed by fire, retaining and integrating the original stone plinth into the new structure.
What is charred larch cladding, and why was it used on this cabin?
Charred larch cladding is timber that has been surface-burned, typically using a technique derived from the Japanese practice of shou sugi ban. Charring carbonizes the outer wood layer, making it highly resistant to moisture, insects, rot, and fire. Mimosa Architects selected it for both its durability and its symbolic resonance with the fire that destroyed the original cabin on the site.
Is the Sázava River cabin off-grid?
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid for power but is otherwise self-sufficient. Water is drawn from an on-site well, wastewater is collected in a tank housed within the stone plinth, and heating is provided by a woodstove supported by electric heaters. It requires no municipal water supply or gas connection.
What is the folding shutter system on the river-facing facade?
The river-facing wall of the cabin is fully glazed and fitted with a large folding wooden shutter. The shutter closes over the glazing to provide shade during intense summer sun, security when the cabin is unoccupied, and protection during severe weather. When open, it allows uninterrupted views of the Sázava River from the full-length interior space.
Why is the cabin interior described as a “cave”?
The architects used a deliberately unified dark material palette — natural spruce wood panels, black metal elements, and linoleum flooring — to create an interior that absorbs light rather than reflecting it. This enclosing quality suppresses visual noise and directs attention outward toward the fully glazed river view, functioning as a framing device rather than a decorative space.
What is the stone plinth, and what role does it play?
The stone plinth is the surviving foundation of the original cabin that burned down. Mimosa Architects retained and incorporated it into the new structure. It elevates the cabin above flood level, houses the wastewater collection tank, and creates a psychological sense of elevated perspective over the river. It is both a structural and a symbolic element of the project.
Where is the Sázava River located, and what is its architectural significance?
The Sázava River runs through the Bohemian Highlands in the Czech Republic, roughly an hour south of Prague. The Sázava Valley is historically significant as one of Central Europe’s most densely populated recreational river corridors, lined with weekend cabins — known as chaty — that represent a specific Czech tradition of urban escape and riverside leisure culture. Mimosa Architects’ cabin engages critically with this tradition.
Who photographed the Sázava River cabin?
The project was photographed by Petr Polák, whose studio is at petrpolakstudio.cz. Polák’s documentation captures the material texture, light behavior, and landscape relationship of the cabin with precision.
What makes this cabin relevant to contemporary minimal architecture trends?
The Sázava River cabin addresses several of the most active areas of contemporary small architecture: near-off-grid self-sufficiency, charred timber cladding, maximized shared social space over private sleeping capacity, and the use of folding shutters to create temporal shifts in a building’s relationship to its landscape. It also demonstrates how to engage meaningfully with a site’s history without resorting to pastiche or nostalgia.
All images © Petr Polák and Mimosa Architects. Browse WE AND THE COLOR’s Architecture section to find other inspiring projects from around the globe.
#architecture #cabin #CzechRepublic #MimosaArchitects #SázavaRiver -
This Cabin on the Sázava River Is a Masterwork of Minimal Architecture — and It Started With Ash
Reconstruction is rarely romantic. But when Mimosa Architects rebuilt a small riverside cabin on the banks of the Sázava River in the Czech Republic, they did something quietly radical: they kept the ruins. The original cabin had burned down. What remained was a stone plinth — scarred, load-bearing, and stubborn. Instead of erasing it, the architects built on top of it. That decision set the tone for everything that followed.
The result is a cabin in the woods that manages to feel both ancient and precise. It sits between a river and a limestone cliff face, framed by pines, and clad entirely in charred larch — a material choice that nods, with a certain dark humor, to the fire that destroyed its predecessor. This is not a vacation home that provides relaxation. It simply is restful. And right now, that distinction matters more than ever.
We are living through a moment when small, intentional architecture is having a genuine cultural reckoning. Demand for off-grid cabins, forest retreats, and minimal riverside structures has surged. But most of what gets built looks like an Instagram set. This Sázava River cabin does not. It looks like it belongs exactly where it stands.
A cabin in the woods by Mimosa ArchitectsWhat Makes a Cabin in the Woods Architecturally Significant?
That is actually a serious question. Most small cabins do not earn critical attention. They function as shelter, maybe backdrop, and that is enough. So why does this one deserve closer reading?
Because Mimosa Architects made every constraint work harder. The stone plinth was not just preserved — it was activated. It lifts the wooden structure above flood level and provides a physical threshold between the river environment and the inhabited space above. Architecturally, this is what I call a Threshold Plinth Strategy: repurposing a structural remnant as a boundary-maker between landscape risk and lived experience. The plinth does not simply support the cabin. It frames your relationship to the river before you even step inside.
That kind of layered thinking runs through the entire project. Nothing in this cabin exists for decoration alone. Furthermore, nothing looks like it was borrowed from a catalog of cabin clichés. The material palette — charred larch on the exterior, spruce panels on the interior, black metal throughout — is deliberately unified. The architects call the interior a “cave.” That is not hyperbole. It is a spatial thesis.
The Cave Interior Concept: Shelter as Sensory Calibration
Most interiors aspire to openness. This one aspires to enclosure — deliberately. The dark tones of natural spruce paneling, the matte black woodstove, the blackened steel staircase, and the charred exterior all contribute to what I am calling the Chromatic Continuity Principle: a single-palette approach that eliminates visual noise and forces the eye outward, toward the only light source — the fully glazed river-facing wall.
This is not accidental. When your interior is dark, and your exterior view is bright, the window becomes the entire painting. The Sázava River, the kingfishers, the boulders breaking the current — all of it is composed and framed by the architectural decision to suppress interior contrast. You do not decorate this cabin. The river decorates it for you.
Additionally, the linoleum floor extends the “cave” logic all the way to your feet. It is durable, natural, and continuous — moving freely between the interior and the raised terrace outside. No thresholds interrupt the flow. No materials change mid-sentence. The effect is a kind of spatial grammar that reads cleanly even if you cannot articulate why.
Charred Larch Cladding — Why Burning Wood Is One of the Smartest Decisions in Contemporary Cabin Architecture
Shou sugi ban — the Japanese technique of charring timber — has been trending in Western architecture for about a decade. However, its application here carries a meaning that goes beyond surface aesthetics or trend adoption. The choice to clad this cabin in charred larch is simultaneously functional, symbolic, and slightly sardonic.
Functionally, charring creates a carbonized outer layer that repels moisture, insects, and rot. The larch beneath does not need chemical treatment. It also, the architect’s note with dry wit, makes the cabin “less appealing to uninvited guests.” That is a real security benefit. A burned-looking structure invites less casual curiosity than a bright Nordic wood box.
Symbolically, the charred facade connects this cabin to the fire that erased its predecessor. This is what I call Material Memory Architecture: using a building’s material finish to acknowledge what came before on the same site. The cabin does not perform grief about the fire. Instead, it incorporates the idea of fire into its own skin, permanently.
From an SEO and cultural standpoint, charred larch cabins in the woods currently represent one of the fastest-growing architectural search categories globally. Queries for “black cabin architecture,” “charred wood house exterior,” and “shou sugi ban cabin design” have grown substantially year over year. This project lands precisely in that space — but with intellectual depth that most trend-following projects lack.
Sheet Metal on the Uphill Side: A Quiet Structural Decision
Toward the slope behind the cabin, the architects switched from charred larch to sheet metal cladding. The reason is purely environmental: water flows down the hillside over the roof edge and along that wall. Larch, even charred, would not hold up under sustained water exposure at that angle. Metal does.
This is Contextual Material Switching — changing your cladding based on the directional forces your building faces, rather than imposing a uniform material language regardless of exposure. It is a small detail. But it is the kind of small detail that separates architects who think about buildings as living objects in environments from those who think about them as photographs.
The Stone Plinth as Architecture’s Deepest Root
Let us return to the plinth. It is the oldest element of this project. It predates the current building, predates the fire, and may predate several iterations of human habitation on this particular bend of the Sázava. Stone plinths like this one are common in rural Czech architecture — they were built to outlast the lighter wooden structures above them, and they frequently do.
Mimosa Architects did not just preserve the plinth. They integrated it structurally and programmatically. Inside the plinth sits a wastewater collection tank. The plinth also provides the cabin’s primary flood protection, raising the main living level above the river’s reach during high water. Moreover, it creates the psychological experience of elevation — the sense of looking slightly down at the river, rather than sitting at its edge.
That shift in perspective is worth considering. When you look down at moving water, even slightly, you enter a different cognitive mode. You observe rather than participate. You slow down. Architects rarely talk about plinths in these terms, but the spatial psychology of elevated observation is well-documented in environmental psychology literature. This cabin deploys it intuitively.
The Full-Height Shared Space: Against the Bedroom-First Logic
Most small cabin designs prioritize sleeping capacity. More beds equal more utility. Mimosa Architects inverted this logic. The main shared space spans the full height of the cabin, connecting the river facade to the cliffside rear wall. The sleeping areas — small, attic-level, just large enough for a bed — are minimized almost to the point of afterthought.
This reflects a specific philosophical position about what a cabin is for. The architects state it plainly: “After all, the purpose of going out of the city is to be together.” I agree with that. Most weekend retreats fail because they replicate urban apartment logic — private rooms first, shared space as an afterthought. This cabin refuses that hierarchy. Accordingly, it forces the social behavior it was designed for.
I call this the Sociality-First Floor Plan: a layout strategy that deliberately compresses private space to expand the quality of shared space. You cannot retreat here. You can only gather. For some people, that will be uncomfortable. For the right group, it will be exactly the point.
The Folding Shutter System: Architecture That Changes Its Mind
The river-facing elevation is fully glazed across its entire length. That is a significant transparency for a cabin in a flood-prone riparian environment. The design solution is a folding shutter — a large wooden screen that folds down over the glazing when needed.
When open, the cabin frames the Sázava completely. When closed, the cabin becomes, in the architects’ words, an “impregnable box.” The shutter system performs several functions simultaneously. It provides sun shading during summer afternoons. It offers security during the week when the cabin sits empty. And it creates a dramatic temporal rhythm — the act of opening the shutter on Friday evening and closing it on Sunday is a ritual that marks the beginning and end of the retreat experience.
This is Temporal Architecture: design elements whose primary purpose is to mark transitions in time and use, rather than simply to manage light or security. The shutter is not just practical. It is ceremonial. That distinction is exactly what separates good small architecture from great small architecture.
Self-Sufficiency as Design Principle
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid. Beyond that, it relies entirely on its own resources. Water comes from an on-site well. Wastewater collects in a tank within the plinth. Heating comes from a woodstove supplemented by electric heaters. There is no gas connection, no municipal water supply, and no dependency on infrastructure that could fail or be interrupted.
This model — minimal grid dependency — is increasingly relevant. Off-grid and near-off-grid cabin design for woodland and riverside settings has moved from fringe preference to mainstream aspiration. However, true off-grid design requires systemic thinking that most architects skip. Mimosa Architects solved it by embedding the utility infrastructure directly into the existing stone plinth. The wastewater tank is invisible. The well is part of the site’s original character. Nothing looks like a technical compromise.
The View Behind the Cabin: The Discovery Architecture Should Save for Last
There is a moment this cabin saves. On the way to the upstairs sleeping loft, the river view disappears. The staircase redirects your gaze. Suddenly, through a rear opening or window, the limestone cliffs that wall the Sázava valley come into view — a reminder of exactly how enclosed this river corridor is, how the water has cut through rock over millennia to create this narrow, intimate valley.
This sequential reveal is what I call Narrative View Architecture: the deliberate orchestration of views in sequence, so that a building rewards movement through it rather than simply revealing everything at once. You earn the cliff view by climbing to bed. That earned quality — that small effort and reward — is what makes architectural experience genuinely memorable, rather than simply visually impressive.
Most contemporary cabins orient entirely toward their primary view. This one gives you two distinct landscape readings that operate in tension: the openness of the river below, the compression of the cliffs behind. Together, they communicate something true about the Sázava valley — that it is a place caught between directions.
Mimosa Architects and the Czech Tradition of Riverside Cabin Design
Czech riverside cabins — chaty, in Czech — have a specific cultural history. They emerged throughout the twentieth century as urban escape valves for city dwellers, particularly in Prague. The Sázava Valley, roughly an hour from the capital, became one of the most densely chatyied river corridors in Central Europe. Most of these structures are informal, improvised, and deeply personal. They are not designed by architects. They grow incrementally over generations.
Mimosa Architects’ intervention on the Sázava engages with this tradition seriously. The cabin does not mimic the vernacular chata aesthetic — it does not reach for the steeply pitched roof, the painted shutters, the garden gnome on the plinth. Instead, it extracts the underlying logic of the chata: compression, self-sufficiency, community, and sensory connection to the river. Then it rebuilds that logic in a contemporary architectural language.
The result is a cabin that is unmistakably Czech in its relationship to landscape and leisure, but internationally legible in its material and spatial intelligence. That is a difficult balance to strike. Mimosa Architects struck it.
Photography by Petr Polák
The documentation of this project was handled by photographer Petr Polák. Polák’s work captures the cabin’s light behavior accurately — the way the charred larch absorbs and holds afternoon light, the reflective quality of the river surface as seen through the full-height glazing, and the textural contrast between the rough stone plinth and the precise wooden frame above it. Architectural photography of this quality is itself a form of critical interpretation. These images do not flatter the building. They read it.
What This Cabin Predicts About the Future of Small Architecture
The Sázava River cabin points toward several directions in which small architecture will continue to develop over the next decade. First, Material Memory Architecture will grow as a practice — especially for buildings replacing structures lost to fire, flood, or demolition. The act of encoding site history into material choices is both ethical and commercially compelling in an era of climate-driven building loss.
Second, the Sociality-First Floor Plan will become more deliberate as designers respond to post-pandemic research showing that people seek shared experience, not just proximity. Compressing private space to expand social space is a testable hypothesis about human behavior, not just a stylistic preference.
Third, near-off-grid design for riverside and woodland settings will stop being a niche specification and become a baseline expectation. As municipal infrastructure faces increasing stress from climate events, clients who once considered grid independence exotic will consider grid dependency risky.
Finally, the folding shutter — and temporal architecture more broadly — will gain critical recognition as a category. Buildings that change their relationship to the landscape over time are more honest about how we actually use them than buildings that perform a single fixed relationship to their site.
The Sázava River cabin is small. But small buildings, when they are thought through completely, have always been where architectural ideas are tested most rigorously. This one passes.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Sázava River Cabin by Mimosa Architects
Who designed the Sázava River cabin?
The cabin was designed by Mimosa Architects, a Czech architecture practice. The project replaces a previous cabin on the same site that was destroyed by fire, retaining and integrating the original stone plinth into the new structure.
What is charred larch cladding, and why was it used on this cabin?
Charred larch cladding is timber that has been surface-burned, typically using a technique derived from the Japanese practice of shou sugi ban. Charring carbonizes the outer wood layer, making it highly resistant to moisture, insects, rot, and fire. Mimosa Architects selected it for both its durability and its symbolic resonance with the fire that destroyed the original cabin on the site.
Is the Sázava River cabin off-grid?
The cabin is connected to the electrical grid for power but is otherwise self-sufficient. Water is drawn from an on-site well, wastewater is collected in a tank housed within the stone plinth, and heating is provided by a woodstove supported by electric heaters. It requires no municipal water supply or gas connection.
What is the folding shutter system on the river-facing facade?
The river-facing wall of the cabin is fully glazed and fitted with a large folding wooden shutter. The shutter closes over the glazing to provide shade during intense summer sun, security when the cabin is unoccupied, and protection during severe weather. When open, it allows uninterrupted views of the Sázava River from the full-length interior space.
Why is the cabin interior described as a “cave”?
The architects used a deliberately unified dark material palette — natural spruce wood panels, black metal elements, and linoleum flooring — to create an interior that absorbs light rather than reflecting it. This enclosing quality suppresses visual noise and directs attention outward toward the fully glazed river view, functioning as a framing device rather than a decorative space.
What is the stone plinth, and what role does it play?
The stone plinth is the surviving foundation of the original cabin that burned down. Mimosa Architects retained and incorporated it into the new structure. It elevates the cabin above flood level, houses the wastewater collection tank, and creates a psychological sense of elevated perspective over the river. It is both a structural and a symbolic element of the project.
Where is the Sázava River located, and what is its architectural significance?
The Sázava River runs through the Bohemian Highlands in the Czech Republic, roughly an hour south of Prague. The Sázava Valley is historically significant as one of Central Europe’s most densely populated recreational river corridors, lined with weekend cabins — known as chaty — that represent a specific Czech tradition of urban escape and riverside leisure culture. Mimosa Architects’ cabin engages critically with this tradition.
Who photographed the Sázava River cabin?
The project was photographed by Petr Polák, whose studio is at petrpolakstudio.cz. Polák’s documentation captures the material texture, light behavior, and landscape relationship of the cabin with precision.
What makes this cabin relevant to contemporary minimal architecture trends?
The Sázava River cabin addresses several of the most active areas of contemporary small architecture: near-off-grid self-sufficiency, charred timber cladding, maximized shared social space over private sleeping capacity, and the use of folding shutters to create temporal shifts in a building’s relationship to its landscape. It also demonstrates how to engage meaningfully with a site’s history without resorting to pastiche or nostalgia.
All images © Petr Polák and Mimosa Architects. Browse WE AND THE COLOR’s Architecture section to find other inspiring projects from around the globe.
#architecture #cabin #CzechRepublic #MimosaArchitects #SázavaRiver -
The many games of The Most Successful
With Rockstar and Grant Theft Auto 6 in the news for some unsavory reasons, I saw quite a lot of hubbubs about the success of the fifth game in the franchise and its comparative success compared to other games, and other forms entertainment. I’m slightly flabbergasted that someone would claim that GTA5 was the most successful form of entertainment, when people without much contact with the modern world knew about Michael Jackson. Thriller permeated everywhere, you can’t beat it.
Nevertheless, this made an interesting thought experiment on what counts as The Most Successful Video Game. It didn’t help that I saw the goal being pushed after one or two rounds of discussion, under which at least few realized that there’s more than one way of seeing this. Business has a different view on things compared to the customers, and then you have the historical view that has a longer view on how games have affected culture in general. This is why Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout and Pac-Man still live on in the cultural memory, even if the amount of success they’ve seen in terms of money is less than whatever big Triple A title that’s come after.
I should probably note that there’s also a slight difference in how some use the term franchise. While I tend to use it wrong as a synonym with Intellectual Property, an example of a franchise would be Street Fighter II. Street Fighter III would be its own franchise, while all falling under the same umbrella of IP. This is because of merchandising rights and all that business jazz.
Units Sold is of course a big one, the cumulative sales made by one game, or a series of games. For example, the Mario games have a cumulative sale of 957 million units, while Mega Man has 43 million units.
As for individual titles, Minecraft is an evergreen title that hits 350 units sold. GTAV follows It at 220 million units.
Units sold doesn’t really keep you afloat a lot, unless you have Revenue. This is the total gross the series does through game sales, possible DLC, merch, and other licensed material. Pokémon tops this chart with $115, followed by Call of Duty with $31 million.
The way digital games are consumed is different from purchased titles, of course. That’s why something like Candy Crush or Dungeon Fighter Online can top the chart of games with most revenue, as individuals put more money into these games. This compares apples and oranges; the business models are ultimately very different and the amount of money you can squeeze out of a customer via single sold title plus DLC is ultimately less than digital-only but squeezing small amounts throughout their play time. Gacha mixes things with the whole gambling aspect.
I don’t think we should count individual downloads. This is because a download doesn’t translate to a purchase, or revenue. There are numerous cases of curious people testing a free game out and then proceeding not to continue. These people are often counted to the player metric nonetheless, which shows that the total number of players can be skewed to showcase a more positive statistic for PR reasons. This is the same reason why Sony cites the total number of PlayStation 2’s when asked about the total number of consoles sold. It just looks better, and they can fudge the numbers for their benefit.
Then again, Subway Surfers has 2.05 billion individual downloads and spawned numerous imitators so there’s something value in that too.
Player Count is also something that seems to be a significant metric, with Roblox topping the list with the estimated number of players being in billions cumulative. Minecraft hitting a nice spot of 600 million plus players shows that it really is the Tetris of the modern age.
I would argue that the peak number of players, and how long that plateau is held, is a more significant counter simply because it shows how many players consume the game in each span of time. Through this, we get an idea whether a game holds its audience, which is far more important in the long-term in terms of customer satisfaction and how well customers make emotional connection to the game. A game that gets massive sales at the start but sees the player count sink like a rock in water has no lasting hold on the market.
While I don’t give much weight on the Critical Acclaim the journalists give to games (as they are nothing more than just an extra arm in the PR machine), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Soul Calibur top the chart with 99 and 98 according to Metacritic. I’d like to say the User Score is the metric we should use, but seeing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 topping the current list reminds me how customers can’t be any more objective than the journalists most of the time.
If we count Spacewar! as the progenitor of all modern video and computer games (and we are,) gaming is 63 at the time of writing. There are only a handful of game names from the early era of electronic gaming that are still strongly alive. Pac-Man and Mario are the handful, with the rest of their brethren being relocated to nostalgic revivals and retro collections. While we may think the most popular games we have now will last for all time, we’ve seen so many game names simply vanishing, dying out or otherwise fall into torpor. Mega Man is a great example of this, sometimes popping its head up only to fall back into Capcom archives. Maybe we’ll get another game by 2030. Prince of Persia seemed like a name that would never die, but overexposure and simply being owned by Ubisoft clearly took its toll on the name. Same thing could be happening to Assassin Creed now, one can only hope.
Some of you might’ve noticed that I counted Donkey Kong as a Mario title. So does Nintendo, as that’s the first appearance of Mario, then named Jumpman. If you want, we can count Mario being started in 1983, making Mario 42 to Pac-Man’s 45. These are still small numbers compared to something like Universal Monsters, which have lasted for good 117 years. Looking at the comic book world, both Superman and Batman are in their 80s.
However, the gaming industry influences itself. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was influenced by Final Fantasy, which was seen as the premier gaming IP at one point in the Western World. However, going back and seeing what influenced Final Fantasy we find Dragon Quest and its numerous copycats and imitators. Going further back we find both Utima and Wizardry influencing the game, which also influenced so many other Japanese computer RPGs like The Black Onyx, which inspired the creation of The Legend of Zelda. Ultima and Wizardry have their roots in MUDs, which have roots in table-top RPGs, mainly Dungeon and Dragons, which have their roots in the military games generals and other army leaders would play to train their leadership.
The roots of video and computer gaming lie in the games and play of children and adults alike, alongside how stories were told by acting and playing them out. This tangent is to remind ourselves that gaming is not something that just came along with computers and consoles but is just the latest iteration of mankind has been doing ever since we dwelled in caves.
Nevertheless, the game with most cultural impact is probably Pokémon. Its Trading Card Game sales generate about one to three billion dollars per year, which rivals the top-most successful film’s revenue in their lifetime. Of course, TCG is an evergreen product compared to film’s finite runs, so this should illustrate how different the media are. Still, the franchise IP generated that $150 billion plus dollars and probably is Japan’s single most important import product. Pikachu is the face and mascot of the franchise, well-known across the glob, and served as an ambassador to 2014 World Cup, 2020 Tokyo Olympics and in 2025 World Expo. Its yellow face is featured in over fifty embassies across the world. Surprisingly, Pokémon has shown itself to be a multi-generational product, a cornerstone of sorts that sees constant parodies in other shows and games while drawing tourists of all ages to Pokémon Centers across the world, especially to Japan.
Even if Pokémon is a 1990s product, it can be placed alongside Mario and Pac-Man as a long-lasting face of gaming, with it probably ending up as the face of gaming on the long run if we had to choose one, for better or worse. This also illustrates some why Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and to a lesser extent GameFreak would be freakishly overprotective of their IP. There are numerous other contenders we could put there, but I’m making a point there; there must be generationally recognizable face for all without really any breaks.
The list of games that influenced other games is as wide as the library of games out there. Talking about First-Person Shooting ends up someone tracing back to Halo, then Half-Life, a mention of Quake’s code still running in some modern games, another mentioning Goldeneye 007, with usually ending with either Doom or Wolfenstein 3D in a similar fashion I did with RPGs above.
While we have been seeing the influence of video and computer games on the culture ever since the 1970s in an increasing fashion, it’s hard to determine how well a game or a name will endure as history happens. Only in hindsight can we properly determine the ebbs and flows of masses, something the current gaming industry seems to ignore in favour of trying to appease each other with the press as their echo chamber. When Demon’s Souls was put out for the first time, nobody expected it to become a cultural cornerstone. However, history has shown us that people like to play challenging games, and from that challenge comes customer satisfaction. Well-built world and framing, with play-first mentality, is a sort of silver bullet. It’s not a game for everyone, and that’s fine. You can’t please everyone with one product, and trying to is simply being dishonest toward the game and the customer.
#electronicGames #entertainment #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames
-
The many games of The Most Successful
With Rockstar and Grant Theft Auto 6 in the news for some unsavory reasons, I saw quite a lot of hubbubs about the success of the fifth game in the franchise and its comparative success compared to other games, and other forms entertainment. I’m slightly flabbergasted that someone would claim that GTA5 was the most successful form of entertainment, when people without much contact with the modern world knew about Michael Jackson. Thriller permeated everywhere, you can’t beat it.
Nevertheless, this made an interesting thought experiment on what counts as The Most Successful Video Game. It didn’t help that I saw the goal being pushed after one or two rounds of discussion, under which at least few realized that there’s more than one way of seeing this. Business has a different view on things compared to the customers, and then you have the historical view that has a longer view on how games have affected culture in general. This is why Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout and Pac-Man still live on in the cultural memory, even if the amount of success they’ve seen in terms of money is less than whatever big Triple A title that’s come after.
I should probably note that there’s also a slight difference in how some use the term franchise. While I tend to use it wrong as a synonym with Intellectual Property, an example of a franchise would be Street Fighter II. Street Fighter III would be its own franchise, while all falling under the same umbrella of IP. This is because of merchandising rights and all that business jazz.
Units Sold is of course a big one, the cumulative sales made by one game, or a series of games. For example, the Mario games have a cumulative sale of 957 million units, while Mega Man has 43 million units.
As for individual titles, Minecraft is an evergreen title that hits 350 units sold. GTAV follows It at 220 million units.
Units sold doesn’t really keep you afloat a lot, unless you have Revenue. This is the total gross the series does through game sales, possible DLC, merch, and other licensed material. Pokémon tops this chart with $115, followed by Call of Duty with $31 million.
The way digital games are consumed is different from purchased titles, of course. That’s why something like Candy Crush or Dungeon Fighter Online can top the chart of games with most revenue, as individuals put more money into these games. This compares apples and oranges; the business models are ultimately very different and the amount of money you can squeeze out of a customer via single sold title plus DLC is ultimately less than digital-only but squeezing small amounts throughout their play time. Gacha mixes things with the whole gambling aspect.
I don’t think we should count individual downloads. This is because a download doesn’t translate to a purchase, or revenue. There are numerous cases of curious people testing a free game out and then proceeding not to continue. These people are often counted to the player metric nonetheless, which shows that the total number of players can be skewed to showcase a more positive statistic for PR reasons. This is the same reason why Sony cites the total number of PlayStation 2’s when asked about the total number of consoles sold. It just looks better, and they can fudge the numbers for their benefit.
Then again, Subway Surfers has 2.05 billion individual downloads and spawned numerous imitators so there’s something value in that too.
Player Count is also something that seems to be a significant metric, with Roblox topping the list with the estimated number of players being in billions cumulative. Minecraft hitting a nice spot of 600 million plus players shows that it really is the Tetris of the modern age.
I would argue that the peak number of players, and how long that plateau is held, is a more significant counter simply because it shows how many players consume the game in each span of time. Through this, we get an idea whether a game holds its audience, which is far more important in the long-term in terms of customer satisfaction and how well customers make emotional connection to the game. A game that gets massive sales at the start but sees the player count sink like a rock in water has no lasting hold on the market.
While I don’t give much weight on the Critical Acclaim the journalists give to games (as they are nothing more than just an extra arm in the PR machine), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Soul Calibur top the chart with 99 and 98 according to Metacritic. I’d like to say the User Score is the metric we should use, but seeing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 topping the current list reminds me how customers can’t be any more objective than the journalists most of the time.
If we count Spacewar! as the progenitor of all modern video and computer games (and we are,) gaming is 63 at the time of writing. There are only a handful of game names from the early era of electronic gaming that are still strongly alive. Pac-Man and Mario are the handful, with the rest of their brethren being relocated to nostalgic revivals and retro collections. While we may think the most popular games we have now will last for all time, we’ve seen so many game names simply vanishing, dying out or otherwise fall into torpor. Mega Man is a great example of this, sometimes popping its head up only to fall back into Capcom archives. Maybe we’ll get another game by 2030. Prince of Persia seemed like a name that would never die, but overexposure and simply being owned by Ubisoft clearly took its toll on the name. Same thing could be happening to Assassin Creed now, one can only hope.
Some of you might’ve noticed that I counted Donkey Kong as a Mario title. So does Nintendo, as that’s the first appearance of Mario, then named Jumpman. If you want, we can count Mario being started in 1983, making Mario 42 to Pac-Man’s 45. These are still small numbers compared to something like Universal Monsters, which have lasted for good 117 years. Looking at the comic book world, both Superman and Batman are in their 80s.
However, the gaming industry influences itself. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was influenced by Final Fantasy, which was seen as the premier gaming IP at one point in the Western World. However, going back and seeing what influenced Final Fantasy we find Dragon Quest and its numerous copycats and imitators. Going further back we find both Utima and Wizardry influencing the game, which also influenced so many other Japanese computer RPGs like The Black Onyx, which inspired the creation of The Legend of Zelda. Ultima and Wizardry have their roots in MUDs, which have roots in table-top RPGs, mainly Dungeon and Dragons, which have their roots in the military games generals and other army leaders would play to train their leadership.
The roots of video and computer gaming lie in the games and play of children and adults alike, alongside how stories were told by acting and playing them out. This tangent is to remind ourselves that gaming is not something that just came along with computers and consoles but is just the latest iteration of mankind has been doing ever since we dwelled in caves.
Nevertheless, the game with most cultural impact is probably Pokémon. Its Trading Card Game sales generate about one to three billion dollars per year, which rivals the top-most successful film’s revenue in their lifetime. Of course, TCG is an evergreen product compared to film’s finite runs, so this should illustrate how different the media are. Still, the franchise IP generated that $150 billion plus dollars and probably is Japan’s single most important import product. Pikachu is the face and mascot of the franchise, well-known across the glob, and served as an ambassador to 2014 World Cup, 2020 Tokyo Olympics and in 2025 World Expo. Its yellow face is featured in over fifty embassies across the world. Surprisingly, Pokémon has shown itself to be a multi-generational product, a cornerstone of sorts that sees constant parodies in other shows and games while drawing tourists of all ages to Pokémon Centers across the world, especially to Japan.
Even if Pokémon is a 1990s product, it can be placed alongside Mario and Pac-Man as a long-lasting face of gaming, with it probably ending up as the face of gaming on the long run if we had to choose one, for better or worse. This also illustrates some why Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and to a lesser extent GameFreak would be freakishly overprotective of their IP. There are numerous other contenders we could put there, but I’m making a point there; there must be generationally recognizable face for all without really any breaks.
The list of games that influenced other games is as wide as the library of games out there. Talking about First-Person Shooting ends up someone tracing back to Halo, then Half-Life, a mention of Quake’s code still running in some modern games, another mentioning Goldeneye 007, with usually ending with either Doom or Wolfenstein 3D in a similar fashion I did with RPGs above.
While we have been seeing the influence of video and computer games on the culture ever since the 1970s in an increasing fashion, it’s hard to determine how well a game or a name will endure as history happens. Only in hindsight can we properly determine the ebbs and flows of masses, something the current gaming industry seems to ignore in favour of trying to appease each other with the press as their echo chamber. When Demon’s Souls was put out for the first time, nobody expected it to become a cultural cornerstone. However, history has shown us that people like to play challenging games, and from that challenge comes customer satisfaction. Well-built world and framing, with play-first mentality, is a sort of silver bullet. It’s not a game for everyone, and that’s fine. You can’t please everyone with one product, and trying to is simply being dishonest toward the game and the customer.
#electronicGames #entertainment #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames
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Finally Friday Reads: Free Speech Attacks, Incompetency, Cruelty, and Grifting Galore Characterize the Trump Regime
“A modern-day interpretation of a 1871 Thomas Nast work seems fitting to commemorate Trump’s secret crypto dinner.” John Buss, repeat@1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
As the old Buddhist and Hobbit saying goes: “We live in Dark Times.” “Kali Yuga” is the Hindu expression. Darkness has always been an expression of decline in European History, hence the label “Dark Ages” for the period from the 5th to about the 8th century. Usually, these periods experience a decline in economic, intellectual, and cultural life. One of the most prevalent things about these times is that there is a paucity of written records. So, it’s difficult to capture the decline until a renaissance occurs. The breakdown of institutions occurred in these past times as well as the present. At the moment, we still have the ability to document the decline in the US. Many relate to it as a rebirth of fascist movements of the 20th century. It is a global feature at the moment, but no matter if it’s the Decline of the Roman Empire or the American Empire, there are signs.
The invention of the printing press is seen as one of the most powerful examples of an invention that can change the course of history. Access to information directly, for personal consideration, tends to create a citizenry with low tolerance of being shut off from thinking for themselves. Perhaps it’s why today’s dark leaders tend to go for education and the press, and why they attract “low information” and angry denizens. They also attract a cadre of greedy followers willing to help attack and grab the wealth of those who are powerless.
These are indeed Dark Times.
The fight for the light in the newly filed Harvard case against the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students is a prime cause of denying the citizenry access to anything that might cause them to question the goings-on here. But it also breaks into the tradition of the United States being the shining light of discovery, science, and reason. It’s why those of us who have had academic careers cherish and enjoy academic freedom. The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential.
We have traditionally had a small number of women in my field of economics. It was between 4 to 10 percent in the late 70s and early 80s. It once rose to above 30%, but recently has settled on 27%. The STEM fields still reflect the struggle for inclusion. It’s even lower for Black Americans. However, my career has led me to have colleagues from a variety of countries, which is wonderful. In my early career, most of my women colleagues came from the Middle East or China. I was lucky enough to have a professor from Finland. She was brilliant. Believe me. During my academic studies and life, the joy of having colleagues from all over the world who could share things was a blessing in my life. A colleague from the Punjab who now teaches in Canada helped me improve my math chops to get me through some of the most complex models that you could imagine. He stayed with me after Katrina until the campus got its FEMA trailers. I also had a student from Taiwan staying with me. My last biggest joy, however, was writing 2 letters of recommendation for two Black New Orleans students to Rice. The US cannot afford to fall behind in a vast world of research. And, yet, here we are with a professional moron taking down the biggest academic center of research in the World. America’s first University, Harvard. If we do not train the world’s best minds, we will fall deeply behind in everything.
Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump. “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from The Harvard Crimson. Harvard turned out one of my favorite journalists, Joy Reid, and you can read this article knowing there are more good journalists headed to jobs.
A federal judge granted Harvard a temporary restraining order in its suit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its authorization to enroll international students.
The order was issued less than two hours after the University requested a halt to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification. Harvard had described the move as “unprecedented and retaliatory.”
United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that if the DHS’ move goes forward, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
The TRO will go into effect immediately and will likely last until a hearing in the case. Burroughs has scheduled a May 27 status hearing and a May 29 hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Harvard would need to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the DHS’ directive from going into effect after the TRO expires.
Under the terms of the order, the DHS is barred from enforcing the Thursday move to strip Harvard of its SEVP status — and Harvard is no longer legally obligated to turn over the requested documents by Sunday.
Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, has adjudicated several cases relating to Harvard in the past. She oversaw a case brought by Harvard and MIT in 2021 against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to force all international students who were enrolled online in the U.S. to leave the country. ICE ultimately rolled back the policy without a ruling from Burroughs.
Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s first lawsuit, filed in April, against the Trump administration over its nearly $3 billion funding cut.
You can see all of the destruction of the Age of Reason and the Scientific Age, and the Information Age, clearly in these actions and even more clearly in Trump’s appointments and the destruction of the Agencies most responsible for progress using science and reason. BB shared this Substack today, and I thought I’d post it here. It’s from Steven Beschloss, a journalist with a historian brother. “How Much More Stupidity Will Americans Endure? Reflecting on the escalating hostility to American values, principles, and decency in a 24-hour period.” I personally cannot take much more of this.
I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.
That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.
We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.
But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.
Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.
Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.
At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”
But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”
Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.
President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.
There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty. While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”. Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents. But then, our #FARTUS is planning a Trump Tower, hotel, and golf course in GAZA. The Trump Boyz–in between murdering endangered animals for sport–have been travelling the globe using the Tariff stick as a way to expand their Crime Syndicate. All, at the expense of the United States and its economy. This is from QUARTZ: “8 countries where Trump has been making new business deals, from Pakistan to Vietnam, Residential towers, golf courses, crypto — the deals didn’t stop on Inauguration Day.” This is the art of the steal in full display. All we need to see is Eric and Don Jr. flying in the palace in the sky and sitting at Trump’s Crypto Fundraiser now.
Businesses spearheaded by President Donald Trump have struck numerous deals since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Leading the way is the Trump Organization, a conglomerate privately owned by the president. With more than 250 subsidiaries, it serves as a holding company for Trump’s various hotels, residential real estate, towers, resorts, and golf courses across the world.
World Liberty Financial, a decentralized protocol that merges financial services and cryptocurrency, has also brokered deals. A Trump business entity owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of all revenue from coin sales. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. manage the company.
Here are the countries where the Trump empire has been dealmaking. The slide show that follows lists Vietnam. It’s in Hanoi, which reminds me of the Hanoi Hilton and the late Senator John McCain.
The project consists of a golf course, hotels, and luxury residences, and is slated for completion by 2029. In addition, Eric Trump is scheduled to meet with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to discuss a possible Trump Tower in the city, Reuters reports.
In April, the president imposed a “reciprocal” tariff rate of 46% on Vietnamese goods. While that policy is currently on a 90-day pause, it would deal a major blow to the Southeast Asian country if resumed. Goods exported to the U.S. account for 30% of Vietnam’s economy, according to IMF estimates, the largest of all U.S. trading partners. As the specter of these crippling levies looms, Hanoi has pledged to buy more American goods, including Boeing (BA) aircraft and agricultural products.
Other countries include Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore. Most of these discussions haven’t been covered by the Media other than Qatar, which came with the gift that “Palace in the sky” that will cause millions of dollars to refit before it’s handed over to Trump and his “library.” If there’s a bigger oxymoron than Trump Library, I’m waiting to hear it. Let’s just call it the warehouse facility for all the bribes and emoluments. We have to discuss that big ol’ party Trump threw for his richest customers. This is from the New York Times. “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind. The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National Golf Course.”
President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.
The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.
At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”
It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.
“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Mr. Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against crypto companies.
The gala attendees made whooping noises while Mr. Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to The Times by a dinner guest.
Mr. Trump promised to change that approach. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” he said. “And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”
That sure is different than the 2021 #FARTUS who told Fox News. He just couldn’t wait to get into that scam, I guess. This is from the BBC. “Donald Trump calls Bitcoin ‘a scam against the dollar’. This is reported by BBC News Business Reporter Mary-Ann Russon.
Former US President Donald Trump has told Fox Business that he sees Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.
“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”
He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world”.
As per usual, the biggest losers from any more normalization of cryptocurrency will be his own voters. This is from the BBC. “The Bitcoin hum that is unsettling Trump’s MAGA heartlands.” This was written by Mike Wendling.
Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.
The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.
But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.
“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”
Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.
So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it. That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades. The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it. This is from Yahoo Finance: “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq trim losses as Trump threatens Apple, EU with new tariffs.”
US stocks fell on Friday, on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed President Trump’s latest tariff threats and what his giant tax bill means for the deficit and the economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also fell roughly 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) backed off about 0.6%.
All three indexes trimmed steeper losses after Trump said on Friday that Apple (AAPL) must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones sold but not made in the US. The tech giant has begun shifting some manufacturing to India, with China, home to its key suppliers, locked in a trade war with the US. Apple shares fell 3% after Trump’s post on Truth Social.
At the same time, Trump threatened to hike the tariff on EU imports to “a straight 50%” beginning June 1 as trade talks between the two have stalled.
The president’s warnings shattered a more muted mood on Wall Street as investors wound down to the Memorial Day trading break on Monday.
It adds another supply chain complication for companies already worried about the potential hit to the economy from Trump’s tariff blitz. Earnings season has seen several companies hold off from providing full annual guidance thanks to uncertainty around tariffs.
All three major gauges are on track for a losing week. Stocks have suffered as deficit worries pushed up Treasury yields, intensified as Trump’s giant tax bill forged ahead. Wall Street is still weighing the economic impact of Trump’s revised bill, which cleared a key hurdle in the House vote for approval.
Well, I have always called him Orange Caligula. It seems we have a mad emperor on our hands. It didn’t help crypto either. “Bitcoin tumbles under $108K after Trump calls for 50% EU tariff. Trump’s tariff announcement sparks Bitcoin volatility, highlighting digital assets’ sensitivity to geopolitical events.” This is from Crypto Briefing and Vivian Nguyen.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $108,000 early Friday after President Donald Trump called for steep tariffs on EU imports and threatened Apple with similar measures. The digital asset briefly touched $107,300 on Binance, pulling back from session highs above $111,000 as traders responded to fresh geopolitical tensions.
The US president on Friday proposed a 50% tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, 2025, in a post on Truth Social. He cited trade imbalances and regulatory frictions as rationale for the move, declaring current EU-US trade dynamics “totally unacceptable.”
Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs. Wow, how free market is this? Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party? This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone? Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?
President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.
Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.
Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.
This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but that the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.
“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.
Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.
Apple declined to comment for this story.
So, I’m over 4200 words and probably have put you to sleep. You know how I am about Rabbit Holes. How much longer before the economy collapses? I’m actually beginning to wonder that. I know every time I see or hear him act so insane, I just collapse on the couch.
You have a very nice Memorial Day weekend. Please spend your time appreciating the many folks who gave their life for this country and its democracy. Don’t let the ones trying to destroy it get to you. There’s always the June 14th Flag Day “No Kings” protests and actions to look forward to and participate in. Just don’t watch that damn parade. The least we old folks can do is tank the ratings.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
How about a little Warren Zevon and Prince?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #academicFreedom #CryptoCurrencyPonziSchemeFromTrumpAndMusk #FARTUS #HarvardVTrump #NeoRobberBarons #NoKingsProtestOverFARTUSParade #TheHinduLoveGods #TrumpSoursApple #WeLiveInDarkTimes
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Finally Friday Reads: Free Speech Attacks, Incompetency, Cruelty, and Grifting Galore Characterize the Trump Regime
“A modern-day interpretation of a 1871 Thomas Nast work seems fitting to commemorate Trump’s secret crypto dinner.” John Buss, repeat@1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
As the old Buddhist and Hobbit saying goes: “We live in Dark Times.” “Kali Yuga” is the Hindu expression. Darkness has always been an expression of decline in European History, hence the label “Dark Ages” for the period from the 5th to about the 8th century. Usually, these periods experience a decline in economic, intellectual, and cultural life. One of the most prevalent things about these times is that there is a paucity of written records. So, it’s difficult to capture the decline until a renaissance occurs. The breakdown of institutions occurred in these past times as well as the present. At the moment, we still have the ability to document the decline in the US. Many relate to it as a rebirth of fascist movements of the 20th century. It is a global feature at the moment, but no matter if it’s the Decline of the Roman Empire or the American Empire, there are signs.
The invention of the printing press is seen as one of the most powerful examples of an invention that can change the course of history. Access to information directly, for personal consideration, tends to create a citizenry with low tolerance of being shut off from thinking for themselves. Perhaps it’s why today’s dark leaders tend to go for education and the press, and why they attract “low information” and angry denizens. They also attract a cadre of greedy followers willing to help attack and grab the wealth of those who are powerless.
These are indeed Dark Times.
The fight for the light in the newly filed Harvard case against the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students is a prime cause of denying the citizenry access to anything that might cause them to question the goings-on here. But it also breaks into the tradition of the United States being the shining light of discovery, science, and reason. It’s why those of us who have had academic careers cherish and enjoy academic freedom. The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential.
We have traditionally had a small number of women in my field of economics. It was between 4 to 10 percent in the late 70s and early 80s. It once rose to above 30%, but recently has settled on 27%. The STEM fields still reflect the struggle for inclusion. It’s even lower for Black Americans. However, my career has led me to have colleagues from a variety of countries, which is wonderful. In my early career, most of my women colleagues came from the Middle East or China. I was lucky enough to have a professor from Finland. She was brilliant. Believe me. During my academic studies and life, the joy of having colleagues from all over the world who could share things was a blessing in my life. A colleague from the Punjab who now teaches in Canada helped me improve my math chops to get me through some of the most complex models that you could imagine. He stayed with me after Katrina until the campus got its FEMA trailers. I also had a student from Taiwan staying with me. My last biggest joy, however, was writing 2 letters of recommendation for two Black New Orleans students to Rice. The US cannot afford to fall behind in a vast world of research. And, yet, here we are with a professional moron taking down the biggest academic center of research in the World. America’s first University, Harvard. If we do not train the world’s best minds, we will fall deeply behind in everything.
Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump. “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from The Harvard Crimson. Harvard turned out one of my favorite journalists, Joy Reid, and you can read this article knowing there are more good journalists headed to jobs.
A federal judge granted Harvard a temporary restraining order in its suit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its authorization to enroll international students.
The order was issued less than two hours after the University requested a halt to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification. Harvard had described the move as “unprecedented and retaliatory.”
United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that if the DHS’ move goes forward, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
The TRO will go into effect immediately and will likely last until a hearing in the case. Burroughs has scheduled a May 27 status hearing and a May 29 hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Harvard would need to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the DHS’ directive from going into effect after the TRO expires.
Under the terms of the order, the DHS is barred from enforcing the Thursday move to strip Harvard of its SEVP status — and Harvard is no longer legally obligated to turn over the requested documents by Sunday.
Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, has adjudicated several cases relating to Harvard in the past. She oversaw a case brought by Harvard and MIT in 2021 against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to force all international students who were enrolled online in the U.S. to leave the country. ICE ultimately rolled back the policy without a ruling from Burroughs.
Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s first lawsuit, filed in April, against the Trump administration over its nearly $3 billion funding cut.
You can see all of the destruction of the Age of Reason and the Scientific Age, and the Information Age, clearly in these actions and even more clearly in Trump’s appointments and the destruction of the Agencies most responsible for progress using science and reason. BB shared this Substack today, and I thought I’d post it here. It’s from Steven Beschloss, a journalist with a historian brother. “How Much More Stupidity Will Americans Endure? Reflecting on the escalating hostility to American values, principles, and decency in a 24-hour period.” I personally cannot take much more of this.
I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.
That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.
We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.
But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.
Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.
Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.
At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”
But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”
Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.
President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.
There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty. While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”. Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents. But then, our #FARTUS is planning a Trump Tower, hotel, and golf course in GAZA. The Trump Boyz–in between murdering endangered animals for sport–have been travelling the globe using the Tariff stick as a way to expand their Crime Syndicate. All, at the expense of the United States and its economy. This is from QUARTZ: “8 countries where Trump has been making new business deals, from Pakistan to Vietnam, Residential towers, golf courses, crypto — the deals didn’t stop on Inauguration Day.” This is the art of the steal in full display. All we need to see is Eric and Don Jr. flying in the palace in the sky and sitting at Trump’s Crypto Fundraiser now.
Businesses spearheaded by President Donald Trump have struck numerous deals since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Leading the way is the Trump Organization, a conglomerate privately owned by the president. With more than 250 subsidiaries, it serves as a holding company for Trump’s various hotels, residential real estate, towers, resorts, and golf courses across the world.
World Liberty Financial, a decentralized protocol that merges financial services and cryptocurrency, has also brokered deals. A Trump business entity owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of all revenue from coin sales. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. manage the company.
Here are the countries where the Trump empire has been dealmaking. The slide show that follows lists Vietnam. It’s in Hanoi, which reminds me of the Hanoi Hilton and the late Senator John McCain.
The project consists of a golf course, hotels, and luxury residences, and is slated for completion by 2029. In addition, Eric Trump is scheduled to meet with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to discuss a possible Trump Tower in the city, Reuters reports.
In April, the president imposed a “reciprocal” tariff rate of 46% on Vietnamese goods. While that policy is currently on a 90-day pause, it would deal a major blow to the Southeast Asian country if resumed. Goods exported to the U.S. account for 30% of Vietnam’s economy, according to IMF estimates, the largest of all U.S. trading partners. As the specter of these crippling levies looms, Hanoi has pledged to buy more American goods, including Boeing (BA) aircraft and agricultural products.
Other countries include Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore. Most of these discussions haven’t been covered by the Media other than Qatar, which came with the gift that “Palace in the sky” that will cause millions of dollars to refit before it’s handed over to Trump and his “library.” If there’s a bigger oxymoron than Trump Library, I’m waiting to hear it. Let’s just call it the warehouse facility for all the bribes and emoluments. We have to discuss that big ol’ party Trump threw for his richest customers. This is from the New York Times. “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind. The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National Golf Course.”
President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.
The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.
At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”
It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.
“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Mr. Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against crypto companies.
The gala attendees made whooping noises while Mr. Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to The Times by a dinner guest.
Mr. Trump promised to change that approach. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” he said. “And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”
That sure is different than the 2021 #FARTUS who told Fox News. He just couldn’t wait to get into that scam, I guess. This is from the BBC. “Donald Trump calls Bitcoin ‘a scam against the dollar’. This is reported by BBC News Business Reporter Mary-Ann Russon.
Former US President Donald Trump has told Fox Business that he sees Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.
“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”
He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world”.
As per usual, the biggest losers from any more normalization of cryptocurrency will be his own voters. This is from the BBC. “The Bitcoin hum that is unsettling Trump’s MAGA heartlands.” This was written by Mike Wendling.
Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.
The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.
But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.
“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”
Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.
So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it. That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades. The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it. This is from Yahoo Finance: “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq trim losses as Trump threatens Apple, EU with new tariffs.”
US stocks fell on Friday, on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed President Trump’s latest tariff threats and what his giant tax bill means for the deficit and the economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also fell roughly 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) backed off about 0.6%.
All three indexes trimmed steeper losses after Trump said on Friday that Apple (AAPL) must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones sold but not made in the US. The tech giant has begun shifting some manufacturing to India, with China, home to its key suppliers, locked in a trade war with the US. Apple shares fell 3% after Trump’s post on Truth Social.
At the same time, Trump threatened to hike the tariff on EU imports to “a straight 50%” beginning June 1 as trade talks between the two have stalled.
The president’s warnings shattered a more muted mood on Wall Street as investors wound down to the Memorial Day trading break on Monday.
It adds another supply chain complication for companies already worried about the potential hit to the economy from Trump’s tariff blitz. Earnings season has seen several companies hold off from providing full annual guidance thanks to uncertainty around tariffs.
All three major gauges are on track for a losing week. Stocks have suffered as deficit worries pushed up Treasury yields, intensified as Trump’s giant tax bill forged ahead. Wall Street is still weighing the economic impact of Trump’s revised bill, which cleared a key hurdle in the House vote for approval.
Well, I have always called him Orange Caligula. It seems we have a mad emperor on our hands. It didn’t help crypto either. “Bitcoin tumbles under $108K after Trump calls for 50% EU tariff. Trump’s tariff announcement sparks Bitcoin volatility, highlighting digital assets’ sensitivity to geopolitical events.” This is from Crypto Briefing and Vivian Nguyen.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $108,000 early Friday after President Donald Trump called for steep tariffs on EU imports and threatened Apple with similar measures. The digital asset briefly touched $107,300 on Binance, pulling back from session highs above $111,000 as traders responded to fresh geopolitical tensions.
The US president on Friday proposed a 50% tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, 2025, in a post on Truth Social. He cited trade imbalances and regulatory frictions as rationale for the move, declaring current EU-US trade dynamics “totally unacceptable.”
Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs. Wow, how free market is this? Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party? This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone? Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?
President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.
Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.
Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.
This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but that the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.
“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.
Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.
Apple declined to comment for this story.
So, I’m over 4200 words and probably have put you to sleep. You know how I am about Rabbit Holes. How much longer before the economy collapses? I’m actually beginning to wonder that. I know every time I see or hear him act so insane, I just collapse on the couch.
You have a very nice Memorial Day weekend. Please spend your time appreciating the many folks who gave their life for this country and its democracy. Don’t let the ones trying to destroy it get to you. There’s always the June 14th Flag Day “No Kings” protests and actions to look forward to and participate in. Just don’t watch that damn parade. The least we old folks can do is tank the ratings.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
How about a little Warren Zevon and Prince?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #academicFreedom #CryptoCurrencyPonziSchemeFromTrumpAndMusk #FARTUS #HarvardVTrump #NeoRobberBarons #NoKingsProtestOverFARTUSParade #TheHinduLoveGods #TrumpSoursApple #WeLiveInDarkTimes
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Finally Friday Reads: Free Speech Attacks, Incompetency, Cruelty, and Grifting Galore Characterize the Trump Regime
“A modern-day interpretation of a 1871 Thomas Nast work seems fitting to commemorate Trump’s secret crypto dinner.” John Buss, repeat@1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
As the old Buddhist and Hobbit saying goes: “We live in Dark Times.” “Kali Yuga” is the Hindu expression. Darkness has always been an expression of decline in European History, hence the label “Dark Ages” for the period from the 5th to about the 8th century. Usually, these periods experience a decline in economic, intellectual, and cultural life. One of the most prevalent things about these times is that there is a paucity of written records. So, it’s difficult to capture the decline until a renaissance occurs. The breakdown of institutions occurred in these past times as well as the present. At the moment, we still have the ability to document the decline in the US. Many relate to it as a rebirth of fascist movements of the 20th century. It is a global feature at the moment, but no matter if it’s the Decline of the Roman Empire or the American Empire, there are signs.
The invention of the printing press is seen as one of the most powerful examples of an invention that can change the course of history. Access to information directly, for personal consideration, tends to create a citizenry with low tolerance of being shut off from thinking for themselves. Perhaps it’s why today’s dark leaders tend to go for education and the press, and why they attract “low information” and angry denizens. They also attract a cadre of greedy followers willing to help attack and grab the wealth of those who are powerless.
These are indeed Dark Times.
The fight for the light in the newly filed Harvard case against the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students is a prime cause of denying the citizenry access to anything that might cause them to question the goings-on here. But it also breaks into the tradition of the United States being the shining light of discovery, science, and reason. It’s why those of us who have had academic careers cherish and enjoy academic freedom. The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential.
We have traditionally had a small number of women in my field of economics. It was between 4 to 10 percent in the late 70s and early 80s. It once rose to above 30%, but recently has settled on 27%. The STEM fields still reflect the struggle for inclusion. It’s even lower for Black Americans. However, my career has led me to have colleagues from a variety of countries, which is wonderful. In my early career, most of my women colleagues came from the Middle East or China. I was lucky enough to have a professor from Finland. She was brilliant. Believe me. During my academic studies and life, the joy of having colleagues from all over the world who could share things was a blessing in my life. A colleague from the Punjab who now teaches in Canada helped me improve my math chops to get me through some of the most complex models that you could imagine. He stayed with me after Katrina until the campus got its FEMA trailers. I also had a student from Taiwan staying with me. My last biggest joy, however, was writing 2 letters of recommendation for two Black New Orleans students to Rice. The US cannot afford to fall behind in a vast world of research. And, yet, here we are with a professional moron taking down the biggest academic center of research in the World. America’s first University, Harvard. If we do not train the world’s best minds, we will fall deeply behind in everything.
Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump. “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from The Harvard Crimson. Harvard turned out one of my favorite journalists, Joy Reid, and you can read this article knowing there are more good journalists headed to jobs.
A federal judge granted Harvard a temporary restraining order in its suit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its authorization to enroll international students.
The order was issued less than two hours after the University requested a halt to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification. Harvard had described the move as “unprecedented and retaliatory.”
United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that if the DHS’ move goes forward, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
The TRO will go into effect immediately and will likely last until a hearing in the case. Burroughs has scheduled a May 27 status hearing and a May 29 hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Harvard would need to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the DHS’ directive from going into effect after the TRO expires.
Under the terms of the order, the DHS is barred from enforcing the Thursday move to strip Harvard of its SEVP status — and Harvard is no longer legally obligated to turn over the requested documents by Sunday.
Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, has adjudicated several cases relating to Harvard in the past. She oversaw a case brought by Harvard and MIT in 2021 against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to force all international students who were enrolled online in the U.S. to leave the country. ICE ultimately rolled back the policy without a ruling from Burroughs.
Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s first lawsuit, filed in April, against the Trump administration over its nearly $3 billion funding cut.
You can see all of the destruction of the Age of Reason and the Scientific Age, and the Information Age, clearly in these actions and even more clearly in Trump’s appointments and the destruction of the Agencies most responsible for progress using science and reason. BB shared this Substack today, and I thought I’d post it here. It’s from Steven Beschloss, a journalist with a historian brother. “How Much More Stupidity Will Americans Endure? Reflecting on the escalating hostility to American values, principles, and decency in a 24-hour period.” I personally cannot take much more of this.
I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.
That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.
We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.
But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.
Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.
Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.
At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”
But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”
Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.
President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.
There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty. While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”. Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents. But then, our #FARTUS is planning a Trump Tower, hotel, and golf course in GAZA. The Trump Boyz–in between murdering endangered animals for sport–have been travelling the globe using the Tariff stick as a way to expand their Crime Syndicate. All, at the expense of the United States and its economy. This is from QUARTZ: “8 countries where Trump has been making new business deals, from Pakistan to Vietnam, Residential towers, golf courses, crypto — the deals didn’t stop on Inauguration Day.” This is the art of the steal in full display. All we need to see is Eric and Don Jr. flying in the palace in the sky and sitting at Trump’s Crypto Fundraiser now.
Businesses spearheaded by President Donald Trump have struck numerous deals since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Leading the way is the Trump Organization, a conglomerate privately owned by the president. With more than 250 subsidiaries, it serves as a holding company for Trump’s various hotels, residential real estate, towers, resorts, and golf courses across the world.
World Liberty Financial, a decentralized protocol that merges financial services and cryptocurrency, has also brokered deals. A Trump business entity owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of all revenue from coin sales. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. manage the company.
Here are the countries where the Trump empire has been dealmaking. The slide show that follows lists Vietnam. It’s in Hanoi, which reminds me of the Hanoi Hilton and the late Senator John McCain.
The project consists of a golf course, hotels, and luxury residences, and is slated for completion by 2029. In addition, Eric Trump is scheduled to meet with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to discuss a possible Trump Tower in the city, Reuters reports.
In April, the president imposed a “reciprocal” tariff rate of 46% on Vietnamese goods. While that policy is currently on a 90-day pause, it would deal a major blow to the Southeast Asian country if resumed. Goods exported to the U.S. account for 30% of Vietnam’s economy, according to IMF estimates, the largest of all U.S. trading partners. As the specter of these crippling levies looms, Hanoi has pledged to buy more American goods, including Boeing (BA) aircraft and agricultural products.
Other countries include Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore. Most of these discussions haven’t been covered by the Media other than Qatar, which came with the gift that “Palace in the sky” that will cause millions of dollars to refit before it’s handed over to Trump and his “library.” If there’s a bigger oxymoron than Trump Library, I’m waiting to hear it. Let’s just call it the warehouse facility for all the bribes and emoluments. We have to discuss that big ol’ party Trump threw for his richest customers. This is from the New York Times. “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind. The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National Golf Course.”
President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.
The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.
At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”
It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.
“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Mr. Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against crypto companies.
The gala attendees made whooping noises while Mr. Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to The Times by a dinner guest.
Mr. Trump promised to change that approach. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” he said. “And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”
That sure is different than the 2021 #FARTUS who told Fox News. He just couldn’t wait to get into that scam, I guess. This is from the BBC. “Donald Trump calls Bitcoin ‘a scam against the dollar’. This is reported by BBC News Business Reporter Mary-Ann Russon.
Former US President Donald Trump has told Fox Business that he sees Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.
“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”
He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world”.
As per usual, the biggest losers from any more normalization of cryptocurrency will be his own voters. This is from the BBC. “The Bitcoin hum that is unsettling Trump’s MAGA heartlands.” This was written by Mike Wendling.
Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.
The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.
But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.
“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”
Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.
So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it. That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades. The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it. This is from Yahoo Finance: “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq trim losses as Trump threatens Apple, EU with new tariffs.”
US stocks fell on Friday, on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed President Trump’s latest tariff threats and what his giant tax bill means for the deficit and the economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also fell roughly 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) backed off about 0.6%.
All three indexes trimmed steeper losses after Trump said on Friday that Apple (AAPL) must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones sold but not made in the US. The tech giant has begun shifting some manufacturing to India, with China, home to its key suppliers, locked in a trade war with the US. Apple shares fell 3% after Trump’s post on Truth Social.
At the same time, Trump threatened to hike the tariff on EU imports to “a straight 50%” beginning June 1 as trade talks between the two have stalled.
The president’s warnings shattered a more muted mood on Wall Street as investors wound down to the Memorial Day trading break on Monday.
It adds another supply chain complication for companies already worried about the potential hit to the economy from Trump’s tariff blitz. Earnings season has seen several companies hold off from providing full annual guidance thanks to uncertainty around tariffs.
All three major gauges are on track for a losing week. Stocks have suffered as deficit worries pushed up Treasury yields, intensified as Trump’s giant tax bill forged ahead. Wall Street is still weighing the economic impact of Trump’s revised bill, which cleared a key hurdle in the House vote for approval.
Well, I have always called him Orange Caligula. It seems we have a mad emperor on our hands. It didn’t help crypto either. “Bitcoin tumbles under $108K after Trump calls for 50% EU tariff. Trump’s tariff announcement sparks Bitcoin volatility, highlighting digital assets’ sensitivity to geopolitical events.” This is from Crypto Briefing and Vivian Nguyen.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $108,000 early Friday after President Donald Trump called for steep tariffs on EU imports and threatened Apple with similar measures. The digital asset briefly touched $107,300 on Binance, pulling back from session highs above $111,000 as traders responded to fresh geopolitical tensions.
The US president on Friday proposed a 50% tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, 2025, in a post on Truth Social. He cited trade imbalances and regulatory frictions as rationale for the move, declaring current EU-US trade dynamics “totally unacceptable.”
Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs. Wow, how free market is this? Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party? This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone? Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?
President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.
Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.
Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.
This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but that the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.
“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.
Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.
Apple declined to comment for this story.
So, I’m over 4200 words and probably have put you to sleep. You know how I am about Rabbit Holes. How much longer before the economy collapses? I’m actually beginning to wonder that. I know every time I see or hear him act so insane, I just collapse on the couch.
You have a very nice Memorial Day weekend. Please spend your time appreciating the many folks who gave their life for this country and its democracy. Don’t let the ones trying to destroy it get to you. There’s always the June 14th Flag Day “No Kings” protests and actions to look forward to and participate in. Just don’t watch that damn parade. The least we old folks can do is tank the ratings.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
How about a little Warren Zevon and Prince?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #academicFreedom #CryptoCurrencyPonziSchemeFromTrumpAndMusk #FARTUS #HarvardVTrump #NeoRobberBarons #NoKingsProtestOverFARTUSParade #TheHinduLoveGods #TrumpSoursApple #WeLiveInDarkTimes
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Finally Friday Reads: Free Speech Attacks, Incompetency, Cruelty, and Grifting Galore Characterize the Trump Regime
“A modern-day interpretation of a 1871 Thomas Nast work seems fitting to commemorate Trump’s secret crypto dinner.” John Buss, repeat@1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
As the old Buddhist and Hobbit saying goes: “We live in Dark Times.” “Kali Yuga” is the Hindu expression. Darkness has always been an expression of decline in European History, hence the label “Dark Ages” for the period from the 5th to about the 8th century. Usually, these periods experience a decline in economic, intellectual, and cultural life. One of the most prevalent things about these times is that there is a paucity of written records. So, it’s difficult to capture the decline until a renaissance occurs. The breakdown of institutions occurred in these past times as well as the present. At the moment, we still have the ability to document the decline in the US. Many relate to it as a rebirth of fascist movements of the 20th century. It is a global feature at the moment, but no matter if it’s the Decline of the Roman Empire or the American Empire, there are signs.
The invention of the printing press is seen as one of the most powerful examples of an invention that can change the course of history. Access to information directly, for personal consideration, tends to create a citizenry with low tolerance of being shut off from thinking for themselves. Perhaps it’s why today’s dark leaders tend to go for education and the press, and why they attract “low information” and angry denizens. They also attract a cadre of greedy followers willing to help attack and grab the wealth of those who are powerless.
These are indeed Dark Times.
The fight for the light in the newly filed Harvard case against the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students is a prime cause of denying the citizenry access to anything that might cause them to question the goings-on here. But it also breaks into the tradition of the United States being the shining light of discovery, science, and reason. It’s why those of us who have had academic careers cherish and enjoy academic freedom. The free exchange of ideas and opinions is essential.
We have traditionally had a small number of women in my field of economics. It was between 4 to 10 percent in the late 70s and early 80s. It once rose to above 30%, but recently has settled on 27%. The STEM fields still reflect the struggle for inclusion. It’s even lower for Black Americans. However, my career has led me to have colleagues from a variety of countries, which is wonderful. In my early career, most of my women colleagues came from the Middle East or China. I was lucky enough to have a professor from Finland. She was brilliant. Believe me. During my academic studies and life, the joy of having colleagues from all over the world who could share things was a blessing in my life. A colleague from the Punjab who now teaches in Canada helped me improve my math chops to get me through some of the most complex models that you could imagine. He stayed with me after Katrina until the campus got its FEMA trailers. I also had a student from Taiwan staying with me. My last biggest joy, however, was writing 2 letters of recommendation for two Black New Orleans students to Rice. The US cannot afford to fall behind in a vast world of research. And, yet, here we are with a professional moron taking down the biggest academic center of research in the World. America’s first University, Harvard. If we do not train the world’s best minds, we will fall deeply behind in everything.
Today, we got the news of the Case Harvard filed against Trump. “Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump Admin From Revoking Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students.” This is from The Harvard Crimson. Harvard turned out one of my favorite journalists, Joy Reid, and you can read this article knowing there are more good journalists headed to jobs.
A federal judge granted Harvard a temporary restraining order in its suit to block the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke its authorization to enroll international students.
The order was issued less than two hours after the University requested a halt to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to end its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification. Harvard had described the move as “unprecedented and retaliatory.”
United States District Judge Allison D. Burroughs agreed that if the DHS’ move goes forward, Harvard “will sustain immediate and irreparable injury before there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
The TRO will go into effect immediately and will likely last until a hearing in the case. Burroughs has scheduled a May 27 status hearing and a May 29 hearing on whether to issue a preliminary injunction. Harvard would need to file for a preliminary injunction to prevent the DHS’ directive from going into effect after the TRO expires.
Under the terms of the order, the DHS is barred from enforcing the Thursday move to strip Harvard of its SEVP status — and Harvard is no longer legally obligated to turn over the requested documents by Sunday.
Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, has adjudicated several cases relating to Harvard in the past. She oversaw a case brought by Harvard and MIT in 2021 against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to force all international students who were enrolled online in the U.S. to leave the country. ICE ultimately rolled back the policy without a ruling from Burroughs.
Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s first lawsuit, filed in April, against the Trump administration over its nearly $3 billion funding cut.
You can see all of the destruction of the Age of Reason and the Scientific Age, and the Information Age, clearly in these actions and even more clearly in Trump’s appointments and the destruction of the Agencies most responsible for progress using science and reason. BB shared this Substack today, and I thought I’d post it here. It’s from Steven Beschloss, a journalist with a historian brother. “How Much More Stupidity Will Americans Endure? Reflecting on the escalating hostility to American values, principles, and decency in a 24-hour period.” I personally cannot take much more of this.
I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.
That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.
We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.
But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.
Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.
Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.
At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”
But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”
Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.
President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.
There is a daily drumbeat of stupidity, airing of white grievances, and cruelty. While discriminating harshly against everyone who is not white and Christian, this administration harbors supporters who carry torches and shout “Jews will not replace us,” and has bubble-headed Congress Critters who scream about “Jewish Space Lasers”. Anti-semitism has become transactional. It has become a useful tool in the attack on Academia and the Democratic Party. It assumes that you can’t understand the history of the Jewish people without turning a blind eye to the punishing attacks on Palestinian women, children, and innocents in the Gaza Strip. I do not think there is a bigger way of showing disrespect for a group of people than using their historical struggles as a tool to encourage the murder of innocents. But then, our #FARTUS is planning a Trump Tower, hotel, and golf course in GAZA. The Trump Boyz–in between murdering endangered animals for sport–have been travelling the globe using the Tariff stick as a way to expand their Crime Syndicate. All, at the expense of the United States and its economy. This is from QUARTZ: “8 countries where Trump has been making new business deals, from Pakistan to Vietnam, Residential towers, golf courses, crypto — the deals didn’t stop on Inauguration Day.” This is the art of the steal in full display. All we need to see is Eric and Don Jr. flying in the palace in the sky and sitting at Trump’s Crypto Fundraiser now.
Businesses spearheaded by President Donald Trump have struck numerous deals since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Leading the way is the Trump Organization, a conglomerate privately owned by the president. With more than 250 subsidiaries, it serves as a holding company for Trump’s various hotels, residential real estate, towers, resorts, and golf courses across the world.
World Liberty Financial, a decentralized protocol that merges financial services and cryptocurrency, has also brokered deals. A Trump business entity owns 60% of World Liberty and is entitled to 75% of all revenue from coin sales. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. manage the company.
Here are the countries where the Trump empire has been dealmaking. The slide show that follows lists Vietnam. It’s in Hanoi, which reminds me of the Hanoi Hilton and the late Senator John McCain.
The project consists of a golf course, hotels, and luxury residences, and is slated for completion by 2029. In addition, Eric Trump is scheduled to meet with officials in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday to discuss a possible Trump Tower in the city, Reuters reports.
In April, the president imposed a “reciprocal” tariff rate of 46% on Vietnamese goods. While that policy is currently on a 90-day pause, it would deal a major blow to the Southeast Asian country if resumed. Goods exported to the U.S. account for 30% of Vietnam’s economy, according to IMF estimates, the largest of all U.S. trading partners. As the specter of these crippling levies looms, Hanoi has pledged to buy more American goods, including Boeing (BA) aircraft and agricultural products.
Other countries include Serbia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Pakistan, and Singapore. Most of these discussions haven’t been covered by the Media other than Qatar, which came with the gift that “Palace in the sky” that will cause millions of dollars to refit before it’s handed over to Trump and his “library.” If there’s a bigger oxymoron than Trump Library, I’m waiting to hear it. Let’s just call it the warehouse facility for all the bribes and emoluments. We have to discuss that big ol’ party Trump threw for his richest customers. This is from the New York Times. “Hundreds Join Trump at ‘Exclusive’ Dinner, With Dreams of Crypto Fortunes in Mind. The guests were the biggest investors in President Trump’s memecoin, and they were greeted with chants of “shame” as they arrived at Trump National Golf Course.”
President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.
The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.
At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”
It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations.
“The past administration made your lives miserable,” Mr. Trump told the dinner guests, referring to the Biden administration’s enforcement actions against crypto companies.
The gala attendees made whooping noises while Mr. Trump spoke, and applauded as the president declared: “They were going after everybody. It was a disgrace frankly,” according to a video provided to The Times by a dinner guest.
Mr. Trump promised to change that approach. “There is a lot of sense in crypto. A lot of common sense in crypto,” he said. “And we’re honored to be working on helping everybody here.”
That sure is different than the 2021 #FARTUS who told Fox News. He just couldn’t wait to get into that scam, I guess. This is from the BBC. “Donald Trump calls Bitcoin ‘a scam against the dollar’. This is reported by BBC News Business Reporter Mary-Ann Russon.
Former US President Donald Trump has told Fox Business that he sees Bitcoin as a “scam” affecting the value of the US dollar.
“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Mr Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”
He added that he wanted the dollar to be “the currency of the world”.
As per usual, the biggest losers from any more normalization of cryptocurrency will be his own voters. This is from the BBC. “The Bitcoin hum that is unsettling Trump’s MAGA heartlands.” This was written by Mike Wendling.
Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.
The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.
But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.
“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”
Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.
So, build the nastiest factory in the backyard of the people least able to deal with it. That’s the sound of these Robber Barons that should be familiar to anyone who knows US history from its early 20th-century business escapades. The most interesting thing that’s popped up today is that Apple has got Trump in a lather, and the Equity Markets hate it. This is from Yahoo Finance: “Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq trim losses as Trump threatens Apple, EU with new tariffs.”
US stocks fell on Friday, on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed President Trump’s latest tariff threats and what his giant tax bill means for the deficit and the economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) sank 0.4%. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) also fell roughly 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) backed off about 0.6%.
All three indexes trimmed steeper losses after Trump said on Friday that Apple (AAPL) must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones sold but not made in the US. The tech giant has begun shifting some manufacturing to India, with China, home to its key suppliers, locked in a trade war with the US. Apple shares fell 3% after Trump’s post on Truth Social.
At the same time, Trump threatened to hike the tariff on EU imports to “a straight 50%” beginning June 1 as trade talks between the two have stalled.
The president’s warnings shattered a more muted mood on Wall Street as investors wound down to the Memorial Day trading break on Monday.
It adds another supply chain complication for companies already worried about the potential hit to the economy from Trump’s tariff blitz. Earnings season has seen several companies hold off from providing full annual guidance thanks to uncertainty around tariffs.
All three major gauges are on track for a losing week. Stocks have suffered as deficit worries pushed up Treasury yields, intensified as Trump’s giant tax bill forged ahead. Wall Street is still weighing the economic impact of Trump’s revised bill, which cleared a key hurdle in the House vote for approval.
Well, I have always called him Orange Caligula. It seems we have a mad emperor on our hands. It didn’t help crypto either. “Bitcoin tumbles under $108K after Trump calls for 50% EU tariff. Trump’s tariff announcement sparks Bitcoin volatility, highlighting digital assets’ sensitivity to geopolitical events.” This is from Crypto Briefing and Vivian Nguyen.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) fell below $108,000 early Friday after President Donald Trump called for steep tariffs on EU imports and threatened Apple with similar measures. The digital asset briefly touched $107,300 on Binance, pulling back from session highs above $111,000 as traders responded to fresh geopolitical tensions.
The US president on Friday proposed a 50% tariff on all EU imports starting June 1, 2025, in a post on Truth Social. He cited trade imbalances and regulatory frictions as rationale for the move, declaring current EU-US trade dynamics “totally unacceptable.”
Apple is being threatened with 25% tariffs. Wow, how free market is this? Sounds a lot more like the old Soviet Command and Control model. Is he channeling Putin and Orban or just pissed about something Apple did at his party? This is from CNBC. “Trump says Apple must pay a 25% tariff on iPhones not made in the U.S.” Does he not realize how long it would take to even set up a factory, let alone train everyone? Doesn’t he know what this huge project would take to even break even?
President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Shares of Apple fell about 2% on Friday after the post.
Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S.
Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone at $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.
This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple of weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday, according to Politico.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Fox News on Friday that he was not part of the meeting at the White House but that the Apple situation could be part of the Trump administration’s push to bring “precision manufacturing” back to the U.S.
“A large part of Apple’s components are in semiconductors. So we would like to have Apple help us make the semiconductor supply chain more secure,” Bessent said.
Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.
Apple declined to comment for this story.
So, I’m over 4200 words and probably have put you to sleep. You know how I am about Rabbit Holes. How much longer before the economy collapses? I’m actually beginning to wonder that. I know every time I see or hear him act so insane, I just collapse on the couch.
You have a very nice Memorial Day weekend. Please spend your time appreciating the many folks who gave their life for this country and its democracy. Don’t let the ones trying to destroy it get to you. There’s always the June 14th Flag Day “No Kings” protests and actions to look forward to and participate in. Just don’t watch that damn parade. The least we old folks can do is tank the ratings.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
How about a little Warren Zevon and Prince?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #academicFreedom #CryptoCurrencyPonziSchemeFromTrumpAndMusk #FARTUS #HarvardVTrump #NeoRobberBarons #NoKingsProtestOverFARTUSParade #TheHinduLoveGods #TrumpSoursApple #WeLiveInDarkTimes
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CW: #Reading in Week Twenty of 2026 | May 11–17 | ~2700 words | ~15k characters | Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●◐○○ The Thing in the Cellar - David Keller (ss) 1932
Ever since he was a baby, Tommy had feared the cellar. Which also means fearing the kitchen, when the surprisingly stout oaken door leading to the cellar was open, or even just unlocked. Tommy's parents lived with this while he was young, but when it was time for him to start school, his simple parents had consulted a doctor.The young doctor recommended nailing the cellar door open, and locking Tommy in the kitchen for an hour to get over his fears. This is the first story in Classic Masters of Horror, so you can guess how things went.
●●●◐○ Those Left Behind {Behold: Humanity! 20} - Ralts Bloodthorne (nov) 2025
More aftereffects of the Big-C3, the Confederacy-Council Conflict, which morphed into the War Against the Atrekna, which begat the Phase Ghost Invasion, which woke the Earthlings. And Earthlings smite whatever bothers them.When Earth had barely achieved solar system colonies, a Precursor War Machine — a continent-size robot warship, relic of a war millions of years ago — attacked. Humans barley survived. They decided they couldn't keep all their eggs in one basket, so they adapted Precursor tech and built ships, taking humans who would later be called Earthlings (as opposed to the Terrans who stayed behind and spread) into the Great Dark, to hide and grow. If humans were wiped out, some would remain to wreak vengeance.
An Atrekna temporal attack wiped out 99.9% of Terrans. Earthlings responded by novabombing their star systems. Now some are in Council space, investigating the Lanaktallans. The cow-centaurs started the war against the Terran Confederacy, but later surrendered to Terrans and allied with them against the extra-universal Atrekna. Earthlings never investigate. Something odd is going on.
We also see Vuxten get sucked into a holiday special, where he ends up fighting a rogue World Court elf, a holiday banshee, a squad of toy soldiers, and Jack Frost himself before rescuing Santa and Mrs. Claus, who'd been kidnapped by Kris "Krusher" Kringle.
The Flashbang resets normspace, banishing phase ghosts who'd escaped the networks. A Lanaktallan gaming lord nearly kills himself writing a program to purge phase ghosts still in GalNet. Hesstlan combat medic Melinvae gets psych-eval'd out of the military, and courtesy of Atrekna time resets, comes home 82 years old, when her mother is only 45. The rebooting of the SUDS matrioshka shells continues, and Marco's mind unravels, legacy of his personality having been rewritten thousands of times by the now-defunct Council of Eternity.
And so on. Unless you've been reading the series, none of this makes the slightest bit of sense to you. But the author got his organ transplant, and it looks like he'll now live to finish the series.
●●○○○ Sunleaf Haven and the Unwritten Law - Mel Cowan (ss) 2025
Jane was reading by the pool when the newbie walked out of the changing rooms clutching a folded towel below belt level. George was pale and very nervous. When he found himself a lounger, he chose one with a view of, well, everything, and he then proceeded to break the most fundamental, unwritten rule: the Gaze.The social contract of a nudist resort is simple: No staring. No photography without explicit consent. No overt sexual behavior. No comments on appearance. Respect personal space. A towel is vital.
This is how George broke rule after rule, but in the end it was determined that he was an idiot, not a creep, and Jane was able to make him realize what he was doing wrong, and to change.
●●●◐○ Problems in the Pyrenees {NBL Solutions 3} - Ted Bun (nva) 2020
Problem-solving Melody's now full-time Researcher, Susan (budget cuts closed the library she'd worked at), was married to policeman Gerald, who'd been Melody's late husband's deputy. A former colleague of his, Clare, now an author, had contacted him about a problem, and naturally he'd referred her to the Naked Beach Lady's outfit.Clare had a second novel to finish by deadline, and had rented a somewhat isolated cottage in France in order to concentrate. But a man was bothering her, continually stopping by to fix a gate or trim some bushes — and mostly catch glimpses of the bikini-clad woman in the pool, between her morning and evening writing sessions. She needed to get rid of him without making a fuss in the small village where she'd be for the rest of the summer.
Melody to the rescue. And of course she was her usual nudist self while on the job, and encouraged uptight Clare to at least go topless. Nudity even turned out to be the solution to the problem. Melody being Melody, she also helped Clare get over a past assault, as well as try dating again, with a hunky baker (and ex-rugby player) in the nearby village being the match, one with his own troubled past that Melody helped him get over. As a bonus, she also helped the love life of a widowed gay Brit who lived in the village and did odd jobs for people.
Unlike in the past two novellas, Melody herself didn't have a fling. She nearly did on the way back home, but the man who chatted her up turned out to be sexist, so she dumped him after dinner. C'est la vie.
●●●◐○ Admiral's Inspection {Bullard 1} - Malcolm Jameson (ss) 1940
Admiral Abercrombie of the Patrol Force had the notion that the crews of his ships weren't up to snuff, and reached far back in history to a time when iron men sailed iron ships. Could the space sailors of 8940¹ meet the battle efficiency standards of the old Americans of 1940?And that's the story. The notice of the upcoming inspection, with the standards to be applied, then three weeks of preparation. Then the crew of the Pollux would be shadowed by the crew of her sister ship, the Castor, as the umpires rated their reactions to an increasing horrible series of fake accidents and disasters that resulted in most of the crew pretend-killed and most of the ship pretend-disabled.
One of the problems wasn't pretend, however, when an umpire used a small fireworks to make a pretend storage room fire more dramatic. It ended up burning something which released nitrous oxide gas. The "dead" crew in the nearby mess became gas-drunk, and decided to start pulling wires and smashing equipment, which left the ship in real trouble, disabled and heading full blast toward Jupiter.
By the end of the test junior officer Bullard — the hero of a set of nine stories, eight of which are in the collection this tale comes from² — was the only one of the command crew officially left alive. That there are that many more stories in the series tells you he did well in the test.
●●○○○ The Cabral Discovery - Jake Berry Ellison, Jr (ss) 2018
Amil Cabral shared neither the concerns of his corrupt politician father, nor his guilt-ridden priest brother. Nor did he care about stealing his father's riches — really the fortune his grandfather had stolen while fleeing after Amil's namesake's assassination — for his own use.Amil used his father's cryptocurrency to pay for runtime on a black-market quantum cloud computer. His algorithm learned patterns of human behavior, society, and Earth’s biosystems. Amil had already died from his father's torture to get the crypto wallet's key back when his program triggered a watcher program which sent a signal to the stars. Earth was almost ready. Time to send in the harvester ships…
{This is the story the collection is named for? An undeveloped idea that Ellison couldn't write ten pages on?}
●●●◐○ What Manner of Man {Blood 2} - Tanya Huff (ss) 1996
Heny Fitzroy, vampire, was returning home from a card game at a time when gaslamps were new to London. He heard three men attacking a fourth in an alley, and an unwise impulse to intervene struck him. The man he rescued was Charles Evans, an acquaintance of an acquaintance who worked at the Home Office, who'd had a sword run through his shoulder.After running off the ruffians, Henry had looked at the bleeding man and thought a feeding might be in order before taking him home, and had said “I think it might be best if you trusted me and slept.” This led to the man calling for Henry the next day. Someone was stealing military plans, and unless the culprit could be caught before he could pass them on, Napoleon would have the information he needed to defeat Wellington. Evans knew he could trust Fitzroy to find the spy. Henry was trapped.
One candidate was Sir William Wyndham, a man who gambled widely but not well, and who was thus in serious need of money. Another was Lord Ruthven, a man who dressed in black and who was always quietly drunk, who might think the world needed to be burned down. The third candidate was Mr. Maxwell Aubrey, a rich young fool who was easily led; if he would make a fool of himself in front of a formal ball for a bet, could he be convinced to convey some papers, unaware of what they were?
●●●◐○ Gateway to Elsewhere - Murray Leinster (nov) 1954
Tony Gregg bought an interesting coin at a flee market. The owner of the Syrian restaurant he went to identified the Arabic writing on it as saying "Barkut". He said that if Tony came back Thursday when businessman Mr. Emurian dined, he could ask him about it.Mr. Emurian spun a tale of an alternate world where the Arabian Nights were factual. A world that one could get to via isolated places in each world that were identical. He also said that he had a friend who'd pay two thousand dollars for the coin. But the adventurer in Tony won out, and he decided to visit Barkut. He began at the racetrack, flipping the coin — which Mr. Emurian said would be trying to get back to its own world — to choose what horse to bet on. He made eleven grand.
Tony used that money to go where the coin flips led him, eventually ending up in Suakim, on the Red Sea. A journey with a dangerous crew, then stealing a dinghy at night, led to him being washed up on a beach, which ended up being near Barkut. He fought bandits, stole their camels, came to a city, and was imprisoned as a likely djinn, in which incarceration the queen's chief slave girl taught him Arabic.
So we have a djinn-kidnapped queen — who doesn't want to come home. Her chief slave, Ghail, who insists upon it, and who has feelings for Tony — and who knows that the foreign hero will surely mess up. A city of djinns and djinnees, all of whom have the intellect of children, the attention span of butterflies, and vast powers of transmogrification. Tony must try to save Barkut and to win the human Ghail over, while dealing with the two slave-girl djinnees assigned to him, and the other one who has a crush on him. What can a poor fated hero do?
●●●◐○ The Big Trek - Fritz Leiber (ss) 1957
A human wakes in a desert, not knowing how he got there. Not far from him he sees a line of beings walking by. They had two, three, four, six legs; arms or tentacles or other; feathers or fur or scales; and some were in transparent environment suits filled with water or different types of air. Not seeing what else to do, he joined the march, which was also somewhat a dance.At one point they passed the ruins of a city, with broken skyscrapers sprouting from rubble. The man went to examine the city, and found dark beasts hiding in the shadows, beasts who followed him, and who talked. They were former humans, trying to get him to join them. The man's memory returns, and he recalls where he is and why he came, and he flees. He eventually rejoins the march.
●●○○○ Casting Office - Kris Neville (ss) 1951
Neville is sometimes given to Art, and produces opaque works. The first third of this tale was that. At one point there's a line: “Discerning no other purpose, this Critic is forced to assume that the Author is aiming at utter boredom, and from what we remember of his last attempt, we are encouraged to note that he has elevated his aim considerably.” Yes.In any case, an Author is writing an ongoing Production on a planetary scale (and beyond) that the Director thinks is a mess fated to end badly, and that Actors would avoid if they could afford to, which they can't. Actors (and presumably everyone) are souls, who step through a memory blackout door to go on Stage, where they animate an insect or bird or human, then return when their character dies.
The Director and Stage Manager and the Backers decide the Production is a loss, and call in a Play-Doctor to wrap it up quickly. There's only one way to do that…
●●○○○ A Natural Break - Tanis Lang (ss) 2021
Work was swamped. Suspecting her boss was going to ask her to cancel her vacation, Mel booked someplace in a rush, so she could truthfully tell him she'd paid to be somewhere else, and couldn't stay. As happens in all these cases, the place Mel booked barely looking was a naturist resort, which she realized when she saw Doug the receptionist was wearing only a short see-through sarong.Dough showed her around Treetops, and Mel found she quickly got used to seeing naked people, though she kept her clothes on the first day. On the second she decided she couldn't just hide in her cottage, so went out early to swim alone, nude. Cue usual spiel about how it felt wonderful to be liberated and free, and then one simply air-dryed afterward, with no cold, wet, and clingy swimsuit to endure.
And so on. The story is slighter than usual for a first-time nudist tale, especially in an anthology that's supposed to be about romance. All we get at the end of the story is:
“She had discovered the love of her own body, appreciating the freedom and her increased body-confidence, the fantastic feeling of swimming naked. And, just as importantly, the new friends she had made. It had all happened in such a short time too. This new romance with Naturism would change Mel and her life for ever.”
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Week Twenty's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
164+0 ss | 09+0 nvt | 11+0 nva | 43+0 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction
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Three two-star stories in one week. Not a great time. I never give zero filled-circles: the author wrote a story and got it published in a professional magazine, so they get a point. I only did that twice, and it was such a bother I stopped. One-star tales usually mean it was offensive for some reason like racism or misogyny. Two points mean a tale was barely okay, but not bigoted or overwhelmingly stupid.
━━━━━━━━━━[1] I'm sorry, I expect god-level tech if you set your story 7000 years in the future, and here we get spaceships out of Flash Gordon. Frankly, I'd expect more if the story were set 700 years in the future.
[2] So I dug up a Jerry eBooks Omnipack to get the ninth story, "Orders", as well as every other piece of short fiction Malcolm Jameson wrote. I don't know how many of them I'll read.
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I am Sakine Cansiz!
Necibe Qeredaxi
From the moment humans become aware of their existence as a will, they have continuously asked themselves fundamental questions, always searching for the best and most satisfying answers that give meaning to their lives, both personally and socially. The question “Who am I?” has been the question of most truth-seekers, philosophers, prophets, and leaders of social movements. “Who am I?” might be one of the most important questions in the life of every ordinary person, regardless of color, ethnicity, gender, religion, sect, language, and culture. This question carries an even deeper meaning for individuals and social groups whose identity, existence, culture, and history are denied, or worse, face physical and cultural genocide. It becomes a catalyst for different kinds of action compared to others.
This begins at an individual level, becoming a driving force for self-questioning and later transforms into consciousness. In this process, these people consciously search for each other to reach the level of a self-defensive group. In doing so, they work together to build something new and prefigure a different form of life, one that stages their existence against the forces that deny them, both as individuals and as groups. The success of this process of question and answer depends on individuals being immersed in their historical memory. A memory that, with every change, both preserves the roots of its identity and renews itself, being reborn daily.
This process needs other motivations as well: consciousness from the depths of historical and social memory, courage and persistence despite obstacles, determination for all steps including self-sacrifice, the power to struggle against all ugliness, and commitment to promises with those who searched for each other in the initial steps and found each other within the circle of this search. Without extending this introduction further, I will discuss steps that indicate such a birth. Not just a physical birth, but the process of birthing a new identity, beyond that lack of identity and beyond the identity that the ideology and knowledge of those in power have imposed throughout history, especially on women. At stake, are processes of rebirth and self-construction.
One of those people who gave profound meaning to this process from the stage of self-awareness until the age of 56 was Sakine Cansiz, known as “Sara.” She was born on February 12, 1958, in a cold winter in the village of Takhti Khalil in Dersim, Northern Kurdistan, 20 years after the greatest genocide of the 20th century (the Dersim Genocide of 1938). Her parents, grandmother, and many relatives were survivors of the Dersim Genocide. In those extermination campaigns by the Turkish state, being Kurdish and Alevi wasn’t the only crime – being a woman in Kurdish society, trapped between state occupation and tribal relations, was to be in a paradoxical situation. On one hand, they were a weak link of subjugation and multiple layers of occupation, and on the other hand, they possessed an energy always ready for rebellion.
Sakine was the eldest daughter of the family, carrying many household responsibilities. Her mother was a rebellious woman, while her father was a calm and patient man. In general, due to the influence of Alevi culture, women were respected in their family. Sakine was mostly influenced by her grandmother. In the first volume of her book My Whole Life Was A Struggle, Sakine Cansiz describes her grandmother this way:
“My grandmother’s characteristics always caught my attention, I admired her and observed all her behaviors… She never extinguished the fire. At night she would cover it with ashes and start uncovering it again at dawn. For her, it was a sin to go to another house to bring or give fire. If someone asked for fire, she would get angry with them and advise them to keep their own fire under ashes from the night before… For Eze (grandmother), life was about maintaining the fire, praying during lunar and solar eclipses, and being connected to the earth.”[1]
The saying that nature is humanity’s first teacher perfectly fits Sakine’s grandmother. How could one not learn the spirit of patriotism and connection to land and society from her! When she would pray facing the sun daily, saying:
“O Angel of Dawn, who created earth and heaven
Write good fortune for us, poor and innocent humans
O Mother Fatima, O Hazrat Ali, Hassan and Hussein, take up your sword
Be a shield for our youth, protect them and save them… Show your bravery
Free Kurdistan and Dersim. O Khizr, Great Khizr”[2]It’s likely this is the same “Khizr Zine” that we are familiar with from our grandmothers’ stories. Sakine attended primary school in Khozat and completed middle school there as well. Her sister recalls a notable moment from that period regarding their father, saying:
“At that time, our mother was in Germany. Our father would wake up early, brush Ferida and Nesibe’s hair, then Sakine would get us ready and send us to school before going himself.”
Initially, she only knew Dimli (Zazaki) because that was the dialect her family spoke at home. In school, Sakine learned Turkish through the education system, as Kurdish was banned from the establishment of the Turkish Republic until today. However, her mother always told her, “Never be ashamed of being Kurdish.”
In 1968, when the world was awakening to student uprisings and the ’68 revolution, and leftist groups were growing in Turkey and Kurdistan, Sakine’s first self-questioning began during her school years, starting with the language issue. Later, hearing stories of the Dersim genocide from elders, she became aware of the oppression faced by Kurdish society. Hearing about this oppression accumulated questions and the search for answers in Sakine, drop by drop, day by day. Although the elders whispered about these events out of fear, in that terrifying silence her curiosity for knowledge and her adventurous spirit began to emerge. Isn’t it said that “Freedom begins in childhood”[3]? From that stage onward, her determination showed that the elders’ fear created courage in her instead of silence, created curiosity and questioning instead of retreat. Rather than being a mere observer, she threw herself completely into the conflicts and questions, searching for answers.
Regarding Sakine’s first exposure to revolutionary life, Ali Haydar Kaytan (Comrade Fuad), who later became one of PKK’s founding members, says:
“It was 1974, in Dersim their house was in the Dag (Mountain) neighborhood. There was a large house next to theirs. We often stayed there, but occasionally visited that student house near Comrade Sara’s home. That’s how those comrades influenced Comrade Sara.”
Her brother Metin Cansiz describes those moments, saying:
“Sakine was mostly drawn to the leftists. She participated in their marches and demonstrations. She asked questions but never became a member of any ideological group. After she met the Kurdistan revolutionaries, she became very active.”
Her cousin Nurcan Yildirim, who was familiar with this period of Sakine’s life, says:
“It was 1974-1975, she talked about Kurdistan. In that city, I heard the word ‘Kurdistan’ for the first time from that woman. She would tell me about her student comrades, and there was a picture of Leyla Qasim drawn on her wall. She said ‘They drew it and gave it to me as a gift.’”
Her student comrades (who were the first group of Kurdistan revolutionaries) knew that her liberation-seeking tendencies as a woman drew their attention, and they saw her admiration for Leyla Qasim.
In the first volume of her memoirs, Sakine Cansiz writes:
“The inspiration they gave to political and revolutionary work put me on a path that changed my entire life. I knew several men who lived near our home; their lifestyle, their interactions, and their attitude toward values influenced me, and I saw the torch of Dersim’s freedom in them.”
After the 1971 military coup in Turkey, she connected with revolutionary youth and joined the revolutionary movement from Elazığ in Northern Kurdistan. About her interests, she says:
“I read many books, which brought joy and learning. There were ideological discussions, and those who defended these ideologies weren’t ordinary people. They had influential personalities and created enthusiasm in their surroundings. At first, everyone mocked them, calling them 4-5 rebellious Kurdish nationalists. Later, their name changed to Kurdistan Revolutionaries, and they were called Apocu[4].”
She actively participated and was present at the first revolutionary meeting in Dersim at the end of 1976.
Sakine always had conflicts with backward, imposing, and traditional attitudes. She was a woman who rebelled against customs and traditions. Sakine’s activism angered her mother. They were always fighting. About her mother’s personality, Sakine says:
“While she led me to develop a rebellious personality, she also taught me how to fight! I’m very indebted to her for that.”
Because she gave meaning to everything happening around her, instead of cutting off relationship ties, in her youth she tried to understand. This was the characteristic that attracted the attention of the first group of revolutionaries from the beginning, more than justifying the title that later became the name of her three-volume memoir: “My Whole Life Was A Struggle!”
In the winter of 1976-1977, the first expanded meeting of Kurdistan Revolutionaries was held in Dersim. For the first time, she heard the phrase “Kurdistan is colonized” from Abdullah Öcalan, the group’s leader, at this meeting which initially had 60 participants, in the house they called the “White Palace” in Dersim because it was painted white. For the first time, she became thoroughly familiar with national and class conflicts and embarked on a long journey that, as she says, “My Whole Life Was A Struggle!” She strived to ensure women had a role in the national liberation struggle and participated actively. For this, she was the first woman in the movement who organized women wherever she went.
During this period, Sakine Cansiz felt she could no longer continue living as an ordinary woman and searched for an alternative that would allow her to move more freely in revolutionary struggle. Sakine wanted to become a revolutionary and saw the solution in leaving home, searching for and finding an excuse, which was marriage. This path was an excuse and method for many revolutionaries at that time, as leaving home wasn’t easy for women. Sakine told her mother and family:“I love Baki Polat, my cousin. He asked for me before and you didn’t agree. He’s a revolutionary and I’m going with him; he won’t prevent my revolutionary activities.”
Later, she married Baki and went to Izmir. However, Sakine had already left home and achieved part of her dream – she didn’t commit to married life because her goals were different. She worked at a chocolate factory for her livelihood while organizing women in general, particularly immigrant women workers from Eastern European countries in the factory.
After conflicts with her family, especially her mother, Sakine’s second conflict began with Baki after their marriage. On one hand, Baki was a member of “People’s Liberation” which, like its organization, didn’t see Kurdistan as colonized, and on the other hand, Baki Polat wanted Sakine to be a traditional wife solely committed to family life, which was impossible for Sakine. At the factory where she worked, she organized women and youth, leading to her and several others being fired. The workers began demonstrations and strikes. Sakine was arrested for carrying the banner whiuch read. “Kurdistan is colonized”. For these efforts, Sakine was taken to court, where she shouted “Down with the colonizer.” She wasn’t satisfied with just shouting slogans for “bread, work, and freedom” because she believed that in an occupied country and society where identity, history, and culture were denied, work and bread alone meant nothing. She saw true socialism in ending colonization and the joint struggle of peoples, and for this, she organized workers without discrimination.
Anyone somewhat familiar with Sakine’s life knows that she always took on difficult tasks. When she returned to Kurdistan, she began organizing women in Çewlig (Bingöl), one of the most conservative regions of Northern Kurdistan. In a place where people were afraid to even say they were Kurdish, she established several women’s groups of 3 to 5 people and gave women the courage to organize themselves. Despite family and societal barriers, women gathered around the slogans of the first revolutionary group and found themselves in it. Sakine had a great influence on them.
About this period, Sakine says:“We said women must participate in the national liberation struggle, as this is how they can become free and take steps toward true freedom.”
Her first lessons for women were about the effects of the capitalist system on women, and she always said: “Women are viewed as commodities.” Women were initially uncomfortable with this term, but she patiently explained to them what she meant by the commodification of women. Sakine Cansiz’s struggle among women in Çewlig, Xarpêt (Elazığ), and other regions inspired the Kurdistan revolutionaries. She organized not only among women but in all sections of society. She created trust, belief, and hope in a people who had faced attempted genocide.
The fruits of her work in these later years had reached the level of beginning a new phase of struggle. The phase of moving toward establishing a revolutionary party that would answer the needs of freedom and independence for the phrase “Kurdistan is colonized.”
In the last week of November 1978, in the village of Fis in the Lice district of Amed (Diyarbakır), the movement’s first congress was held. Sakine Cansiz (Sara), along with Kesire Yildirim (Fatma), were the first women to participate in the founding congress of the PKK. She was very happy because they were preparing for a historic phase and filling a great void in Kurdistan.
While the manifesto and program were being drafted, Sakine was preparing for women’s struggle, and they even planned to call it the “Girls’ Group”[5], composed of all cadres and supporters. They researched women’s struggle and even prepared to write a pamphlet. Later, Sakine traveled throughout Kurdistan, following up on and analyzing women’s conditions.
From the movement’s First Manifesto, there was an analysis of women that stated:
“The destiny of women is like the destiny of the Kurdish people. Women must establish their own mass organization. If the goal is to build a democratic Kurdistan, then tribal and comprador pressures must be eliminated. Foreigners wanted to influence different social classes, but women are the segment of society they cannot influence. Women have been enslaved since the class society era.”
In 1979, after the congress, Sakine Cansız was tasked with organizing women in Elazığ (Kharput) and preparing for women’s education. Following organizational guidelines, women began studying Roman law and research on women worldwide. They started this struggle to build a foundation for women’s movement from 1979. Once, eighty women gathered in Dersim. Under normal circumstances, such a meeting would never have happened, especially since women couldn’t discuss their issues when men were present.
The state was aware of these steps and conducted operations against revolutionaries and other leftist and socialist groups. Regarding this time, Sakine said:“It’s wonderful to fight and live with hatred against your enemy. I always told myself if our existence intimidates them, I should always be like a curse to them.”
On May 18, 1979, following a coup, Sakine and many of her comrades were arrested in Elazığ. In prison, she demonstrated strong resistance both against the prevalent tendency to surrender within the movement and against state authorities. The state used various torture methods including hanging, electrocution, solitary confinement in cold dark cells, stripping, force-feeding excrement, etc. Her resistance amazed prison officials. She stood very courageously against her torturers. The notorious Diyarbakır prison, known for torturers like Esat Oktay, was where he particularly enjoyed torturing Sakine and wished to hear her scream just once under torture, but she never did.
Sakine described the prison conditions by comparing them to Nazi camps, saying:
“Humanity in Nazi camps was a silent and shameless corpse, the body naked and exposed. Hope was killed in those meaningless eyes. Those corpses only moved when their turn for death came. If one asks if such a place exists on Earth, we don’t need to look far – there is Amed (Diyarbakır).”
When Esat Oktay confronted her saying “You must accept what is said, many have come and gone, do you know who I am?” Sakine replied, “Do you know who I am? I am a revolutionary, clearly you don’t know revolutionaries” – and when he attacked her, she spat in his face.
Let me translate and adapt this narrative about Kurdish political prisoner Sakine Cansız’s resistance and experiences in Turkish prisons:
The incident of spitting in Asad Oktay’s face became a legendary tale passed down both inside and outside the prison. Sakine’s stance led her to be recognized as a symbol of resistance throughout the women’s ward and the entire prison. The resistance of Sakine and her comrades during their hunger strike in Amed Prison became like a rebirth for Kurdish women and the Kurdish people in particular.
Her courage and bravery in prison impressed all the women inmates, both the political and non-political prisoners. One day, through a hole in their ward’s wall, they discovered that a prison guard was regularly spying on the women through it. When the women prisoners reported this to Sakine, she set up an ambush and stabbed the guard’s eye with a knitting needle. The guard screamed in pain, and Sakine was subsequently taken for torture because of this act of defiance.
Gültan Kışanak, the imprisoned HDP mayor of Amed who was in the same prison at that time, described Sakine:
“She maintained relationships with all prisoners. She would care for those who were tortured, massaging their bruised bodies to prevent blood clots after they were beaten with clubs and cables.”
Due to her acts of resistance against the prison administration and guards, Sakine Cansız was transferred to Amasya Prison. There, she was brought before the prison director named Şükrü. Their confrontation became an open defense of her political identity. When the director tried to establish his authority, saying “I am Şükrü, I have run this prison for so long that nothing happens here without my order,” Sakine responded defiantly:
“I am Sakine Cansız, a founder of the PKK. I am here now and I have my own principles! I recognize nothing else.”
While there, she made several escape attempts, but they were unsuccessful due to informants. Because of these efforts to break free from the cell that imprisoned her body she earned the name “Butterfly” from her fellow inmates.
In response to the September 12, 1982 coup, which aimed to break people’s will, only one window of hope remained: the resistance of revolutionary prisoners. Those who played a role in this resistance brought new life to a society on the brink of death. Kurdish revolutionaries understood two key points: first, that Kurdistan’s freedom as a national question depended partly on changing the mentality of the genocidal and denial-based state system, but even more importantly on the awakening of the Kurdish people themselves; and second, that the resistance and defense of a society’s identity and values in this movement wasn’t limited to men – women’s participation in this resistance opened the way for major social transformation.
Sakine Cansız’s resistance paved the way for both women’s and society’s freedom. From this emerged the slogan “Without women’s freedom, society cannot be free.” What had weakened Kurdish society wasn’t just the effects of colonization, but also the social illness and backwardness that colonization had internalized in Kurdish identity.Sakine was the first woman in Turkey’s history to resist at such a level, becoming an exemplary figure of heroism. Sakine never accepted the conditions of an ordinary life and constantly struggled against such circumstances, never surrendering. She spent much of her youth imprisoned in various prisons (Elazığ, Malatya, Bursa, Amed, and Çanakkale).
In 1991, she was released. After her release, she went to the Mahsum Korkmaz Academy in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and participated in ideological education led by A. Öcalan. There, she participated in the first conference of political prisoners and later carried out organizational work in Palestine, Syria, and Rojava.
After this training period, Sakine requested to go to the mountains of Kurdistan. Öcalan, along with the academy comrades’ votes, agreed to her request to go to the Kurdistan mountains, believing that since she had played a role in the PKK’s founding from the beginning, he couldn’t make this decision for her. When most of the women comrades at the academy supported Sakine’s decision to go, Öcalan told her, “Sara, you won.” Sakine was overjoyed at this…“I was very determined and stubborn – when I set my mind to something, I would definitely achieve it. Everything I wanted happened one by one. I saw the leadership, I saw half of Kurdistan, I saw and felt the love of people’s freedom. I told myself if I go to the mountains and my dream of becoming a guerrilla comes true, then everything will be as I wish.”
Sakine later went to the mountains of Kurdistan with great passion, participating in guerrilla activities and operations. She played an active role in the congresses and conferences of the Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Movement and the movement in general, having a decisive role in all conferences and congresses. She was also a powerful writer, which led Öcalan to suggest that she write her life story and memoirs.
Despite the harsh conditions in Kurdistan’s mountains, she maintained a very clean and disciplined life. Exercise was one of her passions and daily habits. She would wake up early in the morning and exercise in the mountain environment, even during snowfall, and collect spring herbs from the highlands. She loved writing her memoirs, always keeping her notebook in her bag, taking it out to write whenever she had the chance.
Öcalan, in describing Sakine’s character, could not hide his amazement and told her:
“You’re a very resilient girl. We put you through a lot of hardship, but this was certainly meaningless. What can we do? It’s our struggle and fighting that brought you to this level… You can be a well-rounded personality. Your courage and sacrifice, a hundred times more than mine, gave you strength.”
When the first autonomous women’s organization (Union of Patriotic Women of Kurdistan) was established within the movement in Hannover in 1987, Sakine was in prison. In the second congress held in 1989, Sakine played an important role by sending a guidance letter from prison that was read at the congress. The main topic of that congress was women’s autonomy (independent and special practices of organization) and how to develop it. From Kurdistan’s mountains, photos of 50 female guerrillas under the command of Comrade Azime were sent to the congress, creating great enthusiasm among women and presenting a new image for everyone.
The third congress of the Union of Patriotic Women of Kurdistan was held in Europe in August 1991, with approximately 1,500 delegates attending. The congress decided to establish autonomous education for women in the Kurdish language, taking a clear and powerful stance against ethnic cleansing. They also decided to publish “Jina Serbilind” (Proud Woman) magazine, which became the first women’s magazine.
After returning to Kurdistan’s mountains, Sakine Cansız stayed in Botan in 1994. That year saw intense fighting, and she was part of the mobile unit, which was the most combative unit and faced the most battles. In 1995, it was decided to hold a women’s congress in Kurdistan’s mountains. Sakine played a key role in the preparatory committee for the first congress of the Kurdistan Women’s Freedom Union (YAJK). They prepared the movement’s bylaws, program, and reports in Metina, in Beshiri village, in a large historic cave symbolically called the “Women’s Temple.” The congress included representatives from all regions, with 350 female delegates participating. It was the first historical experience and step of the Kurdish women’s freedom movement in Kurdistan’s mountains.
This monumental step came after Kurdish women’s militarization. It was an army that would break through all inequalities, shatter the wall of fear, bring women out of their homes, and lead them to struggle. Beyond its military aspect, this army fundamentally uprooted the prevalent conservative mentality in Kurdistan and showed men the standards by which women wanted to live. In all these steps, Sakine was a collective pioneer. She deeply understood that Öcalan had addressed history’s deepest contradiction and that democratic change was impossible without this radical revolutionary approach.
Regarding this step, Sakine said:“Women’s militarization wasn’t limited to just being an armed force. The creation of the freedom army meant ideological and political development, action, will, and the creation of power and morale. It also meant creating grounds for unity with the people. It meant addressing people’s main demands, organizing collectively according to people’s needs, creating an organization that would encompass all of these.”
After gaining extensive practical experience in Kurdistan’s mountains, Sakine returned to the cadre training academy with a wealth of experience and theoretical foundation, where new perspectives and analyses were needed. At the exact time when Turkey and international forces were preparing a conspiracy network to expel Öcalan from Syria, during a Media TV panel with Abdullah Öcalan, Sakine, and several female comrades, the project of women’s liberation was announced. This is considered one of the most fundamental and important stages in the Kurdish women’s freedom movement’s struggle, occurring precisely when the movement’s ideology was being rendered increasingly meaningless by neoliberal propaganda waves globally.
This stage had been formulated in both theory and practice over many years to answer the question “how to live?” and required historically redefining the relationship between men and women in Kurdish society and beyond. Turkish journalist Maher Sayan, in an interview with Öcalan, described this relationship as “fire and gasoline,” referring to the transformation from a traditional master-slave relationship between a dominant man and a traditional woman to a free relationship. According to the women’s liberation ideology, this new relationship was based on principles of patriotism, struggle, organization, free will and thought, and ethics-aesthetics. This step would change not only Kurdish society’s destiny but the entire region’s, now having global reverberations. This was the historical, philosophical, and practical dialogue between Abdullah Öcalan and Sakine Cansız.
After the cadre academy training, Sakine (Comrade Sara) returned to the academy in 1998. Following new dialogue and sociological analysis with Öcalan, she moved her struggle to Europe, where she continued organizational work and opened a broader front in lobby work. She made significant steps both among Kurdish people’s friends and in diplomatic struggle. In 2018, during our first Jineolojî camp in Bilbao, Basque Country, we discovered that Sakine was the first Kurdish woman to visit Bilbao upon arriving in Europe in 1998, meeting with Basque women. Basque activist women and academics noted Sakine’s strong personality and broad intellectual horizon.Whenever Sakine visited a home, she left a powerful memory and greatly influenced the development of patriotic spirit. She built comradely relationships not only with Kurdish homes but also with leftist, socialist, and internationalist figures, opening broad avenues for struggle, resistance, and collaboration. She introduced them to Kurdistan and the freedom movement, finding support for the freedom struggle.
Especially after the international conspiracy against Öcalan and his imprisonment in İmralı‘s solitary confinement, Sakine conducted lobby work country by country while explaining the difficult post-conspiracy period within the movement and society. Particularly regarding the paradigm shift to Democratic Modernity, which was both a strategic step and carried its own risks. Sakine worked day and night to maintain organizational unity and fulfill the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement’s strategic role in resolving historical issues, providing genuine leadership for women within the movement, whilst also protecting the movement and leading the process of socializing Kurdistan’s revolution. For this, alongside other leading cadres, she maintained a decisive position in all subsequent congresses and at the movement’s turning points.
Sakine was very confident that a crucial phase in Kurdistan’s freedom struggle was approaching. Speaking confidently on Roj TV on October 27, 2008, she said:
“There is an ongoing struggle that’s advancing. A struggle that has now become the Kurdish people’s own. It has opened the path to freedom for our people, paved the way for Kurdish people’s organization and unity, and has become the foundation for people’s self-determination.”
In a 2011 interview, published in Nawaya Jin magazine, and responding to a question about women’s responsibilities, Sakine said:
“We struggle so that we don’t become the women who can do nothing but cry, we struggle so we don’t become the women who wear black and lament their pain, that’s why we’re in the mountains… The pain and oppression that society and women have lived through in history and continue to experience today is about awareness, creating consciousness, thought and perspective, and means of struggle. We can only overcome this situation through broad organization.”
When discussions were held in Europe about establishing a Women’s Foundation and its name, it was suggested to name it after Sakine, just as many institutions were named after Rosa Luxemburg. At that time, Sakine said: “Why are they planning to kill me?” Evidently, she sensed that those who couldn’t eliminate her in prison or in Kurdistan’s mountains had pursued her to Europe. In the center known for ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’, they succeeded in their conspiracy against her.
On January 9, 2013, at the Kurdistan Information Center on Paris’s busiest street, Sakine Cansız (Sara), Kurdistan National Congress member Fidan Doğan (Rojbin), and youth movement member Leyla Şaylemez (Ronahî) were assassinated by a member of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT. Later, the killer died in a French prison under mysterious circumstances, leading to the case’s closure.
The occupiers attempted to silence the voice of Kurdish women and the Kurdish people through the assassination of Sakine and other pioneering women. Their goal: to strike a deadly blow against the inspiring mind of this movement. However, Sakine, just as she had learned to succeed, became the voice and spirit of millions in the face of both death and her killers, as people poured into the streets to express their feelings about this massacre. She dreamed of being showered with flowers when received in Kurdistan as a guerrilla fighter. She carried the pain, suffering, and tragedy of her people in her bag, transforming it into hope, energy, awareness, and organization as she traveled from city to city, mountain to mountain, country to country. Yet she also understood that the path to peace is a long one.
Öcalan assessed this massacre and said:“In reality, they wanted to use this massacre to prevent my peace efforts. That is, those within the state who don’t want the issue resolved through democratic means wanted to disrupt the process. Sakine’s life is an example. Women’s freedom is Sakine’s struggle. I will ask for accountability for Sakine, and I will reveal this…”
Source: Tawar Magazine
[1] – Sarah’s documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLiq0p6T1x4
[2] – Ibid.
[3] – A. Ocalan, Beyond the state and violance.
[4] The word apogee is an abbreviation for who belives in Abdullah Ocalan’s philosophy, the leader of the first group of Kurdistan revolutionaries.
[5] Dalal Amed, “Women’s History Lessons in the Kurdistan Freedom Movement”.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Sarah’s documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLiq0p6T1x4.
[8] Butterfly is a 1973 film about the life of a prisoner, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo and Lorenzo Semple Jr. and tells the story of a French prisoner named Henri Charier
[9] Abdullah Ocalan, Volume 1 of “How to Live”
[10] – (Dalal Amed), book “Lessons of Women’s History in the Kurdistan Freedom Movement”.
[11] – Ibidsource: Jineology
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=13733
#feminism #guerrilla #hpg #kurdistan #pkk #SakineCansız #turkey
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'More than 200 contributors skewer the New York Times' coverage of trans people': https://www.alternet.org/200-contributors-skewer-nyt-trans/
'Numerous, eye-opening examples of how the "Old Gray Lady," as the paper is often called, positions and frames transgender people and the issues they and their families face are packed into the letter, which compares the paper's coverage to "far-right hate groups." Perhaps one of its most consequential call-outs is how The Times' reporting is used by anti-LGBTQ state lawmakers and other officials to support anti-transgender legislation and policies.'
Every person who seriously reads The New York Times and considers their political output knows they mainly pander to advertisers and press releases from the White House.
From Chomsky/Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent':
'New York Times editor Max Frankel, who said in an interview that “we’re an establishment institution, and whenever your natural constituency changes, then naturally you will too.”'
Noam Chomsky :chomsky: in his book '9/11':
'To quote the lead analysis in the New York Times (September 16): “the perpetrators acted out of hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage.” U.S. actions are irrelevant, and therefore need not even be mentioned.'
Via William Blum's 'America's Deadliest Export: Democracy':
'This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan … it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad. (Thomas Friedman, much-acclaimed New York Times foreign affairs analyst, November 2003)'
Chomsky again, in https://dev.lareviewofbooks.org/article/dismantle-all-of-this-stuff-a-conversation-with-noam-chomsky:
'A couple of days ago I had a talk with a group of Latin American activists. They were from all over Latin America. Well, just for fun, I read for them a column that appeared in The New York Times that day by one of their top foreign affairs specialists. It was about how the United States has been committed to the rule of law, human rights, and democracy. They just burst out laughing. They’re living in the real world, not the world of US intellectual culture.'
Chomsky in his book 'Global Discontents':
'If you look at polls, plenty of people are opposed to surveillance. The ones who support surveillance are the ones who are as deluded as people like Thomas Friedman or Bill Keller at the New York Times, who think that we have to have surveillance for the sake of security—not noticing that the very administration that is calling for defense against terrorism is maximizing terrorism and the threats against us.'
From Chomsky's book 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals':
'Others are missing from the list of honored dissidents, for example, the six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who were brutally murdered by Salvadoran forces fresh from renewed training by U.S. forces, acting on the specific orders of the U.S. client government. In fact, they are scarcely known at all. Few even know their names, or recall the events. The official orders to murder them have yet to appear in the United States anywhere near the mainstream, not because they are secret: they were published prominently in the mainstream Spanish press. This is not an exception. It is the rule. The facts are not in the least obscure. They are well-known to activists who protested the horrendous U.S. crimes in Central America, and to scholarship. In the Cambridge History of the Cold War, John Coatsworth writes that from 1960 to “the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.” When we turn to coverage in media and intellectual journals, we find that the picture is reversed. To take one of many striking illustrations, Edward Herman and I compared the New York Times coverage of the murder of a Polish priest—whose assassins were quickly found and punished—with the murder of one hundred religious martyrs in El Salvador, including Archbishop Óscar Romero and four American churchwomen, whose assassins were long concealed, while the crimes were denied by U.S. officials and the victims subjected to official contempt. The coverage of the murdered priest in an enemy state vastly exceeded that of one hundred religious martyrs in the U.S. client state, and was radically different in style in the way predicted by a propaganda model of the media. This is only one illustration of a highly consistent pattern over many years.'
From Rebecca Solnit's book 'Whose Story is This?':
'One way we know whose story it is has been demonstrated by who gets excused for hatred and attacks, literal or physical. Early in 2018, the Atlantic tried out hiring a writer, Kevin Williamson, who said women who have abortions should be hanged, and then unhired him under public pressure from people who don’t like the idea that a quarter of American women should be executed for exercising jurisdiction over their own bodies. The New York Times has hired a few conservatives akin to Williamson, including climate waffler Bret Stephens. Stephens devoted a column to sympathy on Williamson’s behalf and indignation that anyone might oppose him.'
...and:
'This misdistribution of sympathy is epidemic. The New York Times called the man with a domestic-violence history who, in 2015, shot up the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, killing three parents of young children, “a gentle loner.” And then when the serial bomber who had been terrorizing Austin, Texas, was finally caught in March 2018, too many journalists interviewed his family and friends and let their positive descriptions of the man stand, as though they were more valid than what we already knew: he was an extremist and a terrorist who set out to kill and terrorize Black people in a particularly vicious and cowardly way. He was a “quiet, ‘nerdy’ young man who came from ‘a tight-knit, godly family,” the Times let us know in a tweet, while the Washington Post’s headline noted that he was “frustrated with his life,” which is true of millions of young people around the world who don’t get a pity party and also don’t become terrorists. The Daily Beast got it right with a subhead about a recent right-wing terrorist, the one who blew himself up in his home full of bomb-making materials: “Friends and family say Ben Morrow was a Bible-toting lab worker. Investigators say he was a bomb-building white supremacist.”'
#TheNewYorkTimes #TransRights #Trans #NoamChomsky #WilliamBlum #RebeccaSolnit #MaxFrankel #ThomasFriedman #BillKeller #EqualRights #propaganda
-
'More than 200 contributors skewer the New York Times' coverage of trans people': https://www.alternet.org/200-contributors-skewer-nyt-trans/
'Numerous, eye-opening examples of how the "Old Gray Lady," as the paper is often called, positions and frames transgender people and the issues they and their families face are packed into the letter, which compares the paper's coverage to "far-right hate groups." Perhaps one of its most consequential call-outs is how The Times' reporting is used by anti-LGBTQ state lawmakers and other officials to support anti-transgender legislation and policies.'
Every person who seriously reads The New York Times and considers their political output knows they mainly pander to advertisers and press releases from the White House.
From Chomsky/Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent':
'New York Times editor Max Frankel, who said in an interview that “we’re an establishment institution, and whenever your natural constituency changes, then naturally you will too.”'
Noam Chomsky :chomsky: in his book '9/11':
'To quote the lead analysis in the New York Times (September 16): “the perpetrators acted out of hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage.” U.S. actions are irrelevant, and therefore need not even be mentioned.'
Via William Blum's 'America's Deadliest Export: Democracy':
'This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan … it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad. (Thomas Friedman, much-acclaimed New York Times foreign affairs analyst, November 2003)'
Chomsky again, in https://dev.lareviewofbooks.org/article/dismantle-all-of-this-stuff-a-conversation-with-noam-chomsky:
'A couple of days ago I had a talk with a group of Latin American activists. They were from all over Latin America. Well, just for fun, I read for them a column that appeared in The New York Times that day by one of their top foreign affairs specialists. It was about how the United States has been committed to the rule of law, human rights, and democracy. They just burst out laughing. They’re living in the real world, not the world of US intellectual culture.'
Chomsky in his book 'Global Discontents':
'If you look at polls, plenty of people are opposed to surveillance. The ones who support surveillance are the ones who are as deluded as people like Thomas Friedman or Bill Keller at the New York Times, who think that we have to have surveillance for the sake of security—not noticing that the very administration that is calling for defense against terrorism is maximizing terrorism and the threats against us.'
From Chomsky's book 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals':
'Others are missing from the list of honored dissidents, for example, the six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who were brutally murdered by Salvadoran forces fresh from renewed training by U.S. forces, acting on the specific orders of the U.S. client government. In fact, they are scarcely known at all. Few even know their names, or recall the events. The official orders to murder them have yet to appear in the United States anywhere near the mainstream, not because they are secret: they were published prominently in the mainstream Spanish press. This is not an exception. It is the rule. The facts are not in the least obscure. They are well-known to activists who protested the horrendous U.S. crimes in Central America, and to scholarship. In the Cambridge History of the Cold War, John Coatsworth writes that from 1960 to “the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.” When we turn to coverage in media and intellectual journals, we find that the picture is reversed. To take one of many striking illustrations, Edward Herman and I compared the New York Times coverage of the murder of a Polish priest—whose assassins were quickly found and punished—with the murder of one hundred religious martyrs in El Salvador, including Archbishop Óscar Romero and four American churchwomen, whose assassins were long concealed, while the crimes were denied by U.S. officials and the victims subjected to official contempt. The coverage of the murdered priest in an enemy state vastly exceeded that of one hundred religious martyrs in the U.S. client state, and was radically different in style in the way predicted by a propaganda model of the media. This is only one illustration of a highly consistent pattern over many years.'
From Rebecca Solnit's book 'Whose Story is This?':
'One way we know whose story it is has been demonstrated by who gets excused for hatred and attacks, literal or physical. Early in 2018, the Atlantic tried out hiring a writer, Kevin Williamson, who said women who have abortions should be hanged, and then unhired him under public pressure from people who don’t like the idea that a quarter of American women should be executed for exercising jurisdiction over their own bodies. The New York Times has hired a few conservatives akin to Williamson, including climate waffler Bret Stephens. Stephens devoted a column to sympathy on Williamson’s behalf and indignation that anyone might oppose him.'
...and:
'This misdistribution of sympathy is epidemic. The New York Times called the man with a domestic-violence history who, in 2015, shot up the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, killing three parents of young children, “a gentle loner.” And then when the serial bomber who had been terrorizing Austin, Texas, was finally caught in March 2018, too many journalists interviewed his family and friends and let their positive descriptions of the man stand, as though they were more valid than what we already knew: he was an extremist and a terrorist who set out to kill and terrorize Black people in a particularly vicious and cowardly way. He was a “quiet, ‘nerdy’ young man who came from ‘a tight-knit, godly family,” the Times let us know in a tweet, while the Washington Post’s headline noted that he was “frustrated with his life,” which is true of millions of young people around the world who don’t get a pity party and also don’t become terrorists. The Daily Beast got it right with a subhead about a recent right-wing terrorist, the one who blew himself up in his home full of bomb-making materials: “Friends and family say Ben Morrow was a Bible-toting lab worker. Investigators say he was a bomb-building white supremacist.”'
#TheNewYorkTimes #TransRights #Trans #NoamChomsky #WilliamBlum #RebeccaSolnit #MaxFrankel #ThomasFriedman #BillKeller #EqualRights #propaganda
-
'More than 200 contributors skewer the New York Times' coverage of trans people': https://www.alternet.org/200-contributors-skewer-nyt-trans/
'Numerous, eye-opening examples of how the "Old Gray Lady," as the paper is often called, positions and frames transgender people and the issues they and their families face are packed into the letter, which compares the paper's coverage to "far-right hate groups." Perhaps one of its most consequential call-outs is how The Times' reporting is used by anti-LGBTQ state lawmakers and other officials to support anti-transgender legislation and policies.'
Every person who seriously reads The New York Times and considers their political output knows they mainly pander to advertisers and press releases from the White House.
From Chomsky/Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent':
'New York Times editor Max Frankel, who said in an interview that “we’re an establishment institution, and whenever your natural constituency changes, then naturally you will too.”'
Noam Chomsky :chomsky: in his book '9/11':
'To quote the lead analysis in the New York Times (September 16): “the perpetrators acted out of hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage.” U.S. actions are irrelevant, and therefore need not even be mentioned.'
Via William Blum's 'America's Deadliest Export: Democracy':
'This war [in Iraq] is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan … it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad. (Thomas Friedman, much-acclaimed New York Times foreign affairs analyst, November 2003)'
Chomsky again, in https://dev.lareviewofbooks.org/article/dismantle-all-of-this-stuff-a-conversation-with-noam-chomsky:
'A couple of days ago I had a talk with a group of Latin American activists. They were from all over Latin America. Well, just for fun, I read for them a column that appeared in The New York Times that day by one of their top foreign affairs specialists. It was about how the United States has been committed to the rule of law, human rights, and democracy. They just burst out laughing. They’re living in the real world, not the world of US intellectual culture.'
Chomsky in his book 'Global Discontents':
'If you look at polls, plenty of people are opposed to surveillance. The ones who support surveillance are the ones who are as deluded as people like Thomas Friedman or Bill Keller at the New York Times, who think that we have to have surveillance for the sake of security—not noticing that the very administration that is calling for defense against terrorism is maximizing terrorism and the threats against us.'
From Chomsky's book 'The Responsibility of Intellectuals':
'Others are missing from the list of honored dissidents, for example, the six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who were brutally murdered by Salvadoran forces fresh from renewed training by U.S. forces, acting on the specific orders of the U.S. client government. In fact, they are scarcely known at all. Few even know their names, or recall the events. The official orders to murder them have yet to appear in the United States anywhere near the mainstream, not because they are secret: they were published prominently in the mainstream Spanish press. This is not an exception. It is the rule. The facts are not in the least obscure. They are well-known to activists who protested the horrendous U.S. crimes in Central America, and to scholarship. In the Cambridge History of the Cold War, John Coatsworth writes that from 1960 to “the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.” When we turn to coverage in media and intellectual journals, we find that the picture is reversed. To take one of many striking illustrations, Edward Herman and I compared the New York Times coverage of the murder of a Polish priest—whose assassins were quickly found and punished—with the murder of one hundred religious martyrs in El Salvador, including Archbishop Óscar Romero and four American churchwomen, whose assassins were long concealed, while the crimes were denied by U.S. officials and the victims subjected to official contempt. The coverage of the murdered priest in an enemy state vastly exceeded that of one hundred religious martyrs in the U.S. client state, and was radically different in style in the way predicted by a propaganda model of the media. This is only one illustration of a highly consistent pattern over many years.'
From Rebecca Solnit's book 'Whose Story is This?':
'One way we know whose story it is has been demonstrated by who gets excused for hatred and attacks, literal or physical. Early in 2018, the Atlantic tried out hiring a writer, Kevin Williamson, who said women who have abortions should be hanged, and then unhired him under public pressure from people who don’t like the idea that a quarter of American women should be executed for exercising jurisdiction over their own bodies. The New York Times has hired a few conservatives akin to Williamson, including climate waffler Bret Stephens. Stephens devoted a column to sympathy on Williamson’s behalf and indignation that anyone might oppose him.'
...and:
'This misdistribution of sympathy is epidemic. The New York Times called the man with a domestic-violence history who, in 2015, shot up the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, killing three parents of young children, “a gentle loner.” And then when the serial bomber who had been terrorizing Austin, Texas, was finally caught in March 2018, too many journalists interviewed his family and friends and let their positive descriptions of the man stand, as though they were more valid than what we already knew: he was an extremist and a terrorist who set out to kill and terrorize Black people in a particularly vicious and cowardly way. He was a “quiet, ‘nerdy’ young man who came from ‘a tight-knit, godly family,” the Times let us know in a tweet, while the Washington Post’s headline noted that he was “frustrated with his life,” which is true of millions of young people around the world who don’t get a pity party and also don’t become terrorists. The Daily Beast got it right with a subhead about a recent right-wing terrorist, the one who blew himself up in his home full of bomb-making materials: “Friends and family say Ben Morrow was a Bible-toting lab worker. Investigators say he was a bomb-building white supremacist.”'
#TheNewYorkTimes #TransRights #Trans #NoamChomsky #WilliamBlum #RebeccaSolnit #MaxFrankel #ThomasFriedman #BillKeller #EqualRights #propaganda
-
USians seem very much content with having that clown as president for this long. I thought y’all were #antifa ? Your president just used annihilationist language to threaten to wipe out an entire civilisation again, btw. I’ve seen many variations of “What should we do?” being thrown around by USians on the internet, directed at people in the Global Majority. When will you stop outsourcing intellectual labour and start listening to Indigenous American peoples and Black radical organisers in the Black Panther tradition? It’s your job. Leave the Global Majority out of this. Your entire Western political bloc should have had at least the brainpower, but no. Y’all still had to ask the Global Majority. I thought having the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Canada, and Australia as part of the Western world alongside you was supposed to be a big advantage, but nah. The only thing you’re good at is narrative control.
#Iran #USpol #genocide #politics #imperialism #history #colonialism #settlercolonialism
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The many games of The Most Successful
With Rockstar and Grant Theft Auto 6 in the news for some unsavory reasons, I saw quite a lot of hubbubs about the success of the fifth game in the franchise and its comparative success compared to other games, and other forms entertainment. I’m slightly flabbergasted that someone would claim that GTA5 was the most successful form of entertainment, when people without much contact with the modern world knew about Michael Jackson. Thriller permeated everywhere, you can’t beat it.
Nevertheless, this made an interesting thought experiment on what counts as The Most Successful Video Game. It didn’t help that I saw the goal being pushed after one or two rounds of discussion, under which at least few realized that there’s more than one way of seeing this. Business has a different view on things compared to the customers, and then you have the historical view that has a longer view on how games have affected culture in general. This is why Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout and Pac-Man still live on in the cultural memory, even if the amount of success they’ve seen in terms of money is less than whatever big Triple A title that’s come after.
I should probably note that there’s also a slight difference in how some use the term franchise. While I tend to use it wrong as a synonym with Intellectual Property, an example of a franchise would be Street Fighter II. Street Fighter III would be its own franchise, while all falling under the same umbrella of IP. This is because of merchandising rights and all that business jazz.
Units Sold is of course a big one, the cumulative sales made by one game, or a series of games. For example, the Mario games have a cumulative sale of 957 million units, while Mega Man has 43 million units.
As for individual titles, Minecraft is an evergreen title that hits 350 units sold. GTAV follows It at 220 million units.
Units sold doesn’t really keep you afloat a lot, unless you have Revenue. This is the total gross the series does through game sales, possible DLC, merch, and other licensed material. Pokémon tops this chart with $115, followed by Call of Duty with $31 million.
The way digital games are consumed is different from purchased titles, of course. That’s why something like Candy Crush or Dungeon Fighter Online can top the chart of games with most revenue, as individuals put more money into these games. This compares apples and oranges; the business models are ultimately very different and the amount of money you can squeeze out of a customer via single sold title plus DLC is ultimately less than digital-only but squeezing small amounts throughout their play time. Gacha mixes things with the whole gambling aspect.
I don’t think we should count individual downloads. This is because a download doesn’t translate to a purchase, or revenue. There are numerous cases of curious people testing a free game out and then proceeding not to continue. These people are often counted to the player metric nonetheless, which shows that the total number of players can be skewed to showcase a more positive statistic for PR reasons. This is the same reason why Sony cites the total number of PlayStation 2’s when asked about the total number of consoles sold. It just looks better, and they can fudge the numbers for their benefit.
Then again, Subway Surfers has 2.05 billion individual downloads and spawned numerous imitators so there’s something value in that too.
Player Count is also something that seems to be a significant metric, with Roblox topping the list with the estimated number of players being in billions cumulative. Minecraft hitting a nice spot of 600 million plus players shows that it really is the Tetris of the modern age.
I would argue that the peak number of players, and how long that plateau is held, is a more significant counter simply because it shows how many players consume the game in each span of time. Through this, we get an idea whether a game holds its audience, which is far more important in the long-term in terms of customer satisfaction and how well customers make emotional connection to the game. A game that gets massive sales at the start but sees the player count sink like a rock in water has no lasting hold on the market.
While I don’t give much weight on the Critical Acclaim the journalists give to games (as they are nothing more than just an extra arm in the PR machine), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Soul Calibur top the chart with 99 and 98 according to Metacritic. I’d like to say the User Score is the metric we should use, but seeing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 topping the current list reminds me how customers can’t be any more objective than the journalists most of the time.
If we count Spacewar! as the progenitor of all modern video and computer games (and we are,) gaming is 63 at the time of writing. There are only a handful of game names from the early era of electronic gaming that are still strongly alive. Pac-Man and Mario are the handful, with the rest of their brethren being relocated to nostalgic revivals and retro collections. While we may think the most popular games we have now will last for all time, we’ve seen so many game names simply vanishing, dying out or otherwise fall into torpor. Mega Man is a great example of this, sometimes popping its head up only to fall back into Capcom archives. Maybe we’ll get another game by 2030. Prince of Persia seemed like a name that would never die, but overexposure and simply being owned by Ubisoft clearly took its toll on the name. Same thing could be happening to Assassin Creed now, one can only hope.
Some of you might’ve noticed that I counted Donkey Kong as a Mario title. So does Nintendo, as that’s the first appearance of Mario, then named Jumpman. If you want, we can count Mario being started in 1983, making Mario 42 to Pac-Man’s 45. These are still small numbers compared to something like Universal Monsters, which have lasted for good 117 years. Looking at the comic book world, both Superman and Batman are in their 80s.
However, the gaming industry influences itself. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was influenced by Final Fantasy, which was seen as the premier gaming IP at one point in the Western World. However, going back and seeing what influenced Final Fantasy we find Dragon Quest and its numerous copycats and imitators. Going further back we find both Utima and Wizardry influencing the game, which also influenced so many other Japanese computer RPGs like The Black Onyx, which inspired the creation of The Legend of Zelda. Ultima and Wizardry have their roots in MUDs, which have roots in table-top RPGs, mainly Dungeon and Dragons, which have their roots in the military games generals and other army leaders would play to train their leadership.
The roots of video and computer gaming lie in the games and play of children and adults alike, alongside how stories were told by acting and playing them out. This tangent is to remind ourselves that gaming is not something that just came along with computers and consoles but is just the latest iteration of mankind has been doing ever since we dwelled in caves.
Nevertheless, the game with most cultural impact is probably Pokémon. Its Trading Card Game sales generate about one to three billion dollars per year, which rivals the top-most successful film’s revenue in their lifetime. Of course, TCG is an evergreen product compared to film’s finite runs, so this should illustrate how different the media are. Still, the franchise IP generated that $150 billion plus dollars and probably is Japan’s single most important import product. Pikachu is the face and mascot of the franchise, well-known across the glob, and served as an ambassador to 2014 World Cup, 2020 Tokyo Olympics and in 2025 World Expo. Its yellow face is featured in over fifty embassies across the world. Surprisingly, Pokémon has shown itself to be a multi-generational product, a cornerstone of sorts that sees constant parodies in other shows and games while drawing tourists of all ages to Pokémon Centers across the world, especially to Japan.
Even if Pokémon is a 1990s product, it can be placed alongside Mario and Pac-Man as a long-lasting face of gaming, with it probably ending up as the face of gaming on the long run if we had to choose one, for better or worse. This also illustrates some why Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and to a lesser extent GameFreak would be freakishly overprotective of their IP. There are numerous other contenders we could put there, but I’m making a point there; there must be generationally recognizable face for all without really any breaks.
The list of games that influenced other games is as wide as the library of games out there. Talking about First-Person Shooting ends up someone tracing back to Halo, then Half-Life, a mention of Quake’s code still running in some modern games, another mentioning Goldeneye 007, with usually ending with either Doom or Wolfenstein 3D in a similar fashion I did with RPGs above.
While we have been seeing the influence of video and computer games on the culture ever since the 1970s in an increasing fashion, it’s hard to determine how well a game or a name will endure as history happens. Only in hindsight can we properly determine the ebbs and flows of masses, something the current gaming industry seems to ignore in favour of trying to appease each other with the press as their echo chamber. When Demon’s Souls was put out for the first time, nobody expected it to become a cultural cornerstone. However, history has shown us that people like to play challenging games, and from that challenge comes customer satisfaction. Well-built world and framing, with play-first mentality, is a sort of silver bullet. It’s not a game for everyone, and that’s fine. You can’t please everyone with one product, and trying to is simply being dishonest toward the game and the customer.
#electronicGames #entertainment #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames
-
The many games of The Most Successful
With Rockstar and Grant Theft Auto 6 in the news for some unsavory reasons, I saw quite a lot of hubbubs about the success of the fifth game in the franchise and its comparative success compared to other games, and other forms entertainment. I’m slightly flabbergasted that someone would claim that GTA5 was the most successful form of entertainment, when people without much contact with the modern world knew about Michael Jackson. Thriller permeated everywhere, you can’t beat it.
Nevertheless, this made an interesting thought experiment on what counts as The Most Successful Video Game. It didn’t help that I saw the goal being pushed after one or two rounds of discussion, under which at least few realized that there’s more than one way of seeing this. Business has a different view on things compared to the customers, and then you have the historical view that has a longer view on how games have affected culture in general. This is why Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout and Pac-Man still live on in the cultural memory, even if the amount of success they’ve seen in terms of money is less than whatever big Triple A title that’s come after.
I should probably note that there’s also a slight difference in how some use the term franchise. While I tend to use it wrong as a synonym with Intellectual Property, an example of a franchise would be Street Fighter II. Street Fighter III would be its own franchise, while all falling under the same umbrella of IP. This is because of merchandising rights and all that business jazz.
Units Sold is of course a big one, the cumulative sales made by one game, or a series of games. For example, the Mario games have a cumulative sale of 957 million units, while Mega Man has 43 million units.
As for individual titles, Minecraft is an evergreen title that hits 350 units sold. GTAV follows It at 220 million units.
Units sold doesn’t really keep you afloat a lot, unless you have Revenue. This is the total gross the series does through game sales, possible DLC, merch, and other licensed material. Pokémon tops this chart with $115, followed by Call of Duty with $31 million.
The way digital games are consumed is different from purchased titles, of course. That’s why something like Candy Crush or Dungeon Fighter Online can top the chart of games with most revenue, as individuals put more money into these games. This compares apples and oranges; the business models are ultimately very different and the amount of money you can squeeze out of a customer via single sold title plus DLC is ultimately less than digital-only but squeezing small amounts throughout their play time. Gacha mixes things with the whole gambling aspect.
I don’t think we should count individual downloads. This is because a download doesn’t translate to a purchase, or revenue. There are numerous cases of curious people testing a free game out and then proceeding not to continue. These people are often counted to the player metric nonetheless, which shows that the total number of players can be skewed to showcase a more positive statistic for PR reasons. This is the same reason why Sony cites the total number of PlayStation 2’s when asked about the total number of consoles sold. It just looks better, and they can fudge the numbers for their benefit.
Then again, Subway Surfers has 2.05 billion individual downloads and spawned numerous imitators so there’s something value in that too.
Player Count is also something that seems to be a significant metric, with Roblox topping the list with the estimated number of players being in billions cumulative. Minecraft hitting a nice spot of 600 million plus players shows that it really is the Tetris of the modern age.
I would argue that the peak number of players, and how long that plateau is held, is a more significant counter simply because it shows how many players consume the game in each span of time. Through this, we get an idea whether a game holds its audience, which is far more important in the long-term in terms of customer satisfaction and how well customers make emotional connection to the game. A game that gets massive sales at the start but sees the player count sink like a rock in water has no lasting hold on the market.
While I don’t give much weight on the Critical Acclaim the journalists give to games (as they are nothing more than just an extra arm in the PR machine), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Soul Calibur top the chart with 99 and 98 according to Metacritic. I’d like to say the User Score is the metric we should use, but seeing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 topping the current list reminds me how customers can’t be any more objective than the journalists most of the time.
If we count Spacewar! as the progenitor of all modern video and computer games (and we are,) gaming is 63 at the time of writing. There are only a handful of game names from the early era of electronic gaming that are still strongly alive. Pac-Man and Mario are the handful, with the rest of their brethren being relocated to nostalgic revivals and retro collections. While we may think the most popular games we have now will last for all time, we’ve seen so many game names simply vanishing, dying out or otherwise fall into torpor. Mega Man is a great example of this, sometimes popping its head up only to fall back into Capcom archives. Maybe we’ll get another game by 2030. Prince of Persia seemed like a name that would never die, but overexposure and simply being owned by Ubisoft clearly took its toll on the name. Same thing could be happening to Assassin Creed now, one can only hope.
Some of you might’ve noticed that I counted Donkey Kong as a Mario title. So does Nintendo, as that’s the first appearance of Mario, then named Jumpman. If you want, we can count Mario being started in 1983, making Mario 42 to Pac-Man’s 45. These are still small numbers compared to something like Universal Monsters, which have lasted for good 117 years. Looking at the comic book world, both Superman and Batman are in their 80s.
However, the gaming industry influences itself. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was influenced by Final Fantasy, which was seen as the premier gaming IP at one point in the Western World. However, going back and seeing what influenced Final Fantasy we find Dragon Quest and its numerous copycats and imitators. Going further back we find both Utima and Wizardry influencing the game, which also influenced so many other Japanese computer RPGs like The Black Onyx, which inspired the creation of The Legend of Zelda. Ultima and Wizardry have their roots in MUDs, which have roots in table-top RPGs, mainly Dungeon and Dragons, which have their roots in the military games generals and other army leaders would play to train their leadership.
The roots of video and computer gaming lie in the games and play of children and adults alike, alongside how stories were told by acting and playing them out. This tangent is to remind ourselves that gaming is not something that just came along with computers and consoles but is just the latest iteration of mankind has been doing ever since we dwelled in caves.
Nevertheless, the game with most cultural impact is probably Pokémon. Its Trading Card Game sales generate about one to three billion dollars per year, which rivals the top-most successful film’s revenue in their lifetime. Of course, TCG is an evergreen product compared to film’s finite runs, so this should illustrate how different the media are. Still, the franchise IP generated that $150 billion plus dollars and probably is Japan’s single most important import product. Pikachu is the face and mascot of the franchise, well-known across the glob, and served as an ambassador to 2014 World Cup, 2020 Tokyo Olympics and in 2025 World Expo. Its yellow face is featured in over fifty embassies across the world. Surprisingly, Pokémon has shown itself to be a multi-generational product, a cornerstone of sorts that sees constant parodies in other shows and games while drawing tourists of all ages to Pokémon Centers across the world, especially to Japan.
Even if Pokémon is a 1990s product, it can be placed alongside Mario and Pac-Man as a long-lasting face of gaming, with it probably ending up as the face of gaming on the long run if we had to choose one, for better or worse. This also illustrates some why Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and to a lesser extent GameFreak would be freakishly overprotective of their IP. There are numerous other contenders we could put there, but I’m making a point there; there must be generationally recognizable face for all without really any breaks.
The list of games that influenced other games is as wide as the library of games out there. Talking about First-Person Shooting ends up someone tracing back to Halo, then Half-Life, a mention of Quake’s code still running in some modern games, another mentioning Goldeneye 007, with usually ending with either Doom or Wolfenstein 3D in a similar fashion I did with RPGs above.
While we have been seeing the influence of video and computer games on the culture ever since the 1970s in an increasing fashion, it’s hard to determine how well a game or a name will endure as history happens. Only in hindsight can we properly determine the ebbs and flows of masses, something the current gaming industry seems to ignore in favour of trying to appease each other with the press as their echo chamber. When Demon’s Souls was put out for the first time, nobody expected it to become a cultural cornerstone. However, history has shown us that people like to play challenging games, and from that challenge comes customer satisfaction. Well-built world and framing, with play-first mentality, is a sort of silver bullet. It’s not a game for everyone, and that’s fine. You can’t please everyone with one product, and trying to is simply being dishonest toward the game and the customer.
#electronicGames #entertainment #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames
-
The many games of The Most Successful
With Rockstar and Grant Theft Auto 6 in the news for some unsavory reasons, I saw quite a lot of hubbubs about the success of the fifth game in the franchise and its comparative success compared to other games, and other forms entertainment. I’m slightly flabbergasted that someone would claim that GTA5 was the most successful form of entertainment, when people without much contact with the modern world knew about Michael Jackson. Thriller permeated everywhere, you can’t beat it.
Nevertheless, this made an interesting thought experiment on what counts as The Most Successful Video Game. It didn’t help that I saw the goal being pushed after one or two rounds of discussion, under which at least few realized that there’s more than one way of seeing this. Business has a different view on things compared to the customers, and then you have the historical view that has a longer view on how games have affected culture in general. This is why Pong, Space Invaders, Breakout and Pac-Man still live on in the cultural memory, even if the amount of success they’ve seen in terms of money is less than whatever big Triple A title that’s come after.
I should probably note that there’s also a slight difference in how some use the term franchise. While I tend to use it wrong as a synonym with Intellectual Property, an example of a franchise would be Street Fighter II. Street Fighter III would be its own franchise, while all falling under the same umbrella of IP. This is because of merchandising rights and all that business jazz.
Units Sold is of course a big one, the cumulative sales made by one game, or a series of games. For example, the Mario games have a cumulative sale of 957 million units, while Mega Man has 43 million units.
As for individual titles, Minecraft is an evergreen title that hits 350 units sold. GTAV follows It at 220 million units.
Units sold doesn’t really keep you afloat a lot, unless you have Revenue. This is the total gross the series does through game sales, possible DLC, merch, and other licensed material. Pokémon tops this chart with $115, followed by Call of Duty with $31 million.
The way digital games are consumed is different from purchased titles, of course. That’s why something like Candy Crush or Dungeon Fighter Online can top the chart of games with most revenue, as individuals put more money into these games. This compares apples and oranges; the business models are ultimately very different and the amount of money you can squeeze out of a customer via single sold title plus DLC is ultimately less than digital-only but squeezing small amounts throughout their play time. Gacha mixes things with the whole gambling aspect.
I don’t think we should count individual downloads. This is because a download doesn’t translate to a purchase, or revenue. There are numerous cases of curious people testing a free game out and then proceeding not to continue. These people are often counted to the player metric nonetheless, which shows that the total number of players can be skewed to showcase a more positive statistic for PR reasons. This is the same reason why Sony cites the total number of PlayStation 2’s when asked about the total number of consoles sold. It just looks better, and they can fudge the numbers for their benefit.
Then again, Subway Surfers has 2.05 billion individual downloads and spawned numerous imitators so there’s something value in that too.
Player Count is also something that seems to be a significant metric, with Roblox topping the list with the estimated number of players being in billions cumulative. Minecraft hitting a nice spot of 600 million plus players shows that it really is the Tetris of the modern age.
I would argue that the peak number of players, and how long that plateau is held, is a more significant counter simply because it shows how many players consume the game in each span of time. Through this, we get an idea whether a game holds its audience, which is far more important in the long-term in terms of customer satisfaction and how well customers make emotional connection to the game. A game that gets massive sales at the start but sees the player count sink like a rock in water has no lasting hold on the market.
While I don’t give much weight on the Critical Acclaim the journalists give to games (as they are nothing more than just an extra arm in the PR machine), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Soul Calibur top the chart with 99 and 98 according to Metacritic. I’d like to say the User Score is the metric we should use, but seeing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 topping the current list reminds me how customers can’t be any more objective than the journalists most of the time.
If we count Spacewar! as the progenitor of all modern video and computer games (and we are,) gaming is 63 at the time of writing. There are only a handful of game names from the early era of electronic gaming that are still strongly alive. Pac-Man and Mario are the handful, with the rest of their brethren being relocated to nostalgic revivals and retro collections. While we may think the most popular games we have now will last for all time, we’ve seen so many game names simply vanishing, dying out or otherwise fall into torpor. Mega Man is a great example of this, sometimes popping its head up only to fall back into Capcom archives. Maybe we’ll get another game by 2030. Prince of Persia seemed like a name that would never die, but overexposure and simply being owned by Ubisoft clearly took its toll on the name. Same thing could be happening to Assassin Creed now, one can only hope.
Some of you might’ve noticed that I counted Donkey Kong as a Mario title. So does Nintendo, as that’s the first appearance of Mario, then named Jumpman. If you want, we can count Mario being started in 1983, making Mario 42 to Pac-Man’s 45. These are still small numbers compared to something like Universal Monsters, which have lasted for good 117 years. Looking at the comic book world, both Superman and Batman are in their 80s.
However, the gaming industry influences itself. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was influenced by Final Fantasy, which was seen as the premier gaming IP at one point in the Western World. However, going back and seeing what influenced Final Fantasy we find Dragon Quest and its numerous copycats and imitators. Going further back we find both Utima and Wizardry influencing the game, which also influenced so many other Japanese computer RPGs like The Black Onyx, which inspired the creation of The Legend of Zelda. Ultima and Wizardry have their roots in MUDs, which have roots in table-top RPGs, mainly Dungeon and Dragons, which have their roots in the military games generals and other army leaders would play to train their leadership.
The roots of video and computer gaming lie in the games and play of children and adults alike, alongside how stories were told by acting and playing them out. This tangent is to remind ourselves that gaming is not something that just came along with computers and consoles but is just the latest iteration of mankind has been doing ever since we dwelled in caves.
Nevertheless, the game with most cultural impact is probably Pokémon. Its Trading Card Game sales generate about one to three billion dollars per year, which rivals the top-most successful film’s revenue in their lifetime. Of course, TCG is an evergreen product compared to film’s finite runs, so this should illustrate how different the media are. Still, the franchise IP generated that $150 billion plus dollars and probably is Japan’s single most important import product. Pikachu is the face and mascot of the franchise, well-known across the glob, and served as an ambassador to 2014 World Cup, 2020 Tokyo Olympics and in 2025 World Expo. Its yellow face is featured in over fifty embassies across the world. Surprisingly, Pokémon has shown itself to be a multi-generational product, a cornerstone of sorts that sees constant parodies in other shows and games while drawing tourists of all ages to Pokémon Centers across the world, especially to Japan.
Even if Pokémon is a 1990s product, it can be placed alongside Mario and Pac-Man as a long-lasting face of gaming, with it probably ending up as the face of gaming on the long run if we had to choose one, for better or worse. This also illustrates some why Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, and to a lesser extent GameFreak would be freakishly overprotective of their IP. There are numerous other contenders we could put there, but I’m making a point there; there must be generationally recognizable face for all without really any breaks.
The list of games that influenced other games is as wide as the library of games out there. Talking about First-Person Shooting ends up someone tracing back to Halo, then Half-Life, a mention of Quake’s code still running in some modern games, another mentioning Goldeneye 007, with usually ending with either Doom or Wolfenstein 3D in a similar fashion I did with RPGs above.
While we have been seeing the influence of video and computer games on the culture ever since the 1970s in an increasing fashion, it’s hard to determine how well a game or a name will endure as history happens. Only in hindsight can we properly determine the ebbs and flows of masses, something the current gaming industry seems to ignore in favour of trying to appease each other with the press as their echo chamber. When Demon’s Souls was put out for the first time, nobody expected it to become a cultural cornerstone. However, history has shown us that people like to play challenging games, and from that challenge comes customer satisfaction. Well-built world and framing, with play-first mentality, is a sort of silver bullet. It’s not a game for everyone, and that’s fine. You can’t please everyone with one product, and trying to is simply being dishonest toward the game and the customer.
#electronicGames #entertainment #games #gaming #videoGames #videogames
-
The moment I demand that another accept as fact, what I chose to believe by faith, I deny them the same freedom to believe or not that I claim for myself.
The epistemology of supernatural belief (faith) and the epistemology of Naturalism (evidentiary science) are different tools for application in different domains.
I don't care what religion another subscribes to, What I object to is the implicit coercion of making decisions, laws, policy based on supernatural beliefs in a pluralistic democracy.
If Claudia Allen chooses to believe scripture is history based on her faith, that is her right of religious freedom, but to propagandize her faith as historic fact to others, is intellectually dishonest and promotes a cultural norm of othering that is irrefutably harmful and destructive to millions of people.
Why are Black people still Christian?
Garrison Hayes
@garrisonhayes
#BlackMastodon #BlackChurch #RespectabilityPolitics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKSF1huXOuw -
The moment I demand that another accept as fact, what I chose to believe by faith, I deny them the same freedom to believe or not that I claim for myself.
The epistemology of supernatural belief (faith) and the epistemology of Naturalism (evidentiary science) are different tools for application in different domains.
I don't care what religion another subscribes to, What I object to is the implicit coercion of making decisions, laws, policy based on supernatural beliefs in a pluralistic democracy.
If Claudia Allen chooses to believe scripture is history based on her faith, that is her right of religious freedom, but to propagandize her faith as historic fact to others, is intellectually dishonest and promotes a cultural norm of othering that is irrefutably harmful and destructive to millions of people.
Why are Black people still Christian?
Garrison Hayes
@garrisonhayes
#BlackMastodon #BlackChurch #RespectabilityPolitics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKSF1huXOuw -
The moment I demand that another accept as fact, what I chose to believe by faith, I deny them the same freedom to believe or not that I claim for myself.
The epistemology of supernatural belief (faith) and the epistemology of Naturalism (evidentiary science) are different tools for application in different domains.
I don't care what religion another subscribes to, What I object to is the implicit coercion of making decisions, laws, policy based on supernatural beliefs in a pluralistic democracy.
If Claudia Allen chooses to believe scripture is history based on her faith, that is her right of religious freedom, but to propagandize her faith as historic fact to others, is intellectually dishonest and promotes a cultural norm of othering that is irrefutably harmful and destructive to millions of people.
Why are Black people still Christian?
Garrison Hayes
@garrisonhayes
#BlackMastodon #BlackChurch #RespectabilityPolitics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKSF1huXOuw -
The moment I demand that another accept as fact, what I chose to believe by faith, I deny them the same freedom to believe or not that I claim for myself.
The epistemology of supernatural belief (faith) and the epistemology of Naturalism (evidentiary science) are different tools for application in different domains.
I don't care what religion another subscribes to, What I object to is the implicit coercion of making decisions, laws, policy based on supernatural beliefs in a pluralistic democracy.
If Claudia Allen chooses to believe scripture is history based on her faith, that is her right of religious freedom, but to propagandize her faith as historic fact to others, is intellectually dishonest and promotes a cultural norm of othering that is irrefutably harmful and destructive to millions of people.
Why are Black people still Christian?
Garrison Hayes
@garrisonhayes
#BlackMastodon #BlackChurch #RespectabilityPolitics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKSF1huXOuw -
The Politics of #Futurity--The Institute of Advanced Studies #UMN: Woodly argues in her new book, Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements—a sweeping account of the meaning and purpose of the Movement for Black Lives (#M4BL)—the value of such movements is something much more profound: they are necessary for the health and survival of democracy.
Woodly will begin by sharing how a unique political philosophy—Radical Black Feminist Pragmatism—served as an intellectual foundation of the movement and the role it played in transforming public meanings, public opinion, and policy. The conversation will then turn to speculating on what a 21st-century paradigm that centers the politics of care might include. We will discuss how political horizons are constructed in popular discourse and political action; the structural relations of race, #coloniality, and #indigeneity and what it would take to change those relations; abolition democracy; the politics of #gender; #disability #justice; and the political economy of degrowth. Together, we will ask: what ideas shape the politics of the future, and what consequences and possibilities are implied by their pursuit?https://ias.umn.edu/events/ias-thursdays-politics-futurity
-
The Politics of #Futurity--The Institute of Advanced Studies #UMN: Woodly argues in her new book, Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements—a sweeping account of the meaning and purpose of the Movement for Black Lives (#M4BL)—the value of such movements is something much more profound: they are necessary for the health and survival of democracy.
Woodly will begin by sharing how a unique political philosophy—Radical Black Feminist Pragmatism—served as an intellectual foundation of the movement and the role it played in transforming public meanings, public opinion, and policy. The conversation will then turn to speculating on what a 21st-century paradigm that centers the politics of care might include. We will discuss how political horizons are constructed in popular discourse and political action; the structural relations of race, #coloniality, and #indigeneity and what it would take to change those relations; abolition democracy; the politics of #gender; #disability #justice; and the political economy of degrowth. Together, we will ask: what ideas shape the politics of the future, and what consequences and possibilities are implied by their pursuit?https://ias.umn.edu/events/ias-thursdays-politics-futurity
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The Politics of #Futurity--The Institute of Advanced Studies #UMN: Woodly argues in her new book, Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements—a sweeping account of the meaning and purpose of the Movement for Black Lives (#M4BL)—the value of such movements is something much more profound: they are necessary for the health and survival of democracy.
Woodly will begin by sharing how a unique political philosophy—Radical Black Feminist Pragmatism—served as an intellectual foundation of the movement and the role it played in transforming public meanings, public opinion, and policy. The conversation will then turn to speculating on what a 21st-century paradigm that centers the politics of care might include. We will discuss how political horizons are constructed in popular discourse and political action; the structural relations of race, #coloniality, and #indigeneity and what it would take to change those relations; abolition democracy; the politics of #gender; #disability #justice; and the political economy of degrowth. Together, we will ask: what ideas shape the politics of the future, and what consequences and possibilities are implied by their pursuit?https://ias.umn.edu/events/ias-thursdays-politics-futurity