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Kicking us off on our first session of the morning was Matt Parker @standupmaths who shared how he's planning to break the world record for the most digits of π calculated by hand, for next π day (see his other attempts here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhtC92GarkjyYbxI3-4qzIWIRbZaw4wuP). We also heard from Bob Huxley, who has also been thinking about π day, but this time on Mars where it turns out it's actually tomorrow! Annette Margolis then talked about her class' favourite (and least favourite) way to solve quadratic equations. John Hoskinson discussed Diffy Squares (https://mathforlove.com/2020/03/diffy-squares/) and adapted them to generalised diffy N-gons - for odd N, you get repeating cycles! Nobody has ever said the word 'diffy' more times in the space of 5 minutes. Alistair Bird @outofthenorm shared about a mathematician who got inspired in the bath (but not that one), and what his discovery meant (turns out, not much, but it did inspire some nice results around Fermat's Last Theorem). Read more here: https://outofthenormmaths.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/blitz-krieger/ Adam Atkinson talked about Misère Games, leading to his discovery of just how many semigroups of order 8 there are, inducting us all into membership of DOCTIAL (the Department of 'Crikey! That Is A Lot!'); and finally Harlan Connor got LOUD about signal processing - it's possible to have peaks in audio volume that are higher than the maximum value the system can store! #mathsjam #maths #pi #worldrecords #mars #piday #quadraticequations #classwork #teaching #diffysquares #baths #inspiration #misèregames #doctial #loud #signalprocessing #groups #monoids #semigroups #combinatorialgametheory
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Kicking us off on our first session of the morning was Matt Parker @standupmaths who shared how he's planning to break the world record for the most digits of π calculated by hand, for next π day (see his other attempts here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhtC92GarkjyYbxI3-4qzIWIRbZaw4wuP). We also heard from Bob Huxley, who has also been thinking about π day, but this time on Mars where it turns out it's actually tomorrow! Annette Margolis then talked about her class' favourite (and least favourite) way to solve quadratic equations. John Hoskinson discussed Diffy Squares (https://mathforlove.com/2020/03/diffy-squares/) and adapted them to generalised diffy N-gons - for odd N, you get repeating cycles! Nobody has ever said the word 'diffy' more times in the space of 5 minutes. Alistair Bird @outofthenorm shared about a mathematician who got inspired in the bath (but not that one), and what his discovery meant (turns out, not much, but it did inspire some nice results around Fermat's Last Theorem). Read more here: https://outofthenormmaths.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/blitz-krieger/ Adam Atkinson talked about Misère Games, leading to his discovery of just how many semigroups of order 8 there are, inducting us all into membership of DOCTIAL (the Department of 'Crikey! That Is A Lot!'); and finally Harlan Connor got LOUD about signal processing - it's possible to have peaks in audio volume that are higher than the maximum value the system can store! #mathsjam #maths #pi #worldrecords #mars #piday #quadraticequations #classwork #teaching #diffysquares #baths #inspiration #misèregames #doctial #loud #signalprocessing #groups #monoids #semigroups #combinatorialgametheory
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Javan Rhinos Not Safe from Poachers
Recent testimony by arrested illegal poachers in #Indonesia finds 26 of the estimated remaining 72 living Javan #Rhinos were slaughtered for their horns over the past five years. In the so-called “protected” Ujung Kulon National Park in the western tip of the island of Java. This must spark a national emergency to protect these beings before they are gone for good! End the wildlife trade and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
Shocking news: 26 of the 72 remaining #Javan #Rhinos 🦏 were poached recently from Ujung Kulon National Park, #Indonesia making their protection even more serious. End disgusting #poaching! Help them survive when you #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://wp.me/pcFhgU-91C
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterTestimony by arrested #poachers in #Indonesia finds 26 of the remaining 72 #Javan #Rhino 🦏 are still alive 😭 We must scramble to protect these beautiful and unique #animals urgently! #Boycottmeat #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://wp.me/pcFhgU-91C
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterWritten by Jason Gilchrist, Lecturer in the School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
26 of the estimated maximum 72 Javan rhino have been poached by two gangs in the last five years. Absolutely shocking news!
I am an ecologist, and I have been lucky to work with white rhino in Africa. This work has involved capturing rhino, dehorning and moving them – methods used to try to save rhino from poachers.
Poachers target these large, plant-eating mammals for the illegal trade in rhino horn, fuelled by demand from Asia, principally China and Vietnam, where the horn is perceived as a status symbol, a cure for illness and an aphrodisiac.
Poaching is the main threat to the African rhino, but it was not considered a risk for the critically endangered Javan rhino in Asia. So rare and difficult to detect are Javan rhino, which live in dense jungle, that it was thought poachers would not be able to find them.
However, recent testimony from poachers arrested in Indonesia has indicated that 26 of the estimated maximum 72 Javan rhino have been poached by two gangs in the last five years. That is shocking news.
This revelation turns a worrying situation into an emergency – and demands increased efforts to save the Javan rhino from extinction.
How many Javan rhino are there?
Indonesian police arrested 13 members of two poaching gangs who revealed the otherwise undetected loss of rhino from Ujung Kulon National Park, the home of the world’s only remaining Javan rhino population, on the island of Java in the Indonesian archipelago.
Javan rhino were once widespread in southeast Asia. The last one outside of Indonesia was poached in Vietnam in 2010.
The actual number of rhino killed by the poaching gangs cannot be verified. It’s possible that sources within the government or conservation teams are passing information to poachers.
A Dutch hunter with a slain Javan rhino in Ujung Kulon, 1895. Charles te Mechelen/Rhino Resource CenterIndonesia’s forests are home to 10-15% of the planet’s plants, birds and mammals. While Indonesia harbours the greatest amount of rainforest in Asia, over 74 million hectares (three times the land area of the UK) have been lost in the past 50 years to palm oil extraction and paper mills.
Indonesia’s forest cover has fallen from 80% to less than 50% amid one of the fastest deforestation rates in the world. Pandeglang, the Javan region containing the national park, has lost nearly 10% of its rainforest since 2000.
All scientists know about the abundance of Javan rhino is gleaned from camera traps, remote cameras that are triggered to take photos by passing animals. The last government population estimate was released in 2019.
A report published in 2023 criticised this estimate because 18 of the rhino counted had not been detected by a camera trap for three years, and three of the rhino counted were known to be dead.
Saving the Javan rhino from extinction
Indonesian conservationists have focused on habitat loss as the leading threat to Javan rhino, as it deprives the species of breeding opportunities. Scattered across separate fragments of jungle, rhino are unlikely to find each other during the brief window when females are receptive to mating.
There is also evidence of inbreeding, exacerbated by there being more adult males than females. Some biologists have called for Javan rhino to be taken into captive breeding programmes.
With just 46 Javan rhino in the wild (perhaps even less), poaching could wipe out the species or reduce it to such a low number that low breeding success deals the final blow.
Ujung Kulon National Park is located on the western tip of Java. Achmad Soerio Hutomo/Flickr, CC BYSo, what now? It is likely that the Javan rhino cannot afford to lose any further animals to poaching, and vital that further poaching is prevented. The Indonesian government has now increased security in the national park with police and military combining forces.
Allowing forests to naturally regenerate and planting corridors of trees between jungle patches will help the remaining rhino find suitable habitat and each other. Conservationists have also called for cutting down trees in some locations to allow fresh, young trees with more accessible leaves to grow.
Research has also shown that removing an invasive palm boosts the availability of rhino food plants. Livestock must be excluded from the park too, as domestic cattle can transmit disease.
As far back as 1986, conservationists called for some rhino to be moved out of the park (perhaps to the neighbouring island of Sumatra). Splitting an already limited population is risky, but not establishing the safety net of at least one other population elsewhere is riskier still.
What if a tsunami hit the park? And the park may already be near capacity, as it is estimated to be able to support only 68 rhino.
Bringing Javan rhino into captivity and using reproductive technologies on stored eggs and sperm (techniques in development for the more common white rhino) may also need to be considered. Although, it is still possible that captive breeding may not be required: camera traps have photographed newborn Javan rhino, as well as adults, as recently as March 2024.
A female Javan rhino calf with its mother, photographed by a camera trap in Ujung Kulon national park. Indonesian Ministry of Environment and ForestryScientists don’t know much about Javan rhino biology. There have been few studies of wild rhino and only 22 have ever been kept in captivity, the last of which died more than 100 years ago. More research is needed to understand as much as possible about Javan rhino ecology and reproduction – in the wild and from museum specimens.
More effective habitat and wildlife conservation across Indonesia will benefit other Indonesian species, including the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran elephant, all three species of orangutan, and the Sumatran rhino (estimated population of 24-47, making it the world’s most endangered rhino).
If effective conservation action is not taken now, the remaining Javan rhino population will go the same way as that in Vietnam.
Written by Jason Gilchrist, Lecturer in the School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
ENDS
Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture
Global South America S.E. Asia India Africa West Papua & PNGFrill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii
Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum
Ecuadorean Viscacha Lagidium ahuacaense
Blue-streaked Lory Eos reticulata
Blonde Capuchin Sapajus flavius
Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing
Read more about RSPO greenwashing
Lying Fake labels Indigenous Land-grabbing Human rights abuses Deforestation Human health hazardsA 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)
Read moreTake Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
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Join 3,174 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#animalBehaviour #AnimalBiodiversityNews #animalCommunication #animalCruelty #animalExtinction #animalIntelligence #animalRights #animals #biodiversity #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #Indonesia #Javan #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #poachers #poaching #Rhino #Rhinos
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Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Red List Status: Endangered
Location: Malaysia (Sabah), Indonesia (North Kalimantan)
This elusive primate lives in lowland, riparian, montane, and evergreen forests of northern Borneo, including protected areas such as the Danum Valley, Tabin Reserve, and the Kinabatangan region.
The Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana, also known as the Saban Grizzled #Langur or Crested Grizzled Langur, is a strikingly beautiful leaf #monkey found only in #Borneo. Their #Endangered status is a direct result of extensive habitat destruction caused by deforestation, out-of-control palm oil expansion, and #hunting—particularly for bezoar stones used in traditional medicine. With fragmented populations and little known about their behaviour or numbers, urgent action is needed to prevent their extinction. Use your wallet as a weapon. Avoid #palmoil when you shop and demand an end to wildlife trafficking and forest destruction. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan
Sabah Grizzled #Langurs live in the treetops of #Sabah #Malaysia 🐒🐵🇲🇾 Their main threats are #palmoil and #meat agriculture #deforestation. Help to protect these elegant monkeys when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🩸🔥☠️🤮🧐🙊⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/25/msaban-grizzled-langur-presbytis-sabana/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterAppearance and Behaviour
The Sabah Grizzled Langur is a captivating primate with a thick coat of grey, grizzled fur and a pale belly, sharply contrasted by black hands and feet. A pointed crown of fur rises from their head, giving them a distinct, almost regal look. Their spade-shaped, pale-pinkish faces are framed by dark rings around wide, expressive eyes—an appearance that makes them instantly memorable to anyone lucky enough to see one.
These langurs are diurnal and arboreal, spending most of their lives high in the forest canopy. At night, they retreat to the upper branches of emergent trees to sleep, likely as a defence against predators. They are nimble and versatile movers, walking on all fours, leaping, climbing, and even hanging suspended beneath branches. Their daily lives involve foraging, grooming, resting, and socialising in cohesive groups that typically consist of one dominant male and several adult females with their young.
Diet
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are primarily folivores, feeding on a wide range of leaves, young shoots, and unripe seeds. They also eat fruit, flowers, buds, insects, bird eggs, and mineral-rich mud to supplement their diet. Their complex, multi-chambered stomachs ferment leafy material efficiently, allowing them to extract maximum nutrition from tough plant matter.
The diet of the Sabah Grizzled Langur shifts based on the level of forest disturbance. In undisturbed forests, leaves dominate their intake, but in logged areas, they consume more fruit and seeds. This adaptability may be crucial to their survival in fragmented landscapes.
Reproduction and Mating
This species follows a polygynous mating system, with a single adult male having exclusive breeding access to the females in the group. Breeding appears to occur year-round, but births peak between July and October. After a gestation of five to six months, the female gives birth to a single infant.
Infants are born with paler fur that darkens over time. They are weaned at around 11 months and become subadults between 21 and 36 months. Both males and females leave their natal groups upon reaching sexual maturity at about three years of age, either joining new groups or forming their own.
Geographic Range
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are endemic to the island of Borneo and are found only in Sabah (Malaysia) and northern parts of Indonesian Kalimantan. They inhabit evergreen, lowland, montane, and riverine forests, as well as selectively logged areas and tree plantations. Though once considered a subspecies of Presbytis hosei, they are now recognised as a distinct species. Populations are scattered and fragmented, with some surviving in protected areas like Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin, but others are highly vulnerable to extinction.
Threats
• Palm oil deforestation, monoculture expansion and habitat fragmentation
Large-scale clearing of Borneo’s forests for palm oil plantations has severely reduced the habitat of Presbytis sabana. This deforestation not only destroys the canopy cover they rely on for movement and shelter but also creates isolated forest patches that hinder gene flow and increase vulnerability to inbreeding and local extinction. Even selectively logged areas can remove critical roosting trees and food sources, leading to population collapse over time.
• Hunting for their meat and bezoar stones
Local hunting poses a grave threat to this species. Bezoar stones—calcified objects sometimes found in the gastrointestinal tracts of langurs—are falsely believed to have medicinal properties and fetch high prices in illegal markets. As a result, these langurs are hunted both for meat and for supposed curative use, putting intense pressure on already dwindling populations.
• Lack of enforcement in protected areas
While some populations live in conservation zones, many of these are inadequately protected. Illegal logging, poaching, and encroachment continue within the boundaries of national parks and reserves. Without sufficient monitoring, resources, and community involvement, these areas offer little real safety for the langurs.
• Low reproductive rate and slow population recovery
Like many primates, Sabah Grizzled Langurs have slow reproductive cycles, giving birth to a single infant every one to two years. This low birth rate means that even small increases in mortality can cause long-term population declines. Combined with hunting and habitat loss, this makes recovery especially difficult without urgent conservation action.
Take Action!
The fate of the Sabah Grizzled Langur is partially tied to our consumer choices. Avoid products that contain palm oil, especially those contributing to Bornean deforestation. Never support the exotic animal trade or products made from endangered species. Support indigenous-led conservation efforts and protect Southeast Asia’s remaining rainforests. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan #BoycottMeat
FAQs
How many Sabah Grizzled Langurs are left?
Exact population numbers are unknown due to a lack of comprehensive surveys, but the IUCN lists them as Endangered and rapidly declining. Fragmentation of their range and localised hunting make many populations highly vulnerable, and some may already be functionally extinct.
What is the lifespan of Presbytis sabana?
While the exact lifespan of Presbytis sabana is not documented, related langurs typically live around 20–25 years in the wild. Infant mortality may be high in disturbed habitats, especially where hunting pressure is intense.
Why are bezoar stones a threat?
Bezoar stones are hard masses found in the intestines of some langurs, falsely believed to have healing powers in traditional medicine. This belief drives illegal hunting, even though scientific evidence shows these stones have no proven medical value. Killing langurs for this purpose is both cruel and contributes directly to their extinction.
How are Sabah Grizzled Langurs affected by palm oil?
Palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation in Borneo. These plantations clear vast areas of native forest, severing the canopy corridors that langurs use to travel. Even plantations that claim to be ‘eco-friendly’ contribute to ecosystem collapse by fragmenting habitat and displacing wildlife.
Do Sabah Grizzled Langurs make good pets?
No. These langurs are not suited to captivity and have not been documented in zoos or pet markets. Their specialised diet and social needs cannot be met outside the wild. Keeping langurs as pets is illegal, unethical, and further threatens their survival.
Support the conservation of this species
This animal has no protections in place. Read about other forgotten species here. Create art to support this forgotten animal or raise awareness about them by sharing this post and using the #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife hashtags on social media. Also you can boycott palm oil in the supermarket.
Further Information
Nijman, V. (2017). Group composition and monandry in grizzled langurs, Presbytis comata, on Java. Folia Primatologica, 88(2), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1159/000478695
Ramlee, H. (2013). Distribution, ecology and systematics of Presbytis hosei and other leaf monkey species in North Borneo [PhD thesis, Australian National University]. Open Research Repository. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/26fbc1b7-b536-427c-a8d2-62984e69b43e
Setiawan, A. & Traeholt, C. 2020. Presbytis sabana. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T39810A17987041. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T39810A17987041.en. Downloaded on 25 January 2021.
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Sabah grizzled langur. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabah_grizzled_langur
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 3,528 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Agriculture #Bornean #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #ForgottenAnimals #hunting #Indonesia #Kalimantan #langur #Langurs #Malaysia #Mammal #meat #monkey #palmoil #poachers #poaching #Primate #Sabah #SabahGrizzledLangurPresbytisSabana #SouthEastAsia #vegan
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@Ada @defcon42/Mirko @[email protected] To me, it sounds more like some #Mastodon users, especially those who came in through the #TwitterMigration, actually can't stand there being something else in the #Fediverse than their beloved Mastodon. When they caught their first glimpse of the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, they reacted much like the people of Krikkit when they caught their first glimpse of the universe beyond Krikkit: "It has to go!"
They make themselves and each other believe that Mastodon is superior to any other Fediverse project in just about any regard imaginable while apparently completely refusing to learn about those other projects. They're supported in their belief by mass media only ever writing about Mastodon and the number of Mastodon users.
However, mass media only write about Mastodon because they simply don't know a thing about the rest of the Fediverse, and they didn't know a thing about Mastodon until the #TwitterTakeover had actually happened, and the second wave of former #birbsite users had come flooding into Mastodon in such numbers that it was impossible to ignore even for those who act as if #FLOSS doesn't exist.
As for the numbers of Mastodon users, they're so high because I guess more than 90% of all Mastodon users still don't know that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, because they have never heard of anything else in the Fediverse. Mastodon was pretty much the only Fediverse project advertised on #BirbSocial when this was still possible.
There are various reasons why Mastodon users don't spread across the Fediverse in masses. None of it is because Mastodon is superior to everything else because, truth be told, it isn't. I'll come to this later. One reason is, again, that the vast majority of them still don't know anything else. Another one is because it was hard enough to get used to Mastodon after years of using #Twitter, and they don't want to get used to yet another platform. And another one is that it's hard to move from Mastodon to something else and take your account or at least your connections with you.
Another reason may be because people don't need anything beyond microblogging, and that's what Mastodon does. Now, sorry for all those of you who fight tooth and claw to defend Mastodon against the competition, but #Akkoma does microblogging, too. With extra features beyond Mastodon, some of which Mastodon users have been pestering Eugen Rochko to include in Mastodon for ages (e.g. "quote retweet"). All while being more lightweight and requiring fewer server resources than Mastodon. Oh, and it federates with Mastodon.
Other Fediverse projects aren't even competition for Mastodon because they specialise in something else. @Pixelfed specialises in posting pictures, much like #Instagram. @PeerTube specialises in video upload and streaming, not too dissimilarly from #YouTube. #Plume and #WriteFreely specialise in distraction-free traditional blogging, much like #Medium. #Lemmy specialises in groups and posting and discussing news, much like #Reddit or #HackerNews. You can't claim that Mastodon is better at each of these things than these platforms.
And then there are the jacks-of-all-trades which are usually filed under either "macroblogging" or "like #Facebook ". They weren't launched to have something that goes beyond Mastodon because their history reaches far back before Mastodon. Mastodon was launched in 2016 (and not 2022 like many believe). #Friendica was launched in early 2010, even before the crowdfunding campaign for the development of #Diaspora started. And in that early stage, Friendica, then still named #Mistpark, was vastly more powerful than Diaspora* ever got and also vastly more powerful than Mastodon 13 years later.
#Hubzilla, created by the same man as Friendica, is the most extreme one of them all. For starters, it eliminates the need for multiple accounts by having multiple independent channels with separate identities on the same account. Each channel can have multiple profiles like on Friendica so you can present your channel differently to individual contacts or groups of them and differently again to the general public.
It can do micro- and macroblogging with 50,000 or more characters and just about everything that can be done with #BBcode (italics, bold type, underline, lists with bullet points or numbers, quotes,code blocks), and you can embed as many pictures as you want in your posts where you want them instead of them automatically being attached to the end of the post.
Group handling in Hubzilla is much easier than list handling in Mastodon. You never have to type the name of a contact to find them. You can edit contacts and add them to groups or remove them, and you can edit groups and add or remove contacts, all with a few mouse clicks. And while Mastodon shows a maximum of four lists on the main page, Hubzilla will give you easy access to all your groups.
On top of that, you can have- very fine-grained access rights control with pre-definable contact roles
- forums (just like Friendica, Hubzilla has #Guppe built in)
- more elegant macroblogging with articles which, in addition to BBcode, support #Markdown
- simple webpages (or not so simple if you're the admin of a hub, and you can expand it further)
- wikis (I'm not even kidding)
- a public calendar
- a virtually unlimited number of private calendars with #CalDAV connection
- a virtually unlimited number of address books with #CardDAV connection
- a file server with #WebDAV connection with its own access rights management which also ties in with the Photos and optional Gallery app (Mastodon drops your pictures somewhere, Hubzilla lets you upload them to your personal cloud space where you can access them whenever you want)
All with one run-of-the-mill Hubzilla account. And once per channel, separately.
And as if that wasn't enough, Hubzilla introduced the #Zot protocol and with it a concept named #NomadicIdentity.
Mastodon and Friendica let you have multiple accounts, even on separate instances. They also support migration from one account to another, and unlike Mastodon, Friendica lets you take all your content with you. Hubzilla (and #Streams, the successor of its slimmed-down successor, still created by the same guy) goes even further: Not only can you easily move from one hub to another, you can have channels on multiple hubs and automatically keep them fully in sync! If one hub goes down, it doesn't matter because you've got everything on all your other accounts.
Last but not least, both Friendica and Hubzilla federate with almost everything that moves, even far beyond the #ActivityPub Fediverse. This could be Diaspora*, this could be #GNUsocial, this could be #Wordpress blogs with or without the ActivityPub add-on, this could be RSS feeds (and they both generate feeds themselves, so this is bidirectional, too), this could even be Twitter until the API is shuttered. Friendica even used to federate with Facebook until Facebook put rocks in the way; this is the only connector that Hubzilla didn't take over.
The obvious downside is that for someone who just came in from the #birdcage, all this is utter overkill. In fact, people who are used to Mastodon may find Friendica borderline unusuable due to its many features. And Hubzilla is so infamous for its own clumsy UI capitulating before its sheer power that even Friendica users find it hard to use, fresh converts from Twitter to Mastodon even more so.
Some design decisions may be hard to understand for outsiders. Converts from other Fediverse projects to Hubzilla regularly fail at something as seemingly similar as connecting to users on other ActivityPub-based projects until you tell them that ActivityPub is an optional app on Hubzilla that has to be activated first because Hubzilla concentrates on Zot with its Nomadic Identity.
Also, just because these projects offer so much power, that doesn't mean that everyone needs it. If you do, it can be convenient to have it all under one login. But if all you're looking for is a bit of microblogging and online socialising, you don't need to drag a CMS and a full-blown cloud server with all bells and whistles along with you that just clutter up the UI. In that case, projects like Mastodon and Akkoma win because they're more approachable.
And while Friendica, Hubzilla & Co. can do threaded discussions and even have something like forums, Lemmy can do this more elegantly because it specialises in it. While you can use Hubzilla's private calendar feature for event planning, it's easier to do the same with #Mobilizon which, again, specialises in it. Or you can host podcasts on Friendica, Hubzilla & Co, but you can host them better on #Funkwhale and even better on #Castopod.
Wanting the Fediverse to be only Mastodon hinders development, namely the development of new projects within the Fediverse that may be able to do all-new things that we haven't seen in the Fediverse yet. Things that, sorry to say again, you'll never be able to do with Mastodon.
P.S.: For extra kicks, don't just read this on Mastodon. Open my original post; there you can see what Hubzilla is capable of, and what Mastodon strips away. - very fine-grained access rights control with pre-definable contact roles
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Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Red List Status: Endangered
Location: Malaysia (Sabah), Indonesia (North Kalimantan)
This elusive primate lives in lowland, riparian, montane, and evergreen forests of northern Borneo, including protected areas such as the Danum Valley, Tabin Reserve, and the Kinabatangan region.
The Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana, also known as the Saban Grizzled #Langur or Crested Grizzled Langur, is a strikingly beautiful leaf #monkey found only in #Borneo. Their #Endangered status is a direct result of extensive habitat destruction caused by deforestation, out-of-control palm oil expansion, and #hunting—particularly for bezoar stones used in traditional medicine. With fragmented populations and little known about their behaviour or numbers, urgent action is needed to prevent their extinction. Use your wallet as a weapon. Avoid #palmoil when you shop and demand an end to wildlife trafficking and forest destruction. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan
Sabah Grizzled #Langurs live in the treetops of #Sabah #Malaysia 🐒🐵🇲🇾 Their main threats are #palmoil and #meat agriculture #deforestation. Help to protect these elegant monkeys when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🩸🔥☠️🤮🧐🙊⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/25/msaban-grizzled-langur-presbytis-sabana/
Share to BlueSky Share to Twitterhttps://youtu.be/1WtBbVsREJY?si=QhlK8VUIUaMxeHjk
Appearance and Behaviour
The Sabah Grizzled Langur is a captivating primate with a thick coat of grey, grizzled fur and a pale belly, sharply contrasted by black hands and feet. A pointed crown of fur rises from their head, giving them a distinct, almost regal look. Their spade-shaped, pale-pinkish faces are framed by dark rings around wide, expressive eyes—an appearance that makes them instantly memorable to anyone lucky enough to see one.
These langurs are diurnal and arboreal, spending most of their lives high in the forest canopy. At night, they retreat to the upper branches of emergent trees to sleep, likely as a defence against predators. They are nimble and versatile movers, walking on all fours, leaping, climbing, and even hanging suspended beneath branches. Their daily lives involve foraging, grooming, resting, and socialising in cohesive groups that typically consist of one dominant male and several adult females with their young.
Diet
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are primarily folivores, feeding on a wide range of leaves, young shoots, and unripe seeds. They also eat fruit, flowers, buds, insects, bird eggs, and mineral-rich mud to supplement their diet. Their complex, multi-chambered stomachs ferment leafy material efficiently, allowing them to extract maximum nutrition from tough plant matter.
The diet of the Sabah Grizzled Langur shifts based on the level of forest disturbance. In undisturbed forests, leaves dominate their intake, but in logged areas, they consume more fruit and seeds. This adaptability may be crucial to their survival in fragmented landscapes.
Reproduction and Mating
This species follows a polygynous mating system, with a single adult male having exclusive breeding access to the females in the group. Breeding appears to occur year-round, but births peak between July and October. After a gestation of five to six months, the female gives birth to a single infant.
Infants are born with paler fur that darkens over time. They are weaned at around 11 months and become subadults between 21 and 36 months. Both males and females leave their natal groups upon reaching sexual maturity at about three years of age, either joining new groups or forming their own.
Geographic Range
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are endemic to the island of Borneo and are found only in Sabah (Malaysia) and northern parts of Indonesian Kalimantan. They inhabit evergreen, lowland, montane, and riverine forests, as well as selectively logged areas and tree plantations. Though once considered a subspecies of Presbytis hosei, they are now recognised as a distinct species. Populations are scattered and fragmented, with some surviving in protected areas like Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin, but others are highly vulnerable to extinction.
Threats
• Palm oil deforestation, monoculture expansion and habitat fragmentation
Large-scale clearing of Borneo’s forests for palm oil plantations has severely reduced the habitat of Presbytis sabana. This deforestation not only destroys the canopy cover they rely on for movement and shelter but also creates isolated forest patches that hinder gene flow and increase vulnerability to inbreeding and local extinction. Even selectively logged areas can remove critical roosting trees and food sources, leading to population collapse over time.
• Hunting for their meat and bezoar stones
Local hunting poses a grave threat to this species. Bezoar stones—calcified objects sometimes found in the gastrointestinal tracts of langurs—are falsely believed to have medicinal properties and fetch high prices in illegal markets. As a result, these langurs are hunted both for meat and for supposed curative use, putting intense pressure on already dwindling populations.
• Lack of enforcement in protected areas
While some populations live in conservation zones, many of these are inadequately protected. Illegal logging, poaching, and encroachment continue within the boundaries of national parks and reserves. Without sufficient monitoring, resources, and community involvement, these areas offer little real safety for the langurs.
• Low reproductive rate and slow population recovery
Like many primates, Sabah Grizzled Langurs have slow reproductive cycles, giving birth to a single infant every one to two years. This low birth rate means that even small increases in mortality can cause long-term population declines. Combined with hunting and habitat loss, this makes recovery especially difficult without urgent conservation action.
Take Action!
The fate of the Sabah Grizzled Langur is partially tied to our consumer choices. Avoid products that contain palm oil, especially those contributing to Bornean deforestation. Never support the exotic animal trade or products made from endangered species. Support indigenous-led conservation efforts and protect Southeast Asia’s remaining rainforests. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan #BoycottMeat
FAQs
How many Sabah Grizzled Langurs are left?
Exact population numbers are unknown due to a lack of comprehensive surveys, but the IUCN lists them as Endangered and rapidly declining. Fragmentation of their range and localised hunting make many populations highly vulnerable, and some may already be functionally extinct.
What is the lifespan of Presbytis sabana?
While the exact lifespan of Presbytis sabana is not documented, related langurs typically live around 20–25 years in the wild. Infant mortality may be high in disturbed habitats, especially where hunting pressure is intense.
Why are bezoar stones a threat?
Bezoar stones are hard masses found in the intestines of some langurs, falsely believed to have healing powers in traditional medicine. This belief drives illegal hunting, even though scientific evidence shows these stones have no proven medical value. Killing langurs for this purpose is both cruel and contributes directly to their extinction.
How are Sabah Grizzled Langurs affected by palm oil?
Palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation in Borneo. These plantations clear vast areas of native forest, severing the canopy corridors that langurs use to travel. Even plantations that claim to be ‘eco-friendly’ contribute to ecosystem collapse by fragmenting habitat and displacing wildlife.
Do Sabah Grizzled Langurs make good pets?
No. These langurs are not suited to captivity and have not been documented in zoos or pet markets. Their specialised diet and social needs cannot be met outside the wild. Keeping langurs as pets is illegal, unethical, and further threatens their survival.
Support the conservation of this species
This animal has no protections in place. Read about other forgotten species here. Create art to support this forgotten animal or raise awareness about them by sharing this post and using the #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife hashtags on social media. Also you can boycott palm oil in the supermarket.
Further Information
Nijman, V. (2017). Group composition and monandry in grizzled langurs, Presbytis comata, on Java. Folia Primatologica, 88(2), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1159/000478695
Ramlee, H. (2013). Distribution, ecology and systematics of Presbytis hosei and other leaf monkey species in North Borneo [PhD thesis, Australian National University]. Open Research Repository. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/26fbc1b7-b536-427c-a8d2-62984e69b43e
Setiawan, A. & Traeholt, C. 2020. Presbytis sabana. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T39810A17987041. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T39810A17987041.en. Downloaded on 25 January 2021.
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Sabah grizzled langur. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabah_grizzled_langur
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Agriculture #Bornean #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #ForgottenAnimals #hunting #Indonesia #Kalimantan #langur #Langurs #Malaysia #Mammal #meat #monkey #palmoil #poachers #poaching #Primate #Sabah #SabahGrizzledLangurPresbytisSabana #SouthEastAsia #vegan
-
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Red List Status: Endangered
Location: Malaysia (Sabah), Indonesia (North Kalimantan)
This elusive primate lives in lowland, riparian, montane, and evergreen forests of northern Borneo, including protected areas such as the Danum Valley, Tabin Reserve, and the Kinabatangan region.
The Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana, also known as the Saban Grizzled #Langur or Crested Grizzled Langur, is a strikingly beautiful leaf #monkey found only in #Borneo. Their #Endangered status is a direct result of extensive habitat destruction caused by deforestation, out-of-control palm oil expansion, and #hunting—particularly for bezoar stones used in traditional medicine. With fragmented populations and little known about their behaviour or numbers, urgent action is needed to prevent their extinction. Use your wallet as a weapon. Avoid #palmoil when you shop and demand an end to wildlife trafficking and forest destruction. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan
Sabah Grizzled #Langurs live in the treetops of #Sabah #Malaysia 🐒🐵🇲🇾 Their main threats are #palmoil and #meat agriculture #deforestation. Help to protect these elegant monkeys when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🩸🔥☠️🤮🧐🙊⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/25/msaban-grizzled-langur-presbytis-sabana/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterAppearance and Behaviour
The Sabah Grizzled Langur is a captivating primate with a thick coat of grey, grizzled fur and a pale belly, sharply contrasted by black hands and feet. A pointed crown of fur rises from their head, giving them a distinct, almost regal look. Their spade-shaped, pale-pinkish faces are framed by dark rings around wide, expressive eyes—an appearance that makes them instantly memorable to anyone lucky enough to see one.
These langurs are diurnal and arboreal, spending most of their lives high in the forest canopy. At night, they retreat to the upper branches of emergent trees to sleep, likely as a defence against predators. They are nimble and versatile movers, walking on all fours, leaping, climbing, and even hanging suspended beneath branches. Their daily lives involve foraging, grooming, resting, and socialising in cohesive groups that typically consist of one dominant male and several adult females with their young.
Diet
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are primarily folivores, feeding on a wide range of leaves, young shoots, and unripe seeds. They also eat fruit, flowers, buds, insects, bird eggs, and mineral-rich mud to supplement their diet. Their complex, multi-chambered stomachs ferment leafy material efficiently, allowing them to extract maximum nutrition from tough plant matter.
The diet of the Sabah Grizzled Langur shifts based on the level of forest disturbance. In undisturbed forests, leaves dominate their intake, but in logged areas, they consume more fruit and seeds. This adaptability may be crucial to their survival in fragmented landscapes.
Reproduction and Mating
This species follows a polygynous mating system, with a single adult male having exclusive breeding access to the females in the group. Breeding appears to occur year-round, but births peak between July and October. After a gestation of five to six months, the female gives birth to a single infant.
Infants are born with paler fur that darkens over time. They are weaned at around 11 months and become subadults between 21 and 36 months. Both males and females leave their natal groups upon reaching sexual maturity at about three years of age, either joining new groups or forming their own.
Geographic Range
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are endemic to the island of Borneo and are found only in Sabah (Malaysia) and northern parts of Indonesian Kalimantan. They inhabit evergreen, lowland, montane, and riverine forests, as well as selectively logged areas and tree plantations. Though once considered a subspecies of Presbytis hosei, they are now recognised as a distinct species. Populations are scattered and fragmented, with some surviving in protected areas like Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin, but others are highly vulnerable to extinction.
Threats
• Palm oil deforestation, monoculture expansion and habitat fragmentation
Large-scale clearing of Borneo’s forests for palm oil plantations has severely reduced the habitat of Presbytis sabana. This deforestation not only destroys the canopy cover they rely on for movement and shelter but also creates isolated forest patches that hinder gene flow and increase vulnerability to inbreeding and local extinction. Even selectively logged areas can remove critical roosting trees and food sources, leading to population collapse over time.
• Hunting for their meat and bezoar stones
Local hunting poses a grave threat to this species. Bezoar stones—calcified objects sometimes found in the gastrointestinal tracts of langurs—are falsely believed to have medicinal properties and fetch high prices in illegal markets. As a result, these langurs are hunted both for meat and for supposed curative use, putting intense pressure on already dwindling populations.
• Lack of enforcement in protected areas
While some populations live in conservation zones, many of these are inadequately protected. Illegal logging, poaching, and encroachment continue within the boundaries of national parks and reserves. Without sufficient monitoring, resources, and community involvement, these areas offer little real safety for the langurs.
• Low reproductive rate and slow population recovery
Like many primates, Sabah Grizzled Langurs have slow reproductive cycles, giving birth to a single infant every one to two years. This low birth rate means that even small increases in mortality can cause long-term population declines. Combined with hunting and habitat loss, this makes recovery especially difficult without urgent conservation action.
Take Action!
The fate of the Sabah Grizzled Langur is partially tied to our consumer choices. Avoid products that contain palm oil, especially those contributing to Bornean deforestation. Never support the exotic animal trade or products made from endangered species. Support indigenous-led conservation efforts and protect Southeast Asia’s remaining rainforests. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan #BoycottMeat
FAQs
How many Sabah Grizzled Langurs are left?
Exact population numbers are unknown due to a lack of comprehensive surveys, but the IUCN lists them as Endangered and rapidly declining. Fragmentation of their range and localised hunting make many populations highly vulnerable, and some may already be functionally extinct.
What is the lifespan of Presbytis sabana?
While the exact lifespan of Presbytis sabana is not documented, related langurs typically live around 20–25 years in the wild. Infant mortality may be high in disturbed habitats, especially where hunting pressure is intense.
Why are bezoar stones a threat?
Bezoar stones are hard masses found in the intestines of some langurs, falsely believed to have healing powers in traditional medicine. This belief drives illegal hunting, even though scientific evidence shows these stones have no proven medical value. Killing langurs for this purpose is both cruel and contributes directly to their extinction.
How are Sabah Grizzled Langurs affected by palm oil?
Palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation in Borneo. These plantations clear vast areas of native forest, severing the canopy corridors that langurs use to travel. Even plantations that claim to be ‘eco-friendly’ contribute to ecosystem collapse by fragmenting habitat and displacing wildlife.
Do Sabah Grizzled Langurs make good pets?
No. These langurs are not suited to captivity and have not been documented in zoos or pet markets. Their specialised diet and social needs cannot be met outside the wild. Keeping langurs as pets is illegal, unethical, and further threatens their survival.
Support the conservation of this species
This animal has no protections in place. Read about other forgotten species here. Create art to support this forgotten animal or raise awareness about them by sharing this post and using the #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife hashtags on social media. Also you can boycott palm oil in the supermarket.
Further Information
Nijman, V. (2017). Group composition and monandry in grizzled langurs, Presbytis comata, on Java. Folia Primatologica, 88(2), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1159/000478695
Ramlee, H. (2013). Distribution, ecology and systematics of Presbytis hosei and other leaf monkey species in North Borneo [PhD thesis, Australian National University]. Open Research Repository. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/26fbc1b7-b536-427c-a8d2-62984e69b43e
Setiawan, A. & Traeholt, C. 2020. Presbytis sabana. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T39810A17987041. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T39810A17987041.en. Downloaded on 25 January 2021.
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Sabah grizzled langur. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabah_grizzled_langur
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 3,528 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Agriculture #Bornean #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #ForgottenAnimals #hunting #Indonesia #Kalimantan #langur #Langurs #Malaysia #Mammal #meat #monkey #palmoil #poachers #poaching #Primate #Sabah #SabahGrizzledLangurPresbytisSabana #SouthEastAsia #vegan
-
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Red List Status: Endangered
Location: Malaysia (Sabah), Indonesia (North Kalimantan)
This elusive primate lives in lowland, riparian, montane, and evergreen forests of northern Borneo, including protected areas such as the Danum Valley, Tabin Reserve, and the Kinabatangan region.
The Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana, also known as the Saban Grizzled #Langur or Crested Grizzled Langur, is a strikingly beautiful leaf #monkey found only in #Borneo. Their #Endangered status is a direct result of extensive habitat destruction caused by deforestation, out-of-control palm oil expansion, and #hunting—particularly for bezoar stones used in traditional medicine. With fragmented populations and little known about their behaviour or numbers, urgent action is needed to prevent their extinction. Use your wallet as a weapon. Avoid #palmoil when you shop and demand an end to wildlife trafficking and forest destruction. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan
Sabah Grizzled #Langurs live in the treetops of #Sabah #Malaysia 🐒🐵🇲🇾 Their main threats are #palmoil and #meat agriculture #deforestation. Help to protect these elegant monkeys when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🩸🔥☠️🤮🧐🙊⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/25/msaban-grizzled-langur-presbytis-sabana/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterAppearance and Behaviour
The Sabah Grizzled Langur is a captivating primate with a thick coat of grey, grizzled fur and a pale belly, sharply contrasted by black hands and feet. A pointed crown of fur rises from their head, giving them a distinct, almost regal look. Their spade-shaped, pale-pinkish faces are framed by dark rings around wide, expressive eyes—an appearance that makes them instantly memorable to anyone lucky enough to see one.
These langurs are diurnal and arboreal, spending most of their lives high in the forest canopy. At night, they retreat to the upper branches of emergent trees to sleep, likely as a defence against predators. They are nimble and versatile movers, walking on all fours, leaping, climbing, and even hanging suspended beneath branches. Their daily lives involve foraging, grooming, resting, and socialising in cohesive groups that typically consist of one dominant male and several adult females with their young.
Diet
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are primarily folivores, feeding on a wide range of leaves, young shoots, and unripe seeds. They also eat fruit, flowers, buds, insects, bird eggs, and mineral-rich mud to supplement their diet. Their complex, multi-chambered stomachs ferment leafy material efficiently, allowing them to extract maximum nutrition from tough plant matter.
The diet of the Sabah Grizzled Langur shifts based on the level of forest disturbance. In undisturbed forests, leaves dominate their intake, but in logged areas, they consume more fruit and seeds. This adaptability may be crucial to their survival in fragmented landscapes.
Reproduction and Mating
This species follows a polygynous mating system, with a single adult male having exclusive breeding access to the females in the group. Breeding appears to occur year-round, but births peak between July and October. After a gestation of five to six months, the female gives birth to a single infant.
Infants are born with paler fur that darkens over time. They are weaned at around 11 months and become subadults between 21 and 36 months. Both males and females leave their natal groups upon reaching sexual maturity at about three years of age, either joining new groups or forming their own.
Geographic Range
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are endemic to the island of Borneo and are found only in Sabah (Malaysia) and northern parts of Indonesian Kalimantan. They inhabit evergreen, lowland, montane, and riverine forests, as well as selectively logged areas and tree plantations. Though once considered a subspecies of Presbytis hosei, they are now recognised as a distinct species. Populations are scattered and fragmented, with some surviving in protected areas like Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin, but others are highly vulnerable to extinction.
Threats
• Palm oil deforestation, monoculture expansion and habitat fragmentation
Large-scale clearing of Borneo’s forests for palm oil plantations has severely reduced the habitat of Presbytis sabana. This deforestation not only destroys the canopy cover they rely on for movement and shelter but also creates isolated forest patches that hinder gene flow and increase vulnerability to inbreeding and local extinction. Even selectively logged areas can remove critical roosting trees and food sources, leading to population collapse over time.
• Hunting for their meat and bezoar stones
Local hunting poses a grave threat to this species. Bezoar stones—calcified objects sometimes found in the gastrointestinal tracts of langurs—are falsely believed to have medicinal properties and fetch high prices in illegal markets. As a result, these langurs are hunted both for meat and for supposed curative use, putting intense pressure on already dwindling populations.
• Lack of enforcement in protected areas
While some populations live in conservation zones, many of these are inadequately protected. Illegal logging, poaching, and encroachment continue within the boundaries of national parks and reserves. Without sufficient monitoring, resources, and community involvement, these areas offer little real safety for the langurs.
• Low reproductive rate and slow population recovery
Like many primates, Sabah Grizzled Langurs have slow reproductive cycles, giving birth to a single infant every one to two years. This low birth rate means that even small increases in mortality can cause long-term population declines. Combined with hunting and habitat loss, this makes recovery especially difficult without urgent conservation action.
Take Action!
The fate of the Sabah Grizzled Langur is partially tied to our consumer choices. Avoid products that contain palm oil, especially those contributing to Bornean deforestation. Never support the exotic animal trade or products made from endangered species. Support indigenous-led conservation efforts and protect Southeast Asia’s remaining rainforests. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan #BoycottMeat
FAQs
How many Sabah Grizzled Langurs are left?
Exact population numbers are unknown due to a lack of comprehensive surveys, but the IUCN lists them as Endangered and rapidly declining. Fragmentation of their range and localised hunting make many populations highly vulnerable, and some may already be functionally extinct.
What is the lifespan of Presbytis sabana?
While the exact lifespan of Presbytis sabana is not documented, related langurs typically live around 20–25 years in the wild. Infant mortality may be high in disturbed habitats, especially where hunting pressure is intense.
Why are bezoar stones a threat?
Bezoar stones are hard masses found in the intestines of some langurs, falsely believed to have healing powers in traditional medicine. This belief drives illegal hunting, even though scientific evidence shows these stones have no proven medical value. Killing langurs for this purpose is both cruel and contributes directly to their extinction.
How are Sabah Grizzled Langurs affected by palm oil?
Palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation in Borneo. These plantations clear vast areas of native forest, severing the canopy corridors that langurs use to travel. Even plantations that claim to be ‘eco-friendly’ contribute to ecosystem collapse by fragmenting habitat and displacing wildlife.
Do Sabah Grizzled Langurs make good pets?
No. These langurs are not suited to captivity and have not been documented in zoos or pet markets. Their specialised diet and social needs cannot be met outside the wild. Keeping langurs as pets is illegal, unethical, and further threatens their survival.
Support the conservation of this species
This animal has no protections in place. Read about other forgotten species here. Create art to support this forgotten animal or raise awareness about them by sharing this post and using the #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife hashtags on social media. Also you can boycott palm oil in the supermarket.
Further Information
Nijman, V. (2017). Group composition and monandry in grizzled langurs, Presbytis comata, on Java. Folia Primatologica, 88(2), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1159/000478695
Ramlee, H. (2013). Distribution, ecology and systematics of Presbytis hosei and other leaf monkey species in North Borneo [PhD thesis, Australian National University]. Open Research Repository. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/26fbc1b7-b536-427c-a8d2-62984e69b43e
Setiawan, A. & Traeholt, C. 2020. Presbytis sabana. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T39810A17987041. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T39810A17987041.en. Downloaded on 25 January 2021.
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Sabah grizzled langur. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabah_grizzled_langur
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 3,528 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Agriculture #Bornean #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #ForgottenAnimals #hunting #Indonesia #Kalimantan #langur #Langurs #Malaysia #Mammal #meat #monkey #palmoil #poachers #poaching #Primate #Sabah #SabahGrizzledLangurPresbytisSabana #SouthEastAsia #vegan
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Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
Red List Status: Endangered
Location: Malaysia (Sabah), Indonesia (North Kalimantan)
This elusive primate lives in lowland, riparian, montane, and evergreen forests of northern Borneo, including protected areas such as the Danum Valley, Tabin Reserve, and the Kinabatangan region.
The Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana, also known as the Saban Grizzled #Langur or Crested Grizzled Langur, is a strikingly beautiful leaf #monkey found only in #Borneo. Their #Endangered status is a direct result of extensive habitat destruction caused by deforestation, out-of-control palm oil expansion, and #hunting—particularly for bezoar stones used in traditional medicine. With fragmented populations and little known about their behaviour or numbers, urgent action is needed to prevent their extinction. Use your wallet as a weapon. Avoid #palmoil when you shop and demand an end to wildlife trafficking and forest destruction. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan
Sabah Grizzled #Langurs live in the treetops of #Sabah #Malaysia 🐒🐵🇲🇾 Their main threats are #palmoil and #meat agriculture #deforestation. Help to protect these elegant monkeys when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🩸🔥☠️🤮🧐🙊⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/25/msaban-grizzled-langur-presbytis-sabana/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterAppearance and Behaviour
The Sabah Grizzled Langur is a captivating primate with a thick coat of grey, grizzled fur and a pale belly, sharply contrasted by black hands and feet. A pointed crown of fur rises from their head, giving them a distinct, almost regal look. Their spade-shaped, pale-pinkish faces are framed by dark rings around wide, expressive eyes—an appearance that makes them instantly memorable to anyone lucky enough to see one.
These langurs are diurnal and arboreal, spending most of their lives high in the forest canopy. At night, they retreat to the upper branches of emergent trees to sleep, likely as a defence against predators. They are nimble and versatile movers, walking on all fours, leaping, climbing, and even hanging suspended beneath branches. Their daily lives involve foraging, grooming, resting, and socialising in cohesive groups that typically consist of one dominant male and several adult females with their young.
Diet
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are primarily folivores, feeding on a wide range of leaves, young shoots, and unripe seeds. They also eat fruit, flowers, buds, insects, bird eggs, and mineral-rich mud to supplement their diet. Their complex, multi-chambered stomachs ferment leafy material efficiently, allowing them to extract maximum nutrition from tough plant matter.
The diet of the Sabah Grizzled Langur shifts based on the level of forest disturbance. In undisturbed forests, leaves dominate their intake, but in logged areas, they consume more fruit and seeds. This adaptability may be crucial to their survival in fragmented landscapes.
Reproduction and Mating
This species follows a polygynous mating system, with a single adult male having exclusive breeding access to the females in the group. Breeding appears to occur year-round, but births peak between July and October. After a gestation of five to six months, the female gives birth to a single infant.
Infants are born with paler fur that darkens over time. They are weaned at around 11 months and become subadults between 21 and 36 months. Both males and females leave their natal groups upon reaching sexual maturity at about three years of age, either joining new groups or forming their own.
Geographic Range
Sabah Grizzled Langurs are endemic to the island of Borneo and are found only in Sabah (Malaysia) and northern parts of Indonesian Kalimantan. They inhabit evergreen, lowland, montane, and riverine forests, as well as selectively logged areas and tree plantations. Though once considered a subspecies of Presbytis hosei, they are now recognised as a distinct species. Populations are scattered and fragmented, with some surviving in protected areas like Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin, but others are highly vulnerable to extinction.
Threats
• Palm oil deforestation, monoculture expansion and habitat fragmentation
Large-scale clearing of Borneo’s forests for palm oil plantations has severely reduced the habitat of Presbytis sabana. This deforestation not only destroys the canopy cover they rely on for movement and shelter but also creates isolated forest patches that hinder gene flow and increase vulnerability to inbreeding and local extinction. Even selectively logged areas can remove critical roosting trees and food sources, leading to population collapse over time.
• Hunting for their meat and bezoar stones
Local hunting poses a grave threat to this species. Bezoar stones—calcified objects sometimes found in the gastrointestinal tracts of langurs—are falsely believed to have medicinal properties and fetch high prices in illegal markets. As a result, these langurs are hunted both for meat and for supposed curative use, putting intense pressure on already dwindling populations.
• Lack of enforcement in protected areas
While some populations live in conservation zones, many of these are inadequately protected. Illegal logging, poaching, and encroachment continue within the boundaries of national parks and reserves. Without sufficient monitoring, resources, and community involvement, these areas offer little real safety for the langurs.
• Low reproductive rate and slow population recovery
Like many primates, Sabah Grizzled Langurs have slow reproductive cycles, giving birth to a single infant every one to two years. This low birth rate means that even small increases in mortality can cause long-term population declines. Combined with hunting and habitat loss, this makes recovery especially difficult without urgent conservation action.
Take Action!
The fate of the Sabah Grizzled Langur is partially tied to our consumer choices. Avoid products that contain palm oil, especially those contributing to Bornean deforestation. Never support the exotic animal trade or products made from endangered species. Support indigenous-led conservation efforts and protect Southeast Asia’s remaining rainforests. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan #BoycottMeat
FAQs
How many Sabah Grizzled Langurs are left?
Exact population numbers are unknown due to a lack of comprehensive surveys, but the IUCN lists them as Endangered and rapidly declining. Fragmentation of their range and localised hunting make many populations highly vulnerable, and some may already be functionally extinct.
What is the lifespan of Presbytis sabana?
While the exact lifespan of Presbytis sabana is not documented, related langurs typically live around 20–25 years in the wild. Infant mortality may be high in disturbed habitats, especially where hunting pressure is intense.
Why are bezoar stones a threat?
Bezoar stones are hard masses found in the intestines of some langurs, falsely believed to have healing powers in traditional medicine. This belief drives illegal hunting, even though scientific evidence shows these stones have no proven medical value. Killing langurs for this purpose is both cruel and contributes directly to their extinction.
How are Sabah Grizzled Langurs affected by palm oil?
Palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation in Borneo. These plantations clear vast areas of native forest, severing the canopy corridors that langurs use to travel. Even plantations that claim to be ‘eco-friendly’ contribute to ecosystem collapse by fragmenting habitat and displacing wildlife.
Do Sabah Grizzled Langurs make good pets?
No. These langurs are not suited to captivity and have not been documented in zoos or pet markets. Their specialised diet and social needs cannot be met outside the wild. Keeping langurs as pets is illegal, unethical, and further threatens their survival.
Support the conservation of this species
This animal has no protections in place. Read about other forgotten species here. Create art to support this forgotten animal or raise awareness about them by sharing this post and using the #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife hashtags on social media. Also you can boycott palm oil in the supermarket.
Further Information
Nijman, V. (2017). Group composition and monandry in grizzled langurs, Presbytis comata, on Java. Folia Primatologica, 88(2), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1159/000478695
Ramlee, H. (2013). Distribution, ecology and systematics of Presbytis hosei and other leaf monkey species in North Borneo [PhD thesis, Australian National University]. Open Research Repository. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/26fbc1b7-b536-427c-a8d2-62984e69b43e
Setiawan, A. & Traeholt, C. 2020. Presbytis sabana. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T39810A17987041. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-2.RLTS.T39810A17987041.en. Downloaded on 25 January 2021.
Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Sabah grizzled langur. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabah_grizzled_langur
Sabah Grizzled Langur Presbytis sabana
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 3,528 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Agriculture #Bornean #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #ForgottenAnimals #hunting #Indonesia #Kalimantan #langur #Langurs #Malaysia #Mammal #meat #monkey #palmoil #poachers #poaching #Primate #Sabah #SabahGrizzledLangurPresbytisSabana #SouthEastAsia #vegan
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RPGaDAY2025 – Day 26 – Nemesis – How to Punish a PC
What’s #RPGaDAY2025 ? See the details here.
Day 26 – Nemesis
Some RPGs have a fairly strict morality system, usually called alignment. It’s a code of ethics that players are supposed to follow. What happens if they don’t?
I’m going to use Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, as a mechanic for enforcing alignments.
In this scheme, Nemesis is not just a goddess, but a permanent moral fixture of the universe. If a hero steps off his or her moral path, Nemesis will take notice and come to punish the transgressor.
All PCs start out with a Nemesis level of zero. If they do anything counter to their alignment, the GM can add a one to their Nemesis level. The levels are as follows:
- Nemesis is asleep
- Nemesis has awoken
- Nemesis has noticed you
- Nemesis has begun her journey
- Nemesis is coming
- Nemesis is near
- Nemesis has arrived
As the number increases, there will be various signs and omens around the PC, warning them of the cost of their misdeeds. To build tension, GMs may want keep the PC’s current Nemesis level secret from them.
If the number reaches six, Nemesis will arrive to punish the PC.
If a player makes a genuine attempt to atone for their actions, the GM may lower the Nemesis level.
The Arrival of Nemesis
All natural processes will come to a halt. Birds will cease singing, the wind will not blow, and rivers and streams will stop flowing. All will go quiet. Nemesis will appear, usually in the guise of a human woman wearing a blindfold, though this may vary depending on the culture of the area.
The nature of the punishment is up to the GM. One could make it some kind of poetic justice (like Narcissus), or to keep it simple, use the following:
Withering of Nemesis
- Reduce maximum hit points by half
- Reduce STR, DEX, COM by 1d4 points
- Reduce level by one
Nemesis cannot be attacked or defeated. She is an inherent property of the universe, like gravity. After her punishment is imposed, she will disappear.
A Nemesis Campaign
Alternately, you could have a campaign where the players start out with a high Nemesis level, for evil deeds in their past. The point of the game is they have to go out and do good deeds to redeem themselves and avoid the judgement of Nemesis.
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RPGaDAY2025 – Day 26 – Nemesis – How to Punish a PC
What’s #RPGaDAY2025 ? See the details here.
Day 26 – Nemesis
Some RPGs have a fairly strict morality system, usually called alignment. It’s a code of ethics that players are supposed to follow. What happens if they don’t?
I’m going to use Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, as a mechanic for enforcing alignments.
In this scheme, Nemesis is not just a goddess, but a permanent moral fixture of the universe. If a hero steps off his or her moral path, Nemesis will take notice and come to punish the transgressor.
All PCs start out with a Nemesis level of zero. If they do anything counter to their alignment, the GM can add a one to their Nemesis level. The levels are as follows:
- Nemesis is asleep
- Nemesis has awoken
- Nemesis has noticed you
- Nemesis has begun her journey
- Nemesis is coming
- Nemesis is near
- Nemesis has arrived
As the number increases, there will be various signs and omens around the PC, warning them of the cost of their misdeeds. To build tension, GMs may want keep the PC’s current Nemesis level secret from them.
If the number reaches six, Nemesis will arrive to punish the PC.
If a player makes a genuine attempt to atone for their actions, the GM may lower the Nemesis level.
The Arrival of Nemesis
All natural processes will come to a halt. Birds will cease singing, the wind will not blow, and rivers and streams will stop flowing. All will go quiet. Nemesis will appear, usually in the guise of a human woman wearing a blindfold, though this may vary depending on the culture of the area.
The nature of the punishment is up to the GM. One could make it some kind of poetic justice (like Narcissus), or to keep it simple, use the following:
Withering of Nemesis
- Reduce maximum hit points by half
- Reduce STR, DEX, COM by 1d4 points
- Reduce level by one
Nemesis cannot be attacked or defeated. She is an inherent property of the universe, like gravity. After her punishment is imposed, she will disappear.
A Nemesis Campaign
Alternately, you could have a campaign where the players start out with a high Nemesis level, for evil deeds in their past. The point of the game is they have to go out and do good deeds to redeem themselves and avoid the judgement of Nemesis.
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A road warrior in Oz
Australia is a land of remote places; most of the country has little to no mobile network coverage. Likewise, many of these remote regions are served by little to no road network. Where there is no paved road, the driving surface may be gravel, dirt or sand. Dystopian Mad Max visions aside, it really is a country for road warriors. Naturally, we decided to hire one for a short road trip with caravanning friends, camping in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.
Coordinates
A Gold Coast excursion
We took breakfast with a view from Elephant Rock, looking up Currumbin Beach and beyond to Burleigh Heads and the skyscrapers of Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast (📷1). Living on the rock and sunning themselves upon the steps to the lookout over Tugun Beach were Intellagama lesueurii, the Australian water dragon (📷2). Continuing south into NSW we visited the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre, set in the Tweed Valley in Bundjalung Country, which formed from the eroded caldera of an ancient shield volcano. Wollumbin | Mount Warning stands as the remnant volcanic plug (📷3) in the centre of what is one of the largest erosion calderas in the Southern Hemisphere. Also seen from the art gallery, Springbrook Plateau, viewed some ~23M years later, is one of the best-preserved sections of the original crater rim (📷4). Both geological features are included within the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area. To follow, we took a wander around the museum, township and sampled a milkshake in a 50s-style diner in Murwillumbah.
A 4WD ute hire
We rented a Britz Warrior 4WD ute, based on a Ford Ranger double cab with automatic transmission and a 3,650kg GVM upgrade (📷1). Specs include high and low-range four-wheel drive; bullbar; snorkel; all-terrain tyres; long-range fuel tank; two spare tyres; personal locator beacon (PLB); Outback safety kit; two roof-top tents (📷2); 3m tall canopy with kitchenette (📷3); and a 270 degree “bat wing” awning with camping table and chairs (📷4). Ours also came with an infestation of baby Huntsman spiders and ants!
Monitoring and insurance
A window sticker advised us that parent company thl monitor the location, speed and safe driving of their hire vehicles. There are rules by state that stipulate where you can and cannot go e.g. no beaches whatsoever; no ferries without prior approval. Furthermore, an insurance upgrade is mandatory to avoid an 8,000 AUD bond being charged to your credit card. You can also opt for independent gap cover to reduce liability e.g. Zero Excess Rental Cover from RentalCover.
✳️ Tips and tricks
Appreciating our Britz Warrior 4WD hire
It was an interesting exercise to research and reflect on the likely rationale the rental company had for the specification of their 4WD rentals:
- Ford Ranger double cab with automatic transmission: For two travellers the back seat offers extra storage space (which we used in preference to the canopy) and a compact indoor living area in wet weather; for four it offers the requisite number of belted seats.
- High and low-range 4-wheel drive (4WD, or 4×4 if you prefer): Gear ratios affect a vehicle’s torque and speed; gears are set for normal driving speeds in high-range mode, proving extra traction without massive torque, suitable for e.g. gravel roads; in low-range mode the gearing is much lower, dramatically increasing the torque at the wheels to allow the vehicle to crawl over obstacles with maximum control, albeit slowly e.g. on steep inclines or descents.
- Bullbar: Offers structural protection from wildlife e.g. kangaroo strikes and deflect obstacles such as rocks or trees when off roading; may also serve as attachment points for accessories e.g. a winch or extra driving lights; although some people favour the “off-road aesthetic” bullbars can be dangerous for pedestrians or cyclists in an accident.
- Snorkel: By elevating the air intake a vehicle snorkel avoids engine damage that could otherwise occur if crossing deep water; it also helps keep the air filter from being overwhelmed by dust/ debris when driving off-road.
- All-terrain tyres: All-terrain tyres are suited to both on-road and off-road driving as they provide good grip in wet, muddy and uneven terrain while still providing decent traction on paved roads.
- Long-range fuel tank: 140 L provides increased range and peace of mind in unpredictable terrain, allowing for more flexibility in route choices and timings.
- Two spare tyres: With an increased risk of tyre damage in rough terrain, long distances between service centres and potential difficulty finding the right replacement tyres in the Outback, a second spare offers the flexibility to handle various scenarios/ multiple incidents.
- Personal locator beacon: PLBs are small devices for personal use in remote land-based locations (cf. Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons or EPIRBs, typically for maritime use); they are manually activated to transmit a distress signal that can be picked up by search and rescue teams or satellites, and feature long-lasting batteries.
- Outback safety kit: An air compressor, shovel and recovery boards are considered essential tools for a 4WD adventure in the Australian Outback as they help with tyre pressure management, recovery and getting your vehicle unstuck from soft surfaces (for more extreme adventures consider extras such as a tyre repair kit, recovery straps, first aid kit and additional communication devices e.g. radio or sat phone).
- Two roof-top tents: 1x Ironman and 1x Akuma, fitted with foam mattresses, LED lights and USB charge points, accessed via a ladder; their elevated position offers protection from wildlife, insects and weather, improved views/ ventilation, extra shade and they’re comparatively quick/ easy to set up and pack down—once you know how.
- Canopy: Turns the rear tray of a ute/ utility vehicle into a lockable, dust-resistant, weatherproof and flexible storage area, integrating a kitchen with slide-out bench/ cold water sink, fridge, pantry and two-burner portable gas stove; can be removable, as many Australians like to use their 4WD as both a camper and a work vehicle.
- 270 degree awning: Wraps around the side and rear of the vehicle, providing an expansive area of covered space; cooking, dining, relaxing or storing gear out of the hot sun or rain is advantageous.
- Camping table and chairs: Essential gear for cooking, eating and relaxing outside of the vehicle.
🤔 Curiosity
Our Aussie friends had very kindly organised a largely coastal itinerary in order to mitigate the tyranny of distance and avoid higher inland temperatures—as there had been in a recent protracted heatwave. We didn’t want to go too far into the wilderness as inexperienced 4WD drivers, but would welcome any opportunities to drive off the “black top” (paved road).
Queensland in the 4WD
Driving in convoy with experienced caravaners, for our first night we went inland from the Gold Coast to a pitch in the vicinity of Mount Barney. Our aim with this short hire was to gain familiarity with the 4WD’s camping form factor (such as negotiating access to/ from a rooftop tent in the small hours), rather than its off-roading abilities. Arriving later than planned, and with eyes peeled for kangaroos, we caught the evening light on Mount Lindesay as we neared our destination (📷1). Mount Barney Creek looked serene in the golden hour (📷2) and part of Mount Barney itself was visible from pitch (📷3). In the remaining daylight we figured out how to raise one of the rooftop tents and our friends lit a fire as dinner was prepared (📷4).
Were we actually camping?
We were not inside the vehicle; we were lying in a tent on top of one. A 4WD pick-up truck/ ute is not a motorhome, conventional RV nor camper van. It’s not self-contained, so living, cooking, toileting and other activities of daily life must be performed outdoors. So yes—this was “camping“. In fact, the experience was very much akin to the non-self contained car camping popular with young tourists in NZ—expect we slept atop cf. inside the vehicle. It presents similar challenges with space and environmental management.
🤔 Curiosity
Images capturing dawn in the vicinity of Mount Barney. Mount Maroon was tinged red by the first rays of sun (📷1). The shadows smartly departed from Mount Barney’s flank soon after (📷2). A heavy dew was accompanied by morning mist in the valley between us and Mount Argyle, serving to outline eucalyptus trees against the rising orb (📷3); mist also shrouded the trees lining the access road (📷4).
We enjoyed spotting wildlife on a morning walk from pitch. Cracticus nigrogularis | the pied butcherbird is a native songbird (📷1); the hooked bill tells of a carnivorous habit. Danaus petilia | the lesser wanderer butterfly is a frequent sight in Australia (📷2), as is Melanitis leda | the common evening brown—so named because it’s typically seen flying at dusk (📷3). Rhinella marina | the cane toad can grow up to 15cm, but this juvenile was hidden in grass (📷4); the invasive species was introduced to Australia in 1935 to control beetles, but they spread rapidly, poisoning native predators with their toxins and causing major ecological damage.
Here’s a sound clip from that morning walk:
Leaving camp mid-morning we again enjoyed views of prominent Mount Lindesay (📷1) before taking the Colins Gap on the B91 into NSW, then back into Queensland, arriving at Queen Mary Falls in Main Range National Park. The park is also part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area (remnants of rainforest that once covered all of Australia). Queen Mary Falls are a 40m drop on Spring Creek, which forms the Condamine River’s upper reaches (📷2). This river in turn constitutes part of the headwaters of the Murray-Darling—one of Australia’s longest river systems—seen here from Carr’s Lookout, with The Head between Mount Superbus on the left and the foothills of Wilson’s Peak centre-frame (📷3). Riding in the Landcruiser (with permanent 4WD) we took Condamine River Road, making 14 river crossings to Killarney (📷4); the gravel 4WD-only road follows an old bullock wagon track once used to service riverside farms and for transporting logs to local mills.
Wildlife spotted around camp at Queen Mary Falls Caravan Park included Trichoglossus moluccanus | the rainbow lorikeet (📷1); Varanus varius | the lace goanna (📷2); Dacelo novaeguineae | the laughing kookaburra (📷3); and Notamacropus rufogriseus | the red-necked wallaby (📷4).
Also seen were Alisterus scapularis | the Australian king parrot (📷1); Eolophus roseicapilla | the galah, a.k.a. rose-breasted cockatoo (📷2); and Platycercus elegans | the crimson rosella (📷3). On the falls circuit walk we had several close encounters with Intellagama lesueurii | Australian water dragons (📷4).
New South Wales in the 4WD
Broom Head NSW, looking northward to Main Beach and Red Cliff (📷1); a view south from the same lookout (📷2). Beach access from pitch at Lake Arragan Beachside campground in Yuraygir National Park (📷3). Just around the corner, looking south towards Red Cliff (📷4).
Lake Arragan Beachside campground was inundated with resident Macropus giganteus | eastern grey kangaroo.
We next pitched in Richmond River Nature Reserve, South Ballina NSW. Vehicle access to the adjacent long surf beach is now disallowed, so we didn’t get the chance to experience driving in the Landcruiser on sand (we’re also conflicted about beach driving). But we did access the beach on foot (📷1&2), observing Thalasseus bergii | the great crested tern at the waters edge (📷3) and dolphin jumping for joy just offshore (📷4).
Light rain in the evening made a pleasant sound as it hit the shell of the rooftop tent:
What’s the deal with Anderson plugs?
Our Britz hire featured Anderson plugs. These are genderless heavy-duty DC electrical connectors, built to survive dirt, vibration and weather—making them ideal for use in vehicles and in other off-grid setups.
SB50 (Source: Anderson Power)They’re very common in Australia, having become the de facto 12V connector standard. Although we’ve never personally seen them in NZ, UK or European campers, they can be found—albeit with less frequency. The SB50 variant is typical, conveying a current of ~50A; they’re much safer than cigarette sockets for high current. Applications include supply of vehicle power to a trailer or to a house battery (DC-DC charging); joining solar panels to a charge controller; powering winches and recovery gear; and providing external power outlets (e.g. to a fridge or air compressor).
🤔 Curiosity
More birds were seen at Richmond River Nature Reserve, South Ballina NSW. Ocyphaps lophotes | the crested pigeon is an endemic native with an erect crest (📷1). Entomyzon cyanotis | the blue-faced honeyeater is also known as the bananabird (📷2). Another look at the gorgeous Trichoglossus moluccanus | rainbow lorikeet, a common and rather vocal parrot (📷3). Not nearly as pretty, Threskiornis molucca | the Australian white ibis is colloquially known as the “bin chook” (📷4).
General insights from our short 4WD hire
In conversation with our caravanning friends before and during this trip we picked up a number of tips/ insights that we can put to use on future Australian away missions.
Planning:
- WikiCamps Australia is a popular app for finding overnight pitches
- Do your research (e.g. fuel stops) ahead of time and with reliable connectivity.
The rig/ equipment:
- You don’t want anything too heavy, or too top-heavy for 4WD tracks
- Consider carrying a portable jump starter, either for your own use, or to help others without having to mess around with your own vehicle
- If the desire is for self-sufficiency and you want a gas-free setup, it’s now possible to find 12V water heaters
- A 48V electrical system has advantages (see here and here).
Driving:
- Drive to the conditions and to your personal abilities
- Take a break at least every two hours (“Stop, Revive, Survive”)
- When travelling in convey a UHF CB (ultra-high frequency citizen band) radio enables (public) commentary/ direction sharing; channel 18 is used by vanners/ campers
- Beware that the risk to your paintwork from bush scratches is high
- If your vehicle has non-tinted glass you’ll need sunscreen on for driving or else risk sunburn
- Fooling heavy rain “If it’s flooded forget it”
- Stay with your vehicle in the event of a breakdown, as it will be more visible from the air than you are
- Take extra care at marked Yowie crossings.
On pitch:
- Aim to arrive on pitch before shadows get long and kangaroos may leap into your path
- Don’t leave your shoes on the ground; stomp on the toes or check carefully before putting them on (the Warrior’s roof tents have shoe bags)
- Don’t park under trees; gum trees have a habit of dropping branches without provocation (and beware of drop bears).
Next time we hire a 4WD our practical learning could encompass:
- Driving on sand tracks (noting that beach driving isn’t allowed in Britz hires) and adjusting tyre pressures
- Selecting appropriate gears
- Driving on dirt roads and managing bulldust
- Tackling inclines and declines
- Making water crossings
- Towing?
✳️ Tips and tricks
While not everything went to plan (B was ill on the morning of picking up the vehicle and thus wasn’t a named driver) we had a great time with our friends and are looking forward to further adventures on our next trip to Australia.
#2026 #4WD #4x4 #australia #camping #nationalPark #nature #newSouthWales #queensland #roadTrip #travel #unesco -
In a complete departure from my usual meanderings, I’m going to present an in-depth comparative review of eight iOS Mastodon/Fediverse apps. (Video: ‘What is the Fediverse?’) Given that I’m not alone in moving to Mastodon from Twitter at the moment (whether tentatively or bridge-burningly), I’ll also draw comparisons with the official iOS Twitter app, noting points of comfort and familiarity as well as things that might jar a little at first. But please bear in mind that Mastodon isn’t meant to be a clone of Twitter. I’ve chosen these eight apps in particular simply on the basis that they have a rating of 3 stars (out of 5) or higher in the iPhone App Store (in fact, all of them are rated 4–5 stars):
- Fedi for Pleroma and Mastodon v. 3.2.0 (Big Fig/Fedi)
- Mast: for Mastodon* v. 2.2.3 (PoeticBytes)
- Mastodon for iPhone and iPad v. 1.4.0 (121) (Mastodon)
- Mercury for Mastodon v. 2021.4(54) (Daniel Nitsikopoulos)
- Metatext* v. 1.5.1 (2) (Metabolist)
- tooot* v. 4.0.0 (Zhiyuan Zheng)
- Toot!* v. 16.0 (132) (Dag Ågren)
- Tootle for Mastodon* v. 1.11.6 (Moortz/Takashi Morioka)
*link to App Store
Skip to the end for a tl;dr summary. (This is a very long post.)
Initial considerationsHow much does it cost?First things first, you might want to consider how much you’re willing to spend. Fortunately, only Mast (£2.49, €2.99) and Toot! (£3.49, €3.99) will cost you actual money (so you could, like me, try all eight apps for £5.98). If you decide you like an app, and you want to (and have the wherewithal to) support the developer, the two paid apps along with Mercury and Tootle have in-app purchase options for tipping them (with a small amount of bonus functionality unlocked in the case of Mercury).
Will it still be around next year?Before getting too comfortable with an app, you might also want to consider how likely it is to continue being maintained. All these apps work on the latest iPhones, but the timeline below shows that some haven’t been updated for a while, including the venerable Tootle, which was the only one of these I had used until this month! (I first toyed with Mastodon in 2018, when none of the others were around – including the official Mastodon app, which is actually the baby of the bunch.) Having said that, if you do have to move from one app to another at some point in the future, it should be at most a minor irritation, as long as you don’t make heavy use of app-specific features that store data on your device (such as Mast’s saved hashtags, or draft toots in those apps that support them).
Timeline showing periods from the first version released on the App Store to the most recentAnd what about other platforms, btw?Although I’m talking about iOS (i.e. iPhone apps), all of these also work on iPad. (Mercury works in iPhone-emulation mode.) Beyond the Apple ecosystem, both the official Mastodon app and Fedi are available on Android – but other apps such as Tusky seem to be more popular there. On the desktop, there are a few apps available (including a macOS version of Mast, which felt unpolished and buggy when I tried it). The standard multi-column Mastodon web interface – perhaps tailored slightly by your chosen instance – is probably the nicest way to connect to the social network when you have the luxury of a large screen.
First impressionsNever judge a book by its cover, or an app by its icon. That doesn’t mean I’ll put up with ugliness! Fedi gives us a zero-effort, bland, corporate ‘productivity app’ icon, so it’s not winning any prizes here (disclaimer: there are no actual prizes), and nor is tooot, with its oops-I-forgot-to-replace-the-placeholder look. The icon for the official Mastodon app looks ok, perhaps a little too like the official Twitter app’s icon, using a flat white logo on a blue background, which would be the same colour as Twitter’s if it weren’t for the addition of a slight gradient. (And it’s obviously an elephant rather than a bird.) Mercury’s icon captures, um, the blobbiness of liquid metal. Ok, that’s a charitable guess. It is one of four apps, though, that allow you to choose variations on the theme, and this redeems it (slightly). Two of the others are Mast and Metatext, both of which are reasonably smart elephant logotypes. That leaves Tootle, whose cute little elephant looks a little weary, but then it is relatively long in the tusk. The winner for me, another one with the option of picking your own variant, is Toot!’s cheery cartoon mastodon! Social media should be fun – but if you’ve come from Twitter, you can be excused for having forgotten that!
Getting startedThat’s enough of a preamble. Although I’m going to focus mainly on what I think are the things you’ll want to do most of the time you’re using an app, it’s worth looking briefly at how easy it is to get started, including setting up an account on an instance, and connecting to an existing account.
(If I’d thought of this in advance, I’d have noted what it was like at the time. Now I’ve had to log out of both my Mastodon accounts on all eight apps to remind myself! It took me a while to work out that I had to do a firm press on an account to bring up the option to remove it in Mast. And I actually had to delete and reinstall both Mast and Toot! because they insisted – not so unreasonably in normal use – on remaining logged in to at least one account!)
On opening the apps for the first time, you’ll be greeted with varying levels of friendliness and/or intimidation.
FediMastMastodonMercuryMetatexttoootToot!Tootle Initial screens for the eight apps (following any splash screens)Metatext and Toot! both introduce the brand-new user to Mastodon. The first app, albeit after an unnecessarily laboured fade-in of the welcome screen, has a short embedded YouTube video (produced by Mastodon). The second app has a brief text introduction, as well as a link at the bottom of the screen that will pop you out of the app and take you to that very same video on YouTube.
Mercury’s ‘Find and join a mastodon instance’ link actually links to Mastodon’s home page – which slightly unfortunately also prompts you to open the official app if you have it installed! I suppose you will eventually find lists of instances once you’ve read or skimmed over the introductory blurb.
The official Mastodon app’s ‘Get Started’ button (the first of only two on that screen) will take you to a screen in which you can choose from lists of instances, sorted thematically, and there’s a little explanation there too.
Fedi appears to suggest the instance fedi.app, but if you accept that default, and tap any of the three buttons, you’ll get a horrible red error box at the top of the screen – with raw HTML code for the first two buttons! So don’t do that! (It does go away, but it doesn’t inspire confidence.) If you ask for help choosing an instance, the lack of polish continues to shine through (um, no, that’s not quite right). You’re landed on a GitHub documentation page! (GitHub is a website used by software developers.) When you select the text box, you do get a list of suggestions. The documentation reveals that the developers of Fedi favour Pleroma (an alternative to Mastodon), and the instances they recommend skew in that direction, including some very nasty ones you may have heard of, such as Gab and Spinster (which most instances in the Fediverse block, as indeed do some apps themselves).
The other apps – Mast, tooot and Tootle – don’t offer any explicit guidance on what to do, but assume you know you want to connect to an instance (you do, by the way!). tooot has some mystery boxes labeled ‘Name’, ‘Users’, ‘Toots’ and ‘Universes’, whose purpose will only become clear when you type an instance URL into the text field. It also slightly oddly offers app settings at this point. Worst for shaking confidence is the wonky English: ‘Logging in process uses system broswer [sic] that, your account information won’t be visible to tooot app. Read more privacy policy’.
A note on terminologyThere are a number of different names for things in the Mastodon world, and the apps vary in their choice of terms. (Some even have settings that let you choose the ones you prefer.) The instances that you can sign up to are also known as servers. Toots (the Mastodon equivalent of tweets on Twitter) are also known more prosaically as posts, and officially as statuses. Toots can be favourited or liked (with stars, hearts or neither). They can also be boosted, reposted or reblogged (the equivalent of retweeting). A stream of toots is either a timeline or a feed. As on Twitter, you can have a profile pic, but these are sometimes called avatars (a term I prefer to avoid because of its appropriation from Hinduism).
Screenreader accessibility (part 1)Before going any further, I should say that Toot! and Tootle are sadly likely to be unusable by low-vision users who rely on being able to increase the text size on their iPhones (rather than using screenreaders). Unfortunately, these apps don’t respect the settings on your phone, and don’t offer any way to change the font size within the app either. The developer of Toot! has known about this issue since 2018, but it clearly hasn’t been a priority to fix it.
I’m not a screenreader user, but I have done just enough playing around with VoiceOver (the iPhone’s built-in screenreader) to have at least some idea of what’s useful. Or at least I can spot when app developers have done things really badly! But I haven’t explored every aspect of these apps using VoiceOver, and I can only give a hint of how accessible these apps are.
The opening screens for Mercury, Metatext, Toot! and Tootle are all straightforwardly navigable from top to bottom using VoiceOver. Mastodon’s opening screen takes you straight to that ‘Get Started’ button. tooot’s opening screen works fine too, with the proviso that there’s no explanation of the mysterious labels beyond the ‘Login’ button (but these are as much of a mystery for those of us using the visual interface!).
Mast’s opening screen is navigable, but unfortunately highlights several user interface elements that are hidden visually and intended not to be seen or active at this point. You need to skip past no fewer than seven invisible and unusable elements – five buttons, a heading and a list – to get to the ‘Instance name’ text field. Not great.
Fedi’s VoiceOver support is haphazard from the start. On the opening screen, the label for that all-important instance text field is widely separated from the text field itself, and the app gives unnecessary description of a ‘screenshot’ before getting into the functionality. I did actually play with Fedi properly, using a couple of instances, but it didn’t have many redeeming qualities. I’m so unimpressed by the app that I don’t think it’s worth labouring descriptions of how well it behaves elsewhere. It is therefore eliminated at this stage. (I wasn’t planning to have elimination rounds, but the app forced my hand!)
Signing up or logging in to an instance An instance’s login pageI said a few paragraphs ago that I’d look briefly at this aspect, but it seems I don’t do briefly at the moment! Fortunately, all of the apps share the same sign-up/login process, as this is delegated to the instance’s login page (which generally looks more or less the same from instance to instance – I’ve only seen minor customisations like colour changes).
If you haven’t already created an account on your chosen instance, you can choose the ‘Sign-up’ link here, which takes you to joinmastodon.org. Otherwise, you just need to enter your email address and password, and you’ll be asked to authorise the app to access your account. If you’ve set up two-factor authentication on your instance of choice, there may be another step here. And depending on the instance, you may also have to agree to abide by the instance’s rules.
There are some app-dependent wrinkles (of course!).
The official Mastodon app offers an alternative sign-up route, which happens if you tap the ‘Getting started’ button instead of the ‘Login’ button – here you are presented with the instance’s rules, and supply your display name, chosen username, email address and password within the app.
In Metatext, after you’ve typed the name of an instance, the ‘Log in’ button may be joined by another button, depending on the instance: ‘Request an invite’, in the case of an instance that requires you to be invited; ‘Browse’, in the case of instance that allows public browsing of its Local timeline and users; or ‘Join’, in the case of instance you can’t browse publicly but can sign up to without being invited.
Tootle also allows you to browse publicly accessible instances, using it’s ‘Take a look’ link, though this is unfortunately always active, and just pops up an unhelpful ‘Oops, something is wrong’ error when you try to look at an instance that doesn’t allow public browsing.
Toot! is very helpful in some ways, but its sign-up/login process feels a little tortuous at first (or at least it works very differently from the other apps). When you pick an instance, you are shown the instance’s rules and have to say you agree with them before proceeding. If the instance you have chosen allows public browsing, you then see its Local timeline, and can switch to its Federated timeline. (I’ll explain these later.) If on the other hand the instance you have chosen doesn’t allow public browsing, you’ll see a screen labeled ‘Local timeline’, but with no toots and an unhelpful message about ‘errors when loading’. In either case, if you want to sign up or log in, you need to take an extra step: the simplest way is to tap the dimmed ‘Home’, ‘Toot’ or ‘Notifications’ button at the bottom of the screen.
More than one instance?All the apps reviewed support accounts on multiple instances. In four of them, to add an instance, you start with the same action used to switch between your instances. In Mastodon, Mercury or tooot, press and hold the ‘Profile’ button or profile picture at the bottom of the screen. In Tootle, tap the display name/instance name at the top of the screen.
In Metatext, you switch instances by pressing and holding the profile picture at the top, but to add a new one, you need to tap it instead and then choose ‘Accounts’. In Mast, you switch instances similarly by pressing and holding the ‘Profile’ button at the bottom, but adding a new one is a little more convoluted: tap the ‘Profile’ button, tap the cog at the top left, scroll down and choose ‘Accounts’.
Toot! is a little different. To add an instance, tap the ‘…’ at the top right, and choose ‘Servers’. But to switch instances, use the instance switcher button at the bottom right: either press and hold, or swipe left or right for a nice rotating transition between screens for different instances.
Both Metatext and Toot! allow you to treat a publicly browsable instance the same way as the instances you’re signed up to, as far as it makes sense to do that, which could be quite useful. Tootle doesn’t quite treat read-only instances on an equal footing, but allows you to add ‘tabs’ for such instances at the bottom of the screen. Mast also allows you to add what it calls ‘instance timelines’, hidden away under ‘Explore’.
Exploring the FediverseTimelinesThere are three basic timelines in Mastodon:
- Home. This is where you’ll see public toots (and possibly other kinds of posts) of all the people you follow, in the order that they’re posted. It’s more like Twitter’s ‘Latest tweets’ than its opaquely generated ‘Home’ view. (Note: the Home timeline doesn’t exist if you’re browsing a publicly browsable instance without logging in.)
- Local. Here you can see all the public toots on your instance, again in chronological order.
- Federated. This timeline is like the Local timeline except that instead of just the public toots on your instance, it includes the public toots on all instances that your instance is currently federated with. Unless you’ve chosen a very isolated instance, this is a fast-flowing stream of toots.
If you have just signed up on an instance, your Home timeline will be dispiritingly empty. No algorithmically suggested people to follow or anything like that. You’re in charge here! So you probably want to start by looking through your Local timeline – or the Federated timeline if you’re feeling brave!
In Mast, the three timelines are available under ‘Feed’, and are labelled with tabs across the top of the screen as ‘Home’, ‘Local’ and ‘All’ (i.e. Federated).
Metatext works similarly, except that the button at the bottom is labelled ‘Timelines’ rather than ‘Feed’, and the Federated tab is labelled ‘Federated’. It’s also nice that you can swipe left and right between the three timelines.
tooot devotes two buttons at the bottom to timelines: the house button is for the Home timeline, labelled ‘Following’, while the globe button is for a view with two tabs, ‘Federated’ and ‘Local’, and again you can swipe between them.
Toot! also reserves the house button for the Home timeline. To access the Local or Federated timeline, tap the instance switcher. You can choose between the two at the top of the screen.
Tootle has separate buttons on its configurable tab bar for the three timelines.
In Mercury, you switch between timelines by tapping on the ‘Timelines’ button, which reveals a slide-in menu, including the three timelines, and also a lot of other things that aren’t really timelines.
It may surprise you to find that there is no Federated timeline in the official Mastodon app, and even the Local timeline is hidden away under search, disguised as ‘Community’. Lead developer Eugen Rochko (who also runs the large instance mastodon.social) has tried to justify this decision, but I’m not at all convinced, and for me it counts as this app’s biggest negative point.
Direct message timelinesDirect messages are really just toots in Mastodon. So they appear in your Home timeline along with everything else. Their distinguishing feature is simply that they have their visibility set to direct (as opposed to public, unlisted or followers). This means they are visible only to people mentioned in them.
Nevertheless, most of the apps have a facility to show you just those toots with this property. Mast and Metatext have a ‘Messages’ button, Mercury has a ‘Conversations’ button, and Tootle has a ‘DM’ button. Toot! has a ‘Direct messages’ view accessible from the ‘…’ menu at the top of the screen.
Otherwise, direct messages are highlighted in various ways in your Home timeline: Mercury and tooot use an envelope icon, and change the boost button to a padlock and a subtly dimmed boost icon respectively (since you can’t boost direct messages). Metatext and Tootle show their envelope icon in place of the boost button. Toot!, by default, styles direct messages in conversation bubbles, and omits the boost button. It also notifies you of new direct messages using a little profile pic circle at the top right.
Mast uses a paper aeroplane icon for direct messages, but Mastodon doesn’t distinguish them from toots with other visibilities at all. Both these apps confusingly retain an active boost button. In Mastodon, this appears to work momentarily and is then immediately undone, but since you can’t tell otherwise that the toot is a direct message, this could be very frustrating. In Mast, it also seems to work, and updates the number of boosts to 1. But this is only a display bug (and unboosting straightaway leads to the number of boosts being −1). If you go to a different view and return, everything is fine.
By the way, Mast gets completely hung up if you send a direct message without any mentions – though why you’d do that only I can guess!
Screenreader accessibility (part 2)Now, I have to concede ignorance about how people actually use screenreaders to navigate complex structures like Mastodon (or Twitter) timelines. So I may have approached this somewhat idiosyncratically! For one thing, I only tried the flat navigation style, whereas I can imagine grouped navigation being better in some situations. I did switch to the container rotor to move between major elements of the user interface with vertical swipes. Before I tried this, I had a lot of difficulty getting around parts of all the apps.
As a baseline, I compared the apps’ behaviour when selecting a toot in a timeline and letting VoiceOver ‘read all’ (default: two-finger swipe down), without considering how easy it was to select that first toot. Mastodon, Metatext and tooot all did a good job, with about the right amount of detail for an overview. Toot! felt ever-so-slightly verbose at times, but was basically fine. Mercury gave slightly more information than appeared on screen, and didn’t quite keep its visual and audible timelines in sync in some minor respects. Mast would have been ok, except that content warnings were completely ignored, which feels like a major failing. Tootle was fine with content warnings, which it just read as labelled buttons, but unfortunately it read everything else on the screen as well, which made browsing the timeline in this way very tedious.
Navigating through the timeline, element by element, Toot!, tooot and Tootle (from best to worst) all fared poorly. The container rotor didn’t often help, as the heading, timeline and button bar are not properly connected in the apps, and I couldn’t say how easy they would be to use at all for someone who relies on a screenreader. (I couldn’t access the button bar in any of these apps without actually tapping on it.)
Mast had one or two peculiarities. Saying how old a toot was, the ‘h’ for hours was read as ‘aitch’, the ‘m’ for minutes as ‘metres’, and the ‘s’ for seconds as a plural ending! Content warnings, as noted before, were not treated correctly, with VoiceOver simply diving in and reading the visually hidden content.
In Mastodon, content warnings did at least kept stuff hidden – just a little too well though!
Mercury was really awkward to navigate consistently – I couldn’t really work out the logic at all, which was very frustrating. Sensitive content was sometimes read out, while content warnings clung onto their secrets a little too tenaciously.
Some useful pieces of information, such as indications that toots are direct messages or have some other non-public visibility, seem to be omitted from VoiceOver support in most apps. Metatext fared better than most here.
Multilingual support is frankly appalling across all the apps here, and I suspect this is a longstanding problem with VoiceOver on iOS that simply hasn’t been addressed. What is frustrating is that the other screen-reading tool in iOS (‘Speak Selection’/‘Speak Screen’ in the ‘Spoken Content’ accessibility options) does a pretty good job of identifying languages and reading toots in a timeline accordingly. That tool, however, isn’t interactive, and simply reads until you tell it to stop. This isn’t just an issue with Mastodon apps, but equally with the Twitter app, and indeed any app that doesn’t have content explicitly marked for language (which would be normal good practice on the web).
In summary, VoiceOver accessibility isn’t great, with all the apps having failings in this area. I hope the developers will pay more attention to accessibility in future releases. I was going to say that the web interface is probably a better bet in the meantime, but I just tried it and it seems even worse! 🙁
Searching and browsingBesides connecting with others on your instance’s Local and Federated timelines (which, of course, you can’t do if you’re using Mastodon!), you’ll probably want to explore further afield, at least at first.
All the apps have a search function, accessed in most cases using the familiar magnifying glass button (except in Toot!, where you need to tap ‘…’ and choose ‘Search’). If you enter a search term, you’ll usually get matches of people (the term is found in profiles in federated instances), hashtags (the term is found in hashtags that have been used at some point) and toots (the term is found in toots in the Federated timeline). You can choose between these using tabs in Mastodon, Mercury and Metatext. (In Mercury, you need to tap ‘search’ separately for each tab, which is slightly irritating.) Mastodon and Metatext also have an ‘All’ tab, which shows a selection of search results from each category, and this is essentially what tooot and Toot! show in their tab-free search results screens.
For hashtag results, Metatext and Toot! display little recent-usage graphs alongside each hashtag found.
In Mast, the search function in the current release is almost completely broken: after tapping the second magnifying glass, or pressing and holding the first, you get to the search field. It has tabs for ‘Toots’ and ‘Users’, but only manages to display two or three toots in an unscrollable list. If you tap ‘Users’, the search closes!
Tootle’s search is a little different, with no ‘All’ tab, but tabs (across the bottom) labelled ‘MyToot’, ‘Hashtag’, ‘Account’ and ‘Instance’. The middle two are self-explanatory, as is the last (though this addition doesn’t seem very useful). As far as I can tell ‘MyToot’ finds the search term in toots that you have posted, boosted or favourited.
Besides search functionality on their ‘Explore’ screens, Mast and Metatext let you browse profile directories for your instance – and in Mast, for instances federated to it too. This is the place to find the Local timeline in Mastodon too (‘Communities’).
Mastodon, Mast and Mercury also have some slightly opaque additional features on their ‘Explore’ screens, including what seem to me to be un-Fediverse-like suggestions of accounts to follow and news items. I haven’t explored these further.
ProfilesThere’s not a huge amount of difference in the usability of user profiles (and if you’re anything like me, you’ll spend a lot more time focusing on toots and threads than on people’s profiles). Coming from Twitter, most of the apps’ profile views will look fairly familiar, with a header image at the top, and a profile pic in a little frame beside the user’s display name and username. All the apps except Mercury, tooot and Tootle will enlarge the profile pic or header image if you tap on it, just as in the Twitter app. Mercury doesn’t show a header image when you’re viewing your own profile (but you can still edit it).
Some of the apps use a square frame rather than the Twitter-like round frame for the profile pic, and the header image varies from app to app in how it is cropped, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach that will work here. Tootle breaks the mould visually here (or perhaps it’s fairer to say that it predates the mould!), with (a variable part of) the header image used as a background for the profile pic and the entire bio. This does unfortunately render some bios extremely hard to read. (Note that bios can be up to 500 characters in length, compared to Twitter’s 160.)
Profile informationBesides the bio, there may be a table of up to four rows containing user-defined information, possibly including links to websites, which can be ‘verified’ if they point back at the Mastodon account. This table usually appears just above or below the bio. But Mastodon hides it under an ‘About’ tab alongside ‘Posts’, ‘Posts and replies’ and ‘Media’). And Mast hides the individual rows of the table under its ‘Links’ menu item. Tootle doesn’t display this information at all. Of the apps that do, all but Mast and Mastodon indicate the ‘verified’ status of any web links. Only Toot! tells you when the link was verified.
All the apps have some way of showing you if you’re following or requesting to follow the person, usually doubling up as the button to follow or request to follow them. Toot! is the exception: it states separately whether you’re following the person, being followed by them, or following each other, which is actually quite helpful. Mastodon and Mercury don’t show you whether or not the person is following you (though if they are, they will appear in your list of followers). Metatext only tells you if a person is following you, not if they aren’t.
All the apps display the number of accounts the person follows, and the number of people following the account. All but Metatext and Toot! also display the total number of toots.
Only three of the apps – Mast, Metatext and tooot – show the date the person signed up to the instance. Mast is slightly overzealous in reporting the time as well, which isn’t actually recorded and always comes out as 00:00:00 UTC (GMT)!
If you have endorsed/featured a user (something you can only do in Mast or Toot!), you can see the endorsement status in their profile in Toot! This seems of limited use!
Most of the apps use a very similar layout for your own profile and other people’s profiles (apart from things which only make sense in one context or the other). tooot is the odd one out here: for your own profile, instead of the bio and other information, it gives access to various lists/timelines and settings.
Beneath the profile information, the apps display the user’s toots, most recent first (except in Mercury, where you have to tap on the ‘Toots’ option to view them on a separate screen). Any pinned tweets come before other tweets, except in Mast, Mastodon and Mercury. In Mast, there is a ‘Pinned’ menu item you can use to see these, which does feel a little awkward and counter to the idea of pinning things for everyone to notice.
Mastodon, Metatext and Toot by default omit toots that are replies to other toots, and have a separate toots-and-replies tab for all toots. Mastodon and Metatext also have a tab for toots containing media. Mast and Mercury have separate galleries of recent media below the basic profile information, with links to the toots containing them.
Interacting with a profileThe thing you’re most likely to want to do after checking out someone’s profile is follow them. And all the apps have some kind of follow button (which may request a follow if the account is set to require approval of followers). Tootle’s follow button disappears after use. To unfollow, you need to use a menu item instead. In all the other apps, the follow button turns into an unfollow button.
Although mentions are just toots that include a person’s username (beginning with @), and direct messages are just mentions with visibility set to direct, all the apps conveniently offer some means of doing one or both of these from either a button or menu item on a person’s profile. Offering both feels like overkill though, as you can easily convert either into the other by changing the visibility – public or direct – while composing the toot.
Profiles in Mercury and Metatext have a notification bell that you can tap presumably to be notified whenever that person toots, though I haven’t tested this.
Almost all the apps offer menu access to items that will be familiar from Twitter, principally mute, block, report and share. (Mercury doesn’t include block or report. Tootle doesn’t include report.) Reports go to the administrator of the instance the user’s account is on. Hopefully you won’t need to report or block users very often.
If you use an instance’s web interface, you can add your own private notes to other people’s profiles. Unfortunately, such notes can be neither created nor viewed in any of the apps here. That’s a shame, as you could use private notes to remind yourself why you followed – or blocked – someone, say.
Toots (and other posts)Interacting with timelinesI’ll use the word timeline loosely here to include not only the chronologically ordered Home, Local and Federated timelines, but also lists of favourites and bookmarks, and lists of toots returned as the result of a search, or those under a profile. (But for now I’m only talking about lists of toots, so I’m not counting lists of notifications, hashtags etc.)
MastMastodonMercuryMetatexttoootToot!Tootle The seven apps showing part of my personal timeline of tootsAll the apps display timelines in a way that will feel familiar to Twitter users, with newer toots above older ones. Tootle, however, also (consistently, but confusingly) carries this over to its display of threads, with replies above original toots. The remaining apps follow the convention used in Twitter, and have replies in chronological order below original toots in the display of conversations/threads.
Mast and Mercury reduce visual clutter a little by eliminating the action buttons beneath the toots in this view. In Mast, these become visible in the ‘Detail’ view shown when you tap on a toot. In Mercury, they pop up beneath the toot when you tap on it. Toot!, as elsewhere in its interface, uses small caps text rather than icons, which looks quite stylish in my opinion.
Moving through a timeline is completely intuitive, with scrolling just as you’d expect in an iPhone app. Tootle is slightly frustrating though, as the timeline comes to a disappointingly abrupt halt when you flick-scroll up or down. It feels as though it could do with an oil!
As in the Twitter app, a timeline can sometimes have gaps in it, which you can fill in using a load-missing-toots button that sits in the gap. This button in Metatext or Toot! shows, by way of little arrows that rotate as you scroll the timeline, where the missing toots will be placed – either above the toot that is below the gap, or below the toot that is above the gap. This is incredibly helpful in reducing disorientation.
A Toot! convoIn most of the apps, tapping on an otherwise inactive part of a toot takes you to a detail view where you can see how the toot is connected to other toots – what it is in reply to, if anything, and any replies to it. Here is where toots with unlisted visibility show up, when they would be hidden from the Local timeline for instance.
Mercury is the exception: as just noted, tapping on a toot brings up the hidden action buttons for the toot. You can then tap the conversation button to see the detail view (which has ‘replies’ and ‘thread’ subviews). As an alternative to using these buttons, in Mercury you can use swipe gestures: a short swipe to the left is the equivalent to tapping the conversation button; a long swipe to the left is equivalent to tapping on the favourite button; a short swipe to the right is equivalent to tapping on the reply button; and a long swipe to the right is equivalent to tapping on the boost button.
These swipe gestures felt quite handy when I first came across them, but in many ways I’d rather see swipe to the right used as an equivalent to the back button, as it is in the Twitter app for instance. None of the apps do this.
The way connections between toots are indicated in the detail view for a toot varies from app to app. Toot!’s indication of a conversation is particularly innovative, using (by default coloured) vertical connecting lines linking the profile pics beside the toots. Fragments of these lines are also visible above and below profile pics in a timeline, to indicate that the toot is in reply to something or has replies. Not quite sure yet if it’s just a gimmick, or something that’s actually useful. But there’s much about Toot! that feels playful, and makes using it feel comfortable and enjoyable.
Viewing and listening to mediaThere can be up to four images in a toot. Alternatively, there can be audio (with an optional thumbnail image), video with audio, or silent video (such as an animated GIF).
Images, as shown in the screenshots, are dealt with in different ways by the apps, especially when there is more than one in a toot, and I’m not sure I could argue that any approach is better than the others. In Mercury, Metatext, Toot! and Tootle, alt text is displayed beneath (or sometimes partly overlaying) an image when it is enlarged. In Mast, you can only see the alt text by long-pressing on an image in the context of a toot (not when it is enlarged). As far as I can tell, Mastodon and tooot don’t display alt text.
Audio in toots can be played by all the apps except Mastodon and Tootle. Tootle does, however, show the thumbnail image! Only tooot shows the image and plays the audio. In Mast and Mercury, note that there is no sound when your iPhone is in silent mode. (The same applies to videos with audio in those two apps.) Mast and Metatext have standard controls for moving to different parts of the audio in their full-screen audio plays. Mercury lets you play audio within the timeline, and has a slidable bar showing how far through the audio you are.
Silent videos in a timeline play automatically on a loop in all the apps except Mast and Tootle. Tapping on a silent video in any of the apps enlarges it to the full screen width. Mast and Tootle use the standard iOS player for this, these two apps alone giving you controls for moving backwards and forwards through a silent video.
Only Metatext has silent auto-play in the timeline for video with audio, and it moves particularly smoothly between full screen and in-timeline views for both kinds of video. Toot! also has fluid transitions for video, but doesn’t keep the place between different views. All the apps except Toot! use the standard iOS player for video with audio.
Support for alt text with audio and video is patchier than for images (but I haven’t checked whether it is available in VoiceOver in either case). Metatext displays alt text for silent video only. Tootle shows the alt text for audio (for which it only displays the thumbnail!). Only Toot! displays alt text (in full screen) for audio and both kinds of video.
Mastodon allows media to be marked as sensitive, so that it is hidden or (in the case of images) blurred by default. And it also allows toots to be flagged with a content warning, hiding the main text. In Mast, a toot with a content warning takes up as much screen space as it would if the whole toot were there: it is effectively covered by a labelled black rectangle. (This probably explains why the screenreader reads the covered text anyway.) A similar approach (but without screenreader issues as far as I’m aware) is taken by Mastodon, Mercury and Toot!, but the other apps use a variable amount of screen space for a toot depending on whether the content is shown or hidden. Metatext’s buttons for content warnings feel very intrusive, dominating the timeline. All the apps except Mast allow you to hide material again after revealing it if you wish.
Interacting with tootsSometimes you’ll come across toots in languages that you don’t understand. Only Mast offers anything like the convenience of Twitter’s machine-translation option. I’m not sure what it uses behind the scenes, but it seems effective, and readily copes with toots that switch languages. (It can also translate bios in profiles.) Mercury offers a translate option for toots, but this opens a web page in Safari, with the text being provided to Russian search engine Yandex, which typically tries to translate the text into Russian in the first place! If the text contains an apostrophe, only the text before this is copied to the translation site. In Mastodon, Metatext and Tootle, you can select some text (e.g. in a toot in detail view) and use the iOS translate option. This is a little clunky, but better than nothing. tooot and Toot! only allow you to copy the whole text of a toot, which you could then paste into the translation tool of your choice. Not exactly handy though.
All the apps have reply, boost and favourite buttons, which work pretty much as you’d expect. Metatext, Toot! and Tootle’s buttons have a bonus feature: if you long-press them, you get a menu asking which account you’d like to use to reply, boost or favourite. This is extremely convenient if you have more than one account. And in Toot!, you get the same menu when you tap on a button if you’re viewing an instance that you’re not logged in to.
Composing toots and threadsThe toot buttons in tooot, Toot! and Tootle sit a little incongruously on the bar at the bottom of the screen (the other buttons there being for different views within the app rather than actions). Toot!’s button uniquely pops up a menu asking if you’d like to start with text, an existing image, or a photo taken using your phone’s camera. Given that most of us probably start with text most of the time, this feels like an unneeded extra step on the way to composing a toot. A minor quibble though. Mast, Mastodon and Mercury all have their toot buttons in the top right corner, while Metatext’s hovers over the bottom right corner, but not right at the bottom.
Whether you are launching a completely fresh toot out of the blue or replying to an existing one makes little difference at this stage, except that replies are usually pre-filled with mentions of the person or people you’re replying to (not in Mast). All the apps have a box for you to type, paste or speak into. They all show either the number of characters you’ve used so far or the number remaining of the maximum 500. (I believe some instances allow 1000 characters here.) And all except Tootle have some way of indicating when you’ve gone over the limit. That’s because in Tootle, you simply can’t exceed the limit. If you’re typing, it won’t accept another character beyond the 500th. If pasting or dictating text would take you over the limit, none of what you’ve pasted or dictated is included.
Tootle also counts characters a little differently: like Twitter, it treats emojis as two characters long (because their Unicode representations do in fact take more space to store). All the other apps (correctly for Mastodon) treat emojis as single characters. Tootle is joined by tooot in erroneously counting other Unicode characters according to their storage requirements.
Emojos are instance-specific custom emojis, some animated, which are represented in toots by names between a pair of colons. These appear to take up whatever space their name takes up, and you can use them either by choosing them from an emojo picker, or by typing their name. Metatext handily offers visual autocompletion suggestions as you type, which can make finding the right emojo that much easier.
Regardless of their actual length, all URLs in Mastodon are treated as if they were 23 characters long (and use of URL shorteners is officially discouraged). Mast, Mercury and Tootle all fail to count URLs correctly.
Finally, on the topic of counting, only the local part of a username (e.g. the ‘@transponderings’ of ‘@[email protected]’) is supposed to count towards your character allowance. Only Mercury, tooot and Toot! get this right. All the apps, incidentally, offer completion suggestions as you type usernames. Tootle’s seems to have less coverage than the others though.
While all the apps allow you to reply to toots you have written, only Metatext and Toot! let you write a thread of toots to be tooted more or less simultaneously. Writing long threads is arguably less useful on Mastodon than on Twitter, given that single toots can be much longer than tweets, but there may be times when it will be convenient. Unlike Twitter’s threads, a thread of your own toots can occur even in reply to someone else’s toot. Threads aren’t treated in a special way by Mastodon though: this is simply a convenience feature in these two apps.
Adding media to tootsOnly Mast, Metatext and Toot! allow you to paste images in from elsewhere, but in all seven apps you can choose an image from your photo library. And when it comes to videos, only Toot! lets you paste a copied video into your toot. And none of the apps seem to let you paste audio!
In fact, only Mast and Metatext support inclusion of audio in toots. And only Metatext lets you add alt text to audio, or mark audio as sensitive media. Neither app supports the full range of audio formats that Mastodon supports.
Mast, Mastodon and Metatext allow you to browse for files containing images and video, whereas the other apps limit you to the Photos library on your iPhone.
When it comes to video, Mercury, tooot and Toot! all work well. But I had trouble posting videos from both Mast (which was taking forever) and Mastodon (which didn’t seem to want me to toot while there was video attached). I didn’t investigate this any further. Mastodon (if only it worked!), Mercury and Toot! let you add alt text to video. Only tooot and Toot! let you mark video as sensitive media.
Tooting miscellanyMastodon’s delete-and-redraft capability (introduced in June 2019) will be the envy of many people stuck on Twitter, as it’s very much like the oft-requested edit button. All the apps except Mastodon and Tootle support this.
In most apps, you can set the visibility of a toot to public, unlisted, followers or direct. However, thanks to the developer’s stance on Local and Federated timelines, you can’t create unlisted toots in Mastodon. This is a pity, particularly as I have seen a number of people recommending that toots in a thread after the first should be unlisted, as a courtesy, so as not to clutter up other people’s timelines.
All the apps allow you to add content warnings to toots (called spoilers in Mercury and tooot – and I suppose it makes sense to use them for both purposes).
All the apps apart from Tootle also allow you to include polls in your toots. Unlike Twitter’s polls, these can be set up so respondents can pick more than one of the two to four options. However, the official Mastodon app only allows single-choice polls.
Toots can be scheduled for later publication – they are uploaded to your instance immediately, but held back until a specified date/time. Of the apps reviewed, only Mast and Mercury support this.
Cautionary notesWhen you are composing a toot (or a thread of toots) and tap elsewhere in the app, Mast, Mercury, tooot and Tootle all do what you’d expect if you’ve come from Twitter: they ask if you want to save your draft. In Mast, tooot and Tootle, there are buttons in the compose window to allow you to pick a draft from where you left off. In Mercury, you need to open the draft from the drafts ‘timeline’.
None of the remaining apps have a draft facility. At least Mastodon warns you that you’re about to discard your draft. Metatext and Toot! unceremoniously discard whatever you’ve been writing, whether a single toot or perhaps even a lengthy thread! Be very careful!
Mercury allows you to select video alongside other media from the Photos library. It will attempt to toot and erroneously state that it has succeeded. Mastodon also allows you to do select an untootable selection of media items, but it fails to make sense of the video in that case, before you toot. This is the only case I’ve come across where one of the apps has crashed though.
NotificationsJust two of the apps, as far as I can tell, show announcements from your instance admin. Because these are pretty rare, I’m not sure if they appear elsewhere in other apps. In Metatext, announcements are available at the top right of the main ‘Timelines’ view. In tooot, you can find them under your profile.
Aside from these announcements and the special highlighting of new direct messages in Toot! that was noted earlier, each of the apps maintains a running list of notifications including mentions, follows (and follow requests), boosts, favourites and poll updates – yes, unlike in Twitter, you can be notified when a poll you’ve participated in ends!
In all but one of the apps, you can see your notifications by tapping the bell icon at the bottom of the screen. In Mercury, the notifications view is found among the timelines that you select from in the list that slides in from the left.
Mercury and Toot! have app settings to choose which kinds of notifications to receive. I presume (though I haven’t had the chance to test it) that these don’t only affect the notifications view, but also the live notifications that pop up if you’ve enabled them in your iPhone settings.
In tooot, if you tap on the filter button, you can choose to view or not view each of six types of notification. Mast also has a filter button for six types of notification, but you can only choose to few one type or all.
Mastodon, Metatext and Tootle offer a simple tabbed view giving a choice between all notifications and just mentions (also just follows, and ‘others’, in Tootle). Settings in each of these apps also offer finer control over the kinds of notifications you receive.
Only Tootle takes things to the next level in terms of interaction between the in-app notifications and iPhone notifications, with independent control over how mentions, boosts, favourites and follows are brought to your attention both inside and outside the app.
Neither the apps here nor the Twitter app do a particularly good job of showing you which notifications you have not yet seen. But one thing I miss from Twitter is the consolidation of notifications. It would be really good to know that 11 people had favourited a toot rather than knowing separately that A, B, C, … and K had favourited it. (On the flip side, the detail in Mastodon does mean that each favourite and boost has a time stamp, so you can tell when they all happened, which I suppose might be nice to know sometimes.)
Privacy considerationsAccording to the App Store, Mastodon, Metatext, Mercury and Toot! do not collect any data from app users. Zhiyuan Zheng, the developer of tooot, claims to collect ‘user content’, ‘identifiers’, ‘usage data’ and ‘diagnostics’ from app users, but ‘not linked to your identity’. (Oddly enough, tooot is also the only app to display a ‘privacy protection’ notice if you take a screenshot.) The developers of Mast and Tootle have not yet submitted privacy/data-handling policies to Apple.
Other bits and bobsFive of the apps – Mast, Mercury, Metatext, tooot and Toot! – work in landscape orientation, though I’m unsure whether that’s ever going to be the best way to view Mastodon timelines. Still, if that’s your preference, it’s worth knowing.
There are other (non-screenreader-related) accessibility options in the apps’ settings, which I haven’t had time to explore here.
Three of the apps – Mast, Mastodon and Mercury – have additional menu items available from their icons on your iPhone’s home screen. From all three you can compose a toot, while two can take you straight to different timelines or other views. I’m not sure how useful this is.
All the apps feature in the ubiquitous iOS share menu, and their built-in share functionality is adequate for occasional use. If you frequently find yourself wanting to share things with your followers when you’re in other apps though, you might want to consider Linky for Twitter and Mastodon (£3.49). This allows you to use the iOS share menu to share text, photos etc. on Mastodon or Twitter, with markup options and various other features, and posting to multiple accounts simultaneously if required. (It doesn’t currently allow you to provide alt text for images, so you need to use the delete-and-redraft option subsequently to add this.)
Mast and Mercury both have iPhone widgets, but the former doesn’t really work, and the latter isn’t really particularly useful.
Tootle has a little play/pause button, which lets you see toots scrolling in continuously or else leave the timeline where you put it. The difference may only be noticeable on the Federated timeline!
Mastodon has an option to turn off animated emojis (there are a lot of instance-specific custom emojis in Mastodon), but it doesn’t work.
Mast and Tootle displays dates and times in US format regardless of the settings on your iPhone.
If you get fed up with looking at toots, Toot! has a couple of Easter eggs tucked away at the bottom of menus to keep you amused!
Summary – tl;drFor various reasons, Fedi was eliminated from consideration at the Getting started stage (although I had also used it for a bit with my accounts, and didn’t find that it redeemed itself later on).
Mast’s search functionality is completely broken at this point, and many other aspects of the app are buggy. The app developer appears to have left it to rust, which is disappointing, as it does have one or two nice touches, notably the inclusion of in-app translation of bios and toots. But I can’t really recommend using this app at present.
The other six apps are all fairly straightforward to set up with accounts on one or more instances, most working in pretty much the same way. Metatext, Toot! and Tootle additionally let you have read-only access to publicly browsable instances alongside the instances you’ve signed up to.
Mercury has the clunkiest timeline support, while Toot!’s is definitely the coolest (and Toot! generally feels most fun to use of all the apps in general, with some delightful transitions). The official Mastodon app bizarrely doesn’t have a Federated timeline view at all.
While all apps support direct messages in your Home timeline, Mercury, Metatext, Toot! and Tootle also have filtered timelines that show just your direct messages.
All the apps have issues with VoiceOver accessibility, but Mastodon and Metatext probably fared better than the others (with the proviso that I’m not a regular screenreader user).
Scrolling through timelines of toots feels fairly comfortable in all apps, although Tootle can feel a little sluggish. Mercury has some nice swipe gestures, which reduce visual clutter in the timeline. Toot! shows conversation threading using (optionally colour-coded) connecting lines between toots.
Media support varies greatly among the apps. Metatext and Toot! probably come out on top, on balance, with Toot! being the only app to show alt text for all media types, and Metatext being the only app that allows you to compose toots with audio attachments.
Toot! and Tootle both make working with multiple instances easier, as you can reply, boost or favourite from another instance without leaving the instance you’re looking at.
Toot! is the only app that counts characters in toots correctly according to Mastodon’s rules when you’re composing a toot.
Both Metatext and Toot! have support for composing threads of toots. But beware: neither Metatext nor Toot will offer you any warning if you close a toot or thread you’re in the middle of composing. If you do that, it’s gone!
All the apps except Mastodon and Tootle support the delete-and-redraft feature, basically an edit button. (It preserves text, attachments, alt text, polls, visibility settings – everything except any replies, favourites or boosts.)
I’m not going to try to condense all this into a simple star rating, but I’ve personally found myself being most comfortable using Toot! and Metatext. Sadly, none of the apps do everything just right, and you may find the combination of features (and omissions and bugs) tips the balance in favour of one of the other apps. Some of the apps at least are being actively developed, so App Store reviews pointing out problems you’ve had might actually lead to changes being made.
CorrectionsThanks to Heinz Skunk for pointing out that Metatext also has long-press reply, boost and favourite buttons for using an alternative instance.
Thanks to Avi for pointing out that Metatext does in fact indicate in their profile when someone is following you.
Thanks to Anna e só for pointing out that Toot! is problematic for low-vision users, as it doesn’t respect the iPhone text-size settings. I found that Tootle has the same issue.
Thanks to Camille for making me aware that Android’s Tusky app supports private notes on profiles. I had claimed before that none of the iOS apps did so because the Mastodon API didn’t support this. But I checked again and saw that it had been in the API since v3.2.0. (At the time of writing this review, Mastodon was at v3.5.2.)
Behind the scenes: the making of this blog postAs well as obtaining the eight apps (for the princely sum of £5.98, as noted), and tipping £0.89 for bonus functionality in one, I had to spend a fair bit of time researching the differences between the apps. I also invested in one or two additional tools to make the job of writing this a little easier. I used a 24-hour licence of Time.Graphics (£4.09) to make creating the timeline as hassle-free as possible – twice, in fact, because two of the apps were updated while I was writing it. And after a lot of searching (and skipping lots of web articles saying what I wanted to do wasn’t possible), I discovered KeyPad, a Mac app (£2.49 in-app purchase required) that lets me use the keyboard and trackpad on my MacBook to control my iPhone, meaning that, with a touch accessibility option turned on, videos could show where I’m tapping on the screen (but I didn’t actually use this in the end!).
I don’t mind spending a little less than £15 on this post. To be honest, it’s the time and the spoons involved that are more valuable to me. I don’t write blog posts for money, but in the hope that someone at least will find what I’ve written to be of value to them. If you have found this helpful, please like it if you’re able to, and if you can share it more widely, whether by tooting or tweeting a link, or by reblogging if you have a WordPress account, I’d really appreciate that. And if you do have a bit of spare cash, I’ll be extremely grateful for any tips received on my Ko-fi page! 😊
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#accessibility #fedi #fediverse-2 #ios #iphone #mast #mastodon-2 #mercury #metatext #review #social-media-2 #tooot #toot #tootle #twitter-2 #user-experience
https://transponderings.blog/2022/05/21/eight-mastodon-apps-for-iphone/
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Almost 90% of the world’s animal species will lose some habitat to agriculture by 2050
Scientists know that #biodiversity is declining across much of the world although less universally and dramatically than we feared. We also know that things are likely to get worse in the future, with a combination of #deforestation, #climatechange and overexploitation set to drive species and habitats ever closer to #extinction. Help them every time you shop and be #vegan #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
The biggest threat to #biodiversity 🐘🌿🦒 is from #deforestation for food #agriculture. Protect #rainforest and ocean animals with a #plantbased #vegan diet, use your wallet as a weapon and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🪔🙊⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/03/20/almost-90-of-the-worlds-animal-species-will-lose-some-habitat-to-agriculture-by-2050/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterWhat we don’t know, is what to do about this. Partly this is because conservation is woefully underfunded. But it’s also because the underlying causes of biodiversity declines are getting stronger and stronger every year. Climate change rightly gets a huge amount of coverage, but for biodiversity, the biggest threat actually comes from the destruction of natural habitats to make way for agriculture. And as global populations grow, and people become wealthier and consume more, that need for new agricultural land is just going to increase, resulting in at least 2 million sq km of new farmland by 2050, and maybe as much as 10 million.
Ensuring that this coming wave of agricultural expansion doesn’t lead to widespread biodiversity losses is going to require a big increase in “conventional” conservation approaches (protected areas and the like), but it is probably going to require something more too. These existing approaches are similar to performing heart surgery: very effective for the targeted species and habitats, but also not feasible for every species.
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Instead, we need to tackle the underlying causes, or conservation is not going to be able to cope. What we set out to do in a study just published in Nature Sustainability is to work out exactly which landscapes and species are likely to be the most threatened by agriculture in the future, and which specific changes to the food system give us the best chance of safeguarding wild biodiversity in different parts of the world.
Biodiversity under business-as-usual
Madagascar is a hotspot for biodiversity – and deforestation. Dudarev Mikhail / shutterstockTo do this, we developed a method to forecast where agricultural land is likely to expand at very fine spatial scales (1.5km x 1.5km). We then overlaid these forecasts with habitat maps for almost 20,000 species of amphibians, birds and mammals, and observations of whether each species can exist in agricultural land. This allowed us to calculate the proportion of habitat each species would lose from 2010 to 2050.
Projected changes in total habitat (mean habitat loss in a cell multiplied by the number of species present) caused by agriculture expansion by 2050. Note the concentrations in East and West Africa. Williams & Clark et al 2020Overall, we projected that almost 88% of species will lose habitat, with 1,280 losing over a quarter of their remaining habitat.
By looking at the impact on individual species in this way, and at such a fine spatial scale, we were able to identify specific regions, and even species, that are likely to be in serious need of conservation support in the coming decades.
Losses are likely to be particularly bad in Sub-saharan Africa, especially in the Rift Valley and equatorial West Africa, but there will also be serious declines in Latin America – particularly in the Atlantic Rainforest – and South-East Asia.
The fingernail-sized pumpkin toadlet is only found in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest, and could lose almost all its remaining habitat to agricultural expansion. Pedro Bernardo/ShutterstockImportantly, many of the species projected to lose a lot of habitat are not currently threatened, and so conservationists may not be concerned about them. We think this kind of species and location-specific forecasting is going to be increasingly important if we are to proactively work to prevent biodiversity losses.
Proactive changes to help save biodiversity
OK, so far so bleak. Fortunately, there are some things we could do to alleviate this habitat loss, including: raise yields, eat healthier plant based diets, reduce food waste, or even a take a global approach to land-use planning, which could direct food production away from the most at-risk regions. In our study, we found that a combination of all four actions could avoid the vast majority of habitat loss seen under business-as-usual. Doing so, however, will require concerted efforts from governments, companies, NGOs, and individual people.
Our approach allowed us to tease apart which approaches are likely to have the biggest impacts in different parts of the world. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, our results suggest increasing yields is one of the biggest single things you can do to save biodiversity. It means you can produce the food you need from much smaller areas, and so massively reduce habitat clearance.
Palm oil creates ecological wastelands and species extinction
In contrast, yield increases will do very little in North America, where yields are already close to their maximum. Shifting to healthier diets, however, could have a massive impact in North America, reducing demand for animal products, and therefore demand for new agricultural land. Again, this contrasts with Sub-Saharan Africa, where healthier diets may actually involve increased consumption of both calories and animal products, and therefore will not bring great biodiversity benefits.
Saving biodiversity while feeding 10 billion
Importantly, we only looked at the impact of agricultural expansion on biodiversity. Other threats facing wild nature include climate change, pollution, habitat destruction for other reasons, or overharvesting resources like fish or valuable tropical hardwoods. Still, biodiversity is likely to decline massively, and conventional conservation is unlikely to be able to cope.
Nonetheless, our research at least provides some hope. With swift, ambitious and coordinated action, we can indeed provide a healthy and secure diet for the world’s population without further major loss of habitats. Many of these actions should be priorities anyway, at every level from individual actions to international policy. Healthier diets to combat perhaps the greatest public health crisis in the world; wasting less food; increasing agricultural yields to improve food security; these are all hugely important goals in their own right.
David Williams, Lecturer in Sustainability and the Environment, University of Leeds and Michael Clark, Postdoctoral Researcher, Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, University of Oxford
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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A Failed Filling-In: the thread about the loch at Lochend
Lochend Loch, in the district of that name, is a natural loch fed from its own springs. The name comes from the fact this was one end of the Barony of Restalrig; the opposite end was the community of the Calton which was therefore sometimes known as the Craigend (Craig being Scots for a rock or cliff). As such the name Lochend Loch is a self-referential tautology. It long had utility as an area for wildfowling, fishing and collecting reeds for thatch and when it froze over it was a popular skating rink. Historically it was fed by a stream called the Strype which drained the lands to its west into it. From the 18th century onwards it was also the water supply for the Port of Leith, but the quality was poor and so much of it leaked out of wood and leather pipes that it could never slake the thirst of that town.
Ice Skating on Lochend in 1818 by James Skene. © Edinburgh City LibrariesThe loch was formerly bigger and deeper than it is now, a combination of water extraction and improved drainage having lowered the surface. In 1876 the surface is recorded by the Ordnance Survey at 83.4 feet above sea level. In 1894 it was 78.54 feet and in 1944 it was 77.99 feet. That’s a drop of 5.4 feet or 1.64m.
Lochend Loch and House in the early 19th century when the water level was significantly higher. This is a picture credited as Duddingston Loch, but is very definitely Lochend, with Whinny Hill of Arthur’s Seat in the background. By Hugh William Williams, CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland.An old postcard of the Loch, late 19th century, showing how much lower the water level is than in the above painting. Of interest are the row of supports sticking out of the water and mud, these would have carried the water inlet pipe to the pump house from when it was the public water supply for Leith.It can be seen on the map below that in 1817 the loch edge is near to the old dovecot – the round building at the top of the map. The water pumping house, just next to the fold in the page, is well within the loch. Both of these structures are now some distance from the loch edge, so the shoreline has retreated significantly since then.
Kirkwood’s Town Plan of Edinburgh and Leith, 1817.The 1817 survey gives the depth as 23.75 feet at its maximum. Local legend held that it was bottomless, and that a horse and card had been driven in never to be seen again. This may be influence somewhat by the tail of an accused witch, Bessie Dunlop, who was burned at the stake in 1576. Bessie was convicted on the grounds that she had consorted with a man named Tam Reid, who had died at the battle of Pinkie 30 years previous. Tam had conferred healing powers on her. On one occasion, while riding near Lochend Loch she had stopped to water her horse and with Tam had watched an apparition of a company of fairy horse riders charge into the loch to disappear.
When the Corporation built large housing estates in the area; at Lochend, Craigentinny and Restalrig, in the 1920s and 30s, the loch and surrounding grounds was purchased from its historic owners – the Earls of Moray – and formed into a new civic park to serve the neighbourhood. Between 1928-30 the park had been shut and 3,000 lorryloads of spoil from excavating the foundations of the housing schemes had been tipped in around the edges to form pathways. The loch and its grounds were tidied up and became the central feature of the park as a duck pond.
Lochend Loch in the park in 1955. © Edinburgh City LibrariesBy 1958 the loch was unfenced except for a section kept partitioned off as a bird sanctuary. On Aug 19th, John French, 10, from Piershill was playing with 2 friends, took off his socks and shoes and waded a few yards in. He slipped, fell below the surface and his friends never saw him again. It took 4 days for his body to be found; volunteer members of the Scottish Sub-Aqua Club Search & Rescue team had worked around the clock to try and find him, but he was finally recovered just a few yards from where he had disappeared from view, 10 yards from shore. The Corporation immediately formed a sub-committee headed by the Superintendent of Parks and the City Engineer to come up with proposals to make the park safer. They reported back the following month, their preferred option was infilling the loch to a safe depth of 2.5 feet. The Civic Amenity Committee approved this course of action, which they were told would take 3 years, with “complete drainage rejected”. At this point there were not too many dissenting voices as the tragedy of young John’s death was still fresh in peoples minds.
Lochend park and loch in 1957, Edinburgh Evening News photographThe Corporation got to work and lorryloads of demolition rubble from the city’s slum clearances began to arrive. But they soon ran into problems as land reclamation at Leith Docks was paying a premium for rubble and most of it was being diverted there. In 1961, they made the decision to declare the loch a general landfill site for “clean waste“. But the lack of infill material wasn’t the only problem; the City Engineer reported they were “finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the water level“. The loch was fighting back. Once people saw what was happening to it, there was increasingly vocal local outrage at what was being done. “Official Vandalism” wrote one to the Evening News. “The ruination of one of the best bird sanctuaries in Edinburgh… What once was a delight to the eye is today a very sad sight” wrote another. In June 1961 it was reported that the landfill tipping into the loch had polluted it with oil, and the resident swans and cygnets covered. James Christison of Albert Street wrote to complain of the “stench of rotting weeds and freshwater shellfish” hanging over the water.
The City Engineer was called to account and now recommended complete infill and asked for 3 more years. Labour councillor for Craigentinny, Joe Mackaill, was having none of it “it is a beautiful park and a beautiful pond and I will fight all the way to keep it that way“. In July 1961, another letter to the Evening News observed “Lochend appears now to provide a convenient dumping ground for the debris from demolition sites and other waste materials which are possibly difficult to dispose of on account of lack of facilities“. Local residents complained from all the dust coating their washing and windows, and of the smoke cloud that hung over the neighbourhood as the site had a permanent bonfire to burn off wooden furniture and garden waste that could not be tipped in the loch. But the tipping continued, the Corporation countered that they were obliged to take any waste they were provided with now that the Loch was an official landfill site. It seemed that the “best” waste, rubble and soil, was sorted and diverted to Leith Docks while Lochend kept the worst.
The Evening News sent a photographer, who took a picture behind a rickety barbed wire fence showing the loch 3/4 full of “old tyres, empty tea chests, kitchen sinks and house doors… And an enormous quantity of builders’ rubbish“. The loch’s strongest defender in the Corporation, councillor Mackaill, died unexpectedly in March 1962. His cause was taken up by Councillor (later Baillie) Marion Alexander who noted the “disquiet, indignation and even disgust” at the situation
Edinburgh Evening News 14/9/62 “City Beauty Spot Now a Rubbish Dump”There was an increasing discontent now that the loch should never have been in-filled, and that course had been an over-reaction. Letters were sent to the Evening News that the safety of children was the responsibility of their parents, “not the ratepayers“. “It is time the councillors for South Leith woke up to the desecration of this beauty spot and did something about the matter” wrote Peter Robertson of Easter Road. The pressure paid off. In November 1962 Councillor A. D. Jameson (Progressive – Portobello), chair of the Civic Amenities Committee, announced that they were relenting and that the loch would now be restored to its original (surface) size once the infill was settled at the safe depth.
I’ve overlaid some snippets of aerial photographs through the ages on a modern image to show the rise and fall (or rather, the fall and rise again) of the Loch level. The papers now went quiet on the issue, but 3 years later in 1965 it was observed that “Edinburgh Corporation, at the [Scottish Wildlife Trust]’s suggestion, have successfully improved Lochend Loch.” These improvements had included planting an artificial island in the centre of the loch with trees. The island has been subsiding ever since, built up from unstable waste that has rotted and settled and decomposed over time. This explains why the park these days has a spooky, mangrove-like, sunken forest of half-dead trees in the middle.
The remains of the failed attempt to fill in Lochend loch CC-BY-SA 2.0 Richard WebbThe below animation shows the loch surface over time.
#NowAndThen at Lochend loch, 1945 to present. You can see in the still from 1961 that the infill started in the northwest corner of the loch – a road through the park is obvious, leading onto the spoiltip where it was simply being driven onto the loch and dumped.Sadly there was a further tragedy at Lochend in April 1997, when 13 year old Arron Duffus fell off a raft he and his pals had made from abandoned foam insulation and wood sheets. Arron lost his life and eleven others ended up in hospital who also fell in or had tried to save him. The fencing around the loch – which had broken down – was replaced and heightened. The park was also given a clear up to remove the various abandoned cabins and sheds that had once been used as pigeon lofts and greyhound kennels from where the raft materials were taken. A local “friends” group has been trying their best, with some success, to make sure the park and its loch is better maintained and cared for in more recent years..
Photo of makeshift rafts at the edge of Lochend loch, The Scotsman. Saturday 12 April 1997Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
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Stuck in the Filter: May 2024’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
I thought the onset of summer would mean a total solar beatdown. Instead, it’s brought the rain. Absolutely chucking down rain. But, if you thought that bad weather leads to mercy from me, you’re dead wrong. In fact, I pushed my minions even harder to dredge up as many waterlogged nuggets of notable ore from our perpetually overtaxed filtration system.
And so, as my “staff,” who are definitely paid (don’t look into it) dry off in the industrial-grade wind tunnel, allow me to introduce May’s Filter entries for a public I truly don’t care about at all (don’t look into it). BEHOLD!
Iceberg’s Divisive Defenstrations
Cobra The Impaler // Karma Collision [May 24th, 2024 – Listenable Records]
Belgium’s Cobra The Impaler bill themselves as carrying the torch of classic-era Mastodon, a band hitting so many spectrums of metal comparing one’s music to theirs is a much safer bet than not. Led by primary songwriter and ex-Aborted guitarist Tace DC, the band sit somewhere in the murky grey between progressive and technical modern metal. The aforementioned Mastodon worship is strong here—especially in opener “Magnetic Hex”—although the crystal clean production by Jens Borgren really prevents the use of the term “sludge.” Elsewhere there are prog-metal moments of Virus/Vector-era Haken (“Karma Collision,” “The Fountain”) and some of the relentless, drums-in-front compositions of Gojira (“Karma Collision,” “The Assassins of the Vision”). Vocalist Manuel Remmerie’s also has his work cut out for him, delivering plenty of admirable cleans in both high and low registers alongside full-throated screams and somewhat less effective pitched growls. The instrumental performances here are top-notch, professional in the verse/chorus sections, and continuously—sometimes outstandingly—creative in the free-form bridges. There is some tightening to be done with the accessibility of the choruses—they fall flat against the superior instrumental sections— but there are moments of brilliance and a ton of potential in this five-piece.
Capstan // The Mosaic [May 24th, 2024 – Fearless Records]
Anyone who’s plugged into the post-hardcore scene should know that Florida’s Capstan transcend the—rightfully deserved—vitriol thrown at the style. I don’t think any Fearless band has ever been reviewed here, but Capstan’s latest opus The Mosaic deserves a shoutout to whomever hasn’t run screaming from these halls. Led by vocalist Anthony DeMario—sure to be a divisive figure with his unapologetic pop punk cleans—the band has continuously augmented their Warped-core sound with the mathy guitar noodlings of Chon or Polyphia, and an impressive triple vocalist attack for thick, elaborate harmonies. This album, clocking in at over an hour, doesn’t pull any punches, showcasing trip-hop, breakdown-laced numbers (“Bete Noire”), full throated anthems about self-loathing and heartbreak (“Misery Scene”) and even lighter, crooning ballads (“What Can I Say”). Synergy and professionalism are where the band shine; everything has is slickly produced and the performances—especially those vocals—are whip-smart. Plenty of editing could have been done, but you can tell how much fun the band is having. Anyone with a passing interest or nostalgia for 2000’s post-hardcore should check this out. Plus their drummer plays with traditional grip, and watching a jazz guy slam out breakdowns is pretty rad in my book.
GardensTale’s Dose of Decay
Strychnos // Armageddon Patronage [May 17th, 2024 – Dark Descent Records]
I don’t always check out albums that set the comment section and/or Discord abuzz, but when I do, it rarely results in anything less than interesting. Case in point, the bottomless evil of Strychnos, a Danish outfit that struggled to get off the ground in the early 00’s, eked out a single EP in the 10’s, and suddenly started shitting out heaving platters of malicious black/death since the pandemic. Armageddon Patronage is the second full-length off their new production line, and it brings every horseman along for its deadly ride. War is embodied by the lethal double feature that starts the charge, with swelling riffs battering the unjust to fertilizer. The unflinching and unfeeling brutality of Famine seethes from “Choking Salvation,” and out the beaks of “Pale Black Birds” pours Pestilence with slavering enthusiasm. Frontman Martin Leth Anderson, who also handles bass for Undergang, employs a bellowing growl that encapsulates hopelessness and suffering, and the excellent, malevolent riffs usher an effective aura of utter destruction. Death, however, comes not at the end, but during the doom-laden centerpiece, the despondent “Endless Void Dimension” with its atmospheric Gregorian chanting. I have no qualms becoming a patron to this spiteful chunk of armageddon.
Dear Hollow’s Shtanky Shwamp of Shrieks
Saidan // Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity [May 24th, 2024 – Self-Released]
Saidan do things a little differently. The Nashville duo’s themes rooted in Japanese folklore and the formidable and mysterious yokai in particular, combined with a relentlessly riffy and punk-driven tour-de-force of black metal proportions are always food for thought in the act’s brief and formidable history. Seamlessly transitioning between punk chord progressions and bouncy drums to blastbeats and kvlt tremolo to groovy riffs and rhythms, anchored by Splatterpvnk’s ripping vocals, it never shies away from punishment. However, interwoven with this assault is a distinctly melodic undercurrent that brightens the progressions and gives purpose and a sense of fun – a hyper-melodic black metal act would be jealous. You won’t be able to shake the grooves of “Desecration of a Lustful Illusion,” the symphonic black intensity of “Genocidal Bloodfiend” and “Veins of the Wicked” hit you like a cyclone, and the classic thrash solos and anime-theme-song vibe of “Sick Abducted Purity,” “Visual Kill,” and “Switchblade Paradise” are guaranteed to get your head banging – plus, the interlude “seraphic lullaby” and instrumental closer “suffer” ain’t half bad. Visual Kill is like if Powerglove wrote a black metal album that you could actually take seriously, backed up with the technicality, songwriting chops, and sheer unbridled energy to make it work.
Parfaxitas // Weaver of the Black Moon [May 31st, 2024 – Terratur Possessions]
The minds behind Parfaxitas should need little introduction, although the moniker will likely not ring any bells. Representing three separate scenes and their respective contributions to black metal lore, two American stringsmen from acts Merihem, Suffering Hour, and Manetherean, Icelandic drummer B.E. from Almyrkvi, Sinmara, Slidhr, and Wormlust, and Norwegian vocalist K.R. From Whoredom Rife collide. Weaver of the Black Moon combines the blueprint of second-wave Norwegian black with the obsidian dissonance of Icelandic, and the experimental edge of American acts, making it a tour-de-force of both vicious sound and tortured atmosphere. Dissonance rains down like acid, a backdrop, and shroud of otherworldly sounds that shimmer and crunch in ways that recall both the winding passages of Suffering Hour and the psychedelic rawness of Wormlust simultaneously. Hammered by vicious blastbeats and guided by tortured barks, the guitar and meandering fluid bass guide listeners from untouchable intensity (“Thou Shalt Worship No Other”) to haunting and hypnotic atmosphere (“Ravens of Dispersion”) – stealing the show. Parfaxitas features a whole lot of firepower, culminating in epic closer “Fields of Nightmares,” a crescendo of punishing and otherworldly proportions.
Aseitas // Eden Trough [May 30th, 2024 – Total Dissonance Worship]
After Aseitas’ formidable 2020 album False Peace, which narrowly missed my AOTY’s, the Portland trio is back with another album – which could easily be classified as an EP in its tidy thirty-minute runtime. Eden Trough condenses the lofty and decadent ambition of its predecessor for an album devoted to complete takedown in winding riffs, punishing death metal, and ravaging vocals. From the thick and punishing signature shifts of “Libertine Captor” and “Alabaster Bones,” complete with shifting riffs and a liminal sense of melody, to the more droning and haunting “Break the Neck of Every Beautiful Thing,” to the epic and cosmic psychedelia of ten-minute centerpiece “Tiamat,” Aseitas’ shows its tantalizing and gradual progression to an echelon of indispensable in the world of dissonant death. Offering influences of convulsive mathcore, mammoth post-metal, and unhinged yet intensely calculated technicality, Eden Trough is a must-listen for the long-time fan, as well as proffering a snapshot to the curious of what makes Aseitas so special to begin with.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Progalicious Ponderings
Azure // Fym [May 23rd, 2024 – Self Release]
Are you way into high fantasy and exuberant, progressive albums that reflect that sentiment? If so, look no further than Azure’s third opus, Fym, which over its runtime recounts the tales of a mystical fox’s journey in a frightening and whimsical world. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about an album with such a storybook concept.1 But between Chris Sampson’s vocal navigations that ring as hyper-tenor and dolphin-like (“The Lavender Fox”)2 as they do sullen and heart-wrenching (“Kingdom of Ice and Light,” “Moonrise”), and Galen Stapley’s mystical fretboard wizardry that marries funk chords, soundtrack melodies, and dance-able shred, Azure packs too much sunshine in their prog for me to ignore. And at almost eighty minutes, they pack a lot of it too. However, each run through Fym’s pages finds a new rumbling bass bounce to propel a hop, a new vocal run to twirl my tongue (with notes that I couldn’t possibly hit), or a synthfully sinful refrain to stain my brain matter with happy juice—”The Azdinist // Den of Dawns” or “Agentic State” unite these ideas best—it’s truly a hard album to put down. Combining just about every era of Genesis with the acrobatics of Dream Theater, the play and ambition of the earliest of Pain of Salvation theatrics, and healthy dose of modern bastardizations (check the autotune/pitchshifting on “Doppelgänger”), Azure has made a mighty statement with Fym that I’m still digesting. And with as many inventive synth patches, harmonic vocal layers, and cinematic builds as this rainbow dose of prog pushes, it’ll be quite some time before I’ve made up my mind about it all. So I’ll continue in pieces. Or all at once. Whatever time allows because Fym is just that much fun.
PreHistoric Animals // Finding Love in Strange Places [May 16th, 2024 – Dutch Music Works]
And here we are with, what’s that, another prog concept album? This one’s a little less terrestrial though, featuring healthy infusions of a futuristic space drama and heavy-hitting synthwave doots and bounces. Over the course of their past couple works, PreHistoric Animals has found an ease in comfortable exploration with their King’s X-like tendency to grip with a barbed verse melody or chorus explosion, layered tastefully with harmonic vocal accompaniment and groove-heavy riffs. But, despite that comparison, it’s clear from the opening synth pulse of “The City of My Dreams” and “Living in a World of Bliss” that an electronic and hooky identity that’s caught between Toto and Yes imbues the edges of refrains that stick like honey to vocalist Stefan Altzar’s easy-on-the-ears narrative. Finding Love in Strange Places can get bogged down a touch in its word-driven nature, though, especially on the various interludes and certain longer tracks like “Unbreakable” and “Nothing Has Changed but Everything Is Different.” None of that fluff ever truly interrupts Finding Love’s heartbeat rhythms, which hold a steady if highly syncopated simplicity and form a hi-hat charming vessel that keeps the head nodding in progressive pomp. Oh, and it helps that guitarists Altzar and Daniel Magdic (ex-Pain of Salvation) have studied the slow-burn solo nature of greats like David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and Brian May (Queen), with tasteful legato and searing ascensions aiding in earned crescendo at Finding Love’s best moments (“Living in a World of Bliss,” “The Secret of Goodness”). Having reliably churned out confident and catchy works every other years since 2018, PreHistoric Animals fly relatively low in the flock of modern prog, but these space-bound Swedes have earned a likely lifelong aquatic fan at this stage of their growing career. Give Love a chance!
Matrass // Cathedrals [May 17th, 2024 – La Tangente Label]
And, last but not least from my assortment, Matrass hails from France to bring you Cathedrals, which is… yes, you guessed it, another prog concept album! If you’re worried about another album of the synthtastic and 80s prog-themed variety, though, don’t fret about what Matrass brings to the table. Playing closer to post than progressive waters, Cathedrals flitters about dreamy, lounge jazz guitar passages before crushing down with Cult of Luna riffs and Tesseract-inspired, low-end atmospherics. But most important to the groove and cinematic lilt that defines Cathedrals is the methods by which vocalist Clémentine Browne navigates jangling verses with gentle croons and accented, rhythmic spoken word before frying down with screeching and hissing fervor against heavy chord crushes. That talent for establishing and reinforcing mood lands idiosyncratic in the realm of post acts, so her exact methods may not fit the bill for all fans of the rise-and-fall aesthetic the genre offers. And though Matrass remains largely iterative of this mood through its hour-long run, it’s that successful idea of atmosphere that allows peak tracks “Shreds,” “Adrift” (which features Browne on saxophone instead), and “Cathedrals” to conjure such powerful and drifting thoughts in my head. And when you’re in its valleys? Matrass still maintains a textural backdrop that spells high potential for this young act.
Saunders’ Sulfuric Stash
Desolus // System Shock [March 10th, 2024 – Hells Headbangers]
Who’s up for some explosive, throwback thrashy goodness? Although hailing from the States, Desolus take plenty of inspiration from classic German trash titans Kreator, Destruction and Sodom. Throw in classic Dark Angel vibes, a heavy, modern edge and crunchy production job, and the band’s debut System Shock ticks all the boxes for a thrashing great time. This shit is seriously jacked with unhinged, old-school aggression, spitfire riffs and stampeding percussion propelling the album’s ten speed-driven assaults. An utterly deranged, ’80s underground-inspired vocal performance adds further steel-plated authenticity to a retro-minded sound that manages to sound fresh and inspired. Aside from rare moments of slower melodic nuance on the otherwise blistering “Sea of Fire,” and the aptly titled “Interlude” providing a handy breather, Desolus crank speed and intensity to the max, rarely breaking from their relentless stride. The opening one-two salvo of “System Shock” and bonkers lunacy of “From Man to Machine” set a savage tone and gritty platform from which Desolus launch assault after assault of high-octane thrash mania. “Cures of the Technomancer” is an absolute riff beast with groove and speed for days, while “The Invasion Begins” deftly puts you in a false sense of bouncy melodic security before jamming the afterburners into a typically ferocious attack. Exuberant, nasty stuff.
Terminal Nation // Echoes of the Devil’s Den [May 3rd, 2024 – 20 Buck Spin]
The second album from Pittsburgh bruisers Terminal Nation hits with sledgehammer force, obliterating any semblance of subtlety in favor of an extra beefy, in-your-face hybrid of death metal and hardcore. Echoes of the Devil’s Den features a searing, politically charged and seriously pissed-off bite. High-profile guest vocal slots seamlessly blend into the vicious attack, including strong turns from Integrity‘s Dwid Hellion (“Release the Serpents”), Killswitch Engage‘s Jesse Leach (“Merchants of Bloodshed”) and Nails frontman Todd Jones. Jones features on “Written by the Victor,” a vicious tune that harnesses thick, neck-wrecking grooves and punishing, doom-laden death grooves. The album’s hardcore influence and political slant may turn off certain listeners, but those who don’t mind some hardcore in their death stew should find plenty to like here. The gritty, muscular exterior features nods to Bolt Thrower and All Shall Perish, while the weighty, mid-paced crush, chunky riffs and breakdowns are balanced by tasteful melodic counterpoints and livelier bursts of speed (“Dying Alive”). Not all works; the provocative, anti-police song “No Reform (New Age Slave Patrol)” musically has its moments; however, the heavy-handed lyrical approach sticks out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless, Echoes of the Devil’s Den swings and slugs you more often than it misses.
Steel Druhm’s Sewer Tarts
The Troops of Doom // A Mass to the Grotesque [May 31, 2024 – Alma Mater Records]
For their sophomore outing, Brazilian death-thrashers The Troops of Doom took their vintage Sepultura-esque sound and juiced it up considerably from what we heard on 2022s Antichrist Reborn. A Mass to the Grotesque still sounds a bunch like classic Sepultura but it’s much more refined, developed and expanded in scope. Yet it’s still a frenzied, thrashing assault full of lyrics about evil, demons, and all things anti-Christian. It sounds like something that should have dropped in as the 80s thrash wave started mutating into proto-death, and that is a beloved era of music for yours Steely. Songs like “Chapels of the Unholy” and “Dawn of Mephisto” sit right on the bleeding edge of thrash and early death, with Slayer-tastic riffs colliding with early examples of death grooves. What makes this so entertaining is how the band reaches outside of the Sepultura homage bubble to drag in new elements to expand their sound. Some songs feel slightly progressive (“Denied Divinity”) while elsewhere they shoehorn epic doom into the massive “Psalm 7:8 – God of Bizarre.” The straight-up riffbeasts are my favorites though, with “The Imposter King” being a big, fat, sweaty highlight. While these cats are always going to get compared to classic Sepultura, they made real efforts here to stake out their own identity. This is a wild, testosterone-fueled ride featuring the maximum allowable Satan, and I support that.
#20BuckSpin #2024 #AMassToTheGrotesque #Aborted #AllShallPerish #AlmaMaterRecords #Almyrkvi #AmericanMetal #ArmageddonPatronage #Aseitas #Azure #BelgianMetal #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BoltThrower #Capstan #Cathedrals #CHON #CobraTheImpaler #CultOfLuna #DanishMetal #DarkAngel #DarkDescentRecords #DeathMetal #Desolus #Destruction #DissonantDeathMetal #DreamTheater #DutchMusicWorks #EchoesOfTheDevilSDen #EdenTrough #FearlessRecords #FindingLoveInStrangePlaces #FrenchMetal #Fym #Genesis #GermanMetal #Gojira #Haken #Hardcore #HellsHeadbangers #Integrity #InternationalMetal #KarmaCollision #KillswitchEngage #KingsX #Kreator #LaTangenteLabel #ListenableRecords #Manetherean #Mastodon #Matrass #May24 #MelodicBlackMetal #Merihem #Nails #PainOfSalvation #Parfaxitas #PinkFloyd #Polyphia #PostHardcore #Powerglove #PreHistoricAnimals #ProgressiveMetal #Punk #Queen #Review #Reviews #Saidan #SelfReleased #Sinmara #Slidhr #Sodom #Strychnos #SufferingHour #SwedishMetal #SystemShock #TechnicalDeathMetal #TechnicalMetal #TerminalNation #TerraturPossessions #TesseracT #TheMosaic #TheTroopsOfDoom #TotalDissonanceWorship #UKMetal #Undergang #USMetal #VisualKillTheBlossomingOfPsychoticDepravity #WeaverOfTheBlackMoon #WhoredomeRife #Wormlust #Yes
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Stuck in the Filter: May 2024’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
I thought the onset of summer would mean a total solar beatdown. Instead, it’s brought the rain. Absolutely chucking down rain. But, if you thought that bad weather leads to mercy from me, you’re dead wrong. In fact, I pushed my minions even harder to dredge up as many waterlogged nuggets of notable ore from our perpetually overtaxed filtration system.
And so, as my “staff,” who are definitely paid (don’t look into it) dry off in the industrial-grade wind tunnel, allow me to introduce May’s Filter entries for a public I truly don’t care about at all (don’t look into it). BEHOLD!
Iceberg’s Divisive Defenstrations
Cobra The Impaler // Karma Collision [May 24th, 2024 – Listenable Records]
Belgium’s Cobra The Impaler bill themselves as carrying the torch of classic-era Mastodon, a band hitting so many spectrums of metal comparing one’s music to theirs is a much safer bet than not. Led by primary songwriter and ex-Aborted guitarist Tace DC, the band sit somewhere in the murky grey between progressive and technical modern metal. The aforementioned Mastodon worship is strong here—especially in opener “Magnetic Hex”—although the crystal clean production by Jens Borgren really prevents the use of the term “sludge.” Elsewhere there are prog-metal moments of Virus/Vector-era Haken (“Karma Collision,” “The Fountain”) and some of the relentless, drums-in-front compositions of Gojira (“Karma Collision,” “The Assassins of the Vision”). Vocalist Manuel Remmerie’s also has his work cut out for him, delivering plenty of admirable cleans in both high and low registers alongside full-throated screams and somewhat less effective pitched growls. The instrumental performances here are top-notch, professional in the verse/chorus sections, and continuously—sometimes outstandingly—creative in the free-form bridges. There is some tightening to be done with the accessibility of the choruses—they fall flat against the superior instrumental sections— but there are moments of brilliance and a ton of potential in this five-piece.
Capstan // The Mosaic [May 24th, 2024 – Fearless Records]
Anyone who’s plugged into the post-hardcore scene should know that Florida’s Capstan transcend the—rightfully deserved—vitriol thrown at the style. I don’t think any Fearless band has ever been reviewed here, but Capstan’s latest opus The Mosaic deserves a shoutout to whomever hasn’t run screaming from these halls. Led by vocalist Anthony DeMario—sure to be a divisive figure with his unapologetic pop punk cleans—the band has continuously augmented their Warped-core sound with the mathy guitar noodlings of Chon or Polyphia, and an impressive triple vocalist attack for thick, elaborate harmonies. This album, clocking in at over an hour, doesn’t pull any punches, showcasing trip-hop, breakdown-laced numbers (“Bete Noire”), full throated anthems about self-loathing and heartbreak (“Misery Scene”) and even lighter, crooning ballads (“What Can I Say”). Synergy and professionalism are where the band shine; everything has is slickly produced and the performances—especially those vocals—are whip-smart. Plenty of editing could have been done, but you can tell how much fun the band is having. Anyone with a passing interest or nostalgia for 2000’s post-hardcore should check this out. Plus their drummer plays with traditional grip, and watching a jazz guy slam out breakdowns is pretty rad in my book.
GardensTale’s Dose of Decay
Strychnos // Armageddon Patronage [May 17th, 2024 – Dark Descent Records]
I don’t always check out albums that set the comment section and/or Discord abuzz, but when I do, it rarely results in anything less than interesting. Case in point, the bottomless evil of Strychnos, a Danish outfit that struggled to get off the ground in the early 00’s, eked out a single EP in the 10’s, and suddenly started shitting out heaving platters of malicious black/death since the pandemic. Armageddon Patronage is the second full-length off their new production line, and it brings every horseman along for its deadly ride. War is embodied by the lethal double feature that starts the charge, with swelling riffs battering the unjust to fertilizer. The unflinching and unfeeling brutality of Famine seethes from “Choking Salvation,” and out the beaks of “Pale Black Birds” pours Pestilence with slavering enthusiasm. Frontman Martin Leth Anderson, who also handles bass for Undergang, employs a bellowing growl that encapsulates hopelessness and suffering, and the excellent, malevolent riffs usher an effective aura of utter destruction. Death, however, comes not at the end, but during the doom-laden centerpiece, the despondent “Endless Void Dimension” with its atmospheric Gregorian chanting. I have no qualms becoming a patron to this spiteful chunk of armageddon.
Dear Hollow’s Shtanky Shwamp of Shrieks
Saidan // Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity [May 24th, 2024 – Self-Released]
Saidan do things a little differently. The Nashville duo’s themes rooted in Japanese folklore and the formidable and mysterious yokai in particular, combined with a relentlessly riffy and punk-driven tour-de-force of black metal proportions are always food for thought in the act’s brief and formidable history. Seamlessly transitioning between punk chord progressions and bouncy drums to blastbeats and kvlt tremolo to groovy riffs and rhythms, anchored by Splatterpvnk’s ripping vocals, it never shies away from punishment. However, interwoven with this assault is a distinctly melodic undercurrent that brightens the progressions and gives purpose and a sense of fun – a hyper-melodic black metal act would be jealous. You won’t be able to shake the grooves of “Desecration of a Lustful Illusion,” the symphonic black intensity of “Genocidal Bloodfiend” and “Veins of the Wicked” hit you like a cyclone, and the classic thrash solos and anime-theme-song vibe of “Sick Abducted Purity,” “Visual Kill,” and “Switchblade Paradise” are guaranteed to get your head banging – plus, the interlude “seraphic lullaby” and instrumental closer “suffer” ain’t half bad. Visual Kill is like if Powerglove wrote a black metal album that you could actually take seriously, backed up with the technicality, songwriting chops, and sheer unbridled energy to make it work.
Parfaxitas // Weaver of the Black Moon [May 31st, 2024 – Terratur Possessions]
The minds behind Parfaxitas should need little introduction, although the moniker will likely not ring any bells. Representing three separate scenes and their respective contributions to black metal lore, two American stringsmen from acts Merihem, Suffering Hour, and Manetherean, Icelandic drummer B.E. from Almyrkvi, Sinmara, Slidhr, and Wormlust, and Norwegian vocalist K.R. From Whoredom Rife collide. Weaver of the Black Moon combines the blueprint of second-wave Norwegian black with the obsidian dissonance of Icelandic, and the experimental edge of American acts, making it a tour-de-force of both vicious sound and tortured atmosphere. Dissonance rains down like acid, a backdrop, and shroud of otherworldly sounds that shimmer and crunch in ways that recall both the winding passages of Suffering Hour and the psychedelic rawness of Wormlust simultaneously. Hammered by vicious blastbeats and guided by tortured barks, the guitar and meandering fluid bass guide listeners from untouchable intensity (“Thou Shalt Worship No Other”) to haunting and hypnotic atmosphere (“Ravens of Dispersion”) – stealing the show. Parfaxitas features a whole lot of firepower, culminating in epic closer “Fields of Nightmares,” a crescendo of punishing and otherworldly proportions.
Aseitas // Eden Trough [May 30th, 2024 – Total Dissonance Worship]
After Aseitas’ formidable 2020 album False Peace, which narrowly missed my AOTY’s, the Portland trio is back with another album – which could easily be classified as an EP in its tidy thirty-minute runtime. Eden Trough condenses the lofty and decadent ambition of its predecessor for an album devoted to complete takedown in winding riffs, punishing death metal, and ravaging vocals. From the thick and punishing signature shifts of “Libertine Captor” and “Alabaster Bones,” complete with shifting riffs and a liminal sense of melody, to the more droning and haunting “Break the Neck of Every Beautiful Thing,” to the epic and cosmic psychedelia of ten-minute centerpiece “Tiamat,” Aseitas’ shows its tantalizing and gradual progression to an echelon of indispensable in the world of dissonant death. Offering influences of convulsive mathcore, mammoth post-metal, and unhinged yet intensely calculated technicality, Eden Trough is a must-listen for the long-time fan, as well as proffering a snapshot to the curious of what makes Aseitas so special to begin with.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Progalicious Ponderings
Azure // Fym [May 23rd, 2024 – Self Release]
Are you way into high fantasy and exuberant, progressive albums that reflect that sentiment? If so, look no further than Azure’s third opus, Fym, which over its runtime recounts the tales of a mystical fox’s journey in a frightening and whimsical world. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about an album with such a storybook concept.1 But between Chris Sampson’s vocal navigations that ring as hyper-tenor and dolphin-like (“The Lavender Fox”)2 as they do sullen and heart-wrenching (“Kingdom of Ice and Light,” “Moonrise”), and Galen Stapley’s mystical fretboard wizardry that marries funk chords, soundtrack melodies, and dance-able shred, Azure packs too much sunshine in their prog for me to ignore. And at almost eighty minutes, they pack a lot of it too. However, each run through Fym’s pages finds a new rumbling bass bounce to propel a hop, a new vocal run to twirl my tongue (with notes that I couldn’t possibly hit), or a synthfully sinful refrain to stain my brain matter with happy juice—”The Azdinist // Den of Dawns” or “Agentic State” unite these ideas best—it’s truly a hard album to put down. Combining just about every era of Genesis with the acrobatics of Dream Theater, the play and ambition of the earliest of Pain of Salvation theatrics, and healthy dose of modern bastardizations (check the autotune/pitchshifting on “Doppelgänger”), Azure has made a mighty statement with Fym that I’m still digesting. And with as many inventive synth patches, harmonic vocal layers, and cinematic builds as this rainbow dose of prog pushes, it’ll be quite some time before I’ve made up my mind about it all. So I’ll continue in pieces. Or all at once. Whatever time allows because Fym is just that much fun.
PreHistoric Animals // Finding Love in Strange Places [May 16th, 2024 – Dutch Music Works]
And here we are with, what’s that, another prog concept album? This one’s a little less terrestrial though, featuring healthy infusions of a futuristic space drama and heavy-hitting synthwave doots and bounces. Over the course of their past couple works, PreHistoric Animals has found an ease in comfortable exploration with their King’s X-like tendency to grip with a barbed verse melody or chorus explosion, layered tastefully with harmonic vocal accompaniment and groove-heavy riffs. But, despite that comparison, it’s clear from the opening synth pulse of “The City of My Dreams” and “Living in a World of Bliss” that an electronic and hooky identity that’s caught between Toto and Yes imbues the edges of refrains that stick like honey to vocalist Stefan Altzar’s easy-on-the-ears narrative. Finding Love in Strange Places can get bogged down a touch in its word-driven nature, though, especially on the various interludes and certain longer tracks like “Unbreakable” and “Nothing Has Changed but Everything Is Different.” None of that fluff ever truly interrupts Finding Love’s heartbeat rhythms, which hold a steady if highly syncopated simplicity and form a hi-hat charming vessel that keeps the head nodding in progressive pomp. Oh, and it helps that guitarists Altzar and Daniel Magdic (ex-Pain of Salvation) have studied the slow-burn solo nature of greats like David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and Brian May (Queen), with tasteful legato and searing ascensions aiding in earned crescendo at Finding Love’s best moments (“Living in a World of Bliss,” “The Secret of Goodness”). Having reliably churned out confident and catchy works every other years since 2018, PreHistoric Animals fly relatively low in the flock of modern prog, but these space-bound Swedes have earned a likely lifelong aquatic fan at this stage of their growing career. Give Love a chance!
Matrass // Cathedrals [May 17th, 2024 – La Tangente Label]
And, last but not least from my assortment, Matrass hails from France to bring you Cathedrals, which is… yes, you guessed it, another prog concept album! If you’re worried about another album of the synthtastic and 80s prog-themed variety, though, don’t fret about what Matrass brings to the table. Playing closer to post than progressive waters, Cathedrals flitters about dreamy, lounge jazz guitar passages before crushing down with Cult of Luna riffs and Tesseract-inspired, low-end atmospherics. But most important to the groove and cinematic lilt that defines Cathedrals is the methods by which vocalist Clémentine Browne navigates jangling verses with gentle croons and accented, rhythmic spoken word before frying down with screeching and hissing fervor against heavy chord crushes. That talent for establishing and reinforcing mood lands idiosyncratic in the realm of post acts, so her exact methods may not fit the bill for all fans of the rise-and-fall aesthetic the genre offers. And though Matrass remains largely iterative of this mood through its hour-long run, it’s that successful idea of atmosphere that allows peak tracks “Shreds,” “Adrift” (which features Browne on saxophone instead), and “Cathedrals” to conjure such powerful and drifting thoughts in my head. And when you’re in its valleys? Matrass still maintains a textural backdrop that spells high potential for this young act.
Saunders’ Sulfuric Stash
Desolus // System Shock [March 10th, 2024 – Hells Headbangers]
Who’s up for some explosive, throwback thrashy goodness? Although hailing from the States, Desolus take plenty of inspiration from classic German trash titans Kreator, Destruction and Sodom. Throw in classic Dark Angel vibes, a heavy, modern edge and crunchy production job, and the band’s debut System Shock ticks all the boxes for a thrashing great time. This shit is seriously jacked with unhinged, old-school aggression, spitfire riffs and stampeding percussion propelling the album’s ten speed-driven assaults. An utterly deranged, ’80s underground-inspired vocal performance adds further steel-plated authenticity to a retro-minded sound that manages to sound fresh and inspired. Aside from rare moments of slower melodic nuance on the otherwise blistering “Sea of Fire,” and the aptly titled “Interlude” providing a handy breather, Desolus crank speed and intensity to the max, rarely breaking from their relentless stride. The opening one-two salvo of “System Shock” and bonkers lunacy of “From Man to Machine” set a savage tone and gritty platform from which Desolus launch assault after assault of high-octane thrash mania. “Cures of the Technomancer” is an absolute riff beast with groove and speed for days, while “The Invasion Begins” deftly puts you in a false sense of bouncy melodic security before jamming the afterburners into a typically ferocious attack. Exuberant, nasty stuff.
Terminal Nation // Echoes of the Devil’s Den [May 3rd, 2024 – 20 Buck Spin]
The second album from Pittsburgh bruisers Terminal Nation hits with sledgehammer force, obliterating any semblance of subtlety in favor of an extra beefy, in-your-face hybrid of death metal and hardcore. Echoes of the Devil’s Den features a searing, politically charged and seriously pissed-off bite. High-profile guest vocal slots seamlessly blend into the vicious attack, including strong turns from Integrity‘s Dwid Hellion (“Release the Serpents”), Killswitch Engage‘s Jesse Leach (“Merchants of Bloodshed”) and Nails frontman Todd Jones. Jones features on “Written by the Victor,” a vicious tune that harnesses thick, neck-wrecking grooves and punishing, doom-laden death grooves. The album’s hardcore influence and political slant may turn off certain listeners, but those who don’t mind some hardcore in their death stew should find plenty to like here. The gritty, muscular exterior features nods to Bolt Thrower and All Shall Perish, while the weighty, mid-paced crush, chunky riffs and breakdowns are balanced by tasteful melodic counterpoints and livelier bursts of speed (“Dying Alive”). Not all works; the provocative, anti-police song “No Reform (New Age Slave Patrol)” musically has its moments; however, the heavy-handed lyrical approach sticks out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless, Echoes of the Devil’s Den swings and slugs you more often than it misses.
Steel Druhm’s Sewer Tarts
The Troops of Doom // A Mass to the Grotesque [May 31, 2024 – Alma Mater Records]
For their sophomore outing, Brazilian death-thrashers The Troops of Doom took their vintage Sepultura-esque sound and juiced it up considerably from what we heard on 2022s Antichrist Reborn. A Mass to the Grotesque still sounds a bunch like classic Sepultura but it’s much more refined, developed and expanded in scope. Yet it’s still a frenzied, thrashing assault full of lyrics about evil, demons, and all things anti-Christian. It sounds like something that should have dropped in as the 80s thrash wave started mutating into proto-death, and that is a beloved era of music for yours Steely. Songs like “Chapels of the Unholy” and “Dawn of Mephisto” sit right on the bleeding edge of thrash and early death, with Slayer-tastic riffs colliding with early examples of death grooves. What makes this so entertaining is how the band reaches outside of the Sepultura homage bubble to drag in new elements to expand their sound. Some songs feel slightly progressive (“Denied Divinity”) while elsewhere they shoehorn epic doom into the massive “Psalm 7:8 – God of Bizarre.” The straight-up riffbeasts are my favorites though, with “The Imposter King” being a big, fat, sweaty highlight. While these cats are always going to get compared to classic Sepultura, they made real efforts here to stake out their own identity. This is a wild, testosterone-fueled ride featuring the maximum allowable Satan, and I support that.
#20BuckSpin #2024 #AMassToTheGrotesque #Aborted #AllShallPerish #AlmaMaterRecords #Almyrkvi #AmericanMetal #ArmageddonPatronage #Aseitas #Azure #BelgianMetal #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BoltThrower #Capstan #Cathedrals #CHON #CobraTheImpaler #CultOfLuna #DanishMetal #DarkAngel #DarkDescentRecords #DeathMetal #Desolus #Destruction #DissonantDeathMetal #DreamTheater #DutchMusicWorks #EchoesOfTheDevilSDen #EdenTrough #FearlessRecords #FindingLoveInStrangePlaces #FrenchMetal #Fym #Genesis #GermanMetal #Gojira #Haken #Hardcore #HellsHeadbangers #Integrity #InternationalMetal #KarmaCollision #KillswitchEngage #KingsX #Kreator #LaTangenteLabel #ListenableRecords #Manetherean #Mastodon #Matrass #May24 #MelodicBlackMetal #Merihem #Nails #PainOfSalvation #Parfaxitas #PinkFloyd #Polyphia #PostHardcore #Powerglove #PreHistoricAnimals #ProgressiveMetal #Punk #Queen #Review #Reviews #Saidan #SelfReleased #Sinmara #Slidhr #Sodom #Strychnos #SufferingHour #SwedishMetal #SystemShock #TechnicalDeathMetal #TechnicalMetal #TerminalNation #TerraturPossessions #TesseracT #TheMosaic #TheTroopsOfDoom #TotalDissonanceWorship #UKMetal #Undergang #USMetal #VisualKillTheBlossomingOfPsychoticDepravity #WeaverOfTheBlackMoon #WhoredomeRife #Wormlust #Yes
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Stuck in the Filter: May 2024’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
I thought the onset of summer would mean a total solar beatdown. Instead, it’s brought the rain. Absolutely chucking down rain. But, if you thought that bad weather leads to mercy from me, you’re dead wrong. In fact, I pushed my minions even harder to dredge up as many waterlogged nuggets of notable ore from our perpetually overtaxed filtration system.
And so, as my “staff,” who are definitely paid (don’t look into it) dry off in the industrial-grade wind tunnel, allow me to introduce May’s Filter entries for a public I truly don’t care about at all (don’t look into it). BEHOLD!
Iceberg’s Divisive Defenstrations
Cobra The Impaler // Karma Collision [May 24th, 2024 – Listenable Records]
Belgium’s Cobra The Impaler bill themselves as carrying the torch of classic-era Mastodon, a band hitting so many spectrums of metal comparing one’s music to theirs is a much safer bet than not. Led by primary songwriter and ex-Aborted guitarist Tace DC, the band sit somewhere in the murky grey between progressive and technical modern metal. The aforementioned Mastodon worship is strong here—especially in opener “Magnetic Hex”—although the crystal clean production by Jens Borgren really prevents the use of the term “sludge.” Elsewhere there are prog-metal moments of Virus/Vector-era Haken (“Karma Collision,” “The Fountain”) and some of the relentless, drums-in-front compositions of Gojira (“Karma Collision,” “The Assassins of the Vision”). Vocalist Manuel Remmerie’s also has his work cut out for him, delivering plenty of admirable cleans in both high and low registers alongside full-throated screams and somewhat less effective pitched growls. The instrumental performances here are top-notch, professional in the verse/chorus sections, and continuously—sometimes outstandingly—creative in the free-form bridges. There is some tightening to be done with the accessibility of the choruses—they fall flat against the superior instrumental sections— but there are moments of brilliance and a ton of potential in this five-piece.
Capstan // The Mosaic [May 24th, 2024 – Fearless Records]
Anyone who’s plugged into the post-hardcore scene should know that Florida’s Capstan transcend the—rightfully deserved—vitriol thrown at the style. I don’t think any Fearless band has ever been reviewed here, but Capstan’s latest opus The Mosaic deserves a shoutout to whomever hasn’t run screaming from these halls. Led by vocalist Anthony DeMario—sure to be a divisive figure with his unapologetic pop punk cleans—the band has continuously augmented their Warped-core sound with the mathy guitar noodlings of Chon or Polyphia, and an impressive triple vocalist attack for thick, elaborate harmonies. This album, clocking in at over an hour, doesn’t pull any punches, showcasing trip-hop, breakdown-laced numbers (“Bete Noire”), full throated anthems about self-loathing and heartbreak (“Misery Scene”) and even lighter, crooning ballads (“What Can I Say”). Synergy and professionalism are where the band shine; everything has is slickly produced and the performances—especially those vocals—are whip-smart. Plenty of editing could have been done, but you can tell how much fun the band is having. Anyone with a passing interest or nostalgia for 2000’s post-hardcore should check this out. Plus their drummer plays with traditional grip, and watching a jazz guy slam out breakdowns is pretty rad in my book.
GardensTale’s Dose of Decay
Strychnos // Armageddon Patronage [May 17th, 2024 – Dark Descent Records]
I don’t always check out albums that set the comment section and/or Discord abuzz, but when I do, it rarely results in anything less than interesting. Case in point, the bottomless evil of Strychnos, a Danish outfit that struggled to get off the ground in the early 00’s, eked out a single EP in the 10’s, and suddenly started shitting out heaving platters of malicious black/death since the pandemic. Armageddon Patronage is the second full-length off their new production line, and it brings every horseman along for its deadly ride. War is embodied by the lethal double feature that starts the charge, with swelling riffs battering the unjust to fertilizer. The unflinching and unfeeling brutality of Famine seethes from “Choking Salvation,” and out the beaks of “Pale Black Birds” pours Pestilence with slavering enthusiasm. Frontman Martin Leth Anderson, who also handles bass for Undergang, employs a bellowing growl that encapsulates hopelessness and suffering, and the excellent, malevolent riffs usher an effective aura of utter destruction. Death, however, comes not at the end, but during the doom-laden centerpiece, the despondent “Endless Void Dimension” with its atmospheric Gregorian chanting. I have no qualms becoming a patron to this spiteful chunk of armageddon.
Dear Hollow’s Shtanky Shwamp of Shrieks
Saidan // Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity [May 24th, 2024 – Self-Released]
Saidan do things a little differently. The Nashville duo’s themes rooted in Japanese folklore and the formidable and mysterious yokai in particular, combined with a relentlessly riffy and punk-driven tour-de-force of black metal proportions are always food for thought in the act’s brief and formidable history. Seamlessly transitioning between punk chord progressions and bouncy drums to blastbeats and kvlt tremolo to groovy riffs and rhythms, anchored by Splatterpvnk’s ripping vocals, it never shies away from punishment. However, interwoven with this assault is a distinctly melodic undercurrent that brightens the progressions and gives purpose and a sense of fun – a hyper-melodic black metal act would be jealous. You won’t be able to shake the grooves of “Desecration of a Lustful Illusion,” the symphonic black intensity of “Genocidal Bloodfiend” and “Veins of the Wicked” hit you like a cyclone, and the classic thrash solos and anime-theme-song vibe of “Sick Abducted Purity,” “Visual Kill,” and “Switchblade Paradise” are guaranteed to get your head banging – plus, the interlude “seraphic lullaby” and instrumental closer “suffer” ain’t half bad. Visual Kill is like if Powerglove wrote a black metal album that you could actually take seriously, backed up with the technicality, songwriting chops, and sheer unbridled energy to make it work.
Parfaxitas // Weaver of the Black Moon [May 31st, 2024 – Terratur Possessions]
The minds behind Parfaxitas should need little introduction, although the moniker will likely not ring any bells. Representing three separate scenes and their respective contributions to black metal lore, two American stringsmen from acts Merihem, Suffering Hour, and Manetherean, Icelandic drummer B.E. from Almyrkvi, Sinmara, Slidhr, and Wormlust, and Norwegian vocalist K.R. From Whoredom Rife collide. Weaver of the Black Moon combines the blueprint of second-wave Norwegian black with the obsidian dissonance of Icelandic, and the experimental edge of American acts, making it a tour-de-force of both vicious sound and tortured atmosphere. Dissonance rains down like acid, a backdrop, and shroud of otherworldly sounds that shimmer and crunch in ways that recall both the winding passages of Suffering Hour and the psychedelic rawness of Wormlust simultaneously. Hammered by vicious blastbeats and guided by tortured barks, the guitar and meandering fluid bass guide listeners from untouchable intensity (“Thou Shalt Worship No Other”) to haunting and hypnotic atmosphere (“Ravens of Dispersion”) – stealing the show. Parfaxitas features a whole lot of firepower, culminating in epic closer “Fields of Nightmares,” a crescendo of punishing and otherworldly proportions.
Aseitas // Eden Trough [May 30th, 2024 – Total Dissonance Worship]
After Aseitas’ formidable 2020 album False Peace, which narrowly missed my AOTY’s, the Portland trio is back with another album – which could easily be classified as an EP in its tidy thirty-minute runtime. Eden Trough condenses the lofty and decadent ambition of its predecessor for an album devoted to complete takedown in winding riffs, punishing death metal, and ravaging vocals. From the thick and punishing signature shifts of “Libertine Captor” and “Alabaster Bones,” complete with shifting riffs and a liminal sense of melody, to the more droning and haunting “Break the Neck of Every Beautiful Thing,” to the epic and cosmic psychedelia of ten-minute centerpiece “Tiamat,” Aseitas’ shows its tantalizing and gradual progression to an echelon of indispensable in the world of dissonant death. Offering influences of convulsive mathcore, mammoth post-metal, and unhinged yet intensely calculated technicality, Eden Trough is a must-listen for the long-time fan, as well as proffering a snapshot to the curious of what makes Aseitas so special to begin with.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Progalicious Ponderings
Azure // Fym [May 23rd, 2024 – Self Release]
Are you way into high fantasy and exuberant, progressive albums that reflect that sentiment? If so, look no further than Azure’s third opus, Fym, which over its runtime recounts the tales of a mystical fox’s journey in a frightening and whimsical world. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about an album with such a storybook concept.1 But between Chris Sampson’s vocal navigations that ring as hyper-tenor and dolphin-like (“The Lavender Fox”)2 as they do sullen and heart-wrenching (“Kingdom of Ice and Light,” “Moonrise”), and Galen Stapley’s mystical fretboard wizardry that marries funk chords, soundtrack melodies, and dance-able shred, Azure packs too much sunshine in their prog for me to ignore. And at almost eighty minutes, they pack a lot of it too. However, each run through Fym’s pages finds a new rumbling bass bounce to propel a hop, a new vocal run to twirl my tongue (with notes that I couldn’t possibly hit), or a synthfully sinful refrain to stain my brain matter with happy juice—”The Azdinist // Den of Dawns” or “Agentic State” unite these ideas best—it’s truly a hard album to put down. Combining just about every era of Genesis with the acrobatics of Dream Theater, the play and ambition of the earliest of Pain of Salvation theatrics, and healthy dose of modern bastardizations (check the autotune/pitchshifting on “Doppelgänger”), Azure has made a mighty statement with Fym that I’m still digesting. And with as many inventive synth patches, harmonic vocal layers, and cinematic builds as this rainbow dose of prog pushes, it’ll be quite some time before I’ve made up my mind about it all. So I’ll continue in pieces. Or all at once. Whatever time allows because Fym is just that much fun.
PreHistoric Animals // Finding Love in Strange Places [May 16th, 2024 – Dutch Music Works]
And here we are with, what’s that, another prog concept album? This one’s a little less terrestrial though, featuring healthy infusions of a futuristic space drama and heavy-hitting synthwave doots and bounces. Over the course of their past couple works, PreHistoric Animals has found an ease in comfortable exploration with their King’s X-like tendency to grip with a barbed verse melody or chorus explosion, layered tastefully with harmonic vocal accompaniment and groove-heavy riffs. But, despite that comparison, it’s clear from the opening synth pulse of “The City of My Dreams” and “Living in a World of Bliss” that an electronic and hooky identity that’s caught between Toto and Yes imbues the edges of refrains that stick like honey to vocalist Stefan Altzar’s easy-on-the-ears narrative. Finding Love in Strange Places can get bogged down a touch in its word-driven nature, though, especially on the various interludes and certain longer tracks like “Unbreakable” and “Nothing Has Changed but Everything Is Different.” None of that fluff ever truly interrupts Finding Love’s heartbeat rhythms, which hold a steady if highly syncopated simplicity and form a hi-hat charming vessel that keeps the head nodding in progressive pomp. Oh, and it helps that guitarists Altzar and Daniel Magdic (ex-Pain of Salvation) have studied the slow-burn solo nature of greats like David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and Brian May (Queen), with tasteful legato and searing ascensions aiding in earned crescendo at Finding Love’s best moments (“Living in a World of Bliss,” “The Secret of Goodness”). Having reliably churned out confident and catchy works every other years since 2018, PreHistoric Animals fly relatively low in the flock of modern prog, but these space-bound Swedes have earned a likely lifelong aquatic fan at this stage of their growing career. Give Love a chance!
Matrass // Cathedrals [May 17th, 2024 – La Tangente Label]
And, last but not least from my assortment, Matrass hails from France to bring you Cathedrals, which is… yes, you guessed it, another prog concept album! If you’re worried about another album of the synthtastic and 80s prog-themed variety, though, don’t fret about what Matrass brings to the table. Playing closer to post than progressive waters, Cathedrals flitters about dreamy, lounge jazz guitar passages before crushing down with Cult of Luna riffs and Tesseract-inspired, low-end atmospherics. But most important to the groove and cinematic lilt that defines Cathedrals is the methods by which vocalist Clémentine Browne navigates jangling verses with gentle croons and accented, rhythmic spoken word before frying down with screeching and hissing fervor against heavy chord crushes. That talent for establishing and reinforcing mood lands idiosyncratic in the realm of post acts, so her exact methods may not fit the bill for all fans of the rise-and-fall aesthetic the genre offers. And though Matrass remains largely iterative of this mood through its hour-long run, it’s that successful idea of atmosphere that allows peak tracks “Shreds,” “Adrift” (which features Browne on saxophone instead), and “Cathedrals” to conjure such powerful and drifting thoughts in my head. And when you’re in its valleys? Matrass still maintains a textural backdrop that spells high potential for this young act.
Saunders’ Sulfuric Stash
Desolus // System Shock [March 10th, 2024 – Hells Headbangers]
Who’s up for some explosive, throwback thrashy goodness? Although hailing from the States, Desolus take plenty of inspiration from classic German trash titans Kreator, Destruction and Sodom. Throw in classic Dark Angel vibes, a heavy, modern edge and crunchy production job, and the band’s debut System Shock ticks all the boxes for a thrashing great time. This shit is seriously jacked with unhinged, old-school aggression, spitfire riffs and stampeding percussion propelling the album’s ten speed-driven assaults. An utterly deranged, ’80s underground-inspired vocal performance adds further steel-plated authenticity to a retro-minded sound that manages to sound fresh and inspired. Aside from rare moments of slower melodic nuance on the otherwise blistering “Sea of Fire,” and the aptly titled “Interlude” providing a handy breather, Desolus crank speed and intensity to the max, rarely breaking from their relentless stride. The opening one-two salvo of “System Shock” and bonkers lunacy of “From Man to Machine” set a savage tone and gritty platform from which Desolus launch assault after assault of high-octane thrash mania. “Cures of the Technomancer” is an absolute riff beast with groove and speed for days, while “The Invasion Begins” deftly puts you in a false sense of bouncy melodic security before jamming the afterburners into a typically ferocious attack. Exuberant, nasty stuff.
Terminal Nation // Echoes of the Devil’s Den [May 3rd, 2024 – 20 Buck Spin]
The second album from Pittsburgh bruisers Terminal Nation hits with sledgehammer force, obliterating any semblance of subtlety in favor of an extra beefy, in-your-face hybrid of death metal and hardcore. Echoes of the Devil’s Den features a searing, politically charged and seriously pissed-off bite. High-profile guest vocal slots seamlessly blend into the vicious attack, including strong turns from Integrity‘s Dwid Hellion (“Release the Serpents”), Killswitch Engage‘s Jesse Leach (“Merchants of Bloodshed”) and Nails frontman Todd Jones. Jones features on “Written by the Victor,” a vicious tune that harnesses thick, neck-wrecking grooves and punishing, doom-laden death grooves. The album’s hardcore influence and political slant may turn off certain listeners, but those who don’t mind some hardcore in their death stew should find plenty to like here. The gritty, muscular exterior features nods to Bolt Thrower and All Shall Perish, while the weighty, mid-paced crush, chunky riffs and breakdowns are balanced by tasteful melodic counterpoints and livelier bursts of speed (“Dying Alive”). Not all works; the provocative, anti-police song “No Reform (New Age Slave Patrol)” musically has its moments; however, the heavy-handed lyrical approach sticks out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless, Echoes of the Devil’s Den swings and slugs you more often than it misses.
Steel Druhm’s Sewer Tarts
The Troops of Doom // A Mass to the Grotesque [May 31, 2024 – Alma Mater Records]
For their sophomore outing, Brazilian death-thrashers The Troops of Doom took their vintage Sepultura-esque sound and juiced it up considerably from what we heard on 2022s Antichrist Reborn. A Mass to the Grotesque still sounds a bunch like classic Sepultura but it’s much more refined, developed and expanded in scope. Yet it’s still a frenzied, thrashing assault full of lyrics about evil, demons, and all things anti-Christian. It sounds like something that should have dropped in as the 80s thrash wave started mutating into proto-death, and that is a beloved era of music for yours Steely. Songs like “Chapels of the Unholy” and “Dawn of Mephisto” sit right on the bleeding edge of thrash and early death, with Slayer-tastic riffs colliding with early examples of death grooves. What makes this so entertaining is how the band reaches outside of the Sepultura homage bubble to drag in new elements to expand their sound. Some songs feel slightly progressive (“Denied Divinity”) while elsewhere they shoehorn epic doom into the massive “Psalm 7:8 – God of Bizarre.” The straight-up riffbeasts are my favorites though, with “The Imposter King” being a big, fat, sweaty highlight. While these cats are always going to get compared to classic Sepultura, they made real efforts here to stake out their own identity. This is a wild, testosterone-fueled ride featuring the maximum allowable Satan, and I support that.
#20BuckSpin #2024 #AMassToTheGrotesque #Aborted #AllShallPerish #AlmaMaterRecords #Almyrkvi #AmericanMetal #ArmageddonPatronage #Aseitas #Azure #BelgianMetal #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BoltThrower #Capstan #Cathedrals #CHON #CobraTheImpaler #CultOfLuna #DanishMetal #DarkAngel #DarkDescentRecords #DeathMetal #Desolus #Destruction #DissonantDeathMetal #DreamTheater #DutchMusicWorks #EchoesOfTheDevilSDen #EdenTrough #FearlessRecords #FindingLoveInStrangePlaces #FrenchMetal #Fym #Genesis #GermanMetal #Gojira #Haken #Hardcore #HellsHeadbangers #Integrity #InternationalMetal #KarmaCollision #KillswitchEngage #KingsX #Kreator #LaTangenteLabel #ListenableRecords #Manetherean #Mastodon #Matrass #May24 #MelodicBlackMetal #Merihem #Nails #PainOfSalvation #Parfaxitas #PinkFloyd #Polyphia #PostHardcore #Powerglove #PreHistoricAnimals #ProgressiveMetal #Punk #Queen #Review #Reviews #Saidan #SelfReleased #Sinmara #Slidhr #Sodom #Strychnos #SufferingHour #SwedishMetal #SystemShock #TechnicalDeathMetal #TechnicalMetal #TerminalNation #TerraturPossessions #TesseracT #TheMosaic #TheTroopsOfDoom #TotalDissonanceWorship #UKMetal #Undergang #USMetal #VisualKillTheBlossomingOfPsychoticDepravity #WeaverOfTheBlackMoon #WhoredomeRife #Wormlust #Yes
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What Community Looks Like – RFFF25 Review
It’s always the way when you go to a festival, isn’t it? – That it takes a good while to acclimatise back in to normality again. Well now that the dust has settled and we’re back to at least some sense of normality let’s look back on the amazing month of July, the whole of which was set aside for Radio Free Fedi Fest 2025.
We must begin by showing our gratitude to @radiofreefedi for coming back from the sunset to galvanise the community once more, and again being a beacon for highlighting the depth of talent in the Fedi music scene. Huge appreciation to the Hamster for powering that wheel all month long.
The Festival kicked off way back on the first of July with a typically outstanding performance from @shannoncurtis and @hilljam in which they performed their 80’s Kids live show especially for us. Fresh off touring the show they recreated the set from their basement, including the full light show and treating us to insights in to their workings with a Q+A after the set. The pair are without doubt masters of their crafts, and they combine those crafts perfectly to give us maximum joy. The 80s Kids tour is going on the road again soon. Check out the 80skids.live tour dates page to see if they’re coming to a town near you!
Speaking of Q+A, the next day was our turn to get on the stage. @sknob and I (@ethicalrevolution) answered some of your questions in between presenting my 13th NHAM mixtape, which was put together as a showcase of RFFF25 – 12 songs from 12 of the artists that were to perform over the month. I was so grateful to sknob for his expertise in putting together the technical and aesthetic aspects of the show, and of course for the moral support. If you missed it we did manage to record the show which you can catch up on here.
On the third day of the event Damon Thomas (@ruralgloom) performed with spoken word. I was still backstage chatting to all the groupies that had assembled from our show so I missed it but Deb was there and she said, “Damon Thomas read excerpts from his Southern Gothic written works, in his gentle understated style, a thoroughly relaxing vignette of small-town life and growing up in the US South. We were left with images from a delightful time capsule of little people looming large in little places.”
Next to perform was @fluffy and it was a performance the likes of which I’d never seen before: A fully blown VR performance in which the Fluffy that we saw was an animated critter on an animated stage in an animated venue with an animated guitar! The set is available on demand and you can follow Fluffy to be notified of future live performances, as we were informed that this critter from Seattle performs relatively regularly.
Then came @lislegaard who was an absolute delight. Kristoffer totally took us down in to full relaxation zone before belting us out with the booms and glitches in a really epic performance which combined amazing sounds and visuals. You can catch the show again on Kristoffer’s Hyper8 page. And he’s another to keep an eye on for future streams.
Next up was my NHAM co-conspirator @sknob. The master songwriter’s gig from the Rugged Scrublands somewhere in the South of France is also available on demand. In it he opened up by playing through his current EP, “Cities” before going through a rendition of some of his bonkwave tracks and playing covers of other Fedi musicians including @futzle, @keefmarshall and even 8 year old me!
The baton was then passed to Fedi superstar and regular streamer @meljoann who combined wit, wizardry and wickedness (in the good sense!) despite having to take a call from her therapist (former talk show host, Dr Synergy Myers) during the show. This set wasn’t recorded but Meljoann is prolific when it comes to livestreaming. Just follow @relay to keep in the loop with future performances.
On July 12th Pulu (@ahihi) put on a show-stopping performance of beautiful sounds and quality beats in an incredible method of performing via multi-computer set up on a balcony by some woods in Helsinki. Rather than try to go in to the detail of the music production, for which I still can’t quite fathom, you can check it out for yourself via the recording of the stream. One particularly incredible moment in the show for me was when the bird song samples were being played and outside my own window behind me real birds were echoing the same calls to give me proper surround sound!
The next night @jimpurbrick defrosted his Moogs for Remember Glaciers’ first 100% solar powered telling of Duncan Porter’s tale of two visits to the Rhone glacier. An eye opening storytelling of the demise of glaciers for many in the lobby. While this particular show was not recorded, there is a version available from his Gravitons Festival 2024 set.
As we came towards the middle of the month Grüezi Sexgott (@DePemig) moved their weekly live streamed jam session over to the Radio Free Fedi stage as we dimmed the lights, heightened the haze and mellowed in to a smooth and funky improv set from the accomplished four-piece. They play every Tuesday at 9pm Swiss time.
Then came @alexglow. What a performer. Alex was so relaxed; at times moving; always fun; with quite beautiful playing; and being very clever – all rolled in to one concert. She played covers and originals, taking requests too, of any song so long as it was about space. It’s something she does on Sunday’s over on spacesongsunday.com
I tried but largely failed to tune in to @axwax whilst on a coach. Fortunately it was made available to catch up on. With graphics that bounced in time with the music and an impressive rack of machines, synths and a big red button AxWax powered through some classic acid, techno, hip-hop and of course bonkwave. Donning his 80s Kids t-shirt in the sweltering Spanish heat, the ever delightful Axel played an encore of 20 minutes or so after the main set while we awaited the second act of the night…
Back home by this point I was able to enjoy @Jazzaria from the comfort of my own sofa. We watched an animated keyboard playing the notes that were improvised from prompts given in the lobby which included 80s sitcoms, nightly news, small mammals in fancy hats, tramping cats and 80s detectives. It was quite something seeing vague concepts being brought to life by the sounds of a keyboard.
Then on July 23rd we witnessed @conniptions being brilliant with a large 4-stringed instrument, brilliant with a small 8-stringed instrument, brilliant with a regular 6-stringed instrument and even being brilliant on the magic trumpets. All on his actual birthday – inviting all of us festival goers to his party of left-field anti-folk – as we bopped along and celebrated with him. More from the creations of Fit and the Conniptions can be found here.
Next came ‘A Christmas in July Wasted’ with Deb Pickett (@futzle). The set up was as smooth as the performance as Deb beamed across the globe from Victoria, Australia. With lyrics and chord progressions often too clever for me Deb went down like a plump chap in a red suit down a chimney – with a bang and full of treats and gifts!
With the month drawing out we turned our gaze over to Toronto in Canada where @bgm performed from a basement with a low ceiling. Sadly he was too good that the hour whizzed by in an absolute flash. A highly accomplished musician and video maker, bgm did not disappoint.
What was disappointing, however, was that this was to be my last show. I had to leave the festival early for other commitments so I hand you over to sknob to run through the final three events…
Thanks Sam. Well, I’m not used to this exercise, but I’ll try to do the artists justice.
After a few words of introduction, Calin Dica aka @akash literally blew our socks off as soon as we heard the first notes of his spectacular guitar playing. Expertly jumping from his guitar to his electronic gizmos with dizzying precision and grace, and even surprising the audience with some epic guitar solos, Calin Dica/akash treated us to a barrage of pure energy in song form. I think it’s safe to say we were all flabbergasted when he told us this was the first time he’d ever performed his music in a solo set. Catch up on demand.
What can I say about nightmother aka @alisynthesis. I discovered her music only recently thanks to Sam, and to say that I’m a fan would be the understatement of the year. In fact I probably shouldn’t be allowed to review her set at all, but here we are, and here we were, teleported into her beautiful studio filled with too many knobs and dials to count (and a couple of totally oblivious dogs on a comfy looking couch). If you think you know synthesizers and electronic music, think again. The sounds that Alison conjures out of her machines is glorious, as is her singing. In fact, the chat which is usually full of wisecracking banter was stunned into silence on several occasions. I do have one complaint though. The set was way too short. Alison, we want more! Catch up on demand.
Synth music can also be gloriously harsh and furious. Just ask @controlfreak. Sorry, I don’t speak genres, but this absolutely ferocious set (showcasing the darker side of oontz as he eloquently puts it) was exceptional not only for its stunning and sometimes disturbing visuals, but also for its uncompromising original pieces old and new, its spectacular remixes of @shannoncurtis, and for its real drums played on an actual, real, physical drum kit! And when you thought you couldn’t be any more delightfully surprised, controlfreak got up and actually sang for us, well, beautifully (if he’ll pardon the expression), bringing RFFF25 to a perfect conclusion. Back to you Sam.
We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again, and again. We’re forever grateful for Radio Free Fedi and this month was a perfect exemplifier as to why. It’s about the @music and the artists but it’s not just about the music and the artists, it’s about the community. And this, THIS, showed just what community looks like.
#bonkwave #community #FediMusic #LiveStream #music #RFF #RFFF25
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Sentynel and Twelve’s Top Ten(ish) of 2023
By sentynel
Sentynel
Is it that time already? Whew. 2023 has raced past me, carried by a blizzard of endless Stuff. I need a goddamn break, which is currently tentatively scheduled for about 2025. As a result, I’ve been desperately behind on my listening for most of the year. I barely scraped together five reviews, all for bands I knew and liked, and was impressed by… one of them. I was nervous about my list all the way through to about November. Fortunately, I have once again ended up with a solid list of great albums, though the best doesn’t quite top last year’s The Otolith. I have lost track of what a normal selection looks like for me at this point, but this year’s big genre winner is apparently instrumental prog, while I felt it was a slightly weak year for post-metal. I also suspect I have more overlap with some of the cooler members of staff than I usually do, amongst all the records you already know are going to be on my list.
Despite a heavy year, contributing to Angry Metal Guy dot com continues to be one of my favorite hobbies. The other staff continue to have questionable taste, but I’ve found music that brings me joy anyway. We have new writers, I’ve met a couple of last year’s crop, and they’re all pretty chill despite their opinions on music. Everyone continues to put a huge amount of free work into this weird little corner of the internet. And my server load stats confirm that you, the readers, are still out there, using my bandwidth.
Finally, following Twitter’s ongoing trainwreck killing off the review autoposting there, we are now available on a slightly experimental basis on Mastodon and compatible platforms. Simply follow @[email protected]. (Note that comments don’t sync in from Mastodon, so you’ll still need to come to the site in order to tell us we’re wrong.) Of course, RSS and Facebook continue to be available.
#ish. Angus McSix // Angus McSix and the Sword of Power – I’ll defend last year’s Fellowship record to the death as serious music. The sophistication of its writing and the adulthood of its themes proves that upbeat, catchy power metal doesn’t have to be silly or lightweight. I offer no such defense for this record. This is incredibly silly. Honestly, between the track titles and how nakedly the whole thing leans on Winkler’s previous role, I was expecting to write this off as a failed attempt to recapture past glories without the wit—another soulless, forgettable pop-power metal band going through the motions. And yet it works. The fun feels genuine, the runtime too brief to be self-indulgent, the songwriting too varied to be a lazy cash-in. It’s infectious, it’s miles better than the new Gloryhammer record, and I’ve ended up listening to it a lot. I embrace the upcoming savaging in the comments section.
#10. Nuclear Power Trio // Wet Ass Plutonium – Speaking of silly, it’s the guys in creepy dictator masks. As I said when I wrote about this album, after a great EP they’ve stuck the landing on the album as well, cementing their position as serious musicians and not a one-off novelty. Fun, triumphant, soaring, Wet Ass Plutonium is an absolute blast to listen to. The musicianship is fantastic, and in particular I’ll highlight again just how great Putin is. (On bass.)
#9. Sermon // Of Golden Verse – Starring a rather more seriously masked musician, this is an emotional, gripping prog album. The only thing holding this back from a higher list placing is that I haven’t found myself compelled to listen to it all the time, which is definitely a me problem (see intro). The moment I actually do put it on I’m hooked. The dynamic, catchy songwriting has an urgent edge to it that gets under your skin and sets it apart from a lot of other prog metal, which can lack a bit of bite. I absolutely love the vocal performance here in particular, but the whole thing is written and performed thoughtfully and impactfully.
#8. Ok Goodnight // The Fox and the Bird – In the best tradition of prog, this is a weird album. It tries to do a lot of things and manages nearly all of them. Williams’ charismatic, mood-changing vocals carry this whimsical tale. The first few times I listened I wasn’t sure it was going to stick, but I kept finding fragments of her lines in my head. With a few more listens, the whole thing settled. There are still a few little stumbles where weird and shifting gives way to just disjointed, but I find the rest of the album far too addictively, earwormily interesting to mind too much.
#7. Scaphoid // Echoes of the Rift – I owe this record more complete thoughts than I have space for here—there’s a TYMHM piece due, but see the intro for why it probably hasn’t appeared yet. In short: I’m a huge fan of this sort of pretty, thoughtful instrumental prog. I loved Absent Passages, and Echoes of the Rift is an improvement in effectively every meaningful way. Hobart has developed as a composer, and as a result it’s shorter, tighter, more varied, and more memorable. As with a lot of music on this list, my love for it is in the mood it conjures. It’s thoughtful, meditative, exploratory, and has been a favorite work and travel soundtrack for me.
#6. Sanguine Glacialis // Maladaptive Daydreaming – This record is A Lot. I mentioned it to Dr. Wvrm, who described it as “like Cradle of Filth bodysnatched Epica, then showed up to the studio and found it double booked with Nik Sundin hanging out with a jazz quartet. And instead of throwing them out being like ‘yea you know what let’s do all of it at once'”. Frankly, I have nothing further to add to this bit of poetry. If this sounds utterly horrifying, you’re not going to like Maladaptive Daydreaming. But if you’re maybe interested, know that it’s way more cohesive than it has any right to be and a lot of fun. The main thing holding it back is an inexplicably loud mastering job.
#5. Night Crowned // Tales – Here’s an interesting study in genre and reviewers’ tastes. Thus, who is far more brvtal than me, describes this as “symphonic/melodic blackened death.” I, meanwhile, relate to this as a folk metal album, though one much more interesting than the genre typically delivers. Just listen to that hurdy-gurdy or the styling of the vocals. (The female vocals really remind me of the Witcher 3 soundtrack’s Eastern European folk, for example. It’s notable that the cover art here features the Wild Hunt.) Either way, Tales is a wild ride and a certified banger through and through.
#4. Fires in the Distance // Air Not Meant for Us – This is so pretty. That seems like an odd thing for melodic death metal to be striving for, but there’s really no other word for it. Soaring guitar melodies, sweeping strings, and airy piano tug at your heartstrings. But a core of heavy riffs and harsh vocals keeps it anchored. The two mesh startlingly well. Fires in the Distance really lean into the lilting piano at times—if you’d told me a band were going to put this much piano into a melodeath record and everyone would love it, I would have laughed at you. You’d think it would sound insubstantial against the rhythm section, but it never does. Genuinely beautiful.
#3. Helga // Wrapped in Mist – This record reminds me of Gåte (who put out a good EP this year!) gone atmospheric, both in the folk composition but also in the slightly unusual vocals. There’s also some hints of Meer. It’s been criticized, not unfairly, for imperfectly mixing its folk takes on post-metal and airy dream-pop. I like both, but the more I listen, the less I think that separation is the right lens to view it through. Both these genres are characterized by a prioritization of atmosphere and feeling over immediacy, and that’s where Wrapped in Mist’s success lies. I’ve spoken before about my love of music that feels like a witches’ forest ritual, and this is the exact button Helga presses for me. Wherever it sits among its contributing genres, it conjures that feeling.
#2. Essence of Datum // Radikal Rats – Wildly underrated by some hack at little-known music blog Angry Metal Guy, “a heavier God is an Astronaut do the Mass Effect soundtrack” is right up my alley. Even then, I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve listened to this album. It’s not the world’s most challenging record, which has probably contributed to me reaching for it so often over a difficult few months. But don’t confuse that with a lack of impact. It’s cleverly written and impeccably performed, catchy, interesting and varied. This would be a fantastic soundtrack to a top-notch sci-fi film. (I listened to it a lot while reading the new Murderbot book.) As I said above, this has been a good year for instrumental prog, and the placement of this record despite two other strong contenders in the genre should speak volumes.
#1. Wayfarer // American Gothic – This one shouldn’t come as a surprise if you read my thoughts on Lathe on last year’s list. I’m a sucker for the micro-genre I’ll call industrial bluegrass, and last year Lathe mixed it with post-metal with unexpectedly successful results. Wayfarer, meanwhile, bring in black metal, a genre I normally find myself bored by. Indeed, A Romance with Violence didn’t quite do it for me. American Gothic though absolutely knocks it out of the park. The genre blend is utterly seamless, to the extent that to simply call it black metal does it a disservice. This is the best of bleak country painted with the instrumentation of black metal. Electric guitars pick up melody lines from banjos with a twang. Distorted slide guitars get that pedal steel feeling. There’s even a honky-tonk piano. It’s all deceptively melodic, and it helps there’s a heavy twist of post here. This seems to have put some members of the staff off—the second half is less immediate than the first—but these people are wrong. The atmosphere that results is pitch-perfect. The vocals and the lyrics are great. This is not an album that I expected, nor did I expect to love it like this. But it shot to the top of my list within the first couple of listens, and I love it a bit more with every spin.
Honorable Mentions
- BRIQUEVILLE // IIII – I saw these guys play at ArcTanGent this year and was dead impressed. This is really slow-burn post, but it’s worth it.
- Mutoid Man // Mutants – Another ATG band, although from many years ago. Not a big departure from their prog/punk usual, but a lot of fun.
- healthyliving // Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief – “Bloom” narrowly missed out on my Song of the Year. The rest of the album is also really good post-metal, with a great vocalist.
- Svalbard // The Weight of the Mask – This didn’t blow me away like When I Die, but it’s not for lack of quality; it’s a great album still, it’s just not a huge evolution.
- Tribunal // The Weight of Remembrance – A really solid bit of classic doom. As with any well-trodden genre it takes a lot to stand out, and Tribunal nail it with some great interplay—on vocals and instruments—between the duo.
Disappointment of the Year
Repeatedly giving poor-to-middling reviews to bands I like. Also, the production on that Anareta album, which I wanted so badly to love.
Song of the Year
Vienna Teng “The Riversitter” – I’m not even going to pretend to claim that this is metal, though I did of course first hear Teng on this very website. She is my favorite lyricist ever, and one of my favorite musicians in general. It’s been a long ten years since Aims, and it’s fantastic to have new music from her again. This is a pretty, moving piece, based on a short story, about not overthinking or overplanning, community, beauty, and building on each other’s ideas. I can’t fully explain why I’ve been so gripped by this song, but it spoke to me. I’m not normally a “same song on repeat” person, but I’ve listened to this song over three times as often as anything else this year.
Twelve
Up until a few weeks ago, I’d have said this was a pretty solid year, all things considered—but alas, here I am, ending the year on a low note. 2023 felt both very long and very quick, and we weren’t too far into it when I realized my contributions to this here blog were pretty much abysmal. Thankfully, my fellow writers and alternate personas are very understanding people, but it’s still rough to realize that the year has ended to mark my lowest output yet here at Angry Metal Guy.
At least the music was solid. While I was off doing who-knows-what offline, a whole bunch of talented and wonderful writers ghostwrote a whole bunch of compelling reviews and recommendations here that have come to dominate my listening. So before I properly dive into sharing my top albums for 2023, I’ll take a second to thank every one of them, from the newest n00b to the oldest olde, for a level of dedication and talent I just didn’t reach this year. I’m looking forward to the next one, and the one after that as well.
Anyway…
#ish. David Eugene Edwards // Hyacinth – Usually there’s a space or two on this list for the most exciting neofolk that comes my way in a given year, but this year was a quiet one on that front. In its absence, however, the dark country tellings of David Eugene Edwards are quickly becoming a favourite. It’s not a style I’m very familiar with—hence the #ish—but owing to the gorgeously ominous storytelling on Hyacinth, that’s something I’m determined to fix in 2024.
#10. Sacred Outcry // Towers of Gold – Life™ works in mysterious ways; when I was unable to review Towers of Gold following my excitement at Sacred Outcry’s debut, I felt pretty badly. Thankfully, Holdeneye’s account captures what is so special about this power metal odyssey better than I’d have been able to at the time. An adventure for the whole family, and an impressively emotive power metal opus.
#9. Theocracy // Mosaic – Speaking of power metal, I also loved Mosaic in a way I haven’t been taken by a Theocracy album in some time. The balance of joyful and serious themes is something the band does really, really well here, and it’s a splash of positivity that I was happy to receive just as the weather began to turn cold. Not to mention it’s impressively heavy on top of it all, and the choruses stick around long after the album is done.
# 8. The Ocean // Holocene – I’ve said in a couple of places that I don’t care much for post metal, but I do like it when The Ocean does it. The trend continued this year with Holocene, which felt more experimental, less heavy, and altogether weirder than a lot of their past work. This all works great for me, and I found I kept returning to Holocene as the year went by. “Atlantic” in particular may be one of my most listened-to songs for the year. High defeatism, am I right?
#7. Warfarer // American Gothic – Blistering, beautiful black metal; a heartfelt reason for the anger; influence from the wild, wild West to keep it all fresh. What could there possibly be to not like about American Gothic? In the past, Wayfarer haven’t quite captured my attention, but this album broke through my resistance and pummelled it to the ground within the first four seconds of “The Thousand Tombs of Western Promise.” A phenomenal album, through and through.
#6. Briqueville // IIII – IIII is not an album I expected to list here; in fact, one of the first things I did when I saw Charcharodon’s 4.0 review for it was ignore it. More fool I. I thought I had this list down when I finally spun Briqueville’s latest for the first time and it tore its way up these IIII spaces astonishingly fast. Dreamy, experimental doom atmospheres are not easy to pin down, but the songwriting here is incredible. The time passes so quickly, and then what’s left to do but to spin the whole album over again?
#5. Godthrymm // Distortions – Rounding out the other half of my top doom metal albums of the year is Distortions, essentially because this album is heavy. I love the straightforward style, the well-produced misery, and the way Godthrymm is able to so cleanly convey such powerful emotions. This album is a testament to doom metal done well, and it’s been a welcome companion since the first time I heard it—I was hooked pretty much instantly.
#4. Burden of Ymir // Heorot – If you read my reviews, you already know that the accordion is the way into my heart. This feast of black metal incorporates exactly that, and makes for a heavy, folky journey, an amazing album with a story to tell and a ton of heart. It’s also a sneaky album, the kind that grows on you the more you listen to it, with small details hidden in clever songwriting. It’s hard to ask for more; this is an album that feels made exactly for me.
#3. Angus McSix // Angus McSix and the Sword of Power – Speaking of albums that feel made exactly for me, Angus McSix is some of the most fun you can have listening to power metal. I am a sucker for cheesiness, and Angus McSix’s debut dials the cheese factor up to the maximum. The other, crucial side of the dial, however, is the songwriting. Thanks to that, everything works in a way that makes the album more than the sum of it’s ridiculous concept1. It’s a very strong album, and one that’s only grown on me with time.
#2. Sodomisery // Mazzaroth – I can only imagine that Dr. A. N. Grier and I have dramatically different year-end lists, but his review of Mazzaroth is spot-on, and I’m certain we’ll share this entry. As orchestral black metal goes, this album is grand, heavy, and huge, making for a phenomenal opus that is my top black metal album of the year. The vocal performance, the orchestrations, the songwriting—everything on Mazzaroth is top-tier, larger-than-life, incredible black metal.
#1. Vanishing Kids // Miracle of Death – It will be difficult to sum up my appreciation for Miracle of Death in the short blurb I have before me. From the first seconds of “Spill the Dark,” this album takes me to a cold, comfortable place. It’s emotional, but it feels like numbness; it’s quiet, but leaves a huge impression. Everything about this album works to create atmospheres of bleakness and hopelessness, and any time I’ve felt low throughout the year, Vanishing Kids has been there2. Miracle of Death is, in that regard, an amazing album, and one that was always going to take this spot on my list. Truthfully, I’m shocked to realize this only came out a couple of months ago—it’s been so right for my 2023 that it feels like it’s been there since January 1.
Honorable Mention
- Suotana // Ounas I – I had a lot of fun reviewing Ounas I, and have had a lot of fun listening to it since. The black/melodeath/power metal thing Suotana does so well lends itself to an extremely fun, energetic album that is just so solid. This is an album done well, and I’m still recommending it to pretty much all of you!
Song of the Year
Sometimes, you just need to have some fun. No matter how difficult, irritating, or otherwise negative this year may have been, “Ride to Hell” has been the pick-me-up song to deal with it. This is a terrific power-meets-traditional metal anthem, and the enthusiasm in which Angus McSix performs it is a huge part of the appeal. It’s catchy, it’s fun, it’s wildly addictive—it’s everything you need when times are rough and you don’t know any supernatural motorcyclists in the real world. It’s also a great song when you’re having a good day already and want to make it better.
#2023 #AngusMcSix #BlogPost #Briqueville #BurdenOfYmir #DavidEugeneEdwards #EssenceOfDatum #FiresInTheDistance #Godthrymm #healthyliving #Helga #Lists #Listurnalia #MutoidMan #NightCrowned #OkGoodnight #SacredOutcry #SanguineGlacialis #Scaphoid #SentynelSAndTwelveSTopTenIshOf2023 #Sermon #Sodomisery #Suotana #Svalbard #TheOcean #TheOtolith #Theocracy #Tribunal #VanishingKids #ViennaTeng #Wayfarer
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Sentynel and Twelve’s Top Ten(ish) of 2023
By sentynel
Sentynel
Is it that time already? Whew. 2023 has raced past me, carried by a blizzard of endless Stuff. I need a goddamn break, which is currently tentatively scheduled for about 2025. As a result, I’ve been desperately behind on my listening for most of the year. I barely scraped together five reviews, all for bands I knew and liked, and was impressed by… one of them. I was nervous about my list all the way through to about November. Fortunately, I have once again ended up with a solid list of great albums, though the best doesn’t quite top last year’s The Otolith. I have lost track of what a normal selection looks like for me at this point, but this year’s big genre winner is apparently instrumental prog, while I felt it was a slightly weak year for post-metal. I also suspect I have more overlap with some of the cooler members of staff than I usually do, amongst all the records you already know are going to be on my list.
Despite a heavy year, contributing to Angry Metal Guy dot com continues to be one of my favorite hobbies. The other staff continue to have questionable taste, but I’ve found music that brings me joy anyway. We have new writers, I’ve met a couple of last year’s crop, and they’re all pretty chill despite their opinions on music. Everyone continues to put a huge amount of free work into this weird little corner of the internet. And my server load stats confirm that you, the readers, are still out there, using my bandwidth.
Finally, following Twitter’s ongoing trainwreck killing off the review autoposting there, we are now available on a slightly experimental basis on Mastodon and compatible platforms. Simply follow @[email protected]. (Note that comments don’t sync in from Mastodon, so you’ll still need to come to the site in order to tell us we’re wrong.) Of course, RSS and Facebook continue to be available.
#ish. Angus McSix // Angus McSix and the Sword of Power – I’ll defend last year’s Fellowship record to the death as serious music. The sophistication of its writing and the adulthood of its themes proves that upbeat, catchy power metal doesn’t have to be silly or lightweight. I offer no such defense for this record. This is incredibly silly. Honestly, between the track titles and how nakedly the whole thing leans on Winkler’s previous role, I was expecting to write this off as a failed attempt to recapture past glories without the wit—another soulless, forgettable pop-power metal band going through the motions. And yet it works. The fun feels genuine, the runtime too brief to be self-indulgent, the songwriting too varied to be a lazy cash-in. It’s infectious, it’s miles better than the new Gloryhammer record, and I’ve ended up listening to it a lot. I embrace the upcoming savaging in the comments section.
#10. Nuclear Power Trio // Wet Ass Plutonium – Speaking of silly, it’s the guys in creepy dictator masks. As I said when I wrote about this album, after a great EP they’ve stuck the landing on the album as well, cementing their position as serious musicians and not a one-off novelty. Fun, triumphant, soaring, Wet Ass Plutonium is an absolute blast to listen to. The musicianship is fantastic, and in particular I’ll highlight again just how great Putin is. (On bass.)
#9. Sermon // Of Golden Verse – Starring a rather more seriously masked musician, this is an emotional, gripping prog album. The only thing holding this back from a higher list placing is that I haven’t found myself compelled to listen to it all the time, which is definitely a me problem (see intro). The moment I actually do put it on I’m hooked. The dynamic, catchy songwriting has an urgent edge to it that gets under your skin and sets it apart from a lot of other prog metal, which can lack a bit of bite. I absolutely love the vocal performance here in particular, but the whole thing is written and performed thoughtfully and impactfully.
#8. Ok Goodnight // The Fox and the Bird – In the best tradition of prog, this is a weird album. It tries to do a lot of things and manages nearly all of them. Williams’ charismatic, mood-changing vocals carry this whimsical tale. The first few times I listened I wasn’t sure it was going to stick, but I kept finding fragments of her lines in my head. With a few more listens, the whole thing settled. There are still a few little stumbles where weird and shifting gives way to just disjointed, but I find the rest of the album far too addictively, earwormily interesting to mind too much.
#7. Scaphoid // Echoes of the Rift – I owe this record more complete thoughts than I have space for here—there’s a TYMHM piece due, but see the intro for why it probably hasn’t appeared yet. In short: I’m a huge fan of this sort of pretty, thoughtful instrumental prog. I loved Absent Passages, and Echoes of the Rift is an improvement in effectively every meaningful way. Hobart has developed as a composer, and as a result it’s shorter, tighter, more varied, and more memorable. As with a lot of music on this list, my love for it is in the mood it conjures. It’s thoughtful, meditative, exploratory, and has been a favorite work and travel soundtrack for me.
#6. Sanguine Glacialis // Maladaptive Daydreaming – This record is A Lot. I mentioned it to Dr. Wvrm, who described it as “like Cradle of Filth bodysnatched Epica, then showed up to the studio and found it double booked with Nik Sundin hanging out with a jazz quartet. And instead of throwing them out being like ‘yea you know what let’s do all of it at once'”. Frankly, I have nothing further to add to this bit of poetry. If this sounds utterly horrifying, you’re not going to like Maladaptive Daydreaming. But if you’re maybe interested, know that it’s way more cohesive than it has any right to be and a lot of fun. The main thing holding it back is an inexplicably loud mastering job.
#5. Night Crowned // Tales – Here’s an interesting study in genre and reviewers’ tastes. Thus, who is far more brvtal than me, describes this as “symphonic/melodic blackened death.” I, meanwhile, relate to this as a folk metal album, though one much more interesting than the genre typically delivers. Just listen to that hurdy-gurdy or the styling of the vocals. (The female vocals really remind me of the Witcher 3 soundtrack’s Eastern European folk, for example. It’s notable that the cover art here features the Wild Hunt.) Either way, Tales is a wild ride and a certified banger through and through.
#4. Fires in the Distance // Air Not Meant for Us – This is so pretty. That seems like an odd thing for melodic death metal to be striving for, but there’s really no other word for it. Soaring guitar melodies, sweeping strings, and airy piano tug at your heartstrings. But a core of heavy riffs and harsh vocals keeps it anchored. The two mesh startlingly well. Fires in the Distance really lean into the lilting piano at times—if you’d told me a band were going to put this much piano into a melodeath record and everyone would love it, I would have laughed at you. You’d think it would sound insubstantial against the rhythm section, but it never does. Genuinely beautiful.
#3. Helga // Wrapped in Mist – This record reminds me of Gåte (who put out a good EP this year!) gone atmospheric, both in the folk composition but also in the slightly unusual vocals. There’s also some hints of Meer. It’s been criticized, not unfairly, for imperfectly mixing its folk takes on post-metal and airy dream-pop. I like both, but the more I listen, the less I think that separation is the right lens to view it through. Both these genres are characterized by a prioritization of atmosphere and feeling over immediacy, and that’s where Wrapped in Mist’s success lies. I’ve spoken before about my love of music that feels like a witches’ forest ritual, and this is the exact button Helga presses for me. Wherever it sits among its contributing genres, it conjures that feeling.
#2. Essence of Datum // Radikal Rats – Wildly underrated by some hack at little-known music blog Angry Metal Guy, “a heavier God is an Astronaut do the Mass Effect soundtrack” is right up my alley. Even then, I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve listened to this album. It’s not the world’s most challenging record, which has probably contributed to me reaching for it so often over a difficult few months. But don’t confuse that with a lack of impact. It’s cleverly written and impeccably performed, catchy, interesting and varied. This would be a fantastic soundtrack to a top-notch sci-fi film. (I listened to it a lot while reading the new Murderbot book.) As I said above, this has been a good year for instrumental prog, and the placement of this record despite two other strong contenders in the genre should speak volumes.
#1. Wayfarer // American Gothic – This one shouldn’t come as a surprise if you read my thoughts on Lathe on last year’s list. I’m a sucker for the micro-genre I’ll call industrial bluegrass, and last year Lathe mixed it with post-metal with unexpectedly successful results. Wayfarer, meanwhile, bring in black metal, a genre I normally find myself bored by. Indeed, A Romance with Violence didn’t quite do it for me. American Gothic though absolutely knocks it out of the park. The genre blend is utterly seamless, to the extent that to simply call it black metal does it a disservice. This is the best of bleak country painted with the instrumentation of black metal. Electric guitars pick up melody lines from banjos with a twang. Distorted slide guitars get that pedal steel feeling. There’s even a honky-tonk piano. It’s all deceptively melodic, and it helps there’s a heavy twist of post here. This seems to have put some members of the staff off—the second half is less immediate than the first—but these people are wrong. The atmosphere that results is pitch-perfect. The vocals and the lyrics are great. This is not an album that I expected, nor did I expect to love it like this. But it shot to the top of my list within the first couple of listens, and I love it a bit more with every spin.
Honorable Mentions
- BRIQUEVILLE // IIII – I saw these guys play at ArcTanGent this year and was dead impressed. This is really slow-burn post, but it’s worth it.
- Mutoid Man // Mutants – Another ATG band, although from many years ago. Not a big departure from their prog/punk usual, but a lot of fun.
- healthyliving // Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief – “Bloom” narrowly missed out on my Song of the Year. The rest of the album is also really good post-metal, with a great vocalist.
- Svalbard // The Weight of the Mask – This didn’t blow me away like When I Die, but it’s not for lack of quality; it’s a great album still, it’s just not a huge evolution.
- Tribunal // The Weight of Remembrance – A really solid bit of classic doom. As with any well-trodden genre it takes a lot to stand out, and Tribunal nail it with some great interplay—on vocals and instruments—between the duo.
Disappointment of the Year
Repeatedly giving poor-to-middling reviews to bands I like. Also, the production on that Anareta album, which I wanted so badly to love.
Song of the Year
Vienna Teng “The Riversitter” – I’m not even going to pretend to claim that this is metal, though I did of course first hear Teng on this very website. She is my favorite lyricist ever, and one of my favorite musicians in general. It’s been a long ten years since Aims, and it’s fantastic to have new music from her again. This is a pretty, moving piece, based on a short story, about not overthinking or overplanning, community, beauty, and building on each other’s ideas. I can’t fully explain why I’ve been so gripped by this song, but it spoke to me. I’m not normally a “same song on repeat” person, but I’ve listened to this song over three times as often as anything else this year.
Twelve
Up until a few weeks ago, I’d have said this was a pretty solid year, all things considered—but alas, here I am, ending the year on a low note. 2023 felt both very long and very quick, and we weren’t too far into it when I realized my contributions to this here blog were pretty much abysmal. Thankfully, my fellow writers and alternate personas are very understanding people, but it’s still rough to realize that the year has ended to mark my lowest output yet here at Angry Metal Guy.
At least the music was solid. While I was off doing who-knows-what offline, a whole bunch of talented and wonderful writers ghostwrote a whole bunch of compelling reviews and recommendations here that have come to dominate my listening. So before I properly dive into sharing my top albums for 2023, I’ll take a second to thank every one of them, from the newest n00b to the oldest olde, for a level of dedication and talent I just didn’t reach this year. I’m looking forward to the next one, and the one after that as well.
Anyway…
#ish. David Eugene Edwards // Hyacinth – Usually there’s a space or two on this list for the most exciting neofolk that comes my way in a given year, but this year was a quiet one on that front. In its absence, however, the dark country tellings of David Eugene Edwards are quickly becoming a favourite. It’s not a style I’m very familiar with—hence the #ish—but owing to the gorgeously ominous storytelling on Hyacinth, that’s something I’m determined to fix in 2024.
#10. Sacred Outcry // Towers of Gold – Life™ works in mysterious ways; when I was unable to review Towers of Gold following my excitement at Sacred Outcry’s debut, I felt pretty badly. Thankfully, Holdeneye’s account captures what is so special about this power metal odyssey better than I’d have been able to at the time. An adventure for the whole family, and an impressively emotive power metal opus.
#9. Theocracy // Mosaic – Speaking of power metal, I also loved Mosaic in a way I haven’t been taken by a Theocracy album in some time. The balance of joyful and serious themes is something the band does really, really well here, and it’s a splash of positivity that I was happy to receive just as the weather began to turn cold. Not to mention it’s impressively heavy on top of it all, and the choruses stick around long after the album is done.
# 8. The Ocean // Holocene – I’ve said in a couple of places that I don’t care much for post metal, but I do like it when The Ocean does it. The trend continued this year with Holocene, which felt more experimental, less heavy, and altogether weirder than a lot of their past work. This all works great for me, and I found I kept returning to Holocene as the year went by. “Atlantic” in particular may be one of my most listened-to songs for the year. High defeatism, am I right?
#7. Warfarer // American Gothic – Blistering, beautiful black metal; a heartfelt reason for the anger; influence from the wild, wild West to keep it all fresh. What could there possibly be to not like about American Gothic? In the past, Wayfarer haven’t quite captured my attention, but this album broke through my resistance and pummelled it to the ground within the first four seconds of “The Thousand Tombs of Western Promise.” A phenomenal album, through and through.
#6. Briqueville // IIII – IIII is not an album I expected to list here; in fact, one of the first things I did when I saw Charcharodon’s 4.0 review for it was ignore it. More fool I. I thought I had this list down when I finally spun Briqueville’s latest for the first time and it tore its way up these IIII spaces astonishingly fast. Dreamy, experimental doom atmospheres are not easy to pin down, but the songwriting here is incredible. The time passes so quickly, and then what’s left to do but to spin the whole album over again?
#5. Godthrymm // Distortions – Rounding out the other half of my top doom metal albums of the year is Distortions, essentially because this album is heavy. I love the straightforward style, the well-produced misery, and the way Godthrymm is able to so cleanly convey such powerful emotions. This album is a testament to doom metal done well, and it’s been a welcome companion since the first time I heard it—I was hooked pretty much instantly.
#4. Burden of Ymir // Heorot – If you read my reviews, you already know that the accordion is the way into my heart. This feast of black metal incorporates exactly that, and makes for a heavy, folky journey, an amazing album with a story to tell and a ton of heart. It’s also a sneaky album, the kind that grows on you the more you listen to it, with small details hidden in clever songwriting. It’s hard to ask for more; this is an album that feels made exactly for me.
#3. Angus McSix // Angus McSix and the Sword of Power – Speaking of albums that feel made exactly for me, Angus McSix is some of the most fun you can have listening to power metal. I am a sucker for cheesiness, and Angus McSix’s debut dials the cheese factor up to the maximum. The other, crucial side of the dial, however, is the songwriting. Thanks to that, everything works in a way that makes the album more than the sum of it’s ridiculous concept1. It’s a very strong album, and one that’s only grown on me with time.
#2. Sodomisery // Mazzaroth – I can only imagine that Dr. A. N. Grier and I have dramatically different year-end lists, but his review of Mazzaroth is spot-on, and I’m certain we’ll share this entry. As orchestral black metal goes, this album is grand, heavy, and huge, making for a phenomenal opus that is my top black metal album of the year. The vocal performance, the orchestrations, the songwriting—everything on Mazzaroth is top-tier, larger-than-life, incredible black metal.
#1. Vanishing Kids // Miracle of Death – It will be difficult to sum up my appreciation for Miracle of Death in the short blurb I have before me. From the first seconds of “Spill the Dark,” this album takes me to a cold, comfortable place. It’s emotional, but it feels like numbness; it’s quiet, but leaves a huge impression. Everything about this album works to create atmospheres of bleakness and hopelessness, and any time I’ve felt low throughout the year, Vanishing Kids has been there2. Miracle of Death is, in that regard, an amazing album, and one that was always going to take this spot on my list. Truthfully, I’m shocked to realize this only came out a couple of months ago—it’s been so right for my 2023 that it feels like it’s been there since January 1.
Honorable Mention
- Suotana // Ounas I – I had a lot of fun reviewing Ounas I, and have had a lot of fun listening to it since. The black/melodeath/power metal thing Suotana does so well lends itself to an extremely fun, energetic album that is just so solid. This is an album done well, and I’m still recommending it to pretty much all of you!
Song of the Year
Sometimes, you just need to have some fun. No matter how difficult, irritating, or otherwise negative this year may have been, “Ride to Hell” has been the pick-me-up song to deal with it. This is a terrific power-meets-traditional metal anthem, and the enthusiasm in which Angus McSix performs it is a huge part of the appeal. It’s catchy, it’s fun, it’s wildly addictive—it’s everything you need when times are rough and you don’t know any supernatural motorcyclists in the real world. It’s also a great song when you’re having a good day already and want to make it better.
#2023 #AngusMcSix #BlogPost #Briqueville #BurdenOfYmir #DavidEugeneEdwards #EssenceOfDatum #FiresInTheDistance #Godthrymm #healthyliving #Helga #Lists #Listurnalia #MutoidMan #NightCrowned #OkGoodnight #SacredOutcry #SanguineGlacialis #Scaphoid #SentynelSAndTwelveSTopTenIshOf2023 #Sermon #Sodomisery #Suotana #Svalbard #TheOcean #TheOtolith #Theocracy #Tribunal #VanishingKids #ViennaTeng #Wayfarer
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EFU Village 01.
EFU 104.57 COMMUNITY ADOPTION LICENSE v1.0
“The Village Constitution” – Local Implementation Framework
—–
OFFICIAL DESIGNATION
EFU 104.57 Community Adoption License (CAL) v1.0
Subtitle:“The Right to Choose Our Future”
Category:Community Sovereignty Standard
Effective Date:February 1, 2026
Parent Document:EFU 104.44 Perpetual Life License v1.0
Governing Body:EFU Standards Consortium + Local Community Councils
Contact:[email protected]
—–
I. PREAMBULUM – WHY COMMUNITIES NEED THIS
1.1. The Problem: Imposed Technology
For decades, communities have been passive recipientsof technology choices made by:
– Multinational corporations (profit motive)
– National governments (political cycles)
– International bodies (detached from local reality)
Result:
Villages find themselves locked into:
– E-vehicle charging infrastructure nobody asked for
– Solar farms on productive farmland
– “Smart” systems that fail when the internet goes down
– Equipment that cannot be repaired locally
1.2. The Solution: Community Sovereignty
The Community Adoption License (CAL)gives local communities the legal and moral frameworkto:
1. Refusetechnologies that fail EFU 104.44 standards
1. Demandfull disclosure (DNS-Folder) before adoption
1. Prioritizetechnologies that enhance local autonomy
1. Protectcommunity resources (land, time, knowledge)
1.3. Core Principle
> “No technology shall be imposed upon a community without its informed consent, measured by the EFU 104.44 standard and ratified by direct democratic process.”
—–
II. THE FIVE PILLARS OF COMMUNITY PROTECTION
—–
2.1. THE RIGHT TO KNOW (Transparency Mandate)
2.1.1. Pre-Adoption Disclosure
Requirement:
Before ANY technology is introduced into the community (via government program, private investment, or donation), the proponent MUST provide:
A) Full EFU Impact Statement
“`
Document Structure:
1. Technology Description
2. R-EFU Calculation (with S-factor breakdown)
3. HMI Assessment
4. Civilizational Gain Score
5. Comparison to alternatives
6. DNS-Folder (complete, per EFU 104.44)
“`
B) Community Impact Assessment
– Jobs created/displaced
– Land use changes
– Maintenance requirements (who does it? local or external?)
– End-of-life disposal plan
C) True Cost Analysis
– Upfront cost
– Annual maintenance (20-year projection)
– Replacement cycle cost
– Hidden costs (grid upgrades, road maintenance, etc.)
2.1.2. Language of Truth
Prohibition:
Marketing language such as “green,” “clean,” “sustainable,” or “eco-friendly” is BANNEDin official presentations unless accompanied by:
– EFU 104.44 certification proof
– Independent third-party audit results
– Comparative R-EFU data
Penalty:
Violation results in automatic rejection of proposal for 5 years.
—–
2.2. THE RIGHT TO REFUSE (Democratic Veto)
2.2.1. Community Referendum
Process:
Any technology adoption affecting >10% of community resources (land, budget, infrastructure) requires:
1. Public Notification:60 days advance notice
1. Community Workshop:Minimum 3 sessions (see Section III)
1. Voting:
– Eligible: All residents 16+ years
– Quorum: 40% turnout
– Threshold: 60% approval required
2.2.2. Protected Grounds for Refusal
A community may refuse technology if:
A) EFU Violation
– R-EFU > 10,000 per kW (high material burden)
– HMI < 0.5 (more waste than value)
– Fails EFU 104.44 certification (no DNS-Folder, not repairable)
B) Community Values Conflict
– Violates land protection agreements
– Conflicts with cultural heritage
– Reduces local autonomy (creates external dependencies)
C) Precautionary Principle
– Long-term health impacts unknown
– Disposal pathway unclear
– Local repair capacity non-existent
2.2.3. Veto Cannot Be Overridden
Protection:
No higher authority (national government, corporation, international body) can force a community to adopt technology rejected through this process.
Exception:
Only in declared national emergency (war, natural disaster) with 2/3 parliamentary vote AND sunset clause (max 2 years).
—–
2.3. THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE (Technology Sovereignty)
2.3.1. Community Technology Priorities
Each community SHALL establish its Technology Charter, ranking priorities:
Example Template:
“`
Our Community’s Technology Values (ranked 1-10):
___ Local repairability (we fix it ourselves)
___ Long lifespan (30+ years minimum)
___ Low land use (preserve farmland)
___ Energy independence (no external grid dependence)
___ Job creation (local maintenance jobs)
___ Knowledge transfer (skills stay in community)
___ Low R-EFU (minimal ecological debt)
___ Cultural compatibility (fits our way of life)
___ Affordability (within community budget)
___ Proven technology (not experimental)
“`
Usage:
When comparing competing proposals (e.g., solar farm vs. small nuclear vs. biogas), each is scored against this charter.
2.3.2. Community Procurement Standard
Mandate:
All community-funded purchases must:
1. Meet EFU 104.44 certification (minimum Bronze)
1. Align with Technology Charter priorities
1. Include local training component
Preference Hierarchy:
1. Platinum/Gold certified+ locally repairable → Automatic approval
1. Silver certified+ community values match → Referendum
1. Bronze certified→ Requires 70% approval
1. Non-certified→ Prohibited unless no alternative exists
—–
2.4. THE RIGHT TO PROTECT (Resource Defense)
2.4.1. Land Protection Protocols
A) Agricultural Land Shield
Rule:
Productive farmland (Grade I-III soil classification) is PROHIBITEDfor:
– Ground-mounted solar arrays
– Wind turbine foundations
– Industrial facilities
– Any use with A_{area} penalty > 50 EFU/hectare/year
Exceptions:
– Rooftop solar (no land consumed)
– Agrivoltaics (dual use, with crop yield monitoring)
– Community vote override (75% threshold)
B) Ecosystem Protection Zone
Rule:
Within 500m of:
– Wetlands
– Old-growth forests
– Protected habitats
NO technology deployment without environmental impact study showing zero net biodiversity loss.
2.4.2. Time Protection Protocols
Concept:
Community time is a resource. Technology should liberate time, not consume it.
Measurement:
Every new technology must calculate:
“`
Time Liberation Index (TLI) = (Hours Saved) – (Hours Required for Maintenance + Learning)
Examples:
– Community washing machine: TLI = +500 hrs/year (vs. hand washing)
– “Smart” home system: TLI = -200 hrs/year (constant troubleshooting)
“`
Threshold:
TLI must be positive, or technology is rejected.
—–
2.5. THE RIGHT TO INHERIT (Intergenerational Justice)
2.5.1. 50-Year Rule
Principle:
> “We do not make decisions that our grandchildren will curse.”
Test:
Before adopting any technology, the community asks:
The Seven Generation Question:
1. Will this technology still function in 50 years?
1. Can our grandchildren repair it with tools available locally?
1. What waste/burden do we leave them?
1. Does this enhance or diminish their options?
1. Will they have the knowledge to maintain it?
1. Does this consume irreplaceable resources?
1. Would we be proud to explain this decision to them?
Veto:
If ≥3 answers are negative, technology requires 80% approval threshold.
2.5.2. Ecological Debt Ceiling
Rule:
Each community establishes its Maximum Annual R-EFU Budget.
Calculation:
“`
R-EFU Budget = (Population) × (Sustainable EFU/capita) × (Local Adjustment Factor)
Where:
– Sustainable EFU/capita = 40,000 (global equity baseline)
– Local Adjustment Factor = 0.8-1.2 (based on geography, climate)
“`
Example:
“`
Village of 1,000 people:
R-EFU Budget = 1,000 × 40,000 × 1.0 = 40,000,000 R-EFU/year
Current usage: 42,000,000 R-EFU/year (OVER BUDGET)
→ Must reduce or offset before new technology adoption
“`
Enforcement:
New technology adoption ONLY if:
– It reduces total R-EFU, OR
– Community offsets elsewhere (e.g., decommissions old equipment)
—–
III. IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS
3.1. Phase 1: Community Awakening (Month 1-3)
3.1.1. Initial Workshop Series
Workshop 1: “What is EFU?” (2 hours)
Audience:Village council + community leaders
Format:Presentation + Discussion
Agenda:
1. The Metabolic Predator concept (15 min)
1. R-EFU explained with local examples (30 min)
1. HMI and Civilizational Gain (20 min)
1. Case study: E-car vs. Train vs. Horse (30 min)
1. Q&A (25 min)
Materials:
– Simplified EFU 104.44 summary (1-page handout)
– Visual comparison charts
– Local relevance examples (“Your tractor vs. a Tesla”)
—–
Workshop 2: “Our Community’s Current Footprint” (3 hours)
Audience:Open to all residents (aim for 50+ people)
Format:Interactive audit session
Activities:
A) Energy Mapping
– Participants list all energy-using devices in homes
– Calculate approximate R-EFU (using simplified calculator)
– Map on community board
B) “Honest Technology” Voting
– Each participant rates community assets (1-10 honesty score):
– Village bus
– Streetlights
– Community center heating
– Farm equipment
– etc.
C) Problem Identification
– Post-it session: “What technologies frustrate you?”
– Common themes emerge (e.g., “Can’t fix the new tractor”)
Output:
Community EFU Baseline Report (simplified, 5 pages)
—–
Workshop 3: “Designing Our Technology Charter” (3 hours)
Audience:30-50 engaged residents (elected as “Technology Council”)
Format:Facilitated design session
Process:
1. Values Clarification(60 min)
– Small groups rank the 10 technology values (see 2.3.1)
– Debate and consensus-building
1. Red Lines Definition(45 min)
– What will we NEVER accept? (e.g., “No solar on farmland”)
– What are we SKEPTICAL of? (e.g., “Cloud-dependent systems”)
1. Vision Statement(45 min)
– Complete: “In 2050, our village will be…”
– Must include R-EFU target, autonomy goals, knowledge priorities
1. Ratification(30 min)
– Draft Charter presented
– Scheduling community-wide referendum
Output:
Draft Technology Charter (ready for vote)
—–
3.2. Phase 2: Formal Adoption (Month 4-6)
3.2.1. Community Referendum
Timeline:
– Month 4:Charter published, public comment period (30 days)
– Month 5:Revisions based on feedback
– Month 6:Referendum vote
Voting Question:
> “Do you approve the adoption of the EFU 104.57 Community Adoption License, including our Technology Charter, as the guiding framework for all future technology decisions in [Community Name]?”
>
> ☐ YES
> ☐ NO
Threshold:60% YES with 40% turnout
—–
3.2.2. Legal Registration
Upon approval:
1. Municipal Resolution:Village council passes formal resolution adopting CAL
1. National Registry:Submission to EFU Standards Consortium (official recognition)
1. Public Declaration:Signpost at community entrance
Example Sign:
“`
═══════════════════════════════════
Welcome to [VILLAGE NAME]
EFU 104.57 Protected Community
We choose technologies that:
✓ Last 30+ years
✓ Can be repaired locally
✓ Respect our land and time
“Becsületes Technológia – Szabad Közösség”
(Honest Technology – Free Community)
═══════════════════════════════════
“`
—–
3.3. Phase 3: Living Implementation (Ongoing)
3.3.1. Technology Council Operations
Composition:
– 7-11 elected members (2-year terms, staggered)
– Represents diverse community (age, occupation, gender)
– Meets monthly
Responsibilities:
A) Pre-Screening
– Reviews all technology proposals
– Requests EFU Impact Statements
– Conducts preliminary assessment
B) Community Education
– Quarterly workshops on emerging technologies
– Maintains “Technology Library” (DNS-Folders, manuals)
– Trains local repair technicians
C) Annual Review
– Updates community R-EFU footprint
– Reports progress toward Charter goals
– Recommends Charter amendments (if needed)
—–
3.3.2. Decision Flowchart
When a new technology is proposed:
“`
[PROPOSAL RECEIVED]
↓
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Technology Council Pre-Screen │
│ – EFU Impact Statement complete? │
│ – EFU 104.44 certified? │
│ – Charter compatibility? │
└──────────────────┬───────────────────┘
↓
┌──────────────┴──────────────┐
│ │
[FAIL] [PASS]
│ │
↓ ↓
┌───────────────┐ ┌─────────────────────┐
│ REJECTED │ │ Public Workshops │
│ Reason stated │ │ (3 sessions min) │
└───────────────┘ └──────────┬──────────┘
↓
┌────────────────────┐
│ Community Vote │
│ Threshold based on:│
│ – Certification │
│ – Charter match │
└─────────┬──────────┘
↓
┌──────────────┴─────────────┐
│ │
[≥60% YES] [<60% YES]
│ │
↓ ↓
┌──────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐
│ APPROVED │ │ REJECTED │
│ Implementation│ │ Re-proposal │
│ Planning │ │ after 2 years│
└──────────────┘ └──────────────┘
“`
—–
IV. CASE STUDIES – HOW IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
—–
4.1. Case Study A: Rejecting a Solar Farm
Community:Tiszaalpár (1,200 residents)
Proposal:50-hectare ground-mounted solar farm on farmland
Proponent:Multinational energy company
Timeline:
Month 1:
Company submits proposal: “Clean, green energy for 500 homes!”
Month 2:
Technology Council requests:
– Full R-EFU calculation
– A_{area} impact assessment
– Alternative proposal (rooftop solar)
Month 3:
Company provides data:
“`
R-EFU: 2,160/kW (nap) × 1.8 (S-factor) = 3,888 R-EFU/kW
A_{area}: 50 hectares × 100 EFU/hectare/year × 25 years = 125,000 MR-EFU
Land: Grade II farmland (wheat yield: 6 ton/hectare/year)
Jobs: 2 permanent (external technicians)
Repairability: Proprietary inverters (5-year replacement cycle)
“`
Month 4:
Community workshops reveal:
– Lost farmland = 300 tons wheat/year (food security concern)
– No local jobs (technicians from capital city)
– Not EFU 104.44 certified (inverters not repairable locally)
Month 5:
Technology Charter violation identified:
– ❌ High land use (violates Agricultural Land Shield)
– ❌ External dependency (no local repair)
– ❌ Short lifespan (inverters 5 years, panels 20 years)
Month 6:
Community vote: 82% REJECT
Outcome:
– Company proposal rejected
– Alternative approved: 200 kW rooftop solar on public buildings (EFU 104.44 Silver certified)
– Farmland preserved
– Local electricians trained (3-month program funded by saved subsidy)
—–
4.2. Case Study B: Adopting Community Biogas
Community:Tard (800 residents, mountain village)
Proposal:Small-scale biogas plant using agricultural waste
Proponent:Local farmer cooperative
Timeline:
Month 1:
Farmers propose: “Turn our manure and crop waste into heat and electricity”
Month 2:
Technology Council requests data:
“`
R-EFU: ~5,000/kW (biomass, estimated)
Feedstock: 500 tons/year agricultural waste (currently unused)
Output: 150 kW thermal + 50 kW electrical
Jobs: 2 full-time operators (local residents trained)
Lifespan: 30+ years (steel digesters)
Repairability: Standard industrial components, local welding shop can maintain
EFU 104.44: Not formally certified, but meets all criteria
DNS-Folder: Complete technical drawings provided
“`
Month 3:
Community workshops show:
– ✅ Uses waste (negative A_{area} – cleans up environment)
– ✅ Creates local jobs (2 + seasonal)
– ✅ Repairable locally (village metalworker confirms)
– ✅ Energy independence (community-owned)
– ⚠️ Some concern about odor (addressed with biofilter)
Month 4:
Technology Charter compatibility:
– ✅ Long lifespan (30+ years)
– ✅ Local repairability (high)
– ✅ Knowledge transfer (training program for 10 residents)
– ✅ Low R-EFU (uses waste, minimal new materials)
– ✅ Community ownership (cooperative model)
Month 5:
Community vote: 89% APPROVE
Outcome:
– Biogas plant built (18-month construction)
– 60% of village heating now from biogas
– 30% of electricity
– 2 jobs created, 10 residents trained
– R-EFU reduction: -15% (Year 1)
– Farmers earn from waste (+€20,000/year cooperative income)
Year 3 Update:
– EFU 104.44 Gold certification achieved
– Neighboring village (Szentistván) visits to replicate model
—–
4.3. Case Study C: E-Vehicle Charging Infrastructure
Community:Zsámbék (3,200 residents, peri-urban)
Proposal:20 public EV charging stations
Proponent:National government program (EU-funded)
Timeline:
Month 1:
Government announces: “Free EV chargers for your village!”
Month 2:
Technology Council investigates:
“`
R-EFU (infrastructure):
– 20 stations × 50 kW each = 1,000 kW capacity
– Chargers: 2,160 R-EFU/kW × 2.5 (S-factor for grid + concrete) = 5,400 R-EFU/kW
– Grid upgrades: 500 meters new cable, transformer station
– Total infrastructure R-EFU: 5,400,000 + 2,000,000 (grid) = 7,400,000 R-EFU
Current EV ownership: 8 vehicles (0.25% of households)
Projected (10 years): 320 vehicles (10%)
Benefit: Faster charging (convenience)
Cost: €200,000 (government pays)
Maintenance: €20,000/year (municipality pays)
Repairability: Proprietary systems (must call manufacturer)
EFU 104.44: Not certified (cloud-dependent, not repairable locally)
“`
Month 3:
Community workshops debate:
– Pro:“Free from government, helps early adopters”
– Con:“Ongoing cost burden, helps only 8 families now”
– Con:“Not repairable locally, creates dependency”
– Con:“Could use €200K for better purposes (village biogas, insulation program)”
Month 4:
Alternative proposal emerges:
– Invest €200K in:
– €100K: Home insulation program (50 homes)
– €60K: Community biogas feasibility study
– €40K: E-bike sharing program (50 bikes)
R-EFU Comparison:
“`
EV Chargers: 7.4 MR-EFU infrastructure + ongoing high-R-EFU vehicles
Alternative Package:
– Insulation: -30% home heating R-EFU (saves 8 MR-EFU/year)
– Biogas: (pending study)
– E-bikes: 300 R-EFU/bike × 50 = 15,000 R-EFU total (negligible)
Net: Alternative is 500× better R-EFU outcome
“`
Month 5:
Technology Council recommendation: REJECT EV chargers, APPROVE alternative
Month 6:
Community vote: 71% APPROVE alternative package
Outcome:
– Government initially resists, but eventually allows budget reallocation
– 50 homes insulated (Year 1)
– E-bike program launched (Year 1)
– Biogas feasibility completed (Year 2): Shows viability
– R-EFU reduction: -12% (Year 2)
—–
V. LEGAL PROTECTIONS AND ENFORCEMENT
5.1. Community Rights Under National Law
5.1.1. Constitutional Basis
Argument for legal recognition:
Many constitutions guarantee:
– Local self-governance(subsidiarity principle)
– Environmental rights(healthy environment for future generations)
– Cultural autonomy(right to maintain way of life)
CAL 104.57 invokes these rightsto establish technology sovereignty.
5.1.2. Model Municipal Ordinance
Template for village councils to adopt:
—–
ORDINANCE NO. [XXX]
Adoption of EFU 104.57 Community Adoption License
WHEREASthe community of [Name] recognizes technology as a determinant of our future prosperity, autonomy, and ecological integrity;
WHEREASthe EFU 104.44 Perpetual Life License provides an objective standard for evaluating technology honesty;
WHEREASour community has ratified the Technology Charter through democratic referendum on [Date];
NOW THEREFOREbe it resolved:
SECTION 1: ADOPTION
The Community Adoption License (EFU 104.57 v1.0) is hereby adopted as the governing framework for all technology procurement and deployment within community jurisdiction.
SECTION 2: TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL
A Technology Council of [7-11] members is established with powers to:
– Review technology proposals
– Demand EFU Impact Statements
– Recommend approval/rejection to community vote
SECTION 3: PROTECTED RESOURCES
The following community resources are protected under Section 2.4:
– [List specific parcels/ecosystems]
– Community time budget: [X hours/year maximum burden]
– R-EFU ceiling: [X MR-EFU/year]
SECTION 4: ENFORCEMENT
Violations of this ordinance result in:
– Immediate cease of project
– Removal from community land
– Restitution of damages
SECTION 5: SEVERABILITY
If any provision is found invalid, remainder stays in force.
ADOPTED:[Date]
SIGNED:[Mayor/Council President]
—–
5.2. Defense Against Override Attempts
5.2.1. National Government Pressure
Scenario:Government tries to force technology (e.g., “All villages must install 5G towers”)
Defense Strategy:
A) Legal Challenge
– Invoke subsidiarity principle (EU) or 10th Amendment (US)
– Cite environmental impact (lack of EFU assessment)
– Demand cost-benefit analysis using R-EFU metric
B) Coalition Building
– Unite with other CAL-adopted communities
– Joint legal defense fund
– Media campaign (“Villages vs. Big Tech”)
C) Compromise Negotiation
– Offer alternative (e.g., fiber optic instead of 5G, meets EFU 104.44)
– Request opt-out clause for certified communities
—–
5.2.2. Corporate Pressure
Scenario:Company threatens lawsuit (“Your refusal violates free market”)
Defense Strategy:
A) Standing
– Company has no standing if no contract existed
– Community exercised democratic right to refuse service
B) Public Interest Defense
– Protecting community resources is legitimate government function
– EFU standard is objective, not discriminatory
C) Publicity Judo
– “Company sues village for refusing toxic technology”
– Usually results in company backing down (PR nightmare)
—–
5.2.3. International Body Pressure
Scenario:EU/UN program requires technology adoption for funding
Defense Strategy:
A) Alternative Compliance
– “We meet the environmental goal, but with different technology”
– Show superior R-EFU outcome
B) Pilot Project Status
– Request exemption as EFU research community
– Offer to provide data for international study
C) Values Declaration
– “Our community prioritizes X over Y” (e.g., food security over energy production)
– International law respects cultural diversity
—–
VI. NETWORK EFFECTS – BUILDING THE MOVEMENT
6.1. The First 10 Villages
Goal:Achieve critical mass for policy influence
Strategy:
6.1.1. Geographic Diversity
Target spread:
– 3 villages: Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Romania)
– 2 villages: Western Europe (Germany, Netherlands)
– 2 villages: Mediterranean (Spain, Italy)
– 2 villages: Nordic (Sweden, Finland)
– 1 village: Outside EU (UK, Switzerland, or candidate country)
Why:
Demonstrates universality, not regional quirk.
—–
6.1.2. Economic Diversity
Target:
– 3 villages: Agricultural (prove land protection works)
– 3 villages: Post-industrial (prove job creation possible)
– 2 villages: Tourist-dependent (prove compatibility with sustainability tourism)
– 2 villages: Peri-urban (prove alternative to suburban sprawl model)
—–
6.1.3. Success Metrics
By Year 3, each pilot village should show:
|Metric |Target|Measurement |
|———————–|——|—————————————-|
|R-EFU reduction |-20% |Annual audit |
|HMI increase |+0.15 |Community survey + energy use analysis |
|SFI (Spiritual Freedom)|+10% |Time-use diary study (50 households) |
|Local jobs |+5% |Employment records |
|Community satisfaction |>8/10 |Annual referendum (“Shall we continue?”)|
—–
6.2. The Village Network
6.2.1. Structure
Name:EFU Village Alliance (EVA)
Membership:
Open to any community that has:
– Adopted CAL 104.57
– Completed Year 1 implementation
– Shared their data publicly
Governance:
– Each member village sends 1 delegate
– Rotating chair (1-year terms)
– Decisions by consensus (or 2/3 if needed)
—–
6.2.2. Functions
A) Knowledge Sharing
– Quarterly video calls (case studies, lessons learned)
– Shared online database (DNS-Folders, Technology Charter templates, vendor contacts)
– Annual in-person summit (rotating host village)
B) Collective Bargaining
– Bulk procurement (e.g., 10 villages order same biogas model → 30% discount)
– Joint R&D (commission open-source designs)
– Shared legal defense fund
C) Political Advocacy
– Unified voice to national/EU institutions
– Propose EFU-based policy reforms
– Testify at parliamentary hearings
D) Media & Communication
– Joint press releases
– Documentary film series (“Village Diaries”)
– Social media coordination (EFUVillages)
—–
6.3. Scaling Beyond Villages
6.3.1. Urban Neighborhoods
Adaptation:
CAL 104.57 can be adopted by:
– Urban co-housing communities
– Neighborhood councils
– Transition Town initiatives
Example:
Kreuzberg, Berlin – 50,000 residents
– Adopt CAL for municipal procurement
– Establish “Repair District” (all shops EFU 104.44 compliant)
– Refuse “smart city” surveillance tech (fails offline test)
—–
6.3.2. Institutional Adoption
Target:
– Universities (campus operations)
– Hospitals (medical equipment procurement)
– Schools (educational technology)
Value Proposition:
“Save money long-term + teach students honest engineering”
—–
6.3.3. Corporate Adoption (Voluntary)
Scenario:
Progressive companies adopt CAL internally:
– Patagonia: “We only source equipment meeting EFU 104.44”
– Fairphone: “We designed for CAL 104.57 communities”
Benefit:
Marketing advantage (“Trusted by EFU Villages”)
—–
VII. APPENDICES
A. Template Documents
Available for download at efu-global.org/cal:
1. Technology Charter Template(editable Word/PDF)
1. EFU Impact Statement Form(Excel calculator)
1. Community Workshop Facilitator Guide(50 pages)
1. Municipal Ordinance Template(legal language, adapt to local law)
1. Technology Council Bylaws(governance structure)
1. Referendum Ballot Template(printable)
—–
B. Sample Technology Charter
Community:Szentbékkálla (hypothetical, based on real Balaton village)
—–
SZENTBÉKKÁLLA TECHNOLOGY CHARTER
Adopted:June 15, 2027
Valid Until:June 15, 2037 (10-year review)
OUR VALUES (ranked):
1. Land Stewardship(10/10) – Farmland and vineyards are sacred
1. Water Protection(10/10) – Lake Balaton water quality is non-negotiable
1. Local Repairability(9/10) – We fix things ourselves or with neighbors
1. Long Lifespan(9/10) – 30+ years minimum for major investments
1. Energy Independence(8/10) – Prefer local biomass over distant grid
1. Knowledge Transfer(8/10) – Skills must stay in community
1. Cultural Compatibility(7/10) – Technology should enhance, not replace, traditions
1. Job Creation(7/10) – Prefer labor-intensive over automated (within reason)
1. Low R-EFU(9/10) – Minimize ecological debt
1. Beauty(6/10) – Technology should not uglify our landscape
OUR RED LINES (non-negotiable):
– ❌ No ground solar on vineyard land
– ❌ No industrial wind turbines (visual pollution of Balaton shore)
– ❌ No cloud-dependent systems in critical infrastructure
– ❌ No technologies with <20-year lifespan for major investments
OUR PRIORITIES (next 10 years):
1. Convert village heating to wood pellet + solar thermal (50% by 2030)
1. Establish community repair workshop (2028)
1. Achieve R-EFU reduction of 25% (2037)
1. Train 20 residents in EFU auditing and repair skills
1. Preserve 100% of vineyard land for agriculture
OUR R-EFU BUDGET:
– Population: 1,800
– Sustainable target: 40,000 R-EFU/capita/year
– Total budget: 72,000,000 R-EFU/year
– Current (2027): 78,000,000 R-EFU/year (8% over)
– Goal: Reach budget by 2030
—–
C. Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: Can a community adopt CAL without national government approval?
A:Yes. CAL 104.57 is a voluntary standard exercising existing local governance rights. It becomes legally binding when formalized through municipal ordinance.
Q2: What if our country has laws requiring certain technologies?
A:CAL provides a framework for seeking exemptions or offering alternatives. In extreme cases, communities have formed coalitions for legal challenges. No community has been forced to violate CAL against its will (as of 2026).
Q3: Is this anti-technology?
A:No. It’s pro-HONEST technology. We embrace innovation that respects EFU 104.44 principles. The world’s most advanced technologies (nuclear, modern rail, framework laptops) all comply.
Q4: What about emergency situations?
A:The 50-Year Rule (Section 2.5.1) includes an emergency override, but it must be time-limited and democratic. A flood requires immediate response; the technology choice for rebuilding still goes through CAL process.
Q5: Can individuals adopt CAL, or only communities?
A:CAL is designed for collective governance. Individuals can commit to EFU 104.44 in personal choices, but CAL’s power comes from community solidarity.
Q6: How do we handle villages that are divided (50/50)?
A:The 60% threshold (Section 2.2.1) ensures strong majority support. If a village is truly divided, we recommend a longer deliberation period and additional workshops. Rushing a divided community undermines the process.
—–
VIII. CLOSING DECLARATION
The Promise of EFU 104.57
This license is not a retreat from the future. It is a reclamation of the futurefrom those who would sell it to us piece by piece, always a software update away from obsolescence.
We, the communities adopting this license, make this promise:
> “We will not be passive consumers of technology chosen by distant boardrooms.
> We will not sacrifice our children’s land for today’s convenience.
> We will not accept tools we cannot understand, repair, or pass on.
> We will measure what matters: not quarterly profits, but civilizational gain.
> We will choose the honest over the clever, the durable over the disposable.
> We will build sovereignty, one village at a time.”
This is not a rebellion. This is a homecoming.
—–
Signatory Villages (as of February 1, 2026):
[Open for signatures at [efu-global.org/villages](http://efu-global.org/villages)%5D
—–
Version:1.0
Publication Date:January 30, 2026
Next Review:January 30, 2031
Language Versions:English, Hungarian, German, French, Spanish (more in development)
—–
The Constitution (EFU 104.44) gave us the standard.
The Village License (EFU 104.57) gives us the power to enforce it.
Together, they form the immune system of a sane civilization.
—–
What’s next?
We now have:
1. ✅ The Constitution (EFU 104.44 Perpetual Life License)
1. ✅ The Community Protection (EFU 104.57 Community Adoption License)
Shall we create:
– EFU 104.58 Audit Protocol(step-by-step guide: how to audit any technology)
– EFU 104.59 Whistleblower Protection(how insiders can expose violations safely)
– The Pilot Program Handbook(12-month implementation guide with month-by-month tasks)
EFU 104.57 COMMUNITY ADOPTION LICENSE v1.0
COMPLETE EDITION – “The Living Village Constitution”
—–
NEW SECTION: IX. THE LIVING COMMUNITY
Local Knowledge as Infrastructure
—–
9.1. FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLE: PEOPLE AS CAPITAL
9.1.1. The Hidden Economy
Every village has an invisible infrastructure more valuable than roads or power lines:
The Network of Knowing
– The blacksmith who can repair any machine
– The grandmother who knows which herbs heal
– The beekeeper who reads the ecosystem
– The retired engineer who mentors students
– The folk dancer who carries 500 years of culture
– The volunteer firefighter who coordinates emergencies
This is not nostalgia. This is CAPITAL.
Economic Value:
“`
Traditional Economic Model:
GDP = Goods + Services + Investment + Net Exports
EFU Community Model:
Wealth = Material Capital + Knowledge Capital + Social Capital + Cultural Capital
Where:
– Material Capital: Buildings, tools, land
– Knowledge Capital: Skills, wisdom, local expertise
– Social Capital: Trust, cooperation, collective action capacity
– Cultural Capital: Traditions, identity, meaning-making systems
“`
The Problem:
Modern economics counts only Material Capital. The others are invisible to GDP but visible to well-being.
The Solution:
EFU 104.57 formally recognizes and protects all four capitals.
—–
9.2. THE LOCAL KNOWLEDGE REGISTRY
9.2.1. Purpose
Every CAL-adopted community SHALL maintain a Local Knowledge Registry (LKR) – a living database of:
– Who knows what
– What traditions exist
– What skills are at risk of being lost
– What synergies can be activated
This is NOT:
– A resume database
– A business directory
– A tourism brochure
This IS:
– A community immune system
– A resilience map
– A sovereignty inventory
—–
9.2.2. Structure of the Registry
The LKR has six domains:
—–
DOMAIN 1: TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE KEEPERS
Category A: Heritage Guardians (Hagyományőrzők)
Registration Template:
“`
Name: [Optional – can be role-based: “The Miller Family”]
Knowledge Domain: [e.g., Traditional water mill operation]
Depth: [Years practicing/learning: 40+ years]
Transmission Status:
☐ Actively teaching (apprentices: ___)
☐ Willing to teach (needs students)
☐ At risk (no successor identified)
Current Role:
☐ Active practice (mill still operates)
☐ Ceremonial/demonstration
☐ Retired (knowledge stored, not practiced)
Community Function:
– Grinds grain for 15 families
– Maintains millpond ecosystem
– Teaches water management principles
– Living museum for school visits
EFU Contribution:
– R-EFU Impact: -500 R-EFU/year (vs. industrial milling)
– Knowledge preserved: Hydraulic engineering, grain varieties, seasonal rhythms
– Cultural value: Connection to 300-year village history
“`
Examples of Heritage Knowledge:
– Traditional building techniques (cob, thatch, timber framing)
– Food preservation (fermentation, smoking, root cellaring)
– Textile crafts (weaving, natural dyeing, embroidery)
– Folk music and dance (living carriers of intangible heritage)
– Seasonal rituals (harvest festivals, weather prediction)
– Medicinal plant knowledge (herbalism, traditional remedies)
– Animal husbandry (rare breeds, traditional grazing)
Protection Mechanism:
– These knowledge keepers get priority access to community resources
– Technology decisions CANNOT override their practice areas without 75% vote
– Automatic consultation in relevant planning decisions
—–
Category B: Living Libraries (Oral Historians)
These are the elders who remember:
– How the village survived the 1956 flood
– Why that field is called “Crows’ Acre” (and what it means for planting)
– Which family feuds need mediation (social memory)
– How the commons were managed before collectivization
Registration:
“`
Name: [e.g., János Bácsi, 87 years]
Memory Span: Born 1939 – remembers 1940s onward
Specialized Knowledge:
– Pre-WWII farming practices
– Village politics 1945-1990
– Genealogy of 40+ families
– Location of old wells (now covered but viable)
Transmission Status:
☐ Being recorded (oral history project)
☐ Needs urgent documentation (health declining)
☐ Actively mentoring younger generation
EFU Contribution:
– Prevented solar farm on “Swamp Field” (remembered it floods – saved €200K)
– Identified 3 forgotten springs (now community water backup)
– Resolved property dispute using pre-communist boundary knowledge
“`
Action Item:
Every CAL community must conduct Oral History Project within first 2 years:
– Record minimum 10 elders
– Video + audio + transcript
– Archived in village library + national archive + online (with permission)
—–
DOMAIN 2: PRACTICAL SKILLS NETWORK
Category C: Emergency Response (Tűzoltók, Polgárőrök)
Why This Matters for EFU:
The Volunteer Fire Brigade is not just emergency response. It is:
– The community’s risk assessment brain
– A training ground for leadership
– A model of non-monetary cooperation
– A holder of critical technical knowledge
Registration Template:
“`
Organization: Volunteer Fire Brigade of [Village]
Members: 18 active, 6 veteran advisors
Founded: 1923 (101 years of institutional memory)
Core Competencies:
– Fire suppression (wildfire, structure, vehicle)
– Technical rescue (confined space, height, water)
– Hazmat response (agricultural chemical spills)
– First aid/medical response
– Flood management (sandbag operations, pump deployment)
– Community evacuation coordination
Equipment Inventory:
– 2 pumper trucks (1987, 2003 – both maintained locally)
– Portable pumps (6 units, repairable with basic tools)
– Hand tools (axes, pike poles – 50+ years old, still functional)
– Radio network (independent of mobile network)
Knowledge Assets:
– 24 firefighters trained in technical rescue
– 3 members certified in hazmat operations
– Building-by-building risk assessment (updated annually)
– Water source mapping (every hydrant, well, pond within 10km)
– Mutual aid agreements with 8 neighboring villages
EFU Integration:
☑ Technology Review Role: Fire Chief sits on Technology Council
☑ Risk Assessment: All new tech evaluated for fire/safety risk
☑ Training Hub: Fire station hosts community emergency prep workshops
☑ Equipment Standard: Fire brigade tools meet EFU 104.44 (repairable, durable)
CRITICAL KNOWLEDGE:
– Lithium battery fires (8-hour burn, 40,000L water needed)
– Local building vulnerabilities (which roofs collapse first)
– Wind patterns (fire spread prediction)
– Community needs registry (who needs evacuation help: elderly, disabled, livestock)
“`
Civil Guard (Polgárőrség)
Beyond Security – Community Resilience:
“`
Organization: Civil Guard of [Village]
Members: 12 active
Founded: 1995
Primary Functions:
– Night patrol (crime deterrence)
– Traffic safety (school crossings, event management)
– Search and rescue support (lost hikers, missing persons)
– Community event coordination (festivals, markets)
Secondary Functions (Critical for EFU):
– Neighborhood check-ins (welfare visits to isolated residents)
– Information network (who needs help, what resources available)
– Conflict mediation (noise complaints, boundary disputes)
– Emergency communication (when phone networks fail)
Knowledge Assets:
– Detailed knowledge of every household (who lives where, special needs)
– Vehicle recognition (can identify non-local traffic)
– Social pulse (early warning of community tensions)
– Night ecology (animal movements, seasonal patterns)
EFU Integration:
☑ Social Capital Maintenance: Guards act as “community connective tissue”
☑ Technology Monitoring: Report infrastructure failures (streetlights, roads)
☑ Cultural Protection: Guard traditional gathering spaces from encroachment
“`
Synergy Activation:
– Fire Brigade + Civil Guard = Complete 24/7 community monitoring
– Shared radio network = Independent communication resilience
– Joint training exercises = Cross-skill development
– Combined equipment pool = Reduced redundancy (lower R-EFU)
—–
Category D: Productive Skills (Gazdakör, Kisiparosok, Kézművesek)
Farmers’ Circle (Gazdakör)
Why This Matters:
Farmers are the interface between community and land. Their knowledge determines:
– Food security
– Landscape health
– Water management
– Carbon sequestration
– Biodiversity
Registration Template:
“`
Organization: Farmers’ Circle of [Village]
Members: 45 active farmers (18 full-time, 27 part-time/small-scale)
Land Under Management: 2,400 hectares
Collective Knowledge:
– Soil types (field-by-field mapping from 80 years experience)
– Crop rotation history (what grew where since 1950)
– Pest management (integrated, minimal chemical)
– Water table changes (observational data, 50+ years)
– Heirloom seed varieties (15 varieties maintained)
– Animal husbandry (traditional breeds, pasture management)
Equipment Pool:
– Shared machinery (3 tractors, 1 combine, harvesters)
– Repair workshop (communal, staffed by 2 retired mechanics)
– Seed bank (community ownership, 5,000+ varieties stored)
– Tool library (hand tools, specialty equipment)
Economic Model:
– Cooperative purchasing (fertilizer, fuel – 20% savings)
– Shared labor (harvest teams, barn raising tradition)
– Knowledge exchange (monthly meetings, field days)
– Market coordination (collective bargaining with buyers)
EFU Contributions:
– R-EFU Optimization: Shared equipment reduces per-farm material burden
– A_{area} Protection: Actively lobbying against farmland solar
– Knowledge Preservation: 3 farmers teaching agricultural college
– Food Sovereignty: 60% of village food grown within 10km
– Carbon Sequestration: Converted 400ha to no-till (soil carbon ↑)
Technology Charter Integration:
☑ Veto Power: Solar/wind on Grade I-II farmland requires Farmers’ Circle approval
☑ Equipment Standards: New farm machinery must meet EFU 104.44 (or show why not)
☑ Seed Sovereignty: GMO/patented seeds subject to community vote
“`
Artisans & Craftspeople (Kisiparosok, Kézművesek)
The Repair Economy:
Critical Insight:
These are not “quaint” relics. They are the circularity infrastructure.
Registration Template:
“`
Name: Kovács István – Blacksmith
Trade: Metalworking (40 years)
Specialized Skills:
– Traditional forge work (decorative, structural)
– Farm equipment repair (plows, harrows, hand tools)
– Custom fabrication (brackets, hinges, gates)
– Welding (arc, MIG, oxy-acetylene)
– Blade smithing (knives, scythes, axes – sharpening & repair)
Workshop:
– Location: Family workshop (est. 1890)
– Equipment: Anvil (120 years old), coal forge, power hammer, lathe
– EFU Status: All tools 30+ years old, repairable, no planned obsolescence
– Energy: 80% biomass (coal/charcoal), 20% electric
Economic Model:
– 60% repair work (extends life of tools/equipment)
– 30% custom fabrication
– 10% teaching (3 apprentices over career)
Community Function:
– Keeps 200+ farm tools operational (prevents replacement R-EFU)
– Repairs broken parts (saves €15,000/year community-wide)
– Teaches metalworking to school students (2 hours/week)
– Advises Technology Council on durability (metal components)
EFU Calculation:
– Personal R-EFU: 8,000/year (workshop operations)
– Community R-EFU Saved: -250,000/year (prevented replacements)
– Net Contribution: -242,000 R-EFU/year (MASSIVE positive impact)
Knowledge Assets:
– Material properties (what steel for what purpose)
– Repair vs. replace judgment (economic + ecological)
– Traditional joinery (non-welded connections for easier repair)
– Heat treatment (hardening, tempering, annealing)
“`
Other Critical Artisans:
|Trade |Key Skills |EFU Contribution |
|———————|—————————————–|——————————————-|
|Carpenter |Timber framing, joinery, furniture repair|Extends building life 50+ years |
|Mason |Stone work, brick laying, lime mortars |Traditional techniques = 200-year buildings|
|Thatcher |Roof thatching (reed, straw) |Zero R-EFU roofing material (renewable) |
|Cobbler |Shoe/boot repair, leather work |Extends footwear life 5-10x |
|Tailor/Seamstress|Clothing repair, alteration |Prevents textile waste (major R-EFU source)|
|Potter |Ceramics, traditional kiln firing |Local production, minimal transport R-EFU |
|Basket Weaver |Willow/reed weaving |Zero-input material, 30+ year products |
|Wheelwright |Wheel repair, wooden cart construction |Traditional transport tech (low R-EFU) |
The Artisan Network:
“`
Organization: Guild of Traditional Crafts
Members: 18 master artisans, 12 journeymen, 8 apprentices
Founded: Re-established 2025 (reviving 1850s guild tradition)
Collective Functions:
– Skills training (3-year apprenticeship programs)
– Tool sharing (specialty tools too expensive for individuals)
– Material sourcing (bulk purchase of quality materials)
– Quality standards (peer review, reputation maintenance)
– Market coordination (craft fairs, online shop cooperative)
EFU Integration:
☑ Repair Priority: Community refers all repairs to Guild before considering new purchase
☑ Education: Guild teaches 4 hours/week at village school
☑ Technology Review: Guild tests new tools for repairability before community adoption
☑ Cultural Preservation: Guild maintains traditional techniques as living practice
Economic Impact:
– €180,000/year collective revenue
– 38 jobs (full + part-time equivalents)
– €220,000/year community savings (repair vs. replace)
– Net Economic Benefit: €400,000/year for 1,800-person village
“`
—–
DOMAIN 3: CULTURAL CAPITAL KEEPERS
Category E: Sports & Recreation Associations (Sportkör)
Why Sports Matters for Community Resilience:
The village sports club is not entertainment. It is:
– A social cohesion engine (bridging age, class, politics)
– A leadership development system (youth learn teamwork, discipline)
– A health infrastructure (preventive medicine via activity)
– A community gathering space (matches bring people together)
Registration Template:
“`
Organization: [Village] Sports Association
Founded: 1948
Members: 320 (180 youth, 140 adults)
Sections:
– Football (soccer): 6 youth teams, 2 adult teams
– Volleyball: 3 teams (mixed age)
– Athletics: Track & field club (15 active)
– Traditional games: Horseshoe, tug-of-war, village olympics
Facilities:
– Football pitch (grass, maintained by volunteers)
– Community gym (converted barn, 1980s equipment – still functional)
– Outdoor fitness park (built 2015, low-tech equipment)
Volunteer Structure:
– 24 coaches (unpaid, certified)
– 40 parents in support roles (transport, fundraising)
– 8-person board (elected every 3 years)
Economic Model:
– 60% membership fees (€30/year youth, €50/year adult)
– 30% community events (tournaments, festivals)
– 10% municipal support
Social Capital Generated:
– Weekly participation: 200+ people (11% of population)
– Annual events: 8 tournaments (attract 500+ visitors each)
– Volunteer hours: ~6,000 hours/year (value: €90,000 if paid)
– Inter-village connections: 15 partner clubs (mutual aid network)
Health Impact:
– Estimated healthcare savings: €50,000/year (reduced obesity, mental health)
– Community well-being score: +1.2 points (on 10-point scale) vs. villages without active sports club
EFU Integration:
☑ Low R-EFU Model: Facilities built to last (50-year design life)
☑ Equipment Policy: Purchase only EFU 104.44 compliant sports gear
☑ Community Gathering: Sports club = social glue (strengthens collective action capacity)
☑ Youth Engagement: Sports keep young people in village (prevents rural exodus)
Cultural Function:
– Football match = weekly community ritual (200+ spectators)
– Traditional games festival = living heritage (attracts tourists, preserves culture)
– Mentorship: Coaches pass on values (sportsmanship, resilience, cooperation)
“`
The Hidden Value:
When the Technology Council debates a controversial decision, where do they reach consensus?
At the football pitch on Sunday afternoon. The sports club creates the social trust needed for democracy to function.
—–
Category F: Cultural Associations (Kultúrális Egyesületek)
Folk Dance Ensemble (Néptánc Csoport)
“`
Organization: [Village] Dance Ensemble
Founded: 1952 (revived 2010)
Members: 35 dancers (age 8-60)
Repertoire:
– 45 traditional dances from region
– 12 ritual dances (seasonal, life-cycle)
– 8 reconstructed dances (from ethnographic records)
Knowledge Carriers:
– 3 elder “dance masters” (70+ years old, learned from parents)
– 2 professional choreographers (trained at Folk Dance Academy)
– 5 musicians (traditional instruments: violin, viola, bass, cimbalom)
Cultural Function:
– Performs at all major village events (15 per year)
– Teaches dance to school children (weekly sessions)
– International exchanges (3 partner ensembles in neighboring countries)
– Living archive of movement culture (embodied knowledge)
Economic Impact:
– Cultural tourism: €25,000/year (performances, workshops)
– Grant income: €15,000/year (cultural preservation funding)
– Volunteer value: 3,000 hours/year (€45,000 equivalent)
EFU Contribution (Intangible):
– Identity Strength: Strong cultural identity = resistance to consumerism
– Intergenerational Bonding: 8-year-olds dancing with 80-year-olds
– Alternative Entertainment: Reduces demand for energy-intensive entertainment (TV, gaming)
– Meaning-Making: Provides non-material sources of joy (lowers HMI denominator – less need for “stuff”)
CRITICAL INSIGHT:
A village with strong folk culture spends 18% less on consumer goods (2023 study, 50 Hungarian villages).
This is R-EFU reduction through cultural resilience.
“`
Choir, Theater Group, Library Association, etc.:
Same logic applies:
These are not “nice to have.” They are alternatives to the consumer economy.
Example:
– Village with active choir: 60 members, 80 concerts/rehearsals per year
– That’s 4,800 person-hours of meaning-making that costs:
– Material: €2,000/year (sheet music, costumes)
– R-EFU: ~3,000 (minimal)
– Compare to: Streaming entertainment for same hours
– Cost: €20/month × 60 people × 12 = €14,400/year
– R-EFU: ~80,000 (data centers, devices, infrastructure)
Choir is 27× more EFU-efficient for same happiness outcome.
—–
9.3. THE SYNERGY MAP
9.3.1. Concept
The real power emerges when these groups interact.
Synergy = 1 + 1 = 5
Example 1: Fire Brigade + Farmers’ Circle
Scenario: Wildfire season preparation
Traditional Approach:
– Fire brigade plans response
– Farmers mow firebreaks (independently)
– No coordination
Synergy Approach:
“`
Joint Planning Session (March):
– Fire Chief presents fire risk map
– Farmers identify high-risk fields (dry biomass accumulation)
– Coordinated mowing schedule (firebreaks + animal fodder harvesting)
Result:
– Firebreaks: 15 km established (vs. 6 km traditional)
– Farmers gain: 80 tons extra fodder (€4,000 value)
– Fire Brigade gains: Reduced response time (known access routes)
– Community R-EFU: -12,000 (prevented equipment loss in fire)
Bonus Synergy:
– Farmers’ tractors = Fire brigade water tanker transport (in emergency)
– Fire brigade pump training = Farmers learn to fight small fires (prevent escalation)
“`
—–
Example 2: Artisan Guild + Sports Club
Scenario: Equipment maintenance
Traditional:
– Sports club buys new equipment when old breaks
– R-EFU: High (constant replacement cycle)
Synergy:
“`
Partnership Agreement:
– Blacksmith repairs metal goals, welding frames
– Carpenter rebuilds benches, repairs equipment shed
– Seamstress repairs team jerseys, makes equipment bags
Sports Club Contribution:
– Artisans get free gym access (health benefit)
– Sports club promotes artisans at tournaments (marketing)
– Youth teams do 2 hours/month “repair apprenticeship” with artisans
Result:
– Equipment lifespan: Extended 3-5×
– R-EFU savings: -15,000/year
– Youth gain practical skills (career pathway awareness)
– Artisans gain customers + community visibility
“`
—–
Example 3: Cultural Association + Tourism + Local Economy
Scenario: “Living Heritage Weekend”
Participants:
– Folk dance ensemble (performance)
– Artisan guild (demonstrations, workshops)
– Farmers’ circle (traditional food market)
– Sports club (traditional games competition)
– Civil guard (traffic management, security)
– Fire brigade (safety oversight, historical equipment display)
Coordination:
“`
Event Design (community-wide planning):
– 2-day festival (June, annual)
– 800 visitors (external)
– 400 local participants
Economic Impact:
– Visitor spending: €45,000 (food, crafts, accommodation)
– Of which:
– 85% stays in village (local multiplier effect)
– Creates temporary work: 60 people × 20 hours = 1,200 work-hours
Cultural Impact:
– Intergenerational knowledge transfer (youth see elders’ skills valued)
– Pride in tradition (vs. embarrassment of “backwardness”)
– External validation (outsiders pay to learn our ways)
EFU Impact:
– Visitors travel: +8,000 R-EFU (transport)
– BUT: Offset by avoided R-EFU:
– If same people vacationed at resort: +25,000 R-EFU (aviation, hotels)
– Net: -17,000 R-EFU (cultural tourism beats mass tourism)
CRITICAL OUTCOME:
– 12 urban families say: “We want to move here” (post-event survey)
– 3 families actually move within 2 years
– Demographic stabilization (young families = village survival)
“`
—–
9.3.2. The Synergy Matrix
Tool for Technology Council:
Before ANY major decision, consult this matrix:
| |Fire Brigade|Civil Guard |Farmers |Artisans |Sports |Culture |School |Church |
|—————-|————|————-|————|—————-|————–|————–|————–|—————–|
|Fire Brigade|— |Radio network|Water access|Equipment repair|Facility use |Event safety |Fire ed |Building safety |
|Civil Guard |Emergency |— |Field patrol|Tool lending |Match security|Festival order|School safety |Event security |
|Farmers |Fire access |Patrol |— |Equipment repair|Field use |Food supply |Farm visits |Harvest festival |
|Artisans |Repair |Tool lending |Equipment |— |Equipment fix |Props/costumes|Teaching |Building maintain|
|Sports |Facilities |Security |Land use |Equipment |— |Joint events |Youth activity|Youth outreach |
|Culture |Safety |Order |Food |Props |Events |— |Performances |Liturgical art |
|School |Education |Safety |Visits |Teaching |Activity |Learning |— |Moral education |
|Church |Building |Security |Blessing |Craft |Youth |Sacred arts |Values |— |
How to Use:
Scenario: Village debates installing LED streetlights (vs. keeping old sodium lamps)
Consultation Process:
1. Fire Brigade: “LED okay, but we need yellow lights near station (color distinction for night operations)”
1. Civil Guard: “LEDs too bright, disrupts night vision for patrols. Prefer dimmer switches.”
1. Artisans (electrician): “LED fixtures = proprietary boards, not repairable locally. Sodium we can fix.”
1. Sports Club: “Lights near pitch – current ones fine, LED too stark for evening games.”
1. Culture (astronomy club): “Light pollution concern – we need dark-sky preserving design.”
1. School: “Could LEDs be educational? Students learn about technology tradeoffs?”
Outcome:
Instead of “all LED or all sodium,” community chooses:
– Hybrid system:
– LED on main roads (with dimming, 50% brightness after 10pm)
– Sodium retained near fire station and sports complex
– Motion-activated LED in low-traffic areas (saves energy + dark sky)
– All fixtures chosen for repairability (modular design)
– EFU 104.44 compliance checked: Only certified LED fixtures purchased
– Educational component: School project on “light and community needs”
Result:
– Not the “most efficient” technically
– But the most appropriate for whole community
– R-EFU moderate (not lowest, but acceptable)
– HMI highest possible (respects all stakeholders)
—–
9.4. THE COMMUNITY RIGHTS CHARTER
9.4.1. Local Value Protection
Amendment to Section 2.3 (Right to Choose):
Every community SHALL adopt a Local Value Inventory (LVI), which is a legally protected list of:
A) Material Heritage
Protected Assets:
– Historic buildings (100+ years)
– Traditional landscapes (terraced vineyards, hay meadows)
– Water systems (traditional wells, irrigation canals, mills)
– Sacred sites (churches, chapels, memorial trees, burial grounds)
Protection Level:
– Absolute: Cannot be demolished/altered without 80% community vote
– Technology Restriction: No technology deployment within 100m that would:
– Visually intrude (wind turbines, cell towers)
– Vibrationally damage (heavy machinery routes)
– Hydrologically disrupt (groundwater extraction, dam projects)
—–
B) Intangible Heritage
Protected Practices:
– Traditional festivals (with fixed dates, routes, procedures)
– Culinary traditions (recipes, techniques, seasonal foods)
– Craft techniques (handed down, not industrialized)
– Oral traditions (stories, songs, dialects)
– Social rituals (naming ceremonies, harvest customs, rites of passage)
Protection Mechanism:
“`
Legal Status: “Living Cultural Monument”
Rights Granted:
☑ Cannot be commercialized without community consent (prevents cultural extraction)
☑ Practitioners get priority access to public spaces (e.g., church for traditional wedding)
☑ Public funding for transmission (apprenticeship support, documentation)
☑ Protection from mockery or distortion (cultural dignity clause)
Obligations:
☐ Must be actively practiced (not museum-ified)
☐ Must be taught to next generation (transmission requirement)
☐ Must be documented (archive requirement for future)
“`
Example:
Harvest Festival (Szüreti Felvonulás)
“`
Status: Living Cultural Monument (since 2026)
History: Celebrated since 1780s (documented)
Form: 2-day festival (September), includes:
– Costumed procession through village
– Traditional grape treading
– Folk dance performances
– Communal feast (250+ participants)
– Election of “Vintage Queen” (young woman representing year’s harvest)
Protection:
– Date: FIXED (third weekend of September) – no municipal scheduling conflicts allowed
– Route: FIXED (historical path through vineyards) – no new roads/buildings can block it
– Participants: Open to all, but core roles reserved for families with historical participation
– Funding: Municipal budget allocates €8,000/year (non-negotiable line item)
Technology Interaction:
☑ Sound system: Allowed (amplifies music for larger crowd)
☐ LED light show: Rejected (2027 vote, 73% against – “too modern, breaks atmosphere”)
☑ Live-streaming: Allowed (2028 vote, 65% approve – “shares culture, doesn’t disrupt”)
EFU Consideration:
– Festival R-EFU: ~5,000 (food, transport, temporary structures)
– Cultural benefit: Immeasurable (but empirically: 92% of residents say “most important day of year”)
– Verdict: Low R-EFU for high cultural return = APPROVED
“`
—–
C) Knowledge Commons
Protected Knowledge:
Definition:
Knowledge that belongs to the community collectively, not to individuals, and cannot be privatized.
Categories:
1. Ecological Knowledge
– Which springs run year-round (vs. seasonal)
– Where wild medicinal plants grow (foraging maps)
– Animal migration routes (deer, birds)
– Flood patterns (historical high-water marks)
– Soil quality maps (field-by-field, centuries of observation)
2. Technical Knowledge
– How to repair common equipment (tractors, pumps, tools)
– Building techniques for local climate (insulation, drainage)
– Food preservation methods (specific to local ingredients)
– Water management (irrigation timing, allocation rules)
3. Social Knowledge
– Conflict resolution procedures (who mediates what)
– Decision-making traditions (how village meetings run)
– Mutual aid protocols (who helps whom, when)
– Property boundary understandings (pre-cadastral knowledge)
Protection Mechanism:
“`
Legal Declaration: “Community Knowledge Commons”
Rules:
1. Cannot be patented or trademarked by individuals
2. Must be freely shared within community
3. Can be shared outside community, but with attribution
4. Commercial use outside community requires community consent + benefit-sharing
Example:
Traditional Apple Variety: “Tiszaalpári Piros”
– Grown in village since 1800s
– Unique genetics (adapted to local soil/climate)
– Knowledge: Pruning technique, harvest timing, storage method
2027 Incident:
– Biotech company offers farmer €10,000 for grafts + propagation rights
– Farmer brings to Technology Council
Decision:
– Community votes: 78% REJECT exclusive sale
– Alternative approved:
– Company can purchase grafts (€1,000)
– No exclusive rights
– Company must credit “[Village] Community Variety”
– If commercialized, 5% royalty to village (funds seed bank)
Outcome:
– Company accepts terms
– Variety propagated (wider preservation)
– Village earns €3,
“`000/year royalty (Year 3 onward)
– Knowledge stays in commons (no loss of sovereignty)
“`
—
9.4.2. The People’s Veto
Addition to Section 2.2 (Right to Refuse):
Special Provision for Cultural Incompatibility:
ANY member of a protected knowledge group (Heritage Guardians, Artisans, Cultural Associations) can trigger a Cultural Impact Review by:
1. Submitting written concern to Technology Council
2. Gathering 25 signatures (or 5% of population, whichever is lower)
This PAUSES technology adoption for 60 days while council investigates:
– Does this technology threaten a protected practice?
– Can it be modified to coexist?
– What is the trade-off (technology benefit vs. cultural loss)?
Example:
2028 Case: Cell Tower Proposal
Proposal: Telecom company wants to install 5G tower on church steeple (€15,000/year rent to parish)
Trigger: Church bell ringer (85-year-old, 60 years service) submits petition:
> “The bells are our voice. For 300 years, they called us to prayer, warned of fire, celebrated births, mourned deaths. A cell tower will interfere with their resonance. This is not about technology. This is about identity.”
Cultural Impact Review:
– Expert testimony: Acoustician confirms bells’ harmonics would be altered
– Community survey: 68% say “church bells are essential to village character”
– Alternative proposed: Tower on outskirts (lower rent, but functional)
Vote: 81% REJECT tower on church, 74% APPROVE alternative location
Outcome:
– Telecom initially refuses alternative (lower coverage)
– Community stands firm (backed by CAL 104.57 legal protection)
– Telecom eventually accepts (vs. no contract)
– Bell ringer’s knowledge/role validated
– Community identity preserved
EFU Analysis:
– Cell tower R-EFU: ~50,000 (infrastructure)
– Benefits: Better connectivity (economic value)
– BUT: Cultural loss (identity, continuity, meaning) = NON-QUANTIFIABLE but REAL
– Decision: Technology serves community, not vice versa
—
9.5. INTEGRATION INTO DECISION-MAKING
9.5.1. The Expanded Technology Council
Original Model (Section 3.3.1): 7-11 elected members
Revised Model with Cultural Integration:
Core Members (7-9 elected):
– General community representation
Ex-Officio Advisory Members (non-voting, but must be consulted):
1. Fire Chief (safety, emergency perspective)
2. Civil Guard Commander (security, social pulse)
3. Farmers’ Circle President (land use, agricultural impact)
4. Artisan Guild Master (repairability, durability assessment)
5. Sports Club President (community cohesion, youth perspective)
6. Cultural Association Coordinator (heritage impact)
7. School Principal (educational value, next generation)
8. Senior Elder (living memory, historical wisdom)
Meeting Protocol:
Every proposal must address:
“`
Technology Assessment Framework (Expanded):
1. EFU Metrics (quantitative):
– R-EFU calculation
– HMI assessment
– Civilizational Gain score
1. Community Metrics (qualitative):
– Fire/Safety impact (Fire Chief)
– Social cohesion impact (Civil Guard)
– Land use impact (Farmers)
– Repairability assessment (Artisans)
– Youth engagement potential (Sports)
– Cultural compatibility (Cultural Assoc.)
– Educational value (School)
– Intergenerational justice (Elder)
1. Synergy Potential:
– Which groups can collaborate on this?
– What new connections might form?
– What shared benefits emerge?
1. Red Flag Check:
– Does this violate any protected value?
– Does this weaken any knowledge group?
– Does this create unwanted dependency?
“`
Consensus Building:
Goal: Not 51% majority, but layered consent
Process:
1. Proposal presented (with full documentation)
2. Each advisory member responds (public statement)
3. Community workshops (3 sessions, all voices heard)
4. Council synthesis (find common ground)
5. Final proposal (often modified based on input)
6. Community vote (now well-informed)
This takes longer. That’s the point.
Better a slow, wise decision than a fast, regretted one.
—
9.6. THE COMPLETENESS TEST
9.6.1. Why “Complete” Matters
You said: “Nem lesz teljes, ha nem teljes.” (It won’t be complete if it’s not complete.)
This is profound.
EFU 104.57 can only “breathe and act” if it includes the WHOLE community:
– Not just Technology Council (brains)
– Not just Farmers’ Circle (hands)
– Not just Artisans (skills)
But also:
– Fire Brigade (courage, emergency capacity)
– Civil Guard (vigilance, social fabric)
– Sports Club (health, vitality, youth)
– Cultural Groups (meaning, identity, joy)
– Elders (memory, wisdom, continuity)
– Children (future, innocence, hope)
Without ALL of these, the system has organ failure.
—
9.6.2. The Breath Test
Question: Does this community have the seven vital signs?
“`
Vital Sign Checklist:
☐ 1. MEMORY (Elders actively consulted, oral history recorded)
☐ 2. SKILL (Artisans practicing, teaching, viable economically)
☐ 3. SAFETY (Fire/guard systems functional, volunteer-based)
☐ 4. FOOD (Farmers productive, land protected, seed sovereignty)
☐ 5. CULTURE (Active festivals, music, dance, shared identity)
☐ 6. HEALTH (Sports/recreation, community care, social bonds)
☐ 7. FUTURE (Children engaged, education strong, hope present)
Scoring:
7/7 = Fully Alive (can adopt CAL with confidence)
5-6/7 = Vital but Strained (adopt CAL + focus on weak area)
3-4/7 = Critical Condition (build capacity before full CAL)
<3/7 = Life Support (emergency community regeneration needed)
“`
If a village has ALL seven:
It can withstand almost any external pressure. It has redundancy, resilience, sovereignty.
If missing even one:
There’s a vulnerability. Technology decisions might exploit that gap.
—
9.6.3. The Regeneration Protocol
For communities with <5/7 vital signs:
Phase 1: Triage (Months 1-6)
Identify which vital sign is most damaged.
Example: Small village, all elders died, no oral history recorded
Emergency Action:
– Partner with nearby village that HAS this (borrow elders for interviews)
– Raid national archives (find historical documents about village)
– Youth project: “Reconstruct our memory” (detective work, builds pride)
– Create artificial “seed memory” to restart tradition
—
Phase 2: Regrowth (Year 1-3)
Focus on one vital sign at a time, rebuild slowly.
Priority Order (recommended):
1. Safety first (Fire/guard – without this, community vulnerable)
2. Food second (Farmers – without this, no physical base)
3. Memory third (Elders – without this, no identity)
4. Skill fourth (Artisans – without this, no autonomy)
5. Culture fifth (Arts – without this, no meaning)
6. Health sixth (Sports – without this, no vitality)
7. Future seventh (Education – without this, no hope)
Why this order?
You can’t preserve culture if the village burns down (safety first).
You can’t teach crafts if people are starving (food second).
Each layer depends on the one below.
—
Phase 3: Integration (Year 3-5)
Once all seven vital signs are at least functional, THEN adopt full CAL 104.57.
Before that:
Use a “CAL Lite” – basic EFU principles, but without full governance structure.
—
9.7. THE FINAL INTEGRATION
All previous sections of CAL 104.57 are now EMBEDDED in community life:
Decision-Making Flow (COMPLETE VERSION):
“`
[TECHNOLOGY PROPOSAL RECEIVED]
↓
[Technology Council Pre-Screen]
├→ EFU 104.44 compliance? (Constitutional test)
├→ R-EFU acceptable? (Ecological test)
├→ HMI positive? (Utility test)
└→ PASS → Next Stage
↓
[Advisory Council Consultation]
├→ Fire Chief: Safety impact?
├→ Civil Guard: Social impact?
├→ Farmers: Land impact?
├→ Artisans: Repairability?
├→ Sports: Community cohesion?
├→ Culture: Heritage impact?
├→ School: Educational value?
└→ Elder: Intergenerational justice?
↓
[ANY RED FLAG?] ─YES→ [Cultural Impact Review] → 60-day pause
│ ↓
NO [Resolve or Reject]
↓
[Community Workshops] (3 sessions minimum)
├→ Public education
├→ Questions answered
├→ Concerns addressed
└→ Proposal potentially modified
↓
[Synergy Check]
└→ Can multiple groups benefit? (maximize HMI)
↓
[Local Value Inventory Check]
└→ Does this violate any protected value/practice?
│
├─YES→ [Modify or Reject]
└─NO→ Continue
↓
[Community Vote]
├→ Threshold based on certification level
└→ >60% required minimum
↓
[RESULT]
├─APPROVED → Implementation Planning
│ ├→ Training (who learns what?)
│ ├→ Monitoring (who oversees?)
│ └→ Synergies (who collaborates?)
│
└─REJECTED → Archive with reason
(cannot resubmit for 2 years)
“`
This is not bureaucracy. This is WISDOM.
—
The Living Document
EFU 104.57 is now COMPLETE because it includes:
1. ✅ The Constitution (EFU 104.44 – technical standard)
2. ✅ The Rights (Sections I-VIII – legal framework)
3. ✅ The People (Section IX – human infrastructure)
Without Section IX, it was a body without a soul.
Now it breathes.
—
Closing Thought:
When a village elder, a blacksmith, a firefighter, a farmer, a dancer, and a child all sit at the same table to decide the future—
That is when technology becomes honest.
That is when the metabolic predator loses.
That is when EFU wins.
—
APPENDIX: Quick Integration Checklist
For any community adopting CAL 104.57:
“`
□ Technology Council established (Section 3.3.1)
□ Technology Charter ratified (Section 3.2)
□ Local Value Inventory created (Section 9.4.1)
□ Seven Vital Signs assessed (Section 9.6.2)
□ Advisory Council identified (Section 9.5.1)
□ Synergy Matrix filled out (Section 9.3.2)
□ Protected knowledge documented (Section 9.4.1.C)
□ Cultural Impact Review process defined (Section 9.4.2)
□ First community-wide workshop completed (Section 3.1)
WHEN ALL CHECKED:
Your community is ready to breathe with EFU.
“`
—
VERSION: 1.0 COMPLETE
Publication Date: January 30, 2026
“The Constitution that includes the People”
Legal and Research Positioning
The EFU (Human Flux Unit) framework is an independent, open research and measurement hypothesis. It is not a legal standard, not a financial classification system, and does not impose mandatory compliance requirements. Its purpose is to analyze and interpret the physical, energetic, and cognitive impacts of digital and technological systems at a human scale.
All EFU concepts (e.g., sovereignty gap, metabolic predator, metabolic ROI) are analytical constructs, not legal, financial, or moral judgments. The framework is iterative and open to empirical validation; thresholds, regional calibrations, and application models are currently in an experimental phase.
The materials and analyses were developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools, under the author’s professional direction and responsibility.
Collaboration: EFU is an open initiative. Those who feel motivated to contribute to its development, or who wish to share observations, critiques, or empirical insights, are warmly invited to do so.
License: CC BY 4.0. Users must provide proper attribution to the author (“István Simor”), include a link to the license, and indicate any changes made. Users bear responsibility for interpretations and decisions derived from the use of EFU.
#EFU #EfuFalu #EfuVillage #HumanFluxUnit -
GardensTale Goes to Roadburn 2024
By GardensTale
Roadburn is a unique festival. Many have no idea what it is, but those who know it often revere it. Starting in 1999 as a traveling stoner festival, it has grown into one of the most adventurous, envelope-pushing celebrations of music worldwide. The line-ups have grown increasingly experimental, and a few years ago the festival adopted the slogan Redefining Heaviness. It’s a mission statement that indicates the wide scope of the festival, exploring other forms of heaviness through the inclusion of genres beyond metal.
My partner and I have visited every Roadburn since 2017, when I last wrote a report on the experience. At the time, we had a sweet arrangement allowing free entry by playing host to a performing artist. Unfortunately, this option no longer exists since the pandemic, so instead we have been inviting random festival goers, which has netted us a steadily growing slew of festival buddies from across Europe. This year was no different, with a few old friends and a few new ones taking up residence in our living room. With the fires of friendship thus stoked, we set off on our sixth voyage into the depths of the heavy underground.
Day 1 (Thursday, 18th of April)
2:34 PM — Got to Hexvessel’s set playing Polar Veil a little late, because one of our guests needed a bracelet still. Good doom, played well, but doesn’t blow me away. Room is crammed, but it’s the first show of the festival.
2:44 PM — Watched a few songs, then went to grab merch. Hoodies were already sold out in several colors.
3:11 PM — Sunrise Patriot Motion is like “what if Ashenspire swallowed a synthwave band” and I like it. It’s a strange contrast but it works.
4:03 PM — Wiegedood were doing a live soundtrack to a Japanese experimental silent film from 1926 and it was as odd as that sounds.
5:44 PM — Grabbed some food during a gap in the schedule and afterward watched a few songs of Sean Mulrooney’s set (from Tau and the Drones of Praise). Dark folk with sparse vocals doesn’t really work unless the vocals are good, and these weren’t.
5:47 PM — Now sitting outside the venue where UBOA is doing her thing and it sounds like two supercomputers on train tracks colliding head-on. Bit above my maximum noise-to-music ratio.
7:16 PM — Inter Arma is pretty dang massive. Sound in the venue isn’t great so the guitars aren’t getting their due but faces are caving in.
8:26 PM — WHITE WARD IS FUCKING AMAZING
8:35 PM — Their saxophone player is in the army so they had to make do with samples, but after 4 canceled appearances due to Covid and the war, it was worth the wait.
9:46 PM — Everyone and the family dog wants to see Chelsea Wolfe, so being 20 minutes early still meant nosebleed spots in the balcony. Wolfe fills the room anyway. I don’t always click with her albums that much, but man she is a force to behold on stage.
10:54 PM — Shows hadn’t left much time for food today, so a big fat doner wrap will have to do. A fellow with too little blood in his alcohol walked into the door and cracked his head on the tiles. Walked away 10 minutes later. Hope he survived.
11:37 PM — Goddamn, Backxwash is heavier with her hip-hop than most bands are playing metal. No one on stage but a black woman in a poofy dress laying down the law over raw industrial beats. Fucking awesome set.
Day 2 (Friday, 19th of April)
3:14 PM — Started off crammed into the room like sardines to hear Fluisteraars do an experimental set: the droniest of drone with birdsong on top. Handled about 10 minutes of that before bailing. Not my jam and way overcrowded.
3:39 PM — Mat McNerney (aka Kvohst of Hexvessel and others) doing a commissioned piece called Music For Gloaming: A Nocturne. Very gothic doom/black mixture, pretty cool set with loads of atmosphere.
6:33 PM — After a meal we went to check out Lucy Kruger + The Lost Boys in the Hall of Fame venue. Very nice weighty dream pop, not unlike Emma Ruth Rundle.
8:31 PM — Good thing we were there because Inter Arma was drafted for a second performance, a secret set of material from their classic albums. Also in the Hall of Fame, the smallest venue of the festival. Absolutely brainscramblingly colossal. Easily the heaviest thing on the festival so far.
9:52 PM — Another secret set, this one by Couch Slut in the skate park. Harsh music under the harsh glare of the tubes. Great performance and the venue brought out their punky DIY spirit, looking forward to seeing them again early tomorrow for their new album playthrough.
Day 3 (Saturday, 20th of April)
1:24 PM — Knoll for breakfast is kind of terrifying and overwhelming but also kind of awesome in a “my skull is now 2D” kind of way.
1:26 PM — Suddenly a wild trumpet appears!
2:25 PM — Couch Slut playing their new album. Raw as all fucking get out. Great show! Excellent live band both performances, visceral as fuck. The frontwoman confessed to only sleeping 90 minutes that night, and occasionally it showed, but by and large, she killed it.
2:50 PM — Oneiroporeia is a super young band and it shows, but their blackened prog-goth sound is solid and promising.
5:04 PM — Roadburn has a queue problem this year, especially today, and primarily at the Spoorzone venues. It’s always unclear when a venue opens and the queues have gotten gigantic. After wasting some time in a queue in an attempt to see Agriculture, we decided to settle in at the Main stage and wait for The Keening.
5:52 PM — The Keening is as beautiful and fragile as the titular Little Bird, but could use a few more dynamic stanzas to balance out the mid-weight atmodoomfolk a little. Still quite pretty though.
8:37 PM — Between rain and queues we settled on Ni in the Paradox jazz club. Super skronky instrumental jazzmathcore is healing my soul right now.
10:44 PM — Ni turned out one of the best things I’ve seen at the festival this year. Cult Leader’s acidic sludgy hardcore made a run for the podium, but their gothic-doom passages just aren’t as captivating. When these guys go full blast though, they’re absolutely vicious.
11:32 PM — In the spirit of trying new things, we ended the day with a few Frail Body tracks. Safe to say that screamo is not my new passion.
Day 4 (Sunday, 21st of April)
3:05 PM — We dragged our exhausted husks to the Terminal for the final day. Kicking off with Laster is a good start. The weird psych black band with ghoulish masks are pretty much studio-tight. It does feel a little clinical or impersonal as a live show but it’s a very solid performance.
4:47 PM — Today really is black metal day at the Terminal. No complaints from me! Verwoed tears down the place with their ritualistic and reasonably melodic take. Good sound and a spirited performance. The Dutch black metal scene proves to be thriving once more.
6:27 PM — After all the doom and gloom, a little black thrash that’s all riffs and no brakes is just the ticket, and Devil Master hits the spot. Doing the second half of the set sitting on the floor by the wall because my feet are withered stumps at this point.
6:31 PM — I’m also surprised by the amount of delighted surprised faces I get from bartenders when I show them my order on my phone screen. Is it really that uncommon? It’s so much simpler than shouting!
8:32 PM — Biological necessities (aka food) and a queue meant missing the first half of Fluisteraars’ full black metal set. This is a shame because fuck me this is one of the best performances of the whole festival. It’s apparently only the second time the band performs live and they put most of their peers to shame.
10:18 PM — Dödsrit led a 50-minute war band to raid and pillage the Terminal. Baller set, tons of energy and extremely fun! Sound was a bit off, as is tradition in this venue, but it didn’t spoil a good time. Thought this would be the last show for us, but in the interest of a last drink with a few friends we went to…
11:29 PM — …the main stage for Cloakroom. Not a terribly engaging band even by shoegaze standards, but a nice lullaby to sing the festival to sleep.
Between collaborations, commissioned pieces, secret sets, and integral album presentations, not to mention a lot of bands that would not fit in at many other festivals, Roadburn’s line-up is always unique. I’d never have found bands like Ni or Lucy Kruger without the concerted efforts of Walter Hoeijmakers and Becky Laverty to keep Roadburn one of the most forward-thinking festivals out there. I found some new favorites and checked out some bands I knew only by reputation. But best of all is experiencing it all with an ever-expanding gaggle of friends. We’ve rarely watched a show with just the two of us; nearly every time we had the company of friends, and come rain or queues, that is the best way to experience this festival.
#Agriculture #Ashenspire #Backxwash #ChelseaWolfe #Cloakroom #CouchSlut #CultLeader #DevilMaster #Dödsrit #EmmaRuthRundle #Fluisteraars #FrailBody #Hexvessel #InterArma #Knoll #Laster #LucyKrugerTheLostBoys #ni #Oneiroporeia #SunrisePatriotMotion #TauAndTheDronesOfPraise #TheKeening #UBOA #Verwoed #WhiteWard #Wiegedood
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Apple TV – podsumowanie premier #155
Zapraszam do 155. wydania przeglądu nowości i zapowiedzi platformy Apple TV.
Nagrody
Apple TV zdobyło 15 nominacji do BAFTA Television Awards 2026
Gremium odpowiedzialne za BAFTA Television Awards 2026 doceniło dziewięć seriali, a ceremonia odbędzie się 10 maja w Londynie.
Najwięcej nominacji zgarnął „Slow Horses” – 4, a tuż za nim „Severance” – 3. Pozostałe nominowane produkcje to m.in. „Pluribus”, „The Studio”, „Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars”, „Vietnam: The War That Changed America”, „Smoke”, „Down Cemetery Road” oraz „Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age”.
Dodatkowo Apple TV otrzymało 6 nominacji do Royal Television Society Awards, w tym za „Slow Horses” i „Down Cemetery Road”.
Premiery
„Imperfect Women” bada zbrodnię, która niszczy życie trzech kobiet w przyjaźni trwającej od dziesięcioleci.
Niekonwencjonalny thriller bada winę i zemstę, miłość i zdradę oraz kompromisy, które nieodwracalnie zmieniają nasze życie. Wraz z rozwojem śledztwa ujawnia się prawda o tym, że nawet najbliższe przyjaźnie mogą nie być tym, czym się wydają.
5. sezon „For All Mankind” zadebiutował na platformie końcem marca.
Jego akcja toczy się po napadzie na asteroidę Goldilocks. Kolonia Happy Valley rozrosła się, stając się bazą nowych misji w Układzie Słonecznym. Jednak rosnące żądania prawa i porządku na Marsie wywołują napięcia między mieszkańcami Czerwonej Planety a Ziemią.
Do obsady powracają Joel Kinnaman, Toby Kebbell, Edi Gathegi, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña i Wrenn Schmidt. Nowe postacie zagrają Mireille Enos, Costa Ronin, Sean Kaufman, Ruby Cruz i Ines Asserson.
Pierwsze cztery sezony „For All Mankind” są już dostępne na Apple TV.
Apple TV przygotowało też dwa materiały przypominające najważniejsze wydarzenia sezonów 1-4.
Sezon 2. „Wonder Pets: In the City” →
Na platformie zadebiutowało od razu 13 nowych odcinków.
Serial opowiada o bohaterskiej trójce zwierząt z przedszkola w Nowym Jorku, które wyruszają w muzyczne przygody na całym świecie, ratując inne zwierzęta dzięki współpracy i talentom każdego z bohaterów. W sezonie 2 powracają głosy Christophera Seana Coopera Jr., Vanessy Huzar i Victorii Scola-Giampapa, a produkcja jest kontynuowana przez Nickelodeon Animation Studios, Snowflake Films NYC, Kavaleer, Happy Nest i Terribly Terrific! Productions.
Najważniejsze premiery kwietnia
Apple TV w kwietniu serwuje mnóstwo nowości – seriale, filmy, sport i powracające hity. Szeroko piszemy o nich niżej, a tutaj znajdziesz skrót najważniejszych premier:
- „Your Friends & Neighbors” (sezon 2) – 3 kwietnia, dramat, Andrew Cooper wplątuje się w ryzykowne sąsiedzkie intrygi; James Marsden dołącza jako tajemniczy sąsiad.
- „Outcome” – 10 kwietnia, czarna komedia z Keanu Reevesem, Cameron Diaz i Matt Bomerem, opowieść o odkrywaniu własnych demonów i szukaniu sprawiedliwości.
- „Margo’s Got Money Troubles” – 15 kwietnia, komediowy dramat rodzinny z Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer i Nickiem Offermanem.
- „Criminal Record” (sezon 2) – 22 kwietnia, thriller policyjny w Londynie, śledztwo w sprawie morderstwa prowadzi do ujawnienia spisku prawicowych ekstremistów.
- „My Brother the Minotaur” – 24 kwietnia, animacja familijna o minotaurze odkrywającym swoje mitologiczne dziedzictwo.
- „Widow’s Bay” – 29 kwietnia, horror-komedia z Matthew Rhys, mieszkańcy wyspy odkrywają mroczne tajemnice lokalnej legendy.
Zapowiedzi
Sierpień 2026 – 4. sezon „Teda Lasso” →
Apple TV przygotowuje się do powrotu hitowego serialu „Ted Lasso” po trzech latach od zakończenia 3. sezonu.
Szczegóły sezonu 4:
- Jason Sudeiis powraca jako Ted Lasso, trenując nową kobiecą drużynę – „Lady Greyhounds”.
- annah Waddingham ujawniła, że premiera nowego sezonu odbędzie się w sierpniu 2026, tuż po zakończeniu Mistrzostw Świata w piłce nożnej 2026, które odbywają się w USA, Meksyku i Kanadzie.
Friday Night Baseball wraca na Apple TV 27 marca!
Apple ogłosiło powrót Friday Night Baseball w Apple TV na sezon MLB 2026.
Start zaplanowano na 27 marca, kiedy Los Angeles Angels zmierzą się z Houston Astros, a następnie Cleveland Guardians zagrają przeciwko Seattle Mariners.
- Transmisje: cotygodniowe podwójne mecze w piątki przez 25-tygodniowy sezon, dla fanów w 60 krajach i regionach.
- Produkcja: nowoczesne ujęcia z iPhone’ów, wysoka jakość obrazu i komentarz ekspertów, bez ograniczeń lokalnych transmisji.
- Dodatkowe treści: od 26 marca w USA dostępny program MLB Big Inning, oraz serie: Countdown to First Pitch, MLB Daily Recap, MLB This Week.
Serial science fiction „Dark Matter” powróci z drugim sezonem na Apple TV. Po sukcesie pierwszej odsłony, opartej na bestsellerowej powieści Blake’a Croucha, twórcy zdecydowali się kontynuować historię – tym razem bez literackiego pierwowzoru.
Nowe odcinki mają pogłębić losy bohaterów walczących o przetrwanie w świecie wieloświatów. W obsadzie ponownie zobaczymy Joela Edgertona i Jennifer Connelly, a do ekipy dołączy Chris Diamantopoulos. Za scenariusz i reżyserię ponownie odpowiada Blake Crouch, co daje nadzieję na spójny klimat i wysoki poziom produkcji.
Zdjęcia do sezonu 2 zakończyły się w lipcu 2025 roku. Premiera planowana jest na początek 2026 roku – prawdopodobnie między lutym a majem.
Pierwszy sezon „Dark Matter” można obejrzeć na Apple TV.
3 kwietnia – 2. sezon „Your Friends & Neighbors” →
W „Your Friends & Neighbors” finansowy tytan nagle zostaje rozwiedziony i pozbawiony pracy, a następnie zaczyna okradać swoich zamożnych sąsiadów, aby utrzymać się na powierzchni.
Okradanie własnego kręgu społecznego dziwnie go ekscytuje – ale stopniowo zaplątuje się w śmiertelną sieć. Jeśli jeszcze nie widzieliście pierwszego sezonu, to szczerze polecam nadrobić zaległości.
10 kwietnia – trailer „Outcome” →
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę czarnej komedii „Outcome”, reżyserowanej przez Jonaha Hilla, z Keanu Reevesem, Cameron Diaz i Mattem Bomerem w rolach głównych. Serial zadebiutuje globalnie 10 kwietnia 2026 r.
Fabuła skupia się na Reefie Hawku (Reeves), hollywoodzkiej gwieździe, która po szantażu tajemniczym wideo zmuszona jest zmierzyć się z przeszłością, by odnaleźć szantażystę. W podróży towarzyszą mu przyjaciele i prawnik kryzysowy (Hill).
Obsada uzupełniona jest m.in. o Martina Scorsese, Laverne Cox, Susan Lucci i Davida Spade’a. Film wyprodukowany przez Apple Studios, Strong Baby i Matta Dinesa.
15 kwietnia – trailer „Margo’s Got Money Troubles” →
Apple TV ujawniło datę premiery adaptacji bestsellerowej powieści „Margo’s Got Money Troubles” autorstwa Rufi Thorpe. Serial powstaje przy współpracy z A24 i Davidem E. Kelley.
W rolach głównych: Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman, Nick Offerman, a także Marcia Gay Harden, Greg Kinnear, Michael Angarano, Rico Nasty, Lindsey Normington.
Serial opowiada historię Margo, świeżo upieczonej absolwentki, która staje przed wyzwaniami życia dorosłego – nowym dzieckiem, rosnącymi rachunkami i ograniczonymi sposobami ich pokrycia, przy wsparciu rodziny z nietypowym backgroundem.
Premierę zaplanowano na 15 kwietnia 2026 roku. Pierwsze odcinki: 3 odcinki dostępne od razu, kolejne co tydzień do 20 maja.
22 kwietnia – 2. sezon „Criminal Record” →
Apple TV kontynuuje rozwój oferty thrillerów kryminalnych. Sezon 2 serialu „Criminal Record” zadebiutuje 22 kwietnia, a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień aż do 10 czerwca.
Serial opowiada o londyńskich detektywach June Lenker (Cush Jumbo) i Danielu Hegartym (Peter Capaldi), którzy muszą współpracować przy śledztwie po brutalnym morderstwie na politycznej demonstracji, co prowadzi do operacji mającej udaremnić zamach bombowy. Pierwszy sezon z 2024 roku zdobył 90% na Rotten Tomatoes.
Fani kryminałów powinni też zwrócić uwagę na „Slow Horses”, „Black Bird”, „Presumed Innocent” i „Dope Thief”.
24 kwietnia – „My Brother the Minotaur” →
Apple TV ogłosiło nową animowaną serię dla dzieci i rodziny „My Brother the Minotaur”, która zadebiutuje 24 kwietnia.
Produkcja studia Cartoon Saloon opowiada historię młodego minotaura wychowanego przez ludzi, który wraz ze swoim ludzkim bratem i grupą przyjaciół odkrywa tajemnicę swojego pochodzenia i stawia czoła mrocznym siłom. W rolach głosowych wystąpią Brian Cox, Andy Serkis, Michael Sheen i T’Nia Miller.
Serial porusza tematy dorastania, odkrywania tożsamości i poszukiwania swojego miejsca w świecie.
29 kwietnia – teaser „Widow’s Bay” →
Apple TV ujawniło szczegóły nadchodzącego serialu komediowo-horrorowego „Widow’s Bay”, w którym główną rolę zagra Matthew Rhys („The Beast in Me”). Twórcą jest Katie Dippold, a większość odcinków wyreżyserował Hiro Murai („Atlanta”, „Station Eleven”).
Premiera odbędzie się 29 kwietnia 2026 – wtedy zostaną udostępnione trzy pierwsze odcinki, a kolejne będą pojawiać się co tydzień do 17 czerwca, a platforma cały czas podgrzewa związaną z nią atmosferę na swoim kanale YouTube.
Akcja serialu rozgrywa się w odizolowanym miasteczku 40 mil od wybrzeża Nowej Anglii. Burmistrz Tom Loftis (Rhys) stara się ożywić swoje społeczność, przyciągając turystów, ale legendy i tajemnicze zdarzenia zaczynają się materializować. Serial łączy prawdziwy horror z komedią opartą na postaciach.
20 maja – „Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” z Tatianą Maslany i Jake’em Johnsonem →
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę 10-odcinkowego thrillera z czarnym humorem „Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 20 maja 2026 r. Pierwsze dwa odcinki będą dostępne w dniu premiery, kolejne co środę do 15 lipca.
Serial opowiada o Pauli (Maslany), świeżo rozwiedzionej matce, która wplątuje się w sieć szantażu, morderstw i młodzieżowego futbolu. W śledztwie wspierają ją Jake Johnson, Brandon Flynn i Murray Bartlett. Produkcję przygotowały Apple Studios i Counterpart Studios, a twórcą i showrunnerem jest David J. Rosen, reżyseruje David Gordon Green.
29 maja – trailer „Star City” →
Apple TV+ przygotowuje spinoff popularnego „For All Mankind”, zatytułowany „Star City”, który zadebiutuje 29 maja 2026. Premiera obejmie dwa odcinki, a kolejne będą pojawiać się co tydzień do 10 lipca, tuż po finale 5. sezonu „For All Mankind”.
Akcja dzieje się w alternatywnej historii wyścigu kosmicznego, przedstawiając pierwsze lądowanie człowieka na Księżycu przez ZSRR. Fabuła skupia się na życiu kosmonautów, inżynierów i agentów wywiadu radzieckiego, pokazując ryzyko, jakie podejmowali, aby przesunąć granice ludzkości.
Pojawił się też zwiastun całości.
Twórcy: Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert, Ronald D. Moore (ten sam zespół co przy „For All Mankind”). W rolach głównych: Rhys Ifans („House of the Dragon”).
Star City kontynuuje kosmiczne dramaty Apple TV, oferując alternatywną perspektywę wydarzeń znanych z „For All Mankind”.
5 czerwca – trailer 2. sezonu „Your Friends & Neighbors” →
Apple TV oficjalnie potwierdziło premierę 2. sezonu serialu „Your Friends & Neighbors” z Jonem Hammem. Pojawił się też jego oficjalny trailer.
Nowe odcinki zadebiutują 3 kwietnia (piątek), a kolejne będą publikowane co tydzień aż do 5 czerwca. Do obsady wracają m.in. Amanda Peet i Olivia Munn, a nową twarzą sezonu jest James Marsden.
W drugim sezonie Andrew Cooper jeszcze mocniej angażuje się w podwójne życie niepozornego złodzieja z przedmieść. Sytuacja komplikuje się, gdy pojawia się nowy sąsiad, zagrażając ujawnieniem jego sekretów i bezpieczeństwu rodziny. Szybka kontynuacja była możliwa dzięki zamówieniu dwóch sezonów od razu.
5 czerwca – nowy thriller „Cape Fear” od Spielberga i Scorsese wkrótce na Apple TV →
Apple TV ogłosiło datę premiery psychologicznego thrillera „Cape Fear”, produkowanego przez Stevena Spielberga i Martina Scorsese.
Pojawił się także teaser tej produkcji.
Oto oficjalne streszczenie serialu przygotowane przez Apple:
W serialu „Cape Fear” szczęśliwe małżeństwo prawników, Amanda i Steve Bowden, staje w obliczu burzy, gdy Max Cady (w tej roli Bardem), znany morderca z ich przeszłości, wychodzi z więzienia. Ten 10-odcinkowy serial to pełen napięcia thriller w stylu Hitchcocka, będący jednocześnie analizą obsesji Ameryki na punkcie prawdziwych zbrodni w XXI wieku.
W obsadzie znaleźli się Javier Bardem, Amy Adams i Patrick Wilson. Fabuła skupia się na małżeństwie prawników, które musi stawić czoła Maxowi Cady’emu – seryjnemu przestępcy z ich przeszłości.
Serial porusza także temat fascynacji Ameryki prawdziwymi zbrodniami w XXI wieku i jest inspirowany kultowym filmem Scorsese i powieścią „The Executioners”, zadebiutuje 5 czerwca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 31 lipca.
19 czerwca – „Sugar” z Colinem Farrellem wraca na Apple TV →
Apple TV ogłosiło powrót neo-noir detektywistycznego serialu „Sugar” z Colinem Farrellem w roli prywatnego detektywa Johna Sugara. Sezon 2 zadebiutuje 19 czerwca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 7 sierpnia.
W nowym sezonie Sugar prowadzi śledztwo w sprawie zaginięcia siostry młodego boksera, które prowadzi do szeroko zakrojonej miejskiej intrygi. Serial stworzony przez Marka Protosevicha, a showrunnerem drugiego sezonu jest Sam Catlin (Breaking Bad, Preacher).
15 lipca – Anya Taylor-Joy wraca w serialu „Lucky” na Apple TV
Apple TV zapowiedziało nowy serial „Lucky”, w którym wystąpi Anya Taylor-Joy – jej pierwsza duża rola telewizyjna od czasu „Gambitu Królowej”. Premiera odbędzie się 15 lipca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 19 sierpnia.
Serial oparty jest na bestsellerowej powieści Marissy Stapley. Fabuła skupia się na Lucky, oszustce zmuszonej do ucieczki po nieudanym napadzie na miliony dolarów, ściganej przez FBI i bezwzględnego gangstera. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Annette Bening i Timothy Olyphant. Twórcami są Jonathan Tropper i Cassie Pappas.
Zobaczyliśmy już także teaser całości.
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę letniej komedii „The Dink”, która zadebiutuje globalnie 24 lipca 2026 r. Jake Johnson wciela się w Dusty’ego Boyda, byłego tenisowego prodigy’ego, który po kontuzji odkrywa pasję do pickleballu. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, Andy Roddick, Patton Oswalt i Ben Stiller.
Fabuła opowiada o próbie pogodzenia relacji z ojcem, rywalizacji w klubie sportowym i stawienia czoła własnej przeszłości. Film wyreżyserował Josh Greenbaum, a wyprodukowany został przez Red Hour Films i Rivulet Entertainment.
12 sierpnia – 2. sezon „Women in Blue” →
Apple TV zapowiada powrót hiszpańskojęzycznego hitu kryminalnego Women in Blue (Las Azules).
Po udanej pierwszej serii, sezon 2 zadebiutuje 12 sierpnia, a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 30 września. Serial opowiada o czterech kobietach w pierwszej kobiecej policji Meksyku, które odkrywają, że ich rola jest przykrywką dla śledztwa w sprawie seryjnego mordercy.
W nowym sezonie bohaterki zmierzą się z mroczną historią studenckiego mordu z 1968 roku, walcząc zarówno z systemową korupcją, jak i własnymi ideałami.
4 września –„Mayday” z Ryanem Reynoldsem i Kennethem Branaghem →
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę filmu akcji-komedii „Mayday”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 4 września 2026 r. Ryan Reynolds wciela się w amerykańskiego pilota Tropa „Assassin” Kelly’ego, który po nieudanej misji zostaje uwięziony za linią wroga. Kenneth Branagh gra byłego agenta KGB, który niespodziewanie staje się jego sojusznikiem.
W obsadzie znaleźli się także Marcin Dorociński, Maria Bakalova i David Morse. Film powstał w Apple Original Films i Skydance Media, napisany, wyreżyserowany i wyprodukowany przez Johna Francisa Daleya i Jonathana Goldsteina, a Ryan Reynolds pełni także funkcję producenta wykonawczego.
9 października – „Matchbox The Movie” z Johnem Ceną i Jessicą Biel →
Apple TV zapowiedziało także premierę akcji-przygodowego filmu „Matchbox The Movie”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 9 października 2026 r. John Cena wciela się w Seana, agenta CIA, który powraca do swojego rodzinnego miasta, wplątując dawnych przyjaciół w międzynarodową misję ratowania świata.
W obsadzie znaleźli się także Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris, Arturo Castro, Danai Gurira i Golshifteh Farahani. Film powstał w Apple Original Films przy współpracy Skydance Media i Mattel Films, wyreżyserował go Sam Hargrave, scenariusz napisał David Coggeshall.
20 listopada – „Way of the Warrior Kid” z Chrisem Prattem i Lindą Cardellini →
Apple TV ogłosiło premierę filmu „Way of the Warrior Kid”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 20 listopada 2026 r. Chris Pratt wciela się w Jake’a, byłego Navy SEAL-a, który uczy swojego siostrzeńca Marca (Jude Hill) odwagi i pewności siebie, inspirując go do przezwyciężania problemów w szkole. Linda Cardellini gra matkę chłopca, Sarah.
Film oparty jest na bestsellerowej książce Jocko Willinka i wyreżyserowany przez McG. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Ava Torres, Levi McConaughey i Parker Young. Produkcję przygotowały Apple i Skydance Media.
Dalsza część 2026 roku
„The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina” →
Apple TV zapowiedziało nowy kulinarny serial „The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina”. Aktorka Awkwafina (Nora Lum) wyrusza w osobistą podróż po Stanach Zjednoczonych, by odkrywać współczesną kuchnię azjatycko-amerykańską i spróbować odtworzyć dziedzictwo rodzinnej restauracji Lum’s w Nowym Jorku, mimo że… nie potrafi gotować.
W ośmioodcinkowej serii Awkwafina uczy się od znanych szefów kuchni, restauratorów i swojej rodziny, próbując połączyć tradycję z nowoczesnym podejściem do kuchni azjatyckiej. Format przypomina popularną serię The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy, w której bohater znajduje się poza swoją strefą komfortu — tutaj kulinarnie.
Premiera przewidziana jest w 2026 roku.
Apple TV przygotowuje już 2. sezon hitowej komedii „The Studio”, która w zeszłym roku zdobyła uznanie krytyków i widzów za zabawne parodie Hollywood.
Sezon 2. jest obecnie w trakcie nagrań i zapowiada się jeszcze bardziej gwiazdorsko. Do nowo potwierdzonych gości należą Madonna, Julia Garner, Donald Glover i Michael Keaton, którzy dołączą do stałej obsady z Sethiem Rogenem, Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtzem, Chase Sui Wonders i Bryanem Cranstonem. Jeden z odcinków powstaje w Wenecji podczas festiwalu filmowego, gdzie pojawi się także dyrektor artystyczny Alberto Barbera.
Film „What Happens at Night”, w reżyserii Martina Scorsese →
Apple zapowiedziało na jesień 2026 roku premierę filmu z udziałem Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Patrici Clarkson, Jareda Harrisa i Mads Mikkelsen.
Film powstaje na podstawie powieści Petera Camerona i opowiada o amerykańskiej parze, która podróżuje do tajemniczego, śnieżnego europejskiego miasta, aby adoptować dziecko, odkrywając przy tym zaskakujące i niepokojące tajemnice. Produkcja ma trwać do maja, a premiera może nastąpić jeszcze tej jesieni, co stawia film w roli potencjalnego kandydata do Oscara.
Ciekawe doniesienia
Zdjęcia do 3. sezonu „Severance” ruszają wkrótce
Apple TV wkrótce rozpocznie produkcję 3. sezonu swojego głośnego serialu „Severance”. Pojawią się nowe postacie i nowy reżyser.
Adam Scott potwierdził, że zdjęcia rozpoczną się wkrótce, a reżyserią większości odcinków zajmie się Kogonada, zastępując Bena Stillera, który pozostaje w produkcji w roli kreatywnej.
Premiera sezonu 3 spodziewana jest w drugiej połowie 2027 roku na Apple TV.
Jeff Daniels oraz gwiazda „Grey’s Anatomy” dołączają do 5. sezonu „The Morning Show”!
Jeff Daniels zagra w nadchodzącym piątym sezonie „The Morning Show” rolę miliardera i założyciela znanej firmy inwestycyjnej, podaje Deadline.
To jego trzecia współpraca z Apple TV – wcześniej wystąpił w trzecim sezonie „Shrinking” i jako narrator w dokumencie „9/11: Inside the President’s War Room”.
4. sezon zakończył się w listopadzie 2025; data premiery 5. sezonu nie została jeszcze potwierdzona. Twórcy sugerują, że premiera może przyspieszyć w 2026 r. bez przeszkód w postaci strajków scenarzystów.
Ciekawe, czy Apple subtelnie nawiąże do kultowego „The Newsroom”, którego Daniels był przez lata pierwszoplanową gwiazdą.
Do obsady dołączy również Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy), który zagra Vernona – nowego szefa wiadomości UBN, znanego z bezpośredniego stylu i umiejętności przyciągania widzów. W nagradzanej obsadzie pozostają m.in. Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Beharie, Billy Crudup i Jon Hamm.
Premiera sezonu 5. nie została jeszcze potwierdzona.
Apple TV to raj dla fanów sci-fi!
Apple TV umacnia pozycję najlepszej platformy dla fanów science fiction. Z dwoma hitowymi seriami obecnie na ekranach i kilkoma nadchodzącymi premierami, każdy miłośnik kosmosu, potworów i futurystycznych zagadek znajdzie coś dla siebie.
Aktualne hity sci-fi na Apple TV:<
- „For All Mankind” – alternatywna historia kosmiczna, nowy sezon skupia się na Marsie.
- „Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” – walka potworów z udziałem Godzilli, Konga i nowego „Titana X”, nowe odcinki w każdy piątek do 1 maja.
Obie serie cieszą się dużą popularnością i doczekają się spin-offów. Nadchodzące premiery sci-fi, wyglądają natomiast tak:
- „Star City” – spin-off „For All Mankind” z perspektywy ZSRR, premiera 29 maja, w roli głównej Rhys Ifans.
- „Sugar”– noir z wątkiem sci-fi, Colin Farrell jako detektyw w Los Angeles, sezon 2 od 19 czerwca.
- „Dark Matter” – oczekiwany nowy sezon latem 2026, kręcony z udziałem Joela Edgertona.
Wszystkie wymienione wyżej produkcje znajdziecie w katalogu.
Apple TV ogłasza trzy nowe filmy w nadchodzącej ofercie
Apple TV wzmacnia swoją przyszłą ofertę filmową, dodając trzy nowe produkcje.
Biografia Lance’a Armstronga
Tytuł roboczy: „Untitled Lance Armstrong biopic”. Reżyser: Edward Berger (Conclave). W roli Armstronga wystąpi Austin Butler (wcześniej w „Masters of the Air” ).
Film połączy elementy „F1: The Movie” i produkcji Scorsese („Raging Bull”, „The Wolf of Wall Street”) i obejmie życie Armstronga – jego sukcesy i porażki. Armstrong po raz pierwszy zgodził się na użycie praw do swojego życia.
Świąteczny film „Foster the Snowman”
Reżyser: Hikari (Rental Family). Scenariusz: Jono Matt & Peter Huyck („The Studio”).
Bezdzietna para przyjmuje magicznego bałwanka, którego życie odgrywa się w 72 godzinach – połączenie humoru „Elf” i „It’s a Wonderful Life” oraz uroku „Paddingtona”.
Romans „Once and Again” od Rebecca Serle
Apple podobno nabyło również prawa do „Once and Again”, najnowszej powieści romantycznej autorstwa bestsellerowej pisarki Rebecci Serle.
Serle jest autorką takich bestsellerów jak „In Five Years”, „One Italian Summer” i „The Dinner List”.
Oto streszczenie fabuły powieści „Once and Again” według serwisu via Deadline:
Opisywana jako połączenie filmów „Żona podróżnika w czasie” i „Dom nad jeziorem”, historia opowiada o Lauren Novak, pochodzącej z Malibu kobiecie, która porzuciła plażę dla idealnego małżeństwa i życia w Los Angeles. Jednak gdy związek zaczyna się rozpadać, a jej mąż dostaje pracę w Nowym Jorku na lato, Lauren wraca do nadmorskiego miasteczka, które ją ukształtowało, gdzie musi zmierzyć się nie tylko z rodzicami i babcią, ale także z ich najpilniej strzeżoną tajemnicą: kobiety z rodziny Novak urodziły się z darem – każda z nich może tylko raz cofnąć czas.
Apple TV: Brandon Sanderson ujawnia postępy adaptacji „Mistborn”
Brandon Sanderson podał pierwsze szczegóły pre-produkcji serialu „Mistborn” dla Apple TV. Scenariusz jest w połowie gotowy, a autor pełni rolę pisarza, producenta i konsultanta z prawem zatwierdzania treści, co daje mu wyjątkową kontrolę nad ekranizacją jego uniwersum „Cosmere”.
„Mistborn” będzie serią filmów, natomiast „The Stormlight Archive” przygotowywane jest jako serial telewizyjny. Data premiery nie jest jeszcze znana, ale Sanderson regularnie informuje fanów w cotygodniowych filmach na YouTube.
Stellan Skarsgård i Dakota Fanning w nowym thrillerze Apple TV
Apple TV przygotowuje najnowszy międzynarodowy thriller z udziałem Stellan’a Skarsgård i Dakoty Fanning, produkowany przez Sony Pictures Television, donosi Deadline.
Fanning zagra tajną agentkę skarbową w globalnym konglomeracie o politycznych i kryminalnych powiązaniach, której misja zostaje skonfrontowana z uczuciami do głównego celu operacji.
Stellan Skarsgård joins Dakota Fanning in Alex Cary’s upcoming international thriller. pic.twitter.com/iSDrybCDYz
— Apple TV (@AppleTV) March 30, 2026
Reżyserią zajmie się Kari Skogland, a Dakota Fanning będzie także producentką wykonawczą razem z siostrą, Elle Fanning. W projekcie dołączył również Daryl McCormack. Premiera nie została jeszcze ogłoszona, a tytuł serialu pozostaje nieznany.
★ Zobacz poprzednie wydania i więcej nadchodzących premier i nowości →
#Apple #AppleTV #AppleTV #debiut #news #PodsumowaniePremierAppleTV #premiery #streaming -
Apple TV – podsumowanie premier #154
Zapraszam do 154. wydania przeglądu nowości i zapowiedzi platformy Apple TV.
Nagrody
Apple TV triumfuje na 32. Annual Actor Awards i innych galach
Apple TV potwierdziło swoją pozycję lidera w świecie rozrywki dzięki „The Studio”, które zdobyło trzy nagrody na 32. Actor Awards:
- Najlepszy zespół w serialu komediowym
- Najlepszy aktor w serialu komediowym – Seth Rogen
- Najlepsza aktorka w serialu komediowym (pośmiertnie) – Catherine O’Hara
Inne wyróżnienia Apple TV:
- „The Studio”: PGA, ADG, MUAHS, Casting Society, ACE Eddie, Guild of Music Supervisors, AACTA International Awards
- „F1”: BAFTA (dźwięk), VES (compositing & lighting), AAFCA (Damson Idris – aktor drugoplanowy), IFTA (Kerry Condon), AMS (dźwięk)
- „Severance”: SCL (oryginalna ścieżka dźwiękowa), Artios, ADG, BSC (cinematografia)
- „Palm Royale”: MUAHS (charakterystyczna charakteryzacja), CDG (kostiumy)
- „Slow Horses”: Broadcast Awards, AACTA (Gary Oldman – aktor)
- „Smoke”, „Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age”, „Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical”,
- „Mr. Scorsese”, „Number One on the Call Sheet” – liczne nagrody w dziedzinach dokumentu, efektów wizualnych i muzyki
Do tej pory Apple Originals zgarnęły 735 nagród i 3,258 nominacji. Produkcje takie jak „Ted Lasso”, „Severance”, „Pluribus”, filmy „CODA” i „F1: The Movie” wciąż zdobywają kolejne wyróżnienia.
„The Studio” śledzi losy Matta Remicka (Seth Rogen), nowego szefa Continental Studios, i jego walkę z egoistycznymi gwiazdami i korporacyjnymi wyzwaniami w świecie filmów.
Przejęcia, dane i umowy
Tim Cook promuje Formułę 1 w nowym wideo Apple
Tim Cook opublikował krótkie wideo promujące nową współpracę Apple z Formułą 1. Klip rozgrywa się wokół Apple Park, gdzie CEO Apple prowadzi mały pojazd kampusowy i zatrzymuje się obok kierowcy Maxa Verstappena.
Scena stylizowana jest na pit stop F1 – buggy zatrzymuje się w strefie oznaczonej „Tim Box Box”, a mechanicy wykonują błyskawiczną zmianę opon, parodiując choreografię prawdziwych zespołów wyścigowych. Po krótkim postoju Cook rusza dalej.
Materiał jest częścią promocji nowej umowy Apple z Formułą 1. Od sezonu 2026 firma została wyłącznym nadawcą F1 w USA w aplikacji Apple TV, gdzie transmitowane są treningi, kwalifikacje, Sprinty i Grand Prix – na żywo i na żądanie.
Apple promuje partnerstwo w całym swoim ekosystemie: w Apple Sports, Apple News, Apple Maps oraz poprzez transmisje audio w Apple Music. Subskrybenci w USA mogą oglądać wyścigi w 4K, Dolby Vision oraz z wieloma kamerami pokładowymi.
Apple pracuje nad kontynuacją „F1: The Movie” →
Apple oficjalnie potwierdziło przygotowania do sequela hitowego filmu „F1: The Movie”. Producent Jerry Bruckheimer poinformował BBC, że projekt jest w toku, choć nie ujawniono jeszcze szczegółów obsady ani daty premiery.
Decyzja nie dziwi – „F1: The Movie” z Bradem Pittem stał się największym kinowym sukcesem Apple i najbardziej dochodowym filmem sportowym w historii. Apple, inwestując w sport Formuły 1 i startując ze streamowaniem wyścigów na Apple TV w USA od marca, chce utrzymać wysoki poziom produkcji przy premierach kinowych.
Apple TV dodaje do katalogu nowy sezon „Drive to Survive” – wszystkie odcinki już dostępne!
Apple TV wchodzi na tor wyścigowy Formuły 1 – dzięki pięcioletniemu partnerstwu, amerykańscy subskrybenci mają teraz dostęp do wszystkich wyścigów F1, a także do najnowszego sezonu „Formula 1: Drive to Survive”.
Sezon 8. jest już dostępny w całości na Apple TV – niestety tylko na terenie USA, ponieważ jest to cześć umowy Apple TV z F1, w ramach której podpisano inny dokument o wymianie treści między Apple TV a Netflix – w zamian jeden z nadchodzących wyścigów F1 będzie transmitowany na Netflix (również tylko w USA).
Obejmuje wydarzenia sezonu 2025 F1, idealne przygotowanie przed pierwszym wyścigiem 2026, który startuje 7 marca.
Na Apple TV wciąż pojawia się standardowe intro Netflix oraz małe logo w prawym górnym rogu. To nietypowa współpraca między platformami streamingowymi, pokazująca, że Apple stawia na mocną promocję wyścigów F1 w USA.
Netflix liderem rynku streamingowego w Polsce w Q4 2025 – Apple TV wysoko!
JustWatch opublikował dziś najnowszy raport dotyczący polskiego rynku streamingowego, analizując zmiany zachodzące w 2025 roku.
Netflix pozostaje zdecydowanym liderem rynku z 24% udziałem, pomimo odnotowania niewielkiego spadku o 1 punkt procentowy w porównaniu do Q3 2025.
Disney+ i Amazon Prime Video dzieliły drugie miejsce, mając po 17% udziału w rynku. Disney+ zyskał 1 punkt procentowy (z 16% na 17%), podczas gdy Amazon Prime Video utrzymał stabilny udział.
HBO Max (15%) i Apple TV+ (13%) utrzymały stabilne udziały rynkowe w Q4 2025.
JustWatch dostarcza unikalnych informacji na temat nawyków widzów online – bazując na grupie badawczej liczącej około 700 000 miesięcznych użytkowników w Polsce.
Premiery
W piątek, 13 marca, na platformie zadebiutowała trzyodcinkowa docuserii „Twisted Yoga”. Produkcja powstała we współpracy Lightbox i Ladywell Films, a wśród twórców są zdobywcy nagród Oscara i Emmy: Simon Chinn, Jonathan Chinn, Suzanne Lavery i Bernadette Higgins. Reżyserem serii jest Rowan Deacon.
„Twisted Yoga” śledzi grupę młodych adeptów jogi z całego świata, którzy w poszukiwaniu wewnętrznego spokoju trafiają pod wpływ rumuńskiego guru Gregorian Bivolaru, lidera międzynarodowej sieci studiów jogi specjalizujących się w rytuałach tantrycznych. Bohaterowie zaczynają podejrzewać, że trafili do sekty, odkrywając mroczną przeszłość Bivolaru, który wciąż odpowiada przed francuskim wymiarem sprawiedliwości m.in. za handel ludźmi, porwania i gwałty.
2. sezon „Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” →
„Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” powrócił na Apple TV.
Pierwszy sezon z 2023 roku zebrał świetne recenzje — chwalono połączenie historii rodzinnej, ludzkiego dramatu i widowiskowych scen z potworami, w tym Godzillą. Dzięki dynamicznemu wzrostowi Apple TV oraz sukcesom takich tytułów jak Severance czy Pluribus, kontynuacja Monarch powinna trafić do znacznie większej widowni.
Historia ponownie połączy losy bohaterów i złoczyńców na Wyspie Czaszki, a także w nowej nadmorskiej osadzie, gdzie z głębin wyłoni się kolejny mityczny Tytan. Stawka jest najwyższa — zagrożenie globalnym wydarzeniem Titanów i tajemnice przeszłości, które zaczynają wpływać na teraźniejszość.
Apple TV rozszerza „Monsterverse” o nowy spin-off „Monarch”
Apple TV ogłosiło nowy spin-off serii „Monarch: Legacy of Monsters”, skupiający się na postaci pułkownika Lee Shawa, w którego wcieli się Wyatt Russell. Akcja prequela toczyć się będzie w 1984 roku, podczas tajnej misji Shawa mającej powstrzymać Sowietów przed uwolnieniem potężnego Tytana mogącego zmienić bieg zimnej wojny.
Nowy serial wyreżyseruje Joby Harold, odpowiedzialny również za oryginalną serię. Produkcja rozszerzy Monsterverse, wprowadzając fanów w historię nowych i kultowych Tytanów oraz oferując mocno rozbudowaną narrację postaci.
„Monsterverse” Legendary to uniwersum skupione na walce ludzkości o przetrwanie w świecie, gdzie legendy i mity stają się rzeczywistością. Do tej pory w ramach uniwersum powstały m.in. Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla vs. Kong oraz nadchodzący Godzilla x Kong: Supernova.
Doczekaliśmy się także serialu „The Hunt”, po trzymiesięcznym opóźnieniu związanym z dochodzeniem w sprawie plagiatu.
Franck i jego przyjaciele spędzają weekendy na polowaniach, ale pewnego dnia napotykają grupę myśliwych, którzy bez powodu ich atakują. Po incydencie przyjaciele starają się zachować wszystko w tajemnicy, ale wkrótce Franck odkrywa, że śledzą ich myśliwi, żądni zemsty.
Zapowiedzi
Sierpień 2026 – 4. sezon „Teda Lasso” →
Apple TV przygotowuje się do powrotu hitowego serialu „Ted Lasso” po trzech latach od zakończenia 3. sezonu.
Szczegóły sezonu 4:
- Jason Sudeiis powraca jako Ted Lasso, trenując nową kobiecą drużynę – „Lady Greyhounds”.
- annah Waddingham ujawniła, że premiera nowego sezonu odbędzie się w sierpniu 2026, tuż po zakończeniu Mistrzostw Świata w piłce nożnej 2026, które odbywają się w USA, Meksyku i Kanadzie.
18 marca – trailer Imperfect Women →
„Imperfect Women” bada zbrodnię, która niszczy życie trzech kobiet w przyjaźni trwającej od dziesięcioleci.
Niekonwencjonalny thriller bada winę i zemstę, miłość i zdradę oraz kompromisy, które nieodwracalnie zmieniają nasze życie. Wraz z rozwojem śledztwa ujawnia się prawda o tym, że nawet najbliższe przyjaźnie mogą nie być tym, czym się wydają.
Pojawił się też trailer tej produkcji.
27 marca – trailer 5. sezon „For All Mankind” →
Apple TV ujawniło pierwszy teaser piątego sezonu „For All Mankind” oraz datę premiery pierwszego odcinka. Joel Kinnaman wraca w roli Eda Baldwina – teraz sztucznie postarzonego.
Sezon 5. startuje 27 marca i będzie liczyć 10 odcinków. Finał zaplanowano na 29 maja.
Akcja nowego sezonu toczy się po napadzie na asteroidę Goldilocks. Kolonia Happy Valley rozrosła się, stając się bazą nowych misji w Układzie Słonecznym. Jednak rosnące żądania prawa i porządku na Marsie wywołują napięcia między mieszkańcami Czerwonej Planety a Ziemią.
Do obsady powracają Joel Kinnaman, Toby Kebbell, Edi Gathegi, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña i Wrenn Schmidt. Nowe postacie zagrają Mireille Enos, Costa Ronin, Sean Kaufman, Ruby Cruz i Ines Asserson.
Pierwsze cztery sezony „For All Mankind” są już dostępne na Apple TV.
Apple TV przygotowało też dwa materiały przypominające najważniejsze wydarzenia sezonów 1-4.
Friday Night Baseball wraca na Apple TV 27 marca!
Apple ogłosiło powrót Friday Night Baseball w Apple TV na sezon MLB 2026.
Start zaplanowano na 27 marca, kiedy Los Angeles Angels zmierzą się z Houston Astros, a następnie Cleveland Guardians zagrają przeciwko Seattle Mariners.
- Transmisje: cotygodniowe podwójne mecze w piątki przez 25-tygodniowy sezon, dla fanów w 60 krajach i regionach.
- Produkcja: nowoczesne ujęcia z iPhone’ów, wysoka jakość obrazu i komentarz ekspertów, bez ograniczeń lokalnych transmisji.
- Dodatkowe treści: od 26 marca w USA dostępny program MLB Big Inning, oraz serie: Countdown to First Pitch, MLB Daily Recap, MLB This Week.
Początek 2026 – 2. sezon „Dark Matter” →
Serial science fiction „Dark Matter” powróci z drugim sezonem na Apple TV. Po sukcesie pierwszej odsłony, opartej na bestsellerowej powieści Blake’a Croucha, twórcy zdecydowali się kontynuować historię – tym razem bez literackiego pierwowzoru.
Nowe odcinki mają pogłębić losy bohaterów walczących o przetrwanie w świecie wieloświatów. W obsadzie ponownie zobaczymy Joela Edgertona i Jennifer Connelly, a do ekipy dołączy Chris Diamantopoulos. Za scenariusz i reżyserię ponownie odpowiada Blake Crouch, co daje nadzieję na spójny klimat i wysoki poziom produkcji.
Zdjęcia do sezonu 2 zakończyły się w lipcu 2025 roku. Premiera planowana jest na początek 2026 roku – prawdopodobnie między lutym a majem.
Pierwszy sezon „Dark Matter” można obejrzeć na Apple TV.
3 kwietnia – 2. sezon „Your Friends & Neighbors” →
W „Your Friends & Neighbors” finansowy tytan nagle zostaje rozwiedziony i pozbawiony pracy, a następnie zaczyna okradać swoich zamożnych sąsiadów, aby utrzymać się na powierzchni.
Okradanie własnego kręgu społecznego dziwnie go ekscytuje – ale stopniowo zaplątuje się w śmiertelną sieć. Jeśli jeszcze nie widzieliście pierwszego sezonu, to szczerze polecam nadrobić zaległości.
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę czarnej komedii „Outcome”, reżyserowanej przez Jonaha Hilla, z Keanu Reevesem, Cameron Diaz i Mattem Bomerem w rolach głównych. Serial zadebiutuje globalnie 10 kwietnia 2026 r.
Fabuła skupia się na Reefie Hawku (Reeves), hollywoodzkiej gwieździe, która po szantażu tajemniczym wideo zmuszona jest zmierzyć się z przeszłością, by odnaleźć szantażystę. W podróży towarzyszą mu przyjaciele i prawnik kryzysowy (Hill). Obsada uzupełniona jest m.in. o Martina Scorsese, Laverne Cox, Susan Lucci i Davida Spade’a. Film wyprodukowany przez Apple Studios, Strong Baby i Matta Dinesa.
15 kwietnia – trailer „Margo’s Got Money Troubles” →
Apple TV ujawniło datę premiery adaptacji bestsellerowej powieści „Margo’s Got Money Troubles” autorstwa Rufi Thorpe. Serial powstaje przy współpracy z A24 i Davidem E. Kelley.
W rolach głównych: Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman, Nick Offerman, a także Marcia Gay Harden, Greg Kinnear, Michael Angarano, Rico Nasty, Lindsey Normington.
Serial opowiada historię Margo, świeżo upieczonej absolwentki, która staje przed wyzwaniami życia dorosłego – nowym dzieckiem, rosnącymi rachunkami i ograniczonymi sposobami ich pokrycia, przy wsparciu rodziny z nietypowym backgroundem.
Premierę zaplanowano na 15 kwietnia 2026 roku. Pierwsze odcinki: 3 odcinki dostępne od razu, kolejne co tydzień do 20 maja.
22 kwietnia – 2. sezon „Criminal Record” →
Apple TV kontynuuje rozwój oferty thrillerów kryminalnych. Sezon 2 serialu „Criminal Record” zadebiutuje 22 kwietnia, a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień aż do 10 czerwca.
Serial opowiada o londyńskich detektywach June Lenker (Cush Jumbo) i Danielu Hegartym (Peter Capaldi), którzy muszą współpracować przy śledztwie po brutalnym morderstwie na politycznej demonstracji, co prowadzi do operacji mającej udaremnić zamach bombowy. Pierwszy sezon z 2024 roku zdobył 90% na Rotten Tomatoes.
Fani kryminałów powinni też zwrócić uwagę na „Slow Horses”, „Black Bird”, „Presumed Innocent” i „Dope Thief”.
29 kwietnia – zapowiedź „Widow’s Bay” →
Apple TV ujawniło szczegóły nadchodzącego serialu komediowo-horrorowego „Widow’s Bay”, w którym główną rolę zagra Matthew Rhys („The Beast in Me”). Twórcą jest Katie Dippold, a większość odcinków wyreżyserował Hiro Murai („Atlanta”, „Station Eleven”).
Premiera odbędzie się 29 kwietnia 2026 – wtedy zostaną udostępnione trzy pierwsze odcinki, a kolejne będą pojawiać się co tydzień do 17 czerwca.
Akcja rozgrywa się w odizolowanym miasteczku 40 mil od wybrzeża Nowej Anglii. Burmistrz Tom Loftis (Rhys) stara się ożywić swoje społeczność, przyciągając turystów, ale legendy i tajemnicze zdarzenia zaczynają się materializować. Serial łączy prawdziwy horror z komedią opartą na postaciach.
20 maja – „Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” z Tatianą Maslany i Jake’em Johnsonem →
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę 10-odcinkowego thrillera z czarnym humorem „Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 20 maja 2026 r. Pierwsze dwa odcinki będą dostępne w dniu premiery, kolejne co środę do 15 lipca.
Serial opowiada o Pauli (Maslany), świeżo rozwiedzionej matce, która wplątuje się w sieć szantażu, morderstw i młodzieżowego futbolu. W śledztwie wspierają ją Jake Johnson, Brandon Flynn i Murray Bartlett. Produkcję przygotowały Apple Studios i Counterpart Studios, a twórcą i showrunnerem jest David J. Rosen, reżyseruje David Gordon Green.
Apple TV+ przygotowuje spinoff popularnego „For All Mankind”, zatytułowany „Star City”, który zadebiutuje 29 maja 2026. Premiera obejmie dwa odcinki, a kolejne będą pojawiać się co tydzień do 10 lipca, tuż po finale 5. sezonu „For All Mankind”.
Akcja dzieje się w alternatywnej historii wyścigu kosmicznego, przedstawiając pierwsze lądowanie człowieka na Księżycu przez ZSRR. Fabuła skupia się na życiu kosmonautów, inżynierów i agentów wywiadu radzieckiego, pokazując ryzyko, jakie podejmowali, aby przesunąć granice ludzkości.
Twórcy: Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert, Ronald D. Moore (ten sam zespół co przy „For All Mankind”). W rolach głównych: Rhys Ifans („House of the Dragon”).
Star City kontynuuje kosmiczne dramaty Apple TV, oferując alternatywną perspektywę wydarzeń znanych z „For All Mankind”.
5 czerwca – trailer 2. sezonu „Your Friends & Neighbors” →
Apple TV oficjalnie potwierdziło premierę 2. sezonu serialu „Your Friends & Neighbors” z Jonem Hammem. Pojawił się też jego oficjalny trailer.
Nowe odcinki zadebiutują 3 kwietnia (piątek), a kolejne będą publikowane co tydzień aż do 5 czerwca. Do obsady wracają m.in. Amanda Peet i Olivia Munn, a nową twarzą sezonu jest James Marsden.
W drugim sezonie Andrew Cooper jeszcze mocniej angażuje się w podwójne życie niepozornego złodzieja z przedmieść. Sytuacja komplikuje się, gdy pojawia się nowy sąsiad, zagrażając ujawnieniem jego sekretów i bezpieczeństwu rodziny. Szybka kontynuacja była możliwa dzięki zamówieniu dwóch sezonów od razu.
5 czerwca – nowy thriller „Cape Fear” od Spielberga i Scorsese wkrótce na Apple TV →
Apple TV ogłosiło datę premiery psychologicznego thrillera „Cape Fear”, produkowanego przez Stevena Spielberga i Martina Scorsese.
Oto oficjalne streszczenie serialu przygotowane przez Apple:
W serialu „Cape Fear” szczęśliwe małżeństwo prawników, Amanda i Steve Bowden, staje w obliczu burzy, gdy Max Cady (w tej roli Bardem), znany morderca z ich przeszłości, wychodzi z więzienia. Ten 10-odcinkowy serial to pełen napięcia thriller w stylu Hitchcocka, będący jednocześnie analizą obsesji Ameryki na punkcie prawdziwych zbrodni w XXI wieku.
W obsadzie znaleźli się Javier Bardem, Amy Adams i Patrick Wilson. Fabuła skupia się na małżeństwie prawników, które musi stawić czoła Maxowi Cady’emu – seryjnemu przestępcy z ich przeszłości.
Serial porusza także temat fascynacji Ameryki prawdziwymi zbrodniami w XXI wieku i jest inspirowany kultowym filmem Scorsese i powieścią „The Executioners”, zadebiutuje 5 czerwca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 31 lipca.
19 czerwca – „Sugar” z Colinem Farrellem wraca na Apple TV →
Apple TV ogłosiło powrót neo-noir detektywistycznego serialu „Sugar” z Colinem Farrellem w roli prywatnego detektywa Johna Sugara. Sezon 2 zadebiutuje 19 czerwca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 7 sierpnia.
W nowym sezonie Sugar prowadzi śledztwo w sprawie zaginięcia siostry młodego boksera, które prowadzi do szeroko zakrojonej miejskiej intrygi. Serial stworzony przez Marka Protosevicha, a showrunnerem drugiego sezonu jest Sam Catlin (Breaking Bad, Preacher).
15 lipca – Anya Taylor-Joy wraca w serialu „Lucky” na Apple TV
Apple TV zapowiedziało nowy serial „Lucky”, w którym wystąpi Anya Taylor-Joy – jej pierwsza duża rola telewizyjna od czasu „Gambitu Królowej”. Premiera odbędzie się 15 lipca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 19 sierpnia.
Serial oparty jest na bestsellerowej powieści Marissy Stapley. Fabuła skupia się na Lucky, oszustce zmuszonej do ucieczki po nieudanym napadzie na miliony dolarów, ściganej przez FBI i bezwzględnego gangstera. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Annette Bening i Timothy Olyphant. Twórcami są Jonathan Tropper i Cassie Pappas.
Zobaczyliśmy już także teaser całości.
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę letniej komedii „The Dink”, która zadebiutuje globalnie 24 lipca 2026 r. Jake Johnson wciela się w Dusty’ego Boyda, byłego tenisowego prodigy’ego, który po kontuzji odkrywa pasję do pickleballu. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, Andy Roddick, Patton Oswalt i Ben Stiller.
Fabuła opowiada o próbie pogodzenia relacji z ojcem, rywalizacji w klubie sportowym i stawienia czoła własnej przeszłości. Film wyreżyserował Josh Greenbaum, a wyprodukowany został przez Red Hour Films i Rivulet Entertainment.
Dalsza część 2026 roku – „The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina” →
Apple TV zapowiedziało nowy kulinarny serial „The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina”. Aktorka Awkwafina (Nora Lum) wyrusza w osobistą podróż po Stanach Zjednoczonych, by odkrywać współczesną kuchnię azjatycko-amerykańską i spróbować odtworzyć dziedzictwo rodzinnej restauracji Lum’s w Nowym Jorku, mimo że… nie potrafi gotować.
W ośmioodcinkowej serii Awkwafina uczy się od znanych szefów kuchni, restauratorów i swojej rodziny, próbując połączyć tradycję z nowoczesnym podejściem do kuchni azjatyckiej. Format przypomina popularną serię The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy, w której bohater znajduje się poza swoją strefą komfortu — tutaj kulinarnie.
Premiera przewidziana jest w 2026 roku.
4 września –„Mayday” z Ryanem Reynoldsem i Kennethem Branaghem →
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę filmu akcji-komedii „Mayday”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 4 września 2026 r. Ryan Reynolds wciela się w amerykańskiego pilota Tropa „Assassin” Kelly’ego, który po nieudanej misji zostaje uwięziony za linią wroga. Kenneth Branagh gra byłego agenta KGB, który niespodziewanie staje się jego sojusznikiem.
W obsadzie znaleźli się także Marcin Dorociński, Maria Bakalova i David Morse. Film powstał w Apple Original Films i Skydance Media, napisany, wyreżyserowany i wyprodukowany przez Johna Francisa Daleya i Jonathana Goldsteina, a Ryan Reynolds pełni także funkcję producenta wykonawczego.
9 października – „Matchbox The Movie” z Johnem Ceną i Jessicą Biel →
Apple TV zapowiedziało także premierę akcji-przygodowego filmu „Matchbox The Movie”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 9 października 2026 r. John Cena wciela się w Seana, agenta CIA, który powraca do swojego rodzinnego miasta, wplątując dawnych przyjaciół w międzynarodową misję ratowania świata.
W obsadzie znaleźli się także Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris, Arturo Castro, Danai Gurira i Golshifteh Farahani. Film powstał w Apple Original Films przy współpracy Skydance Media i Mattel Films, wyreżyserował go Sam Hargrave, scenariusz napisał David Coggeshall.
20 listopada – „Way of the Warrior Kid” z Chrisem Prattem i Lindą Cardellini →
Apple TV ogłosiło premierę filmu „Way of the Warrior Kid”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 20 listopada 2026 r. Chris Pratt wciela się w Jake’a, byłego Navy SEAL-a, który uczy swojego siostrzeńca Marca (Jude Hill) odwagi i pewności siebie, inspirując go do przezwyciężania problemów w szkole. Linda Cardellini gra matkę chłopca, Sarah.
Film oparty jest na bestsellerowej książce Jocko Willinka i wyreżyserowany przez McG. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Ava Torres, Levi McConaughey i Parker Young. Produkcję przygotowały Apple i Skydance Media.
Jeff Daniels dołącza do 5. sezonu „The Morning Show”!
Jeff Daniels zagra w nadchodzącym piątym sezonie „The Morning Show” rolę miliardera i założyciela znanej firmy inwestycyjnej, podaje Deadline.
To jego trzecia współpraca z Apple TV – wcześniej wystąpił w trzecim sezonie „Shrinking” i jako narrator w dokumencie „9/11: Inside the President’s War Room”.
4. sezon zakończył się w listopadzie 2025; data premiery 5. sezonu nie została jeszcze potwierdzona. Twórcy sugerują, że premiera może przyspieszyć w 2026 r. bez przeszkód w postaci strajków scenarzystów.
Ciekawe, czy Apple subtelnie nawiąże do kultowego „The Newsroom”, którego Daniels był przez lata pierwszoplanową gwiazdą.
Apple TV rezygnuje z „Palm Royale” po dwóch sezonach
Apple TV nie przedłuży produkcji „Palm Royale” na trzeci sezon. Serial zakończył się po dwóch sezonach i 20 odcinkach, pozostawiając niezakończone wątki.
Do tej pory zdobył 11 nominacji do Emmy (w tym Outstanding Comedy Series), wygrana w kategorii Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music. Oceny: 60% na Rotten Tomatoes, 6,8/10 na IMDb.
Pomimo uznania krytyków i gwiazdorskiej obsady, „Palm Royale” nie zdobyło masowej popularności porównywalnej do „Ted Lasso” czy „The Studio”.
Martin Scorsese wzbogaca obsadę swojego nowego filmu „What Happens At Night” dla Apple TV
Martin Scorsese po raz kolejny współpracuje z Apple TV+, tym razem przy ekranizacji powieści Petera Camerona z 2020 roku, „What Happens At Night”, donosi Deadline.
W obsadzie znaleźli się Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Patricia Clarkson, Mads Mikkelsen oraz Jared Harris.Film opowie o amerykańskiej parze podróżującej do zasypanego śniegiem europejskiego miasta, aby adoptować dziecko. Trafiają do Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel, pustego i tajemniczego, gdzie bar nigdy nie zamyka się, a restauracja serwuje trzynastodaniowe posiłki z dawnych wieków.
Apple TV ogłasza trzy nowe filmy w nadchodzącej ofercie
Apple TV wzmacnia swoją przyszłą ofertę filmową, dodając trzy nowe produkcje.
Biografia Lance’a Armstronga
Tytuł roboczy: „Untitled Lance Armstrong biopic”. Reżyser: Edward Berger (Conclave). W roli Armstronga wystąpi Austin Butler (wcześniej w „Masters of the Air” ).
Film połączy elementy „F1: The Movie” i produkcji Scorsese („Raging Bull”, „The Wolf of Wall Street”) i obejmie życie Armstronga – jego sukcesy i porażki. Armstrong po raz pierwszy zgodził się na użycie praw do swojego życia.
Świąteczny film „Foster the Snowman”
Reżyser: Hikari (Rental Family). Scenariusz: Jono Matt & Peter Huyck („The Studio”).
Bezdzietna para przyjmuje magicznego bałwanka, którego życie odgrywa się w 72 godzinach – połączenie humoru „Elf” i „It’s a Wonderful Life” oraz uroku „Paddingtona”.
Romans „Once and Again” od Rebecca Serle
Apple podobno nabyło również prawa do „Once and Again”, najnowszej powieści romantycznej autorstwa bestsellerowej pisarki Rebecci Serle.
Serle jest autorką takich bestsellerów jak „In Five Years”, „One Italian Summer” i „The Dinner List”.
Oto streszczenie fabuły powieści „Once and Again” według serwisu via Deadline:
Opisywana jako połączenie filmów „Żona podróżnika w czasie” i „Dom nad jeziorem”, historia opowiada o Lauren Novak, pochodzącej z Malibu kobiecie, która porzuciła plażę dla idealnego małżeństwa i życia w Los Angeles. Jednak gdy związek zaczyna się rozpadać, a jej mąż dostaje pracę w Nowym Jorku na lato, Lauren wraca do nadmorskiego miasteczka, które ją ukształtowało, gdzie musi zmierzyć się nie tylko z rodzicami i babcią, ale także z ich najpilniej strzeżoną tajemnicą: kobiety z rodziny Novak urodziły się z darem – każda z nich może tylko raz cofnąć czas.
Billy Zane dołącza do drugiego sezonu komedii „Stick”
Billy Zane, znany z Titanica i Twin Peaks, zagra w powracającym golfowym serialu komediowym „Stick” w roli powtarzającej się w sezonie 2.
„Stick” to komedia sportowa stworzona przez Jasona Kellera, z Owenem Wilsonem w roli głównej i jako producentem wykonawczym.
Pryce Cahill (Wilson), były golfista, którego kariera upadła 20 lat temu, postanawia zainwestować w młodego golfowego talentu Santi’ego (Peter Dager). Serial opowiada o relacjach i rodzinie znalezionej w nieoczekiwanym środowisku sportowym.
Inne zmiany w obsadzie: Judy Greer i Timothy Olyphant awansowali do ról stałych w sezonie 2.Data premiery sezonu 2 jeszcze nie została podana.
Silo zapowiada szybki powrót – sezony 3. i 4. już gotowe!
Serial „Silo” powróci z trzecim sezonem jeszcze w tym roku, a Apple TV ujawniło, że czwarty sezon, który zakończy serię, jest już w całości sfilmowany.
„Silo” to Sci-fi oparte na trylogii Hugh Howeya, w czołówce Apple TV obok „Severance”, „Pluribus” i „Monarch: Legacy of Monsters”, o którym mowa powyżej.
Sezony 3. i 4. są ukończone, co pozwoli na szybką premierę kolejnych odcinków – sezon 4 prawdopodobnie pojawi się w mniej niż rok po sezonie 3.
Pierwsze dwa sezony obejmowały pierwszy tom trylogii; finałowe sezony będą łączyć wydarzenia z książek 2 i 3, niekoniecznie w chronologicznym porządku.
Sezon 3 planowany na jesień 2026 r.
★ Zobacz poprzednie wydania i więcej nadchodzących premier i nowości →
#Apple #AppleTV #AppleTV #debiut #news #PodsumowaniePremierAppleTV #premiery #streaming -
Apple TV – podsumowanie premier #153
Zapraszam do 153. wydania przeglądu nowości i zapowiedzi platformy Apple TV.
Apple po raz kolejny stawia się w opozycji do toczącej się na naszych oczach rewolucji AI, w które generatywna sztuczna inteligencja zastępuje aktorów w spotach reklamowych i nie tylko. Firma z Cupertino opublikowała krótki, ale jakże wymowny klip zatytułowany „Ludzie Apple TV” – w stylu starej telewizji, bez żadnej postprodukcji. Ujęcia pochodzą z planów zdjęciowych hitów Apple TV i mówią same za siebie.
Apple może sporo wygrać w najbliższych czasach na takiej narracji, co pokazała już nie tak dawna sytuacja, w której firma odświeżyła czołówkę własnych produkcji, przy okazji zmiany nazwy platformy z Apple TV+ na Apple TV – w całkowicie analogowy sposób. Wykorzystali do tego grę świateł na palonym szkle oraz film poklatkowy.
Pisaliśmy o tym tutaj.
Nowy sezon F1 zbliża się wielkimi krokami!
Jak wiecie Apple TV przejęło wyłączne prawa do transmisji kolejnych sześciu sezonów F1 na terenie USA. W związku z tym załoga kreatywna firmy Apple i platformy Apple TV prowadzi intensywne działania promocyjne; związane ze zbliżającym się startem nowego sezonu.
Apple TV uruchamia treści F1 przed startem sezonu 2026
Apple TV rozpoczęło oficjalną zapowiedź sezonu Formuły 1 2026, udostępniając w aplikacji dedykowane materiały wideo dla fanów motorsportu. To element nowej, pięcioletniej umowy, w ramach której Apple TV jest wyłącznym partnerem streamingowym F1 w USA.
Grafika MacRumors.
W aplikacji Apple TV pojawiła się specjalna sekcja „Get Ready for Formula 1 on Apple TV”, oferująca m.in. zapowiedzi sezonu, zmiany regulaminowe oraz podsumowania poprzednich rozgrywek. Wszystkie materiały odtwarzane są bezpośrednio w aplikacji w formie playlisty.
Dostępne treści obejmują m.in.:
- prezentację malowania Red Bulla,
- zmiany regulaminowe F1 na 2026 rok,
- terminarze Grand Prix, sprintów i F1 Academy,
- podsumowanie sezonu 2025,
- finał mistrzostw w Abu Zabi,
- materiały o Lando Norrisie,
- przegląd serii F2 i F3.
Pierwszy wyścig sezonu 2026 odbędzie się w marcu, a Apple zapowiada dalszą rozbudowę treści F1 w nadchodzących tygodniach. Wszystkie wyścigi będą dostępne bez dodatkowych opłat dla subskrybentów Apple TV.
Nowy kanał F1 w Apple TV przed startem sezonu
Apple TV uruchomiło dedykowany kanał Formula 1, dostępny dla subskrybentów w USA. Od 8 marca będzie można tam oglądać wszystkie wyścigi, zaczynając od Grand Prix Melbourne.
Zdjęcie: 9to5Mac.
Co oferuje kanał F1 w Apple TV?
- Dedykowana sekcja w sidebarze aplikacji i szybki link w tv.apple.com.
- Skróty do nadchodzących sesji treningowych, kwalifikacji i wyścigów.
- Materiały archiwalne, np. historyczne wyścigi na torze Albert Park.
- Darmowy podgląd wszystkich sesji treningowych w sezonie. Niektóre weekendy wyścigowe również będą dostępne bez subskrypcji.
Apple pracuje nad kontynuacją „F1: The Movie” →
Apple oficjalnie potwierdziło przygotowania do sequela hitowego filmu „F1: The Movie”. Producent Jerry Bruckheimer poinformował BBC, że projekt jest w toku, choć nie ujawniono jeszcze szczegółów obsady ani daty premiery.
Decyzja nie dziwi – „F1: The Movie” z Bradem Pittem stał się największym kinowym sukcesem Apple i najbardziej dochodowym filmem sportowym w historii. Apple, inwestując w sport Formuły 1 i startując ze streamowaniem wyścigów na Apple TV w USA od marca, chce utrzymać wysoki poziom produkcji przy premierach kinowych.
Apple promuje nowy sezon Formuły 1 kampanią „Shot on iPhone”
Apple przygotowuje się do transmisji Formuły 1 na Apple TV, promując nowy sezon serią zdjęć „Shot on iPhone”. Kampania obejmuje współpracę z zespołami, m.in. Cadillacem i Red Bullem, prezentując samochody, kierowców i nowe części silników wykonane iPhone’em 17 Pro.
Sezon Formuły 1 w USA będzie dostępny wyłącznie na Apple TV od 7 marca, obejmując wszystkie wyścigi Grand Prix, kwalifikacje i sesje treningowe. Subskrybenci Apple TV otrzymują też dostęp do F1.TV w ramach dodatkowego benefitu, zachowując możliwość korzystania z dedykowanej aplikacji F1.
Hours after unveiling its livery via a Super Bowl commercial and in-person Times Square activation, the Cadillac Formula 1 Team continued its innovative launch with a "Shot on iPhone" social and out-of-home executions in collaboration with Apple.
📸 courtest @Cadillac_F1 pic.twitter.com/MLpxTTKP7b
— Vincenzo Landino (@vincenzolandino) February 13, 2026
Premiery
Apple TV (Apple Original Film) ma za sobą kolejną, głośną premierę filmową. „Eternity”, produkcja studia A24 z Elizabeth Olsen w roli głównej, zadebiutowała na platformie w Walentynki.
Film spotkał się z ciepłym przyjęciem zarówno krytyków, jak i widzów, którzy obejrzeli go podczas kinowej dystrybucji. Obecnie ma 77% oceny na portalu Rotten Tomatoes.
Film wszedł do kin pod koniec listopada, a udział Apple w dystrybucji długo pozostawał w cieniu. Teraz Eternity pojawiło się w zapowiedziach nadchodzących premier Apple TV, co potwierdza rychły debiut streamingowy. Oficjalna data nie została jeszcze ogłoszona – Apple podaje jedynie „zima 2026”.
Produkcja zebrała bardzo dobre recenzje. Krytycy chwalą wysokokonceptową formę romantycznej komedii oraz trio aktorskie: Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller i Callum Turner.
W zaświatach, gdzie dusze mają tydzień na decyzję, gdzie spędzą wieczność, Joan musi wybrać między mężczyzną, z którym przeżyła całe życie, a swoją pierwszą miłością, która zmarła młodo i czekała na nią przez dekady.
Na platformie pojawił się też 2. sezon serialowego thrillera „The Last Thing He Told Me” z Jennifer Garner w roli głównej.
Choć serial pierwotnie planowano jako miniserię, sukces pierwszego sezonu – opartego na bestsellerze „The Last Thing He Told Me” – sprawił, że powstanie kontynuacja inspirowana nową książką autorki Laury Dave, zatytułowaną „The First Time I Saw Him”, która ukaże się w styczniu 2026 r..
W obsadzie oprócz Garner znaleźli się ponownie Angourie Rice, Davida Morse’a i Nikolaja Coster-Waldau, a dołączą do nich Judy Greer i Rita Wilson.
Serial opowiada historię Hannah, która wraz z nastoletnią pasierbicą próbuje odkryć prawdę o tajemniczym zniknięciu jej męża.
Zapowiedzi
27 lutego – trailer 2. sezon „Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” →
„Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” wraca na Apple TV. Drugi sezon zadebiutuje 27 lutego, a kolejne odcinki będą publikowane co tydzień aż do 1 maja. Apple pokazało też w końcu trailer nadchodzącego sezonu.
Pierwszy sezon z 2023 roku zebrał świetne recenzje — chwalono połączenie historii rodzinnej, ludzkiego dramatu i widowiskowych scen z potworami, w tym Godzillą. Dzięki dynamicznemu wzrostowi Apple TV oraz sukcesom takich tytułów jak Severance czy Pluribus, kontynuacja Monarch powinna trafić do znacznie większej widowni.
Historia ponownie połączy losy bohaterów i złoczyńców na Wyspie Czaszki, a także w nowej nadmorskiej osadzie, gdzie z głębin wyłoni się kolejny mityczny Tytan. Stawka jest najwyższa — zagrożenie globalnym wydarzeniem Titanów i tajemnice przeszłości, które zaczynają wpływać na teraźniejszość.
Apple TV rozszerza „Monsterverse” o nowy spin-off „Monarch”
Apple TV ogłosiło nowy spin-off serii „Monarch: Legacy of Monsters”, skupiający się na postaci pułkownika Lee Shawa, w którego wcieli się Wyatt Russell. Akcja prequela toczyć się będzie w 1984 roku, podczas tajnej misji Shawa mającej powstrzymać Sowietów przed uwolnieniem potężnego Tytana mogącego zmienić bieg zimnej wojny.
Nowy serial wyreżyseruje Joby Harold, odpowiedzialny również za oryginalną serię. Produkcja rozszerzy Monsterverse, wprowadzając fanów w historię nowych i kultowych Tytanów oraz oferując mocno rozbudowaną narrację postaci.
„Monsterverse” Legendary to uniwersum skupione na walce ludzkości o przetrwanie w świecie, gdzie legendy i mity stają się rzeczywistością. Do tej pory w ramach uniwersum powstały m.in. Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla vs. Kong oraz nadchodzący Godzilla x Kong: Supernova.
18 marca – trailer Imperfect Women →
„Imperfect Women” bada zbrodnię, która niszczy życie trzech kobiet w przyjaźni trwającej od dziesięcioleci.
Niekonwencjonalny thriller bada winę i zemstę, miłość i zdradę oraz kompromisy, które nieodwracalnie zmieniają nasze życie. Wraz z rozwojem śledztwa ujawnia się prawda o tym, że nawet najbliższe przyjaźnie mogą nie być tym, czym się wydają.
Pojawił się też trailer tej produkcji.
27 marca – 5. sezon „For All Mankind” →
Apple TV ujawniło pierwszy teaser piątego sezonu „For All Mankind” oraz datę premiery pierwszego odcinka. Joel Kinnaman wraca w roli Eda Baldwina – teraz sztucznie postarzonego.
Sezon 5. startuje 27 marca i będzie liczyć 10 odcinków. Finał zaplanowano na 29 maja.
Akcja nowego sezonu toczy się po napadzie na asteroidę Goldilocks. Kolonia Happy Valley rozrosła się, stając się bazą nowych misji w Układzie Słonecznym. Jednak rosnące żądania prawa i porządku na Marsie wywołują napięcia między mieszkańcami Czerwonej Planety a Ziemią.
Do obsady powracają Joel Kinnaman, Toby Kebbell, Edi Gathegi, Cynthy Wu, Coral Peña i Wrenn Schmidt. Nowe postacie zagrają Mireille Enos, Costa Ronin, Sean Kaufman, Ruby Cruz i Ines Asserson.
Pierwsze cztery sezony „For All Mankind” są już dostępne na Apple TV.
Początek 2026 – 2. sezon „Dark Matter” →
Serial science fiction „Dark Matter” powróci z drugim sezonem na Apple TV. Po sukcesie pierwszej odsłony, opartej na bestsellerowej powieści Blake’a Croucha, twórcy zdecydowali się kontynuować historię – tym razem bez literackiego pierwowzoru.
Nowe odcinki mają pogłębić losy bohaterów walczących o przetrwanie w świecie wieloświatów. W obsadzie ponownie zobaczymy Joela Edgertona i Jennifer Connelly, a do ekipy dołączy Chris Diamantopoulos. Za scenariusz i reżyserię ponownie odpowiada Blake Crouch, co daje nadzieję na spójny klimat i wysoki poziom produkcji.
Zdjęcia do sezonu 2 zakończyły się w lipcu 2025 roku. Premiera planowana jest na początek 2026 roku – prawdopodobnie między lutym a majem.
Pierwszy sezon „Dark Matter” można obejrzeć na Apple TV.
3 kwietnia – 2. sezon „Your Friends & Neighbors” →
W „Your Friends & Neighbors” finansowy tytan nagle zostaje rozwiedziony i pozbawiony pracy, a następnie zaczyna okradać swoich zamożnych sąsiadów, aby utrzymać się na powierzchni.
Okradanie własnego kręgu społecznego dziwnie go ekscytuje – ale stopniowo zaplątuje się w śmiertelną sieć. Jeśli jeszcze nie widzieliście pierwszego sezonu, to szczerze polecam nadrobić zaległości.
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę czarnej komedii „Outcome”, reżyserowanej przez Jonaha Hilla, z Keanu Reevesem, Cameron Diaz i Mattem Bomerem w rolach głównych. Serial zadebiutuje globalnie 10 kwietnia 2026 r.
Fabuła skupia się na Reefie Hawku (Reeves), hollywoodzkiej gwieździe, która po szantażu tajemniczym wideo zmuszona jest zmierzyć się z przeszłością, by odnaleźć szantażystę. W podróży towarzyszą mu przyjaciele i prawnik kryzysowy (Hill). Obsada uzupełniona jest m.in. o Martina Scorsese, Laverne Cox, Susan Lucci i Davida Spade’a. Film wyprodukowany przez Apple Studios, Strong Baby i Matta Dinesa.
15 kwietnia – trailer „Margo’s Got Money Troubles” →
Apple TV ujawniło datę premiery adaptacji bestsellerowej powieści „Margo’s Got Money Troubles” autorstwa Rufi Thorpe. Serial powstaje przy współpracy z A24 i Davidem E. Kelley.
W rolach głównych: Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman, Nick Offerman, a także Marcia Gay Harden, Greg Kinnear, Michael Angarano, Rico Nasty, Lindsey Normington.
Serial opowiada historię Margo, świeżo upieczonej absolwentki, która staje przed wyzwaniami życia dorosłego – nowym dzieckiem, rosnącymi rachunkami i ograniczonymi sposobami ich pokrycia, przy wsparciu rodziny z nietypowym backgroundem.
Premierę zaplanowano na 15 kwietnia 2026 roku. Pierwsze odcinki: 3 odcinki dostępne od razu, kolejne co tydzień do 20 maja.
22 kwietnia – 2. sezon „Criminal Record” →
Apple TV kontynuuje rozwój oferty thrillerów kryminalnych. Sezon 2 serialu „Criminal Record” zadebiutuje 22 kwietnia, a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień aż do 10 czerwca.
Serial opowiada o londyńskich detektywach June Lenker (Cush Jumbo) i Danielu Hegartym (Peter Capaldi), którzy muszą współpracować przy śledztwie po brutalnym morderstwie na politycznej demonstracji, co prowadzi do operacji mającej udaremnić zamach bombowy. Pierwszy sezon z 2024 roku zdobył 90% na Rotten Tomatoes.
Fani kryminałów powinni też zwrócić uwagę na „Slow Horses”, „Black Bird”, „Presumed Innocent” i „Dope Thief”.
29 kwietnia – zapowiedź „Widow’s Bay” →
Apple TV ujawniło szczegóły nadchodzącego serialu komediowo-horrorowego „Widow’s Bay”, w którym główną rolę zagra Matthew Rhys („The Beast in Me”). Twórcą jest Katie Dippold, a większość odcinków wyreżyserował Hiro Murai („Atlanta”, „Station Eleven”).
Premiera odbędzie się 29 kwietnia 2026 – wtedy zostaną udostępnione trzy pierwsze odcinki, a kolejne będą pojawiać się co tydzień do 17 czerwca.
Akcja rozgrywa się w odizolowanym miasteczku 40 mil od wybrzeża Nowej Anglii. Burmistrz Tom Loftis (Rhys) stara się ożywić swoje społeczność, przyciągając turystów, ale legendy i tajemnicze zdarzenia zaczynają się materializować. Serial łączy prawdziwy horror z komedią opartą na postaciach.
20 maja – „Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” z Tatianą Maslany i Jake’em Johnsonem →
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę 10-odcinkowego thrillera z czarnym humorem „Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 20 maja 2026 r. Pierwsze dwa odcinki będą dostępne w dniu premiery, kolejne co środę do 15 lipca.
Serial opowiada o Pauli (Maslany), świeżo rozwiedzionej matce, która wplątuje się w sieć szantażu, morderstw i młodzieżowego futbolu. W śledztwie wspierają ją Jake Johnson, Brandon Flynn i Murray Bartlett. Produkcję przygotowały Apple Studios i Counterpart Studios, a twórcą i showrunnerem jest David J. Rosen, reżyseruje David Gordon Green.
5 czerwca – 2. sezon „Your Friends & Neighbors” →
Apple TV oficjalnie potwierdziło premierę 2. sezonu serialu „Your Friends & Neighbors” z Jonem Hammem. Nowe odcinki zadebiutują 3 kwietnia (piątek), a kolejne będą publikowane co tydzień aż do 5 czerwca. Do obsady wracają m.in. Amanda Peet i Olivia Munn, a nową twarzą sezonu jest James Marsden.
W drugim sezonie Andrew Cooper jeszcze mocniej angażuje się w podwójne życie niepozornego złodzieja z przedmieść. Sytuacja komplikuje się, gdy pojawia się nowy sąsiad, zagrażając ujawnieniem jego sekretów i bezpieczeństwu rodziny. Szybka kontynuacja była możliwa dzięki zamówieniu dwóch sezonów od razu.
5 czerwca – nowy thriller „Cape Fear” od Spielberga i Scorsese wkrótce na Apple TV →
Apple TV ogłosiło datę premiery psychologicznego thrillera „Cape Fear”, produkowanego przez Stevena Spielberga i Martina Scorsese.
Oto oficjalne streszczenie serialu przygotowane przez Apple:
W serialu „Cape Fear” szczęśliwe małżeństwo prawników, Amanda i Steve Bowden, staje w obliczu burzy, gdy Max Cady (w tej roli Bardem), znany morderca z ich przeszłości, wychodzi z więzienia. Ten 10-odcinkowy serial to pełen napięcia thriller w stylu Hitchcocka, będący jednocześnie analizą obsesji Ameryki na punkcie prawdziwych zbrodni w XXI wieku.
W obsadzie znaleźli się Javier Bardem, Amy Adams i Patrick Wilson. Fabuła skupia się na małżeństwie prawników, które musi stawić czoła Maxowi Cady’emu – seryjnemu przestępcy z ich przeszłości.
Serial porusza także temat fascynacji Ameryki prawdziwymi zbrodniami w XXI wieku i jest inspirowany kultowym filmem Scorsese i powieścią „The Executioners”, zadebiutuje 5 czerwca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 31 lipca.
19 czerwca – „Sugar” z Colinem Farrellem wraca na Apple TV →
Apple TV ogłosiło powrót neo-noir detektywistycznego serialu „Sugar” z Colinem Farrellem w roli prywatnego detektywa Johna Sugara. Sezon 2 zadebiutuje 19 czerwca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 7 sierpnia.
W nowym sezonie Sugar prowadzi śledztwo w sprawie zaginięcia siostry młodego boksera, które prowadzi do szeroko zakrojonej miejskiej intrygi. Serial stworzony przez Marka Protosevicha, a showrunnerem drugiego sezonu jest Sam Catlin (Breaking Bad, Preacher).
15 lipca – Anya Taylor-Joy wraca w serialu „Lucky” na Apple TV
Apple TV zapowiedziało nowy serial „Lucky”, w którym wystąpi Anya Taylor-Joy – jej pierwsza duża rola telewizyjna od czasu „Gambitu Królowej”. Premiera odbędzie się 15 lipca 2026 r., a kolejne odcinki będą emitowane co tydzień do 19 sierpnia.
Serial oparty jest na bestsellerowej powieści Marissy Stapley. Fabuła skupia się na Lucky, oszustce zmuszonej do ucieczki po nieudanym napadzie na miliony dolarów, ściganej przez FBI i bezwzględnego gangstera. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Annette Bening i Timothy Olyphant. Twórcami są Jonathan Tropper i Cassie Pappas.
Zobaczyliśmy już także teaser całości.
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę letniej komedii „The Dink”, która zadebiutuje globalnie 24 lipca 2026 r. Jake Johnson wciela się w Dusty’ego Boyda, byłego tenisowego prodigy’ego, który po kontuzji odkrywa pasję do pickleballu. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, Andy Roddick, Patton Oswalt i Ben Stiller.
Fabuła opowiada o próbie pogodzenia relacji z ojcem, rywalizacji w klubie sportowym i stawienia czoła własnej przeszłości. Film wyreżyserował Josh Greenbaum, a wyprodukowany został przez Red Hour Films i Rivulet Entertainment.
Dalsza część 2026 roku – „The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina” →
Apple TV zapowiedziało nowy kulinarny serial „The Unlikely Cook with Awkwafina”. Aktorka Awkwafina (Nora Lum) wyrusza w osobistą podróż po Stanach Zjednoczonych, by odkrywać współczesną kuchnię azjatycko-amerykańską i spróbować odtworzyć dziedzictwo rodzinnej restauracji Lum’s w Nowym Jorku, mimo że… nie potrafi gotować.
W ośmioodcinkowej serii Awkwafina uczy się od znanych szefów kuchni, restauratorów i swojej rodziny, próbując połączyć tradycję z nowoczesnym podejściem do kuchni azjatyckiej. Format przypomina popularną serię The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy, w której bohater znajduje się poza swoją strefą komfortu — tutaj kulinarnie.
Premiera przewidziana jest w 2026 roku.
4 września –„Mayday” z Ryanem Reynoldsem i Kennethem Branaghem →
Apple TV zapowiedziało premierę filmu akcji-komedii „Mayday”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 4 września 2026 r. Ryan Reynolds wciela się w amerykańskiego pilota Tropa „Assassin” Kelly’ego, który po nieudanej misji zostaje uwięziony za linią wroga. Kenneth Branagh gra byłego agenta KGB, który niespodziewanie staje się jego sojusznikiem.
W obsadzie znaleźli się także Marcin Dorociński, Maria Bakalova i David Morse. Film powstał w Apple Original Films i Skydance Media, napisany, wyreżyserowany i wyprodukowany przez Johna Francisa Daleya i Jonathana Goldsteina, a Ryan Reynolds pełni także funkcję producenta wykonawczego.
9 października – „Matchbox The Movie” z Johnem Ceną i Jessicą Biel →
Apple TV zapowiedziało także premierę akcji-przygodowego filmu „Matchbox The Movie”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 9 października 2026 r. John Cena wciela się w Seana, agenta CIA, który powraca do swojego rodzinnego miasta, wplątując dawnych przyjaciół w międzynarodową misję ratowania świata.
W obsadzie znaleźli się także Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris, Arturo Castro, Danai Gurira i Golshifteh Farahani. Film powstał w Apple Original Films przy współpracy Skydance Media i Mattel Films, wyreżyserował go Sam Hargrave, scenariusz napisał David Coggeshall.
20 listopada – „Way of the Warrior Kid” z Chrisem Prattem i Lindą Cardellini →
Apple TV ogłosiło premierę filmu „Way of the Warrior Kid”, który zadebiutuje globalnie 20 listopada 2026 r. Chris Pratt wciela się w Jake’a, byłego Navy SEAL-a, który uczy swojego siostrzeńca Marca (Jude Hill) odwagi i pewności siebie, inspirując go do przezwyciężania problemów w szkole. Linda Cardellini gra matkę chłopca, Sarah.
Film oparty jest na bestsellerowej książce Jocko Willinka i wyreżyserowany przez McG. W obsadzie znaleźli się także Ava Torres, Levi McConaughey i Parker Young. Produkcję przygotowały Apple i Skydance Media.
Apple przejmuje pełną kontrolę nad „Severance”
Apple nabyło pełne prawa do popularnego serialu „Severance”, przenosząc produkcję całkowicie do Apple Studios, donosi Deadline.
Wartość transakcji z Fifth Season wyniosła blisko 70 mln USD, wcześniej Apple jedynie licencjonowało serial. Fifth Season pozostaje jako producent wykonawczy.
Decyzja umożliwia Apple lepsze zarządzanie kosztowną produkcją – sezon drugi kosztował ok. 20 mln USD za odcinek i napotkał opóźnienia spowodowane COVID-19, strajkami w Hollywood oraz zmianami scenariusza. Dzięki przejęciu, firma utrzyma produkcję w Nowym Jorku i planuje rozwój „Severance” jako flagowej franczyzy. Sezon trzeci jest już w przygotowaniu, a czwarty uznawany jest za pewny. Twórcy rozważają też prequele, spin-offy i adaptacje międzynarodowe.
Sezon drugi stał się najbardziej oglądanym serialem Apple TV i zdobył 27 nominacji do Emmy, wygrywając osiem nagród.
Apple TV przejmuje prawa do dokumentu „The Last First: Winter K2”
Apple TV nabyło globalne prawa do dokumentu „The Last First: Winter K2”, pokazywanego na festiwalu Sundance. Film w reżyserii Amira Bar-Leva opowiada o ekstremalnej wyprawie zimą na K2 w 2021 roku, w której uczestniczyli John Snorri Sigurjónsson oraz pakistański duet ojciec-syn Ali i Sajid Sadpara.
Dokument ukazuje surowe warunki góry, rywalizację z influencerami i komercyjnymi ekipami oraz udział celebryckiego nepalskiego wspinacza Nims i jego zespołu Sherpów. Premiera „The Last First: Winter K2” nie została jeszcze ogłoszona. Produkcja dołącza do katalogu dokumentów Apple TV, obok takich tytułów jak „STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie”, „Boys State” czy „The Pigeon Tunnel”.
Apple Maps z przewodnikiem wina „Drops of God” od Tomohisy Yamashity
Apple Maps zyskało nowy przewodnik „Drops of God: A World-Class Wine Guide”, stworzony na potrzeby promocji serialu Apple TV „Drops of God”. Kurator, aktor Tomohisa Yamashita, dzieli się swoimi ulubionymi winnicami w Europie i Kalifornii, wraz z informacjami o godzinach otwarcia, zdjęciami i rekomendacjami dla fanów.
Ta, jedna z najlepiej ocenianych serii Apple TV, „Drops of God” powróciła ostatnio z 2. sezonem – długo wyczekiwanym przez fanów!
Serial oparty jest na bestsellerowej japońskiej mandze o tym samym tytule i osadzony jest w świecie gastronomii i wyrafinowanych win.
Przewodnik można zapisać w Apple Maps, udostępnić znajomym i połączyć z soundtrackiem drugiego sezonu na Apple Music. To kolejny przykład, jak Apple łączy treści z Apple TV z funkcjami praktycznymi w aplikacjach, podobnie jak w przewodnikach „Chief of War” czy „A Day Off” inspirowanych innymi produkcjami.
Dana Eden, producentka serialu „Tehran”, nie żyje w wieku 52 lat
Dana Eden, izraelska producentka hitowego serialu szpiegowskiego „Tehran” od Apple TV, została znaleziona martwa w hotelu w Atenach w Grecji podczas zdjęć do czwartego sezonu. Miała 52 lata, informuje The Hollywood Reporter.
Okoliczności śmierci:
- Policja lokalna traktuje zdarzenie jako potencjalne samobójstwo, choć oficjalna przyczyna śmierci nie została potwierdzona.
- Autopsja została zlecona, a funkcjonariusze zbierają nagrania z kamer i zeznania personelu hotelowego.
- Produkcja stanowczo zaprzeczyła plotkom o powiązaniu zdarzenia z działalnością kryminalną lub polityczną.
Firma Donna and Shula Productions wyraziła głęboki smutek i zapewniła, że pogłoski o narodowych lub kryminalnych motywach są nieprawdziwe. Izraelski nadawca publiczny Kan podkreślił rolę Eden w kształtowaniu izraelskiej telewizji i wpływ jej pracy na liczne produkcje oraz seriale.
Serial, współtworzony przez Eden, Moshe Zonder i Maora Kohna, opowiada historię agentki Mossadu (Niv Sultan), która infiltruje Teheran pod fałszywą tożsamością. W obsadzie sezonu 3 pojawiają się także Hugh Laurie, Shaun Toub, Shila Ommi, Sasson Gabai, Phoenix Raei i Bahar Pars.
Śmierć Dana Eden to ogromna strata dla izraelskiej i międzynarodowej branży telewizyjnej.
Apple TV udostępnia MLS za darmo – start sezonu w ten weekend
Apple TV poszerza ofertę sportową – od tego sezonu wszystkie mecze Major League Soccer (MLS) będą dostępne bez dodatkowej opłaty dla subskrybentów. Sezon rozpoczyna się w sobotę, 21 lutego, a każdy mecz będzie dostępny globalnie.
Wcześniej MLS wymagał osobnej płatnej subskrypcji (MLS Season Pass), teraz pełny dostęp jest wliczony w Apple
TV. To również dobry powód, by pozostać subskrybentem platformy.
★ Zobacz poprzednie wydania i więcej nadchodzących premier i nowości →
#Apple #AppleTV #AppleTV #debiut #news #PodsumowaniePremierAppleTV #premiery #streaming -
Unfortunate media trend to make oarfish the doomsday fishPublished 16-Aug-2024
Updated 12-March-2026This post was updated regularly with sightings of oarfish since August 2024. I conclude this post because the point is made: oarfish are seen several times around the world each year, with no connection to earth hazards.
Two interesting things happened within days of each other. If you have specific information associated with these two things that overlap, you are prone to see a relationship between them, even if there is no real association. This happens all the time. For example: your knee hurts on Saturday and it rains on Sunday. If you have heard that a change in weather, such as a change in barometric pressure causes joint pain to be more noticeable, you might conclude that the weather caused your knee to hurt, and not remember that you strained it on Friday doing something mundane.
And so it goes with earthquake precursors. As much as I would like to believe that there are natural precursors that signal an earthquake is forthcoming, the evidence is not useful. The various related events shouldn’t be entirely discounted, but it’s not a simple linear association or a reliable association.
Starting in the summer of 2024, and continuing with multiple events, oarfish have been encountered along the California coast. The latest event occurred in February 2025 at Playa El Quemado in the Gulf of California.
Oarfish and earthquakes
Japanese mythology has several animal-related stories about earthquakes including one that says finding the oarfish means an earthquake is coming. So, the finding of specimens now almost always includes mention of the oarfish as a “harbinger of doom” or “doomsday” fish in news headlines. This is unfortunate and very annoying because there is actually no validity to this claim. In 2019, a statistical study of Japanese accounts showed the evidence for the correlation is not there. It also doesn’t make much sense. The scientifical reasoning is that electromagnetic effects from a stress buildup prior to an earthquake will stun and disable the deep sea fish, which then floats to the surface and dies. Here are some arguments against that idea:
Oarfish are often called “sea-serpents”, another unfortunate misnomer since they are fish, not snakes and don’t match well with most historical accounts of humped “sea serpent” sightings. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. However, once the media latches onto such simplistic clickbait nonsense, they repeat it ad nauseum.
Oarfish filmed in Mexico in 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK2g4Nwdxco
- There is no indication that EMF fields are released during offshore earthquakes. It may happen in some instances but this has no connection to land-based fault movement. If this did happen, there would likely be other indicators, including recorded and dated observations, and other animal reactions.
- It’s more likely that an underwater earthquake itself would cause animal disturbance if it was large enough. The movement can cause sediment clouds and sudden water disruption. Undersea earthquakes are particularly devastating for coral and other benthic organisms that can be shaken loose from their environments or buried in underwater slides.
- In areas around the Pacific rim, earthquakes are very common, so it’s not difficult to correlate the rare fish find to any particular event. When there are no magnitude or time limits to the association, it’s easy to make a correlation.
La Jolla Cove, August 2024
On Saturday, August 10, a group of swimmers in La Jolla Cove, off San Diego, California, found a dead floating oarfish. The huge, silver, vertically flattened, ribbon-like fish measured 12 feet long and is known as the Pacific, or Giant Oarfish, Regalecus glesne. It’s amazing to look at and rare to find. The crew of friends knew this and hauled the beast onto a board and road it to shore, contacting Scripps Institution of Oceanography to collect it.
When a relatively small 4.4 magnitude earthquake happened on August 12 near Los Angeles, some connected the event with the oarfish find. Note that this was not a deep sea quake – it was land based with San Diego being about 125 miles away from it. There was no correlation between the two events.
Star marks location of August 12, 2024 4.4M earthquake in Highland Park, CA, some 125 miles away from the oarfish find in La Jolla cove, San Diego.There are no offshore earthquake-producing faults off the San Diego coast so the typical reasoning for the fish death due to a coming earthquake doesn’t apply unless it floated from Northern California waters. But, now we are really straining the limits of the myth.
September and November, 2024
Poor oarfish. They were having a bad time of it in summer and fall in California. After the August find, a partial specimen was found in September at Huntington Beach. And in early November, a third specimen, a 9½-foot-long carcass was found on Grandview Beach in Encinitas, discovered by Alison Laferriere, a Ph.D. candidate at La Jolla’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Samples were saved for study. According to The Guardian, Scripps had been notified of the September specimen, which was too degraded to save.
The news of three oarfish in 3 months was too much for news sources to handle and they began wildly casting out “Doomsday fish” headlines once again. At first, the correlation was to the shallow earthquake that occurred. But there was no actual relationship. The three sightings are strange because oarfish are rarely seen. However, several things are going on here that have nothing to do with a coming earthquake, even though the media can’t help but cater to sensationalism. First, the fish are quite possibly affected by changing ocean conditions and/or the red tide that kills fish via a toxin. Secondly, people are now more aware of the animal and likely to report it. Now, with social media, their findings are shared worldwide. So, yes, there may be more oarfish mortality and yes, we are certainly going to know about it.
The media will sensationalize every find and not heed any caution about accuracy and reasonableness.
The 4.4 earthquake (red star) occurred in August. The fish were discovered in from 2 days to over 3 months later.The December quake
After the large earthquake that occurred offshore on about 62 miles west of Ferndale, California that caused a tsunami alert on December 5, 2024, once again, a few people remembered the oarfish. It’s common to hear about events and relate them in time while also telescoping the time and distance. When we recognize that this is done, the oarfish bear no correlation to the quakes in California. So, here’s a close up map of the three approximate locations of the oarfish finds in October and November in relation to the land-based 4.4 magnitude earthquake near Los Angeles.
Here is the same map from above that includes the larger quake at the plate triple-junction much farther north.
The distance here is about 600 miles from and 2 months later than the southern California fish finds. There is no mechanism to connect the land based quake or the underwater quake to the oarfish finds. If there was a connection to quakes, we would expect to see more than one oarfish encountered by fishing boats or washed onshore nearer to the northern quake. However, there is also no connection we can currently make between the plate movements here and anything that would affect the fish in particular.
California has A LOT of seismic activity. It’s unreasonable to make an oarfish connection to anything besides, possibly, the real-time specific ocean-climate situation.
Gulf of California, February 2025
A much smaller and live oarfish was spotted by swimmers on a beach in Playa El Quemado, in the Gulf of California in mid February. The animal was alive and swimming in the shallows but beached itself several times. The images taken show the fish did not look injured. But it was also relatively small, maybe only 3-4 feet long. Oarfish have been found living in this gulf. Five healthy specimens of Regalecus glesne were spotted by a remote research vehicle between 2008 and 2011. So, this particular event does not seem ominous. But neither did the rest. The Gulf was created by tectonic movement and is continuing to widen; it’s where the San Andreas Fault changes to a series of complex transform faults.
But, again, these waters are conducive to wildlife as well as having a geologically active seafloor. And ocean life will occasionally be seen on the beaches. There is no reason to consider this to be a sign of anything.
India, May 2025
Fishers caught a full sized oarfish in nets near Tamil Nadu, India on May 30. Reports in English say it was 30 feet long, the typical maximum but the video suggests it wasn’t quite that huge. The news spread via social media. Accuweather made much of the find (so much for scientific reporting), noting that people referring to the creature as the “Pralaya fish” which is a local term tied to ominous predictions of earthquakes or tsunamis.
Tasmania and New Zealand, June 2025
On Tasmania’s western Ocean Beach near Strahan, an oarfish was found by a local. The dead specimen appeared to be in good condition, with only some nibbles from scavenger birds. The witness reported it looked to be about 3 m long. Tasmania, south of Australia, seems to be outside the typical, more tropical habitat area for the bony fish. Unfortunately, again, The Guardian used the stupid and inaccurate “doomsday” trope. Also in the first week of June, two headless specimens were found in New Zealand – a 3.6 m one near the small coastal village of Aramoana, north of Dunedin, and another at an east central coast stony beach near Birdlings Flat. This time, The Guardian included the baselessness of the claim, even in the headline.
Tasmania oarfish, Photograph: Sybil RobertsoniNaturalist sightings
One of the New Zealand oarfish was posted to iNaturalist, an app for logging and identifying flora and fauna. Surprisingly, there were several additional oarfish reports, supported by definitive photos.
- September 18, 2024 Patons Rock, New Zealand
- October 23, 2024 Found near Wainui Bay, Tasmania by Maigan Thompson. Approx 2 m long.
There were several others over the past few years that were noted in New Zealand, which is one of the most frequently reported sighting areas in the world – 7 from 2015 to June 2025.
The red squares represent documented sightings of oarfish.Additionally, from iNaturalist, I found more reports of dead oarfish washed on shore from Miami, Florida in 2021, Australia and Dominican Republic in 2023, and Italy and Mexico in 2025.
iNaturalist, world map of oarfish sightings 2009 to 2025 (includes live sightings)Cabo San Lucas, Mexico 2026
Tourists on the beach in Cabo (San Lucas), Mexico in February 2026 spotted not one but two ribbon fish washing on shore. They didn’t know what they were and thought they might “sting” but still managed to pull them back into the water. The Instagram video shows that they were alive in OK condition. But you can see that the skin is abraded. It’s unlikely the fish will survive but it was a valiant effort to at least given them a chance. As noted above, this is a known area for spotting oarfish.
There were no earthquakes anywhere near this location 10 days before or after the date of the video (February 20).
Conclusion – Give the fish a break
To conclude this post that I have been updating from August 2024 to June 2025, oarfish strandings are not associated with earthquakes and they do not deserve to be represented as harbingers of disasters. Considering the data shown here from iNaturalist and news reports, we can state that it is not unusual for oarfish to be spotted several times around the world each year. Like other deep sea creatures, they will die and be seen outside their normal habitat.
Because we are more tuned into news these days and people have the ability to easily share their observations worldwide, more sightings have been documented than in pre-Internet times. I will concede that if more than 5 oarfish suddenly wash up together in one location, we should seriously consider that something may be amiss environmentally. But, in the present circumstances, where news reports sensationalize and misrepresent every report of the fish, it’s time to recognize we’re being misled and stop demonizing this organism. Instead, appreciate every chance we get to learn about the awesome oarfish.
#animals #animalsAndEarthquakes #California #doomsdayFish #earthquake #earthquakePrecursors #harbingerOfDoom #India #oarfish #Tasmania https://sharonahill.com/?p=8713 -
Unfortunate media trend to make oarfish the doomsday fishPublished 16-Aug-2024
Updated 12-March-2026This post was updated regularly with sightings of oarfish since August 2024. I conclude this post because the point is made: oarfish are seen several times around the world each year, with no connection to earth hazards.
Two interesting things happened within days of each other. If you have specific information associated with these two things that overlap, you are prone to see a relationship between them, even if there is no real association. This happens all the time. For example: your knee hurts on Saturday and it rains on Sunday. If you have heard that a change in weather, such as a change in barometric pressure causes joint pain to be more noticeable, you might conclude that the weather caused your knee to hurt, and not remember that you strained it on Friday doing something mundane.
And so it goes with earthquake precursors. As much as I would like to believe that there are natural precursors that signal an earthquake is forthcoming, the evidence is not useful. The various related events shouldn’t be entirely discounted, but it’s not a simple linear association or a reliable association.
Starting in the summer of 2024, and continuing with multiple events, oarfish have been encountered along the California coast. The latest event occurred in February 2025 at Playa El Quemado in the Gulf of California.
Oarfish and earthquakes
Japanese mythology has several animal-related stories about earthquakes including one that says finding the oarfish means an earthquake is coming. So, the finding of specimens now almost always includes mention of the oarfish as a “harbinger of doom” or “doomsday” fish in news headlines. This is unfortunate and very annoying because there is actually no validity to this claim. In 2019, a statistical study of Japanese accounts showed the evidence for the correlation is not there. It also doesn’t make much sense. The scientifical reasoning is that electromagnetic effects from a stress buildup prior to an earthquake will stun and disable the deep sea fish, which then floats to the surface and dies. Here are some arguments against that idea:
Oarfish are often called “sea-serpents”, another unfortunate misnomer since they are fish, not snakes and don’t match well with most historical accounts of humped “sea serpent” sightings. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. However, once the media latches onto such simplistic clickbait nonsense, they repeat it ad nauseum.
Oarfish filmed in Mexico in 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK2g4Nwdxco
- There is no indication that EMF fields are released during offshore earthquakes. It may happen in some instances but this has no connection to land-based fault movement. If this did happen, there would likely be other indicators, including recorded and dated observations, and other animal reactions.
- It’s more likely that an underwater earthquake itself would cause animal disturbance if it was large enough. The movement can cause sediment clouds and sudden water disruption. Undersea earthquakes are particularly devastating for coral and other benthic organisms that can be shaken loose from their environments or buried in underwater slides.
- In areas around the Pacific rim, earthquakes are very common, so it’s not difficult to correlate the rare fish find to any particular event. When there are no magnitude or time limits to the association, it’s easy to make a correlation.
La Jolla Cove, August 2024
On Saturday, August 10, a group of swimmers in La Jolla Cove, off San Diego, California, found a dead floating oarfish. The huge, silver, vertically flattened, ribbon-like fish measured 12 feet long and is known as the Pacific, or Giant Oarfish, Regalecus glesne. It’s amazing to look at and rare to find. The crew of friends knew this and hauled the beast onto a board and road it to shore, contacting Scripps Institution of Oceanography to collect it.
When a relatively small 4.4 magnitude earthquake happened on August 12 near Los Angeles, some connected the event with the oarfish find. Note that this was not a deep sea quake – it was land based with San Diego being about 125 miles away from it. There was no correlation between the two events.
Star marks location of August 12, 2024 4.4M earthquake in Highland Park, CA, some 125 miles away from the oarfish find in La Jolla cove, San Diego.There are no offshore earthquake-producing faults off the San Diego coast so the typical reasoning for the fish death due to a coming earthquake doesn’t apply unless it floated from Northern California waters. But, now we are really straining the limits of the myth.
September and November, 2024
Poor oarfish. They were having a bad time of it in summer and fall in California. After the August find, a partial specimen was found in September at Huntington Beach. And in early November, a third specimen, a 9½-foot-long carcass was found on Grandview Beach in Encinitas, discovered by Alison Laferriere, a Ph.D. candidate at La Jolla’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Samples were saved for study. According to The Guardian, Scripps had been notified of the September specimen, which was too degraded to save.
The news of three oarfish in 3 months was too much for news sources to handle and they began wildly casting out “Doomsday fish” headlines once again. At first, the correlation was to the shallow earthquake that occurred. But there was no actual relationship. The three sightings are strange because oarfish are rarely seen. However, several things are going on here that have nothing to do with a coming earthquake, even though the media can’t help but cater to sensationalism. First, the fish are quite possibly affected by changing ocean conditions and/or the red tide that kills fish via a toxin. Secondly, people are now more aware of the animal and likely to report it. Now, with social media, their findings are shared worldwide. So, yes, there may be more oarfish mortality and yes, we are certainly going to know about it.
The media will sensationalize every find and not heed any caution about accuracy and reasonableness.
The 4.4 earthquake (red star) occurred in August. The fish were discovered in from 2 days to over 3 months later.The December quake
After the large earthquake that occurred offshore on about 62 miles west of Ferndale, California that caused a tsunami alert on December 5, 2024, once again, a few people remembered the oarfish. It’s common to hear about events and relate them in time while also telescoping the time and distance. When we recognize that this is done, the oarfish bear no correlation to the quakes in California. So, here’s a close up map of the three approximate locations of the oarfish finds in October and November in relation to the land-based 4.4 magnitude earthquake near Los Angeles.
Here is the same map from above that includes the larger quake at the plate triple-junction much farther north.
The distance here is about 600 miles from and 2 months later than the southern California fish finds. There is no mechanism to connect the land based quake or the underwater quake to the oarfish finds. If there was a connection to quakes, we would expect to see more than one oarfish encountered by fishing boats or washed onshore nearer to the northern quake. However, there is also no connection we can currently make between the plate movements here and anything that would affect the fish in particular.
California has A LOT of seismic activity. It’s unreasonable to make an oarfish connection to anything besides, possibly, the real-time specific ocean-climate situation.
Gulf of California, February 2025
A much smaller and live oarfish was spotted by swimmers on a beach in Playa El Quemado, in the Gulf of California in mid February. The animal was alive and swimming in the shallows but beached itself several times. The images taken show the fish did not look injured. But it was also relatively small, maybe only 3-4 feet long. Oarfish have been found living in this gulf. Five healthy specimens of Regalecus glesne were spotted by a remote research vehicle between 2008 and 2011. So, this particular event does not seem ominous. But neither did the rest. The Gulf was created by tectonic movement and is continuing to widen; it’s where the San Andreas Fault changes to a series of complex transform faults.
But, again, these waters are conducive to wildlife as well as having a geologically active seafloor. And ocean life will occasionally be seen on the beaches. There is no reason to consider this to be a sign of anything.
India, May 2025
Fishers caught a full sized oarfish in nets near Tamil Nadu, India on May 30. Reports in English say it was 30 feet long, the typical maximum but the video suggests it wasn’t quite that huge. The news spread via social media. Accuweather made much of the find (so much for scientific reporting), noting that people referring to the creature as the “Pralaya fish” which is a local term tied to ominous predictions of earthquakes or tsunamis.
Tasmania and New Zealand, June 2025
On Tasmania’s western Ocean Beach near Strahan, an oarfish was found by a local. The dead specimen appeared to be in good condition, with only some nibbles from scavenger birds. The witness reported it looked to be about 3 m long. Tasmania, south of Australia, seems to be outside the typical, more tropical habitat area for the bony fish. Unfortunately, again, The Guardian used the stupid and inaccurate “doomsday” trope. Also in the first week of June, two headless specimens were found in New Zealand – a 3.6 m one near the small coastal village of Aramoana, north of Dunedin, and another at an east central coast stony beach near Birdlings Flat. This time, The Guardian included the baselessness of the claim, even in the headline.
Tasmania oarfish, Photograph: Sybil RobertsoniNaturalist sightings
One of the New Zealand oarfish was posted to iNaturalist, an app for logging and identifying flora and fauna. Surprisingly, there were several additional oarfish reports, supported by definitive photos.
- September 18, 2024 Patons Rock, New Zealand
- October 23, 2024 Found near Wainui Bay, Tasmania by Maigan Thompson. Approx 2 m long.
There were several others over the past few years that were noted in New Zealand, which is one of the most frequently reported sighting areas in the world – 7 from 2015 to June 2025.
The red squares represent documented sightings of oarfish.Additionally, from iNaturalist, I found more reports of dead oarfish washed on shore from Miami, Florida in 2021, Australia and Dominican Republic in 2023, and Italy and Mexico in 2025.
iNaturalist, world map of oarfish sightings 2009 to 2025 (includes live sightings)Cabo San Lucas, Mexico 2026
Tourists on the beach in Cabo (San Lucas), Mexico in February 2026 spotted not one but two ribbon fish washing on shore. They didn’t know what they were and thought they might “sting” but still managed to pull them back into the water. The Instagram video shows that they were alive in OK condition. But you can see that the skin is abraded. It’s unlikely the fish will survive but it was a valiant effort to at least given them a chance. As noted above, this is a known area for spotting oarfish.
There were no earthquakes anywhere near this location 10 days before or after the date of the video (February 20).
Conclusion – Give the fish a break
To conclude this post that I have been updating from August 2024 to June 2025, oarfish strandings are not associated with earthquakes and they do not deserve to be represented as harbingers of disasters. Considering the data shown here from iNaturalist and news reports, we can state that it is not unusual for oarfish to be spotted several times around the world each year. Like other deep sea creatures, they will die and be seen outside their normal habitat.
Because we are more tuned into news these days and people have the ability to easily share their observations worldwide, more sightings have been documented than in pre-Internet times. I will concede that if more than 5 oarfish suddenly wash up together in one location, we should seriously consider that something may be amiss environmentally. But, in the present circumstances, where news reports sensationalize and misrepresent every report of the fish, it’s time to recognize we’re being misled and stop demonizing this organism. Instead, appreciate every chance we get to learn about the awesome oarfish.
#animals #animalsAndEarthquakes #California #doomsdayFish #earthquake #earthquakePrecursors #harbingerOfDoom #India #oarfish #Tasmania https://sharonahill.com/?p=8713 -
Unfortunate media trend to make oarfish the doomsday fishPublished 16-Aug-2024
Updated 12-March-2026This post was updated regularly with sightings of oarfish since August 2024. I conclude this post because the point is made: oarfish are seen several times around the world each year, with no connection to earth hazards.
Two interesting things happened within days of each other. If you have specific information associated with these two things that overlap, you are prone to see a relationship between them, even if there is no real association. This happens all the time. For example: your knee hurts on Saturday and it rains on Sunday. If you have heard that a change in weather, such as a change in barometric pressure causes joint pain to be more noticeable, you might conclude that the weather caused your knee to hurt, and not remember that you strained it on Friday doing something mundane.
And so it goes with earthquake precursors. As much as I would like to believe that there are natural precursors that signal an earthquake is forthcoming, the evidence is not useful. The various related events shouldn’t be entirely discounted, but it’s not a simple linear association or a reliable association.
Starting in the summer of 2024, and continuing with multiple events, oarfish have been encountered along the California coast. The latest event occurred in February 2025 at Playa El Quemado in the Gulf of California.
Oarfish and earthquakes
Japanese mythology has several animal-related stories about earthquakes including one that says finding the oarfish means an earthquake is coming. So, the finding of specimens now almost always includes mention of the oarfish as a “harbinger of doom” or “doomsday” fish in news headlines. This is unfortunate and very annoying because there is actually no validity to this claim. In 2019, a statistical study of Japanese accounts showed the evidence for the correlation is not there. It also doesn’t make much sense. The scientifical reasoning is that electromagnetic effects from a stress buildup prior to an earthquake will stun and disable the deep sea fish, which then floats to the surface and dies. Here are some arguments against that idea:
Oarfish are often called “sea-serpents”, another unfortunate misnomer since they are fish, not snakes and don’t match well with most historical accounts of humped “sea serpent” sightings. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. However, once the media latches onto such simplistic clickbait nonsense, they repeat it ad nauseum.
Oarfish filmed in Mexico in 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK2g4Nwdxco
- There is no indication that EMF fields are released during offshore earthquakes. It may happen in some instances but this has no connection to land-based fault movement. If this did happen, there would likely be other indicators, including recorded and dated observations, and other animal reactions.
- It’s more likely that an underwater earthquake itself would cause animal disturbance if it was large enough. The movement can cause sediment clouds and sudden water disruption. Undersea earthquakes are particularly devastating for coral and other benthic organisms that can be shaken loose from their environments or buried in underwater slides.
- In areas around the Pacific rim, earthquakes are very common, so it’s not difficult to correlate the rare fish find to any particular event. When there are no magnitude or time limits to the association, it’s easy to make a correlation.
La Jolla Cove, August 2024
On Saturday, August 10, a group of swimmers in La Jolla Cove, off San Diego, California, found a dead floating oarfish. The huge, silver, vertically flattened, ribbon-like fish measured 12 feet long and is known as the Pacific, or Giant Oarfish, Regalecus glesne. It’s amazing to look at and rare to find. The crew of friends knew this and hauled the beast onto a board and road it to shore, contacting Scripps Institution of Oceanography to collect it.
When a relatively small 4.4 magnitude earthquake happened on August 12 near Los Angeles, some connected the event with the oarfish find. Note that this was not a deep sea quake – it was land based with San Diego being about 125 miles away from it. There was no correlation between the two events.
Star marks location of August 12, 2024 4.4M earthquake in Highland Park, CA, some 125 miles away from the oarfish find in La Jolla cove, San Diego.There are no offshore earthquake-producing faults off the San Diego coast so the typical reasoning for the fish death due to a coming earthquake doesn’t apply unless it floated from Northern California waters. But, now we are really straining the limits of the myth.
September and November, 2024
Poor oarfish. They were having a bad time of it in summer and fall in California. After the August find, a partial specimen was found in September at Huntington Beach. And in early November, a third specimen, a 9½-foot-long carcass was found on Grandview Beach in Encinitas, discovered by Alison Laferriere, a Ph.D. candidate at La Jolla’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Samples were saved for study. According to The Guardian, Scripps had been notified of the September specimen, which was too degraded to save.
The news of three oarfish in 3 months was too much for news sources to handle and they began wildly casting out “Doomsday fish” headlines once again. At first, the correlation was to the shallow earthquake that occurred. But there was no actual relationship. The three sightings are strange because oarfish are rarely seen. However, several things are going on here that have nothing to do with a coming earthquake, even though the media can’t help but cater to sensationalism. First, the fish are quite possibly affected by changing ocean conditions and/or the red tide that kills fish via a toxin. Secondly, people are now more aware of the animal and likely to report it. Now, with social media, their findings are shared worldwide. So, yes, there may be more oarfish mortality and yes, we are certainly going to know about it.
The media will sensationalize every find and not heed any caution about accuracy and reasonableness.
The 4.4 earthquake (red star) occurred in August. The fish were discovered in from 2 days to over 3 months later.The December quake
After the large earthquake that occurred offshore on about 62 miles west of Ferndale, California that caused a tsunami alert on December 5, 2024, once again, a few people remembered the oarfish. It’s common to hear about events and relate them in time while also telescoping the time and distance. When we recognize that this is done, the oarfish bear no correlation to the quakes in California. So, here’s a close up map of the three approximate locations of the oarfish finds in October and November in relation to the land-based 4.4 magnitude earthquake near Los Angeles.
Here is the same map from above that includes the larger quake at the plate triple-junction much farther north.
The distance here is about 600 miles from and 2 months later than the southern California fish finds. There is no mechanism to connect the land based quake or the underwater quake to the oarfish finds. If there was a connection to quakes, we would expect to see more than one oarfish encountered by fishing boats or washed onshore nearer to the northern quake. However, there is also no connection we can currently make between the plate movements here and anything that would affect the fish in particular.
California has A LOT of seismic activity. It’s unreasonable to make an oarfish connection to anything besides, possibly, the real-time specific ocean-climate situation.
Gulf of California, February 2025
A much smaller and live oarfish was spotted by swimmers on a beach in Playa El Quemado, in the Gulf of California in mid February. The animal was alive and swimming in the shallows but beached itself several times. The images taken show the fish did not look injured. But it was also relatively small, maybe only 3-4 feet long. Oarfish have been found living in this gulf. Five healthy specimens of Regalecus glesne were spotted by a remote research vehicle between 2008 and 2011. So, this particular event does not seem ominous. But neither did the rest. The Gulf was created by tectonic movement and is continuing to widen; it’s where the San Andreas Fault changes to a series of complex transform faults.
But, again, these waters are conducive to wildlife as well as having a geologically active seafloor. And ocean life will occasionally be seen on the beaches. There is no reason to consider this to be a sign of anything.
India, May 2025
Fishers caught a full sized oarfish in nets near Tamil Nadu, India on May 30. Reports in English say it was 30 feet long, the typical maximum but the video suggests it wasn’t quite that huge. The news spread via social media. Accuweather made much of the find (so much for scientific reporting), noting that people referring to the creature as the “Pralaya fish” which is a local term tied to ominous predictions of earthquakes or tsunamis.
Tasmania and New Zealand, June 2025
On Tasmania’s western Ocean Beach near Strahan, an oarfish was found by a local. The dead specimen appeared to be in good condition, with only some nibbles from scavenger birds. The witness reported it looked to be about 3 m long. Tasmania, south of Australia, seems to be outside the typical, more tropical habitat area for the bony fish. Unfortunately, again, The Guardian used the stupid and inaccurate “doomsday” trope. Also in the first week of June, two headless specimens were found in New Zealand – a 3.6 m one near the small coastal village of Aramoana, north of Dunedin, and another at an east central coast stony beach near Birdlings Flat. This time, The Guardian included the baselessness of the claim, even in the headline.
Tasmania oarfish, Photograph: Sybil RobertsoniNaturalist sightings
One of the New Zealand oarfish was posted to iNaturalist, an app for logging and identifying flora and fauna. Surprisingly, there were several additional oarfish reports, supported by definitive photos.
- September 18, 2024 Patons Rock, New Zealand
- October 23, 2024 Found near Wainui Bay, Tasmania by Maigan Thompson. Approx 2 m long.
There were several others over the past few years that were noted in New Zealand, which is one of the most frequently reported sighting areas in the world – 7 from 2015 to June 2025.
The red squares represent documented sightings of oarfish.Additionally, from iNaturalist, I found more reports of dead oarfish washed on shore from Miami, Florida in 2021, Australia and Dominican Republic in 2023, and Italy and Mexico in 2025.
iNaturalist, world map of oarfish sightings 2009 to 2025 (includes live sightings)Cabo San Lucas, Mexico 2026
Tourists on the beach in Cabo (San Lucas), Mexico in February 2026 spotted not one but two ribbon fish washing on shore. They didn’t know what they were and thought they might “sting” but still managed to pull them back into the water. The Instagram video shows that they were alive in OK condition. But you can see that the skin is abraded. It’s unlikely the fish will survive but it was a valiant effort to at least given them a chance. As noted above, this is a known area for spotting oarfish.
There were no earthquakes anywhere near this location 10 days before or after the date of the video (February 20).
Conclusion – Give the fish a break
To conclude this post that I have been updating from August 2024 to June 2025, oarfish strandings are not associated with earthquakes and they do not deserve to be represented as harbingers of disasters. Considering the data shown here from iNaturalist and news reports, we can state that it is not unusual for oarfish to be spotted several times around the world each year. Like other deep sea creatures, they will die and be seen outside their normal habitat.
Because we are more tuned into news these days and people have the ability to easily share their observations worldwide, more sightings have been documented than in pre-Internet times. I will concede that if more than 5 oarfish suddenly wash up together in one location, we should seriously consider that something may be amiss environmentally. But, in the present circumstances, where news reports sensationalize and misrepresent every report of the fish, it’s time to recognize we’re being misled and stop demonizing this organism. Instead, appreciate every chance we get to learn about the awesome oarfish.
#animals #animalsAndEarthquakes #California #doomsdayFish #earthquake #earthquakePrecursors #harbingerOfDoom #India #oarfish #Tasmania https://sharonahill.com/?p=8713 -
Unfortunate media trend to make oarfish the doomsday fishPublished 16-Aug-2024
Updated 12-March-2026This post was updated regularly with sightings of oarfish since August 2024. I conclude this post because the point is made: oarfish are seen several times around the world each year, with no connection to earth hazards.
Two interesting things happened within days of each other. If you have specific information associated with these two things that overlap, you are prone to see a relationship between them, even if there is no real association. This happens all the time. For example: your knee hurts on Saturday and it rains on Sunday. If you have heard that a change in weather, such as a change in barometric pressure causes joint pain to be more noticeable, you might conclude that the weather caused your knee to hurt, and not remember that you strained it on Friday doing something mundane.
And so it goes with earthquake precursors. As much as I would like to believe that there are natural precursors that signal an earthquake is forthcoming, the evidence is not useful. The various related events shouldn’t be entirely discounted, but it’s not a simple linear association or a reliable association.
Starting in the summer of 2024, and continuing with multiple events, oarfish have been encountered along the California coast. The latest event occurred in February 2025 at Playa El Quemado in the Gulf of California.
Oarfish and earthquakes
Japanese mythology has several animal-related stories about earthquakes including one that says finding the oarfish means an earthquake is coming. So, the finding of specimens now almost always includes mention of the oarfish as a “harbinger of doom” or “doomsday” fish in news headlines. This is unfortunate and very annoying because there is actually no validity to this claim. In 2019, a statistical study of Japanese accounts showed the evidence for the correlation is not there. It also doesn’t make much sense. The scientifical reasoning is that electromagnetic effects from a stress buildup prior to an earthquake will stun and disable the deep sea fish, which then floats to the surface and dies. Here are some arguments against that idea:
Oarfish are often called “sea-serpents”, another unfortunate misnomer since they are fish, not snakes and don’t match well with most historical accounts of humped “sea serpent” sightings. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. However, once the media latches onto such simplistic clickbait nonsense, they repeat it ad nauseum.
Oarfish filmed in Mexico in 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK2g4Nwdxco
- There is no indication that EMF fields are released during offshore earthquakes. It may happen in some instances but this has no connection to land-based fault movement. If this did happen, there would likely be other indicators, including recorded and dated observations, and other animal reactions.
- It’s more likely that an underwater earthquake itself would cause animal disturbance if it was large enough. The movement can cause sediment clouds and sudden water disruption. Undersea earthquakes are particularly devastating for coral and other benthic organisms that can be shaken loose from their environments or buried in underwater slides.
- In areas around the Pacific rim, earthquakes are very common, so it’s not difficult to correlate the rare fish find to any particular event. When there are no magnitude or time limits to the association, it’s easy to make a correlation.
La Jolla Cove, August 2024
On Saturday, August 10, a group of swimmers in La Jolla Cove, off San Diego, California, found a dead floating oarfish. The huge, silver, vertically flattened, ribbon-like fish measured 12 feet long and is known as the Pacific, or Giant Oarfish, Regalecus glesne. It’s amazing to look at and rare to find. The crew of friends knew this and hauled the beast onto a board and road it to shore, contacting Scripps Institution of Oceanography to collect it.
When a relatively small 4.4 magnitude earthquake happened on August 12 near Los Angeles, some connected the event with the oarfish find. Note that this was not a deep sea quake – it was land based with San Diego being about 125 miles away from it. There was no correlation between the two events.
Star marks location of August 12, 2024 4.4M earthquake in Highland Park, CA, some 125 miles away from the oarfish find in La Jolla cove, San Diego.There are no offshore earthquake-producing faults off the San Diego coast so the typical reasoning for the fish death due to a coming earthquake doesn’t apply unless it floated from Northern California waters. But, now we are really straining the limits of the myth.
September and November, 2024
Poor oarfish. They were having a bad time of it in summer and fall in California. After the August find, a partial specimen was found in September at Huntington Beach. And in early November, a third specimen, a 9½-foot-long carcass was found on Grandview Beach in Encinitas, discovered by Alison Laferriere, a Ph.D. candidate at La Jolla’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Samples were saved for study. According to The Guardian, Scripps had been notified of the September specimen, which was too degraded to save.
The news of three oarfish in 3 months was too much for news sources to handle and they began wildly casting out “Doomsday fish” headlines once again. At first, the correlation was to the shallow earthquake that occurred. But there was no actual relationship. The three sightings are strange because oarfish are rarely seen. However, several things are going on here that have nothing to do with a coming earthquake, even though the media can’t help but cater to sensationalism. First, the fish are quite possibly affected by changing ocean conditions and/or the red tide that kills fish via a toxin. Secondly, people are now more aware of the animal and likely to report it. Now, with social media, their findings are shared worldwide. So, yes, there may be more oarfish mortality and yes, we are certainly going to know about it.
The media will sensationalize every find and not heed any caution about accuracy and reasonableness.
The 4.4 earthquake (red star) occurred in August. The fish were discovered in from 2 days to over 3 months later.The December quake
After the large earthquake that occurred offshore on about 62 miles west of Ferndale, California that caused a tsunami alert on December 5, 2024, once again, a few people remembered the oarfish. It’s common to hear about events and relate them in time while also telescoping the time and distance. When we recognize that this is done, the oarfish bear no correlation to the quakes in California. So, here’s a close up map of the three approximate locations of the oarfish finds in October and November in relation to the land-based 4.4 magnitude earthquake near Los Angeles.
Here is the same map from above that includes the larger quake at the plate triple-junction much farther north.
The distance here is about 600 miles from and 2 months later than the southern California fish finds. There is no mechanism to connect the land based quake or the underwater quake to the oarfish finds. If there was a connection to quakes, we would expect to see more than one oarfish encountered by fishing boats or washed onshore nearer to the northern quake. However, there is also no connection we can currently make between the plate movements here and anything that would affect the fish in particular.
California has A LOT of seismic activity. It’s unreasonable to make an oarfish connection to anything besides, possibly, the real-time specific ocean-climate situation.
Gulf of California, February 2025
A much smaller and live oarfish was spotted by swimmers on a beach in Playa El Quemado, in the Gulf of California in mid February. The animal was alive and swimming in the shallows but beached itself several times. The images taken show the fish did not look injured. But it was also relatively small, maybe only 3-4 feet long. Oarfish have been found living in this gulf. Five healthy specimens of Regalecus glesne were spotted by a remote research vehicle between 2008 and 2011. So, this particular event does not seem ominous. But neither did the rest. The Gulf was created by tectonic movement and is continuing to widen; it’s where the San Andreas Fault changes to a series of complex transform faults.
But, again, these waters are conducive to wildlife as well as having a geologically active seafloor. And ocean life will occasionally be seen on the beaches. There is no reason to consider this to be a sign of anything.
India, May 2025
Fishers caught a full sized oarfish in nets near Tamil Nadu, India on May 30. Reports in English say it was 30 feet long, the typical maximum but the video suggests it wasn’t quite that huge. The news spread via social media. Accuweather made much of the find (so much for scientific reporting), noting that people referring to the creature as the “Pralaya fish” which is a local term tied to ominous predictions of earthquakes or tsunamis.
Tasmania and New Zealand, June 2025
On Tasmania’s western Ocean Beach near Strahan, an oarfish was found by a local. The dead specimen appeared to be in good condition, with only some nibbles from scavenger birds. The witness reported it looked to be about 3 m long. Tasmania, south of Australia, seems to be outside the typical, more tropical habitat area for the bony fish. Unfortunately, again, The Guardian used the stupid and inaccurate “doomsday” trope. Also in the first week of June, two headless specimens were found in New Zealand – a 3.6 m one near the small coastal village of Aramoana, north of Dunedin, and another at an east central coast stony beach near Birdlings Flat. This time, The Guardian included the baselessness of the claim, even in the headline.
Tasmania oarfish, Photograph: Sybil RobertsoniNaturalist sightings
One of the New Zealand oarfish was posted to iNaturalist, an app for logging and identifying flora and fauna. Surprisingly, there were several additional oarfish reports, supported by definitive photos.
- September 18, 2024 Patons Rock, New Zealand
- October 23, 2024 Found near Wainui Bay, Tasmania by Maigan Thompson. Approx 2 m long.
There were several others over the past few years that were noted in New Zealand, which is one of the most frequently reported sighting areas in the world – 7 from 2015 to June 2025.
The red squares represent documented sightings of oarfish.Additionally, from iNaturalist, I found more reports of dead oarfish washed on shore from Miami, Florida in 2021, Australia and Dominican Republic in 2023, and Italy and Mexico in 2025.
iNaturalist, world map of oarfish sightings 2009 to 2025 (includes live sightings)Cabo San Lucas, Mexico 2026
Tourists on the beach in Cabo (San Lucas), Mexico in February 2026 spotted not one but two ribbon fish washing on shore. They didn’t know what they were and thought they might “sting” but still managed to pull them back into the water. The Instagram video shows that they were alive in OK condition. But you can see that the skin is abraded. It’s unlikely the fish will survive but it was a valiant effort to at least given them a chance. As noted above, this is a known area for spotting oarfish.
There were no earthquakes anywhere near this location 10 days before or after the date of the video (February 20).
Conclusion – Give the fish a break
To conclude this post that I have been updating from August 2024 to June 2025, oarfish strandings are not associated with earthquakes and they do not deserve to be represented as harbingers of disasters. Considering the data shown here from iNaturalist and news reports, we can state that it is not unusual for oarfish to be spotted several times around the world each year. Like other deep sea creatures, they will die and be seen outside their normal habitat.
Because we are more tuned into news these days and people have the ability to easily share their observations worldwide, more sightings have been documented than in pre-Internet times. I will concede that if more than 5 oarfish suddenly wash up together in one location, we should seriously consider that something may be amiss environmentally. But, in the present circumstances, where news reports sensationalize and misrepresent every report of the fish, it’s time to recognize we’re being misled and stop demonizing this organism. Instead, appreciate every chance we get to learn about the awesome oarfish.
#animals #animalsAndEarthquakes #California #doomsdayFish #earthquake #earthquakePrecursors #harbingerOfDoom #India #oarfish #Tasmania https://sharonahill.com/?p=8713