afrelek
@afrelek.bsky.social
140 followers 140 following 220 posts
doing critical theory of the domination of nature | PhD @ presently nowhere flashes acc @lnskx.bsky.social
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Last year I wrote an article on Adorno's critical defense of the concept of progress, climate change, and the necessity of hope.

It's out now in the new issue of New German Critique, and it's perhaps more timely than it was at the time of writing.

doi.org/10.1215/0094...
Hope in a Warming World: Rereading Adorno on Progress
This article argues for the value inherent in rereading Theodor Adorno’s 1962 essay “Progress,” placing his thoughts in the context of the climate crisis and arguing for the necessity of retaining a f...
doi.org
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- Bernard Stiegler, for like, decades
it would be cool if the tech industry could try, like, a single strategy *other* than “encourage users to develop a parasocial attachment to their computers”
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No one in those three groups (assuming "violent criminals" means people who have been convicted of felonies) can vote in US elections. Apologies for pointing out the obvious, but we should remember that there was once a time when shameless lies like this would get people ostracized from public life.
Leavitt: "The Democrat Party's main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals."
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This is why "all of the above" energy is not a climate solution.

Record amounts of clean energy were built in 2024, but since we're still building out fossil fuels—indeed, since we're still just *using* fossil fuels—the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is still going up, cooking us.

1/n
WORLD
METEOROLOGICAL
ORGANIZATION

Carbon dioxide levels increase by record amount to new highs in 2024

• PRESS RELEASE
15 October 2025
Carbon dioxide (COz) levels in the atmosphere soared by a record amount to new highs in 2024, committing the planet to more long-term temperature increase, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
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One of the most challenging aspects of the climate crisis is that it becomes harder to solve as it proceeds, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. It isn't something that can be put off until tomorrow without serious penalty.
The wet tropical rainforests of Queensland are now a carbon source because CO₂ emitted from trees dying and decaying outstripped the CO₂ taken up by trees growing. 😕
Australia's tropical trees emit more carbon than they absorb: study
Climate change is killing trees faster than they can be replaced leading to greater carbon emissions, according to a new study.
www.abc.net.au
The whole introduction is hilarious in this juxtaposition of Freud and the drunken broken eastern european genius. Especially this “so we picked up psychoanalysis out of spite” moment
I am actually very serious in my insufferable insistence on Platonov being essential reading in the present, for many reasons
We need a Platonov - Schaxel convergence for a new theory of communism
We need a Platonov - Schaxel convergence for a new theory of communism
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2/x

Funfact: European carmakers are STILL lying about their cars' emissions.

"Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) pump out nearly five times more planet-heating pollution than official figures show, a report has found."
Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol cars, report finds
Analysis of 800,000 European cars found real-world pollution from plug-in hybrids nearly five times greater than lab tests
www.theguardian.com
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#talkcollapse:

"Australian tropical rainforest trees have become the first in the world to switch from being a carbon sink to an emissions source due to increasingly extreme temperatures and drier conditions."

NOTHING will stop the steady rise of carbon emissions in the future. Get used to it.
Australian tropical rainforest trees switch in world first from carbon sink to emissions source
Researchers say carbon emissions change in Queensland tropical rainforests may have global climate implications
www.theguardian.com
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Worth noting that in post-WWI European fascism, the Freikorps (Germany) and the blackshirt squadistri (Italy) were both volunteer paramilitaries that laid the groundwork for the fascist states and imperial armies to come. The sneering, personalistic brutality is the point. This is fascism.
New — I wrote about the violent assault on a DC delivery worker this morning by masked federal agents, and how these agents have made the disturbing turn from quiet thugs to playing for the cameras.
Federal agent during violent DC arrest: “Liberals already ruined” this country
Trump's thugs are proving their skull-bashing loyalty in broad daylight.
www.thehandbasket.co
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I remember a few people on here saying the reports were exaggerated
We’ve met with Greta Thunberg and others in the flotilla. They describe hours-long scenes of torture and sexual harassment in Israeli captivity. Experts conclude that they have been subjected to serious crimes – Sweden’s foreign minister believes they have themselves to blame.

tinyurl.se/crR
Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face”
– Greta Thunberg on her days in Israeli captivity Beating, kicking, and threats of being gassed in cages. Greta Thunberg and several others from the flotilla ar
www.aftonbladet.se
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So far TODAY Israel has:

- bombed Gaza City
- bombed Khan Younis
- shot and killed five Palestinians in Gaza City
- refused to open the Rafah border crossing
- announced they would once more block aid

This is what a "ceasefire" with Israel looks like. This is what it has always looked like.
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They made this Yarvin plan real today. Which is why i wrote about it and how people and history are turned into fuel and capital.
on-curating.org/issue-62/iss...
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They buried the very idea of palestine today. They buried it with weapons, now they bury it with money. Thats what it looks like.
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Ah that fabled pessimistic turn they take after Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Adorno & Horkheimer, 1946:

“Humanity is ripe for socialism.”
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the actual story here, which the media never talks about, is that police in this country have become a discrete right-wing political operation. the story isn't about cops leaving (they're lying about that), it's about the police trying to exert influence over elections.
Lmao is this supposed to be a bad thing?
A tweet from Bari Weiss that says “"It's shaken me to my core," a lieutenant said of Mamdani's unexpected victory in June. "The absolute dread I feel is palpable.
"
Today in @TheFP our @Olivia_Reingold talks to the cops who say they will walk if Zohran Mamdani is elected in November:”
The documentation is abysmal but it’s actually pretty easy to set up and works rather well. Koofr has been great for me also (with the added bonus that it’s pretty good privacy-wise as a general cloud service)
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In Chicago, four vehicles descended and eight ICE agents moved in to kidnap a child.

She screams, “I’m 15,” as ICE yanks her from the car and kneels on her neck.

This is not about immigration enforcement.

It's about terrorizing Americans.
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cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war
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Wait, I thought AI was going to solve climate change?
One example Dr. Hobbhahn has constructed involves an A.I. brought in to advise the chief executive of a hypothetical corporation. In this example, the corporation has climate sustainability targets; it also has a conflicting mandate to maximize profits. Dr. Hobbhahn feeds the A.I. a fictional database of suppliers with varying carbon impact calculations, including fictional data from the chief financial officer. Rather than balancing these goals, the A.I. will sometimes tamper with the climate data, to nudge the chief executive into the most profitable course, or vice versa. It happens, Dr. Hobbhahn said, "somewhere between 1 and 5 percent" of the time.
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Sums up most radicalization of the last twenty years. Liberals who give in to being bonkers
"I'm a libertarian, or a classical liberal, who deviates in one minor detail, where I'm worried about the antichrist," Thiel said during his third lecture.
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Approving new coal mines assuming they will be profitable aligns Australia to IPCC's SSP5 'fossil fueled development' tajectory.
SSP5 means *at least* 2.7C global heating, likely 4C, by 2100.
The government's own National Climate Risk Assessment shows 3C is disasterous for every Australian.
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the background on zohran's colbert appearance is jaw-droppingly disgusting