sobek.me

January 2025

A ceasefire in Palestine has begun after a delay. 3 Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners have been released.

The BBC's live reporting on the ceasefire, which is supposed to begin on Sunday, Jan 19.

Nick Eardley and Matt Murphy, BBC Verify, "How 15 months of war has devastated Gaza". Jan 16, 2025. "Health officials in Gaza...have compiled [a] death toll [of] 46,788...a UN analysis in November put the figure for women and children as high as 70%. The health ministry also says that 110,453 Palestinians have been injured...The United Nations Satellite Centre...reported that 69% of all structures had been destroyed or damaged [and] concluded 68% of the road network [was] damaged or destroyed...The [UN]'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates 1.9 million people have been internally displaced - some 90% of the population of Gaza...in need of emergency shelter and essential household items.."

Brett Murphy, ProPublica, "A Year of Empty Threats and a “Smokescreen” Policy: How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza". Jan 15, 2025. "Since Oct. 7, 2023, Biden has repeatedly issued threats that Israel ignored...Some human rights officials said they were prevented from pursuing evidence of Israeli abuses. Experts say Biden’s failure to follow through led to impunity for widespread human rights abuses, including blocking aid deliveries, even after explicit U.S. warnings."

Alex Greenberger, ARTnews, "Nan Goldin Addresses War in Gaza at Berlin Exhibition Opening". Nov 22, 2024. "'The weaponization of antisemitism is being aimed at the Palestinian community in [Germany] and those who speak in support for them,' [Goldin] added. 'The ICC is talking about genocide. The UN is talking about genocide. Even the Pope is talking about genocide. Yet we’re not supposed to talk about this as genocide. Are you afraid to hear this, Germany?'."

Marina Magloire, LA Review of Books, "Moving Towards Life...an archive of a Black feminist falling-out over Zionism.". Aug 7, 2024. "Despite their biographical similarities, [June] Jordan and [Audre] Lorde had differing practices of solidarity. How can we add nuance to the historical narrative of Black feminist solidarity with Palestine?...US-based solidarity movements are still threatened by the same fault lines that felled Lorde and Jordan’s friendship."

Wildfires in LA.

Zack Budryk, The Hill, "LA fires’ heat, intensity driven by planet-warming pollution: Study". Jan 15, 2025. "Human-caused climate change was responsible for about a quarter of the fuel available for the wildfires that have devastated the Los Angeles area...two unusually wet winters...[and] atypical heat last summer and fall...[meant that] when the first fires ignited, moisture levels in dead vegetation were the sixth-lowest on record, according to the [currently un-peer-reviewed] research."
María Mónica Monsalve S., El País, "California wildfires: A window into how climate change fuels extreme events". Jan 15, 2025. "'I'm not going to go so far as to say that climate change caused this fire. But the important thing to understand is that it’s making them more dangerous' [said researcher Kaitlyn Trudeau]. In other words...the likelihood of a fire escalating into a megafire has significantly increased."
Ground News overview of news coverage on the effects of climate change on the Jan 2025 LA wildfires.
New York Times, "Shattered in the Fire: A Historic Black Haven". Jan 14, 2025. "Many of Altadena’s Black families passed their houses down from parents to children, and hoped they would be the foundation of generational wealth...'When you lose a middle-class Black community, it’s a loss of a culture, but it’s also a loss for the next generation,' said Wilberta Richardson...many residents worry that the fires will scatter neighbors and hasten gentrification."
Colm Tóibín, London Review of Books, "In LA". Jan 9, 2025. "...it was the wrong day. If they – the signed editions, the rare art books, the weird books, the books Gary [Indiana] treasured – had come a day later, there would have been no address to deliver them to, so they would have been saved. But on that Tuesday, unfortunately, there still was an address."
Matt Pearce, "Fires and the Facts". Jan 8, 2025. "...this week’s local disaster...[was] my first in years where I wasn’t working in a newsroom...This time, I’m a civilian...[and] getting information about a disaster unfolding around me was dogshit...TikTok will happily serve up joke videos until the moment of your death."

Artist and filmmaker David Lynch has passed.

Shared on Bluesky, a passage from Lynch's book on creativity and meditation, "Catching the Big Fish". "If I ran my set with fear...there would be no fun in going down the road together. And it *should* be fun. In work and in life, we're all supposed to get along. We're supposed to have so much fun, like puppy dogs with our tails wagging. It's supposed to be great living; it's supposed to be fantastic."

Re-shared on Bluesky from Instagram, actor Kyle MacLachlan's tribute to Lynch, a longtime creative partner and friend. "What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him...He was not interested in answers because he understood that questions are the drive that makes us who we are...I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear...David, I remain forever changed, and forever your Kale. Thank you for everything."

Preparing for Trump's second term.

Kelly Hayes, "Wading Into 2025: How to Begin". Dec 31, 2024. "Catastrophes abound and the threat of autocracy looms large. As we prepare ourselves for the struggles ahead, many people are feeling discouraged or confused about how to move forward. As I have made my own preparations for the new year, I have talked with some of my brilliant friends–people like Mariame Kaba, Shane Burley, Dean Spade, and Eman Abdelhadi–about the strengths and weaknesses of our movements, and how we should be showing up for each other in these times."

Zane McNeill, Nonprofit Quarterly, "Preparing for a Second Trump Term by Learning from Hungary’s Playbook". Jan 13, 2025. "...Pető pointed out, 'Hungary is a laboratory, and what works will be applied by other illiberal forces.' [...] 'What can be done is the following: (1) preserve the places and spaces; (2) reflect on why this kind of encroachment…is happening; (3) create and engage in emotionally attractive alternatives; (4) try to get organized at a local level.'"

RFK Jr. nears his Senate confirmation.

Sarah McCammon, NPR, "RFK Jr. faces a complicated confirmation with some opposition on both sides of the aisle". Jan 14, 2025. "some Republicans are also raising concerns, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana...Cassidy, who is also a doctor, says he agrees with Kennedy on some goals, like reducing ultraprocessed food in American diets, but disagrees with his vaccine skepticism...several Republican senators have said Kennedy assured them that he would support Trump's position [on abortion] if he's confirmed as secretary of health and human services."

Jerusalem Demsas, The Atlantic, "The Case for Finding Common Ground With RFK" (podcast transcript). Dec 31, 2024. "we’re seeing a lot less sort of resistance stuff and a lot more trying to figure out how to make the reality of this situation less harmful...I don’t think it’s sane-washing him...he has a growing movement of people behind him, who aren’t just going to go away...What does it look like to try to achieve something that doesn’t even have to be consensus but is understanding between us so that the entire sort of public-health apparatus doesn’t just get dismantled?."

Tech, Trump, culture war.

Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge, "Mark Zuckerberg lies about content moderation to Joe Rogan’s face". Jan 10, 2025. "Zuckerberg wants us to believe this isn’t about politics at all. Getting Rogan’s listeners riled up about Zuckerberg’s enemies and finding Republicans a new tech company target is just a coincidence, as are the changes to allow more hate speech on his platforms happening now...All of this has nothing to do with the incoming administration, Zuckerberg tells Rogan."

Thomas Zimmer, "Navigating the Nonsense and Propaganda of Clownish Authoritarianism". Jan 8, 2025. "Trump is not some fringe extremist online provocateur who is best dealt with by not dealing with him...Let’s not pretend the Trumpian drama is just noise than can be neatly separated from the *real* work of doing politics...What the Trumpist Right desires is a purge of the nation that will not be confined to undocumented people...the hard-right intellectual sphere is openly dreaming about redrawing the boundaries of citizenship...Trump’s raging was capturing the Right’s overall project quite well."

Politico Staff, "How Donald Trump transformed mass culture". Dec 29, 2024. "the average, non-ideological American — who was never really on board with progressive cultural politics to begin with — doesn’t feel the same social pressure to defer to the “woke” positions on every cultural issue...fairly or not, Trump and MAGA have taken on a certain countercultural appeal...It’s not cool or subversive right now to be a Democratic partisan, who are seen as defenders of the status quo. There’s a certain subversiveness to being MAGA, and I think we’ll see that echo throughout the cultural sphere..."

Chantal James, The New Republic, "My Gun Culture Is Not Your Gun Culture". Dec 28, 2024. "The rifle in the Black Southern home served a dual purpose: to protect against the ever-present threat of white supremacist terrorism and to hunt game...White supremacist terrorism of the sort my ancestors grew up with...never receded into the past for the Black South."

John Ganz, "Elon Musk is Ross Perot on Crack". Dec 19, 2024. "The old mediating institutions—congress, the press—are no longer necessary, just some machine that gives the appearance of public acclamation...While plebiscites [(public opinion amplifiers such as Twitter)] might look like direct democracy manifest, they are among autocrats’ favorite tools for ending public deliberation, manufacturing consent, and dismantling republics..."

Right-wing militias grow in the US.

Joshua Kaplan, ProPublica, "The Militia and the Mole". Jan 4, 2025. "A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias...He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors and government attorneys. Experts say that militias could have a renaissance under Donald Trump...The conversations that he secretly recorded give a unique, startling window into the militia movement."

Joshua Kaplan, ProPublica, "Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia". Aug 17, 2024. "AP3, one of the largest U.S. militias, rose even as prosecutors pursued other paramilitary groups after the assault on the Capitol...AP3 [is responsible for] armed vigilante operations — at the Texas border, outside ballot boxes and during Black Lives Matter protests. AP3 leaders have forged alliances with law enforcement around the U.S."

Luigiland.

Fortune Magazine, "UnitedHealth, employer of slain exec Brian Thompson, found to have overcharged some cancer patients for drugs by over 1,000%". Jan 15, 2025. "UnitedHealth’s OptumRx, along with Cigna’s Express Scripts and CVS Caremark Rx, were able to collectively pocket $7.3 billion in added revenue above cost during the five year period of the study."
Alexander Beiner, "Best Served Cold: Luigi Mangione and The Age of Breach". Dec 14, 2024. "...the internet has become our externalised collective unconscious...The longer our unexpressed desires and rages swirl online, the more potent they become...until they breach the physical world...the [aftermath of the] murder of George Floyd was a breach event. So was the January 6th insurrection...[so were] ordinary people taking on Wall Street during the GameStop short squeeze...The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is one of the most important...[and] terrifying to technocrats, [because] it represents a re-embodiment of accountability."
David C. Porter, "This Strange Moment". Dec 5, 2024. "...when this moment passes...every effort will be taken to erase it from memory...This effort will sometimes take the shape of denial, at other times of revision...but most often this effort will take the form of silence...I am writing this to you so you will know that what happened did happen, and that it did mean what it meant."