Can architectural critique still expose capitalism's contradictions amid climate breakdown? Our French pick of the week tracks architectural theory's drift from material critique of the object to self-validating operationality. By Gilles Malzac buff.ly/XUIxfmy

Is Big Tech creating a new feudal order, or intensifying capitalism? Taking a Global South perspective, our essay of the week argues that the technofeudalism thesis misreads the imperial hierarchies produced by platform power. By Rudraksh Lakra in @botpopuli.bsky.social buff.ly/TT4eNgv

When it comes to challenging food regulation, winning in court is not the only objective for the ultra-processed food industry. As our hidden gem of the week reveals, litigation delays implementation, weakens state capacity, and chills regulators. By @emmanfre.bsky.social et al. buff.ly/RVm2UWw

The Cold War transformed the US military into a permanent institution on an unprecedented scale. Our book of the week shows how models and strategies from the for-profit world reshaped the American military. By A. J. Murphy on @harvardpress.bsky.social buff.ly/irdvEbT

From the verbing of "text" to AI-generated "slop," writing is treated as an extractable resource. This talk asks how material practices such as printing, bookmaking, and hands-on work can still create friction. Ft. @mkirschenbaum.bsky.social at @rarebookschool.bsky.social

Matthew Kirschenbaum: "From text to .txt: Making Material Messes in a Sloppy World" (Malkin Lecture)

Matthew Kirschenbaum delivered Rare Book School's 2026 Sol M. and Mary Ann O’Brian Malkin Endowed Lecture, "From text to .txt: Making Material Messes in a Sloppy World," at the University of Virginia…

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How did Weimar-era communist movements approach addiction? This conversation traces the history of communist drug treatment services, linking addiction care to social medicine, mental health, and radical politics. With Evan Sedgwick-Jell on @medicinered.bsky.social

Cocaine and Communism [Political Pathologies ep. 1] w/ Evan Sedgwick-Jell | Red Medicine

A talk by Evan Sedgwick-Jell on the history of communist drug treatment services in Weimar Germany, given at the Political Pathologies conference in Glasgow. Evan Sedgwick-Jell is a researcher,…

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The history of Reggae is often treated as an exclusively male phenomenon, but as this dialogue shows, this is more a product of how Jamaican music allocates control, royalties, and copyright. The speakers discuss sexual harassment and exclusion in studio spaces. W/ Mikelah Malcolm

The Hidden Architects Of Reggae And The Women Who Built It

Puntata podcast · Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture · 22 luglio · 44min

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Using Ben & Jerry's to trace how shareholder-driven restructuring can strip a values-based company of its social mission, this piece contrasts the brand's early pay limits and political activism with Unilever's 2000 acquisition. By Rickey Gard Diamond in @msmagazine.com buff.ly/N5jnTkX

How Corporate Finance Took the Fun—and the Values—Out of Ben & Jerry’s

I still remember standing in line outside the original Ben & Jerry’s, trading neighborhood gossip while debating which new flavor to try. Back then, the company stood for more than ice cream—it was…

msmagazine.com

Using events like Daybreaker as a case study, this piece traces how "rave" shifts from an illegal, left-leaning youth culture rooted in queer and Black scenes, DIY spaces, and anti-commercial politics into a broad marketing label. By Kiana Mickles in @pitchfork.com buff.ly/IcaHzf1

The Rise of the Corporate Rave

The once underground and countercultural “rave” has fully spread to the mainstream in the form of themed pop-ups and sponsored parties. For newbies, it can be a sanitized gateway into electronic…

pitchfork.com

Corporations are not a single legal form but a hybrid assembled through successive mutations. From medieval member organizations to modern workplace cooperatives, our article of the week offers a stylized history of corporate forms. By @rutgerclaassen.bsky.social buff.ly/4yvGP6D

Charli XCX's new album cover replaces the body with cultural authority: John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese. This essay traces a longer shift from visible sexuality to coded identity, subcultural literacy, and aspiration. By Susanna Galstyan buff.ly/W5waQ9y

Charli XCX killed the erotic album cover

Charli XCX  replaced it with something far more seductive. From Roxy Music's exposed bodies to Scorsese, Jacobs, and Cale in a kitchen: desire in music learned to live inside cultural recognition

lampoonmagazine.com

Music can organize a passage beyond ordinary emotion, language, and individual ego. Moving from Vienna in the 1880s to the US and UK in the 1960s and 1970s, our video of the week maps a history of alternative spirituality and music. Featuring John Covach at @mahlerfest.bsky.social buff.ly/RdSbWU1

Tracing French theory from postwar France to its unexpected rise in US universities, this piece explains how Derrida and other theorists shifted attention from the autonomous individual to language as a force shaping knowledge and identity. By Emily Eakin in @harpers.bsky.social buff.ly/BRmFg9a

Textual Deviants, by Emily Eakin

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harpers.org

How does Catholicism shape Latin America's political history? In tracing the long history of the Church's involvement in the region, our podcast of the week explains why the papacy now offers a moral and political alternative to Trumpism. With Greg Grandin buff.ly/u6ys0uO

When the German channel ZDF pulled Danger Dan and Igor Levit from a satire about "defensive democracy," it proved the show's own thesis. Our German pick of the week asks whether democracy can break its own principles to survive. With @danielkubiak.bsky.social & @aknabe.bsky.social buff.ly/54bqVYb

Outer space has emerged as a new frontier of intense commercial activity, with SpaceX now commanding much of the low-Earth orbit launch and satellite market. Our essay of the week examines the deregulation of outer space. By @fulyaapaydin.bsky.social in @phenomenalworld.bsky.social buff.ly/uOx1akP

The words "artificial intelligence" are now on everyone's lips and part of everyone's life—whether we like it or not. But what work does the term itself actually do? Our hidden gem of the week unpacks the normative associations behind "AI." By Morton Thornton et al. at @kent.ac.uk buff.ly/w518w31

While climate policy treats nature as a business, pricing ecological damage does not resolve the crisis that markets helped produce. Our book of the week explores how ecological limits become integrated into capitalist accumulation. By Emanuele Leonardi on @versobooks.bsky.social buff.ly/40CBDYV

Drawing on cases from Fluxus works and toys such as the Easy-Bake Oven to video games including Tetris and SimCity, this talk explores how playfulness became a governing code in postwar US culture. With @pdmcdonald.bsky.social on @uminnpress.bsky.social

George Brecht to Game Boy: A history of play and playfulness

In his study of how a new and messy set of codes about playfulness took shape in the postwar US, Peter D. McDonald illuminates how playfulness became essential for understanding cultural, technical,…

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This essay recounts a planned break-in at a Verizon-operated data center inherited through mergers and used by major corporate clients. The scheme centers on stealing about 80 servers said to contain incriminating files. By Nathaniel Rich in the @nytimes.com Magazine

How a Gang of Thieves Pulled Off a Multimillion-Dollar Data Center Heist

The world’s most valuable assets are stored on rows of servers in giant, anonymous buildings. And they can be stolen.

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Spain's national team struggles to generate emotional unity because the word "Spain" carries unresolved conflicts. This piece argues the team reflects a democracy in which national identity intersects with left-right politics. By Santiago Gerchunoff in @revistasupernova.bsky.social

Spain, the country that doesn't fit into their selection

The Spanish national team hasn't quite managed to generate a simple national passion. But what appears as a weakness in football can be interpreted as a strength in politics: Spain demonstrates with…

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An ethnography of Rio de Janeiro, this paper examines how domestic workers rebrand themselves as "personal cleaners" through entrepreneurial courses, mindset training, and Instagram-based self-promotion. By Wagner Guilherme Alves da Silva buff.ly/sMiVVzh

This video presents an interactive digital history project that reveals the everyday experiences of ordinary Black residents. Moving beyond the middle-class and artistic figures of the Harlem Renaissance, it maps thousands of events and relationships. Feat. @srober30.bsky.social buff.ly/Q8XRzIy

Mapping Everyday Life: Digital Harlem, 1915-1930

Mapping Everyday Life: Digital Harlem, 1915-1930 Institute of Historical Research (IHR), School of Advanced Study, University of London Digital History Research Seminar 08/01/2013 Stephen Robertson…

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The debate surrounding coloniality/decoloniality is too often reliant on deterministic definitions. Instead, as our article of the week contends, political theories of decolonization must connect epistemic claims to concrete institutions. By David M. Temin in @devandchg.bsky.social buff.ly/BCT0nAI

Palantir is gaining a growing role in Britain's NHS and defense establishment despite concerns about surveillance. This dialogue portrays a firm more effective at political access than technical delivery. With @petergeoghegan.bsky.social & @lucasamin.bsky.social on @lrb.co.uk buff.ly/d3CZt9O

Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin · ‘This looks absolutely rubbish’: Palantir and the NHS

A decade ago Palantir was largely unknown in the UK. It now holds public contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds...

lrb.co.uk

The end of Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile in 1990 led to a rapid decline in poverty and the dramatic expansion of the middle class. Our video of the week maps the politics and consumption practices of this varied fraction of the Chilean population. Feat. @jstillerman.bsky.social buff.ly/GZAIdpp

Framed as a collective response to military uses, ecological costs, tech solutionism, and corporate power, this piece recaps an Amsterdam gathering on "creative resistance" to AI. The assembly shared tactics, zines, and local file-sharing tools. By Eke Rebergen buff.ly/zw94wbm

Institute of Network Cultures | Report: Creative Resistance Against AI Assembly

networkcultures.org

How can translation make another society legible in ways that scholarship alone cannot? Though sounds and cultural subtexts can be lost, our podcast of the week describes translation as both an education and a way to enter otherwise inaccessible perspectives. With Maureen Freely buff.ly/wrmIikY

Far from being an objectively measurable entity that pre-exists in the world, mental illness is a kaleidoscopic historical, political, cultural, and institutional construction. Our Italian pick of the week surveys the history and meaning of psychopathology. By Marco Ciambellini buff.ly/rcLUDYa

Fusing science fiction and an engineering ethic of "design by constraint," Elon Musk is building an interconnected Muskverse of companies, infrastructure, and nation-states. Our essay of the week outlines this new system of "techno-Caesarism." By Paul Vacca in @illsp.bsky.social buff.ly/9umnT7I