Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 26

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

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Shit. All right, well, St. Andrew, I'm going to pivot to you to pull us out of this tailspin. I've locked it, thank you. Hello, hello. What's it seem, everyone? Today, I wanted to go on a bit of a personal meandering, I guess, on some of the ideas and concepts that is kind of floating on my head surrounding sustainable city planning and city living. I see a lot of these ideas and stuff kind of just crimped them from like all over the place and in some cases, they are a bit less, I would say, viable than others, but I do find like the work of, for example, lowtechmagazine.com and so on to be very inspiring in terms of all capabilities. What potential there is in obsolete technologies, what lowtech solutions exist for issues, and what we can do as people to just kind of make living in urban sprawl or suburban hell a little bit less hellish.

Yeah, that is definitely a topic close to my heart as well as someone who lives in a city. I would like cities to be less hellish. Yeah. That seems like a goal. And I would like suburbs to not exist. So eternal war on the suburbs. We have to ally with rural America. Protracted people's war against the suburbs.

Yes. My crank proposal has always been reintroducing mastodons and just like just having mastodons just like walking through and destroying buildings because that's what the suburbs deserves. Yeah. Mastodons isn't the actual animals. Yes, yes. I thought you meant like the social media platform. No, no. No, I think we need to clone leopards so that they breed as quickly as rabbits and just let them loose.

Wasn't Dr. Doofenshmuts raised by leopards? Sure, why not? Robert, do you know who Dr. Doofenshmuts is? No. Okay, let's just move on. No explanation. Down, okay. I think we are roughly the same in the same age bracket for television we watched.

So you both have a lot of Trimmers movies to catch up on. I'm very familiar with The Good Doctor. Perry the Platypus Pilled. Yes, I am very, very, very platypilled as they say. Platypilled. Nice. Let's continue. Right, so there are a lot of aspects of my evil plan to make the entire tri-state area more sustainable.

But I think I would want to start with something that tends to consume a lot of the energy in cities. And that is like heating and cooling. I mean, for me, living in a tropical country, heating has never been a consideration. I mean, the coolest it gets is in like the, I would say like 18, 19, 20 degrees Celsius area. Wow. And to me, that is like chilly, that's like layering up kind of thing, because I can't handle that kind of cold. Which is kind of wild to me that I ever considered moving to Canada. I don't think I'll be able to handle it.

It does get much colder. I mean, when I was in Canada, we would not uncommonly have minus 40 Celsius weeks. So, yeah. Yeah, I've never experienced minus degrees before. I don't know if that's like real. Oh, no, it is. Oh, it's fine. It's not a big deal. You just put on an extra pair of socks, you're good to go.

Okay, so when it hits negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit. You've experienced negative 40 degrees. It's not like Arctic temperatures. No, like negative 40 Fahrenheit is the temperature of the surface of Mars. It's a sunny day. Well, negative 40 Fahrenheit is the same as negative 40 Celsius. Oh, is it? Yeah.

They actually converge at that point. Yeah, it's like you just... It's just pain. Like it's not even cold anymore. Your face just hurts. It's great. I'm going to call out my favorite meme again and have negative 40 Fahrenheit, negative 40 Celsius. Clapping hands in the middle. Yeah.

Classic. Classic. Anyway, yes. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I can't even conceive of that kind of temperature. I am an island boy, so that's how I operate. Got it. I am an island boy. I had to say that like heat is very, very uncomfortable. Humid.

Humid heat is even more uncomfortable. Yeah. Dry heat is also extremely uncomfortable. When you have a hot day combined with like Sahara and dust in the air and no clouds in the sky, it is truly, truly miserable. I can't imagine what life in a city would be like if these sort of temperatures continue to climb as they are climbing. As we're seeing global average temperatures rising by a half degree or a degree or two degrees Celsius, that's just ridiculous. Let alone three or four degrees Celsius increase.

Especially compounded with the fact that in a city, there's this thing called the urban heat island effect. So cities are 10 degrees Celsius hotter than the surrounding countryside. And the reasons for that are numerous. You know, you have like vehicles emitting heat constantly. You have air conditioners pumping heat into the air. You have concrete and asphalt covering every surface, just like absorbing and radiating the sun's rays. And you have these urban canyons between tall buildings to prevent heat from escaping and to keep it at the sort of street level. It's miserable, right? And the typical solutions, the individual solutions, the short term solutions, they just make the situation worse.

Because I mean, when you're feeling hot, I mean, I was just feeling hot just now and I turned on the AC, right? When you're feeling hot, you know, you turn on the AC or you put on a fan. But not to wash a fan, but the AC continues and fuels this vicious cycle of heating the outdoors to cool the indoors, making external spaces even more uncomfortable. So you end up with air conditioning use accounting for like one fifth of global electricity usage of building related global electricity usage. And you end up with the thing that's supposed to be cooling us, heating things even more. Because, you know, as developing countries, you know, they have access to one more air conditioning, especially in developing countries tend to be in the hotter sides of the world.

You know, the use of air conditioning just continues to skyrocket. And the International Energy Agency actually estimated that it would take the amount of energy needed to cool buildings will triple by 2050, which is equivalent to the current electricity demand in the US and Germany combined. So on top of all that, you also have an issue of like heat and heat deaths, right? The deaths and injuries caused by heat. I mean, heat stroke is becoming more and more of an issue in cities, especially when it, you know, temperatures reach above 25 degrees Celsius. People, you know, manual labels, people who work outside, people who just have to move around a lot,

you know, experience the symptoms of heat stroke whenever there's like this spike in temperature, right? And then even if you don't experience like a heat stroke, heat is exhausting. It is energy draining, it's utterly sapping. And it requires a lot out of your body to keep you cool and prevent you from like overeating. And surprisingly, this overheating issue is not just like, you know, a tropical issue or like a hot country issue. Like places like Moscow had like an estimated 11,000 people die due to heat wave in 2010. And so with all these heat waves and stuff, we need to like figure out what to do with all these giant concrete buildings. And for some people, like eco-brutalism is, you know, wow, so cool.

To me personally, and this is just my subjective opinion, I find it ugly and disgusting and I hate it. But, you know, to each their own, right? Ah, brutalism discourse. I mean, what do you all think of brutalism? I think Yugoslavian brutalism was cool. Every other kind of brutalism is just like... My opinion on brutalism boiled down to thinking the game control is fun. I have stayed in a Yugoslavian brutalist architecture hotel, which was one of the weirdest nights of my life. Because it was clearly made. It was like one of these gigantic like people's hotels that was meant to provide everyone with vacations.

So there's like 20,000 rooms and we were like the only three people there. So there was one person at the desk in this just cavern of empty rooms. It was such this, everything felt like a liminal space. It was very odd. It can be very uncanny. It wasn't like bad. It was like reasonably well constructed. It was just deeply strange. I mean, that's what makes the game control so cool is that, yeah, it plays with those uncanny feelings on brutalism. Well, still being like very cool. Control is the game that Jacob Gala made a video about, right?

Yes, he did make a video about it. I think I watched that recently. It's like the sort of all this house kind of thing. Right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to check out that game because I mean, that's kind of like my issue with brutalism. It feels like a boss level in a video game. Yes, you have to go through each level, clear out all the minions and make it to the top and beat the boss. It's kind of unsettling. Yes.

And then like equal brutalism is just like, oh, what if trees? Trees or moss. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, okay, cool. But I mean, like one of my many occupations and I still maintain it seasonally. I was a power washer and I hate moss. And so to see moss all over buildings just really bothers me. Like I just want to get, you know, my spray gun and just clear it all off. And especially in like this climate, moss is like a very significant issue.

So that makes sense. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my pet peeves among many. So I mean, there are many different ways we could combat the urban heat island effects that don't involve equal brutalism. And they can also help to facilitate, you know, creating more attractive spaces to live and to play. You know, obviously, the solution isn't to just like build those every building that has ever been built and make it more sustainable, you know, with vernacular materials and stuff. Of course, new buildings should be built with those principles in mind. But, you know, it's unpractical to or even sustainable to destroy all the buildings you've already built and make and rebuild them.

You know, the best thing we can do is try to mitigate and adapt with what we already have greenery. And I know I was just roasting equal brutalism for just trapping trees and everything. But, you know, greenery is an important part in that, right? Because, you know, it call it causes evapotranspiration, which is like where water evaporates and plants leaves and cools the temperature. You know, it also improves people's like psychological well-being. And they just, they're nice to look at. They're nice to look at. They keep things cool. In fact, they can help cause temperatures to drop by like two to three degrees Celsius in the surrounding area. I think people certainly misinterpret it.

But like this is one of the big things you can see with racism in the U.S. where like you can literally like you can literally track racial divides in a lot of American cities by the by the temperature because like places where not a lot of people live just don't have trees. And, you know, this this has like a just this sort of like cascading series of environmental and social effects, which are a disaster and environmental racism. Yeah. Yeah, to really stark honestly, if you look at the heat maps or some of these cities and you could literally see, you know, where poor black folks live, you know, you can see the places with less trees, the places next to factories with like toxic runoff and waste and that kind of thing. It's just, you know, right there. And it sucks. Which is why, of course, part of any sort of efforts to improve cities and make things more sustainable would involve, you know, social justice and would involve responding to and addressing the compounding effects of like environmental racism over the past several decades. So, you know, and part of the issue again, tying things back to environmental racism is that a lot of the climate change policies that, you know, ostensibly amends to favor like high density urban smart growth, you know, like sustainable blocks and that kind of thing.

They're not conceived or implemented in a way that involves the people being affected by them. You know, in fact, a lot of these like sort of green projects raise the cost of food, energy, water transport housing for people in the area. So they create these sorts of like gentrified neighborhoods, essentially, where the original inhabitants can no longer afford to live there. So, if we want to develop like a sustainable city, a resilient city, a sustainable or resilient neighborhood, it requires social justice. It requires, you know, equity and, you know, like the involvement of all affected through, you know, consensus or democracy to just really shape the future that, you know, they will be experiencing because they're the ones being affected by it. There are a lot of other ways as well to heat proof as a city reflective roofs and roads can also help reduce the absorbative powers of solar radiation by concrete and asphalt. So in fact, in some cities like LA and in New York, there's this white reflective coating that has been implemented in some 500,000 meters square of roof space that saves an estimated 2,282 tons of CO2 per year from cooling emissions. I mean, all it takes really is just like that sort of white reflective coat and it saves dividends in the long run. NASA had done some research on this and it demonstrated the results, demonstrated that a white roof could be 23 degrees Celsius or 42 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than a typical black roof on a hot New York summer day.

And in places where like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, it's kind of like gloss everywhere. That is crazy. That is absolutely, absolutely wild. And in cities where like 10% of the land area is like asphalt, you can imagine how that sort of reflective sealant can impact the cooling or the heating of the area. Water, of course, is another like important aspect of cooling cities. In Andalus, which was like the Muslim kingdom in Ghebirin Peninsula in the 14th century, they used to have these sort of like courtyards with pools and fountains that would stimulate water evaporation and cool the air. And so like cities today, you know, take some hints from that, you know, you have ponds and pools and fountains and misting systems and stuff that can sort of chill things out. And that being implemented in China, where you have, like, for example, water misters at like bus stops, which can chill the air and, you know, cool passengers as they wait. And they found actually that adding water features and like cool coatings reduces the cooling requirements of an area by 29 to 43%. And also lowers the overall average air temperature by 1.5 degrees Celsius.

So it's like, honestly, while like these little things can have such a major impact on temperature. Speaking of like all the methods of cooling, ancient methods of cooling, there's this Middle Eastern sharing device called the Mashrabiil, or I think it's the Mashrabiil. It's basically an architectural element that is usually built by wooden lattice work and sometimes stained glass. It's used to like catch and cool the wind through like having these basins of water in them. I mean, so I could try to describe it. It's like a window jutting out of a building with some decorated by lattice work with jars and basins of water placed within them to let the wind pass through. And as the wind is passing through, it's causing evaporative cooling, then it chills out the interior. And so these Mashrabiils, they've been used since the Middle Ages by, you know, the Coptic churches of Egypt and the Art Deco movement in Iraq and by, you know, the architecture in Baghdad as well. So these sort of construction methods, while they tend to be developed for, you know, individual homes or individual buildings, they can in fact be implemented with even the aesthetics of Islamic geometry to help to cool a building and reduce its overall zero to emissions. So I've been talking about heating and cooling and stuff for a while now. And speaking of, I should probably turn off my AC rather. I think I heard either it was you and Drew or maybe it was Robert talking about the ceramic kind of cooling idea.

Yeah, I mean, that's a big thing. And like the part of the American Southwest, like New Mexico, there's a lot of like swamp coolers that are basically working. Right. Yeah. Swamp coolers. It only works in certain climates, right? Like you wouldn't really, I don't think the smoke cooler would not be affected here in Oregon. If it's too humid, it's not going to work. You're just going to get even more humid. I think there's kind of a broader thing there architecturally, which is that like, we have a lot of sort of like, like we've lost a lot of in the way we do architecture, we've lost a lot of the sort of like build, we've lost a lot of sort of building techniques adapted to specific locations. Yeah, for natural architecture. Yeah. Yeah. And like that's something that has to be reversed, like immediately because yeah, like our current model of building houses out of oil is going to get us all killed. Oh, really? What's, yeah, what's the problem there? What's wrong? What's wrong with that? You know, on top of that, right? It's not just vernacular architecture, but vernacular clothing. I mean, it's, I mean, as again, someone living in a tropical country, I see it for myself like working people going to work wearing like full long sleeve dress shirts and long, long dress pants and, you know, like formal shoes and it's honestly absurd. You know, sometimes like they have the whole tie, like, you know, pulled up and everything. It's not, it's entirely based on like European standards of professionalism and it needs to be abolished. Abolish. Yeah. Dress codes. All right. Abolish, like this whole idea that, you know, we have to dress this particular way, despite, you know, the temperature, because it's more professional, whatever.

Fuck professionalism, honestly. Yeah, we are podcasting or in the vanguard of this, but we need you all to help to destroy professionalism once and for all. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Show up to work in your bathing suit. But yeah, like vernacular buildings as well. You know, obviously, you had in, in Africa, in different parts of Africa, you'd have different structures that were particularly teal. So, you know, if you were in a, in a tropical rainforest environment, you'd have a building that's tailored to, you know, keeping mosquitoes out and maintaining a certain temperature within and maintaining comfort as well within. Or, you know, in colder regions, you would have certain construction that would keep heat within the building and prevent excessive discomfort. You know, and they were also, of course, like when it comes to like cooler areas, you were also expected to sort of keep yourself warm as well as, you know, keep your building warm. In fact, it was more so keeping yourself personally warm, so keeping yourself layered up, even when you're indoors.

And of course, that's kind of lost today. People expected to just, you know, turn on the heater and vibe for the months of winter. But it isn't sustainable. A lot of things we enjoy today aren't sustainable. It keeps coming back to that. But yeah. Speaking of things that we enjoy that are not at all sustainable, how about cars? Yes. Can we get rid of cars? Can we please get rid of cars? I mean, cars are very convenient in terms of like, if you want to get somewhere very specific. You know, if there's a place you want to go, I'm the one you need to know. I'm a car. I'm a car. I'm a car. You know, kind of thing. Thank you. Yes. My little musical interlude there. Thank you for appreciating it.

I appreciate it. But ultimately, like, they honestly aren't sustainable. They honestly aren't something that we can maintain in the near or even far, well, potentially in the neighborhood. It's much the far future. I mean, people already know the problems with gas cars, really know why gas cars are bad. But, you know, things are just sort of pivoted towards electric cars and electric cars. Let's get a bunch of electric cars. But electric cars aren't better. I mean, the materials they require, the energy they require is quite frankly not sustainable in the long run. And it just lengthens the amount of time that we spend dependent on cars for short and long distance travel. And especially how in the states, we've like built our cities around the idea of a car, which has expanded the urban terrain unnecessarily. And if you look at like all the space taken up by like highways, no overpasses and how much have just like urban space has taken up, but just been built around the idea of the car.

It really kind of makes the whole idea of a city so much less useful. It's really frustrating. And I think it's also working out. Cars are so unbelievably dangerous. Yeah, we're very much used to like having these like death machines driving around at all times. And that makes for like a very cool like series of metal band song names or whatever. But the death statistics aren't funny when it comes to cars. No. And like the average transportation time having cars has not actually decreased. Like the amount of time it takes to get from place to place based on like where you live in your city has not actually decreased because now everything has just spread further apart. So 100 years ago would take, you know, like a 15 minute trek to get to like, you know, the market or something. It can take off sometimes longer, especially if you're driving in like rush hour traffic to get just just just like a couple of miles.

Or even in some cases, a decent jog gets you there faster just because of how we've just designed cities all around these rolling metal death cages. Yeah, it's not it's not great. It's one of the reasons I don't currently have a car. Yeah. And that's kind of something that's shocking to other people when I tell them that really I have no intention of ever buying a car, of ever owning a car. It's not something that I want. And I mean, I live relatively close to like some of the major transport arteries of the country. And you know, Trinidad has like this unique-ish transportation system, public transportation system. So we have these privately owned maxi taxis that they're like vans with seats in the back. And you know, you could you just kind of jump in depending on where they're going, which route they're taking. And they're convenient enough for me and for my purposes.

So I just, you know, I go anywhere to go with them. But they're also gas guzzling inefficient machines. I mean, they're better than, you know, all those people driving cars. I mean, as an island, you know, like, I don't know why we're so obsessed with having more and more cars on the road. But at the end of the day, they still aren't the best in terms of sustainability and in terms of viable, reliable, sustainable transport. We also have like personal taxis as well, but they have the same problems as regular taxis. And what's frustrating is that we used to have a train line that went along the entire east-west corridor of the country. And that's where most of the people in Trinidad live along the east-west corridor.

But that was destroyed in the 1960s, I think, to make way for highways and a priority bus route. So instead of having a nice, convenient, cute little train that we could take to go from place to place, you have to rely on buses and maxis and taxis and cars. Yeah, that is quite... That's not cool. That is quite... That's not good. That's quite grim, because...

We need to reconfigure. Seriously, I would love for them to bring back trains, to be able to take a train, to not have to rely on... I mean, government bureaucracy makes all things unreliable, but I think a train would have been slightly more reliable than a bus. Very much on the pro train. On the pro train train, I've had fewer moments more happy than riding the Portland max line and streetcar in a no-face costume. It's very fun. I think also, another thing about cars, right? This is just on a very pure political level, like cars are the thing that allow suburbs to exist.

And the existence of suburbs has produced just generation upon generation of frothing reactionaries, who are the source of enormous percentages of the world's problems. And so, if you get rid of those places, you produce less of them. Yeah. Which is just a political benefit for anyone who wants to not die. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, we don't think about it because there are already so many things to think about, but if you actually sat down and pondered the death toll of cars,

and really brought it to forefront and really made it less of a necessity, I think more and more people would be open to the idea of rejecting cars, to keeping them as at most a benign novelty, that maybe one or two exist in an entire community for use if needs be. But otherwise, I don't see how each and every person in the world owning their own car is at all the best way to go. Also, cars are kind of ugly to me. Yeah. We really didn't design them to look cool. I mean, there's some cars that look kind of cool, like some of the more classic ones.

And that's part of the issue, right? They're getting uglier to me, and they're also getting larger. And killing a lot more people. They're raising their grills more and more, so you're basically a pedestrian killing machine. We've effectively undone most of the benefits of making cars safer for passengers by making them much more dangerous for pedestrians, which is entirely a marketing choice. Like the fucking trucks they were making 25 years ago are just as useful. And in a lot of cases, more useful for like practical farm work for hauling and whatnot than the trucks they're making today. They haven't meaningfully gotten better. They've just gotten a lot larger for no real reason other than it makes people feel like big men.

Well, and then you get these fun, you get these fun, you can look at their marketing people like explicitly talking about how like, yeah, like basically explicitly playing into the fantasy of running over protesters. And it's great. Yeah, so get rid of cars and you won't have to deal with that. But Chris, how is that sustainable or viable? Hmm, good question. Introducing super blocks. Oh, yes. Super blocks are basically neighborhoods of nine blocks.

So I don't think they have to be. I think the philosophy and ideas behind super blocks could be implemented to suit different cities with different histories and different layouts. Especially with like localized streetcars within each city block within each super block like system. Exactly. So just to clarify, the idea super blocks are basically, you know, neighborhoods of nine blocks where traffic is restricted to the roads on the outside of the block, which means that the interior of the super blocks are entirely walkable. That combined with the idea of a super block being mixed use means that people are mostly able to access their basic necessities within their city block are able to like spend more time, have more open space to spend more time to meet with people to talk to do activities to, you know, have some relief from noise pollution and air pollution from vehicles and to really like connect people with the space they're living in and make the space they're living in more livable. I mean, I don't live smack dab in the middle of like urban urban town, but I could imagine for people living in like New York or whatever, you know, you can't exactly step out of the apartment and play in the road. On a typical day, if you have kids or whatever, you know, they can't exactly just go run outside.

You will die. Exactly. So fast. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, people complain about like, oh, kids, these days don't go outside as much. But I mean, look at outside. Yeah.

You know, look at what look at what has been created and reflect on that. I mean, part of the issue is the way social media algorithms are designed to suck people into like cycles of addiction. But that's a whole nother topic, right? I think a lot of people, more people will be willing to be able to pull themselves out of that sort of harmful algorithmic hell. If there was an outside to pull themselves out to, you know, but honestly, cities, especially in notorious for like not having places you can be where you don't have to spend money. And that sucks. So I think super blocks being places where, you know, libraries and places people can eat.

Makerspaces, community kitchen. It does seem to be missing or ignoring the what we're going to lose with super blocks, which is how, how am I going to roll down the street? Smoking Indo, sipping on gin and juice. If I'm not allowed to drive within my block. Wow. Yeah. I think we can, where am I going to do that? I think, I think you could just get a bike.

Who's cruising on the bicycle? Have you tried smoking Indo sipping on gin and juice while riding a bicycle? It's impossible. Get a cup holder. Anything is possible. This is Snoop Dogg erasure. No, but the idea of having a like community gardens, community, like kitchens, like maker spaces, libraries, all these within like this super block framework, you know, like green spaces. It does make actual urban city living seem attractive and not like you're just living in nested concrete boxes.

Yeah. I mean, people like living in cities because that's where everything's happening, right? Yeah. But yeah, you, you want people to take part in the things that are happening, but the place is unlivable. Yeah. You have the table I will continue to complain about until the end of time, which the table in Chicago, Chinatown, the threatens to arrest you for sitting at it. Like it's. Yeah.

Like the hostility of, I mean, this goes back to like racism, because of course everyone does everything does, but you know, a lot of these loitering laws and stuff were literally designed to target black people and to target, you know, poor people. Like vagrancy laws and that sort of thing is just hostile people's existence that gets into like hostile architecture and that sort of thing. But I think with these two blocks, you know, we open up our spaces to make them welcoming to human existence. These spaces that are not built around cars, built around commutes, built around work. And this obviously is a transformation that requires more than just, you know, vote for so and so and make the city green kind of thing. You need something more substantial in that, you know, within these super blocks as well, you're able to take stock of how. Your block or whatever you have a better mental sense of community and able to take about a sense of even things like.

How your block can. Communally sustain themselves and, you know, reduce waste and all these different things. This in conjunction with struggle against capitalism in the state, but you know that is implied this is, you know, this is the show this is it could happen here. I don't know if you expect in like you like tourism, but it's not really what we do around here. I mean the benefits to these sort of like super blocks, you know, these 15 minutes zone so people can walk within 15 minutes to get the essentials. The benefits are innumerable, you know, better air quality, less noise, healthy lifestyle, mental health boost. But the issue is without a combination of, you know, these projects and these activities with like anti capitalism and anti statism. It tends to lend itself towards gentrification and we've seen that in Spain, which is where some of these super blocks have been implemented.

They've created like these locations that are obviously more desirable because who doesn't want to live in a super block where, you know, you actually have a sense of community because we're all desperate for that. And at least an increase in property demand, higher prices, higher rent, it basically creates these pockets of unaffordable neighborhoods, yeah, displacing local residents. So you have to get into the fight against gentrification in order to make this, you know, idea viable. The last thing that I want to get into really is as Gar mentioned, community gardens, I want to talk about urban farming, because that is crucial. I mean, parts of what makes cities, cities in a lot of cases is the fact that they import all their food, right? They have the urban rural divide that, you know, delineates the two areas. But considering the transportation costs, the energy costs, all those things that compound to sustain a city, a city's food needs. We have to look to ways that we can sustain cities and sustain neighborhoods within cities within themselves.

Before I continue, I just want to point out that the future of urban farming is not in vertical farms. They look very cool, you know, like those tall kind of like pillars of like lettuce or whatever, growing out of things. But the land that they save is usually canceled out by the land they need to produce the energy to power them. Like they have very energy intensive spaces. So until that issue is resolved, and I don't know if it will be considering, you know, how the energy requirements are sort of built into the vertical, the concentration of energy requirements built into the vertical farming design. We have to look to more practical methods. Land ownership tends to be a major hurdle when it comes to organizing community gardens and maintaining community gardens. I mean, like folks like Black Futures Farm, Oakland Avenue Urban Farm and the Victory Garden Initiative, they've been working to like provide fresh produce to those in need, especially in urban food deserts.

But in a lot of these projects, they go in good for some years and then the city suddenly spins around and is like, we need this land for development. So they just snatch it up and, you know, those years of efforts just basically go down the drain. Community land trusts have been put forward as a potential solution to that issue. But like a lot of these things, I mean, it's a good band aid, I would say, but it's not necessarily marking the end of capitalism. Another issue that there is with the whole urban farming thing is that the culture that develops around them while they, you know, provide education and community and connection for people within them. And that is extremely valuable. I think some organizers fall into this habit of treating, of creating this sort of like shared delusion around community gardens, you know, claiming to be sort of feeding the people, quote unquote. And what really brought this to my attention was in habits territories newsletter, they had an article on it last year, I think, on, you know, urban community gardens.

And it was written by Gabriel, I seen the co founder of Atlanta, which I find to be a very, very creative name. Basically asked the question, are we really feeding ourselves? I mean, these local food initiatives, they do produce food that people eat. But it can be a bit harmful to be overly optimistic about our food autonomy at this stage, especially considering how reliant we still are on big agriculture. You know, like, yes, we are producing, you know, organic, nutritionally dense crops and stuff. And that's great. That's helping people. But, you know, oftentimes, it usually just means that, you know, the people might be getting participants and be getting like a salad or, you know, a couple of tomatoes. It's not necessary that they're cutting down their grocery bill in a sustainable, long-term way. Because I mean, if you've tried gardening, you know, that like, when you work here with a limited space, you know, you grow your first set of tomatoes. Tomatoes are cool, but they don't last forever, you know, and you have to wait until the next harvest to get more tomatoes or whatever the case may be, same for like lettuce or whatever. It's kind of rough, you know, it doesn't, it helps for like a meal or maybe two, depending on like your living situation, but it doesn't meaningfully cut into our reliance on groceries and, you know, food imports.

Yeah, it definitely takes a bit to get to that point and you have to do it with a combination of like food preservation and like canning and like, you know, like jarring and a whole bunch of other stuff to actually make that a worthwhile endeavor as opposed to just making like, great, I spent three months making these tomatoes. Now they're ready for one meal and then they're all gone. We'll be like one salts. Yeah, yeah, you do have to really kind of figure out how to grow enough to keep enough ready to be harvested for jarring and canning for future use and make sure like you're, you know, harvesting them when they are ready so that you can, you know, you don't lose stuff and that you have like, you know, an ongoing, ongoing process of like preserving the food that you do grow for later as well. So you can definitely take a lot, a lot more like mental effort and planning than just, you know, planting it and then, you know, using it and cooking it when it's when it's all ready. Yeah, I mean, a lot of energy and stuff is put into growing things like greens and roots and fruiting vegetables. And the healthy, you know, they have the vitamins and micronutrients but, you know, people still need meat, dairy, eggs, you know.

Protein, yeah. Heavy, high calorie dense stuff, you know, like potatoes and other starches that can really hold people over. Wheats and that kind of thing. And that just isn't being grown right now, you know, wheat and rice and soy and nuts and corn and sugar. These staples and stuff don't tend to be produced by these community gardens and by these, you know, garden plots. Yeah, not many, not many, not many legume patches at your local community garden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I'm in the process of growing some pigeon peas right now and they are taking a very long while.

And what I realize is that, I mean, I just planted them, so I'm being a bit impatient. But what I realize is that when they do grow out and I've seen, you know, some mature pigeon pea trees and stuff, I know how big they tend to grow. By the time harvest rules around, you know, you get all those different pods and you, you know, you put in the work, you pick all the pods and you pry open the pods and, you know, you put in some more litteration into the sentence and, you know, you get those peas out. Once those peas are out of the pod and you put them in a pot, they are not potent enough to hold you over for more than one meal. You know, like you pick like a tree's worth of peas in a pod and, you know, that's like sometimes like half of a meal. But really, honestly, respect to the people who are producing all their food right now, because I can't imagine having to be shelling peas all the time. It's kind of ridiculous. I mean, it can be fun, but I can't imagine doing it all day.

I mean, work is work, right? It's gonna, yeah. Yeah, work is hell. We know this. But yeah, so I mean, community gardens, they're good, you know, they have, you know, education, they build community, they provide outdoor activity and stuff, but, you know, I think what community gardens, urban gardens, there's stuff you need to do is find ways to, and this isn't to disparage the work that's being done, you know, like massive support, I'm doing that myself kind of thing. But we've got to like, as the article argues, we can't get caught up in the fluffing up of the reality for marketing purposes. You know, we need to look for ways that can actually feed ourselves. That means getting into caloric foods. That means, you know, like dried beans, potatoes, fruit trees, that kind of thing, grains, nuts, all that jazz. And also, connecting with farms outside of the city, you know, local farms outside of the immediate urban landscape, seeing what cooperatives can be developed,

that can work at each other mutually to build a more potent capacity for food autonomy. So I mean, get in touch with the soil, you know, get the sun in your face. But also think about what more we can do to sort of take this to the next level. And yeah, that is what I believe could in fact happen here. This has happened here good. Yeah, it's nice to have a positive one of these. Yeah. We should do that more often.

If only we had the power. If only we had the power. Well, come back tomorrow when we'll be talking about another bad thing and then abandoning you to deal with your thoughts about it. Wow. We try. We try. We do try. This is us trying. Well, this is us having St. Andrew try. You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you very much. This is a topic I wanted to discuss for a long time in terms of, yeah, because we get a lot of people talking about like, yeah, how, you know, and whatever like post collapse fantasy that you can imagine where you're able to kind of reconfigure society. How would you plan urban living? And you're like, well, yeah, there's a lot of actually really cool ideas for like keeping people close together can be a very ecological idea. If you do it certain ways, it's just a lot of the ways you've defaulted to over the past like really 300 years has made it not that. With the invention of the car really, really screwing us over. So yeah, thank you so much for talking about urban living and super super blocks and all this kind of stuff.

Where can where can people find more of your work in writing on the interwebs? You can find me on YouTube at St. Andrew's and you can find me on Twitter, which hopefully when you hear this, I am still not on at underscore St. True. Fantastic. Yeah. St. Andrew just put together a really great episode about anti work stuff and the way that debacle has has happened and what we can learn from it and that kind of thing. And while you should still actually care about anti work. And yeah, so we definitely recommend the anti work video for recent recent recent stuff.

Let's see, if you want to feed your brain into the addiction driven social media algorithm, you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. It happened here pot and cool zone media. And yeah, let's go think about go think about makerspaces and community gardens. It seems like a good a good way to dedicate your thoughts time. And roll down the street smoking Indo sipping that gin and juice while you still can. On a bike, on a bike, on a bike while I am personally is doing my moral judgment upon you. Before the fascist anarchists take away your F one fifties. Yeah.

Look, if if if we can democratize military grade weaponry the way the Ukrainians have, we can we can we can form neighborhoods that cannot be forced to live in the traffic. The auto industrial complex. What really reduced frivolous air travel. What a fantasy. Otherwise, we'll end up in a Mad Max world. And I mean, who wants that right? Well, aspects of it. Aspects of it.

Yeah. All right. See you later, everybody. Bye. Podcast. Thank you. That is, that is, it is, it's true. It's true, actually.

It could happen here. A podcast breaking news by listening to a podcast. Oh, that is more or less the truth. We have, we have dragged Robert out of bed at before the crack of dawn at 1142 AM. And we're going to talk about actually something very fun. I've been wanting to talk about this for a long time because this is one of actually one of my favorite things. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to tell a bit of a, a bit of a little story regarding one of my all time favorite events and topics. So back in like 2013, there was this a cheesy little online university science show made by the Rochester Institute of Technology called can you imagine. The, the idea was to highlight some of the cool and weird things at the university. In part to promote the imagine RIT festival, which was like the school's annual like innovation and creativity festival thing that they put on. So yeah, today I want to talk specifically about episode three of the web series, because the contents of which overlap with some of my like artistic interests and like my love of illusions and paradox. And I will kind of tie into some topics we always discuss in the show. So yeah, episode three, one of probably probably the most interesting episode. Episode three opens with the hosts, Kevin and Steph, as they like stand awkwardly in a gloriously dated you like university film set.

Like it's only 20, it's only 2013, but it was like obviously like made in the 90s. Like like like the set. Well, it's all very dated. What, what specifically are you referring to? Oh, like, they're like, they're just like weird, like, like weird, like, like dated science stuff on the walls, the all the hosts are wearing like dorky orange t shirts, like over over top of their regular clothes. Really old computers. Yeah, yeah, it's all it's all the kind it's all that kind of stuff. Like dorky orange t shirts with the letters RIT for Raj Kruster Institute of Technology. Of course, because everything in this online video series is perfect. Kevin is wearing his shirt over top of like a button down. It's great. The first 50 seconds of the video are taken up with like plugging the upcoming RIT Imagine Festival with a with a co host Steph beautifully stumbling over her lines when she says the events catchphrase.

It's where the left brain and the right brain collide. And it's great. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's perfect. So after all the plugs and the vamping, the hosts get down to the fun engineering feet that they'll be showing us today, which is a neat little architectural experiment, a part of the RIT campus called the Asherian stairwell. Of course, named after the impossible staircases depicted in Dutch artist MC Escher's artwork. So the video cuts to from the little like soundstage they're filming in to this boring white seemingly typical stairwell. Our host Kevin ascending a flight of the gray concrete stairs explains that what located in building seven of the campus. The stairwell was designed by Filipino architect Rafael Nelson Avagando, and was one of the first structures put up when RIT moved their campus from downtown Rochester to the more suburban Henrietta. When he's taking, when he's reaching the top of the stairs, he turns the quarter, and then suddenly seems to appear at the bottom of the lower side of stairs, leading up to the landing that he just left from all while continuing to talk about the architect behind this like kind of weird impossible feet.

So as Kevin walks back up to camera, he says that the stairwell was built in 1968, and it's been wowing RIT students ever since. It's, it is very cool. It's like, it's like, you're like, okay, you get, you get the little like, like, you get the little like architectural trick that they're doing. But it is, it is still pretty fun to see before episode three of can you imagine aired, you could already find a few articles on the school's website about the Asherian stairwell, along with some like forum posts, debating how the architecture in the stairwell works to like achieve the effect. Also, floating around on YouTube was like a random segment of what looked like a like a PBS style late 90s documentary about the physics and architecture of the school and specifically the stairwell that interviewed some like professors and some like architects and like of the and some physicists kind of discussing what like how to like bring paradox into the physical world. Yeah, but but around the time that can you imagine episode aired, the now like infamous RIT stairwell was mostly unknown. So it was like, even despite it being very interesting, no one really knew about it until this episode of this little web series there. The little web episode dedicates around half its time to interviewing students and registered random people at the university about if they even know about the stairwell's existence. And if they do what like experiences they have with like messing around with like the looping architecture, because yeah, you can, you know, you can play a lot of games with this type of with this type of design.

So the rest of the short video like tries to demonstrate the disorienting ascent down and descent back up via the camera in various ways like you know like human chains or holding hands around the weird like boobiest loop type staircase and like passing objects back and forth in a circle while inside and around the enclosed stairwell. There's one where Kevin walks around with a cup to show that the stairs aren't like clearly like heavily slanted like the water stays pretty pretty level as he walks all the way through and we like we follow with him the entire time. So yeah, like the overall like nerdy and lo-fi style of the university video match with like the insane feat of architectural illusion. It's a really fun mix like it's like it's like it's it's a it is very like surreal but not totally on purpose because it's just all of these like regular college students. Showing this like really cool architecture by this really good architect and you're like oh yeah they're just like so chill about it. It is it is it is pretty fun. It's pretty fun. After the third episode of the Imagine RIT video was posted. Finally, the mind boggling looping staircase of building seven in of RIT started to gain a lot of confused appreciation and the dorky university science show went viral. People sort of traveling from out of state, even other countries to see the Asherian stairwell themselves and film videos on social media as they walk through it. There's this one video of like people traveling from like a different country and they're like harassing like the school staff to try to like tell them where it is and they're like oh my god you're still doing this. It was like this film was this video was like like years old but it still happens. People still travel there to to specifically see it. There is like tense online discussion and debate on how the Filipino architect Rafael Avagando was able to achieve the effect and what kind of other bizarre architectural experiments he may have worked on, because you can find his Facebook page and you can find some stuff about him, but he has not really, because like this the stairwell was built in the late 60s, but you have you so even though he has an online presence, he's like he's like he's not like active.

So it's unclear like what else he's actually been doing. But I would, I would, I would love to learn more about this architect and what else he's done because this, it is, it is really rad to have these like very like small condensed, but like high effort type, like type builds. And like the existence of the whole thing poses some really interesting questions around how extremely clever paradoxical design can push the boundary of how we make assumptions about spatial physics, and how we visually and physically demonstrate things that we usually can only depict in two dimensions right like you can you can easily depict the ashering stairwell in two dimensions, but when you're scaling that up to three dimensions, it's obviously more work like like that is that is part of the paradox. Plus, you know, it also demonstrates the importance of art and how ideas once thought impossible or merely optical illusions can actually with enough dedicated effort break into a real reality. If a brilliant architect can manage to build this physically and like logically impossible structure, what other types of things can we actually do as possible. The video now has like over a million views on its original upload. And video is about the RIT stairwell have raked up as many as like 25 million views. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

You know what else demonstrates the looping nature of time, having to listen to all these ads that we do. Yeah. Pew Pew. We are we are back. I've rounded the corner and we are back where we came from. Because of the fun paradox of architecture. The one the one other thing I should mention before we continue on this episode is that the entire thing is fake. It's false. No way. Not this time. We created it.

Not this time. No, not this time. It's totally made up. Because of course, it's a staircase that breaks the basic rules of movement and physics. Kevin walks up the stairs and teleports to the lower stairwell beneath them. That's not an architectural illusion. It's called a good video editing and Adobe After Effects. It's not like, no, you're really going to believe a video on the internet and some well-placed, falsified internet posts over the very basic rules that govern our universe. Like, oh boy, did it fool millions of people.

And if I played my cards, right, I hope most of our listeners until the last few seconds. Yeah. So the whole the whole thing was a was a student like film and art project around around building a modern myth. Because it sure is interesting how good storytelling can overrule obvious logical processes. The tale of the Asherian stairwell is one of my favorite case studies and how disinformation spreads and is believed while all in defiance of the basic rules of reality. Because it's not a matter of what facts are true. It's about what facts are compelling. The idea of a logically impossible staircase being built by a brilliant Filipino architect is more interesting than it being someone's weird disinformation art project.

Fair. So, yeah, I want to say, like, how what what were you guys thinking as I was explaining the Asherian stairwell? Like, what would you see this going? Okay, so I had in the back of my head. Okay, we should we should mention this. Garrison has been hyping up this episode for like. I don't even a pretty significant amount of time has to ask nothing. So show up. Yeah.

And there's a staircase and I'm like, what? And I was like, my brain, my brain started going because you said 1968 and I was like. Like, my counterinsurgency brain flicked on and I was like, wait a second, hold on. Is this like some kind of like weird, like we redesigned the college campuses so they stop people stop taking the Dean hostage. A thing that used to happen constantly and would all my favorite part about this would happen constantly and you'd get New York Times articles calling it nonviolent. Great. Yeah. Yeah, it was a, that was a, I was, yeah, I spent more mental energy that I probably should have trying to figure out how it would work.

No, no, maybe they just made it like, maybe they just made it. Occam's razor. It's obviously. Yeah, I mean, I was, I was in the like, I was in the like, okay, so they built the staircase, they built another stack. The viewers cannot see my fingers. It's a regular staircase. It doesn't tell us. It was like, but you can find videos of people traveling to the school to see if it's real and they try it and they're so disappointed.

They're like, oh, yeah, it's, it's, no, it's just stairs. It doesn't. Yeah, it's disappointing in a lot of ways because it's not even like a thing where like there's like another back staircase that you walk down and then you go back up and again. No, it's just, it's just nothing. It's just stairs. I was hoping there was like some actual clever thing as no. No, it's just. It's not really cool.

It's just. It was that meme where all the math doesn't add up and the person. What is happening? I was like, all right, Garrison, you got us here. You made Robert get up before noon. What is happening? Well, the reason, the real reason I got up before I got Robert up before noon is because I actually have scheduled an interview with the creator of the Asherian stairwell. The actual one via like the online art project and building a modern myth idea, which we are now going to segue into.

So, yeah, what follows is us talking with the creator of the Asherian stairwell project. Hello, we are, we are back from our very, very brief break. And with me, along with Robert and Chris and Sophie is Michael, the creator of the Asherian stairwell project and the building the modern myth project. Hello. Greetings. Greetings. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about what one of my one of my favorite things actually, which is a little to us to project. Yeah, I've been a fan of this for a long time and found it to be really compelling and interesting.

And I so I just walked through Robert and Chris and Sophie, what what it what it was but from the perspective of it being true for like, for the good 15 minutes I was I was I was going was going through talking about it as if it were completely real. I'm curious to hear how you did that. I was slightly baffling because, again, we were told nothing. And then what we got is Garrison is talking about a YouTube video about an architecture thing and I was like, what is happening here? Yeah. And then, and then talking about, hey, oh yeah, and I guess one more thing is that it's actually fake of and it's part of this whole this whole thing. So yeah, I would I would love to talk to you about both like how how you like logistically like made the project but also like the underlying your underlying thoughts that like inspired you to do it in the first place and then like retrospected now almost like 10 years later. Like how do you view the project is like happening, you know, right before like the peak of online disinformation.

Yeah, 2016 right so but first of all, I think we should probably start at the beginning like what was your inspirations for this type of like online like there because it seems it seems built to go viral in a lot of ways. Yes, exactly. So this was around 2011, I guess was when I first got the idea. It was for my master's thesis my MFA for film at Rochester RIT and the idea actually began from this like deep anxiety about how to discern fact from fiction. At the time, like I came into film school like really into like realism in films like Romania New Wave, Michael Hanukkah, Dardan brothers like these are filmmakers who are like, they're sort of like the modern day version of Italian neorealism. And they're trying to like depict like these reality as it is I wanted to like learn how to make those types of films. So over like with each year that's what I tried to get better at. And the more I tried to do that. And a number of things were happening around that time right in class they showed us that these mock amenities called no lies which was made in 1973 by this guy called Mitchell block actually won a student Oscar at the time and delusions and modern primitivism 2001 by this guy named Daniel Laughlin. And these like I was like floored because I thought they were real, like real documentaries. And, and it bothered me like our teacher stole this afterwards that these were actually scripted works of fiction with like really, really good actors.

And it like I went into kind of like existential crisis mode afterwards like, how do I even discern what's true from what's not if I got fooled by these things especially like that's like my concentration. That's what I've been studying for years and even I was not even able to tell that they were fake right. What was that going on. And then there was like smartphones were becoming a thing like I just looked it up smartphones didn't start out so out selling flip phones till 2013. So around this time like it was becoming a thing where everyone would have the internet in their pocket so I guess there was that anxiety going on. I kind of think about how we're starting to function and how we're, how I remember when I proposed my thesis to the thesis committee I, I, one of the things that I was telling them was, I have this worry about how reliant we are on the internet to determine what's true and what's not and this is like, like my professors found my concerns like really abstract and theoretical like why. Because this is 2011 right like why about fact and fiction it wasn't like fake news that wasn't even a thing. Yeah, it wasn't it didn't become part of the everyday lexicon like you said until 2016, when Trump started throwing that term around. Yeah, and suddenly we hear about it every day. So there was that going on Trayvon Martin was a thing and it for the first time like nationally, you could see like disinformation like on, you know, just like exaggerated versions of different different

accounts from like polarizing sides. Yeah, all that was going on. And so I wanted to, it was, it was like this film project was about trying to take something that was, are you familiar with it with the difference between like a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge. Yeah. Okay, so, so, so like, you know, for anyone who might be listening that doesn't really know the exact difference. Because a priori knowledge is the type of knowledge that you can have without needing to make observations or conduct experiments or look at surveys or do any research of any, any kind is a sort of knowledge you can know just by reasoning it out, but just by sitting in a room by in the dark, you could figure things out. This is the sort, this is a priori knowledge. So an example of that is like knowing that all bachelors are unmarried, right, or all triangles of three sides. That's a priori knowledge. An example of a posteriori knowledge is something that you find out through observation or using one or more of your five senses, right, like Joe Biden is the president of the United States. The masses of Mars is 6.4171 times 10 to the 23rd kilograms, you actually have to go out into the world and conduct surveys or do research. So that's a posterior knowledge. So the idea was to take something that was a priori false, something that could, that could be disproven by reason alone, like you wouldn't have, you wouldn't need to do any research in order to know that it was false. You'd simply have to reflect on it and think about it. So we could have picked anything, right? We could have said, made up like a fake news report that leads mathematicians at MIT having invented like a square with five sides, something like that, you know.

I remember that weekend update in SNL had this sketch. I think it was like, forget who it was, it might have been Kevin Nealon or something like that. The report was like, scientists and mathematicians have discovered a new number. The number exists between five and six and they're calling it the number spleen, you know, something like that, which is like just impossible. So come up with something that could be disproven by reason alone and at the same time surround it with this wealth of online information supporting its veracity. So like, you know, it was kind of a social experiment. So I was like, have we, are we so far beyond rational thinking that even something that can be disproven a priori people would believe? And it was like, we didn't really know the answer to that. But we were going to commit to creating this thing as though it was real and but which was like logically impossible. So in a way, it anticipated the age of like this information. Absolutely. The thing I kind of alluded to in my little scripted portion is like, yeah, it wasn't just the YouTube video. There was also all this extra online content that was created. Some of which are articles, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like there was, you could find like articles, forum posts, all this kind of stuff like, like, like, if yeah, like so if you could look into it more and find these other things,

but it still contradicts the basic logical processes that we can use to discern what is real and what is not. In terms of like, yeah, in terms of like believing in a five-sided square, like, no, that's not what that, that's not how like physics and like spatial, like the spatial dimensions work. Right. So yeah. And then in terms of all the extra material you filmed for it, there was like, there was like, I think I read around like nine hours of documentary footage was also created. Well, it was a lot, like a lot of footage, but it was only made into like, probably a 30-minute thing. We got our friends, like at the very beginning, we got our friends to play along with it. Like so whenever you see posts about this, just comment, like, it's real, like, yeah, I was there and it was really great. And eventually, people would actually start visiting the stairwell, like from all over, like from Canada, they'd cross the border to get there because it's in upstate New York, right? And I actually ran into a couple from India who happened to be visiting New York and they were like, since we're here, we'd like to see the stairwell, that sort of thing.

Oh, no. I know, I felt really bad for a lot of the visitors, so we actually had to come up with souvenirs so that they wouldn't leave empty-handed, right? So we made fake, we made postcards, like saying I've been to the Esher in stairwell, stuff like that. That is so good. And what happened, and the way we explained it, so a lot of people were really mad actually, you know, as you can imagine when they got there. But after we would explain what we were doing with the project, like a lot of them actually, like, started playing along and thought it was really cool and they went home with their souvenirs and told their friends that they just saw this amazing thing. So, you know, it kind of built that way for a little bit. It's like telling kids that Santa isn't real.

And some of them will be like, play along with like, okay, cool, this means I can play along with a myth to help keep other kids happy. And some of them will be like, what? Oh, no, my entire reality is broken. How could this happen? Right. And when you find out, it's your turn to like pass it on. Exactly. So a lot of that was going on like Shaq, the basketball player posted about it at some point, Joe Rogan talked about it on his podcast. They got kind of crazy. Wait, did Joe Rogan know it wasn't real? It's funny, you should see the clip of him doing it because he was like, it was him and who's the other guy, Bert Preiser or something.

Anyway, they were arguing about whether or not it was real. The other guy was like, no, it's real. It's so real. Joe Rogan was like, all you guys are fucking idiots. You're all idiots. So let's Google it right now. They Google it and they look up an article and Joe Rogan's like, okay, yeah, all right, it's still fucking stupid. The guy who built it is fucking stupid. That is so good. You have no idea how happy you have made me because in my research, I have read your thesis, I read a lot of articles about this. I did not come across the Joe Rogan clip, but I would have loved to see that.

Right, right. It's like way back, right? It's like 10 years ago and there's a lot of stuff to dig through and I found it, though, again. So I like to kind of go into the logistics of actually doing this in terms of creating all the fake web content, but also dreaming up this family-friendly science show that's made by RIT. The thing between naturalism and realism and not trying to replicate reality, but playing it as if it were reality and how those are two different things. Yeah, what we wanted to make it as real as possible and that's what I had been studying anyway, but in a dramatic context, like making narrative films. And the idea was to, there's this event at RIT every year, which gets a lot of people, like 30,000 people a year, go to the campus and look at these, whatever the students are working on. It's kind of like a mini festival type thing. Well, not mini, it's pretty big. So we wanted to make a video for that event as though we were promoting the event. Hey, come see the Asherian stairwell when you get here at RIT.

And you know, normally for these events, if you have a booth or something, you'll see reservations and you'll see like four people reserve, 15 people. We were like, started getting nervous and we found out, we got a sense that this was going to be big because when I looked at the reservations for our non-existent stairwell, there were like 1,000-plus visitors waiting to visit it. Yeah, I still remember like going to campus that day at the festival Saturday and like my friend Ira comes up to me and is like, Mike, people want to kill you. Like, come get over here. I was like trying to not show my face. But anyway, yeah, that's what, so the way, like a lot of the legs of the project was just like word of mouth, I guess. And we actually ran out of money. We didn't get to do like the web stuff on the scale that we wanted to, but it turned out that we didn't even have to. In fact, like within a few days or maybe a week or something after the original video came out, I posted a video explaining that it's a myth. Like I posted it and I was like, all right, that was a fun ride.

Now it's going to be over because here's a video of me explaining everything. On the same YouTube channel, yeah. Right. And people still didn't believe it. People were saying that my video explaining was fake. That was a conspiracy. Like people were, you know, like who paid you to say the truth? They're still invested inside the actual myth of it, yeah. Because it is so much, for a lot of people, they thought that is more compelling than the idea that it is this like, you know, project around what Israel and what's not. They just got so invested in the reality of it that they'll explain away every other explanation. Right. Right.

Exactly. Like my, I had a teacher at Rutgers where I did my undergrad to Modlin. He used to say that, you know, there's two types of thinking. There's reasoning and there's rationalizing. Reasoning is when you start from a place of ignorance and you look at the best evidence and the best arguments you can find and follow that through to the, you know, the rational conclusion. Rationalizing is when you start from what you want to believe and working backwards and looking for, you know, confirmation. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

And looking for the arguments that are already support what you're saying there, there was a lot of a lot of rationalizing going on. I guess people wanted to believe it. Yeah. So for, for the, how much, how many people in this, I assume for all of the filming, like everyone was all like in on it, but you know, there's a whole bunch of great stuff around like all of like the man on the street segments are like perfectly done in terms of like people like just acting like regular university students like talking about the stairwell and like how they've got like lost and then they're like looping around in a circle and all the segments with you with them. Like inside the stairwell was all like the very, like the very clever editing. I assume you're using stuff like Adobe After Effects. Right. And yeah, it gets, it is played. It's played so well. Like it's, it's, I think part of the part of why it's so successful is that it's not filmed. Like you would film something too high. Like, like, like for a lot of films when they like want to do like, like, you know, like, like a, the term is like a one or where they have like one long shot and they like hide the transitions in between.

You can, you can obviously tell like they're filming it to make these transitions work versus the way you film this is just how people would film it if they were filming this for real. And yeah, they tell that and it's, it is so carefully done because it's not trying to be something. It is, it is just being the thing so earnestly in terms of like how, how the actors like stumble over their lines in the, in like the opening segment. Like the aesthetics of like all of like the title cards and everything is just so it has this, it has this like aura of earnestness, which I think helps sells the whole project so, so much. Yeah. Yeah, actually speaking of the show and like the cheesy type title cards and stuff. My girlfriend at the time was a producer for this show called this local show called homework hotline and where kids call in with their homework and they answer questions about it. I studied the shit out of that show just looking at how they built the sets and how cheesy and how awkward like the the hosts were because a lot of it was like a lot of the realism I think of it is just, um, yeah, the awkwardness of the people how it's not. It's not really meant to be and like, like the best, the most convincing on truths right is a combination of fact and fiction.

Yeah. And, you know, a lot of and blending in the actors with the real people, you know, in, in, in the, in the actual video, stuff like that. It's like, yeah, it comes out 2013 goes goes pretty viral. You like pretty quick create a very easy explanation for no it's not it's not real it's part of this project people still believe it for years and years. As kind of the decade progresses we go into like the era of disinformation everyone starts getting phones in their pockets everyone has Facebook with them wherever they go everyone has Twitter with them wherever they go. How is kind of your views on like the ethics of the project and what it demonstrates in terms of like a case study and like a social experiment like how has that changed over the years from like you like 10 years ago when you're giving this up to you now after you know we've had stuff like you know like January 6 and two and on you know all these types of things which I feel like are almost like foreshadowed in this in this weird way by showing how successful your little project is. Yeah. Um, so a lot of a lot of the criticisms that it was faced from the get go like from RIT professors even is still facing right now, like it's still the type of thing.

People bring up which is essentially that hey there's so much disinformation out there at the time we weren't even using those terms disinformation. Right. But basically people were were were bringing up the same complaints which is there's so much disinformation out there. You're basically just adding to it what what are you even doing so I guess the idea is that and you know it's a very noble idea which is what's our response to disinformation right we should. I guess the idea is we should call out every instance of it when we can flag posts, report posts that violate community community standards, you know speak out, provide counter evidence when you see fake news that sort of thing. And I think that's great. That's a good thing. But disinformation. The problem with disinformation is at the time this is kind of how I explained it like 10 years ago I described it as a pen as an epidemic.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Right. Or like a cockroach infestation like every time you kill one 10 more spring up. And the this this notion of like we got to call out every instance of disinformation and stamp it away is like, it's great but you're focused on killing cockroaches. And the symptoms not the actual problem. Right. I want to get to the cockroaches nest, right. And whenever whenever I give talks about this, this project, people always approach me afterwards, you know, like, wanting me to kind of because we don't just talk about this project we talk about like deep fake stuff like. Okay, speeches of Obama like looking like the real Obama but it's completely fake right. People start to realize holy shit like I don't even know what's real or not anymore like what can I trust and they approach me expecting me to ease their anxiety somehow and kind of like guide them through how to discern what's true from what's not as though my project was about finding some sort of solution.

And I tell them that like my project wasn't about solving the problem. It was about seeing the problem right it's about it's about trying to get to the heart of the matter and it's like, to me I think like the heart of the matter like the cockroaches nest is the. I don't know, you, there are different ways to say but basically the, the lack of critical thinking in individuals and like in the society we shape together, or, or lack of a willingness to think through things carefully maybe that's, that's, that's like if we had a society of critical thinkers this wouldn't be much of a problem. I think it's because so many people come at a lot of information from like when you would say the rational viewpoint of like, they're trying to use reason and stuff like they're trying to think critically they're trying to think like logically, but they come at it in the terms of rationalizing stuff they already believe. And I think that's a very prevailing type of idea in terms of like yes I'm going to believe in this thing so I'm going to find evidence to to support it. Which isn't critical thinking I don't think I'm not really know that is that is itself a logical fallacy, but that is so common especially on the internet because the internet encourages the backfire effect you know whenever someone calls it on something.

You want to be right. So you're going to it's as soon as as soon as someone calls it something you're going to backfire you're going to like become even more entrenched in what you believe. And when you know when you explain to someone that no Hillary Clinton is bad, but she doesn't eat the blood of children like no she does I saw this thing I have to believe it because like, all of the things are tied up and what makes you a person and now all of these like ideas that have that were used to be just be conspiracy theories that you could believe in for fun are now so a part of like what people's sense of being are and how they have their entire world view that there's so much more. The internet is such a bigger part of their lives everything on the internet is a bigger part of the lives for each person. So it is more of an ontological threat because these things are so closer together now, right they used to be much more distinction between the internet and you, because you can only ask the computer every once in a while, we can now carry around a super computer wherever we go. So it is like a part of you like you bring it with you almost everywhere it's always in your pocket. So these things are so like stitched together that prime apart and telling people know this thing you carry around actually probably most of what you see on it isn't isn't actually true that there is people can like believe that in their heads, but don't actually don't actually believe that the belief doesn't actually impact them because like we all know that there's like, you will know that people can just go on the internet and lie right that is like part of the joke, but we still don't act like it like oftentimes we get so we get so like in a case into the stories that we tell ourselves right the part of why the sharing stairwell is so good is that it's such a compelling story like that like the idea like a brilliant architect bringing like you know building this paradox in the real world is like is so much more fun than being like

some dude just knows how to use Adobe After Effects like right so you get so entrenched into storytelling because the story of like politicians eating the eating the blood of children is so much more interesting than no politicians just don't care about you like and getting to the heart of that problem is so much more difficult than just you know debunking things because you can do things all day and it does that actually matter. Yeah, and I think that there's there's a secondary problem that like, you know, there's another like a level of it which is that yeah like everyone knows that there's information now. Like, everyone does but but that just makes it worse because now if you want to do this information where you can claim is like oh hey look at all these other times that all the stuff has been fake and then you know this is how you get everyone like doing frame by frame to see stuff like a bombing and going oh these are all right right and it's like you know you talk to these people and they're like oh yeah no I did I did the research look I like I saw through the license like no you've just completely made this thing up in your head. But you can see the green screen compression and like no it's just regular video compression and it's like yeah like everyone can be a detective now so everyone can be so convinced to their own conclusions even when the conclusions turn out to be not true. Right. It's a problem if there wasn't easy solution, we wouldn't have the problem right it's one of those things where it's like your projects are very good example of like.

It's a very demonstrative thing you can like you and you take someone along this journey demonstrate hey this can happen to you so you should watch out for us right look look at the story I crafted look how you become convinced of it for these six minutes. And then you think oh wait no you can't teleport to a bottom stairwell that's not that's not how that works. But because you take them on that journey it's a very it's a I love it so much as like a demonstrative process being like. So like this can happen so watch out for it in the future to think is honestly more useful than just debunking somebody because you can debunk all day you can have the backfire effect and stuff. Yeah you're right about the demonstrative stuff because it's like if a bunch of film students and volunteers with no connections and no resources pulled this off like we did like a tally of all the videos at the end of the year of. You know all the videos that ripped it off and posted on their own channels and all that. And it was like 50 million right so if a bunch of film students like had that much influence what more can like people who are actually fun like. Power and resources right what could they do and we were just doing ours was about like this innocuous silly stairwell wasn't about anything that would cause you know anyone's death or anything like that or.

And let you know something like in Myanmar where the Myanmar military. Basically systemically systematically created fake articles and fake photos to create like to to arouse this thing for the Rohingya people and base they incited a genocide. Through Facebook just through fake news right in the Philippines where I live right now. Which a lot of commentators call like the patient zero of disinformation because in 2016 this guy called Duterte. Was elected president basically ran it running his entire campaign on this information and after him was Brexit like a month later and after that was Trump got the nomination so like. What's her name Katie Barth Barthar or something like that the one of the executives of Facebook referred to the Philippines as patient zero in the era of disinformation because like. And the thing that Duterte the president here right now was running on was basically like the same sort of. Othering and scapegoating of a certain group and he said basically he's the guy who said like basically if you're a drug user or a drug dealer it should be okay to murder you and kill you.

And that's what happened that's exactly what happened because they were posting all these stories about. You know the same sorts of stories that you that we saw in the US in 2016 about undocumented immigrants or Muslims or something like that this like oh this undocumented immigrant rape the five year old girl you know that sort of thing yeah. And he would the the the organized campaign making up stories about drug addicts like murdering and raping people basically like got an entire nation to well not an entire nation but basically this guy won the election. And you know we have a country right now that basically live through just atrocities the last five six years you know. And like the double edged sword of this like what Chris mentioned is like yeah this type same type of thing because it exists people also like retroactively apply it to like you know like Sandy Hook was staged or like even stuff now with like you know the pandemic right people like right what if what is the pandemic isn't real what if all these people just you know conjured this thing into being and it's all a giant miscarriage campaign right so it has this dual it has this double edged sword nature which makes combat and disinformation so challenging since like disinformation to combat disinformation to comment the idea of disinformation and there's so many layers of it now this this this it's just yeah it makes it makes actually get into the heart of it so much more challenging because it's been abstracted so many times. One of the things I was remembering what didn't didn't the New York Times went to the first people to come up with the term fake news and then Trump started using it after like maybe watching postificate which you said it was but my memory if it was like it was it was it was the

media that came up with fake news and then like Trump just took it and it became this like this just like demon they absolutely could not control and was just turned on them. Do you remember the context in which they use that they were like they were I think they were calling like stuff that Trump said fake news. I am I'm unsure of at the moment who specifically coined to that term. But I mean we definitely see terms like even like in terms like disinformation which used to be more tied to like a discord in philosophy breaking like in like even even back even as back far as like the 80s getting you know turned into an actual like political term that everybody uses. So I'm reading that it was actually somebody from Buzzfeed an editor at Buzzfeed was one of the that makes sense. Frank Silverman is one of the ones who first popularized it was in 2016. Yeah, but there could be there could be, you know, several other people that say that they coined it. I don't know. I mean I even there's even an illustration from 1894 by by Frederick offer with reporters carrying newspapers labeled humble news, cheap sensation and fake news. So it's I mean, in terms of in terms of just matching words together, I'm sure it has had a decent history, but definitely Trump is the one that like launched it into the zeitgeist.

Right, right, right. Let's see, Robert you've been pretty quiet I know it's pretty early in the morning for you. Do you have any do any kind of thoughts to help us kind of generally start closing us out not like super immediately but generally head in that direction. I mean, no, not really kind of brought up everything, I would say. All right, all right. It's. Yeah, I guess, Mike, what have. How is this project and have impacted how you approach film and just the like how you how you use the internet yourself in the past decade. Well, I, I'm fully aware of what we did every time I'm like looking at something I'm like they had done that they have done this and that you know that sort of thing.

I don't know if it's if. Yeah, I'm not sure how it's how this project specifically had impacted me other than just trying to think through things a bit more carefully, trying to go through things like. I mean, like, so we basically came up with this idea of what eventually became troll farms right like me and like my classmates would. Hey, we even make fake accounts and like talk about the stairwell and so I don't know like a few years later people we we learned that people were actually doing this like to influence like elections around the world and a lot of the strategy of like the Russian troll farms and stuff. was to basically create caricature versions right of arguments from whatever side like, you know, whether they might present an argument from like the left or the right but in like a caricaturized version of it. And so what people would see when they see that, they'd see an argument coming from the other side and they'd ridicule it like, look at these people who just seem crazy, espousing this whatever view, you know, or they might say things like, like, yeah, if you're a Democrat you want to abort babies at like the ninth month or something like that. Yeah, no reasonable person actually argue. So what happens is like. People talk about how the goal of Russia was to like polarize, you know, polarize the political spectrum. I think like the bigger goal and the, the goal that we're going to be on untangling for many, many years and the more

difficult problem to deal with was that they over simply they successfully oversimplified discourse. You know what I'm saying, like they found a way to like oversimplify the type of discourse we're having because everyone's like arguing with such simplistic. I'm not sure if I'm making sense. It's like, it's like, it's like the term I use is like politics as fandom. Right, right, right. And that's I think that like intersect it's not exactly what you're saying but like it intersects with that type of idea of like condensing down actual discussions on like what you believe in and what politics you want and how you want to improve the world into this weird fandom lens of like this team versus this team which we've had a degree of that for a long, long time. But with the internet and how discussions on the internet are designed to work right how algorithms want to boost content how there's always a short snippet. It just mirrors the way people discuss like what Star Wars character is their favorite. It's just that but for politics. So it's, it's just this like what if politics is just this idea of fandom, and you can debate what fandom is more valid than the other right. I like the last Jedi more you like Rise of Skywalker. This means your version of reality is less good than mine. That is objectively true. If you like Rise of Skywalker, your version of reality is wrong. But it's that same idea. But for how we like make social programs and how we address racism and how we like give food to poor people and how we do affordable housing

and how we handle the police. So it's that type of idea, which is just disinformation kind of impacts this in part because when you flood the zone with so much conflicting information that people can't really get a handle on or easily sort of like when they're when when you when you put that much confusion into the air. It makes people more likely to just kind of grasp it sides because everything coming out is way too complicated and messy and it's it takes too much work right right what's actually true. So holding to some rubric of well I believe this so that means these are the good guys these are the bad guys, and I don't have to to analyze it any deeper than that I can reject information that comes from this group or I can reject information that says this, because I just category categorically reject, you know, anything that that fits in with that like that's the benefit of disinformation for authoritarians of all stripes you're seeing in Ukraine right now where you've got all of these different authoritarian powers you've got Turkey you've got Russia you've got, you know, fucking the United States at least to the extent that like we enter impact a lot of things internationally. And you've got them all coming down on different sides of this issue and of what's happening in Ukraine and because there's so much disinformation and misinformation about what's going on. People just kind of grasp that well whatever side I'm have been more sympathetic to recently I'm just going to believe whatever they say, because it's way too complicated to actually analyze what's going on. Yeah, and this was this was the thing that that I mean this was explicit on the left I remember this there was this around 2017, 2018. There was a whole thing about how like people people like talking about anti imperialism would would literally say like new on nuances liberalism.

I don't like nuances liberalism don't don't research this don't think about this because nuances how liberals like, you know, spread sort of pro pro regime change propaganda like I remember those people like Amber Frost just just said this. And this was a huge and you know like I got a lot of shit for this because you know, like I remember when the when the coup in Bolivia happened like I made a giant thread that was trying that was like okay we need to figure out like how specifically the CIA was involved in this like okay so did they plan the whole thing was it like were they working with local partners was the thing where someone else planned it and they signed off on it and like to this day people think that I supported the coup because I was like we should figure out who was who the actors were on the ground because no one like this this this this this became like an it like like like a tenant like an actual sort of like like political tenants of of how a lot of anti imperialism like in the American left worked was you you were not supposed to do nuance you were not supposed to look at who was like you know if you were too long looking at what was going on in the ground people would be like you work for the CIA and that you know I think like we've we've finally seen that basically blow up in their faces because you know oh hey look how many of these people just like wound up supporting Russia and then spent like three months saying that Russia would never invade Ukraine that this happens but it's I don't know it's it's it's it's extremely depressing how people who otherwise are you know like in a lot of ways like I spent a lot of their time like trying to you know filter out stuff from the media that's false just go into this because they just do not want to deal with the complexity of reality yeah it's just easier not to again if there was a simple problem we wouldn't need to discuss the problem yeah yeah so I guess basically like just to like answer that question about how it I guess at the time I'd say like we got an up close look at how things were going to be like you know with with all these things we

we kind of anticipated the next few years so yeah that's basically what happened sorry to interrupt your closing but no no no it's the best note that we can go Mike do you where can people find you online and if people want to look into some of your other projects I mean you found me like they want to find me they'll find me right I don't know I still don't know how you got my email but Garrison is extremely good about this talk not that many people are that good yeah well they could check out the YouTube channel like I'm gonna be posting some new films this year probably so my name Michael luck and allow or just search the assurance there well I guess that's a way yeah yeah I'll add your YouTube channel to to the description yeah and I just want to thank you so much for coming on to talk about your your project yeah thanks for having me right well that that does it for us today you can follow us on the internets for some reason on Twitter and Instagram that happened here pod and also media and yeah go go create a myth that people will believe and travel from out of country to walk over some stairs because that sounds like fun go do something like that for fun fun sees all right bye bye it could happen here it being a number of things this is the podcast about things falling apart and also maybe putting them back together and assuming there's not a nuclear war in the immediate future you will probably be hearing this episode sometime in early March I am Robert Evans my co hosts as always well as often Chris and Garrison and that's that's my job for the day done I'm gonna I'm gonna sit back and chill you guys want to take it from here

yeah I'll take it from here we are doing one of our perennial things fall apart but also we sort of put them back together again episodes and joining us today is jmc from strange matters a new libertarian socialist cooperative magazine jmc great to have you here yeah this is really great so I guess we should probably explain what the magazine is not just in and of itself but also because it's a good lead in into into what we're going to be talking about so we basically there's five of us as co editors and we're all equal worker owners in it it's a magazine called strange matters and the point of it is to explore radical new ideas not just in terms of politics and economics which is going to be kind of half the focus is trying to figure out like you know libertarian socialist talk a lot about dual power which you know you all talk about on the show a lot talk about building independent institutions under the direct democratic control the working class to control real resources and are not the state or capitalist firms but like we talk a big game but we actually know how to do that stuff and do we know how to do stuff like run like you know a big company as a as a self managed democracy or do we know how to like run a city as a as a radical democracy like rooted neighborhood councils or anything like that so it kind of is not really and there's a lot of like open questions that we don't know yet the answers to and that very few people are working on those answers so strange matters is partly about discovering those answers not because we the editors have the answers but because we need like some kind of space within which we can bring lots of different people different life experiences together in order to talk about the stuff and figure it out and then the other mission of it is to be a kind of general interest literary intellectual and doing the kind of journalism and philosophy and poetry and memoir and stuff like that that that perhaps get shut out of capitalist society because it's not commercial or because it's too weird or because it's like I don't know a historiographical essay about Ibn Khaldun or something

like that you know and we think that there should be a place for that just because it brings delight and meaning into people's lives and it's what we're fighting for a more democratic society in order to do so that's basically our vibe and the same question is a collective editorial that we that we collectively drafted and edited talking about our political views in particular and the recent history of libertarian socialism and as for me I'm a writer who's written for a couple other places like the point and the Brooklyn rail and I also was involved in the DSA's libertarian socials caucus and also the yeah yeah yeah I'll see but yeah a lot of history there trauma you know some some yeah but any who and also the symbiosis Federation which is a Federation across Mexico the US and Canada that is trying to put together it's a it's a combination of local organizations are trying to do this kind of direct democracy stuff yeah so I guess well okay so the pandemic isn't I guess the perfect jumping in point for this but I want to go back and I guess just get getting into the meat of this piece because I think it's very interesting I wanted to sort of talk about the origins of like what's called sort of neo-anarchism and how it sort of began to decay after sort of after the collapse of Occupy and after well I guess the sort of kind of revolutionary arc of the 2010s so basically before you do the decline at least is the way that we wrote it and I kind of think that it's the way that I would tell it you have to kind of do the rise first right because like there was this moment from roughly the fall of Soviets in 91 to roughly like 2000 and even kind of lingering in an afterlife afterwards where it kind of looked like anarchism was going to take over the world and that's a bit of a joke but it's also not a

joke because in the context of like the radical left which is of course obviously a kind of like you know dissident scene in any country where it happens to exist you know everything receded in terms of the traditional parties because the fall of these Soviet style Leninist states either through their collapse as in the case of the USSR or in the case of their transition to much more like clearly and obviously like state capitalist semi-liberalized model like in China like the you basically had like this total recession not just in Leninism interestingly which are obvious enough right like you know it's basically a global collapse of Leninist style of governments but also in like social democracy because it a lot of the I mean it's actually kind of interesting why it's unclear why it is people have different theories but they're you know people often describe it in you know Fisher's term the writer Mark Fisher capitalist realism the attitude in the 90s was that you know there's there's only one world that's possible and it's the best of all possible worlds and that's the capitalist world where everybody's going to have McDonald's in every country and two countries that have the same McDonald's are never going to go to war which we kind of found out the hard way this week that that's not really the case well and if people had paid attention more to other parts of the world they would know that like well there were civil wars in a bunch of countries that had McDonald's it didn't stop people from shooting each other as the United States should tell you people will kill each other whether or not they have access to chicken McNuggets yeah you know I mean I think like that that's a period that has it's full of the most wrong anyone has ever been like you got your frantic Fukuyama like the most wrong person ever you've got yeah you've got a lot of sort of ideologues you like have sort of deluded themselves into thinking this stuff is over and yeah I think you're right that that sort of plays into this you know into sort of the collapse of I guess the party state left and then the way in which that you

you know the alternative to that I guess becomes neo-anarchism and anarchist practice even if it's not necessarily ideology with all the groups kind of seeps its way into the rest of the activism yeah so basically the story that we tell is that there's you know the Sepatista rebellion in 1994 triggers these it's not just that the Sepatistas are able to create their autonomous territory in Chappas but it triggers this wave that we use a term that sometimes is used in academia called neo-anarchism for this you know there's an anarchist revival in the 90s around the world and it's not just people calling themselves anarchist it's all these movements that were inspired by the libertarian socialist broadly speaking the Sepatistas adopting kind of similar methods in their local context in different countries fighting against I mean a lot of things initially it's against like you know neoliberal trade deals but it also ends up being against like sweatshops because that's basically what a lot of outsourcing is is you know if they have unions in this country from the social democratic period they shut down the factory fire everybody move it to some place where some dictatorship is going to shoot anybody who tries to do a union and then that you know that that lowers the statistics has gotten sophisticated enough by this point that you know it ends up being cheaper for the company even though they have to transport goods all across the world and do just in time delivery and that kind of thing so the a lot of the anti globalization movement that ended up around the 2000s was like against all these things and usually using the kinds of direct actions which is when you act kind of independent of the state and not trying to like you know convince a politician to do something but taking action to get your result your desired result you know and all this kind of stuff that were at using like direct democratic consensus methods in the way that they organized stuff that that was that was all basically anarchistic and so there was this

way in which anarchist methods anarchist tactics anarchist like attitudes towards what activism even is started filtering into all these other movements and this has been happening a little bit in the 80s to so there was like the anti nuclear movement had a lot of this the the the feminist there was a whole stream of single ecological movements were actually like pioneered in a lot of ways by anarchists in the 90s. So as well as indigenous movements in places like Mexico, Bolivia, etc. So the, the, this is the kind of like rise of this neo anarchist milieu that we're talking about which is not just about anarchists it's about people who act and think like anarchists without necessarily identifying as it. Yeah, I mean that's the kind of thing that I hope we can kind of more encourage as well in the next few decades, as those types of ideas can be. I want to make sure that we can take these ideas and make them very approachable for people, even if they don't use the terms that we might use, you can still kind of suggest these types of thoughts and this suggests these types of kind of lenses and viewpoints as much as we're about to get to how this sort of goes wrong or fails in some sense like I think that was the strength of this movement was that it was it's tactics were really easy to spread. And that led to a lot of people adopting it led to it sort of becoming this, I guess, activist consensus that you know like you use the consensus process you, you know, you have horizontal organizations you have you do direct actions you mobilize people and you don't have these sort of like, like parties but that yeah and I think I think the next part of the story that you want to tell us about, I guess how that fell apart, and the consequences of that. Basically, what ends up happening is that, like, there is this moment of our ascent because I would identify myself as being definitely like part of these.

I mean, I have to board a lot later with like Occupy Wall Street but a lot of the kind of explosion of movements that happened around the world in 2011 again, not always right it started with the Arab spring which started with somebody saying themselves on fire in Tunisia and like you know and then that kind of led to other countries in the Middle East and protest against dictatorships and so on, but it starts getting kind of like transported beyond its initial Middle Eastern context and what a lot of people don't know is that the, the Occupy Wall Street happened in North America, and like other movements that, you know, some of them were called Occupy, some of them I'm one of them was Maidan in Ukraine, as a matter of fact, and other, like, you know, the Hong Kong, the umbrella movements. And all these kind of movements that proceeded from after 2011. A lot of them were basically in a single kind of wave, a protracted wave of copycat movements that we're trying to adopt the same kind of tactics of like occupying public squares, declaring them basically autonomous and doing like direct democracy in those squares modeling the kind of society that they that people wanted to create. You know, in this moment where it seemed like you could have these direct democratic sorts of movements that the end in the US where there's like a direct line of succession from like Occupy Wall Street through to like Black Lives Matter, through to like the anti pipeline indigenous protest there's a lot of like shared movement experience, a lot of the same people showing up to it or teaching the next generation in those movements and I think this is something I mean, it's difficult to find like sources on this but I mean y'all are involved in social movements I think that that's like a rough, that's roughly a description of what's happened right, unless unless we're crazy. Yeah, and I think, you know, I think, I guess what you call the last wave that is Occupy Ice in 2018.

Yeah, yeah, you know, like I remember like that was the sort of mix of I guess two crowds one is, you know, I mean like I remember it was a bunch of, you know, people who'd been in Occupy and then also it was a lot of people who radicalized essentially by Trump. Yeah, there was a pretty big new wave of people. Yeah, around 2016 and that, you know, I guess the other thing that that's going on through this period is the ascension of the right and the return also not just of, you know, not just a sort of the fascist right but of Leninism and social democracy as well. Yeah. And that's also happened around like when Bernie Sanders was getting more popular. Yeah, yeah, and I think I think I think there's there's, you know, there's a couple of there's like two threads here there's the sort of Bernie Sanders thread. And then there's, you know, the rise of the rise of the tankies which has to do with Syria and has to do with sort of this backlash against the the 2011 revolutions that, you know, like some of that backlash turns into like, just, you know, like aired ones like hard right. I mean, there's never like not a right wing but like air to ones turn into just like firebombing cities and. Right. And then Assad as well like the barrel bombing, you know, peaceful protest stuff can overthrow governments if the government is not willing to bomb and shoot people who gather on mass in the central square because they're afraid of what the world's response would be if they did start doing that.

But, you know, when Bashar al-Assad did that in Syria against the democratic opposition movements, you know, that basically sent the signal, nothing, I mean, nothing happened to Assad, right. So that basically sent the signal that like, oh, he had a stressful couple of years, but yeah, yeah, right, right. Yeah, like, like you can you can just shoot people and bomb them. And like it and that basically defanged the kind of central tactic that a lot of these movements were trying to do, which is to have like large numbers of people do nonviolent civil disobedience. And then through those like direct actions cultivate this culture of like direct democracy in the hopes that, you know, the assemblies that are created in that space could in some way become the germ of the organs that could run society. That's like when it's taken to its logical conclusion, because usually people who are involved in this, they get involved in it, they think the assembly stuff is really cool. They start learning more about it. They get radicalized by being in the assembly because like when you're in a direct democratic assembly and you're actually making the decisions like together and then you come to an agreement and you execute the decision. You start asking yourself like, why can't we do everything like this. And then, you know, that that's what directs a lot of people in this kind of anarchistic direction. But yeah, one of the reasons why these movements started to decline is because they get smashed the, but I think that there's always this other thing going on, which,

and I wonder how you all felt about this, like reading it, like, you know, there's, there was this kind of both like an external critique at first from people like, you know, Baskar Sankarov, Jackabin and things like that. But then also like this increasingly over the years in the last half of the 2010s internal critiques of anarchism coming from anarchists themselves are people in this general kind of military and socialism, talking about how like, anarchists didn't have solutions to the most pressing crises in the 21st century like if you like if you guys had to say, I know it's like kind of pretentious but like what is the most pressing crisis of the 21st century or what are like the top three just off the top of your heads without thinking what would you list if you had to list three two or three separate things. Climate change, creeping authoritarianism and rampant disinformation about basic facts of reality. Sweet. Okay, so let's tackle each one of those right, like, what's, what's an anarchist got to say about climate change well okay disrupt the pipelines, like, you know, do like, you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet so you have to have like, you know, we have all the slogans right I mean we've all heard them like a million times. Yeah, you have the diagnoses of the problem but yeah.

Yeah, but then like, okay, so how are we going to, like, you know, I guess we're going to build some co-ops, and then the co-ops are going to democratize production, and then we can do degrowth, somehow, but like, also disrupting existing production, but there's like a missing step here right because like, you know, the reason why we have all this production in a certain way is because the entire economy depends on it's been set up that way. So you implied in the idea that we're going to do degrowth somehow is that we need some way of constructing a different economy, and how do you construct a different economy right through some kind of planning. So really the question is like, how do you do economic planning. Second one, I'm going to skip keeping authoritarianism for now because that's actually like feeding into the more the ending of the essay but the, but the other one right disinformation another great question right like, what do you do with social media. Like, okay, again, anarchists talk in general a lot about like, okay, we're going to democratize all the companies because we're democratizing everything we're democratizing neighborhoods or democratizing cities so it's kind of the same thing turning everything into like a radical direct democracy. Okay, but if we're going to have social media, first of all, should we like was it a mistake to invent a centralized system, instead of the more decentralized internet that created that existed before social media was kind of an interesting question, but then assuming that we do.

How do we restructure it, not just in terms of how it's managed but like okay we have the democracy of Facebook or whatever. And let's say that we're the workers at Facebook. What do we do, like, how do we structure it so that it's not a giant misinformation engine, right like once, once you actually have like the responsibility and the power of being in the saddle which is what we spend so much of our time kind of just trying to do. We actually make decisions about what to do. And honestly, there aren't that many I mean what do you what do you do with with the utility like that, like for example, who ought to be in control the utility like that, is it really just the workers of Facebook, aren't all the people who are users of it don't they have a right to be making decisions about it too. And is it just an American institution just because it's an American LLC or is it like a global institution because everybody on the planet's on it. Is there, you know, are there ways that it could be reconfigured like fundamentally in terms of how users use it that would change the experience in some way to actually make it make you less liable to misinformation but on the other hand if you try to manipulate people in order to, you know, not see something that's going to be misinformation, isn't that, well, you know, like censorship, or, or, or some other thing that we generally would oppose right like the tool of centralized social control so they like these are pretty deep questions. And again, this is generally a kind of silence. And of course, you know, in that case, there's silence from the social Democrats to, and there's silence from the Leninist, I mean well the Leninist just kind of fantasize about turning Facebook into the tool of the liberal party state uses in order to crush dissent forever or whatever. But you know, social Democrats are like let's nationalize Facebook. And it's like, you know, yeah, sure, we could we could do that and then you know the NSA owns on Facebook.

I'm sure that that's a, that's a better scenario. I tend to think somewhat differently about what it means to have an anarchist solution to those problems. Like for example, I don't, I don't see anarchists or social Democrats or Leninists having any kind of stopping climate change solution. Because I don't, I don't realistically see the organizing potential, the capable of actually stopping what's going on in any kind of reasonable timeframe and I certainly don't think that the existing, you know, neoliberal structures or the authoritarian structures that exist in, you know, other countries or in this country are going to stop it either. So when I think about solutions to climate change from an anarchist perspective, I think about how can anarchist organizing help people deal with the consequences of climate change. And I see, I tend to see the potential for actually like mitigating climate change coming more from there's as the consequences of this become more dire to people, if anarchists are better are good at providing relief and helping people and organizing through that and eventually there's some potential to actually get people organized to stop the causes of the problem but I just don't, I'm not an optimist about our ability to stop the worst of it at this point, especially not after the most recent IPCC report and I guess I'm kind of in the same boat when it comes to disinformation. I, and this is not just like anarchists I feel like lack, as you've stated a caught like a good idea about like what do we do with Facebook what we do with YouTube what we do with the way all of these things are set up and the harms that they do at scale. Nobody, and I include the people currently in charge has any real good ideas for that, because they haven't like I've been working in this space for a very long time I've spent a lot of time talking with and debating with a lot of the folks who are

leading minds kind of in the fight against disinformation. And I just don't feel like there's any sort of solution that is an immediate term solution because so many the problem is so advanced as it is so as I guess that's kind of like where I land on a lot of this stuff is we certainly need to be thinking about solutions but I kind of like I think it's less likely that there's going to be like you were saying the kind of debate is between is there some way of like reforming or fixing making Facebook more democratic or is it just we need to decide that maybe we don't have some of this stuff. And I tend to land towards that that like well, I think the solution is going to be maybe maybe Facebook's a bad idea maybe we should maybe we shouldn't have there's aspects of it that are necessary obviously and I think aspects of things like Telegram and Twitter that are useful but I think the they're also fundamentally tied to the algorithms that drive them, which is also what drives so much of the toxic aspects that I think if you're enforcing the medium from the algorithm, you're talking about something that is very different and I don't longer the media. Yeah, it's so radically different that it's just it's not even useful to compare them. It's like it's like it's like comparing discord to Facebook it's like they're not they don't operate the same way. Yeah, that's exactly kind of where I where I tend to be on on that and I know that's not like I to the extent that like that's pessimistic I guess I am kind of pessimistic about anarchism's ability to stop the worst of things that's where I kind of look at myself as an optimistic anarchist is in the I believe anarchism offers solutions when these things go as badly as they're going to do in a way that you know the present systems or you know more authoritarian systems that people propose can't

solve the worst consequences of these problems as as well that's that's kind of where I feel like it is can feel a lot simpler to default to like the dual power framework. There's a lot of these things because otherwise the problems are so complex that you cannot approach them from it from from every angle, so you really do need to simplify and condense them and collapse them into something that is more simplified which often results in like a dual power kind of framework for what you actually start doing. Yeah, and I think you have to, I think if you're an insurrectionist, if you're a revolutionary, whether you're an anarchist, or, you know, a lininist or whatever, you have to be looking at what's actually happening in Ukraine right now and recognize that. All right, well, to what extent do you think you're going to be able to organize people in such a way that allows them to deal with thermobaric weapons. You know, in what way are you going to organize people that allows them to effectively resist cluster musicians. And I think that when you kind of look at it that way which is what it would take to overthrow any of the large hegemonic powers in the world right now. A much more realistic set of solutions is all right, well, let's work on building power by building organizations and communities that are capable of taking care of themselves in the holes that these powers are increasingly going to be experiencing because because they too are crumbling and that's much smarter than being like, all right, well, I'm going to try to get a bunch of my friends with rifles and arm up a couple of drones and go up against, you know, people who have access to MLRS, you know, weapons systems and whatnot.

Yeah, no, I think that's a really great point. I, the way that I would think about it is the starting with the big picture problems is a bit misleading because, as you said, like, nobody, it's quite like nobody has solutions to these problems. Certainly the social democrats. They sure haven't solved them. Yeah. You know, and I say this is somebody who's like half a social democrat by temperament. It would be really nice if we elected a little social democratic government and they swooped in and, you know, did like New Deal stuff. I like New Deal stuff. I like WPA stuff as much as the next, you know, person who likes arts programs and infrastructure development. Well, you know, some infrastructure development, not others, right. Or the war complex we can do a little without. But, you know, the thing about it is those big problems, you're right, it looks like there's not going to be like a big solution and that we're going to kind of have to cope with the consequences of it, at least at first. Yeah. Even coping. This is this is kind of where I think the real kind of substance of the problem that libertarian socialists are facing right now. Even coping would require a greater level of organization than we have proven able to muster up to now.

Not because the methods that we choose don't work because in fact, as you point out and as I actually really want to forcefully argue and because I because we do in the end of the essay, like authoritarian methods don't work and can't work for a lot of the specific place. And history shows that very definitively. But there is also a serious way in which even kind of developing these like, you know, local, highly like, you know, rooted in a community, like direct democratic institutions that control real resources, scaling that up to the point where it actually could start replacing some of the gaps left behind by, you know, states and capitalist firms that are too dysfunctional or too focused on their own goals to meet those needs. That would actually require us to be able, for example, to know how to build up a cooperative sector in a city, or how to kind of like network the tenants unions that already exist, you know, across different, you know, regions maybe even across like a continent and then construct like the way in which they self manage each other, or not each other self managed together, you know, the larger group, or would require and you know, there's a lot of people working on these problems. But sometimes there is a kind of like, you know, you'll see this like obstacle in the road because for example, like, what do you do when the it may not even be the state properly speaking right it might be like a posse that's funded by some rich billionaire. Asshole who's got like his, you know, his notion that some people are just better than others and that you should institute the dictatorship of the tech bros. You know, and then that billionaires funding a bunch of people who've got now like you know, some industrial access to industrial infrastructure, and they don't like the fact that you're doing your DIY like, you know, commune or whatever stuff in there on their turf.

So, how do you fight back against that I mean some of it you can fight back against at kind of our current level of capacity but some of it does kind of require us to start thinking like well, how do you, how do you build up financial independence. I would like how do you build up the kind of independence where it's like if we get kicked off with the capitalist social media, for example, which is a great deal of what we use for fundraising, how what kind of institutions could we create that would be like alternatives. There are not like the the ones that the Nazis created when there was a purge of some of them that gab like highly dysfunctional like you know it didn't even work for them. Not that I mean I'm happy about that but like you know my point is like the same thing could happen to us. So what would we do the like there are all these kinds of things that are more little picture questions in a way, but they scale up relatively to at least like medium sized questions where we need this kind of like these these because because part of what it is is also that like, it's not that these questions are impossible. It's that they're kind of neglected. And there's, there's these, the thinkers like Christian Williams who's an anarchist from the Pacific Northwest who wrote a pamphlet about this called wither anarchism, and there was another pamphlet or an essay and counterpunch by a person named Gabriel who's an autonomous Marxist basically like a libertarian Marxist Marxist anarchist type, called what happened to the anarchist century and both of those essays which I highly recommend that people read. They make they make points, basically, like this, you know, like where where the focus on how to construct those institutions and the nitty gritty of how to do that has kind of receded from anarchism.

Because it's actually practiced in fate, like, so there's like a rhetoric of revolutionary transformation, but not always the attention to the nitty gritty of how you actually can like build resilient institutions that actually like carry that through, which you know, 100 years ago people talking about like the one big union and the general strike, but that's kind of like. It didn't work in exactly the way that they were thinking it would even in the most successful revolutions like in Spain, and be it was also like the the there's there's there's a certain way in which our tensions are focused on other things and it's not that those things are bad it's just that like, there's been this kind of neglect of the question of large scale organization, and how you do coordination, like you know in order to tackle problems that are kind of like at the scale that that I was talking about before. And so basically the argument of the essay is that in the absence of that, like for the socialist movement that emerged after 2016 turned away from neo anarchism thinking basically that it had no solutions which I don't think is true either, but it's like, you know, or like it was true in the moment but it doesn't have to be true, but it was true, but enough people thought that it was that they turned to like the social democratic route, but with the failure of Corbyn and Bernie, that kind of burned a lot of people out to, and a lot of what it seems like it's coming up now and I'm wondering I wonder what you guys think of this like a lot of the people that we see showing up in movement spaces, who we see kind of like getting politically activated for the first time or whatever. A lot of those people are really interested in neo anarchism and on specifically because I don't I don't know how true that is. That's at least that's that that part's not true at least at least at least here in Portland. That's very much not the case. Yeah, well, Portland Portland is also got to know other no other

than maybe Eugene, like, okay, that's that's fair. That's why I'll see out a little bit too. Portland is a big enough anarchist city that there are entire decade long, like, like inter anarchist wars that no one else in the US has ever heard of that are like the most important thing that's ever happened in Portland. Oh, boy. Welcome to the green red. Let me tell you, Chris, you have just pissed off 60 people who could not explain to you if you gave them a year could not explain to you why they're angry. I mean, to be to be fair, like, I am an anarchist in Chicago. When the first time I introduced to my Twitter mutuals together, they almost got in a fistfight. So like, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, that's that completely scans, even with like DSA stuff, I feel like there's there was at least was a trend a little bit to stay away from some of the more Russia communist kind of like types of aesthetics and and ideas, because it is a turn off for so many people. And it does, you know, encourages it as like encourage and forefront a form of authoritarianism that maybe is not great. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I I've seen sort of both. Okay, so I think the last like year has been very different than I think the previous five. I've seen it on Twitter, but I don't know how much it expands into actual spaces. I think I think it's like I saw a lot. I mean, one of the things that happens in the DSA is is that the Leninist essentially took over the International Committee. And right, they they had this kind of delish division. The DSA were like, you have like, you have a part of the DSA that's essentially a social democratic machine. And then you have the International Committee, which is which is the sort of foreign policy wing essentially run by by essentially run by by the Leninist. And I think, I don't know, I think I saw it there. The everything I think I saw a lot of that that I've seen, even from people who are ordinarily not Stalinist is what you know, part of what I was talking about this is is the sort of like climate Stalinism, or like climate, yeah, stuff like that. That is a huge problem that, you know, I mean, I think, I think part of it also just has to do with the fact that people

don't. Like, okay, so like we have actually existing climate Leninism, like we have it, it's China, like the CCP changed, literally changed state ideology in the mid 2010s, as you know, as an attempt to deal with with with with pollution, climate change, it did nothing. Like they pressed every policy, like it didn't work. Yeah, yeah, I mean, they did carbon markets, they did they literally just banned coal and entire provinces and it didn't work. They they changed your country valuations. I they probably shot people. Yeah, yeah, like it lays out specifically with China to an excruciating degree like it like in detail if you're really interested in this type of like climate left authoritarianism, they call it climate now in the book but you can call it climate climate Leninism you can call whatever, but they they lay out how it could work and how use cases of it have not worked to a pretty pretty intense degree if you're interested in that I would recommend reading the book climate Leviathan definitely influenced a large portion of the writing for this one. Yeah, and I mean to your point, I don't think that this is the only trend, I do I agree with you that out of like the conjuncture of 2020. There was this. I think that a lot of the more like establishment reformist aspects of the movement were discredited, and that pushed people in different radical directions, like one of which very much is anarchism and libertarian socialism I am seeing a lot more faces that are interested in those questions for sure. Counter to the trend that I was describing from the last like five years of like you know people becoming more disinterested because of the real or perceived lack of solutions. However, I do think that it's important and this is kind of following on Chris's climate Leninism point to understand

that there's at least a counter trend, where a lot of people are have not only moved away from libertarian socialism have not only moved but they've also moved away from democratic socialism. And if you follow that pattern which is a pattern that I at least have seen within the within various trade unions in a lot of among a lot of like intelligentsia type people like journalists professors blah blah you see a very common set of arguments and I think it's very clear that as the century proceeds and the crises get worse and start killing like even larger numbers of people than they already are, we're going to see this argument a lot more. Yeah. And the argument is something like this. I mean, there's a quote from a tweet. And, you know, one could argue that it doesn't matter old friends old enemies. You are naive. If you think this is the tweet, climate, you are naive if you think climate change can ever be solved without an authoritarian government at that point. That's the and that's that's the whole thing. So it's a it's a nasty little tweet because it's ambiguous right. It has this like shocking and scandalous effects, you know, we need authoritarianism to solve climate change the scandalous, you know, I put to the bridge or whatever. But then it's like, okay, wait, but what do you mean by authoritarian am I just being hysterical reacting. It's the same as saying you're naive if you think that climate change can be solved without nuclear power or climate change can be solved without really big hammers. Like we have authoritarian governments, we have nuclear power, we have really big hammers and climate change has not been solved. It's impossible that any of those things might be a part of a theoretical solution that may happen someday. Yes, but it hasn't. And there's like, if you're trying to say that authoritarian governments are better at dealing with climate change than the governments that currently dominate. Number one, hell of a lot of authoritarian governments are responsible for our current situation re climate change.

Number two, the Soviet Union, which I suspect most of these people see as a guiding light, horrible for the environment turned the largest body of water in Eurasia into a poison lake. Yes, right. Not not not good at the environment, you know. And here's here's what's interesting about the thing to me. The other thing that it's doing is kind of signaling that it's like patently ridiculous to oppose this idea without specifying what the idea is like and like in other words of communism. Like, but like, I mean, let's be blunt, right? What they're implying as a Leninist is the one party state the secret police press censorship in the command economy. Yeah. So does that help you fight climate change? That's actually an interesting and a kind of like, you know, distant 5000 foot view, you know, from the God's eye view or whatever. Like, the, that's an interesting technical question. Do these actually help or hinder a response, but we're not even having that conversation because instead it's this kind of attempt to get you to think that. So again, does a tweet matter? Well, I think a tweet matters. If it comes from a member of the National Political Committee of the DSA, because at least extensively of DSA is, which is the person who did that tweet, because at least ostensibly if DSA is a mass movement, as it purports to be, the mass movement of socialists in the US. And, you know, and the National Political Committee is ostensibly the leadership of the DSA, which I personally don't believe, but that's certainly how they think of themselves. And then this indicates that the largest, most important socialist mass movement in the US, at least self branded, has people in its leadership who believe that the secret police might help in addressing climate change. That's an interesting thing. And it's also very disturbing. And the thing is, this, this person is not actually like important. He's a symptom, because this is something that's happening across the board and a more intellectually

various version of this argument was put forward by the Marxist intellectual and historian, a professor of human ecology called Andreas Maum, and people who are really into like Marx nerd stuff will probably have heard. Yeah, mom's name. What a very good book called Fossil Capital. Everything he's written after fossil capital is a disaster. Yeah, I like some of the sabotage stuff. I mean, it's a little romantic and impractical, whatever it is. He wrote an ethical discourse instead of a thing about like the risk of eco-sabotage, which is the actual important part of getting. Well, and also the degree to which it can matter because eco-sabotage, there's this idea on the left that like, well, what we need to do is be targeting fossil fuel infrastructure. And again, it's like what it's it's like what that DSA dude said, like, yeah, that could theoretically be part of a thing that but also process. If it's like nine dudes who do it and then they go to prison or get shot. Well, that doesn't really fix climate change.

I think I think the book, the book, Ministry for the Future really lays out all the all kind of like the best case scenario. Yes, all these types of things and how they can work together to overall trend in this direction because yeah, that type of like eco-sabotage in conjunction with other like political effects can be impactful on what things happen. But it won't necessarily be, you know, it's not it's not as simple as we would like it to be because yeah, it's it turns out a complex world has complex consequences and complex. And I think I think this is, you know, the trend that mom is on the trend, you know, there's there's a big environmental authoritarian like thing among liberals. This is the huge thing in political science was a big thing in ecological studies that was essentially making a similar argument to what mom was making. That's like, well, okay, you need some kind of air quotes of vague authoritarianism to deal to climate change. And, you know, it's it's it's basically this this attempt, there's like these people have have seen climate change, but they have no actual solution to it. So they wave their hands and pretend that like this, like, you know, the state is going to descend from this guy and save them.

And it's not. And I think that's, you know, I think I think we're we're sort of. You know, I think as we just kind of wrap this up because we fortunately are running out of time. But, you know, this like this exact moment like like these like few weeks are this moment of incredible like rupture on the left, right? Because we have we've had we've had in some way social democrats be discredited by the fact that the Corbyn and Sanders both lost, right? Their political project has been discredited. We've had a series of sort of anarchist failures within, you know, and in the last couple of weeks, right, it was all of the sort of big state, like authoritarian people like tied themselves to a bunch of imperialists. And, you know, staked their whole entire politics off of them being the anti imperialist class.

And then, you know, the state who's like a bunch of their press people like literally work for right and who they've been arguing like is the counter imperialist power just does imperialism. And so like, yeah, I think we have this moment where everything is in chaos in which we have to be the ones that that that have solutions or have or have the tools to build them. And I think that's why that's why this project is important because that's that's something that we need in in this exact moment. Yeah, I think there's a tremendous value in being humble about seeking out solutions to these questions and not doing what so many do on the left and pretend that their tendency has an absolute answer because all we have is theories. And the reason I know that to a point of certainty is that no one has solved any of these problems yet. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And so there is a tremendous degree of humility that people need to have in terms of like, all right, well, we are attempting to arrive at the conclusions that can lead us to a better world as opposed to we are trying to force through this thing that we know will work. Because you don't, you know, if you're a Marxist lininist and you think that we need climate Mao, you don't know that that will work because it hasn't yet. And if you're an anarchist who thinks the solution is bombing as many oil refineries as you possibly can.

Well, you don't know that you're ever going to get enough people on board for that to mean anything. And I think that there's a the conversations that we need to be having. I think it's it's important to see them as conversations as opposed to polemics aimed at just getting people in line behind this shining vision of a clear set of steps. It's important to envision the end goal. I say that a lot, you know, we need to be looking and accepting the possibility of a better future. But it's important not to be dogmatic about the road to get there because nobody nobody really has a clear idea of what that looks like. So the piece ends up and if you want to see the ending of it, it'll be up in in sometime in the next couple weeks. But the basic gist of where it goes is precisely to the practical question, right, instead of like making these like polemical arguments that are rooted more in like kind of like what tribe you've decided to identify with within the broad family of socialism then in like actually trying to like solve problems for the people around you right or help contribute to the solutions. Like, it's actually we what we want to ask is like, if we have like the giant ecological crisis. How do you, how do you actually do it is it by trying to force people from the top down to do it as Andreas mom kind of draws on the failed policies of war communism as an inspiration for that. Or is it potentially by having like democratized institutions that incentivize people with carrots instead of sticks like Naomi Klein, basically uncovered a lot of her journalism and this changes everything.

So this is kind of like the debate that we have to start having in order to be able to together formulate these kinds of solutions. Yeah. All right, well, I think that's going to do it for for us today. What do we what do we you guys got a got a got a plug you want to throw up throw up before we roll out. If you want to follow us at at strange underscore matters on Twitter. We also have a Facebook and you can read our articles at strange matters dot co op, which is our website. And if anything that you read there that you've heard here inspires you at all please consider donating we're going to be in the next month raising money for for the magazine and we want to pair writers above market rate because we think market rates too low.

So but in order to actually do that and not the money is going to the editors from the fundraiser. So if if if we're going to be able to do that, we got to meet our fundraising target. All right. Well, support them and you know, figure out how to save the world. It's it's up to you and I'm speaking to exactly one person right now and no one else, but I'm not going to be more specific. Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and putting the back together again and today we're doing one of our, I guess increasingly less rare but still sort of uncommon putting things back together again episodes. And with me today is Ted Min from Amazonians United to talk about different kinds of union union workers organizing and the work that you all have been doing so Ted welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

So, all right, one of the things that I wanted to talk about right off the bat is that Amazonians United is running a very, very different kind of organization than a lot of the union efforts that we've talked about on the show and a lot of the sort of like, I guess classical or sort of Brazilian model stuff that that you know we've we've we've you know then then what you see in the press and then also that we've been covering so I wanted to start off by asking you about solidarity unionism and how it sort of differs from other kinds of union organizations and campaigns. Sure, I think it's pretty simple actually I think solidarity unionism is workers who believe in ourselves. And by that I mean it's workers recognizing that we don't need someone to save us. When, because we are the ones doing the work we know how to run our workplaces, we know how to do it best. And we also deserve the wealth that we produce and so solidarity unionism to me is building organization with each other where a fabric of our organization is our relationship, and our solidarity as coworkers, engaging in struggle against bosses, managers, owners, everyone that's that's telling us what to do while taking the lion's share of the wealth that we create. And it's by uniting coming together around issues that we care about taking direct action in the workplace, building our confidence and our strength and our consciousness. And our organization that to me is solidarity unionism. It is distinctly different from business unionism, which is the dominant form mainstream unionism, or you know legalistic unionism whatever you want to call it. That model that has been failing for several decades actually is predicated on a deep distrust of workers, the disbelief that workers can organize ourselves run our own workplaces represent ourselves defend ourselves and each other.

And in business union, I mean, you know, you, you see the ads when they're posting for union staff job, come lead these workers come come join this union and lead you're not even a worker in the workplace how are you going to lead someone in there. Yeah, like, you know, you're a lawyer, you're, you know, you have a different professional expertise, you're not moving the packages with us from inside with from within the warehouse. And so, yeah, I think that's, that's the main difference to me of the model. Do you, are you a worker, do you believe in workers, you trust and have faith that workers we ourselves can build our own organization lead ourselves. And when, or do you think workers need to be led, need to be represented, need to be told what to do, need to pay you to go and save that. And yeah, I, I believe in workers so I'm a, I'm a solidarity unionist. And I think we were talking a bit before the show about this and I think there's, there's a lot of aspects about this that are, I think, very powerful in, you know, in, in, in, in Secretary of the economy that haven't been unionized and haven't or unions ever treated from people who were never sort of organized to begin with. And I think that's, you know, something that there's, there's, there's, there's this problem that happens, like, with, with a lot of unions where, you know, you get, you get this sort of bureaucratic structure that builds up and the bureaucratic structure that builds up, like, doesn't have, doesn't necessarily have the same interests as the people in the union. And that's a real problem. And you get these entrenched, like, you know, you can get these entrenched as you control unions and you get this sort of proliferation of, of these people. And I think this, this was part of why a lot of the sort of the anti-union techniques that you saw in like the sort of anti-union purges in the 80s.

I mean, you've been seeing them for a while, like why they started working in the 80s was that, like, you know, when, when, when, when someone like starts ranting about union bureaucrats, right, like, they're actually, like, there actually was a divide there. There was a sort of, like, I guess, like, there was a sort of, like, a kind of fundamental class difference, which I think has a lot, I mean, also has a lot to do with, you know, when you get into your sort of, like, more, more revolutionary context that, that has to do with why a lot of unions when, you know, France is infamous for this, right, like, France has had these giant, like, communist trade unions. And every time a revolution started, the trade union just, like, sits there and does nothing. And yeah, and you have to sort of ask yourself, like, okay, so why is this happening? And I think, yeah, solidarity unionism, it has a lot of answers to this sort of, I guess you could call it, like, there's, there's, there's the sort of, like, right-wing critique of unions that has to do with, like, well, okay, so we don't want workers to organize, we don't want them to have collective power at all. But then there's also, you know, but, but the reason that it works in a lot of cases, because it's able to tap into a sort of, like, into these structural problems that a lot of unions have. And I think, so my understanding of, of how y'all's organizing has been going, and correct me if I'm wrong, that I've been interested in is that, like, unlike a lot of other campaigns that you've seen, even specifically with Amazon, but like a lot of other, the sort of, the campaigns that are getting a lot of press, like, you're not acting, like, your goal isn't to just get, like, recognition as a collective bargaining unit. Right. That's another key part of, or key difference between solidarity unionism, business unionism. In business unionism, your, your, what defines you as a union is whether you are legally recognized by the state, by the NLRB, by the appointed government body.

Yeah. And that is the point at which the folks in these organizations, like, are we a union or are we not? Okay, let's, let's do an election. Let's follow all these rules that, by the way, we're designed to demobilize us. Yeah, century ago, but let's follow all these rules. Let's try to fight in the courts to be recognized as a union. And then once we're a union, then we can fight for a legal contract. It's benefited a lot of people in different ways. I'm not, you know what I mean? Like, but that approach is different than solidarity unionism where it's like, we know our power is in the workplace on the shop floor, where our power is based on our unity and numbers as co-workers. We see this when we walk out and within a month they give us a raise. How long would it have taken to get a raise if we went for an LRB election? Yeah. What organization are we even building in that way? And so our, instead of seeking legal recognition and waging our struggle against bosses in the courts, we are choosing to wage, engage in struggle in the shop floor where we are the experts. Where we have the power, where we have the organization, where we are doing the work, where that is our home turf.

We have more power there. It makes more sense to build power where we have power, not in the institutions that were specifically designed to disempower us and give large employers the upper hand. All the different ways that they can manipulate how the votes happen, what is considered part of the voting unit, the contract negotiation process. I mean, all of these legal hurdles, I mean, for the vast majority of workers, you'll need lawyers to be even understand how to engage in that world. That's not our world. It was not built for us to be in. It was built to control us. And so it just doesn't make logical sense to try to wage our struggle in that arena. We should be in waging it in the places that we work. And so, yeah, that's, I think, another core principle, Solidarity Unism. Build power where we have it, and that's the shop floor. Yeah. And I think, I mean, that's something that I've seen, like in, like when I was in college, there was a big grad student union organization campaign. And it kind of, they had this huge problem, which was that, okay, well, they were trying to do, they were trying to get a National Labor Relations Board, like, vote under Trump.

But they couldn't do it because of National Labor Relations Board was controlled by just, like, even by National Labor Relations Board standards, like, just unbelievably anti-union, like, viscerally anti-worker forces. It was like, well, if we try to get a vote, like, there's a chance they could just, you know, like literally destroy the right, like destroy the organizing rights of all grad students in the country. And yeah, and you get it. They did that with the Nissan election or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And they definitely delayed it. Yeah. And it's, you know, yeah, I think this is a trap that, like, a lot of people, even people who are really highly organized, like, get stuck in where, you know, and then, like, eventually, the grad students just, like, essentially just started doing walkouts, because that was the thing they could do when they started doing their own strikes, even though they weren't, like, legally recognized, because that was the thing that you could do to, you know, actually fight in a terrain that wasn't just inherently rigged against you.

So, okay, so you've decided to take a fight in the workplace, like, on the shop floor, where you're at your strongest. What does that actually look like in terms of actions, in terms of organization? Yeah, honestly, I think it's simpler and more rudimentary than one might think or that you might read about in, you know, an academic article or something analyzing. I think it comes down to, comes down to building community, comes down to building culture, and the principles of the community and culture that you build together with your coworkers is one where we value ourselves and each other, we respect ourselves and each other, and that means that we fight for what is fair in the workplace. That means that we maintain integrity anytime a boss disrespects one of us, we need to confront it, we need to address it, if not immediately, soon after in numbers. It means if we're getting overworked and underpaid, then we need to strategize and figure out how do we, how do we compel the employer to stop overworking and underpaying us. How do we hit them in a place that they are forced to respect, and as it goes in the world we are today, it's always the numbers, it's always the money, it's always the profit.

So, what that means on the day to day, I mean, Amazon warehouses are a very isolating place. Amazon has basically gigafied warehouse work, you know, it's like the Uber for warehouses where you can pick up shifts, you can, you know, extra shifts, you can take furlough days, you know, we call them VTOs. Many warehouses like your work, the 10-12 hour shift, and you're, for that entire time you're near one or two people max because we're spaced out and it's loud and there's machinery in your packing boxes. And so, on top of that, you know, the everyday dehumanizing, it's also, you're pushed to work faster and faster. It's difficult to have, you know, deep human interaction when you're busting your ass, moving, you know, 30 to 45 pound packages as quickly as you can. And so, the day to day of building and fighting in the workplace, building community means, for example, every week we have a potluck during lunch, bring coworkers together, new coworkers that, you know, someone could start last week. There's something that we hear a lot, you know, part of the challenge is the turnover is so high, how can you possibly organize? The turnover is so high. That is a specific weapon that bosses use against us. High turnover means what? It means we frequently have new coworkers harder to build relationship and organization.

It means that the job feels more precarious. So, people are always afraid that we'll lose our job, you know, we could get fired, we could, they could change staffing numbers, they could close warehouses. It creates, you know, as a tool, higher turnover, they just, they churn through workers, okay, who's willing to do the most work for the lowest pay and sacrifice the most of their body? Okay, if you can't handle it, then you quit, if you can, then you stay in here, okay, let's find the workers in society that are most able to, you know, produce the most, so on and so forth. And so, basic things, you know, having every day, sometimes it's just like talking with your coworkers is something that is, that they try to keep you from doing in the workplace. And by engaging conversation, you're already resisting that isolation, already resisting bosses trying to just control everything, keep everyone divided. So, weekly pot lunches, having meetings inside or outside of the workplace, coming together, what are the issues that we care about? How do we bring, how do we build more unity around these issues that we know many people care about? Is it doing a petition? People sign on together? Are we delivering the petition in a group? If the management doesn't respond or doesn't give us a reasonable response, how do we escalate? Do we need to walk out? Do we need to take other action?

Any time we see a manager disrespecting a coworker, how do we post up next to them, pull out a notepad, start taking notes, ask questions. We're a witness, you know, how do we defend each other in all of these basic ways? How are we addressing and being honest with ourselves and each other of just the depth of disrespect when they're waiting for us outside of the bathrooms to write us up for time off tasks. They're telling us to work faster when, you know, we're already on a 10-hour shift. We're on our 10 of the 10-hour shift. They sent a bunch of people home and are forcing us to finish all the work for a small number of people. Do we continue putting up with it or do we immediately walk out or do we talk to their coworkers about what we want to do? Just being mindful of being honest about how we are being treated, what is fair, what is not, and taking the necessary action to demand the fairness, the respect that each of us deserve. That's what the workplace struggle looks like. And I think it comes down to building that community with each other and then building the culture of not putting up with bullshit, defending each other, looking out for each other. There's a them, there's an us. Make sure you know what side you're on. And, you know, I think that's the foundation of it.

Yeah, I think that the aspect especially of culture building is really interesting to me because I think that's something that's not really talked about much with organizing efforts. A lot of what gets discussed with, especially in academic circles, when you have people writing about union organizing and even when other union organizers are writing about unions is that you don't hear much about the cultural aspects and you don't hear much about just resisting the actual psychological degradation that you get. And that strikes me, I think also as, yeah, as you've been saying, trust is something that's very important to not discuss enough as, I mean, both as just something that is a goal in itself, like not having this sort of, you know, not having the just sort of horrible demeaning and abusive sort of tyranny of the bosses just like existing as this kind of like normal force. But then also, like, yeah, that's actually something that is really important for anyone who's thinking about organizing is, you know, getting people to organize around just like how, getting people to organize around just the sort of like the psychological degradation. Like, I think is really important because otherwise, you know, you can get you can just get these cultures where, like, I mean, I remember I had a job where I was in like we had a union but like it didn't. I mean, so I was I was a temp worker, so I wasn't in the union like they had a union and it just sort of didn't do anything and no one like this was a real source of sort of right wing resentment because the union just didn't do anything and then, you know, everyone's getting treated terribly like by by the bosses and by sort of upper management but it never even like it never really like this on a cultural level never occurred to them to sort of like use the union for that because that's not really what the union was there for it was just to sort of like, it was just this thing that existed and like occasionally when contracts came up, it would appear.

And I guess on that note, one of the things I was also wondering is what sort of so for people who are who are interested in their own workplaces and starting doing this kind of organizing and starting to sort of, I mean, just fight back against their bosses in ways that don't, you know, either they don't want to or because they literally can't which I think is is is true of a lot of people like who want to organize outside of the business union model how do you how did you all start organizing like this and what what sort of immediate lessons do you think people should should take away and should sort of bring it bring into their own organizing in the workplace. Yeah, um, I think at the base of it is that I guess I mentioned something like this earlier but that we, we can organize ourselves, we can, you know, if you're talking, if you have two co workers that your friends with and you say like hey, let's meet up and talk about what's going on at work, you're starting to organize, you know, and I think part of part of the damage part of the harm that business unionism has done, and also just hierarchical organizing. Kalinsky and organizing. I think they're all part of a sort of connected school of thought where it's like organizing and you know, building a union is something that like you need to be like professionals to or, you know, you, they're experts at it. And then if you're not an expert, then you need to consult an expert to figure out how to do it. And I think that's bullshit. I think it's, if you're a worker, then you can be a union organizer. If you're a worker and you talk with, you know, another worker about what's going on in your workplace like you're already starting to organize. Like I said earlier, if you're calling a meeting, if you're, you know, and workers do this all the time, confronting management about their

workers, that you know, I think it's very much more frequently on an individual basis. But it's the matter of like connecting your issue with a couple other coworkers and then figure out, okay, well, what's our next step but we need more numbers, how do we, you know, how do we build more numbers, if each of us can invite one more person that's six people, if, you know, if the six of us can are starting a petition, we could probably get, you know, signatures of 50 or 60, you know, like it's step by step and saying, if we want to build organization, we can do it from the bottom up, we can start it. And we can figure this out. I mean, every, even within the same company, even within the same company in the same city, you know, I work at a delivery station in Gage Park, other delivery stations in the city of Chicago have a completely different culture, you know, the neighborhood that it's in, the workers that are the bosses, you know, and so even in the same company, the same type of workplace in the same city, it's going to be a different story for how that workplace is going to, you know, get united, come together, figure things out, build organization, and it's just anyone there that is thinking about that kind of just begins the process of putting together the basics. All right, we need to start building up some numbers, we need to start having, you know, addressing some issues that people care about, and there's always, I mean, there's always the, you know, overworked and underpaid, and that's going to exist everywhere. You can always go after those issues, but frequently they're smaller ones, like our first issue was a water petition, or at was access to water. And this is how we started as an organization. Basically, they were taking away bottled water, they said we're leaving around too much garbage or saying bottled water is only there for the summer and now it's not the summer that whatever they're trying to save a few dollars a day on bottled water to make us, you know, work without it.

And we said, that's fucked up, we're doing warehouse work, like hard manual labor, and it's hot in here, we need that bottled water, it's not just the broken unfiltered fountain across the warehouse that you can't even get to while you're working. And so, just a few of us that were talking at breakers like okay, well there's six of us here, well, we're kind of, you know, this is the, this is the break room at work, they're like managers walking around their cameras in here like this is me outside and figure this out. So, you know, we met at a, at a Krispy Kreme down on like 93rd. And we just basically said like well how are we going to get this water we've been asking management, you know, they've given us the same reasons, we need to do something bigger that that they can't ignore. And so, we just drafted it, the six of us drafted it, we went around we got 150 signatures, I think from our coworkers are just like basic commands, we need bottled water stocked every day they need to be you know filters need to be clean we need to get to be able to take a break to get this water. And we delivered the 150 signatures to management. I think it was within 30 or 40 minutes they drove to a grocery store, but you know, went to the nearest Pete's bought every case of bottled water they have brought it and passed it out to everyone we're like oh, okay, like that was, you know, people are like that's hey we got to do a petition for this thing we got to do yeah it was that I don't want to say easy because definitely not easy to like yeah but the steps, the step by step of like how do you begin, how do you get something started, how do you start building some unity. The other steps that we have taken these are, you know, what we think is can be applicable with everyone's own kind of personal tweaks based on you know your own workplace to start getting something going for more coworkers to start realizing. Yeah, like we should be in more control of what's happening around here because we're the ones that are doing all the work yeah we're the ones that are suffering the most from it, and our bodies getting ground down from doing it and so.

Yeah, I think that I think I loop back to a previous question to like how we started how you engage in the struggle and just like what that looks like for building building something up from nothing to something like that's what that's what we you know what I mean that's what we did. Yeah for what I've seen y'all have been extremely effective like at getting management to recognize it but essentially getting them to like a seed to your demands because like this this this kind of organizing like. Solidarity you need what I'm trying to say is solidarity units and works like it's not like like and you know and yeah it's a thing I think one of the things you're talking about is like yeah it's like when like when you win even on something fairly small. Right and you can show people that this works and that like you know if you actually come together on something you can force management to do stuff like I think that also become becomes an important sort of like. I don't know if catalyst is the right word but it becomes it becomes an engine that like feeds itself. Definitely. I mean, especially for a big company like Amazon like. I think the most common perspective at least at the start is like this is such a big company like what could we possibly do they have a thousand warehouses like what you know they could choose to close one and open another one you know they do this.

They could suddenly you know and with two weeks notice like change the schedule from an evening time to an overnight time which is what they did to us basically what can we possibly do inside you know but I think it's like the moment it's like there's a. Kind of cliff or what do you call like the watershed a point like the moment you kind of take that first collective action and then get what you want it's like oh wait it's not as like within this space like we can actually make our lives a lot better yeah pretty quickly. If we just come together and do it ourselves and recognize the power that we have. And I think it's like. That's one of the reasons why it works so well is because it is different from the mainstream approach which. Bosses and these companies understand very well and can easily maneuver around such as oh if we do if if one of our managers does something wrong. What will happen next is we'll receive one of our lawyers will receive a grievance from one of their representative lawyers and you know this business union will have this many months to respond and then we can do this and then. You know we'll do this paperwork and have this legal back and forth and then maybe we'll address this issue six to 12 months down the line.

No disruption, you know nothing to worry about. Let the bosses run amok and we'll get a six to 12 month head start you know get maybe get a slap on the wrist and a fix or if you need to or pay a small fine. That's business union like as opposed to solidarity unions and words like they just disrespected us in a way that like we're not trying to put up with like we are hurting. We can't even finish this shift without hurting ourselves more. We're just going to group up a walk out right now. They're going to figure out they're going to have to figure out how to get the rest of these packages out without us. And when we come back tomorrow, we'll see we'll see if they want to keep treating us the same way. And so it's like to me you know we've had basic basic management confrontations where either immediately you know they were under staffing and we grouped up rolled into the office just like with seven oh it's not even like the whole shit.

Seven out of 50 people will roll in the office said you have to a few people on the line so you need to add extra person we've been asking you have it. We've folded our arms within five minutes they sent an extra person over there they're working the rest of the shift. In the in the business union approach like I don't even know like how you followed, you know, under staffing grievance like what are the details how does that happen. Does a union representative have to be contacted and then negotiate in some way about that like let's just address this right now and fix it. I don't want to wait for some outside activity. Let's just improve our working conditions right now by confronting addressing it. Just, you know, that's something that the bosses are less. It's less predictable for them it's less in their control it's less in their wheelhouse. And I think that's a key reason why it works better. Yeah, and I think one of the things the thing this reminds me of is it reminds me of the kind of stuff that unions used to do when they were strong.

Like it reminds me of like yeah you're like CIO like sit down strike right it's like well okay if the manager does something we didn't we don't like so I'm blows a whistle everyone sits down. And like it's like it's that that kind of not just sort of like when you go to the legal channels but just just immediately taking action is like it's something that it's like it's something that worked and it's you know like that that's that's the kind of stuff that like built your built the original like labor movement and it's really interesting to me that like because I think there's a lot of like I think a lot of people look back at that era sort of like nostalgically and go like well okay if unions were stronger we could do this but like that's not really true you can actually just like like you can do the same things that like you know you're like 1930 CIO was doing like and and if you know and you don't you don't need the kind of institutional backing that that those people had if if like if if you're organized enough in in your in your in your specific location I think that's a really interesting I don't know I'm curious if you agree with us it seems like it's sort of interesting lesson about like what happened to the labor movement or like the more you the more you get into this sort of like okay well the union is now two lawyers sitting down with each other right the what you're doing basically is like this is the this is explicitly what the National Labor Relations Act was right like it was an attempt to get labor labor and capital sit down at the table and stop fighting so that they could like you know it's basically

so the production could go on and like sometimes sometimes that that you know sometimes I favor the union right sometimes you'd have the president be like like the actual like US president will be like okay you come you like steel company you have to like give workers what what they're asking for because our steel production shut down right but like you know the problem with that is that it's based on like it's based on at all costs trying to sort of preserve like it's based on all costs like trying to preserve the labor piece and you know I mean there's reasons for that to like yeah like I'm not gonna like like obviously there's there's any time you take a direct action there's a risk and yeah like I'm not gonna like you know I'm not going to be like it's hard to be really mad at people who don't want to go on strike because they don't like because the you know how am I going to feed my family etc etc but like you know bring like having that kind of militancy in the workplace just you know without without without any kind of formal recognition I think is initially powerful tactic and is I mean literally how the original movement like got built it's difficult though and it can be scary yeah you know and it's like I think you you posed kind of the question or or or kind of questioning the idea like where did how did the labor movement get to where it's at if the origins were more conscious in the ways that you've been describing I think that I mean it's it's definitely you know the risk is always there you're always confronting the power I mean in the workplace when it comes down to it like that obviously the power dynamics shift and it's more complex than you know bosses have more power than workers unless workers organize and workers have more power than bosses that is true and also for example on the day to day you know the boss can fire anyone and then you're you know

however you end up dealing with it you know you could be out anywhere between two or 20 paychecks until something is resolved legally or even through direct action you know there's obviously very directly oppressive power dynamic there and I think that to speak truth to power to directly confront it. Of course it's frightening, I mean I would be lying if you know, like I'm, you know, talking on this on this podcast about doing this and yeah we're doing this you know I'm not going to pretend that like when we even when we were in a 40 person mass, you know, confronting and addressing everyone together it's still like you know there's there's there's still this power dynamic here and we're punching up like it's a punch but like we're punching up to someone that's like a bigger heavier adversary and so it's like they could swing back to like you kind of got to be ready to and so I think that what I'm describing on a kind of like face to face interpersonal that moment in the workplace. I think on a broader scale also exists where it's like, waging an extended, you know, organizing struggle to be fighting this fight, millions of times and many different ways and then continually trying to bring people together, you know people move on because many things that's happening in life they got evicted from their place so they had to move to a different place far away okay suddenly they had to leave the job and they were someone else contributing a lot to the organizing something happened someone has a family member that they need to spend a little bit with everything that's happening, everything that's making you know, reducing our time as working people to take care of ourselves and each other like all of this, we're fighting against all of this, and they're definitely ups and downs they're definitely

like dang like we're, you know, and it seems like at times, all of the struggles and life, like, it's like you take like two steps forward and then two steps backwards. And so, you know, there's definitely a difficult reality, permitting everything, you know, all of the organizing wins that the events that we're talking about, we need to be fully honest about that, and also recognize that there's still like nothing more, there's like nothing more beautiful powerful, there's no, there's nothing that feels better than the that moment when you when the power dynamic was like this, and you pulled something off and it's like, yeah, like, oh, like you, you just did what we wanted, you know, and and more, and now like you're being real careful with us like we we change things here like our lives are better concretely. And we made it happen. And, you know, I think those are like celebrating the wins and like taking joy not always thinking so far okay we got more to go yeah they're always there's always more that we can and have to be building and let's make sure that we're taking the time to recognize and celebrate each of the steps that we are advancing so that, you know, we, we don't get lost in, you know, assuming in the cycle of like seeking permanent infinite growth and organizing and being constantly stressed out about it, rather than like taking those breathers taking those moments okay like let's take this in stride let's do this sustainable that's not burnout. Yeah, I think that's all part of figuring out how to how to how to make it happen. Yeah, and I think that's that's important. I think that's an important thing to understand with any kind of organizing, which is that like yeah if if if you like if if if if there's never sort of a moment in which you're reflecting on or sort of

just celebrating like that the goals that you've actually accomplished right you're just going to sort of be endlessly bashing your head against the wall. And, you know, this is this is like yeah that this is this is sort of a burnout machine this is a way that, you know, there's something that also just sort of feeds despair, which is that yeah like you know like yeah okay your victory is a small victory but it is a real one and that's that's something that even in the face of sort of like the cyclopean or like just the world that we're living in like no your your small victories do lead up to bigger ones. And yeah, you know and getting people to lose sight of that is a major way the system is held together by just sort of like manufacturing hopelessness even when there are reasons for hope and there are reasons to sort of look at what you've done and go hey we won this thing. Definitely. Yeah, I think that's a I guess unexpectedly cheery for the show I know to end on. Do you have anything else? Yeah. I mean, I think we touched on a lot. I guess I have a usual pitch or some version of it. But I think maybe something to bring together different elements that we touched on and bring in some of the cheery hopefulness and also put out some encouragement to I think now is a time where there's a whole lot of uncertainty and I'm, you know, definitely in a global week to week or year to year scale, but also on an individual level I think a lot of individuals right now, likely those that are listening that end up listening to this or those that are like seeing what's happening around the world is like what is my role in all of this? What am I trying to do?

And different people are joining different organizations and trying to figure out how they should be living their lives, what principles they should be living out, how they should be applying themselves to, for example, combat and dismantle capitalism and prison industrial complex and reverse climate destruction and fascism and everything, all of the existential threats that we face. Like what, you know, what is my role? And I think if you at all have the capacity and curiosity to engage in some of this deep work yourself for building community relationships, culture among, you know, just with workers building your own organization, building your own acts of resistance, building your own forms of reclaiming your time and minds and bodies and build something beautiful that can be part of a broader movement that lifts up working people that kind of gets back what we are building and what we deserve. Think about the logistics industry, think about warehouse work, think about joining in and, you know, it's hard work, it's hard manual labor, it's hard mental and emotional work. But I think this is the future of what the winning fighting successfully the movement will need. And I think many people engaging in building more genuine more worker focused worker centered worker run solidarity unions of our own democratic horizontal bottom up. And building this way and connecting with each other. I think this is the way forward. I think this is the examples that we need, we need more people engaging in this work, we need more, more of that attention, energy and focus, like how do we build the real stuff.

And that's going to be the powerful organizational influence to transform society and, and avert these forms of extinction and continued extraction exploitation oppression of all of us. Join us, join the struggle, get some of these jobs, talk to your coworkers, build something that it's really that simple. And yeah, that's my every day pitch. So if people want to find Amazonians United specifically, where can they find you all? Um, so in Chicago so Amazonians United Chicago land is our name we have a Facebook page we have a Twitter. Those are probably where we're most active. Where you can follow and get into contact with us, tweet out as a message on Facebook. If you're really so inclined, you can email us at a you Chicago land at gmail.com. But otherwise, yeah, just look up, you know, follow our social media, you'll see what we post occasionally about what's going on. And, you know, feel free to reach out, get into contact, ask any questions you might have. And, you know, let's connect, let's build community.

Yeah, it is that's that's a U Chicago land at a U Chicago land on Twitter, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sweet. Ted, thank you. Thank you so thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, it was really great. Um, yeah, if you want to find us at you can find us at having your pod on Twitter or Instagram and close on media in the same places. Yeah, go, go, go organize with your coworkers, go do things, go make the world a better place. Yes, yes, yes, sure. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Ard me RTS. This is me doing a pirate voice, which is kind of a bad, a bad Irish voice. That's enough. That's enough of that. Hi, welcome to it could happen here the show where we're talking about things that could possibly happen and or are happening and go yard fiddly D.

Gerson. Welcome to this tech centric episode. This is very exciting with me is a Chris to help us discuss libraries and piracy are permanently pirate brain and and paywalls and all this all this fun stuff. So yeah, we're talking about kind of free access to information and I don't know like I really like libraries and I think a library based economy would be pretty cool. Yeah, you know, like libraries for everything food libraries, you take food, you know, deposit compost. It's a decent decent decent system. Got the tool libraries so you can get you know, your angle grinders for taking apart federal fences can get your, you know, soldering irons for building your FGC nines, you know, all of all of the basic stuff. I guess book libraries are cool too. But we already have those and we're going to be we're going to be talking with them a little bit. We're going to be having a discussion on paywalls piracy are and and how access to information is actually good. Contrary to what many people want to tell you. Yeah, no. So, yeah, as as the internet became easier to access and information flow accelerated. There's been kind of questions and speculation on how physical book libraries will fit into our increasingly digital media landscape.

So it's important to mention that the library is also one of the main ways for lower income people to access the internet with their you know collection of free to use computers, as well as you know a decent Wi Fi connection. And many, many libraries also are expanding their scope to include stuff like maker spaces, as well as you know their printers and standard kind of office supplies. Libraries are already kind of beyond just places to get printed media. But of course that is that is kind of their one that has been their main their main premise. But you know they've been they've been including stuff regarding ebooks, the computer use Wi Fi access all the stuff's been a part of libraries for like the past like 2030 years. Yeah, like it's it's not it's not it's not it's not a new thing. But I think when people think of libraries we just think of books or newspapers and stuff but it is it is definitely more than that. Because yeah, obviously physical libraries are mostly known for printed materials. And because we'll be talking about paywalls and piracy are and fears that access to free content will negatively impact creators ability to make such content. So let's start by talking about book libraries since they're one of the oldest examples of providing information for free. So, based on the kind of surveys and data collected from you from library users across the country, it would seem that libraries and loaned ebooks are actually a very powerful economic engine for the book business.

Yes, libraries do have special deals to buy the books that they do have in stock. Sometimes they're donated, but even beyond that fact, like library users like the fact that libraries exist for the users in and of themselves increase book sales. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty fun. So, even as far back as like 2011 there's been studies that show that libraries do increase book sales. So yes, this is, this is, this is a capitalist argument. But sometimes when arguing with let's, you know, let's call them normies, you can convince them to agree with a lot of kind of like anarchy leaning improvements to the world by carefully using their own rhetoric against them. And there's like the same thing with the giving out free drugs and having safe drug in like intake sites and giving houses to homeless people, you know, all, all this type of stuff, you know, all of those things are cheaper for the taxpayer than what we're currently doing with how we use emergencies like for how we use emergency services spending. So yes, it's a capitalist argument, but you can still kind of, you know, paint someone into a corner to agree to like actual good improvements by using, hey, this is actually cheaper, you know, that type of argument. So, yeah, libraries, they do increase book sales. So that is mostly cool. There is a, there was a study that shows around, this is studying around 2011 showed that 50% of library users report purchasing books by an author they were introduced to through the library system, which debunks the myth that when a library buys books, the publisher will lose future sales. Instead, it confirms that the public library is not only incubate and support literacy, as it's, you know, generally understood in our culture, but it's also an active partner with the publishing industry in for building up the book market. And also including in that is the ever growing ebook market, which I don't really like ebooks, for reasons we'll kind of discuss in a bit for how I kind of have an aversion to the idea of like a digital ownership.

But ebooks are undeniably a very a growing industry that also, you know, does does support writers in a lot of ways. But I think physical books are a lot cooler and more reliable. Nice. There, as you can tell by my very nice physical book collection behind me, which you cannot listen to because this is a podcast and you can't listen with your ears. Unless you're on a lot of drugs, which good luck hearing the books behind me. People who listen to this podcast also have fun. Yeah, you too. But yeah, I'm not I'm not talking with them. This is an anti people who have undrug induced synesthesia podcast. Now, lucky bastards going to get canceled. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's that's that's what's going to get me after all. Not the well bleep that I can't believe you said that. Wow. Well, Chris just said one of the just one of the most one of the most one of the most horrible authors that I would never be caught dead reading any of their books.

Anyway, so the idea that like piracy and free information will like tank creative industries. And, you know, the idea that, you know, just having access to free versions of media will hurt the ability to make more of the media is definitely proven wrong simply by the modern existence and popularity of anime in the United States. Because we would not have anime anime would not be what it is today without piracy. And because in the in the specifically like 2000s late 90s, the piracy of anime became, you know, big massive reason why it is the cultural jug or not that it is today. Over half of anime related sales revenue comes from overseas, not not Japan comes from places like the States. Yeah. And you know, and it's also I think worth mentioning here, like it wasn't even just that they were like pirating the show, right? They were pirating. They were getting a worse version of it. Oh, yeah. Because like, you know, you know, you talk about resolution. Yeah, terrible resolutions like I mean, literally like VCRs that people had figured out how to like write, like get subtitles on like these versions of it are terrible.

The translations are awful and it's still just like absolutely like just catapulted anime from like an incredibly fringe thing for weirdos to a thing that is also still for weirdos, but it's still mostly mainstream. Yeah, I'm going to take this opportunity to plug our future episode is dissecting the politics of attack on Titan. It's coming folks strap in so yes. Anyway, what not what not be the thing is today without without without privacy. And again, but the majority of sales revenue comes from not Japan. So, yeah, that's that's pretty pretty pretty clear. So, the discovery of new books and authors through the library system is definitely searching right now, actually, specifically due to e-books and audiobooks being available online anytime while via library means. So there's like, you know, there's ways you can access, you can quote-unquote borrow these

types of things via the library systems, despite them being like digital media, which again, I prefer physical, but that's something we'll talk about later. So even while visits to libraries, like physical bookstores, plummeted during COVID-19, digital library usage soared, which is, you know, that tracks more than 430 million titles were borrowed from the Overdrive library platform in 2020 alone. And it would, you know, you could assume that this would cause a drop in the purchasing of books during the same period. But the opposite's true.

Actually the overall purchasing of books also rose in 2020, including an 8% lift in these sales of print books, despite a lot of people being out of jobs, out of work, you know, that turns out people are bored, they're gonna spend money on books because books are cool. And even when they have access to library stuff, they still buy books. Yep. It's a simple truth that the library patrons are usually also book buyers. It's me. I am literally surrounded by books on all sides.

They have me surrounded. I have no escape. And this is what happens when you grow up in a library. I mean, I also grew up in a library. I mean, I was homeschooled. I grew up a lot of time in the library. To my left, I have books on urban exploration and Lemony Snicket. To my right, I have books on alchemy.

Behind me, I have books which I shall not name. And behind me, I have a massive stack of comic books. Yeah, I am usually surrounded by books. Books are great and you have them unless they burn up, you're gonna have them no matter whether the internet goes out, whether an online provider shuts down, you're gonna have physical books. They are pretty cool. So in libraries, the library system offers a really great way to discover new books,

new series, new genres, or new authors before deciding whether to permanently purchase those titles. So this isn't just like an assumption used to hype up the idea of a library, but this has been proven by lots of studies, like the one I mentioned a few minutes ago from 2011. Also there was the Panorama Project's immersive media and books 2020 Consumer Survey, which is a way too long of a title. It's a real mouthful. Which found that one third of responders bought a book that they discovered through the library

in 2020. So turns out you discover a book, you return it and you're like, hey, that book's actually pretty good. I'll just buy a copy myself. I did that. I still do that all the time. It's a thing. This is why I own all my Star Wars books, for better or for worse.

Yes, this is why I have a beautiful copy of Splinter in the Mind's Eye, which I am very curious to see who will get that joke. I was trying to think of the worst Star Wars book that I have and you said that and I'm like, I can't. I've got nothing. I've got nothing. I think I actually have that. Well, there you go.

There's two. There's two for you. I gave you two. Yeah, so in our technology-driven world of wanting things very quickly, instant gratification, library users are no different. They still have that instant gratification drive and many times they will want a specific book and they'll be happy to pay for it instead of waiting for it at the library. You can put a book on hold or wait a month or you can buy it for 10 bucks and oftentimes

people will buy the book because we want things quickly. It's according to the same Panorama Project, Immersive Media and Books 2020 Consumer Survey, about 30% of respondents said that they just bought books rather than waiting for them if they are unavailable from the library at the time. It's a great system. Well, libraries are also frequently used just as a really good browsing tool. If you're unsure of what you want to read next, you can go to the library, look at stuff and be like, okay, this is what I'm interested in and then purchase it online or in person

at a later date. It's not just physical books. Library users are also driving the purchase of e-books and physical books and audiobooks. Audiobooks have been actually very big at library. I used to listen to a lot of audiobooks actually from the library because I would get CDs back when those were a thing. Great for road trips. Back in the old days when you had a CD, I say with my Gen Z outlook, yes, CDs, classic.

According to the Audio Publishers Association, also known as the APA, just an acronym, Daily Audiobook Consumption has grown 71% since 2017, which is not surprising. There's stuff like Audible and big platforms that are making high-quality audiobook content, but that's a lot. In 2020 alone, audiobook revenue grew by 17%, even though the number of people who were commuting plummeted. A lot of people listened to audiobooks while driving to work. The number of commuting dropped in 2020 because there was this plague, I'm not sure if you've

heard about that. Well, the government clearly hasn't, so you know. That's true. They're pretending it's not real, but if you look at the audiobook revenue, it grew despite there being much less work commuting. That was the eighth straight year of double-digit growth in the audiobook revenue sector, and it aligns with other digital library usage statistics. Libraries and booksellers, they work in tandem.

Libraries drive interest for content, both physical and digital. Rising tide raises all of those floaty things in the water, as the saying goes. It's a piracy joke, everybody. Overdrive has found that when a reader uses one or more digital library apps, like Libby, which I've never heard of until I had to research this podcast, but if you use more than one, one or more digital library apps, you are 61% more likely to increase your book consumption year over year versus people who do not. So yeah, it turns out when you read more books, you want to read more books.

Because they're good. Because it's fun. It's good stuff. So instead of reading a book, I'm going to give our audio listeners an opportunity right now to listen to this carefully curated selection of ads, unless they're by, like, I don't know, the National Guard or whatever. So here you go. Here's some ads.

And we are back. Wow. What a lovely collection of audio treats to tickle your ears. Okay. Okay. Speaking of tickling your ears, Sonic the Hedgehog. So a lot of the reasons why we're going to... So this will make sense, I promise.

We're about to talk about fly genetics, SSH, Sonic Hedgehog. No. This is a real thing. Look it up. We're talking about how when people are allowed to do piracy and allowed to do their own things with media, it actually boosts the overall presence of the franchise, right? So Sonic the Hedgehog would not be a current cultural stake if it wasn't for fan culture and the use of fan games and fan media related to Sonic.

So the same thing was like anime, right? Sonic fan games, which were allowed to be existed for years, which Sega encouraged, are the only reason why there's a good Sonic games right now, like Sonic Mania, which they just hired people who made fan games. The person who redesigned Sonic the Hedgehog for the movie used to make Sonic fan comics and then got hired to make the actual official Sonic comics, they got hired to fix the horrible movie design. So yeah, Sega's been very good about not being horrible, about copyright stuff and

trademark stuff. They've really encouraged it because it turns out when you yourself don't make good games, you need to rely on fans to actually make the good games. So that's where you get beautiful creations like the Sonic Dreams Collection, which is a heartwarming nostalgic look at Sonic through the ages, and other great games like Sonic Mania. So you can compare this to like a Nintendo who unfortunately makes good games, but also hates when fans make games or do like emulation or any like ports, they will clamp down on

that so fast. If you ever emulate a Nintendo game, you hoe, watch, watch your back. There will be, there will be men in black suits following you around just yet, like to give an understanding of like how far this goes, right? So Super Smash Bros. and Bayley. This game is like maybe older than Garrison. It is. I think I actually don't know if that's right, but yeah, literally older than Garrison, right?

This game has an absolute still, still to this day, like copies of this game are extremely expensive because there's an enormous professional scene around it. Nintendo like basically was working to actively smash them because they were, they were playing a, yeah, yeah, because they were playing on like an emulated, like they were playing an emulated version of it for tournaments because it was easier. Emulated software. Yeah. Yeah.

And Nintendo again, who is literally getting like millions of views of completely free, good publicity was like, no, we hate you. Yeah. Because you can't do this when people use their, their, like their, their content and stuff in ways that are not, not, not official. And because they make decent games, they can actually get, get away with that. Sega does not make decent games, unfortunately. So they have to rely on fans doing that.

But yeah, that's the reason why Sonic is still a thing is because fans have like, have been able to, you know, through, through piracy, through emulation, through creating, through using like Sonic code to code their own games. All of stuff is, is the reason why that's still like a cultural staple that is releasing a new movie next month, which I'm very excited about. I'm very excited about Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It's going to be, it's going to be, I'm thinking, I'm thinking it could, we could finally clamp down on the video game Oscar this time.

I feel it. Well, that's, that's, look, this, this, this, this is just because Ace Attorney got robbed. Okay. Greatest movie of all time. Ace Attorney. That is, that is my little side bit about, about, about, about Sega. Oh yeah. I should also briefly mention that Nintendo just like put, literally put a guy in prison

for helping, for helping jailbreak consoles, like put a man in prison for this, for modifying people's software on a game console. I guess the other thing I'll talk about is like, I mean, part of the reason why I really don't like digital ownership of media is because you don't actually own the thing. You own a license to use the content as long as the online service is active. So even if you buy a game on, you know, the Nintendo Switch Store, you're not actually buying the game. You're buying a license to use the game.

But same thing for whether you're buying media on like Amazon Prime, right? It's, it's, it's the same thing. If you're, if you're buying digital copy of it, it's a license to use it. So you can take, you know, what Nintendo has done a few years ago is they shut down the We Shop channel, which means if you bought a game and it wasn't currently downloaded, you can now, you've just, it's gone. You just cannot, you cannot play it anymore because they just completely took the service down.

So you don't actually, you're not, you're not actually buying the thing. You're just buying a license to use the thing. Now they did, they did the same thing a few months ago for the We You Shop channel and the 3DS channel. So yeah, rip, rip to that. Uh, if you, if you, if you have, if you bought games on there that were not currently running, then you cannot get them anymore. They're just gone.

Like you can, they're just lost, lost a time. And you know, and again, if, if, if you modify the software on the game console that you like nominally own in order to play the games that you bought and paid for, they will throw you in prison. Nintendo will send men in suits to come and get you and throw you in the prison. Yahoo. That's a, it's a Mario, it's a Mario joke, everybody. Um, yes.

So I mean, it's the same thing with like subscription services. Like obviously if you have a subscription service, you don't own the content you're watching, you are just getting permission to use it from a certain amount of time. So this is obviously, this is, this is more obvious, right? You don't own what's on Netflix. You just are able to watch what Netflix has legal rights to show. But you even see this thing extended to like cars, like Toyota was, was trying out a program and that this may even, it may even still be active for some cars where you need a subscription

service to use the key fob on your cars, like automatic, like door locking, like fob, like you need a subscription to use that service of it. Just like, why? Like it's, it's just turning everything, it's turning everything into a, to us, like a subscription service. It's horrible. Like everything is becoming a new subscription service, a new, a new thing to get your monthly payments for.

It's, it's, it's awful. Like you don't actually buy things anymore. It's just a subscription services and digital copies. It's not, nothing is, nothing is actually the thing anymore. Yeah. It's, it's, it's all just rent extraction. The entire economy, instead of, you know, having a thing, they figured out, wait, what if we just distract rent and then you also don't own it?

Same thing with like Tesla cars. You have to like buy, buy, you know, upgrades via software that are already built in and like subscribe to keep your car running nicely. Like what? It's not like, no. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to go on a very small gamer rant here because this is a, this is a thing, a lot, a lot of the worst practices for this originated gaming.

And this, this was a, this was a big fight back in like the early 2010s about, okay, if you buy a game, right, do you own everything on the game? And there was a huge fight about, you know, they'd have these like delayed DLC, like they had these new content packages that would be on the disc, right? That you've bought, but you can't access it unless you pay them money. And this was like a fight and some gamers were like, eh, you know, it's not going to try to fight it. Right.

But most gamers didn't care. And then they became the weaponized shock troops of the far right instead of, you know, dealing with this shit. And now literally everything has fucking day and day one DLC on it that you buy the thing. You don't even get all stuff. You have to, you have to buy the, if you have to buy the season pass to get all the content in the future. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like you have to buy the season pass for your car to work properly. Yeah. So it started with the season pass for a $60 for a $60 game to then buy season pass to get more of the game. And now it's for your $50,000 car. So yay. That's fun.

It's, it's not, it's, it's kind of sucks. So, but yeah, a lot of these, a lot of these like play to win practices, these like free models, which then like the, which lead into like a subscription service based model had to definitely started in online gaming. And it's, yeah, it's, it's really frustrating because as we'll talk about here in a bit, like the Sega model is like better. Like it turns out when you encourage your fans to play around with the stuff, it only helps your property.

Like that's the reason why they, there's still Sonic March available now and it's not like a dead franchise. It's because they let, because they allowed that to happen. So it's actually really cool when we're allowed to access free information and play with it how we want to, instead of like having this weird strict copyright like rules for not allowing certain usage of certain things. Like it's, it's, it's not, it's not great when you're restricting like emulation, restricting fan games, restricting the access to information.

It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not fun. But yeah, this is kind of, it's kind of plays into why I am very skeptical of digital media which is why I started, started collecting Blu-rays of all the, of all the things I like because I've bought things on Amazon Prime, which are now no longer available on Amazon Prime. And that sucks. So like, why do that instead just buy your physical copy? Yeah, well, the thing is like, it didn't, and it's so true to some extent, like if you

buy physical copies, like it didn't used to be like this, like Blu-rays used to, to some extent still do this. They still do. Yeah. Mostly. Yeah, but like, like if you buy the physical copy of it, they will give you a code that lets you use the online version. A digital download code.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that's a much better way of the thing working than instead of, you know, you don't buying it, you don't have the physical product and also they can take it away from you. Yeah. It's, I'll circle back to this idea towards the end, but I kind of want to, I want to a little bit segue to like the idea of the same type of like paywalling subscription

service issues and like the restriction of free information regarding like online news. So you know, there's a lot of people, whether they be like reporters, editors, authors or just annoying people online, but there's a decent collection of people that perpetuate the notion that readers or consumers are actually responsible for the dire straights of the media industry. But the problem with journalism and many other media, you know, industries, but the problem isn't that people aren't paying for news. The problem is that newspapers and outlets are being decimated and dismantled by hedge

funds, capital investment firms, venture capitalists and tech companies in search of profit. You can look at how Facebook tricked a whole bunch of companies into switching over to video content and then a whole bunch of companies will have to fire tons of people because there was a lie. You look at how Sinclair broadcasting dominates local news channels and websites and how well established local papers are struggling while big companies buy up all the competition. So it's especially the venture capitalist thing is actually a really, is a really interesting idea that has been documented decently well.

In a bit, I'll teach you how to bypass newspaper headlines via different methods. But there's this actually good article in the Washington Post that is titled as a secretive hedge fund that gets its newspapers journalists are fighting back. It kind of just details all of the different hedge funds and venture capitalist firms instead of like just totally destroyed so many local papers throughout the entire country. It's actually kind of surprising once you learn how many of these papers are just getting destroyed by like just a few, like just like a few hedge funds are just doing all this damage.

And it's, it's like, yeah, I mean, this is why the current like journalism industry kind of sucks right now is because of these types of practices. And I mean, like no one likes it, like no one's happy with it. Like everyone hates journalism, journalists hate journalism, people who read journalism hates journalism, like activists hate journalism, like everyone's mad at it. And yeah, you could look at these, these hedge funds and venture capitalists who are just like making it such an impossible industry. And then, you know, how you have like, you have internet sites and culture sites like

vice buzzfeed and cracked who've had to frequently lay off large swaths of their editorial and writing teams, whether for like union reasons, or because the company made failed attempts to chase some big tech companies or media giants, you know, proposed money, like in the Facebook, switching over to video content kind of debacle that happened a few years ago. And like, it's, it's, it's understandable why these writers, artists and journalists are frustrated because yeah, the work is hard and the salaries are low, well, the work should be hard.

Some people kind of slack off, but you know, for the good journalism is more is challenging and salary is typically aren't great. But even if audience monetary support were the solution to making creative and writing industries more profitable again, the kind of anti piracy folks would still be missing a fundamental point is that kind of the, the pro paywall people want you to get it through your head that journalism is just like other types of things you buy, whether it be food, you know, alcohol or entertainment, saying, you know, all these things, you know, Netflix isn't free, you know, Coca-Cola isn't free, right?

This isn't journalism's fault. It's just how the world works. You have to buy it to use it. It's, you know, it costs money to make, so you have to buy it to use it. It's just, it's, it's, it's like, it's dumb to think otherwise. This is kind of their framework. But I beg to differ because enjoying art and worthwhile journalism, I think should always have the option of being free because when information is in the public interest, it

should just always be available to everybody. Whether or not you've already used up your three free articles, like this is really important, especially now when there's, you know, the whole, the whole war thing happening and finding like paywall articles about it is incredibly frustrating. And yeah, I mean, there was even when the, there was a right-wing, right-wing extremist who opened fire and killed someone at a Portland Black Lives Matter protest a few weeks ago that that is, you know, still definitely impacting the city because it was, it's still very recent. But a lot of the news coverage, first of all, wasn't great.

There was a whole bunch of news coverage was like, was parroting the police lies and framing the, framing the attackers like an innocent homeowner who was defending himself. It was pretty gross. But even when the news articles have started to like correct their previous grievous errors, almost all of it was paywalled. Like all, like all of, like a whole bunch of stuff was paywalled about it. That's incredibly frustrating because this is like, you know, when information is in the public interest, it should be free to access.

Like that's just, there's like a good moral thing. Like, and even, and we've seen it, we've seen this before. Back in 2020, when the plague was a new thing, news organizations across the country started to lift paywalls to share coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, which was great. And you know, you can, you can obviously see that once that changed over, a lot of people who were making this happen behind the scenes probably hoped that it would just convince people to become paying customers. But it was still like, that's still the way things should be is to have, have the option

of it being free and then having the option to donate. And this actually seems to be kind of the trend in 2018, the University of Texas at Austin surveyed about like a thousand Chicago residents about their local news consumption. And they found that respondents were more willing to give a $10 donation to support a free news site than pay $10 for a subscription to access premium news content. So yeah, like that's, and that I definitely share that same, like that same idea. I will way sooner donate money to a newspaper that I enjoy that is also free, then I will pay $10 a month to read subscription service based news.

It's, it's, because it turns out when you, like this, this applies to all types of media, but like when you enjoy media, you want to support its creators, whether that be anime or whether that be Sonic the fucking hedgehog, whether that be, whether that be news or books, right? If you like something, you're going to buy it, right? I got it introduced to Lemony's, take its books via the library. And now I bought lots because I wanted to, I wanted to buy the books from the person that I like.

Yeah. And there are entire like industries that literally just work on this person. This is why free to play games work. Yeah. Exactly. There's another conversation with free to play games here about like addiction and gambling and manipulation about that. Like that, that's, you know, like setting that aside for a second.

It's like, yeah, these things, if, if, if people didn't want, if didn't spend money on things they like free to play games would not work, like fundamentally as a model. Yeah. No, definitely, definitely the idea of like, yeah, you get someone starts enjoying the service that they start paying for it, whether it be buying a useless, you know, skin for whatever third person shooter you have, or that be, you know, buying books or copies of the film or like anime body pillows, whatever, like you, you want us to actually support the things that you enjoy.

This is just a part of this is what humans do. So yeah, maybe more stuff should be have the option of being free. That is definitely my take on it. Let's let's have a quick, let's have a bit of an app speaking of free content. This podcast is brought to you by these lovely sponsors so you can listen for free while just skipping the ads. So good for you. We're back.

And now we're going to talk about different ways of bypassing paywalls specifically for online news because paywalls frustrate me. And as someone who likes messing around with kind of computer stuff, there's definitely a long list of ways to bypass paywalls depending on what types of paywalls we are talking about. So types of paywalls, there are, there are typically two general types of paywalls. There's hard paywalls and soft paywalls. Hard paywalls require payment upfront. So usually some, some form of subscription fee before accessing any content, websites

with hard paywalls, maybe we'll actually like a tiny snippet of the article, but you need to access, you need to pay subscription to access the full, the full content. Soft paywalls are, are, they typically allow you to read a number of articles before you need to buy a, buy a subscription. So it's either, there's, you have a set number of like articles that you can read for a fixed period or session is, you know, a lot, a lot, a lot of websites operate like this. Most of like New York Times operates like this. A lot of, a lot, a lot of new sites have a soft paywall model, which is great because

they're typically a little bit easier to bypass. First method, this works some of the time. It depends on how the website's constructed, but you can try to stop the loading page before it fully loads. It's generally a quick technique, it's effective on several different types of web pages. You have to stop your browser from fully loading the web page as soon as your browser displays the text element of the paywall content. So you enter a page URL into the search bar, press enter, and then press the X icon or

the escape key as soon as you see some of the text on screen before a paywall window pops up. A major limitation of this is that stopping the website may not load all content elements. So it may only render like a portion of the text, or it may like miss out on like files, like images, animations, or videos. And it also depends on the order of which the website loads the page elements. So for example, if a website loads the paywall first, then this trick won't be successful. Also you have to be kind of pretty fast in order to make this one work.

Typically this isn't the first way I do it because there's generally easier ways. But if you can do this, then cool, it's definitely a fast one if you can't get it to succeed for soft paywall. So I will say the stopping the browser from loading is actually successful at some hard paywall sites because if they do like load a portion of the text to read as like a snippet, sometimes it'll actually load the entire text, but then just block it off with a separate window. So sometimes with a hard paywall, you can actually stop it via this method.

So that's always fun. But second method generally more for soft paywalls is to delete your page's cookies. So you know, websites store cookies to track your browser activities, including how much content you've accessed. So blog publishers, newspaper sites can track the number of free articles you've read using the cookies stored on your browser. If you've hit the limit for non-subscribers, if like the limit of articles allotted, then you can delete the website cookies to refresh that counter and it will possibly reset the

limit of articles. You can go to the privacy or security section of your web browser, select the option that allows you to check the cookies and site for all data, and then search for the website that you're looking for in the cookie management page, and then click remove all. You can do this on like Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Edge, if you want to use that for some reason, Safari, yeah. But this trick may not work very well on hard paywalls because they don't really use cookies for the same purpose.

And also you'll have to do, if you're doing this for soft paywalls, you have to do it every time you reach the limit. And if this won't work if the website is using other kind of more advanced tools to track your activity like IP logs, right? So if it's tracking your IP data instead of your cookies, then this probably won't work. So this one's, this one, I mean, you should clear your cookies every once in a while anyway, just like generally a good practice. But to do this all the time is kind of a bit of work, especially because the next method

is typically easier and does the same thing, which is just reading articles inside a private or incognito mode or in the Tor browser. So as explained earlier, not all paywalls are about the same. If a website uses a soft paywall, you should be able to read subscription based content through incognito or private browsing, because it'll trick the, it'll trick the website into thinking you're a brand new visitor, granting you access to the content before it had, before it racks up enough views to, to throw up at the paywall window. So this is, this is a lot easier than just manually deleting the cookies every single

time because yeah, most web browsers do not transmit pre-existing cookies onto an incognito or private mode browser mode. So it doesn't switch those back over. And then although the website will deposit new cookies onto your browser during private browsing sessions, they will be removed as soon as you close the window. One bummer is that some news pages are getting wise and actually are programming their websites to be able to detect if they're opened in a private or browsing mode, or even on tour. And they just like won't open, they'll say, sorry, you have to, we've detected that you're

using this in private browsing mode to view this content, boot up a regular browser. Which, which really sucks for the tour users, because a lot of people who use them for are like, hey, yeah, like I'm in China, I'm trying to get past the Great Firewall and fuck you each shit, you should have somehow paid a subscription service to us, to see information on this site that is literally illegal here, like, it's great. It's really bad for people who are like actually facing government censorship, who need to use tour to view content. So yeah, that that is a, it's what we call a major bummer, a major sucks, a major, oh

no, capitalism did a whoopsy. Yeah. But yeah, this is definitely, this is one of the modes I do most often is like I can typically get a lot of sites to be able to view through incognito or private or private browsing. But again, it does depend on what the site is, is, is built to do. But by far my favorite method, oh, guess I'll mention another one that I don't really use very often is the paywall removal extensions for, for your browser, which is like third

party browser extensions, which try to automatically bypass paywalls. These are really hit and miss. And it's, they're also a really great way to get nice fancy malware onto your computer. So I would, I typically steer clear of this, but there, there is allegedly a browser extension called a bypass paywalls for Chrome and Firefox that allegedly has been found to be effective that allows you to read the subscription based articles on hundreds of publications like New York Times, Wired, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post. It is, it is, it is free, but you have to manually load it onto your browser and just

typically I'm not a big fan of browser extensions in the first place. So I kind of steer clear of these, but some, some, some people, some people swear by them. So maybe, maybe they can work, they're not really my thing. But my favorite method is archive websites, specifically archive.is. So there are internet archiving tools that preserve copies of web pages and social media posts for reference purposes. And you can use these tools to access paywall to content and read subscription based news articles for free, including a lot of hard paywall pages.

Archive.is, or archive.is is my favorite one. Also it's, it functions under archive.today, just, it just, it depends on what servers they're running at the moment. Of course, there's also the classic and pretty reliable archive.org, which has a nice calendar feature. But it's definitely good to check both of these because sometimes an article will be archived on archive.is really easily and it won't be available on archive.org. Sometimes it'll be on archive.org and not archive.is.

The one that's currently live, I think it's.ph. It automatically switches, usually, I usually just type in archive.is and it switches me over automatically. But yes, there is, there is, there is a few of them. Yeah, yeah, you are right, correct. It does automatically revert to archive.ph at the moment. So yeah, but these are the ones I use the most because people who have access to hard paywalled content will often archive the hard paywalled stuff.

So it's available to people without the paywall. This can include the screenshot mode for archive.is and the regular archival method for archive.org. But both these are great and they're also really good for looking at past versions of the articles. So you can look to see what, how the articles have changed over time. And so it's your greatest research tools and archive.is is very easy to even upload stuff yourself.

Even if you don't have the paywall, like even if you're blocked off from reading the full thing, you can try to submit it to archive.is and there's a good chance I might actually grab an unpaywalled version of it because of how the site works. So just go to archive.ph or archive.is, enter the web page URL that you're wanting to access in the designated dialog box at the bottom, select save, it'll go through a little process and then you'll be able to select the screenshot mode or the web page mode and be able to see what type of thing it archives. It's pretty cool.

The last thing I'll mention is outline.com and 12-foot ladder. These are web-based tools but not specifically archival sites. They're generally used to just get to the text of an article via web page nonsense and bypassing paywall stuff. Unfortunately, websites have also gotten wise to this, so stuff like New York Times and Wall Street Journal have figured out a way to get to these sites blocked so you cannot use outline.com or 12-foot ladder on them. But they still work on stuff like the Washington Post, so it always depends.

But I definitely generally will prefer the archive.is and archive.org method to viewing any kind of paywall to content. Yeah, and that's kind of my, I mean, I'm not, now I'm not going to explain how to do like regular piracy on the podcast because I don't have enough time, but like it's easy. Yeah, there are lots of people who will tell you. I mean, like Kiss Cartoon is like a very popular website. Like, you don't even need to like, you don't even have to like properly like torrent stuff anymore.

There is like so much pirated media available. Yeah, and it's like, okay, so like you got to be a little bit careful with your pirating stuff because sometimes you can get copyright strikes, but if you stream it, they don't copyright strike you for that. So yeah. Yeah. Let's see. The other thing I will plug is a Plex, which is a kind of an online movie hosting service

like Netflix, except you upload all of the content to it. So let's say you buy Blu-rays, it comes with a digital download code, so now you can upload the digital copy into Plex and watch that wherever you want as long as you're signed into the Plex account and you actually own the stuff on the service. So as long as the service is online, you can use it because you actually own the stuff on it. That includes if you have pirated versions of movies downloaded, you can upload this versions onto Plex, then delete the actual hard copies of it on your hard drive, then

just watch the ones on Plex and you're totally fine. So Plex is great for having like ease of access because sometimes I don't want to sort through my Blu-ray disks and make sure that I have a Blu-ray player with me to watch my stuff. So using Plex is a great method to keep your stuff that you actually own accessible online to watch it as long as you sign into a web browser. And the last thing I'll plug is library submission forms. So if you really want media and you don't want to pay for it and you don't want to like pirate it necessarily, you can get libraries to buy stuff.

I did this all the time when I was younger. I found out that you could submit items for purchase via the library on the online forum and I submitted so many comic books. Most of the comic books, I would say a good majority of the comic books in the Multnomah County library system are because of me. Every Wednesday when a new trade paperback would be released, I would upload it to the library submission form and they would buy it and not just one copy. They would buy like 12 copies.

So there's so many Batman comics in the in the Multnomah County system because I would studiously upload all that stuff so that I didn't need to pay for comics. I could just get them from the library. So definitely look into library submissions to kind of grow what your library has in stock. And then also look into see what other things your library is doing because I know more libraries are looking into building like maker spaces and like tool libraries to have access to things that are not just like books, you know, to have power tools and then, you know, have to access to even cool stuff like stuff like vacuum formers and like three printers,

laser cutters, all these things are kind of growing. So look into what your library is doing because oftentimes libraries have some pretty cool stuff. So yeah, this is my little little bit on why I don't like paywalls, why I think content should be free because it actually helps creators in the long run anyway and how to get past news articles that don't want you to read them without paying too much money. Yep. And remember, folks, if Japan invaded your country, pirating anime is reparations.

If you're mad about this tweet, find me on Twitter at I write okay. Yeah, make sure you tweet at I write okay. If you have complaints about that take. So yeah, that is, that is my little, my little bit talking about piracy argh. And, and yeah, I mean, most we should, we should, we should, I think it's, I've always had, I've always hold this opinion that I think we can all learn a lot of lessons from Sonic the Hedgehog. And I think one of the greatest ones is that turns out when you make stuff available to

use for free and allow emulation, people like people like people like the stuff more people enjoy it and then we'll actually support official uses of it as well. So more stuff for free, more, more library based economies and having having gold ring having an enormous number of gold rings makes you nearly invincible. That's that is this is this is also true. I mean, this multiple franchises exist with that exact premise. Um, yeah. So turns out when you have more, more libraries, more rings, people are happier.

Yep. That's the episode. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash

sources. Thanks for listening.