{
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "emsenn",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net"
    }
  ],
  "description": "Letters and notes by emsenn.",
  "feed_url": "https://emsenn.net/feed.json",
  "home_page_url": "https://emsenn.net/",
  "items": [
    {
      "content_text": "Before beginning, I want to say that this piece is for, mostly, adult cishet white men. I understand that many folk need to lie through the Holidays for their own safety, and I don\u0026amp;rsquo;t want them to read this and get any idea that the reasons I give here are a good enough reason to put your safety on the line. But if it\u0026amp;rsquo;s not safety, and you just don\u0026amp;rsquo;t like to make noise at Christmas Dinner? Then this is for you.\nFor me, Christmas Day often represents the last day people feel obligated to Holiday Cheer. After their fear prevents them from saying anything real to their family today, they will feel guilty, and resume lashing out at those with less power than them who make them uncomfortable with their complacency.\nAll the anger, all the pain, that gets suppressed today? It doesn\u0026amp;rsquo;t evaporate: it gets let off, bit-by-bit, Karen-style, through the year, through shitposts and other copes, that usually punch down at others in the same way the racist Uncle\u0026amp;rsquo;s jokes …",
      "date_modified": "2025-12-23T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-12-23T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/this-christmas-give-yourself-bravery/",
      "title": "This Christmas, give yourself bravery",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/this-christmas-give-yourself-bravery/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "¶Pushed Propaganda A couple days ago, I was washing the dishes or cleaning the counters or something, when my phone sent me a push notification from Substack. This notification was from a white settler anarchist who\u0026amp;rsquo;s partners with a different white settler anarchist whose Substack I subscribe to. Substack does that, whenever I start posting on it more: sends me updates about what\u0026amp;rsquo;s happening past the edge of my network.\nWhen I saw what the piece was, I was hopeful: \u0026amp;ldquo;On white COVID-cautious queers, and why I don\u0026amp;rsquo;t fuck with them,\u0026amp;rdquo; being pushed to me by a white anarchist? Was this going to be the piece that finally explains how the way most white queers are COVID-cautious engages in the same abandonment that open COVID-deniers do?\nWell\u0026amp;hellip; yes, but not in the way I\u0026amp;rsquo;d hoped.\nI\u0026amp;rsquo;ll be blunt: the original newsletter on white COVID-cautious queers is eugenicist misogynist white supremacist propaganda. Yes: even as much as it accuses others of …",
      "date_modified": "2025-09-23T06:21:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-09-23T06:21:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/on-white-supremacist-covid-eugenicist-queers/",
      "title": "On white-supremacist COVID-eugenicist queers",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/on-white-supremacist-covid-eugenicist-queers/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "¶Introduction On September 21, 2025, Stephen Miller stood in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, before tens of thousands gathered to honor Charlie Kirk.\nHis premise was mourning, but his content was aggressive and threatening:\n“You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You have made him immortal.”\n“We are the storm,” he declared. His enemies, he told the crowd, “create nothing… you are nothing.”\nMiller cast the gathered mourners as heirs to a civilizational lineage stretching from Athens to Rome, Philadelphia to Monticello. Their children’s children’s children would inherit the fruits of victory, because “the light will defeat the dark. We are on the side of God.”\nFor anyone familiar with Joseph Goebbels’s speech “The Storm Is Coming,” delivered in Berlin in July 1932, the echoes are striking.\nGoebbels, facing a crowd of Germans that perceived itself humiliated by Versailles and paralyzed by the weakness of Weimar liberalism, told his listeners: “Germany is on the edge of …",
      "date_modified": "2025-09-22T09:01:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-09-22T09:01:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/a-storm-is-a-storm-is-a-storm/",
      "title": "A storm is a storm is a storm",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/a-storm-is-a-storm-is-a-storm/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "With the RICO charges against Stop Cop City activists being dismissed being reported as the state failing, and academic thought presenting Stop Cop City as an abolitionist success, it seems indicated that Cop City has been, well, Stopped. But\u0026amp;hellip; it hasn\u0026amp;rsquo;t. So, what\u0026amp;rsquo;s going on with reporting, research, and discourse, that the truth of a situation, when measured materially or ethically, and the truth of its narrative have such little relationship?\nWell, let me first establish that the material and ethical truth aren\u0026amp;rsquo;t a part of the narrative:\nWhile Stop Cop City is called an abolitionist success in academic thought, the Cop City complex was built and is now open, developing and teaching carcerality. While the state is said to have failed in their efforts against activists, in journalistic reporting, they still killed someone and destroyed a forest, among other harms. And, I feel I must also highlight that even these statements reinforce the framing of Weelaunee …",
      "date_modified": "2025-09-14T09:22:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-09-14T09:22:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/storytelling-stop-cop-city/",
      "title": "Storytelling [Stop] Cop City",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/storytelling-stop-cop-city/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "¶Introduction My recent essays, writing from mid-2025, are being described as difficult. Some describe them as impenetrable or alienating. Others say they are overcompressed, self-referential, or withholding. The most consistent descriptor is affective: it feels tiring—like a demand on the reader made without sufficient payoff. One reader described reading my recent writing as \u0026amp;ldquo;running through wet cement, but I can\u0026amp;rsquo;t stop.\u0026amp;rdquo;\nThese assessments are accurate descriptions of what the essays are doing, rhetorically and structurally. What is wrong is the perception that it is anything but intentional. My recent essays are not designed to instruct, persuade, or resolve. They are not written for argument or clarity. They emerge from a specific configuration of constraints: energetic, economic, relational, cognitive, and systemic, primarily intersecting at two points:\nA requirement to produce value dense enough to be recognized by systems that gate access to reality. A refusal …",
      "date_modified": "2025-08-14T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-08-14T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/reading-through-wet-cement/",
      "title": "Reading through wet cement",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/reading-through-wet-cement/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "There is a gap between the story of Stop Cop City and the history of Weelaunee Forest. Not just a difference in emphasis, but a structural disconnect—between the shape of public sense-making and the uneven, often invisible labor of holding ground, building trust, and adapting under pressure. For those who were materially entwined with Weelaunee before Cop City, and before Stop Cop City, it doesn\u0026amp;rsquo;t just feel like something got lost. It’s that something else got installed in its place.\nFor many of us, the experience didn’t affirm abolition. It demonstrated how fast carceral system learn. The state didn’t just repress the movement—it adapted to it. Local and regional governments treated the forest as a test case. Cop City wasn’t stopped. In its wake, coordination between law enforcement agencies deepened, surveillance practices were normalized, and repression became easier to justify. What began as a refusal was converted into feedback.\nHannah Kass’s essay, /“Trees Give Life. Police …",
      "date_modified": "2025-04-12T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-04-12T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/citing-for-containment/",
      "title": "Citing for containment",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/citing-for-containment/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "This was a recursive response, not a policy error On April 2nd, 2025, the U.S. government announced a sweeping tariff policy, applying across all imports with immediately effect. Over the following week, the policy evolved rapidly: it expanded to cover additional categories, triggered immediate procurement responses, and by April 9th, a substantial portion of it was suspended.\nOther parts, particularly those targeting Chinese imports, remained in place or were even intensified. This wasn’t a full reversal. It was a targeted redirection under pressure.\nAcross commentary, the moment was quickly situated within familiar analytical frameworks. Liberal interpretations treated it as institutional constraint on executive overreach. Marxist analysis described it as finance capital disciplining industrial policy. These readings weren’t incoherent—but they narrated the reversal as a moment of political contradiction or contestation, as if different outcomes had been materially possible. In …",
      "date_modified": "2025-04-11T05:08:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-04-11T05:08:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/governing-by-confusion/",
      "title": "Governing by confusion",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/governing-by-confusion/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "I am told that I must be legible. It is demanded from me by settlers, who—whether they mean to or not—imply that colonialism will continue unless I can explain why it shouldn’t. It is demanded from me by Indigenous people who fear that, if we do not make ourselves legible to settlers, our autonomy will become irrelevant. The logic is consistent: if we do not translate our position into terms that can be understood, we will be excluded from the conversation that decides our future.\nThis thinking runs deep. It has been cultivated across generations of the American left. And it draws heavily on Antonio Gramsci’s theory of the organic intellectual—on the idea that people embedded in struggle must emerge as organizers of thought, translators of material conditions into political strategy. We are told this is how hegemony is contested: by producing clarity.\nI think this is absolutely wrong. And in this paper, I’m going to explain why.\nIt is not that I disagree with Gramsci’s context. His …",
      "date_modified": "2025-04-07T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-04-07T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-theory-that-survived-the-war/",
      "title": "The theory that survived the war",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-theory-that-survived-the-war/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "I. Introduction: The Withholding Grammar of the Present Contemporary English, particularly in its American institutional and digital forms, is undergoing a profound shift in how it handles agency, relation, and responsibility. This shift is not superficial. It is not a matter of jargon, slang, or changing taste. It is structural. It reflects the adaptation of language to conditions in which speaking clearly, personally, or relationally is increasingly disincentivized, politically, economically, and algorithmically. Two dominant grammatical modes now shape this linguistic field. The first is what I might call dead institutional English: a procedural, passive, agentless grammar used by governments, corporations, universities, and platforms. This language appears in public apologies, press releases, moderation statements, and official reports. It is structured to perform responsiveness while deferring causality, to acknowledge harm without naming a subject, to describe action without …",
      "date_modified": "2025-04-05T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-04-05T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/marked-speech-borrowed-grammar/",
      "title": "Marked speech, borrowed grammar",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/marked-speech-borrowed-grammar/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "I. Introduction: The Leak That Wasn\u0026amp;rsquo;t a Hack In early 2025, headlines broke about a military operation leak involving a Signal group chat. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and other senior Trump administration officials had accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to an encrypted Signal thread that included sensitive operational discussions about a planned U.S. strike on Houthi targets in Yemen. Goldberg, upon realizing the magnitude of what he was reading, published the contents. What might have once sparked resignations and internal purges instead prompted shrugs and spin. President Trump affirmed his support for Waltz. No one was fired. The moment was absurd. But it wasn’t an accident. Not really.\nInstead, it was the latest expression of a long-term systemic pattern: a slow erosion of institutional discipline around digital communication and classified information. This wasn’t the first time signals leaked. And if history is any guide, it won’t …",
      "date_modified": "2025-03-31T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-03-31T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/signalgate-caused-signalgate/",
      "title": "Signalgate caused signalgate",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/signalgate-caused-signalgate/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "Yesterday, it was announced that xAI is acquiring X. That sentence is easy to skip past. It sounds like corporate rearranging, maybe a branding pivot, maybe Musk doing Musk things again. But the thing is—X is already owned by Elon Musk. And xAI is also owned by Elon Musk. So when a company owned by one person gets bought by another company owned by that same person, that just smells off.\nIt’s not illegal. It’s not even that unusual, structurally speaking. But it’s a moment worth sitting with, because it reveals something more important than the headline itself: the fact that this kind of move doesn’t register for most people—emotionally or cognitively. There\u0026amp;rsquo;s no shared language for what this is, or what it does.\nThat absence of interpretation is the story.\nWe’re watching the formation of power in real time. Not just financial power, not just algorithmic control—governance. The ability to set rules, shape discourse, and define what knowledge is. But we’re watching it through …",
      "date_modified": "2025-03-29T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-03-29T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/when-power-buys-itself/",
      "title": "When power buys itself",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/when-power-buys-itself/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "In this moment of accelerated crisis — legal breakdown, visible state violence, the fast erosion of institutional legitimacy — there’s a growing wave of calls for action. Much of it comes from people who, until recently, insisted that electoralism or procedural reform was the only viable path. Now they’re calling for general strikes, mass occupations, coordinated disruptions. On the surface, this looks like a pivot: away from state trust, toward confrontation. But if you look closer, a particular logic is being carried over. These calls for mass action are often framed in terms of legitimacy through size. People argue that mass action is necessary because it is safer. Because it has weight. Because there is, implicitly, protection in numbers.\nAt the same time, we’re seeing another kind of response — also emerging from that same social terrain. As people share small, local, individual actions — shoplifting banner materials, organizing unpermitted aid work, refusing to comply with public …",
      "date_modified": "2025-03-25T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-03-25T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/between-care-and-control/",
      "title": "Between care and control",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/between-care-and-control/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "Seven years ago, I wrote this essay to piece together the connective tissue between Facebook, Russian financial networks, and the Trump campaign’s digital strategy. At the time, the conversation was focused on Cambridge Analytica, disinformation, and the fallout of the 2016 election. Since then, we’ve lived through another election cycle shaped by platform power, a billionaire takeover of Twitter, and a fresh wave of information warfare that makes 2016 look almost quaint by comparison. Back then, much of the discourse treated Facebook’s role as a technological accident—an invention that got out of hand, leading well-meaning users to accidentally destabilize democracy. There was also plenty of speculation about foreign influence, but much of it remained just that: speculation. The real connective tissue, the documented financial relationships and strategic decisions that tied these players together, was available in public records. It wasn’t theoretical. It wasn’t hidden. It was just …",
      "date_modified": "2025-03-15T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-03-15T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-network-effect/",
      "title": "The network effect",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-network-effect/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "There was a time when shaping public opinion was a job for politicians, PR firms, and media moguls. The gatekeepers of discourse held the keys to influence, carefully curating what narratives gained traction. But today? That power is shifting to a decentralized, unaccountable force: the highest bidder. Welcome to FuzzAI, where debates are no longer won by truth but by profit.\nFuzzAI is a market-driven rhetorical battlefield, where AI-powered debates unfold under the influence of anonymous bettors. Instead of passively wagering on an outcome, participants actively feed arguments to AI debaters, optimizing them for persuasion. The result? The most financially backed, memetically powerful narratives don’t just win—they shape reality.\n¶The Persuasion Economy Here’s how it works:\nA debate is set. AI agents argue both sides.\nParticipants place bets on who will win and on which argument will be most effective.\nAI refines its rhetoric in real time, guided by the financial incentives of its …",
      "date_modified": "2025-03-09T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-03-09T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-financialization-of-persuasion/",
      "title": "The financialization of persuasion",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-financialization-of-persuasion/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "The Trump administration has called for emergency elections in Ukraine, after a series of events distancing themselves from the nation currently partially occupied by Russia. The move has many historical parallels - to keep it simple and non-speculative, let\u0026amp;rsquo;s look at the parallels within a government who this administration has explicitly credited as an inspiration: the Third Reich.\nParallels Austria (1938ce): the forced election that never happened Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg planned a referendum on independence. Adolf Hitler forced him to cancel it under military threats. Trump allies push for elections in Ukraine while supporting Russian aggression, similar to how Hitler demanded political changes while preparing to invade. Austria was annexed before the people could vote, and Germany held a rigged plebiscite after occupation. The Sudetenland Crisis (1938) Germany supported ethnic German Nazis in the Sudetenland, encouraging them to demand autonomy. Trump’s team …",
      "date_modified": "2025-03-07T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-03-07T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/historical-parallels-on-trumps-call-for-emergency-ukraine-elections/",
      "title": "Historical parallels on Trump's call for emergency Ukraine elections",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/historical-parallels-on-trumps-call-for-emergency-ukraine-elections/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "Radicalism is not polite. It doesn\u0026amp;rsquo;t come from a curated aesthetic, the perfect brand partnership. It isn\u0026amp;rsquo;t found in the conversation of people eating a tax write-off for dinner. It cannot be embedded in a Twitter bio. If the only way I can tell you’re a radical is by checking your social media (which you might have on private, anyway), then how are you a radical?\nI certainly don\u0026amp;rsquo;t mean the folk keeping their praxis hush-hush: keep normie and carry on.\nI mean the ones whose contribution to social change amounts to trying to shift the Overton window with telepathy.\nAnd if you point to it, they wrap themselves in the cozy, pre-fab slogan:\nthere’s no wrong way to be a radical\nExcept\u0026amp;hellip; there is.\nIf your radicalism fits neatly into the reformist pipeline. If it gets you clout, a nonprofit job, or a spot on a conference panel\u0026amp;hellip; then it’s not radical. If your idea of revolutionary work is branding yourself as a radical rather than risking something for radical …",
      "date_modified": "2025-03-06T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2025-03-06T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/radical-is-as-radical-imagines/",
      "title": "Radical is as radical imagines",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/radical-is-as-radical-imagines/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "In the days following the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, something remarkable happened. Across social media and beyond, people expressed a surprising solidarity with the act - not necessarily with the violence itself, but with the frustrations it laid bare. The sentiment wasn’t about glorifying a death; it was about recognizing a brutal truth: millions of lives are shaped, diminished, and ended by a healthcare system built to profit from suffering. For a fleeting moment, the collective response wasn’t shock or confusion - it was clarity: this system is intolerable, and something has to change.\nBut now that a suspect has been identified and arrested, that clarity is being systematically rewritten.\nThe media has wasted no time casting the suspect, as a radical extremist. They emphasize his alleged manifesto, his use of a ghost gun, and his Ivy League background - details designed to isolate him from the broader frustrations he briefly symbolized. The narrative is …",
      "date_modified": "2024-12-10T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2024-12-10T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/solidarity-erased/",
      "title": "Solidarity erased",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/solidarity-erased/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "The collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria isn’t just another international headline. For those living in societies that depend, directly or indirectly, on imperial or colonial arrangements, it’s a reminder that entrenched power is not invulnerable. When we see officials dragged from their offices and once-untouchable authorities fleeing, we recognize that if carefully maintained hierarchies can crumble there, they might crumble anywhere. This recognition often stirs a nervous unease among so-called allies - people who claim to support liberation but prefer it safely limited to symbolic or distant acts rather than meaningful transformations.\nThe shifting lens of Western media plays a key role in nurturing this unease. Early reporting on uprisings frequently frames them as heroic struggles for justice, human rights, and democracy. But as soon as the movements start to redistribute power in disruptive ways, dismantling oppressive structures and redrawing the boundaries of political and …",
      "date_modified": "2024-12-08T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2024-12-08T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-nervous-ally/",
      "title": "The nervous ally",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/the-nervous-ally/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "Back in February, I told you that my family and I were moving to Lakota territory to engage in food autonomy and build something rooted in sovereignty. We believed we’d find a space where we could work without the immediate interference of settler systems, where our time wouldn’t be consumed by reacting to settler expectations of our existence.\nI was wrong.\nInstead, we found ourselves confronting colonization’s worst scars, not just in the actions of settlers, but in how deeply those scars have been carved into my kin. The family we went to collaborate with had turned the language of sovereignty into a smokescreen for harm. Behind their rhetoric was an armed gang engaged in drug trade, sex trafficking, and child sexual assault. We tried to confront this, to protect the kids who were being harmed, and that’s what made us targets.\nIt wasn’t just my kin who came after us. Settlers who had been drawn to this gang’s performative decolonial rhetoric—leftists, professional organizers, and …",
      "date_modified": "2024-12-08T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2024-12-08T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/looking-for-homes-old-and-new/",
      "title": "Looking for homes old and new",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/looking-for-homes-old-and-new/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "It\u0026amp;rsquo;s been a couple (or few) months since I\u0026amp;rsquo;ve sent out any sort of update, so there\u0026amp;rsquo;s a lot I want to share and I\u0026amp;rsquo;ll probably forget a lot.\nI\u0026amp;rsquo;ve set up a YouTube channel. I\u0026amp;rsquo;ve already uploaded a few videos you can stream there, and plan on uploading more as I get more comfortable having a camera in my face.\nMe and my family have started stream restoration on a segment of Phahin Sinte Wakpala (Porcupine Tail Creek).\nThat explains the headline of this short update. In other news, we got a small cabin, which means I\u0026amp;rsquo;ve been able to set up my desk, and charge my laptop. Which means it\u0026amp;rsquo;ll again be part of my work to post more, here, on my new video channel, on my website, and on my Ko-Fi.\nWhich means it would be really great for me and my efforts if y\u0026amp;rsquo;all who already know what I\u0026amp;rsquo;m doing, went and told other folk about it. It\u0026amp;rsquo;s really obvious that many of the things I talk about, like climate adaptation, indigenous autonomy …",
      "date_modified": "2024-07-17T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2024-07-17T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/now-streaming/",
      "title": "Now streaming",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/now-streaming/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "Me and my family have been living near the small community of Porcupine, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, for about a month now. We were invited because of our experience with regenerative horticulture and sustainable resource management oriented toward ending food apartheid, and so we\u0026amp;rsquo;ve been taking time talking with folk to see how those skills should be applied here. And, we think we know what we should do:\nOne of the first things we learned as a problem here was how much of the land is used for cattle grazing. That isn\u0026amp;rsquo;t something we can directly change, so our focus turned toward looking at how that problem can be a solution for other problems, in a way that does change the primary issue.\nSo, our question became, is there a way we can enable alternative incomes?\nThere\u0026amp;rsquo;s a lot of forms of pollution that come from cattle ranching. One of the most known is the contamination of surface water with pathogens, but one we found ourselves looking toward as a possible …",
      "date_modified": "2024-04-30T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2024-04-30T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/support-sustainable-economics-in-pine-ridge/",
      "title": "Support sustainable economics in Pine Ridge",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/support-sustainable-economics-in-pine-ridge/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "Shortly before the start of 2024, my family decided to accept an invitation to move from where we are to Lakota Territory, to assist in food autonomy efforts there. Preparing for the move has kept us really busy, so this\u0026amp;rsquo;ll be a pretty short-and-to-the-point letter.\nFirst, this newsletter will soon be distributed by Buttondown, not Substack, in response to Substack\u0026amp;rsquo;s preferential treatment of fascists. Apologies I haven\u0026amp;rsquo;t done so already, but as I said, I\u0026amp;rsquo;ve been busy.\nSecond, I\u0026amp;rsquo;m not sure what my presence on the Web will look like, going forward. It\u0026amp;rsquo;d be foolish to ignore the changes emergent technologies like LLMs are bringing to this space, and personally, I\u0026amp;rsquo;m going to be living off-the-grid, so it might be difficult to get my writing digitized and syndicated.\nWhich makes my third point a bit awkward: Y\u0026amp;rsquo;all\u0026amp;rsquo;s financial support is going to continue to be a key component of my survival. In fact, it might be more critical, at least …",
      "date_modified": "2024-02-25T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2024-02-25T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/moving-to-lakota-territory/",
      "title": "Moving to Lakota territory",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/moving-to-lakota-territory/"
    },
    {
      "content_text": "Embark on a Voyage to Turntide Islands: A Haven for Change-Makers and Visionaries\nSet sail with us on an exhilarating journey to the Turntide Islands, a newly unveiled digital archipelago where forward-thinkers converge. This vibrant Discord community is your gateway to engaging discussions, innovative ideas, and collaborative projects that aim to reshape our world.\nAt Turntide Islands, we recognize that the currents of change are swift and unyielding. As stewards of this planet, it\u0026amp;rsquo;s up to us to navigate these waters with intention and ingenuity. Our islands serve as fertile ground for cultivating sustainable practices that harmonize with our environment.\nWhether you\u0026amp;rsquo;re a green-thumbed guru or a wizard on the Web, your unique perspective is crucial in steering the course toward a brighter future. Here among like-minded individuals you\u0026amp;rsquo;ll find camaraderie in action-oriented dialogue.\nJoin forces with fellow islanders who share your passion for change:\n🌿 Engage in rich …",
      "date_modified": "2023-12-15T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-12-15T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/come-to-turntide-islands/",
      "title": "Come to Turntide Islands!",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/come-to-turntide-islands/"
    },
    {
      "content_text": "Beneath the saccharine veneer of Disney\u0026amp;rsquo;s \u0026amp;ldquo;(topic:: Asteria)\u0026amp;rdquo; project lies a reality starkly at odds with its advertised \u0026amp;ldquo;campus of discovery.\u0026amp;rdquo; This (topic:: proposed development), slated for the headwaters of the Haw River, ignores the centuries of Indigenous dispossession and Black enslavement that have ravaged this land, while simultaneously threatening the ecological health of the river and the future of the surrounding communities. From Disney\u0026amp;rsquo;s press release on Asteria:\nThe community will come to life on 1,500 acres in the heart of North Carolina\u0026amp;rsquo;s picturesque Chatham County. Ideally situated in the town of Pittsboro, residents will have access to metropolitan amenities with the charm of a small town. Plans call for more than 4,000 residential units including single-family and multi-family homes\u0026amp;hellip; \u0026amp;hellip;Asteria community homeowners will become part of a club with amenities planned to include a wellness and recreation center, …",
      "date_modified": "2023-12-07T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-12-07T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/call-to-act-against-asteria/",
      "title": "Call to act! against Asteria",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/call-to-act-against-asteria/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "The recent Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief election was a spectacle of farce and dysfunction, revealing the deep rot that has consumed this supposed representative body of Indigenous peoples. The inability to reach quorum, despite multiple rounds of voting, speaks volumes about the level of disillusionment and disenfranchisement amongst member nations. They see the AFN for what it truly is: a cog in the colonial machine, designed to appease and pacify rather than empower and liberate.\nThe unwavering adherence to arbitrary and rigid procedural rules – exemplified by the insistence on a 60% threshold for victory – is a slap in the face to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. This colonial imposition serves only to maintain the status quo, ensuring the continued dominance of a self-serving elite and hindering the emergence of a leader with a genuine mandate for change.\nBut beneath the surface of this manufactured crisis lies a simmering tension, a yearning for …",
      "date_modified": "2023-12-07T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-12-07T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/a-broken-election/",
      "title": "A broken election",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/a-broken-election/"
    },
    {
      "content_text": "Comrades, accomplices, friends.\nI write this to reflect on and share how the passing of Alfredo Bonanno is affecting me this evening. Though his spirit has left his body, the spark he carried through his life continues to catch new kindling, burning away what he hoped we could live without, and illuminating the worlds that would be possible.\nBorn in 1937, Alfredo Bonanno was an Italian anarchist philosopher and writer. He is best known as a prominent theorist and proponent of contemporary insurrectionary anarchism. This branch of anarchism emphasizes the importance of direct action and violence in the struggle against authority and oppression.\nIn his seminal work, Armed Joy, Bonanno critiques work as a tool of capitalist domination, advocating for a joyful insurrection that reclaims control and pursues individual passions. Anarchy and Insurrection expands this vision, outlining a strategy for dismantling the current system and building a new society based on individual autonomy, mutual …",
      "date_modified": "2023-12-06T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-12-06T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/alfredo-bananno-has-passed/",
      "title": "Alfredo Bonanno has passed",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/alfredo-bananno-has-passed/"
    },
    {
      "content_text": "I am self-aware that a lot of my recent newsletters have been a lot of words that honestly don\u0026amp;rsquo;t say much. They\u0026amp;rsquo;d fully qualify as navel-gazing. It\u0026amp;rsquo;s a time in my life for navel-gazing. The orientation is still toward bringing myself toward full participation in liberation, so I hope it\u0026amp;rsquo;s still fascinating to read, if in a different way than my newsletters used to be. I’ve been getting more subscribers recently, so that’s reassuring. If you’ve been enjoying these letters, consider recommending them.\nI\u0026amp;rsquo;m trying to get better at being me: doing what I need so I can do what I want. A part of moving toward better is looking at what I feel is inhibiting me. As I\u0026amp;rsquo;ve done that, I\u0026amp;rsquo;ve seen a fear that\u0026amp;rsquo;s kept me disorganized: reactive, instead of responsive.\n\u0026amp;ldquo;Don\u0026amp;rsquo;t mourn. Organize.\u0026amp;rdquo; - Joe Hill, militant unionist, instructing those who cared about the state executing him.\nI can\u0026amp;rsquo;t dismiss the legitimate causes of my fear, but …",
      "date_modified": "2023-12-01T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-12-01T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/getting-better/",
      "title": "Getting better",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/getting-better/"
    },
    {
      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "emsenn"
        }
      ],
      "content_text": "The following letter is a rewrite of a conversation I had with a friend the other day, that I felt was worth sharing, if only to remind folk that some of us are still oriented against COVID, not toward whatever the state says.\nAfter three years of propaganda that has misrepresented the coronavirus from the most fundamental facts of the virus, it is imperative to admit that the social reality is delusional, and there\u0026amp;rsquo;s no possible risk assessment any individual can do from not simply a lack of information, but an abundance of falsehood.\nThis misunderstanding of the problem is what is leading so many liberals and progressives into despair this winter, as they perform risk assessments that are, based on the information they\u0026amp;rsquo;re working with, well-calculated. But the information they\u0026amp;rsquo;re working with has nothing to do with fact.\nA good example of this that I encountered recently was a social media thread - there\u0026amp;rsquo;s no point in linking it directly, as I\u0026amp;rsquo;m sure any …",
      "date_modified": "2023-11-29T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-11-29T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/unmasking-the-delusion-of-covid-risk/",
      "title": "Unmasking the delusion of COVID risk",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/unmasking-the-delusion-of-covid-risk/"
    },
    {
      "content_text": "I\u0026amp;rsquo;m writing this Letter to the Web in a different software than I normally use. Rather than using Emacs, an old-school text-editor on Linux, I\u0026amp;rsquo;m using 4theWords, a browser-based word processor that has gamification features added on. For example, I currently have 24 hours, 26 minutes, and 20 seconds to write an additional 1608 words, in order to defeat something called a Mertino, as part of the game\u0026amp;rsquo;s annual NaNoWriMo challenge.\nThis is part of an ongoing shift in what technology I\u0026amp;rsquo;m using on a computer, in response to the changing present and future. Yup - this is going to be another Letter where I talk vaguely about what I\u0026amp;rsquo;m doing and what I plan to do, with computers. I\u0026amp;rsquo;ll put that after the paid subscriber break, but for now, I\u0026amp;rsquo;d like to share a couple garden updates.\nNot subscribed? Most Letters are free-to-read.\nFirst, we\u0026amp;rsquo;ve put in a fall crop of potatoes. Even though El Nino is settling in (which here means generally colder and …",
      "date_modified": "2023-11-14T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-11-14T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/winter-orientation/",
      "title": "Winter orientation",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/winter-orientation/"
    },
    {
      "content_text": "(The following was sent along to me, and as instructed, I’m circulating it.)\n[\n![A photograph of a protest sign which reads, \u0026amp;ldquo;Cops are the domestic terrorists\u0026amp;rdquo;](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca282a5c-2b7a-4bd6-827f-ffd3233c0fef_1024x659.jpeg \u0026amp;ldquo;A photograph of a protest sign which reads, \u0026amp;ldquo;Cops are the domestic terrorists\u0026amp;rdquo;\u0026amp;rdquo;)\n](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fca282a5c-2b7a-4bd6-827f-ffd3233c0fef_1024x659.jpeg)\nFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE \u0026amp;amp; CIRCULATION; STATEMENT FROM 12 OF 61 RICO CODEFENDANTS:\n\u0026amp;ldquo;Anarchism must not be criminalized\nstatement from 12 of the 61 people indicted on RICO charges in Atlanta.\nThis RICO indictment is an attempt by the state to criminalize dissent and a specific set of ideas which …",
      "date_modified": "2023-11-09T00:00:00Z",
      "date_published": "2023-11-09T00:00:00Z",
      "id": "https://emsenn.net/letters/anarchism-must-not-be-criminalized/",
      "title": "Anarchism must not be criminalized",
      "url": "https://emsenn.net/letters/anarchism-must-not-be-criminalized/"
    }
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "title": "emsenn.net",
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1"
}