Author: nick
A Man Gleaning, George Seurat. (British Museum). This essay was published as the Afterword to “Who Gets the Remainder? The Ethics and Politics of Gleaning,” edited by Amiel Bize and Xenia Cherkaev, in History & Anthropology. The whole history of capitalism begins with the expropriation of people from the land, turning it into money and them into nothings. The passage from nothing to money is conducted by work, and yet people will cling on and find a way out of no way, because no expropriation is ever total. This is the evidence of remainders, or broadly speaking, the evidence of gleaning.…
Francisco Izayas Castillo, a former jail guard in Santa Clara County, California, was sentenced to 45 days in jail after a jury convicted him of misdemeanor battery in March. The charge stemmed from a 2022 incident in which Castillo, the only deputy in the housing unit at the time, helped two inmates beat up a third. When the attackers told him they were going to assault the other inmate, Castillo allegedly responded, “handle it,” then gave them rubber gloves and opened the victim’s cell door. After the attack, when the victim activated an emergency alarm in his cell, Castillo turned…
Photo by Igor Omilaev Earlier this month, researchers at the University of California San Diego published a study offering “the first empirical evidence that a modern artificial intelligence system can pass the Turing test.” Famously named for Alan Turing, the English mathematician and World War II codebreaker, the test is designed to determine whether a computer can exhibit human intelligence such as to make it indistinguishable from a human. What is interesting, perhaps, is how few waves this apparent breakthrough has made within the broader public discourse. Many, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, reckon that we have already achieved artificial…
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, was given a thumping in the recent local elections across the United Kingdom where voters turned out en masse to turf out their Labour councillors and send a strong message to the government that they are extremely unpopular. The Labour Party lost 1,498 council seats whilst the Reform Party gained 1,452 council seats. The establishment has received yet another message that they have used the state to do nothing but harm our people but their reply is to send for the “King in the North” to save their skins. The starting…
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair Tradition is not the worship of ashes. It is the preservation of fire. –Gustav Mahler Corruption as Authoritarian Spectacle Corruption has never been far from the center of American politics. Some of the most notorious scandals stretch from the cronyism of Warren G. Harding to the abuses of power exposed during the Watergate scandal under Richard Nixon. Yet many historians argue that what distinguishes What distinguishes Donald Trump from earlier corrupt presidencies is that corruption no longer operates behind closed doors, shielded by the liberal rituals of institutional legitimacy and the euphemisms of political decorum.…
WARNING TO THE PRESIDENT: U.S.-driven “regime collapse” and imposition of a government of our choosing will fail badly. The same people who keep ’57 Chevrolets on the road with a coat hanger will wreak havoc against a foreign-imposed regime. C.I.A. Director John Ratcliffe, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, monitoring U.S. military operations in Venezuela, from Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Jan. 3, 2026. (White House /Molly Riley) May 28, 2026 ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Avoiding Catastrophic Failure…
Some of the recent legal challenges to the use of surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security upon Americans have resulted in the revelation of truly terrifying behavior by the government, in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. We now know that the federal government spies on innocent Americans without suspicion and without warrants. The spying seems to fall into several categories. The National Security Agency, which is in the Department of Defense, employs about 60,000 domestic spies. These are the folks who want us to believe that they go through the trouble of making applications to…
For more than a decade, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents have plundered passengers at airport security checkpoints on the flimsiest or most shameless pretexts. If you get stopped at an airport security checkpoint with $100 or more in cash, TSA agents can fleece you. More than 10,000 travelers have been stripped of their money by TSA agents since 2014. But the feds almost never bother filing criminal charges against the victims of asset forfeiture. TSA considers itself generous when it “permits the passenger to continue on to their destination”—after taking away their money. Since 2019, the Institute for Justice, a non-profit…
Jorge Nuño and the “Don’t Move, Improve” Beautification Team. In an interview with candidate Jorge Nuño, we touched on a variety of subjects concerning South Central L.A. The conversation covers: affordable housing, unions, infrastructure, city bureaucracy, employment opportunities, the arts and culture and the preservation of African American culture in South Central Los Angeles. We talked about youth, family, the immigrant community I.C.E and safety. But most of all, we discussed power at length and the significance of it, how it is exercised and for whom, and how to avoid its persuasive cant. As we near election day on June…
It has become a real cliché to observe that the “United” Kingdom really isn’t very united at all anymore. So it proved on the weekend of 16 May, when a mass rally called “Unite the Kingdom” (UTK) occurred in central London. Alarmed by this prospect, the embattled Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer immediately rushed onto television and declared the demo would be “divisive.” Divisive why? Because, in attempting to unite British people in love for their own country and historic way of life, Keir said, without any sense of irony, the march was inherently “unpatriotic.” Keir accused the rally, staged…