Live coverage of the final practice session for the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.
Theophile Nael impressively went from sixth on the grid to the top step at the Budapest Sprint Race.
Fernando Alonso cut a positive figure after sampling Aston Martin’s major updates for the first time during Friday practice in Hungary, describing the revised AMR26 as “much better” overall.
Wine 11.14 is out with initial WoW64 mode support on FreeBSD, allowing 32-bit Windows applications to run on a 64-bit system without relying on 32-bit multilib support. The release also adds Start Menu icon support in Wine Explorer, 7.1 format conversions in DirectSound, AES-GMAC support in BCrypt, and 21 bug fixes affecting apps and games including Adobe Reader, Heroes of the Storm, and Age of Empires I and II. Additional details can be found at WineHQ.org.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In Amsterdam sterft het van de verwarde mensen, (stelende) zwervers, junks, Roemeense pooiers, portiekpoepers, linkse radicalisering, wildplassers, vervelende buren, bedelaars, airco's, totale ellende en, niet te vergeten, "jongeren". Zul je zien: het aantal overlastmeldingen schiet subiet omhoog. Voor Het Parool hét moment om er eens een socioloog bij te halen en die te laten kijken of de overlast niet gewoon PERCEPTIE is.
U verwacht het niet maar de socioloog levert: "Een deel van de kritiek op de overlastmeldingen zit hem in de subjectieve aard ervan. Want wat de een als overlast ervaart, daar kijkt een ander niet van op. Overlast is een politiek begrip, zegt socioloog Karlijn Roex, die een boek schreef over de positie van verwarde personen in de samenleving." SUBJECTIEVE AARD. Zo kijkt in Amsterdam niemand op van dergelijke, onnozele kretologie, terwijl de rest van Nederland denkt: sociologie is een politiek begrip.
Nog een zinnetje: "Als een groep witte mensen aan het barbecueën is in het park, dan is het gezellig,” zegt zij. “Maar als het Marokkaanse mannen zijn, is het een probleem." Ja net als wanneer het bij islamitische homohaat cultuur is en bij alle andere homohaat gewoon homohaat.
Maar socioloog Karlijn Roex gaat doorrrr: "Roex ziet dat mensen meer gaan melden zodra er een label of media-aandacht voor een bepaald type overlast is. Volgens haar moeten we opnieuw nadenken over onze definitie van overlast. 'Beperkt het me in mijn leven, houdt het me uit mijn slaap, bedreigt het me?” geeft ze als voorbeeld. 'Of is het niet-esthetisch, niet-reclamefolderwaardig, zoals bijvoorbeeld dakloosheid?'" Want stront in je portiek is natuurlijk alleen maar heel erg niet-reclamefolderwaardig. Bovendien zet je dan toch even een knijper op je neus en binnen vijf minuutjes heb je zo andermans schijt weer weggepoetst.
Wereldvreemder, randstedelijker, wegkijkeriger, sociologischer, typischer en allround VERSCHRIKKELIJKER wordt het niet deze zaterdag. Maar goed, dat is natuurlijk onze perceptie maar, en wij staan er qua sociologen nogal subjectief in.
Verklarende noot
Het centrum van Rotterdam is momenteel één grote tropische dansroute geworden. De straatparade begon om 12:00 uur en is inmiddels in volle gang bezig en duurt nog de hele middag. Kijk hier nu live naar de televisie-uitzending tot en met 14:30 uur.
Ooit was hij multimiljonair, maar zijn ambities voor een nieuw Rotterdamse pretpark brachten hem aan de rand van de afgrond. Ondernemer Hennie van der Most blikt terug op zijn opkomst en ondergang. "Ik ben van vijftig miljoen naar nul euro gegaan.”
Nederland is bezig aan een opmerkelijke opmars als emigratieland voor Amerikanen. Vorig jaar klopten ruim 7.100 Amerikanen bij de IND aan voor een verblijfsvergunning, duizenden meer dan in de jaren ervoor. Ze komen voor werk, gezin, studie of gewoon voor een ander leven. Een oud-presentatrice van Fox News vatte het in Den Haag samen: dit is toch een soort paradijs? Maar achter dat enthousiasme schuilt ook een nuchtere Nederlandse werkelijkheid van wachtrijen, woningnood en een taal die niet meewerkt.
Van South Carolina naar de hofstad
Het verhaal van Juliet Huddy (57) is exemplarisch voor de nieuwe golf. De voormalige Fox News-presentatrice dacht al jaren na over vertrek uit de Verenigde Staten en vroeg dit voorjaar ChatGPT om hulp bij het plannen van een nieuw leven in Europa. De AI wees haar op Nederland, vanwege een visum dat speciaal voor Amerikaanse zelfstandigen bestaat.
Ze verkocht haar huis en verhuisde in mei met haar man, drie honden en een kat naar Den Haag — een stad die ze nog nooit had gezien. Het pakte goed uit. Waar ze vooraf werd gewaarschuwd dat Nederlanders lastig te benaderen zijn, merkt ze daar naar eigen zeggen niets van. De werk-privébalans noemt ze het grootste verschil: in Amerika leef je om te werken, hier werk je om te leven.
Het DAFT-visum: 4.500 euro en een KvK-inschrijving
De belangrijkste sleutel is het Dutch-American Friendship Treaty-visum, kortweg DAFT. Dat verdrag stamt uit 1956 en is decennialang nauwelijks gebruikt. Wie als Amerikaan een bedrijfje inschrijft bij de Kamer van Koophandel en 4.500 euro startkapitaal op een Nederlandse rekening zet, komt in aanmerking voor een verblijfsvergunning als zelfstandig ondernemer. Na vijf jaar is een permanente verblijfsvergunning mogelijk.
Geen miljoeneninvestering, geen verplichte vastgoedaankoop, en in de praktijk worden de aanvragen vrijwel altijd goedgekeurd. Die combinatie maakt de regeling tot een hit op Amerikaanse sociale media, waar accounts de route naar Nederland promoten als de makkelijkste achterdeur naar Europa.
Voor Nederlanders met Amerikaanse dromen is er slecht nieuws: een spiegelbeeldige regeling bestaat aan de andere kant van de oceaan niet.
De cijfers op een rij
| Indicator | Aantal | Periode |
| Visumaanvragen door Amerikanen bij de IND | ruim 7.100 | 2025 |
| Waarvan via het DAFT-verdrag | ruim 1.000 | 2025 |
| DAFT-vergunningen vijf jaar eerder | circa 300 | 2020 |
| Amerikanen met een Amerikaans paspoort in Nederland | circa 27.500 | 2026 |
| Inwoners met een Amerikaanse migratieachtergrond | circa 65.000 | 2026 |
De groei zit niet in één categorie. Werkmigratie, kennismigratie en gezinsmigratie stijgen allemaal, en ook het aantal Amerikaanse asielaanvragen — historisch een zeldzaamheid — is toegenomen.
Waarom nu?
Voor een deel van de nieuwkomers is de politiek in eigen land de directe aanleiding. Het verhitte klimaat rond Donald Trump maakt volgens hen een normaal gesprek met vrienden of familie bijna onmogelijk. Voor anderen is het geen vlucht maar een rekensom: internet, zorgpremie, boodschappen en alcohol zijn in Nederland goedkoper dan waar ze vandaan komen, en zes weken vakantie per jaar bestaat in de VS simpelweg niet.
Daar komt de dagelijkse verwondering bij. Op Instagram en TikTok staat een compleet genre van Amerikaanse nieuwkomers die pannenkoeken, kwark, bakfietsen, Madurodam, kaaswinkels en de vrijdagmiddagborrel uitleggen aan het thuisfront. Een van hen verbaast zich er hardop over dat ze in Nederland bijna wekelijks een straatveger tegenkomt, terwijl ze er in Amerika nooit één zag — daar betaalde ze ook belasting, zegt ze, maar kreeg ze er weinig voor terug.
Waar de romantiek stopt
Het paradijsgevoel houdt niet oneindig stand. Vrijwel elke Amerikaanse nieuwkomer loopt vast op dezelfde vier obstakels:
- Bureaucratie. Een BSN aanvragen, een afspraak bij de gemeente en een bankrekening openen zonder BSN vormen een klassieke kip-eisituatie.
- De woningmarkt. Ook expats met een goed inkomen merken dat er in de Randstad simpelweg te weinig huurwoningen zijn, tegen prijzen die het kostenvoordeel deels opeten.
- Geen airco. Een Nederlandse zomer in een slecht geventileerd jarendertighuis is voor veel Amerikanen een cultuurschok op zich.
- De taal. Huddy spreekt goed Frans en Italiaans, maar noemt Nederlands echt lastig. Ze begint binnenkort aan een intensieve cursus, juist om niet weer zo’n Amerikaan te zijn die alleen Engels spreekt.
En dan is er nog het fenomeen waar nieuwkomers net zo hard over klagen als de gemiddelde Amsterdammer: de fatbike.
Wat het voor Nederland betekent
Met 27.500 Amerikaanse paspoorthouders op ruim 18 miljoen inwoners is dit geen migratiestroom die het land verandert. Maar de samenstelling is opvallend: relatief hoogopgeleide zelfstandigen en kennismigranten die zich vooral in Amsterdam, Den Haag, Utrecht en Rotterdam vestigen — precies de steden waar de druk op de woningmarkt het hoogst is.
Tegelijk laat de DAFT-golf iets zien over hoe Nederland van buitenaf wordt bekeken: als een land waar de basis werkt. Fietspaden, publieke voorzieningen, betaalbare zorg en een cultuur waarin vrije tijd geen luxe is. Dat het intern vaak anders voelt, is een verschil dat elke Amerikaan hier vroeg of laat opmerkt.
WASHINGTON (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De regering-Trump wordt geconfronteerd met nieuwe juridische procedures tegen de recentste reeks wereldwijde Amerikaanse importheffingen die deze week zijn ingegaan. Kleine bedrijven hebben twee rechtszaken aangespannen bij de Amerikaanse handelsrechtbank in New York.
Ze beschuldigen Trump ervan dat Sectie 301 van de handelswet uit 1974 onrechtmatig is ingezet om eerdere handelstarieven te vervangen die door het Amerikaanse Hooggerechtshof onwettig waren verklaard. Trump besloot na het oordeel van de hoogste rechters op basis van de wet uit 1974 snel met nieuwe heffingen te komen.
De Amerikaanse regering kondigde deze week aan dat de Verenigde Staten importheffingen van 10 tot 12,5 procent gaan innen op goederen van tientallen handelspartners, waaronder de Europese Unie. Regeringsfunctionarissen noemden als reden voor de nieuwe heffingen de vermeende lakse handhaving op verboden dwangarbeid.
NEW DELHI (ANP/AFP/RTR) - De Indiase onderwijsminister Dharmendra Pradhan stapt op na de aanhoudende demonstraties in het land, de grootste in jaren. De jonge betogers eisten onder meer zijn vertrek na een reeks onregelmatigheden bij belangrijke examens.
Hun woede ontstond na onder meer het uitlekken van een toelatingsexamen, waardoor miljoenen mensen de toets opnieuw moesten doen, en een storing in een onlinebeoordelingssysteem. De betogingen weerspiegelen ook de onvrede over werkloosheid, corruptie en het gebrek aan verantwoording door de overheid. Het nieuws over Pradhan werd onder betogers met gejuich ontvangen.
Duizenden jongeren hebben zich sinds juni aangesloten bij protesten van de kakkerlakkenbeweging (CJP). Die voerde deze week tweemaal overleg met de regering. Zaterdag is er een derde overleg. Volgens een woordvoerder van de CJP willen de betogers onder meer compensatie voor gedupeerden van de onregelmatigheden en willen zij dat alle juridische procedures tegen de betogers worden ingetrokken.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) heeft in 2025 een record aan crimineel vermogen in beslag genomen. Het gaat om 433 miljoen euro aan geld en goederen. Het is het vierde jaar op rij dat de cijfers zijn gestegen.
In 2024 ging het om bijna 410 miljoen euro, het jaar daarvoor ruim 360 miljoen euro. Het OM heeft voor 2,9 miljard aan afgepakte goederen en geld in beheer.
In totaal zijn in 2025 door het OM 3882 witwaszaken afgerond. In Nederland is dat jaar een bedrag van circa 18,3 miljoen euro aan cryptovaluta in beslag genomen. Een jaar daarvoor ging het om veel meer, 46,9 miljoen euro. Ook zijn er vele tientallen miljoenen aan cryptovaluta bevroren of in beslag genomen in het buitenland.
Het OM zegt zich meer te focussen op zaken waarbij de onder- en bovenwereld sterk met elkaar verweven zijn. Verder moet er volgens het OM meer informatie worden uitgewisseld tussen overheden, maar ook tussen overheid en private partijen.
Today's links
- Apple's robo-repo: Privatizing the risk premium, socializing its costs.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Printed batteries; Monopoly credit cards; Mapping airport power outlets; EMI loves pirates; Mexican indigenous phone co-op; Sewer cover textiles; Surge pricing v antitrust; Carbon offsets v forest fires; Charter schools as money laundries.
- Upcoming appearances: Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
Apple's robo-repo (permalink)
It may strike you as weird, but lenders love to lend money to poor people who will have trouble paying back their loans. Obviously, lenders want to be repaid, and obviously the more money you have, the easier it is to settle your debts, but (paradoxically) that means that if you have a lot of money, you expect to pay less to borrow.
In other words: because poor people have a higher likelihood of defaulting, their loans come with higher interest rates and worse terms. Debt is steeply regressive: the less money you have, the more you're expected to pay. The industry term for this is the "risk premium": the riskier a loan is, the more it costs the borrower.
Lenders are always seeking the highest possible return on their loan-books, which makes that "risk premium" awfully tempting. Why loan $1m to Elon Musk at 0.5% interest when you can make 10,000 $100 payday loans to non-union Tesla workers on food stamps at 1,000% interest?
Obviously, the fly in the ointment here is the risK in "risk premium." The reason the risk premium exists is that poor borrowers have a harder time paying their loans. That can be good, up to a point: if you're Klarna and you're originating loans to people Chipotle lunches on the installment plan, you want your borrowers to miss several payments. Klarna loans are free if you pay them back on time, but if you miss a payment, you're hit with a huge penalty charge and sky-high interest (on top of the principle and the penalty). On a small purchase, penalties and interest can quickly add up to a triple-digit APR.
That's where Klarna makes its money: people who miss their burrito installment payments. However: if a Klarna borrower goes bankrupt before they've repaid the principle, Klarna loses money. A successful loan-book of unsecured burrito mortgages depends on the existence of many missed payments and few defaults.
"Financial innovation" is often just a project to decrease the risk in risky loans, but without decreasing the risk premium you get paid for issuing those loans. It's a way to eat your cake and have it too: even though you've reduced the likelihood that you'll have to write off your loan, you still charge the borrower as though that risk is unchanged. As with so many aspect of finance, "innovation in lending" is a way to shift value from the financial industry's customers to itself.
Remember the subprime crisis? The whole point of collateralized debt obligations and swaps was to offer loans to people with bad credit – even loans they obviously couldn't pay back – without incurring a default risk. Subprime mortgages supercharged the practice of loan origination and resale (where a bank offers you a loan and then sells that loan to someone else, so your default becomes their problem) by splitting the loans into pieces. These pieces were recombined according to complex mathematical formulas that supposedly "proved" that the default risk from poor borrowers had been "offset" by combining them with other borrowers' loans and wrapping them in opaque insurance contracts.
Those subprime mortgages came with cheap "teaser rates" – the interest rate you paid over the first couple years – but then the interest payments "ballooned" to farcical sums that borrowers had no hope of repaying. Those farcical sums were the risk premium. When financier transmuted these high-risk 30-year mortgages into complex derivatives, they were effectively promising their customers a piece of that risk premium for 28 out of the 30 years that the mortgage ran for.
But it wasn't all financial engineering: subprime mortgage salesmen could also promise customers that they wouldn't lose everything even after a wave of borrower bankruptcies and defaults. That's because mortgages are secured: they are backed by deeds for the homes the borrowers own(ed). If a borrower goes bust, the lender can repossess their house or apartment and sell it to recover the loan amount.
Now, the finance sector did repossess a fuckton of houses after the crash. Foreclosure and eviction became official policy: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Obama that a wave of foreclosures was necessary to "foam the runways" for the banks, so Obama encouraged banks to foreclose on their loans, rather than restructuring them so that Americans could keep their homes:
But even with these foreclosures, lenders and their customers lost hundreds of billions on the subprime crisis. That's because all that subprime lending pushed the price of houses up and up and up, so when the market collapsed, those mortgages were "underwater" – the money from selling the foreclosed homes didn't cover their outstanding loans.
Collateralization – backing loans with legally binding promises to surrender some asset if you default – is a way to reduce risk, but it can't eliminate it. Assets degrade: houses burn, cars get totaled, jewelry is stolen. Assets also devalue: a loan backed by bitcoin at $111,000 on the eve of Trump's election will be underwater today with bitcoin at $64,000. This devaluation can also occur when your house's value plummets because Elon Musk repeatedly bombs your neighborhood with flaming rocket debris, or when your Tesla's resale value collapses after Musk throws a string of Seig Heils on national television.
The point being that risk mitigation is never risk elimination, but markets have a hard time distinguishing between the two. Partly that's because of risk shifting. A lender who can "securitize" their loans (turn them into bonds and sell them off to investors) can insulate themselves from risk, because the people who buy the bonds are now carrying that risk.
So many of our crises come from the intersection of these two phenomena: the promise of reducing loan risks without losing the risk premium and the fact that risk reduction can fail suddenly (or be revealed as nothing more than risk-shifting). The first phenomenon creates vast credit bubbles, the second one pops them.
This leaves would-be usurers on an endless quest for new ways to lend money at a premium to poor people while reducing their own risk. You don't need technology to do this – all you need is a captive audience of broke people whom other lenders won't touch.
When the US government adopted the racist practice of "redlining" (denying government-backed loans to Black borrowers), they created a market for predatory pseudo-mortgages called "contract buying." Contract buying is like a mortgage, but without the equity: miss a payment and you get evicted, and you aren't entitled to any of the sale price of the house, even if it was 99.99% paid off when you got kicked out.
Lenders can tip the scales in their favor by making up arbitrary junk fees, and a smart lender waits until the house is almost paid off before whacking the borrower with a ton of these fees. The borrower misses a payment, the seller repossesses the house and sells it again:
Contract lending never went away. Wherever you find a desperate, disfavored group who are locked out of the credit system, you'll find scumbag contract lenders running this scam. Take long-haul truckers, among the most exploited workforce in America. Long before Uber made worker misclassification (treating an employee as an independent contractor) mainstream, the trucking industry was effectively indenturing truckers, exerting more control over their lives than a boss could ever impose on a waged worker, while disclaiming any employer-related responsibilities. Truckers don't get health insurance or sick leave – and they don't get paid if they have to sit at a port for 20 hours waiting to pick up a load.
But the exploitation of truckers doesn't stop with mere wage theft. Truckers also "contract buy" their trucks. Their bosses issue loans that let drivers buy their trucks on terms that allow the company to repo the truck after a single missed payment. And of course, bosses have total control over truckers' wages, so a canny boss can wait until a truck is nearly paid off and then stop the driver's wages, forcing them to miss a payment and lose their truck, which can be sold on to the next victim:
Subprime auto-loans bring this same profitable arrangement to regular drivers who just need a car to commute, pick up groceries, and shuttle the kids to and from school. A subprime auto-loan often contains the "teaser" and "balloon" rates at the heart of the subprime mortgage bubble: for the first year or two, your car payments are affordable, but then they shoot up to a sum that you can't possibly pay. The lender then repossesses your car, zeroing out your equity, and sells it to another victim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s
But the subprime car industry puts a decidedly modern spin on the contract lending scam that has been used to profitably rob so many Black home borrowers and long-haul truckers. Subprime lending's risk-reduction relies on repossession. A subprime car lender doesn't just get rich by charging poor borrowers more money that rich borrowers for shittier, older cars. Subprime car dealers repeatedly "sell" that car to many, many poor people, on conditions that all but guarantee that the borrower will default on their loan and lose their car.
This is where tech comes in. Ubiquitous digital networks and computing make it much easier to repo a car. This started with the humble lo-jack, a simple tracker marketed as a way to locate lost or stolen cars. Subprime auto-lenders were early and aggressive lo-jack adopters, because you can't repo a car if you don't know where it is. Installing a lo-jack is much cheaper than paying repo men to drive around looking for the cars you want to claw back, which means that you can sell cars to people who represent worse credit risks, charging a higher risk premium, and still find the car when those high interest rates force your borrower into default.
The next wave of automotive usury-tech was a kind of systematic exploration of the entire space between a car that is repossessed and a car that isn't. Some subprime cars are fitted with an extra stereo system that can only be controlled by the borrower over a wireless connection. Miss a payment and this secondary stereo turns itself on and starts playing earsplitting threats about what will happen to you if you don't pay up. The only way to turn it off is to make the payment. The next step is remote immobilization: miss too many payments (or violate a lease clause by crossing the county line) and your car just stops working:
But the apex of this usury-tech comes from (where else?) Tesla. Miss a Tesla payment and your car can do way more than just immobilize itself and tell the dealer where to get the car – it also unlock its doors, flash its lights, honk its horn, and back out of its parking space when the repo man arrives:
The cheaper the repo, the riskier the loan can be; the riskier the loan, the higher the risk premium. Digital tech makes repo much cheaper, so wherever you find digital tech, you find digital arm-breakers coming up with ways to robo-repo the things you buy.
There's India's subprime phone lenders, who pre-install usury-tech on their phones. This is a tool that spies on the phone's owner, building a dossier of the owner's most frequently used apps. When the owner misses a payment, the phone starts disabling the user's favorite apps, working its way up the list to the most indispensable ones:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers
It's the digital version of the mob loan-shark who breaks a finger, then your hand, then your arm. The more graduated the threat matrix is, the more payments you can capture. A borrower with a broken finger can get to a pawn-broker to sell their wedding-ring; a borrower with two broken legs has a much harder time.
Digital arm-breakers aren't an epiphenomenon of digitization alone. Usury tech only works if the device's owner can't disable it. Remember: a computer is flexible. The only computer we know how to make is the "Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine," defined as a device that can compute ever valid program. If your phone is running a program that disables your apps, then you can install another program that disables that program. Same goes for your car's lo-jack; the stereo system emitting ear-splitting complaints about your car note; and the immobilizer hooked up to your ignition.
That's where the law comes in. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to produce a tool that bypasses an "access control." That means that if a computer is designed to block you from modifying it, removing that block is a felony, punishable by five years in prison and a $500k fine. DMCA 1201 doesn't distinguish between modifications undertaken for a lawful purpose (changing your printer so it works with generic ink) and unlawful purpose (breaking the locks on a DVD so you can sell infringing copies). DMCA 1201 criminalizes anything the manufacturer dislikes. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model."
DMCA 1201 is the reason you can't neutralize the digital arm-breakers by deleting or blocking the usury-tech in your car, phone or other device:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
Here's where it gets interesting. Apologists for DMCA 1201 insist that the law is necessary, because it lets device makers lock malicious parties out of your devices. Apple leads the pack here: they use DMCA 1201 to block independent repair of their devices, insisting that this isn't done to extort high fees from you or to force you to throw away and replace last year's iPhone after you drop it. No, Apple does this to protect you – from unscrupulous repairers who might install malware on your phone:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently
And Apple says the reason it blocks you from installing apps without using its App Store is to protect you from malicious apps – not to control the app marketplace, where it makes $100b/year on payment processing junk-fees, siphoning off 30% of every dollar you spend in an app:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup
Apple's greatest accomplishment isn't technological, it's psychological. Apple managed to convince millions of people that buying products from a multi-trillion dollar corporation with close ties to both Trump and Xi makes them members of an oppressed religious minority, and those members of the "cult of Mac" tie themselves into knots insisting that Apple would only ever use its powers for good:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones
But moral behavior doesn't consist solely of resisting the temptation to do bad things – to be truly moral, you must not put yourself in temptation's path in the first place. Morality isn't the strength to resist the siren's song – it's the humility to recognize your own weakness and tie yourself to the mast:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped
By giving itself a veto over its customers' choices, Apple deliberately sailed into siren-infested waters, after first putting a gun on every mantelpiece it could find. Now the company is drowning in sin, while spraying gunfire in every direction.
Today, the company is getting into the leasing business. Having monopolized its markets and eliminated the possibility of growth by making and selling things, the company is becoming a lender. As a lender, Apple wants to maximize the risk premiums it can charge, while minimizing its actual risk. That's why the new version of iOS – the operating system for iPhones and iPads – comes with software that lets lenders brick your device if you miss a payment:
The code steals a trick from India's subprime phone lenders, giving Apple the ability to "restrict apps and services when payments are missed." It hooks into a "Partner Finance Lock," which allows Apple to sell devices to third-party userers who want to get into the subprime game, promising those customers all the imaginative flexibility a digital arm-breaker could dream of.
This was always the trajectory of Apple's decision to sell you a computer that takes orders from its manufacturer, rather than its owner. Apple didn't invent the subprime gadget. It also didn't invent the GUI, the MP3 player or the smartphone. Rather, Apple took those gadgets mainstream – just as it will do with subprime gadgets. Just in time for the affordability crisis, the oil shock, the climate shock, the AI collapse and the tariff shock, the age of the digital arm-breaker has well and truly arrived:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/29/boobytrap/#device-lock-controller
Hey look at this (permalink)
- Public opinion on abortion has shifted 4 years after Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade https://theconversation.com/public-opinion-on-abortion-has-shifted-4-years-after-dobbs-decision-overturned-roe-v-wade-285668
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Reading “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” https://www.not-so-obvious.net/reading-do-artifacts-have-politics/
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Google hit with $1 billion fine for breaking EU antitrust rules https://www.theverge.com/tech/943866/google-alphabet-eu-dma-fine-search-services-play-store-steering
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Why Paramount Should Be Worried https://prospect.org/2026/07/22/why-paramount-should-be-worried-warner-bros-merger-ellison/
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The Plain Language Guide to Digital Privacy https://shannonguides.com/dl/167c8da8a0ab/digital-privacy.pdf
Object permanence (permalink)
#25yrsago Shapeable printed batteries https://web.archive.org/web/20011102112023/https://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991069
#20yrsago Monopoly replaces play-money with fake credit-cards https://web.archive.org/web/20070220050926/http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1228653,00.html
#20yrsago HOWTO build a fax out of salmon tins https://web.archive.org/web/20060828010312/https://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/07/25/build-a-rather-bad-salmon-can-fax-machine/
#20yrsago Power outlets in airports wiki https://web.archive.org/web/20060807061721/http://wiki.jeffsandquist.com/default.aspx/AirPower/AirPower
#20yrsago How iTunes is bad for the music industry and the public https://web.archive.org/web/20060813140818/http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191000408
#15yrsago Ousted EMI boss: pirates are our best customers, suing is bad for business https://torrentfreak.com/former-google-cio-limewire-pirates-were-itunes-best-customers-110726/
#15yrsago Patent trolls and shakedowns: Intellectual Ventures and the “little guy” https://web.archive.org/web/20160810163346/https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/07/26/138576167/when-patents-attack
#10yrsago Textiles printed directly from sewer covers https://raubdruckerin.de/
#10yrsago Mexican indigenous groups form co-op phone company to serve 356 municipalities https://globalvoices.org/2016/07/26/so-long-phone-companies-mexicos-indigenous-groups-are-getting-their-own-telecoms/
#5yrsago Surge pricing violates antitrust law https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#pure-transfer
#5yrsago Oregon's carbon offsets go up in smoke https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#murder-offsets
#5yrsago Charter schools are money laundries https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#ed-bezzle
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Virtual: EFFecting Change: Who the Machine Serves, Aug 12
https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-who-machine-serves -
Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales -
Sydney: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Aug 23-24
https://festivalofdangerousideas.com/program/ -
Melbourne: Enshittification at the Wheeler Centre, Aug 25
https://www.wheelercentre.com/events-tickets/season-2026/cory-doctorow-enshittification -
Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/ -
London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn -
South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- Will AI ever come alive, and what happens if it does? (BBC News)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzk4o3fPZZE -
Waarom jij straks het hulpje van AI bent (VPRO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOnvR2fs8CA -
Talk Tech Bock (Vera Linß)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PFjGvQoBgc -
How To Think About AI Before It’s Too Late (This Is Hell)
https://thisishell.com/episodes/1919 -
AI Won't Replace You… But This Might (Deep Focus)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oorWq_m48AQ
Latest books (permalink)
- "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/ -
"Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
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"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ -
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
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"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
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"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
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"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
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"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
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"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Upcoming books (permalink)
- "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
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"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
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"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
- A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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OPINION Linux now being officially not anti-AI might be good news for projects that are explicitly anti-AI, but we foresee problems with conflict over where the money and development effort come from. A couple of weeks ago, reluctant geek superstar Linus Torvalds declared that Linux is not an anti-AI project. The pro-AI folks are jubilant, and they are especially loud on the internet. (They're probably using bots to write their posts.) However, Torvalds inadvertently issued a rallying cry for the people and projects that are anti-AI. The anti-bot resistance is growing. European volunteer-run code forge Codeberg has changed its Terms of Use to ban projects that "mostly consist of code written by 'generative AI' tools," as well as projects involving cryptocurrencies. Some have questioned the connection, but as Pivot to AI notes right in its name, many former blockchain maximalists switched to promoting LLMs instead after the 2022 "crypto winter." This is just one sign that despite the legions of AI advocates, there is also a growing contingent strongly opposed to AI and its use. As Futurism reported back in March, Fewer Americans Like AI Than ICE. Torvalds' position is pragmatic: his interest is in whether it works or not. That is not the only question. There are other important debates about the legitimacy of the vast data harvesting to build the LLMs; about the environmental costs, not merely of their use, but just as importantly, of their training; about how frequent LLM use impacts their human users; and about LLMs' effects on the job market, and the wider economy. Many of these debates come down to questions about the ethics of AI use. A lot of people in the software world are not accustomed to thinking about the ethical consequences of what they do and how they do it. One result is profound and passionate disagreements – and that could defeat the entire anti-AI cause. Anti-AI FOSS OSes We've seen some superb responses to Torvalds' ex cathedra… well, we'd call it some kind of bull, but that seems unfair: even the Pope has serious misgivings about AI. Long-term observer and reporter on the world of system software OSnews summarized its take: "Asbestos is a tool, just like any other." On social media, one of the more on-target responses we saw was an enjoyably ranty thread by a Fediverse member with the wonderful username of [object Object] (see Bootnote). Among other comments, this one from R. L. Dane gave us a laugh: "Lemme see if I can wrap my brain around 2026 now… Linux is Windows, Windows is Facebook, Facebook is Palantir, and Palantir is basically the devil. Oh, and now BSD is Linux. 😁 🖖🏼 Carry on." The mention of BSD is because NetBSD has treated LLM-generated code as presumptively tainted since 2024. OpenBSD's project lead says that since LLM code can't be copyrighted, it can't be contributed – but as we noted when looking at OpenBSD 7.9, it does grandfather in other projects, such as tmux, which do accept LLM-assisted contributions. A year after NetBSD set its guidelines, FreeBSD was still considering the issue. There is already a list of Linux distros with no systemd, of course, but we feel that there are plenty more things that Linux distributions could do to move in an anti-corporate direction – indeed, we added our own speculations in the thread. There's one obvious place to start. Several of the larger and more controversial projects in the FOSS OS world – systemd, GNOME, Wayland, Flatpak, and more – have received substantial development work and backing from the corporate big daddy of Linux: IBM subsidiary Red Hat. After acquiring Red Hat in 2019, IBM is still slowly absorbing the smaller company. In 2025, the back office was subsumed. A Reddit post says that from the first of October, the company will move Red Hat IT to the parent company. As we reported back in March, Red Hat management has drunk the AI Kool-Aid: it is safe to predict that while the volume of its software output may increase, the quality might not. We happened to come across a review of a "nonconformist" sort of Linux distro while we were researching this article: Vendefoul Wolf Linux. It's based on Devuan, the systemd-free fork of Debian, but it also uses the Xlibre project's X11 server. Alongside some well-known desktops, Vendefoul also offers some less well-known ones, of which three are KDE forks. The oldest is the Trinity Desktop Environment, which we last looked at in May 2025, and the newest is the Sonic Desktop, which we mentioned earlier this month. Sonic is a fork of KDE Plasma that aims to retain X11 compatibility. This is about to become much more important, when the Wayland-only Plasma 6.8 arrives. In addition, Vendefoul Wolf adds another KDE fork: the Katana Desktop Environment, a fork of KDE 4. The most recent update was Katana 4.23, back in September 2023. Vendefoul Wolf's reviews on Distrowatch are patchy. We are not recommending it here – we haven't tried it – but it may turn out to be one of a new trend. Anti-AI web browsers To what we suspect will be the rapidly diversifying field of AI-free Linux and BSD variants, the FOSS world also has to consider what to do about web browsers. As we have been reporting for over a year, Mozilla keeps adding LLM-based functions to Firefox. In response to user unhappiness, rather than stopping the process, or offering an LLM-free edition, Mozilla just let you turn the functions off. Over on Mastodon, Sarah Jamie Lewis, Executive Director of the Open Privacy Research Society, has called for collaboration between Firefox forks. She estimates that there are some 136,000 lines of code in Firefox that "only exist to power the built-in LLM/chat/local AI stuff." She has created a Base Browser Project repository, and among others, a preliminary list of features to remove. She acknowledges that it's a huge task, but necessary. The main potential alternative, the reborn Servo engine, is getting there, but has a long way to go. The main other candidate program, Ladybird, has recently turned to AI coding. Although some forks, like the Zen browser we looked at in 2024, and the Japanese-led Floorp browser, focus on user interface innovation, most Firefox forks are more about privacy. The Waterfox fork started out as a 64-bit Firefox before Mozilla offered that. The project started out by optimizing for performance rather than privacy, but it also disables Mozilla's telemetry – which happened to make it immune to the Foxstuck bug in 2022. It's also explicitly AI-free. One of the other significant Firefox forks is Librewolf, which in its own words is "focused on privacy, security, and freedom." So far, so good. It gets trickier when the net is widened a little further: the Tor Browser is even more privacy-centric, aimed at use on the anonymous Tor Network. It has a close sibling, the Mullvad Browser, which is co-developed by the Tor Project and the eponymous VPN vendor. The Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser are both Firefox forks with significant Mozilla code meticulously excised. They, and Librewolf, are highly relevant to developing a Mozilla-free core browser. But as we covered recently, some people are rapidly going off Mullvad since the news broke that its co-owner had donated millions to an anti-immigration populist political party. This poses another ethical question: if you want an AI-free, telemetry-free, open source fork of Firefox, is it acceptable to use code developed by a company co-owned by someone who funds politics you oppose? Does it change things if it doesn't mean cooperating with that company, as the work has already been done? Anti-AI in general There is a growing movement calling for non-AI software. Back in January, we reported on the fall and rise of the OpenSlopware list. One offshoot of that is even more to the point: The No-AI list. It is far from confined to software. It extends to other disciplines and areas as well. There are rallying cries such as Stop Gen AI, which offers "Mutual Aid and Political Activism." There is a growing problem of unwanted AI advocacy in life in general, as AI and that Guy at the bar explains. (We especially recommend the four links under "what it's doing to people.") It's even a problem in creative writing groups, as the Colonization of Confidence describes. In business, the problem is worse, as AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making recounts. The spanner in the anti-AI machine The movement toward AI-free software, though, faces a serious and little-considered problem, which Vendefoul inadvertently exemplifies. A counter-example here is Codeberg again, in its statement "We stay strong against hate and hatred." This opens by saying "Codeberg is currently suffering from hate campaigns due to far-right forces, and so are our users." The key phrase here is "far-right forces." There are some whose politics lead them to interpret free and open source software as being communist, or at least profoundly left-wing. That too is correlated with Codeberg's decision not to accept cryptocurrency-related software: cryptocurrencies are widely liked in libertarian and alt-right circles. (One of the most original and innovative OS development projects of the 21st century so far was Urbit, but it is closely entwined with cryptocurrencies. Urbit's original creator, Curtis Yarvin, has reportedly espoused some extreme beliefs; The Nation called him The Reactionary Prophet of Silicon Valley.) Privacy and cryptocurrencies are inextricably part of the same issue as presented by the Mullvad political donations controversy. Mullvad makes money selling VPN services. As its pricing page says: "We accept cash, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, bank wire, credit card, PayPal, Swish, Eps transfer, Bancontact, iDEAL | Wero, and Przelewy24." Desire for strong privacy, VPNs, and cryptocurrencies are overlapping concerns – and this especially applies to people on the political right. Accepting payment in cryptocurrencies is a big hint towards the political leanings of a company's owners. Mullvad's co-owner supports anti-immigration politics. The Xlibre project is explicitly anti-DEI, and members have publicly stated views critical of transgender people. Similar issues have affected the Hyprland project, as have the views of Ruby-on-Rails developer David Heinemeier Hansson; The Register discussed these projects' endorsement from Framework last year. As we repported earlier that year, the price of software freedom is eternal politics. It's an overly simplistic way to reduce a complex and nuanced situation, but one way to consider this is in terms of pro-AI and anti-AI, versus "woke" and "anti-woke." It's not as simple as there being rival camps: individuals, and individual FOSS projects, can find themselves on one side of one argument, but the opposite side of the other argument. What it will come down to is whether the anti-AI groups in FOSS can work together and help each other to hold off the vast and commercially backed pressure from LLM-assisted and LLM-generated code, even though they may find themselves bitterly opposed in terms of politics and ethics. Bootnote Setting your username to [object Object] is a joke because this is what JavaScript commonly produces when software tries to turn an object into a string. The gag dates back to at least this 2019 post from I Am Devloper, and later appeared on Reddit's /r/ProgrammerHumor. Most social networks are powered by JavaScript. The idea is that by setting your username to something that simulates a worrying JavaScript bug, you are likely to give someone somewhere a very bad day. ®
Stage 20 runs for brutal 170.9km and concludes at Ale d’Huez
Share your thoughts with Tom via email
156km to go My inbox is open for your emails today. I had a lot of incredible submissions when I tried this earlier this week, so let’s go for it again: send me your favourite Tour de France memories. I’d love to hear your stories of watching either on the side of the road, mountain or on your sofa, just a meaningful moment. The email is in the link at the top of the page.
157km to go Barguil and Steinhauser have pulled clear, but Abrahmsen is on their tail. The peloton is not far back, just 33secs. The riders are on the first of four categorised climbs today, this is one of three hors category mountains in today’s road book. The Col de la Croix de Fer is 24km at an average of 5.2%, but much of it steeper than that. It looks bloody tough.
Continue reading...No press briefing has been held for months, as the defence department belatedly or inaccurately releases figures
The Pentagon is taking a “shameful approach” to releasing information about US casualties in the Iran war, Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director, has told the Guardian.
The defence department has not held a press briefing for two-and-a-half months. Officials have faced accusations that they are engaged in a cover-up designed to hide the true cost of Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran, fearing a public backlash before November’s midterm elections.
Continue reading...
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that spoke in tongues, sought forbidden love, orbited an orbiter, and performed ritual magic.
First, scientists have uncovered a “golden age” of languages that flourished for millennia before fading into our dark age of linguistic extinction. Then, Alan Turing’s erotica, the search for the first exomoon, and the cave of the Old Ancestors.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
The silence of long-lost languages
Blasi, Damián et al. The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene. Science.
Some 3,000 years ago, a “golden age” of languages dawned around the world, resulting in the proliferation of tens of thousands of tongues over the next 2,000 years. But over the past millennia, we have entered a dark age of linguistic diversity, driven by the rise of “behemoth languages” that have pushed others into extinction.
That’s the conclusion of a new study that reconstructed humanity’s linguistic diversity since the dawn of agriculture, which emerged about 12,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age.
The global human population before agriculture is estimated to have been between 4.4 and seven million people. Modern hunter-gatherer societies can act as rough proxies for the likely distribution, sizes, and linguistic diversity of these preagricultural populations. With that in mind, researchers led by Damián Blasi of Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona developed a model based on 171 hunter-gatherer groups, which suggested that humans spoke about 4,500 to 6,000 languages before the dawn of agriculture. That’s fewer than the 7,500 that are spoken today, but still a lot considering how few people there were on Earth at the time.
The team then ran thousands of models predicting how languages diversified and evolved as humans adopted plant and animal domestication, a process that radically increased populations and complexified cultures. The predictions converged around a scenario in which linguistic diversity peaked around 2,000 years ago with possibly as many 75,000 tongues spoken worldwide.
“We uncovered a linguistic ‘golden age’ with tens of thousands of languages 3,000 to 1,000 years ago,” Blasi’s team said in the study.”In our model, this “golden age” was followed by an extremely rapid decrease in linguistic diversity, especially over the last two millennia.”
The spread of colonialism over the past 500 years has accelerated language loss due to the ascent of behemoth languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Hindi. But the new study suggests that linguistic diversity was already in decline starting at least 1,000 years ago due to the formation of smaller-scale multinational empires. Sadly, this trend of linguistic impoverishment has far-reaching consequences beyond language itself.
“Languages (and their histories) are regularly utilized as proxies for other units of culture because language is often transmitted and acquired along with other cultural traits, including marriage patterns, religious practices, kinship systems, or modes of social organization,” the team concluded. “Therefore, cultural variants with transmission dynamics similar to those of languages have also undergone a recent mass extinction.”
In other news…
The unfinished work of Alan Turing
Alan Turing, the famed British mathematician who helped break the Nazi enigma code, packed a mind-boggling list of accomplishments into his short life. A foundational figure in the fields of computer science and artificial intelligence, Turing died at just 41 of cyanide poisoning in the wake of horrific persecution from the British government for what was then the crime of being a gay man.
In his spare time from dramatically changing the course of history, Turing also tried his hand at writing fiction, according to a new study about his erotic short story “Pryce’s Buoy.” The draft is an autofictional account of Turing’s affair with his young lover Arnold Murray, a relationship that ultimately forced Turing to endure a sentence of chemical castration to avoid prison in the 1950s.
The draft is cut short before any sexual encounter between the characters—perhaps because Turing’s family censored it, or perhaps because Turing left it unfinished—though the tale is very clearly headed to the bedroom. Sarah Dillon of the University of Cambridge revisits the story in a new study that contextualizes it in the final years of Turing's life and links it directly to the works of gay writer Sir Angus Wilson by revealing that Turing copied many of Wilson’s stylistic choices.
“Wilson braved…dangers—he did not hide his homosexuality, and he did publish his work,” said Dillon in the study. “Turing did not hide his sexuality either, and although he did not publish his story, we cannot say whether this was through choice or because of the abrupt end to his life in June 1954.”
Turing’s life story is heartbreaking, but Dillon emphasized that “Pryce’s Buoy” is an expression of his playful, cheeky side, which persisted even in the midst of the immense injustice to which he was subjected.
That’s no moon—it’s an exosatellite
Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets, which are worlds that orbit other stars, but nobody has clearly spotted an “exomoon” orbiting one of these exoplanets. Now, a team reports the discovery of a Jupiter-sized world that is orbiting a massive object called a brown dwarf that is, in turn, orbiting a star called CD-35 2722, which is about 73 light years from Earth.
This might be the first known exomoon, but the system is so weird and novel that researchers aren’t quite sure that’s the right term. Brown dwarfs are sometimes called “failed stars” because they are about as big as a gas planet can get without igniting nuclear fusion in their cores and transforming into stars. Moons orbit planets, and brown dwarfs are somewhere in between a planet and a star, so the team went with the term “exosatellite.”
“Exoplanet satellites can be easily described as exomoons, but it is not clear if satellites of brown dwarf companions can be called the same, as the term lacks a formal definition,” said researchers led by Kevin Hoy of Diego Portales University. “Perhaps we are approaching the limit of language invented to describe the Solar System, which is entirely unlike CD-35 2722.”
This is why you should always bring a poet! Whether or not the giant exosatellite gets minted as the first exomoon, the discovery is an exciting example of how diverse star systems are increasingly coming into focus.
The cave of the Old Ancestors
For at least 25,000 years, the “Old Ancestors” of Aboriginal Australians gathered to burn grass and perform magic rituals within Cloggs Cave, a cavernous site several hundred miles east of Melbourne.
While the immense significance of the cave is well-known to the GunaiKurnai people of the region, as well as to generations of archaeologists, a new study has confirmed the deep roots of the site as a ritual setting for the Old Ancestors. Researchers led by Elle Grono of the Australian National University unearthed layers of “phytoliths,” which are mineral structures found in plant cells, to corroborate that the cave has been a site of magic and healing for 25,000 years.
“Taken together, the archaeological features and multiple lines of archaeobotanical evidence at Cloggs Cave corroborates traditional GunaiKurnai knowledge and nineteenth century ethnography of ritual practices involving the use of plant resources, indicating that the cave was a special, secluded place used by mulla-mullung, powerful learned men and women, for the practice of magic, healing, cursing and spiritual practices,” said the team in their new study.
In our disorienting time of ephemeral reels and shortened attention spans, there’s inspiration in the incredible continuity of this storied cave, which has witnessed thousands of generations seeking solace in its confines.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.