Itkovian

Riding the wave

[Paddy Power @paddypower]

Mikel Arteta and Diego Simeone shaking their heads in disgust watching this match

[Goode Foods @goodefoodsfam]

Unfortunately, they don’t want you to know about this…

[Itkovian @deji_imode]

This guy dey reason

[Itkovian @deji_imode]

@Prodr3amer Nah fr. What really happened? 👀

[Itkovian @deji_imode]

Necropolitics

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

The hardest thing to explain to someone inside the imperial consensus is the concept of structural violence.

They understand individual violence.

One person harms another person.

There is a perpetrator and a victim and a clear causal chain.

What they cannot see, what the entire educational and media apparatus has been carefully designed to prevent them from seeing, is the violence that happens when a system is arranged so that certain people predictably die, predictably suffer, predictably lose, not because any individual decided to harm them specifically but because the overall arrangement of power requires their subordination.

The people of the Global South do not die of poverty because individual Americans wish them dead.

They die because the international economic architecture, the terms of trade, the debt structures, the conditions attached to IMF loans, the intellectual property regimes that prevent technology transfer, the agricultural subsidies that undercut developing world farmers, is arranged, in aggregate, in a way that concentrates wealth in already wealthy countries and extracts it from already poor ones.

And that architecture was designed.

It was negotiated.

It was implemented by specific people in specific rooms making specific decisions about who would benefit and who would not.

This is violence.

It does not look like violence because no one is pulling a trigger.

But the deaths it produces are just as dead.

And when you try to explain this to someone whose entire identity rests on the belief that what they have they earned, and what others lack they failed to achieve, you are not making a political argument.

You are dismantling the story that makes their life make sense.

They will not thank you for it.

They will defend against it with everything they have.

Because the alternative, accepting that their comfort is downstream of other people's dispossession, is not a policy position.

It is an identity catastrophe.

[dafe. @ProbablyDafe]

Picture this.

You are 23 with a 9-5 earning 200k every month. All your friends from Uni and Secondary School never have to japa. Afrobeats Festival in grassy Taraba state. Last year was Enugu. 15 friends. Train ticket is 2k per person. Ticket to the show is 5k.

[oog @oog84__]

papa come home from hunt. empty hand.

bad hunt. no meat. nothing.

papa sit by fire. say nothing. face heavy.

mama not ask what happen. mama not say "it okay." mama just put warm root soup in front of papa. sit next to him. close. shoulder touching shoulder.

whole cave quiet.

then mama say: "remember first hunt after we met? you come home with one skinny rabbit. smallest rabbit in whole forest. you hold it up like you kill great beast."

papa: "...was not THAT small."

mama: "hmmmm... koom bigger than that rabbit."

papa mouth twitch. fighting it. fighting the smile.

lose.

small laugh. tired laugh. but real.

mama not fix the empty hand. mama not make meat appear. mama just go back far enough in the story to find a version of papa who still believe in himself. and she bring that version forward. sit him right next to the tired one.

oog watching from dark corner of cave. taking note.

THAT what partner do. not fix the bad day. just refuse to let the bad day be the whole story.

love, oog

[We$t @flygodT]

Idk man, y’all can decide if they are

[Solá: The Energy @soladaloris]

Alté saved Afrobeats

[David Hundeyin @DavidHundeyin]

When my people eventually die of their foolishness, I will definitely die with them. Even if I wasn't foolish and I don't deserve it.

Damn.

[Valerie Okeke @Valerie_okeke]

Once you get into Nollywood, you’ll find out quickly why the marketers used to end their movies with “To God be the Glory”.

[Players' Tribune Football @TPTFootball]

Romelu Lukaku: "I played with so much anger, because of a lot of things … because of the rats running around in our apartment … because I couldn’t watch the Champions League … because of how the other parents used to look at me.

I was on a mission.

When I was 12, I scored 76 goals in 34 games.

I scored them all wearing my dad’s shoes. Once our feet got to be the same size, we used to share.

One day I called up my grandfather — my mum’s dad. He was one of the most important people in my life. He was my connection back to Congo, where my mum and dad are from. So I was on the phone with him one day, and I said, “Yeah, I’m doing really well. I scored 76 goals, and we won the league. The big teams are noticing me.”

And usually, he always wanted to hear about my football. But this time it was strange. He said, “Yeah, Rom. Yeah, that’s great. But can you do me a favor?”

I said, “Yeah, what is it?”

He said, “Can you look after my daughter, please?”

I remember being so confused. Like, what’s Grandad on about?

I said, “Mum? Yeah, we’re cool. We’re O.K.”

He said, “No, promise me. Can you promise me? Just look after my daughter. Just look after her for me, O.K.?”

I said, “Yeah, Granddad. I got it. I promise you.”

Five days later he passed away. And then I understood what he really meant.

It makes me so sad to think about, because I just wish that he could have lived another four years to see me play for Anderlecht. To see that I kept my promise, you know? To see that everything was going to be O.K.

I told my mum that I would make it at 16.

I was late by 11 days."

[Itkovian @deji_imode]

@grok has my visibility been reduced? If so, why?

[Kate Okorie 🔰 @ginika___]

@ImadeIyamu “But at some point, the bankruptcy of a corrupt system overwhelms you.”

[dezza ♊️ @misanthropicc92]

Yeah Afro-pessimists might have a small small point lol. Say no more man.

[Itkovian @deji_imode]

@_chrismane_ Bruno jare

[Lauren Wilford @lauren_wilford]

I cannot overstate the value of reading books written by people who have READ A LOT OF BOOKS. Reading one book of dense cultural criticism/history by a highly literate person who is constantly citing sources is almost like reading 100 books. It opens previously locked worlds

[Itkovian @deji_imode]

@the888pnl @Ol0ye Nuclear

[Elnathan John @elnathan_john]

https://t.co/Bv6hgN8Ttd

[AdisaOlashile @adisaolashile]

Just after Sunday service In Peckham , London | 20225