Jason DeBoer

Director of feature film Dead River (@deadriverfilm). My book is Annihilation Songs: Three Shakespeare Reintegrations

[Jason DeBoer @tremblingsun]

Thanks to @believermag and @j_rothacker for the review of Annihilation Songs! "an exalting level of gorgeous prose" https://t.co/DucAD0TdXC

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Revolutionary optimism is a skill that you learn over time. Like any other skill, it takes practice to get good at it. Like any other skill, it can seem very difficult when you first start trying.

Before you’re well-practiced in the skill of revolutionary optimism, things can look pretty hopeless. The doors to revolutionary change seem to be closed and bolted shut on every front. Electoral politics delivers disappointment after disappointment. Our society is full of selfish, sedentary, propaganda-addled bootlickers who will defend the status quo even when it goes against their own material interests. The bread and circuses remain effective at keeping everyone just full enough and distracted enough to keep them turning the gears of the empire for their masters.

Nobody comes out of the box knowing how to maintain their optimism when all their efforts continue to fail. Nobody is born with the skill of keeping hope alive even as the planet dies, as everything gets shittier and shittier, and as our civilization gets more and more dystopian.

It takes practice. Like anything else, until you have practiced, you’re probably going to suck at it.

But as Jake the Dog says, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.

And you’re going to have to get sorta good at it, because the alternative is to lie down and let the bastards get their way.

They want us to believe resistance is futile. They want us to believe that change is impossible, that the fight is unwinnable, that the machine is unbeatable, that the AI surveillance data centers are inevitable, that the wars and genocides will continue no matter what we do. The easiest battle is one your enemy never attempts to wage.

We can’t just hand that to them. We’ve got to keep trying to find ways to win. And we’re not going to keep trying to find ways to win if we have been successfully seduced by the siren’s song of pessimism.

And its song can be seductive. Being pessimistic is pleasing to the ego because it lets you feel cool and right about everything, since things do tend to go the way of the ones currently holding the power. Being the dark, brooding know-it-all who holds all the correct opinions while scoffing at everyone’s efforts to win this thing is a lot easier than being the bright-eyed hope fiend who faces loss after loss and disappointment after disappointment. It’s egoically comfortable, like choosing to support the team you know will always win.

But all the best things in life sit on the other side of discomfort. This is true whether you’re talking about revolution, romance, healing, art, or enlightenment.

So practice optimism.

Refuse to be deflated.

Find reasons to hope.

Study history and learn about the many times revolution has succeeded and ruling power structures have been overthrown.

Study current events and learn about the many ways in which our rulers are losing their grip.

Find that spark within you that can keep pushing onward no matter what happens.

Discover that burning defiance which knows you fight fascists not because you will win but because they are fascists.

Do your inner work until you have enough spaciousness to maintain persistent effort.

Create internal stability so you can continue without collapsing when things get hard.

Set your intention to cultivate optimism, and then practice it every day.

The world depends on it.

No pressure.

[Torrent Film Fest @TorrentFilmFest]

The Desert of the Tartars
Valerio Zurlini
1976

Waiting becomes a way of life, stretching time into something both vast and empty, suggesting that a life can be spent preparing for a moment that never arrives, until absence itself becomes the only certainty.

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

New State Department report on foreign "subversion" is a virtual government blacklist that names 43 Americans + domestic orgs, including:
- Mamdani
- DSA
- Hasan Piker
- Amy Goodman

Full list:
https://t.co/Bexn6D7gpz

[Cinema Phenomenology @phenocine]

95th Anniversary: THE MIRACLE WOMAN (1931) Frank Capra

[Critical Inquiry @CriticalInquiry]

"He apparently excused his own haughtiness and abuses in the name of poetry rooted in the blood and ashes of fascism."

New in review, Bruce J. Krajewski on Anna Arno's Paul Celan: A Life, translated by Soren Gauger: https://t.co/I7cjEzqbtg

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

If literally anyone in Congress could say something about this, that’d be great!

[Ken Klippenstein @kenklippenstein]

looks like they're labeling anti-data center people terrorists too 👇
https://t.co/WwFUk7j1Le

[The Public Domain Review @PublicDomainRev]

Born #onthisday in Berlin in 1892, the philosopher, literary critic, and essayist Walter Benjamin. Read an essay by Anca Pusca on the relevance of Benjamin’s oeuvre in a digital age, and the implications of his work entering the public domain. https://t.co/G69DFFt80J #otd

[Cinémaniac / CNM @Cine_maniac]

Suite : *Le 16 novembre, reprise en salles @lesacaciasfilms également d’un autre film de #FrancescoRosi : Cadavres exquis (1976) avec Lino Ventura.

[Vano Klertiashvili @VanoKlertiashvi]

Alain Delon and Lino Ventura in "Les Adventuriers" (1967)

[vitor.louçã1971 @VLouca1971]

Lino Ventura

[Cinema Phenomenology @phenocine]

Caught in a Trap: Beatriz Guido's Gothic Trilogy https://t.co/X34sMBhkV1

[Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 @LucasSa56947288]

Does anyone know the ICE Agent who killed a man in Maine today?

[Olga Tuleninova 🦋 @olgatuleninova]

Alex Schaefer (American, b.1969)
"Wells Fargo, Carlsbad," 2023
Oil on canvas
28 x 22 in

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

Tiny urban forests can help #rewild urban settings and help fight #climatechange. The brainchild of the Japanese botanist Miyawaki is taking his idea global.

We have so many solutions. Implement them. #ActOnClimate

#climate #forests #nature #biodiversity

[neuro.social.self @neurosocialself]

‘One day everything will be well, that is our hope ..’

Roland Barthes

[Stew Peters @realstewpeters]

The evolution of Flock cameras from Jan. 2024 - July 2026.

These are spreading like a plague.

[Auteur House @auteurhouse]

🎬 Heroic Purgatory (1970, Dir. by Yoshishige Yoshida)

[Los Angeles Review of Books @LAReviewofBooks]

"This beleaguered aspect of surrealist refusal and demand becomes more pronounced in the glaucous light of today's déjà vu of neo-fascisms."

Abigail Susik explores André Breton, surrealism, and necropolitics: https://t.co/H8CosgXp1u