The Antisocial Socialist

podcast friday

2026-05-22T11:33:52Z

I kind of struggled deciding on an episode this week, but I'm going to go back to one from a couple weeks ago that I'm still thinking about a lot, A Bit Fruity's "Clavicular Is a Symptom, Not The Cause (with F.D. Signifier and Kat Tenbarge)." I love it when F.D. Signifier guests on podcasts; I would watch his YouTube but I don't really watch a lot of YouTube so it's nice when he does a thing I can listen to on the subway.

Anyway if you've been under a rock or don't have this shit forced on you, Clavicular is a 20-year-old influencer who promotes young incels hitting their face with a hammer (here is a quick explanation from mainstream media describing how most of us olds learned about him). It's kind of amazing just how completely far-right internet memes have made it into pop culture; like, I will say things like "[blank]maxxing" ironically despite being a normie old. This kid was one of the high school students who graduated under covid lockdown, if you want to know how recent all of this is.

Oh, he also has an eating disorder and is autistic. Things I didn't know. Apparently at least some of the appeal for viewers is watching this kid navigate social situations and failing miserably. Which is fucking gross and awful.

Looksmaxxing and Clavicular are things I learned about against my will, which is the case for everyone in this episode. The whole trend is weird and gross and misogynistic and racist and awful. Which is why the compassion and analysis that Matt, F.D., and Kat bring to the discussion is so important. They have compassion for Clavicular, who may be a terrible person but is also barely out of his teens and needed help and didn't get it. They have more compassion for the boys who follow this kind of content. This is a look into the nihilism of young men, and the degree to which it's an understandable reaction to a world that basically gaslights them.

Anyway, if you have kids in your life, it's definitely worth a listen.

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Reading Wednesday

2026-05-20T11:15:18Z

Just finished: Five Points On an Invisible Line by Su J Sokol. I don't have a lot to add since I'd almost finished it last week, but the final setpiece, a massive, multi-tactic demonstration, is really well done.

Currently reading: Written On the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay. Time to start Aurora Awards reading. TBH I started one of the best novels—won't say which one—and found it very much unparsable in the way that some secondary world fantasy is just too much for me, so I moved on to this one. I'm around halfway through and the jury's still out.

This one is set in Fantasy Medieval France and follows a tavern poet who's recruited by the local provost to help him solve the murder of a duke who is running the country, since his brother, the king, suffers from an undisclosed madness. Great concept, cool characters, the setting is a breath of fresh air, and I cannot argue that Kay is a superb prose stylist.

And yet I almost always bounce off his work. There's a certain Tolkienesque narrative distance that I think works for Tolkien but feels peculiarly pre-modern. Objectively, I respect this as a deliberately alienating technique, but it means that I don't bond with it in quite the same way, and takes a tremendous feat of writing elsewhere to make me love it. It's entirely possible that this will hit that and I'm giving it a chance but so far I'm feeling that I like what he's doing but don't feel emotionally invested.

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L&O season 3: Episode 10

2026-05-20T00:01:29Z

The season finale was...again, not bad. In general I'd say that season 3 is relatively strong by L&O standards. Not by like, good TV standards, but entirely watchable.

( XOXO )

I hope you've enjoyed watching this garbage show with me. See you next season!

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podcast friday

2026-05-15T11:13:01Z

Okay so.

This.

This.

Wizards & Spaceships season 3 begins with this banger:

Didactic Fiction ft. Vajra Chandrasekera, Samantha Mills, and Gregory A. Wilson

Drop what you're doing and go listen.

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L&O season 2: Episode 9

2026-05-14T23:52:32Z

Okay, I don't know how to feel about this one. On the one hand, I can't help but feel that this shouldn't be made. This isn't entertainment and it certainly shouldn't be for copaganda. On the other hand, I thought they did a shockingly good job of it.

It's about Bruce McArthur, a serial killer who preyed for years on middle-aged, poor, brown gay men in the Village, while the cops turned a blind eye. If you don't want to read about that, who could blame you?

( Lost & Found )

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L&O season 3: Episode 8

2026-05-14T00:47:47Z

This one was a financial crime one, so you know I'm into it. I don't know why I'm like this either.

( The Winning Bid )

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Reading Wednesday

2026-05-13T11:09:47Z

Just finished: Nothing

Currently reading: Five Points On an Invisible Line by Su J Sokol. This is the sequel to Invisible Line, and follows the main characters: Laek, Janie, and their kids Siri and Simon, three years after they fled the US and settled in Montreal. They're now joined by Philip, Laek's best friend and former colleague, who had been devastated when he left because he'd been in love with Laek the entire time. Much of the book feels very slice-of-life, with the adults navigating poly relationships and the immigration system, while the kids figure out their identities, except that lurking beneath the surface, everyone except for Simon is involved in some kind of clandestine revolutionary activity and can't tell anyone else about it.

It's a really cool story. There's a tension in genre writing where deep down, everyone kind of wants the trauma to matter, but the tight pacing required to actually create a readable story often doesn't allow enough space for it, and so you get stories where characters just shrug off the physical and emotional costs of fighting the good fight. Otherwise, you have characters spending the whole time talking about their feelings and processing. This to me strikes a good balance; it is absolutely about dealing with trauma, and specifically dealing with the trauma of state violence, but it's also compulsively readable and full of cliffhangers.

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L&O season 3: Episode 7

2026-05-11T23:52:25Z

Another fairly meh episode, and not referencing a particular case as far as I'm aware. Which, given some of the things they've done with real cases, is maybe a blessing.

We do get some quality UofT though!

( Whole Lotta Love )

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L&O season 3: Episode 6

2026-05-10T23:05:21Z

This one's just bad. Not actively harmful or anything, it just doesn't make any sense.

( Family Meal )

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L&O season 3: Episode 5

2026-05-09T23:24:20Z

This one is. Uh. It's mediocre as a plot but absolutely horrific and irresponsible in the context of the case it's based on. Worse, it knows that and hangs a lampshade on it. But it also has some redeeming qualities, so read on if you can deal with the real case involving the murder of a child.

( Up To Snuff )

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podcast friday

2026-05-08T11:48:23Z

Another new-to-me podcast, Against the Grain, did an episode with not new-to-me Jordan S. Carroll, "Science Fiction and the Far-Right." It is very good. I mean, I would want Jordan to have his own podcast as he's a podcast creator's dream to interview, except that he is busy doing other things that are more important. At any rate, as someone rather deep into the SFFH community in a variety of ways, it bears repeating how closely entwined it is with our current dystopian hellscape, and Jordan is really an expert in explaining why and how.

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L&O season 3: Episode 4

2026-05-07T23:39:45Z

After having taken a wee break to watch some movies and the Great Pottery Throwdown (excellent telly btw), I am officially Back On My Bullshit.

Okay episode four of Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, entitled "Forget Me Not," was...good? That's two decent episodes in a row. Granted I'm grading on a curve because, and I can't say this often enough, this is low-budget trashy copaganda, but I actually enjoyed this one as a story. And this is the first time that neither I nor Reddit have been able to determine what this is based on, so it's possible that the writers actually made up a story.

Also this deals with care homes and dementia, so if this is a sensitive topic for you, maybe skip it.

( Forget Me Not )

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Reading Wednesday

2026-05-06T11:30:23Z

Just finished: Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story Of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple. God this is amazing. I don't know what to add; I think iI get a similar thrill with the sense of political and cultural recognition that other people get when they see a character like themselves in fiction for the first time (who knew representation was important???). This is one of those "read this book if you want to better understand me" type things for me. Obviously it's not just therapy for curmudgeonly anti-Zionist anarch-ish middle-aged Jewish women—the history is important, knowing about the strategy and failures are important, the narrative of fighting in the face of defeat is important. But it also helped reset some of my despair.

BTW it's a long slog but about halfway through when they hit the end of WWII I was like, huh, half the book is left??? half the book is footnotes.

Wake Up! (Seasons, Book Winter) by Ryszard I. Merey. Ah, let's read something short after the big, detailed history book—oh no this one is fairly brutal too. This is the third book in the Seasons project (the first two are a + e 4ever and Read and then Burn This, which I also highly recommend), all of which have to do with toxic relationships and gender fuckery, if you like that kind of thing. I do. This is about Tian, a down-on-her-luck tattoo artist. Her fiancée has left her after she's come out as trans, and she's left with an apartment she can't afford. Al, a man she rescues one night, has rent money, but that's because he's a high-stakes mahjong player in deep with some sketchy characters. It's a hallucinogenic fever dream with an unreliable narrator and a shifting, capricious timeline. Beautifully written, absolutely tragic, and if you want you can get a special German edition on sparkly paper that's tiny.

Currently reading: Nothing, starting Five Points On an Invisible Line by Su J Sokol next.

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Cherry blossoms 2026

2026-05-02T16:51:22Z

This has been the longest and coldest winter ever but today was Peak Cherry Weekend at High Park so ioplokon and I did the thing.

( cut for people who don't want to see more cherry blossoms and a cool duck )

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podcast friday

2026-05-01T11:14:28Z

I have had this one open in a tab most of the week so I would remember to tell you about it. Podside Picnic's "Minnesota NoICE" interviews naomikritzer , lydamorehouse , Marissa Lingen, and J.R. Dawson about their experiences during ICE's occupation of the Twin Cities during Operation Metro Surge.

Look. I think these people are heroes. I think every single person who fought back against a fascist paramilitary that was abducting people from their homes and workplaces, torturing them, putting them in concentration camps, sometimes gunning them down in the streets, is a hero. Any act of resistance that throws sand in those gears is worthy of celebration, and there were a lot of those acts.

The thing is as you can tell by the tagging, I know two of these heroes as people. That to me is what really blew me away listening to this episode. I am currently reading a book about resistance to the Nazis that does amazing work humanizing each and every character, but I don't know any of them personally, so it's easy to imagine that they are somehow larger than life, special people who have qualities that I can never possess. Whereas the folks interviewed in this episode are people basically like me (well, more successful in their writing careers lol) and it was genuinely empowering listening to people just describing what they did. Because it's absolutely heroic but it is heroism that required no particular special skills or background or even executive functioning. A thing needed to be done, they did the thing, they are still doing the thing. It's enough to make you weep.

You still need to do the laundry when the fascists roll in, and this is a podcast episode about that, and everyone should give it a listen.

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Book meme from thatjustwontbreak

2026-05-01T01:04:50Z

maevedarcy is posting a meme a day for 3 Weeks 4 Dreamwidth and well, of course I had to.

This week I'm reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple

My favorite book of all time is: I don't really have one. I have favourites for different purposes, like Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy for turning me into, alas, a comedic speculative fiction writer, or Vita Nostra for rewiring my brain, or Moby-Dick for becoming my entire personality for two years, or or or.

My current favorite book (read or re-read in the last 3 months) is: The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar

The last book I bought was: It's on pre-order, but Obstetrix by naomikritzer .

The first book I bought with my own money was: I honestly have no idea.

The first book I received as a gift was: It would have been a children's book? Maybe The Little Prince or Alice's Adventures In Wonderland or something, both of which I was always pretty obsessed with.

The last book I received as a gift was: Always On by Helena Trooperman

The last book I borrowed from the library was: Grendel by John Gardner

The book physically closest to me right now is: There are no books physically close to me because nearly everything is on ebook. The closest paper book is Wake Up! (Book Winter) by R Merey, because tRaum books are beautiful and I paid a dumb amount to get the pretty edition from Germany.

This or that
Physical book or e-book: e-book. I'm a traitor, I know.
Used or new: Library
Fiction or non-fiction: Fiction, but a good non-fiction will engross me
Read at a coffee shop or at the park: Traditionally, a coffee shop, but with covid, park.
Paperback or hardcover: E-book, but if it has to be physical, paperback.
Romance or Crime: Best when combined, not a big fan of either on their own.

Yes or no
Stream of consciousness? Fuck yes
Poetry? Yes
Memoirs? No
Philosophy? Sure
Thrillers? Nah
Chronicles? Nope
Travel logs? Big no
Dialogue heavy? Sure

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Reading Wednesday

2026-04-29T10:55:28Z

Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: Still working my way through Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. I'm now up to the Warsaw Ghetto, so of course it's bleak stuff, with our protagonists having increasingly fewer less-bad choices as the Nazi regime closes in on them.

Of course a lot leading up to this is the question of "when do we flee?" a question that definitely bears no relevance to anyone today. The answer is more or less implied in the title and, well, we know what happened with the Warsaw Ghetto. A few activists were deemed too valuable to let die and were smuggled out. Many had left before. There was never going to be any way to save everyone, or even most people.

It's a weirdly good way to connect with my heritage. I relate to the fact that even in the worst moment in history my people have ever known, we still found time to fight with Zionists and tankies. There is light even in the darkness.

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Reading Wednesday

2026-04-22T11:23:17Z

Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. This is a weirdly dense book—like, not in terms of content but in terms of typography where it turns out to be much longer than it looks. So it will take awhile and I'll no doubt have very scattered thoughts on it. I'm up to a weird point just before WWII where Piłsudski has done a coup in Poland and provided some kind of respite for the Bund there, while Molly's great-great grandfather Sam is in the US, trying to make it as an artist. The revolution in Russia has almost immediately turned sour. The Zionist movement is ascendant in Eastern Europe but still looked on as profoundly unserious by the Bundist majority, who are like, "you're going to be farmers in the desert? Good luck with that and also fuck you."

This is just such an important book, right now in our history with what was once the biggest current of socialist thought in Europe being whittled down to a few of us hobbyists in 2026. It's not just hereness, but a lineage that I think most Ashkenazi Jews are lacking, even ones like me who know a fair bit about the Bund. The majority of Jews in the West have accepted the Devil's bargain of whiteness: give up your culture for safety and assimilation into the power structure, sure celebrate your holidays but now you're part of the dominant culture. There have been times, watching the livestreamed genocide of Gaza, that I have thought, "well, can I just not be Jewish anymore? I want no part of it, I want to wash my hands of it, I cannot participate if this is what most of us feel is okay," but you can't, can you? I mean you can but not in any meaningful way that helps even a single person. It's better to have a history, to know why and how that history has been suppressed, not because of some nostalgia or historical LARPing but because of the whole "first as tragedy, then as farce" of it all.

Which is to say that this book is giving me a lot of feels. You should read it, probably.

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L&O season 3: Episode 3

2026-04-17T23:55:50Z

This one was good by Law & Order standards, in that while the dialogue and acting were quite bad* and I called the murderer almost immediately, it actually performed a socially useful function.

However, it deals with infanticide and I'm putting everything under a cut.

( Uncertain Justice )

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podcast friday

2026-04-17T11:24:45Z

IT'S PODCAST FRIDAY EVERYONE go listen to Wizards & Spaceships' season 2 finale, "In Praise of Difficult Women ft. Silvia Moreno-Garcia"! It's largely about SFF's Skyler White problem, i.e., why are men allowed to be difficult, unlikeable, or deeply problematic and non-villainous women basically aren't. Basically, an excuse to listen to a multi-genre genius hold forth on her opinions for about an hour. She's so cool. Holy shit.

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L&O season 3: Episode 2

2026-04-17T00:48:31Z

This one's about crypto, which admittedly makes my eyes glaze over even though it's really important. It's just that I know enough about economics to know that all money is fake, but crypto is especially fake, and really has all the downsides of money without the advantages of money. Also everyone involved is an asshole, much more so than is depicted in this episode. It's based largely on Andean Medjedovic (and good job casting someone who looks a great deal like him) and the many attempts to find the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

Warning that this episode discusses autism in ways that are fucked up and shitty.

( WAGMI )

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L&O season 3: Episode 1

2026-04-15T23:59:46Z

HEY PALS I'm back with more trashy copaganda from Canada, oh yes it is the return of Law & Order Criminal Intent: Toronto.

( Skin Deep )

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Reading Wednesday

2026-04-15T11:25:00Z

Just finished: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. This one has been on my list forever just because of the author, so I never looked up what it was about or anything like that. If I had, I'd have read it sooner. It's a queer feminist retelling of "The Two Sisters"/"The Twa Sisters," a.k.a. Loreena McKennitt's "The Bonny Swans," which I loved as a teenage goth and still love as an adult goth. It's so immersive in its writing that I somehow failed to connect there being two daughters with one suitor, a miller with a daughter, a river, a land dispute, and a harper until about halfway through when the realization hit that El-Mohtar is at least goth-adjacent and approximately my age lol.

Anyway, it's about Esther and Ysabel, two sisters whose family owns a willow grove (willow being used for "grammar," a.k.a. magic) downstream from Faerie. Esther is being courted by the village incel but is in love with Rin, a shapeshifting Fae who plays the harp and has become enchanted by Esther's singing. Esther would kill or die for her younger sister, and the bond between them is gorgeously written.

Tangentially, "The Bonny Swans" always confused me as a kid because it's stitched together from a bunch of versions of the story, so the father is a farmer in the first verse but the king in the last, and it's unclear whether what the miller's daughter pulls from the river is a swan or a woman, and the novella actually goes a fair way to resolving some of these contradictions. But I also noticed that this is low-key a trans narrative, because in the first verse the farmer has "daughters, one two three," and in the last verse there's no middle daughter, but there's a brother named Hugh. This particular story just leaves out the middle child but there's a free plot idea for you if you want one.

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou. Apparently feminist fairy tale retellings is the Nebula theme this year. This is Bluebeard; a modern day woman telling a story to her son about his father, flashing back to a dreamy narrative about a man who curses the land wherever he goes. It's haunting and poetic and unflinching in its depiction of not just domestic abuse but why women stay in abusive relationships. I thought it dragged at the end but was so well-written that I'd absolutely recommend it.

Currently reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. I just started this last night after pre-ordering it the second I knew of its existence. It's a detailed, illustrated history of the Jewish Bund and the concept of "doikayt," or hereness, the formation of Jewish identity in the diaspora. Obviously this is very relevant and very up my alley and this is the right person to tell the story.

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podcast friday

2026-04-10T11:24:42Z

Gotta be It Could Happen Here's "The Jewish Bund and Political Imagination." Molly Crabapple's been doing the podcast tour for her new book on the Bund, and in this one, Dana El Kurd interviews her about it. That's it, if you know me you know I have an endless appetite for such things. I also have the book but I haven't read it yet due to trying to make it through the Nebula shortlist first.

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Reading Wednesday

2026-04-08T11:11:00Z

Well looks like this sorry, battered world is still there, at least this part of the world, so here's what I'm reading I guess.

Just finished: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. This whipped. Blood-soaked historical fiction set in the early 1900s as a Pikuni vampire tangles with a Lutheran minister in the wake of a horrific massacre. All of the trigger warnings, obviously as it's quite literally visceral, which is not the most upsetting thing about it. Jones is really quite a brilliant writer.

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. This is not the kind of thing that I normally like but works well as a chaser to the previous book, in that it's low-stakes, cozy, and fun. It's about a group of emancipated sentient robots, a car (also sentient), and a human who take over a ghost kitchen in the aftermath of a war between California and the rest of the US. If they don't pay off their debts, they'll be re-sold into slavery, but this is not the kind of book where that happens. It works for me largely because of the descriptions of the biang biang noodles, but it's also about the big theme of the year, which is who counts as a person.

Currently reading: About to start The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar.

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