From capitalism to technofeudalism

A few months ago I wrote a little piece about capitalism. The premise was that, to see the distinctiveness of our current capitalist world, it helps to go back in time to see what it looked like before. A bit like traveling helps to see the distinctiveness of your hometown.

What distinguishes capitalism from feudalism, I wrote, is the separation of labour from the means of production, the ensuing emergence of money relations and markets, and the resulting systematic imperative for capitalists to reduce costs to retain market share.

A Dutch version of this post has been published on doorbraak.eu.

Introduction

In this post I put together some ideas on capitalism, what it is, what it is not, and why it makes sense to recognize that we’re in it.

The reason why I am writing this, is because I feel that the term “capitalism” is often thrown around without too much care. As something that has to do with markets and profits. Or as something that is simply “not socialism or communism”.

Yesterday, in an after-class discussion with a student, I found myself questioning the value of the concept of emergence, and the way it is embraced not just by complexity theorists but by the sciences at large. Today I found some time to think through the argument a bit more and then boom, this blog post EMERGED.

In short, I feel that the idea of emergence, and much of complexity theory in general, is just a form of “science-plaining”, where science invents its own jargon to “explain” to the humanities (and people at large) what they have known for centuries, while maintaining the untenable position that it “objectively describes the world”.

If you, like me …

• … use the Nextcloud calendar app to syncronize your calendar across devices,
• … like to manage your calendar within Emacs,
• … spend considerable part of the year in different timezones …

… I have great news for you: after years of trial and error, I think I have finally found a workable set-up.

To begin with, this set-up builds upon org-caldav, and the org-agenda. As it turns out, this combo works great in combination with Nextcloud, but there are a couple of tricks that are not mentioned in the documentation.

Deze post is ook geplaatst op doorbraak.eu.

Met het intrekken van de uitnodiging van Tofik Dibi als spreker bij de herdenking van de Februaristaking begaat het landelijk bestuur van de FNV een grote fout. Het is beschamend om te zien hoe makkelijk ze zich laten misleiden door valse framing.

In het kort: je kan niet op 25 februari Willem Kraan herdenken, en tegelijk de mensen die de overduidelijke lessen trekken uit zijn voorbeeld (en dat van zijn kameraden) wegzetten als “ordeverstoorders”.

A Dutch version of this post has been published on doorbraak.eu.

On 4 November 2025, Science Guide reported on the decision by the rector of University Utrecht, Wilco Hazeleger, to allow the founder of the FvD - Thierry Baudet - to speak at a debate night at the university.

This is simultaneously shocking, and completely unsurprising. It is shocking because the academic community has apparently still - after everything that is happening in the world - not built up the necessary immune response to keep these threats out. It is unsurprising because this moral failure of university management has been with us for many years.

Een Nederlanse vertaling van dit stuk verscheen op Doorbraak.

One of the worst things of teaching at the university is that students are constantly graduating. I wish I could prevent you all from graduating.

This is a sticker that I got from students who graduated last year. These were very impressive students. They played an important role in the city-wide protests against the silence and complicity of this society in the face of the ongoing genocide.

• N.B.1: 14 July 2025: I originally posted this on 12 August 2024. But the content is now new and improved.
• N.B.2: A small discussion can be found underneath this Lemmy post.
• N.B.3: To skip the explanation, and immediately create and download your own version of the new graph, click here: https://mishathings.org/co2-graph. It runs on a small server, so you might need to have a bit of patience. Also it works better on a desktop/laptop than on a phone 😬).

A powerful but problematic graph

For some years now, I have seen this graph go around on social media. I think it’s a powerful image, because it shows us so clearly that it is happening in our lifetime and under our watch.

A few days ago I shared this post, which basically adds to the many warnings (within and outside the Fediverse) that the U.S. is quickly descending into fascism. What is new?

One of the (private) responses came Nuwagaba Gift, a 21-year old teacher, community organizer and farmer from Uganda, and we ended up exploring some of the historical details of this Sturmabteilung (SA). Among other things, Nuwagaba pointed out the crazy story of the co-founder and leader of the SA, Ernest Röhm, who, before he was killed in night of the long knives, was recruited by the Bolivian military ataché of the Netherlands to serve in the Bolivian army…

This article tells a fascinating story about how the municipality of Amsterdam tried to build an AI model to help officials detect fraud in welfare support. In particular, the article describes how the municipality tried to do it the right, ethical and fair way by avoiding bias.

The article presents many interesting and critical angles, but I still felt like adding my own two cents.

Some direct thoughts:

Treating everyone equally