Monthly Link Dump: November 2025

This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too).

The Trail of Political Consciousness
by Benji at benji.dog

I made a zine the other day so that I could have a physical copy of Nemik’s Manifesto from the Star Wars TV show: Andor. You can read it, print a copy, and share with others if you’d like.

About cultural (in)coherence
by Tim F. at cultural snow

I have an instinctive fondness for the notion of a culture war, but inevitably it turns out to be less fun than it sounds, being shorthand for dim bigotry.

Rise Against Big Tech: A Movement For Collective Digital Freedom
by Dirk Slater at Internet Exchange

Across social justice and digital rights movements, urgency is growing: Big Tech platforms have come to shape nearly every aspect of our digital lives, often through surveillance, exploitation, and monopolistic control that deepens divides, erodes trust and isolates communities. Breaking that dependence is not simply about switching software; it is a cultural and strategic shift that demands shared values, collective action, and long-term planning.

Understanding what “I am not ‘anti-AI’… I am pro-craft.” means to me
by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez at As in guillotine...

As 2025 draws to a close, the “inevitable” hype around AI hasn’t slowed so it remains important to maintain an informed, healthy skepticism because the shills are everywhere — writing articles for industry publications, appearing on industry podcasts, and speaking at industry conferences, often with opaque disclosures and bold claims typically going unchallenged.

An Allhallowstide Journey to The Green Chapel
by John Reppion at Moore & Reppion

In November 2021, myself and M. D. Penman released our adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at the Thought Bubble comics convention. When we were working on the book, one of the things we always intended to do but never got around to was to visit Lud’s Church together. Now it’s November again, and Mark and I are getting ready to take part in a panel at Thought Bubble all about adapting medieval sources into comics. So, better late than never, on the 2nd of November 2025, we finally made the trip Staffordshire together.

Fascist cycles – Privileged groups and inequality: a match made in hell
by V.H. Belvadi at VHB

How many times must a series of events repeat before it may be recognised as a cycle? Once. At least as far as history is concerned, waiting for more examples without learning from the few we do have borders on idiocy. As a historian of science I do not often deal with social and political histories, but if you are doing a good enough job it becomes impossible to avoid them entirely. So I have here a few ideas I want to expand upon that identify some semblance of cycles in fascism. Alas, it appears that those open to learning lessons from these histories rarely need them, and those who need them refuse to learn at all.

What Will Life Really Be Like After The Internet Gets Incinerated?
by Tom Cox at tom-cox.com

It was 2015 when I first sketched out my ‘Map Of Britain After The Great 2029 Technology Crash’. Much more recently, I gave the sketch to my dad, Mick, and he came up with the infinitely more attractive and detailed version you can see above. 2029 seemed exotically, brain-meltingly far away in 2015 but now it’s no further in the future than the pandemic is in the past.

Actually Existing Solarpunk
by James Bridle at booktwo.org

It’s not really about selling the excess: it’s about combating energy poverty and increasing energy democracy, while actually and actively changing the energy mix, and building community. It’s a nascent political form within the transition, and it’s #actuallyexistingsolarpunk: not just technology, but a shift in how we live. We can redistribute power.

everything is community-building
by Rebecca Toh at rebeccatoh.co

But this library is a little different. I think it’s got to do with the stake people have in it. Our volunteer librarians can shape how the library is run. Our bookshelf-owners alter the experience of the library every time they remove or add a book or a note to their shelf. We’re playing and creating together in real-time. Not only that, we have to work, and it’s this effortful, again, can’t-quite-put-your-finger-to-it thing of having to give of yourself, that creates a strong community.

The Law of Shame in Gillian Rose’s Arthuriana and The Green Knight
by Gregory Marks at The Wasted World

The final chapter of Gillian Rose’s Love’s Work (1995) is its most fragmentary. After several chapters in the confessional mode, Rose diverts from the discussion of her life to a series of short reflections on reason, religion, and the life of the mind, as though to make explicit at the last moment what would otherwise be hidden in the philosopher’s memoir. The first of these fragments in a retelling of King Arthur’s tragedy as a parable for the fate of sovereign law. Four figures make up this parable: King Arthur, his Queen Guinevere, his knight Launcelot, and the court they compose, Camelot.

A Lamentation for Linnaeus: In Praise of Confusion and Rewilding Wonder
by Maria Popova at The Marginalian

A century after Descartes severed the body from the mind, Linnaeus severed the organism from the ecosystem, dividing nature into discrete categories, dismembering the interdependence that makes this rocky planet a living world.

Whistle Up
by Dan Sinker at dansinker.com

For the last few months, the sound of whistles has become a regular occurrence in Chicago. They act as an instant alert system that ICE is on the streets, as a call to action to neighbors to come out, and as a rapid warning for those that need to take cover. Parents, whistles around their necks, have stood outside of schools on patrol. Businesses across the city and suburbs have bowls of whistles available.

Party politics is realigning itself
by thenextwavefutures at The Next Wave

This means that I’m more interested in Zohran Mamdani’s Mayoralty election win in New York, and the by-election win in Wales by Plaid Cymru (over Reform UK) in what was a safe Labour seat, for what they tell us about politics more broadly.

A 1970s Childhood
by Daniel A. Kaufman at Cathode Ray Zone

I was born in 1968, so my childhood was spent in the 1970s. My parents had recently moved from Queens to Long Island, where I would be raised in a leafy suburb, and as they’d only emigrated to the United States ten years earlier, they were almost as new to the place as I was.

The Personal Season
by Britt Coxon at BrittHub

Winter feels like a very personal season, a season for introspection. For me Winter is a time of thought, rest, planning, a season to recharge your batteries. Spring is the time to put some of those plans into action, a time for renewal, progress, gradual change. You cannot change yourself, your season, overnight. Especially not in January. January and February are odd months, they don’t feel real, the year ends, a new one begins, but Winter goes on. It feels unbalanced.