#message from the editor

[justforbooks]

‘One man rents a city for three days? That’s obscene’

The Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, is about to descend on Venice with his fiancee, some ex-Marines and his limitless credit card. We meet the Italian activists who are saying: enough

When she heard that Jeff Bezos was getting married in Venice this June, Heather Jane Johnson felt worse than she had in her entire life. Twenty-five years ago, she ceased trading as a bookseller in Boston, Massachusetts. “I lost a lot because of Bezos and the complicity of Americans in the making of Amazon,” the 53-year-old says. “A big reason I moved to Italy is because I felt betrayed by my countrypeople.”

So when posters went up calling a public meeting in the city she now calls home, she went, and she has been to every meeting of anti-Bezos activists since, including one the day before her own wedding last week. “These young people have really restored my faith in humanity,” Johnson says.

Many of the No Space for Bezos activists are based in Laboratorio Occupato Morion, which describes itself as an “anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist and trans-feminist political space”. “Let’s say that this is the house of many struggles,” says Federica Toninello, 33. It has the same vaulted ceiling and grand proportions as its neighbours, but is full of banners and placards, ready to festoon Venice for Bezos’s wedding celebrations, which are due to start on Thursday. (I spotted no billionaires when I visited on Sunday, but then they have a powerful drive towards invisibility.) It could be any countercultural collective, except this is Venice, so everything is a hundred times more beautiful. Striking, timeless graphics from past campaigns plaster the walls – No Big Ships, an anti-cruise, anti-tourist campaign, which started here before spreading across Europe; No One Is Illegal, a grassroots refugee solidarity movement; posters on the climate crisis, the housing shortage, and one from a pop-up feminist union representing the city’s maids.

Noemi Donà, 19, is from the USG (loosely, the union of left youth); Oliver, 43, came via the “Sardines”, an anti-racist group set up to fight the hard-right Lega Nord. He works as a receptionist in a Venice hotel – not one of the hyper-luxe ones, just “a small, 14th-century palace” – but has his eye on the economy beyond tourism. “Bezos can pay, he can stay,” he says, “but thousands of shops in Italy have closed because of Amazon. So I don’t think he is welcome.” There’s a university collective that meets here, which occupied a number of campuses last year, protesting about the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

The air is delicious and a bit headachey with the smell of aerosol and felt-tip pens. Some banners say Free Palestine; others say Stop Bombing Iran. Palestina Libre is an active organisation across Italy, and the US’s attack on Iran is still less than 24 hours old and deeply shocking. But if No Space for Bezos – “it’s not a collective, it’s a platform”, says Marta Sottoriva, a 34-year-old secondary school teacher – has ambitions that feel unimaginably large, it has already achieved some of what it wants, after only a few weeks.

“If Bezos had announced his marriage here, and we hadn’t moved, the narrative in the world’s media would have been the luxury hotels, the VIPs, the dresses, the gossip,” says Sottoriva. “We really wanted to problematise the ridiculous and obscene wealth that allows a man to rent a city for three days.”

On 12 June, the movement unfurled its simplest and largest banner – eight metres long, featuring just Bezos’s name crossed out in red – down the bell tower of the San Giorgio Maggiore basilica, while the deeply unpopular city mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, was trying to do a press conference. Toninello laughingly describes their slanging match on social media: “He was saying, ‘For shame!’ and we were saying, ‘You should be ashamed!’” Activists put up a similar banner on the Rialto bridge in the same week.

They have already shifted the focus from: “How much money does that one man have?” to the more interesting: “How much disruption can No Space for Bezos cause? What kind of numbers will they get? What conversations will they start?” Between Elon Musk handing voters million-dollar cheques and Vladimir Putin ordering up chaos and death like consumables, there is this awful sense of limitlessness to the elite’s purchasing power. If it turned out there was something a billionaire couldn’t buy, and it was something that ought to be simple – a little goodwill, servility, privacy and respect, for him, his fiancee Lauren Sánchez and their 200 friends – well, that would be a really big deal.

Not all the direct action this week will be announced in advance, but one thing has not been kept secret: this Saturday, there will be a demo to block access to the cavernous Scuola Grande della Misericordia, where Bezos planned to hold a big party.

I walked around the building on Sunday evening, just to see what kind of numbers you’d need on the protest to really, comprehensively screw the chance of Kim Kardashian showing up. Along the north wall is a pavement of probably three metres, with a steep drop into the canal, and a narrow bridge, the walkway ending randomly, Venetianly, in a metal gate. The west side has a wider pavement, again with the canal running alongside, with a little bridge to the left that could let police in or protesters out, but only in slow-moving units of maybe seven at a time. It is the most beautiful bridge in the world, unless you count all of Venice’s other bridges, but it’s not built for speedy access. At the front, a square, Misericordia on one edge, canal on the other; 200 protesters could make a lot of trouble for you here.

The rumour is that Bezos is not relying solely on the police but is bringing ex-marines with him, which has only served to make him less popular. “How can you move away a person from the water without injuring that person?” Toninello asks, her tone much more playful than anxious. “We are using our bodies to say: ‘Stop. No more. We don’t want this.’”

According to media reports on Monday, Bezos has been forced to move the party to another venue.

Even if you can picture the city’s exquisite eccentricities – bridges that stop dead at a front door, like the 14th-century lagoon equivalent of a lift that opens into your penthouse; alleyways with framed paintings stuck on the walls, as if that were normal – you still, I promise you, would not understand without pacing it how comically impossible it would be to have an elegant, star-studded party here if even 15 people made it their business to tell you that you weren’t welcome. It crossed my mind that maybe Venice is a decoy, and they’re actually having the parties in Maui.

The activists’ assemblies aired everything – critics say Bezos and Sánchez aren’t great targets for the anti-tourist movement, since they’re bringing just 200 guests, a drop in the ocean for a city that receives 30 million visitors a year. Yet in almost every scenario, Venetians perceive the same disregard from local government. It will effectively close down the centre of the city to please a billionaire; it has the power to limit Airbnb rentals, but declines to do so; it thinks last year’s tourist levy of €5 a day has solved the problem, but seemingly doesn’t consider that, as Sottoriva says, locals “really feel like animals in a zoo, or cartoon characters in Disneyland”.

Sofia, 26, is originally from Barcelona, so she has been around these discussions of overtourism often enough, but she sees something unique in this city, for good and ill. “There is a hidden Venice, which I was lucky enough to find through activism. A very vibrant community where you know each other, and support each other. I don’t mean an intellectual movement – I mean there are places where people do live, where they have neighbourhood suppers, where you can see children playing. The place risks becoming lifeless if you never see children.”

The political vision for a depopulated Venice – made of tourists, its workers coming in from the mainland, and existing as a one-of-a-kind theme park – is made obvious in the mayor’s dealings with the Bezos nuptials. But it also seems to chime with the values of the Amazon boss himself: his behaviour as an employer, his manifest resentment of corporate tax responsibility, an antisocial, anti-equality attitude that you’d be able to see from space, if he thought you were worthy of going there.

Climate change activists have other, intersecting complaints. Never mind that Amazon “promotes a culture of extreme, overexaggerated consumption”, says Stella Faye, a 27-year-old university researcher, “it represents a model of exploitation of people and of nature. It depends on huge amounts of electricity, for the servers, and then huge amounts of water resources to cool the servers, which are often placed in arid areas. So they’re taking water resources from regions where people desperately need them.”

Politically, Bezos has swung from what everyone always assumed was mild support for the Democrats to active support for Trump. “We are not seeing a multibillionaire bending to Trump,” Sottoriva says, “we are seeing a new political grammar in which the private interests of digital capitalism and technocapitalism merge with fascism. This is not just about Venice.”

What might conceivably trouble Bezos the most is the burgeoning critique of billionaires not as individuals, but as a structural force. “I would say anti-wealth movements are new,” says Robin Piazzo, a political scientist from Turin university. “Usually Marxists don’t like to focus on people like billionaires: they use concepts such as capitalism, objective things, not specific people. So most of the extra-parliamentary left avoided the wealthy themselves. And when the institutional left focused on, for example, Berlusconi, it was not framed as: ‘He is too rich.’ The problem was that he was using his money to influence politics and the media. It was always about good billionaires and bad ones, because they wanted to co-opt the good ones.”

At a grassroots level, however, there has always been a strong strain of anti-wealth critique, the one thing religion and politics could agree on. Piazzo is also a city councillor for the Democratic party, the largest centre-left party. A 90-year-old woman came up to him after the last council meeting and said, “You have to do something about rich people, I hate them. I’m with Papa Francisco [Pope Francis].” This is a dangerous moment for the ultra-high-net-worths: when wealth itself is seen to be acting in its own interests, and it has accumulated to the degree that its impact scars every poorer life with which it comes into contact, that starts to look a lot like a class war, albeit with one side very small (there are roughly 2,700 billionaires in the world; they could fit into a regional concert hall) and, until recently, almost invisible.

So at some point, wealth will show its teeth. I think back to the last protest I went to in Italy, the G8 summit in Genoa, 2001. The policing was unbelievably reactive and harsh; a protester called Carlo Giuliani was shot dead on the first night by the carabinieri. I was with British lefties, whose first reaction when the police come at you is to run down a side street – a great strategy if you’re being charged by a horse, a terrible idea if you’re being teargassed. You get stuck in this well of gas, and it gets in your eyes.

After the death of Giuliani, the Corpo Forestale was brought in: very distinctive uniforms, powder blue with knee-high black boots, hitting people with batons, a little bit like Nazis choreographed by Busby Berkeley. But what was most surreal was that the G8 had already erected an almost impenetrable metal fence. Only one protester managed to get through and she was arrested immediately. In that steel-ring protection was an admission: that those heads of state were the enemy, all our interests were not aligned.

Twenty-four years later, there’s something gaslighty in Bezos’s decision that he could represent all he represents – wage degradation, hyper-consumerism, environmental destruction, wealth supremacy – and still be a regular Joe that the people of Venice would be happy for, because he’d met his special person. What an out-and-out bizarre and provocative place to say that – a city with non-negotiable borders and a cliff edge into a canal every 50 yards. “I am afraid, personally,” says Noemi Donà. “But I’m here.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[thepersonalwords]

Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.

Rob Bignell, Editor, Writing Affirmations: A Collection of Positive Messages to Inspire Writers

[pushing500]

Your babies have hair? Mine are always bald, even as toddlers 😓

PS) Little Dani is very cute!

So far, both of my babies in this run (Ivy and Dani) have not just had hair, but have had colourful hair! Ivy had a lil' green tuft when she was born, and Dani has her fabulous purple-y hair. I'm glad you agree that she's cute! 🥰

Back in my Animist Alliance run, my beloved impid couple had a baby who was bald, but he ended up with a fabulous ponytail when he got older, so don't lose hope yet!

I like to joke that my RimWorld colonists (at least in this run) have been born with hair because they take after me, and I was born with quite an impressive head of hair if I do say so myself.

Look at little baby Gracie, awwww

[chicago-geniza]

Going to my friend's MOVING SALE and bringing FILIPINO BREAKFAST for him and his BOYFRIEND. Go go gadget leaving the house having social interaction following through climbing out of the HOLE that is not our GRAVE

[skeletalheartattack]

I keep thinking your pfp is Lois Griffin lol

they're calling me the wife of peter griffin these days

[blackcatanna]

Barrage of YouTube ads relentless, send help. Categories are diet pills, betterhelp, clothing sites I already buy from, bastard fast fashion and AI productivity, which is already HORRIFYING ENOUGH but a lot of these damn ads include fucking Slack notification sounds, which DISTURB MY PEACE.

[healer-pop]

DUDE IMAGINE CERVIX KISSING VENTURE WITH THE STRAP???

god I cannot even tell u how much they would be all over that. bc listen, this act is so sensual and intimate and that’s something Venture is all about. It’s the feeling of fullness, of pressure against the inner most part of you, while you’re basically pressed against your partner and the endorphins it releases is just… wow. unmatchable.

Virgin Venture would go absolutely speechless at the feeling. They would be completely at your mercy, their brain just wouldn’t be able to comprehend the sensation. Honestly, if they’re still being bratty and talking big, it’s the only way to shut them up. A KO. They’d stare up at you with wide eyes, mouth falling open, just completely helpless at the pleasure being rocked through their body right now. Their hands on your shoulders leaving beautiful crescent moons via blunt nails, their own form of tattooing themself upon you. As you fix your gaze on them, breathing whispers of praise on their cheeks, the tears take their place, starting to fall. Wet streams that leave their skin glistening without the two of you realizing, “U-uhng- m-more. More, please, fuck, m-more?”

It’s almost completely guttural sounds, a few words you can pick out mixed into the noise being a couple of strung together letters that Venture can actually remember right now. Anything else that spills from their lips is just gasping babble, punched straight from their lungs.

A Venture with a bit more experience is still in cloud nine, but has more control over their brain function. Their face is blissed out, seeing more colors than humanly possible, staring straight into the ceiling because anything else would be too overwhelming.

Their voice still hitches in places as they talk, “A-aah… yes, yes, cariño. So fucking good. You’re- you’re so deep in me… So deep. I feel so filled up by you. Mm… I- I want you to move. Hard, ok? Wanna… wanna feel you tomorrow too.”

Loose arms, tossed over your neck like a shawl. You lean down to kiss their neck, savoring the moan it pulls as you lick off salty sweat from their heated skin. Their legs pull you in as tight as they can, every time you give a vicious thrust to their cunt. You live for the way Venture shuts their eyes, the broken moans that they hand out shattered by your pace.

They’re completely relaxed in your arms despite the bruising fuck you’re currently delivering to them right now. Open to your desires, putty in your hands. You could line hickies up on their neck. Fuck, play tic tac toe with it, they couldn’t care less. All they can think about is the way your cock hits their cervix every time you push in.

You might literally drive them wild. Expect their clinginess to drive up 500% because getting fucked like that? Yeah, no. Their body suddenly craves everything about you. Your scent, your warmth, your presence. It’s like an undeniable itch that they need to scratch, can’t get through the day with out having some sort of physical contact with you. Like all their hormones are secreting some sort of need. Maybe due to their fucked out state that you created, the way they just completely imprinted on you as theirs… Like, they are hanging off of you the next day.

Many others try and attempt to talk to Venture, but don’t get very far since they’re still not completely able to formulate full thoughts. They chalk it up to poor sleep and let Venture be, but it makes you smile to know the full story.

They snuggle into your neck as you try to get paperwork done, try and pull you into sharing their jacket. They’ve always been affectionate but this feels… different. Almost as if they are gently floating down from sub space, using the physical touch to ease the transition. You allow it, of course, but it’s definitely a plus to have a snugglebug on your arms the next day.

Yeah. Venture definitely likes when you cervix kissing them, but would probably ask that you save it for when they DON’T need to be a single person. Or, you know, have a brain the next day.

[sukibenders]

POC artists: *creates a song that talks about the oppression and systematic racism they themselves or others like them suffer from/have to deal with, how it's progressed throughout the years and how many poc still have to fight to be seen as human*

Some video/edit creator: "Hey, this is such a cool song! I think it would perfectly for my cutesy edit that literally has nothing to do with the topic that the song is about. Better yet, why don't I even change the lyrics to fit as well!"

[justforbooks]

They say a nation gets the government they deserve. Barry Blitt, 2016 cover for The New Yorker. Obviously it’s about the US presidential election that year, but I’m not sure that much has changed.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[scare-ard--sleigh]

ohhhhhhhhhh my goddddddddd and now the fucking t*ble t*nnis guy is passive aggressively up my ass : \

[thepersonalwords]

Each time I write, I reaffirm my soul.

Rob Bignell, Editor, Writing Affirmations: A Collection of Positive Messages to Inspire Writers

[chongoblog]

For anyone who hasn't been up to date on the clown show that is the American news, I'll give a quick recap because oh boy.

So Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. One day, he gets a notification on his phone from the messaging app "Signal". He sees that he's been added to a group chat called "Houthi PC small group". He thinks nothing of it at first, until a couple days later he sees on the news that the U.S. is bombing Yemen. He takes a look and sees that he has been added to a group chat by the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

Plenty of government officials including vice president JD Vance were in this conversation, and they were discussing their bombing on Yemen. And Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added by mistake.

So Goldberg approached the White House, who confirmed that he had been accidentally added to the chat. He then posted part of the conversation in a news story on the front page of his news website, omitting any classified information as to not get arrested for that level of security breach.

The response from the administration has been wild. They're all smearing the journalist, obviously, but their responses at first varied from "he made it all up" to "he must've hacked is way in" to "big deal, people add people to group chats on accident all the time". Eventually, they were put in front of Congress to testify under oath, where they said that nothing in the conversation was classified information like military hours or types of weapons used.

In response, Goldberg said "Oh, so it's not classified? Okay then! That means I can do this," and then he released the full unedited conversation. The conversation was nothing but classified information like military hours and the types of weapons used.

Not only are they communicating on private phones on third party apps as a way to circumvent the Presidential Records Act (the chat was interestingly set to auto-delete messages after 4 weeks), but it really kinda highlights the incompetence of America's leadership right now.

They're not going to win.

[drchucktingle]

Jeff is the head editor at Atlantica Magazine, but he hasn’t been writing much. The Tromp administration is hard to get a beat on, throwing out so much absurdity that it feels like nothing even matters anymore. He wants a story that will make a difference, and it’s not as if those just fall into your lap. But when Jeff’s phone suddenly buzzes with a new text message, that’s exactly what happens. Now Jeff is privy to a chat thread of top-secret information from Tromp’s under-qualified, highly-ignorant inner circle, and it’s looking like a real story. It’s also looking like a total hunk. Soon enough, Jeff and the physical manifestation of this egregiously handled group text containing highly sensitive government information are locked in the heat of gay, erotic passion, and he’s about to pound out a story that he never could’ve imagined. This erotic tale is 4,100 words of sizzling human on gay physically manifested leaked text action, including anal, blowjobs, rough sex, and living group chat love.

----

please enjoy new tingler JOURNALIST POUNDED BY THE PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF AN EGREGIOUSLY MISHANDLED GROUP TEXT FROM MEMBERS OF THE TROMP ADMINISTRATION CONTAINING HIGHLY SENSITIVE GOVERNMENT INFORMATION out now here or on patreon

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

ILLUMINATION's November 2024 Newsletter 

Summary of Monthly Updates for ILLUMINATION Publications Dear writers and readers,  Our Chief Editor, Dr Mehmet Yildiz (Main), shared key updates and reflections for November 2024. After nearly a year, he wrote this detailed newsletter from his main account to reach a broad audience and transparently share the reality of our growing publications. Since 2023, ILLUMINATION has grown…

[pikachu-deluxe]

it's weird to me that a lot of people don't know the obscure trivia for games that i do, like how is this not common knowledge

[afloweroutofstone]

The Trump administration accidentally included the conservative editor of The Atlantic in a group chat where they were discussing, in great detail, the US bombing campaign in Yemen

In all, 18 individuals were listed as members of this group, including various National Security Council officials; Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator; Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and someone identified only as “S M,” which I took to stand for Stephen Miller. I appeared on my own screen only as “JG.”

...I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president...

At this point, a fascinating policy discussion commenced. The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”...

At 8:27, a message arrived from the “Pete Hegseth” account. “VP: I understand your concerns – and fully support you raising w/ POTUS. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (economy, Ukraine peace, Gaza, etc). I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”

The Hegseth message goes on to state, “Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. 2 immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first – or Gaza cease fire falls apart – and we don’t get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both. We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered. But, we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC”—operations security. “I welcome other thoughts.”...

The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)

It was the next morning, Saturday, March 15, when this story became truly bizarre.

At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

The only person to reply to the update from Hegseth was the person identified as the vice president. “I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance wrote. (Two other users subsequently added prayer emoji.)

According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.