Love Is A Truth Procedure
Enjoyment itself is something that parasitizes upon human pleasures, perverting them so that a subject can draw a surplus-enjoyment from displeasure itself….we can see clearly how surplus-enjoyment is the obverse of sadism: when a capitalist switches from counting the pleasure to the pleasure of counting, he renounces (or, at least, relegates to a secondary role) direct pleasure itself (pleasure of consuming particular objects), replacing it with the “abstract” pleasure of counting possible pleasures. Surplus-enjoyment thus functions as a sadistic denigration of actual pleasures. - Goads
Members of the European Parliament cannot find Iran on a map.
This is a classic thing that I ask every politician. I ask them, “ Are your colleagues stupid or are they cynical?” If they’re cynical, that means they’re aware of what’s going on and they just refuse to lean into it because they have some other perverse incentives, like corporate lobbying or whatever. Or are they stupid because they’re just oblivious to what’s going on? They’re so tunneled in, they’re so echo-chambered, so much a product of the system… - Hasan Piker Jacobin
Republican lawmakers in multiple states and Congress are advancing proposals to shield polluters from climate accountability and prevent any type of liability for climate change harms—even as these harms and their associated costs continue to mount. - Inside Climate News
Western powers have sown chaos and authoritarianism in the region precisely because they fear how powerful its nations could become if left to their own devices, she says. The global order requires instability in the Middle East “to ensure the geopolitical significance of the region never translates into actual power”. - DaliaGebrial
FAA Approves a Massive Pilot Program That Will Let Electric Air Taxis Fly Across 26 States as Early as This Summer. - ZME
Love, for Badiou as for Tupinambá, is not reducible to sentiment or affect, but names a truth-procedure by which the world is reorganized from the perspective of the Two. The truth of love is the truth of difference: a world no longer arranged around the self, but opened by the encounter with an irreducible other… Love…is the name for the subject’s encounter with the Other as co-participant in truth…Perversion, by contrast, abolishes this minimal scene of the Two. Speech here does not aim to reach the Other, but to overwrite it and install itself in the position of the Other speaking without interrup-tion; without symbolic castration. - By Marie Boesgaard Bendtsen
As Premier Li Qiang underscored in the Government Work Report delivered at the opening of the 2026 Two Sessions, embodied intelligence – alongside quantum technology, brain-computer interfaces, and 6G – is now positioned among China’s priority future industries. Notably, this is the first time embodied intelligence has appeared as a distinct category in such a high-level policy document, marking its elevation from niche technology to strategic industrial priority. More importantly, embodied intelligence and robotics are being folded into a longer-term blueprint for AI integration across manufacturing and strategic sectors under China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030). - The Diplomat
US and Gulf states race for Ukrainian interceptor drones, 3D printed model costs $1,000 apiece — Shahed-136 kamikaze drone threat spurs rush for interceptors. - Tom’s Hardware
The U.N. estimates that only about 1,300 Iranians have fled via Turkey each day since the war started, and on some days, more people return to Iran than depart. But Iran’s neighbors and Europe are growing increasingly concerned about a possible migration crisis should the war drag on and are making contingency plans. - AP
Enjoying Genocide: Israel is preparing for largest-scale ground offensive in Lebanon since 2006 war - Axios. According to the report, Israel plans to seize the entire area south of the Litani River and dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, in what officials say would “be like Gaza.” - Jerusalem Post
Here’s the thing on comedy. If I were to do a satire on the assassination of John Foster Dulles, it would shock people. They’d say, “That it is in heinous taste.” Why? Because it’s fresh. And that’s what my contention is: that satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous when you think about it. And I know, probably 500 years from today, someone will do a satire on Adolf Hitler, maybe even showing him as a hero, and everyone will laugh.” - Lenny Bruce, 1967
Humor in a Time of Genocide: Ahmed Masoud’s play about Gaza and the history of Palestine: Hajja Souad, an 80-year old Palestinian woman living on the besieged Gaza Strip, knows about business. She has survived decades of wars and oppression through making shrouds for the dead. A compelling black comedy that delves deep into the intimate life of ordinary Palestinians to weave a highly distinctive path through Palestine’s turbulent past and present. - Book Awards
This essay explores the interrelationship between tragedy and comedy, with specific focus given to the potential that comedy can provide in transforming the most tragic of situations. In building this claim, the very dynamics and distinctions that divide the tragic from the comic are considered in view of the self-negation that the comic posits. That is, while tragedy requires a certain acceptance of the finite, from which destiny and circumstance come to certify the hero’s tragic predicament, in comedy, what succeeds is that which functions through an act of self-negation. This, it is argued, offers a subversive redefining of tragedy, one that proves constitutive of a comic fatalism that does not mourn one’s tragic predicament or fated end, but, instead, fully identifies with our comic predicament. Going beyond the pitfalls of political nicety and moral condemnation, which seek easy gratification or cynical distance, the conclusion examines the conceptual artist, Vanessa Place, and her performance of rape jokes. - Jack Black
“The symbol of the Antichrist has played a surprisingly significant role in shaping Americans’ self-understanding,” wrote historian Robert Fuller in 1995’s Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession. “Because they tend to view their nation as uniquely blessed by God, they have been especially prone to demonize their enemies.” - TNR
Donald Trump has warned that Nato faces a “very bad” future if US allies fail to assist in opening up the Strait of Hormuz, sending a blunt message to European nations to join his war effort in Iran…Despite his warning, Trump was pessimistic that US allies would heed his pleas for help. - FT
