Herbert Marcuse (/mɑːrˈkuːzə/ mar-KOO-zə;[4] German: [maʁˈkuːzə]; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German and American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin and then at the University of Freiburg, where he received his PhD under the supervision of Martin Heidegger.[5] He was a prominent figure in the Frankfurt-based Institute for Social Research, which later became known as the Frankfurt School. In his written works, he criticized capitalism, modern technology, Soviet Communism, and pop culture, arguing that they represent new forms of social control.[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse (more)

the supposed war on terrorism following the World Trade Center bombings

The Gulag[c][d] was a system of labor camps in the Soviet Union.[8][9][7] The word Gulag originally referred only to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era. The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Glávnoye upravléniye ispravítel'no-trudovýkh lageréy" (Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й or "Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps"), but the full official name of the agency changed several times. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed both ordinary criminals and political prisoners, a large number of whom were convicted in accordance with simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The agency was established in 1930 and initially was administered by the OGPU (1923–1934), later known as the NKVD (1934–1946) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in the final years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag (more)

Samizdat (Russian: самиздат, pronounced [səmɨzˈdat], lit. 'self-publishing'), also samvydav (Ukrainian: самвидав), was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual reproduction was widespread, because printed texts could be traced back to the source. This was a grassroots practice used to evade official Soviet Union censorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, romanized: Arkhipelag GULAG) is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in Russian in 1973 by the Parisian publisher YMCA-Press,[1][2] and it was translated into English and French the following year. It explores a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labor camp system. Solzhenitsyn constructed his highly detailed narrative from various sources including reports, interviews, statements, diaries, legal documents, and his own experience as a Gulag prisoner. Following its publication, the book was initially circulated in the Soviet Union by samizdat underground publication. It was not widely published there until 1989. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn[a][b] ⓘ (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008)[6][7] was a Soviet and Russian author and dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag prison system. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".[8] His nonfiction work The Gulag Archipelago "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state" and sold tens of millions of copies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

Elle Hunt: I’m disagreeable – and it’s backed by science. Can I change my personality? (more)

book by Jason Pargin (David Wong), ISBN:9781250285959 (more)

L Neil Smith and Scott Beiser have put their Roswell Texas Graphic Novel online for free.

Cosma Shalizi reviews Dan Sperber's Explaining Culture. Roswell is certainly worthy of contemplation: like Lourdes, it has become famous for something which never happened. I refer, of course, to the infamous myth that a flying saucer crashed there in 1947, making the national news, (more)

Debris found by a rancher in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, has become the basis for UFO conspiracy theories alleging that the United States military recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. After metallic and rubber debris was recovered by Roswell Army Air Field personnel, the United States Army Air Forces[a] announced possession of a "flying disc". This announcement made international headlines, but was retracted within a day. The debris was from a complex and uncrewed military balloon train consisting of linked balloons and assorted equipment, operated from the nearby Alamogordo Army Air Field as part of the top-secret Project Mogul, a program intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests.[b] To obscure the purpose and source of the debris, the army reported that it was merely a conventional weather balloon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_incident (more)

book by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber (more)

Dan Sperber (born 20 June 1942 in Cagnes-sur-Mer) is a French social and cognitive scientist, anthropologist and philosopher. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology, linguistic pragmatics, psychology of reasoning, and philosophy of the social sciences. He has developed: an approach to cultural evolution known as the epidemiology of representations or cultural attraction theory as part of a naturalistic reconceptualization of the social; (with British philosopher and linguist Deirdre Wilson) relevance theory; (with French psychologist Hugo Mercier) the argumentative theory of reasoning. Sperber formerly Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is Professor in the Departments of Cognitive Science and of Philosophy at the Central European University in Budapest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Sperber

Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy, and Our Lives by Joseph Heath, 2014. (more)

Jürgen Habermas [ a ] (18 June 1929 – 14 March 2026) was a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addressed communicative rationality and the public sphere. He held professorships at Heidelberg University and Goethe University Frankfurt and directed the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg. Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focused on the foundations of epistemology and social theory , the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context , and contemporary politics, particularly German politics . His major works include The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), a social history of the emergence and decline of bourgeois public discourse, and The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), which advanced a theory of rationality grounded in interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in instrumental or strategic reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas

Modeling Complex Systems: Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics series, 2004, by Nino Boccara. (more)

*Darializa Avila Chevalier (born December 3, 1993) is an American politician and activist. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, she is the Democratic nominee for New York's 13th congressional district in the 2026 election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darializa_Avila_Chevalier (more)

Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer

Prison abolition is a movement that seeks to abolish prisons as an institution.[1] Unlike prison reform, prison abolition aims to establish a criminal justice system that avoids the use of detention entirely. Supporters commonly advocate for a restorative justice approach that aims to rehabilitate criminals, as opposed to retributive justice, which aims to punish the criminal in proportion to the crime.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_abolition

Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and Marxist feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, author and social theorist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), running for Vice President in the 1980 and 1984 elections under that party. She is also a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She has been active in movements such as the Occupy movement and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis (more)