Sérgio Santos

“But in some ways parties were serious and important too, she thought” — Ghosts by César Aira

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 10:00:00 +0100

But in some ways parties were serious and important too, she thought. They were a way of suspending life, all the serious business of life, in order to do something unimportant: and wasn’t that an important thing to do?

— Ghosts by César Aira

“It’s equally stupid to say that capitalism is fine but fascism is a step too far. (…)” — …

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:00:00 +0100

It’s equally stupid to say that capitalism is fine but fascism is a step too far. If capitalism had been capable of existing without fascism, fascism wouldn’t have existed. Fascism is supposed to be just an excrescence, or so I’ve read. But a person suffering from a certain type of excrescence known as cancer is prone to die even if he is otherwise perfectly healthy. The idea of a peaceful capitalism is lunacy. People think this is how it works: everything is ticking along quite nicely, peace reigns, but then there’s a disruption, an unfortunate incident: war. It’s like with fattening pigs! Every day someone brings you a nice meal; you get washed, flattered and photographed; but from time to time an unfortunate incident occurs and you get slaughtered.

— Refugee Conversations by Bertolt Brecht

Teevee by G.E.K.

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:30:00 +0100

Faculty Of Perception by G.E.K.

First heard at Meio Dia Meio Noite #22 on Radio Alhara.

we will not cancel us by Adrienne Maree Brown

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:00:00 +0100

We hurt people.

But we will not cancel us.

Canceling is punishment, and punishment doesn’t stop the cycle of harm, not long term. (…)

We will not cancel us. But we must earn our place on this earth.

We will tell each other we hurt people, and who. We will tell each other why, and who hurt us and how. (…)

We will not cancel us. If we give up this strategy, we will learn together the other strategies that will ultimately help us break these cycles, liberate future generations from the burden of our shared and private pain, leaving nothing unspeakable in our bones, no shame in our dirt.

Each of us is precious. We, together, must break every cycle that makes us forget this.

— we will not cancel us by Adrienne Maree Brown

Books read in 2024

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 15:00:00 +0000

I spent a good deal of 2024 reading books. Below are my favourites and the full list of books I read. You can also check my lists for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

As a focus for next year, I plan on reading less North American writers, more fiction, and more women writers (only 17 of 81 books this year).

Favourites ⭐️

Raised from the Ground (Levantado do Chão) by José Saramago

a fome é uma boa razão para roubo, quem rouba por precisão tem cem anos de perdão, bem sei que o ditado não é assim, mas devia ser, se eu sou ladrão por ir roubar bolota, ladrão é também o dono dela, que nem fabricou a terra nem plantou a árvore e a podou e limpou

How Music Works by David Byrne

It can often seem that those in power don’t want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they’d prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.

A Fortune-Teller Told Me by Tiziano Terzani

This is one aspect of a reporter’s job that never ceases to fascinate and disturb me: facts that go unreported do not exist. How many massacres, how many earthquakes happen in the world, how many ships sink, how many volcanoes erupt, and how many people are persecuted, tortured and killed. Yet if no one is there to see, to write, to take a photograph, it is as if these facts had never occurred, this suffering has no importance, no place in history. Because history exists only if someone relates it. Every little description of a thing observed one can leave a seed in the soil of memory - that keeps me tied to my profession.

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

In 2014 there was a transit strike when London’s mayor threatened to close perhaps a hundred London Underground ticket offices, leaving only machines. This sparked an online debate among certain local Marxists about whether the workers threatened with redundancy had “bullshit jobs” […] Asked to respond, I eventually referred my interlocutors to a circular put out by the strikers themselves, called “Advice to Passengers Using the Future London Underground.” It included lines like these:

Please ensure you are thoroughly familiar with London Underground’s 11 lines and 270 stations before traveling . . . Please ensure that there are no delays in your journey, or any accidents, emergencies, incidents, or evacuations. Please do not be disabled. Or poor. Or new to London. Please avoid being too young or too old. Please do not be harassed or assaulted while traveling. Please do not lose your property or your children. Please do not require assistance in any way.

[…] What tube workers actually do, then, is something much closer to what feminists have termed “caring labor.” It has more in common with a nurse’s work than a bricklayer’s. It’s just that, in the same way as women’s unpaid caring labor is made to disappear from our accounts of “the economy,” so are the caring aspects of other working-class jobs made to disappear as well.

Teaching As a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman

It is not uncommon, for example, to hear “teachers” make statements such as, “Oh, I taught them that, but they didn’t learn it.” There is no utterance made in the Teachers’ Room more extraordinary than this. From our point of view, it is on the same level as a salesman’s remarking, “I sold it to him, but he didn’t buy it”—which is to say, it makes no sense. It seems to mean that “teaching” is what a “teacher” does, which, in turn, may or may not bear any relationship to what those being “taught” do.

Beyond powerlessness (Sair da Nossa Impotência Política) by Geoffroy de Lagasnerie

If we want to escape from our situation of powerlessness and anxiety, we must re-examine our relationship to the political, and strive to produce new types of political practice.

Full list

Fiction

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter - César Aira
The Plains - Gerald Murnane
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan
How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu
Levantado do Chão - José Saramago ⭐️
Até Amanhã Camaradas - Manuel Tiago
A Noite - José Saramago
Accidental Death of an Anarchist - Dario Fo
Nós Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso - Luís Bernardo de Honwana
Cousas - Alfonso Castelao
Stories of Mr. Keuner - Bertolt Brecht
Niebla - Miguel de Unamuno
The Ministry for the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson
Human Acts - Han Kang
The Invisible Ones - Nanni Balestrini

Poetry

Par de Olhos - Inês Morão Dias
Eu Índice N - E.M de Melo e Castro
Trabalho Poético 2 - Carlos de Oliveira
Queda de Neve nas Terras Altas - Rui S. Magalhães

Non-fiction

No Time to Spare - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Creative Act - Rick Rubin
The Art Collector’s Handbook - Mary Rozell
Unreasonable Hospitality - Will Guidara
Management of Art Galleries - Magnus Resch
Contro l’automobile - Andrea Coccia
Sonic Life - Thurston Moore
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - Ursula K. Le Guin
Diálogos de Colecionar - Adelaide Duarte
How Music Works - David Byrne ⭐️
The Curator’s Handbook - Adrian George
Trabalho Capital - Paulo Mendes
Utopía no es una isla - Layla Martínez
A Fortune-Teller Told Me - Tiziano Terzani ⭐️
Arquivo e Intervalo - José Maçãs de Carvalho
In Praise of the Bicycle - Marc Augé
The Abolition of Work - Bob Black
The Communist Manifesto: Insights and Problems - Murray Bookchin
Bullshit Jobs - David Graeber ⭐️
Textos escolhidos - Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles
A Escola Infinita - Eva Gonçalves
Practical Anarchism - Scott Branson
FIRE com Obrigações - Dama de Ouros
Teaching As a Subversive Activity - Neil Postman ⭐️
Terra de Catarina - Margarida Fernandes
Sad by Design - Geert Lovink
Botânica - Vasco Araújo
Privacidade 404 - Filipe Cruz
Sair da Nossa Impotência Política - Geoffroy de Lagasnerie ⭐️
O Coleccionador de Belas-Artes - Sara & André
Os Galifões e a Luta Contra a Praxe na Coimbra dos Anos 70 seguido de Os Quentes Anos 70 em Coimbra - M. Ricardo de Sousa & F. Carmichel
Lisboa Clichê - Daniel Blaufuks
The New Nihilism - Peter Lamborn Wilson
Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art - Brandon LaBelle
Entrevistas Corsárias - Pier Paolo Pasolini
The Year of Dreaming Dangerously - Slavoj Žižek
Inland Journal - André Cepeda e Eduardo Matos
Cúmplice dos Artistas - Alexandre Melo
I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette
Las comunas - José María Carandell
Lágrimas de Crocodilo - Susana Lourenço Marques
Two Cheers for Anarchism - James C. Scott
Sobre o Combate contra a Mudança Climática - António Cândido Franco
Carta de Florença - Ana Mata
A Exposição como Parcela de Tempo - Hugo Canoilas
Portugal, Povo de Suicidas - Miguel de Unamuno
A Arquitectura é um Gesto - Maria Filomena Molder
Scorched Earth - Jonathan Crary
Nem obedecer nem comandar - Francesco Codello
Copenhagenize - Mikael Colville-Andersen
Bad New Days - Hal Foster
Ghost Image - Hervé Guibert
All Art is Ecological - Timothy Morton
The Right to Be Lazy - Paul Lafargue
Lifehouse - Adam Greenfield
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
Care where no-one does - Freek Lomme
Wrong Way - Joanne McNeil
O Dogma da Não-Violência - Rolando d’Alessandro
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma - Claire Dederer
Bookshops - Jorge Carrión

“I need you to realize that most people are not like you and are actively victimized by the tech …

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:00:00 +0100

Even if you’re technologically savvy, you’re still dealing with these problems — fresh installs of Windows on new laptops, avoiding certain websites because you’ve learned what the dodgy ones look like, not interacting with random people in your DMs because you know what a spam bot looks like, and so on. It’s not that you’re immune. It’s that you’re instinctually ducking and weaving around an internet and digital ecosystem that continually tries to interrupt you, batting away pop-ups and silencing notifications knowing that they want something from you — and I need you to realize that most people are not like you and are actively victimized by the tech ecosystem.

— Never Forgive Them by Edward Zitron

QR Friend

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 12:10:00 +0100

We released another new app: QR Friend.

I was using an older Android phone for a while, without access to Google Lens. That meant I needed to get an app for reading QR codes. But I couldn’t find a decent one on Google Play. They were either outdated, or riddled with ads and unnecessary features. So we built one ourselves.

“Oh, I taught them that, but they didn’t learn it.” There is no utterance made in the Teachers’ Room …

Sat, 14 Sep 2024 16:00:00 +0100

It is not uncommon, for example, to hear “teachers” make statements such as, “Oh, I taught them that, but they didn’t learn it.” There is no utterance made in the Teachers’ Room more extraordinary than this. From our point of view, it is on the same level as a salesman’s remarking, “I sold it to him, but he didn’t buy it”—which is to say, it makes no sense. It seems to mean that “teaching” is what a “teacher” does, which, in turn, may or may not bear any relationship to what those being “taught” do.

— Teaching As a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman

Writing code faster or working longer hours is not the fastest way to get a project done because you …

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 18:30:00 +0100

Writing code faster or working longer hours is not the fastest way to get a project done because you can only linearly scale up how fast one can program. On the flip side, there’s nonlinear savings that can be had by reducing the amount of work you need to do in the first place. Thus, you should write less code rather than trying to write code faster.

— Software Development is Nonlinear System by Dan Lew

Caderno Redesign

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 10:52:51 +0100

We (Bloco) have done a major update of the Caderno Android app, 12 years after its release. It includes a new icon, a big redesign, and new features like search, backup and dark mode. Plus we’re finally testing revenue models for the app.