Some good links (week 48)

Politics

Some very good things from Dagens Nyheter crossed my feeds this week. They're in Swedish (duh) but machine translation might not completely butcher them. DN typically paywalls its articles a day after publication. In unrelated news, the Wayback Machine exists. Make of that what you will.

The first one is an incredible piece by Nadia Jebril about Palestinian diaspora grief and food. It is about eating when you cannot possibly find hunger in yourself anymore, about connection through ritual and spices. Swedish is a weirdly efficient language, which is how you get quotes like this: "Bröd, olivolja och za'tar. Behöver vara någonstans dit ingen smärta når." ("Bread, olive oil and za'tar. Must be something there that no pain can reach."). Link this way: Mamma. Pappa. Smaken av Palestina (via Twitter, Somar Al Naher retweeting Sanjin Pejković)

There is also a solid editorial about the far-right's naked attempts to turn the (very centrist) leader of the socio-democrats into Satan in order to make it even easier for the traditional right-wing to compromise with Nazis instead of normal politicians. Ironically enough this naked manipulation calling Magdalena Andersson too soft on radical islam comes just as she's aligning with old right-wing ideas about immigration. Swedish politics are going GREAT (no). Link this way: SD försöker förvandla Magdalena Andersson till Satan (via Twitter, Tobias Hübinette retweeting Annika Strandhäll)

In English, I was recently introduced to Isaac Chotiner and his tendency to metaphorically murder interviewees. He has notably been doing solid work around the situation in Palestine lately, see all of Chotiner's interviews here. As someone who doesn't like BHL, one interview in particular was a delight - watch how the annoying philosopher gets baited on one topic then another, only for Chotiner to bring the two together into an impressively clean kill. Content warnings for discussion of sexual assault and anti-muslim policies: Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Rights of Women and of the Accused. (via googling and finding an article presenting Chotiner's work after reading rahaeli on Bluesky saying she'd simply leave the country and forget English for good measure if Chotiner ever sent an interview request)

Crafts

I just learned about the "Swedish snowflake". Being a handweaver trained in Sweden, it surprised me that I had never heard of it or seen anything that looks quite like it: so when Laura Fry brought it up, I went looking. The authors of the weaving software Weavepoint have a good article on the topic (in Swedish), notably mentioning that it was fashionable for a bit but never quite made it into the Swedish handweaving canon! And now I need to get my hands on yet another old Swedish weaving book. Link this way: Snöflingor, Martinsson & Eriksson (via googling after a conversation in Abby Franquemont's Discord)

Tech

Wired has published a very long, very good read about the story behind the Mirai botnet. It goes in-depth about the stories of the people who created the beast, just enough of the technical aspects to be fascinating, and makes it extra-obvious that putting hackers (or anyone) in prison is a mistake. Link this way: The Mirai Confessions (via Bluesky, someone I can't remember reposted the author advertising the last day of free access)