My latest piece, Pact and pike, is an in-depth look at the deep networks of aid and resistance built by peasants across feudal Europe. Often dismissed as mindless mobs with pitchforks they instead sparked revolutions in communal organizing and fought their oppressors with a wide array of innovative tactics.

Over a year in the making, this anarchic history winds its way through community pacts, masked secret societies, revolutionary conspiracies, skilled ambushes, peasant militia breaking whole armies and a whole hell of a lot of dead nobles.

(If you like the piece, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or supporting my writing by donating a few bucks.)

The Notes essay gives some more on the sources behind this history of medieval European peasant revolt, how my interest in the era started as a poor kid in the '90s South and why I think this part of the past is important, especially for anarchists and leftists.

hi everyone,

we wanted to share an update regarding our previous financial update. If you haven’t read that post yet, go check it out first.

in this post we want to respond to some common questions and suggestions, provide an update on what we’re planning to do next, and tell you how you can help.

the numbers

first off: an update on how numbers have changed since our update on Monday. we’ve seen a large increase in cohost plus subscriptions, exceeding our expectations significantly. these numbers are accurate as of yesterday, March 14th (stripe only updates every 24-48 hours):

this is all, objectively, really great! it has been motivating over the last few days to see how much cohost means to a lot of y’all. even with this boost in MRR, we’re still operating at a loss of, on average, $17k per month, so we’ve got some other plans to help make that up.

the good news is the cash infusion from this recent subscriber wave (a bit over $20k after payment processing) combined with some funding offers we’ve received means we’re comfortable saying we’ve got at least six more months to make up that shortfall in one way or another.

more details follow! keep reading!

There's two layers to it. One is fairly utilitarian: if you're trying to hook up for gay sex it's kind of useful to know who's going to be doing what.

The other is that i think a lot of queers don't actually unlearn the harm of sexual binarism and basically recreate the old structures they hated but with fancy fun gay colors instead.

It's fully reasonable to realize your queer identity and breath a huge sigh of relief, to go "wow, I'm so glad I've found a space where I'm not forced to be in that role." But the trap is in taking that relief and moving on without interrogating it.

Why did that suck? Because it hurt you. Okay, true. Why did it hurt you?

A common mistake i see many queers make is that they, feeling an intense resentment to their former enforced identity, respond with "because the identity was bad!"

No. The enforcement was bad. Maybe the enforcement was so bad you can never even approach similar identities again! But it was the enforcement that caused harm.

Gay men who leave enforced heterosexuality may very well turn around and say "heterosexuality was the problem!" And then recreate the most comically misogynistic "women are submissive, men are dominant" dynamics imaginable except with "top" and "bottom" replacing "man" and "woman". Ctrl+F. Because the freedom of homosexuality became about escaping heterosexuality to this strawman, not about escaping the rigid enforcement of heterosexuality.

overwhelming to imagine the mental calculus of worrying about fasting during a systematic starvation. keeping tradition alive while still staying healthy; trying to enjoy iftar in the imperial core while knowing your tax dollars abet mass starvation. belated ramadan mubarak and solidarity with palestinians and those fasting everywhere.

Looked around and found this article about exactly this.

Death ends their misery, but forever denies them the relief that they were seeking. Part of Ramadan’s joy is the act of looking forward: to iftar, the meal that breaks the fast every evening; to Laylat al-Qadr, the night when the first verses of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad; to the feast of Eid, which marks the end of daily sacrifice. How do you celebrate the holy month when you fear the suffering will not end?

God prescribes fasting as a means of self-discipline, a way to show Muslims what they’re capable of and to protect themselves from hellfire. But He is merciful; not everyone is called on to fast, especially if doing so causes harm. The Quran grants exceptions to those who are pregnant, breast-feeding, or menstruating, and to people who are travelling, elderly, or ill. Starvation or P.T.S.D. would count as illnesses; fleeing your home would count as travel. These exemptions seem almost absurd, and maybe they won’t matter. Some will choose to fast regardless. Sometimes the best way to forget one pain is to focus on another.