Beyond the Spark II: Crisis and Continuity is a new report by Dr Colm Walsh (Queen’s University Belfast), examining the conditions that contributed to the Ballymena riots of June 2025 and the lessons for preventing future episodes of collective violence. Building on the original Beyond the Spark research, the study explores the experiences of young people […]
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Village-scale resilience
The end-of-the-world already happened, it's just not evenly distributed. But with every end is a new beginning.
John Vervaeke: “The Meaning Crisis: Wisdom, Purpose, and the Search for Coherence” - The Great Simplification
The crises that our world is facing seem to be constantly growing, leading to enormous and devastating systemic effects across the globe.
How to fight hate: New Humanist’s Autumn 2026 issue is out now
With race riots on the rise and the populist right gaining traction, we ask how the UK can push back
Rediscovering The Spark
The last few years have been hard as someone who is not only very much engaged with technologies, their applications, damages and affordances as well as their politics. We’ve been moving through hype cycle after hype cycle with increasing promises at increasing speeds. Which is somewhat natural of course: Being built not around something material, […]
Six Months at Riot Games
I’ve been up all night after reading Kotaku’s article on the company culture of Riot, and its effect on women in particular. Cecilia contacted me as a potential source, but I didn’t commit to providing my experience on the record because I was worried about the ramifications of speaking out. The discourse around this conversation and the reticence to believe the women who came forward has stunned me. I’ve been carrying around a heavy weight on my shoulders since 2014, and I feel it is finally time to let it go. I only lasted six months at Riot before resigning.
Early violence is a bad teacher. But the mind can learn anew | Aeon Essays
A world of violence sustains itself through guns, poverty and other social ills, but also through the minds it creates
Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences
POLITICS AFTER THE END OF THE END OF HISTORYWhat happens when politics is everywhere, yet nothing seems to change? From the abandoned dance floors of Thatcher’s London to the mass mobilizations of Black Lives Matter, Anton Jäger traces how public life has become infused with protest, spectacle, and moral urgency — while the old infrastructure of parties, unions, and civic solidarity has been hollowed out.Hyperpolitics revisits the illusions of the “end of history” and dissects the strange energies that replaced them: viral outrage, endless culture wars, and the digital rush of causes that flare and vanish overnight. Jäger shows how the promises of post–Cold War liberalism gave way to a restless, unsteady public sphere where private passions overflow into politics but rarely build enduring power.Ranging from Guy Debord and Wolfgang Tillmans to Houellebecq’s disenchanted fictions, Hyperpolitics makes sense of a world in which collective action remains fragmented and the social fabric thinner than ever. For anyone trying to grasp why our age feels so charged yet so inconsequential, this book offers a vital map through the new contradictions of our hyperpolitical moment.
Real Problems, Real Solutions: A Messaging Guide to Move Beyond Racial Scapegoating in the Victorian Election
The Commons is an online library for the change makers of the world and for those interested in social change, activism, organising, advocacy and justice.
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate
July 7, 2020 The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and […]
Becoming Alive, Autonomous, and Explosive • Ill Will
Interview with the Invisible Committee on "Survival Manual" and the ongoing uprising in France.
Remotely Coerced Violence: 764, The Com Network, and the Hybridization of Threats - Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract: This article examines 764 and the wider Com Network as a case study in remotely coerced violence and the hybridization of contemporary terrorist and violent extremist threats. It argues that nihilistic violent extremism is best understood as a victim-driven, youth-centered online ecosystem in which status, belonging, and identity are earned through the production, circulation, … Continued
2026 IC2S2: Keynote Presentation by Kate Starbird
When Riot Cops Are Not Enough
In When Riot Cops Are Not Enough, sociologist Mike King examines the policing, and broader political repression, of the Occupy Oakland movement. King’s active and daily participation in that movement provides a unique insider perspective to illustrate how the Oakland police and city administrators lost the ability to effectively control the movement.
The Maidan in Movement: Diversity and the Cycles of Protest
The Maidan protests provide us with insights into Ukrainian society and the dynamics of mobilisation more generally. Based on the EuroMaidan Protest Participant Survey, on-site rapid interviews wit...
The Intelligence Curse
This series examines the incoming crisis of human irrelevance and provides a map towards a future where people remain the masters of their destiny.
