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I fell into a rabbit hole and was checking the history of my city in Algeria… in 1906 when the French started sending settlers to the city and steal the agricultural land there was around 33 000 indigenous people (and 1500 settlers). 4 years into the war of liberation in 1958, 52 after the French started sending settlers there… there was only 6000 indigenous people left in the city. Took 45 years after the liberation for the city to reach 33 000 inhabitants again…
I’m not sure I wanna know the details of what happened to the 27 000 indigenous people who just disappeared… because I know that given the geography, time period and methods they were most likely killed…
I swear each time I innocently wanna learn something about Algeria’s recent history I dig too much and find myself learning some horrors the French committed in Algeria…
The primary agent confirmed by documentary evidence is CN2D, a compound mixture of three components: CN gas (chloroacetophenone), a cyanide derivative; DM gas (diphenylaminechlorarsine, also known as adamsite), an arsenical compound; and kieselguhr, a fine siliceous powder of micron-scale particles that carried the toxic gas particles deep into the respiratory system.[2][10] The combination of these three elements in high concentrations produced a gas that could rapidly prove lethal in enclosed spaces, causing asphyxiation or pulmonary edema.[11]
According to witness testimony, death in a confined cave could occur within fifteen minutes of exposure.[12] The agents used belonged to First World War-era arsenals and were not particularly innovative in chemical terms.[2] CN2D was delivered in grenades, flares, and rockets.[13] Internally, the French military referred to these agents as "reinforced tear gases" (gaz lacrymogènes renforcés), a framing intended to suggest they fell within categories technically permitted under the Geneva Conventions, despite their chemical composition and documented lethal effects identifying them as prohibited arsenical agents.[3] Lafaye notes that the use of other toxic gases is possible based on partial archival evidence, but cannot be confirmed in the current state of research.[2][14]
Napalm was also deployed by French forces in Algeria, used in surface operations against forests, villages, and ALN positions throughout the conflict.[15] According to the French military's own classification, napalm fell under the category of "special weapons" alongside chemical and nuclear agents.[3] Its use in Algeria is documented from 1956 onward.[2]
Algerian researcher in nuclear engineering Amar Mansouri notes that other weapons used by the French army include sarin, butane, and phosphorus.[16][17]
No worry! I did think about chemical weapons (even thought about the first “gas chambers” when the French would put whole villages in caves and then start a fire at the entrance all night long so the smoke would slowly kill everyone inside) but they were used more in the mountains and in the desert. And I’m from an agricultural region not a region with a lot of mountains and natural caves.
The population also quickly got up again right after the liberation, in the 4 years following the liberation the population augmented by 17000 people suggesting a lot of people coming in the but after that for 30 years there was an increase of only 2000 people. It suggests that the sudden increase was caused more by people moving into the town rather than just birth. Except it’s also a town where the same families have been living for centuries so the sudden increase was most likely people coming back and not new people coming in the city.
The geography added to the demography and the mortality rate (still one third of the population missing even if we consider that the sudden influx after the liberation was people coming back) suggests that it was concentration camps rather than chemical weapons. (The French did it before the “israeli” calling them “regrouping villages” and pretending it’s to protect the indigenous population when it’s about controlling and starving indigenous people) If that’s the case then the small settler population that existed in the town led to France not destroying fully the town like they did with smaller villages. There’s also the option of forced displacement without concentration camps (France displaced 40% of the indigenous population).
I kinda wanna ask my grandpa but he still sleeps with a shotgun near his bed because of his trauma caused by colonialism. I see him only in winter and in summer I’m not going to use that time to awaken trauma. I did mention my findings and my theory to my dad so he’ll probably talk about it with my uncle who used to be a history teacher before he retired. So I might find out what happened. If I do and y’all are interested I’ll update the post.
im rly struggling not so much with reading ml theory as i am comprehending how it applies to current + everyday situations, and making connections. do you have any advice for actually understanding and applying theory? either way, have a great day!!
Oooh, this is an excellent question! It's something I struggled with a lot early on, and I suspect a lot of other people as well—even if we don't talk about it a lot.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three(ish) steps you can take to start overcoming this hurdle
1. Understand the context in which works were written
Works of theory will often sound like they're making general and (relatively) timeless arguments, when really they are almost always trying to convince specific people to take specific actions. For example, I would personally argue that it's difficult to truly understand . . .
The Principles of Communism and The Communist Manifesto without understanding 19th c. European anarchism and the revolutionary wave of 1848.
What Is to Be Done? without understanding the fracturing of Russian socialist circles after 1898 and the growth of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany, which Lenin was so inspired by.
On Contradiction without understanding the debate between urban vs. agrarian revolutionary organizing, which characterized the Communist Party of China's formative years.
Just to name a few examples of works often recommended as "timeless."
Two further qualifications should be made on this point:
You do not need to become an expert on this history! Even a surface level concept of surrounding historical events will help you dig much deeper into a text. You can read accompanying history books, articles on the text or author, or even just a wikkkipedia page. Anything to help ground you in the world a text was written in.
For popular, foundational texts, the old Progress Publishers, International Publishers, and Foreign Language Press* editions usually have extensive footnotes on historical context, which I have found invaluable in my own studies. These are so helpful that, when possible, I would honestly recommend looking for pdf scans of these editions over the Marxist Internet Archive html editions for digital reading!
The point is not to say that these texts don't contain general and timeless lessons; it is to understand how formative theorists have used such lessons to intervene in the political movements of their time. Seeing how theory has guided the practical activities of the revolutions which inspire us will help us understand how to apply it in our own historical moment 😉
1.5. Understand how works were written
This is related to point one, but I'm bracketing it out just because it's a bit more of an intermediate step that I don't want people to feel bad for struggling with.
Basically, the point here is that once you understand the basic methodology of dialectical and historical materialism, you should look for how it's applied in every piece of Marxist theory you read. I don't have anything like instructions on how to do this, but I'll say that the article Continuing the Revolution is Not a Dinner Party by Mick Kelly really helped me take this step, just because he uses the jargon from On Contradiction to apply the general kind of methodology pioneered by Marx. (I personally happened to reread this piece around the same time I was rereading The 18th Brumaire, and it suddenly made everything click where I could see how Marx was charting the development of contradictions much more clearly than when I first read the text!)
2. Study theory directly about modern issues
It turns out that one of the best ways to learn how to apply theory to the current situation is . . . to study theory applied to the current situation. This is a bit harder to know where to start with just because there isn't a consensus around the important journals to read right now in the same way that there's consensus about the most important that were published 100 years ago—but there are journals out there, for you to explore.
In addition to whatever random articles from random outlets people send me, I try to keep up with The Monthly Review, and listen to lectures/interviews/podcasts with contemporary theorists. (Some good youtube channels for these are, The Red Nation, Geopolitical Economy Hour, Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective, and the Critical Theory Workshop—I have disagreements with each of these, but still find their intellectual output quite stimulating.)
Another way you can go about this is identifying parties or orgs whose work you appreciate, and looking at the theoretical works they publish. For example, my own org keeps a dedicated theory page on our website, with an assortment of articles blending historical interpretation with contemporary strategy and tactics. Of these, I continue to particularly recommend the article Some Points on the Mass Line, which I believe is one of the best pieces wrt demonstrating how we can actually apply foundational M-L theory to everyday political organizing in the modern world!
3. Get organized!
I cannot emphasize just how much talking regularly with actual Communists about actual political work will teach you about theory! I don't think it makes sense for me to give, like, instructions on this here, but you can read my potted posts on organizing in Amerikkka under my #get organized tag. Remember, after all, that "the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it"!
*FLP Peking (Beijing), that is. FLP Paris is frustratingly lacking in this regard
imo engaging critically with texts and scholars is not something you should just do when you disagree, but also when you agree. it can be enriching to identify the limitations of an author or activist that you largely agree with because it can give you broader perspective and opportunity for introspection. also, to put it bluntly, everyone says stupid shit at one time or another, so you shouldn't uncritically accept everything someone says to you.
The machinery of whiteness constantly deploys violence-and in a mirror-register, constantly manufactures wonder, surprise, and innocence in relation to that violence.
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A new study shows how pickup artist influencers use smart glasses to create content, and the connection between covert recording and harm.
Instagram is full of first-person videos of men harassing women in public. They follow a similar script: A man walks up to a woman or group of women in a store, sitting outside a cafe, or walking home from a bar, and delivers a pickup line. The women almost always nervously laugh, react with barely-veiled disgust, or say "fuck off" while he stalks her or refuses to walk away. The men recording these videos capture them with Meta's smart glasses, which are designed to discreetly capture interactions like these and upload the videos to Meta's platforms where the women in the videos are turned into content for "pickup artist" accounts.
New research reveals this ecosystem works, and how pickup artists (PUA) influencers are using Meta's products, including its smart glasses and social media platforms, to perpetuate a culture of harassment against women.
[...]
"The more surreptitious the filming seemed, the researchers found, the more serious the harassment. "The data reveals a clear correlation between the 'covertness' of the filming modality and the severity of the harassment," they wrote. "This combination of first-person perspective and device concealment confirms that the means of production remain largely clandestine, facilitating a condition of low awareness among subjects and reinforcing the deceptive nature of wearable-mediated capture."
That's crazy, I would not be able to tell those apart from regular glasses. I'm not typically fixated on a person's glasses in conversations anyway as someone who wears glasses
A new study shows how pickup artist influencers use smart glasses to create content, and the connection between covert recording and harm.
Instagram is full of first-person videos of men harassing women in public. They follow a similar script: A man walks up to a woman or group of women in a store, sitting outside a cafe, or walking home from a bar, and delivers a pickup line. The women almost always nervously laugh, react with barely-veiled disgust, or say "fuck off" while he stalks her or refuses to walk away. The men recording these videos capture them with Meta's smart glasses, which are designed to discreetly capture interactions like these and upload the videos to Meta's platforms where the women in the videos are turned into content for "pickup artist" accounts.
New research reveals this ecosystem works, and how pickup artists (PUA) influencers are using Meta's products, including its smart glasses and social media platforms, to perpetuate a culture of harassment against women.
[...]
"The more surreptitious the filming seemed, the researchers found, the more serious the harassment. "The data reveals a clear correlation between the 'covertness' of the filming modality and the severity of the harassment," they wrote. "This combination of first-person perspective and device concealment confirms that the means of production remain largely clandestine, facilitating a condition of low awareness among subjects and reinforcing the deceptive nature of wearable-mediated capture."
That's crazy, I would not be able to tell those apart from regular glasses. I'm not typically fixated on a person's glasses in conversations anyway as someone who wears glasses
Instagram is full of first-person videos of men harassing women in public. They follow a similar script: A man walks up to a woman or group of women in a store, sitting outside a cafe, or walking home from a bar, and delivers a pickup line. The women almost always nervously laugh, react with barely-veiled disgust, or say "fuck off" while he stalks her or refuses to walk away. The men recording these videos capture them with Meta's smart glasses, which are designed to discreetly capture interactions like these and upload the videos to Meta's platforms where the women in the videos are turned into content for "pickup artist" accounts.
New research reveals this ecosystem works, and how pickup artists (PUA) influencers are using Meta's products, including its smart glasses and social media platforms, to perpetuate a culture of harassment against women.
University of Sydney researchers Joanne Gray, Marcus Carter, and Ben Egliston watched hundreds of these videos to learn how pickup artist content creators use smart glasses, and what specific forms of gendered harms these recordings cause. They published their research paper, "Harm Through the '#RizzCam': Smart Glasses, Ambient Capture and Invisible Harassment," online this week as a preprint article.
The researchers compiled a dataset of 350 Instagram videos posted between September 2023 and March 2026. The videos fit specific criteria: they depicted real-world interactions involving unsolicited approaches to women in public or semi-public settings. "Unsolicited interactions were defined as approaches that appeared to be initiated without prior indication of mutual engagement," the researchers wrote in the paper. "We included videos that appeared to be staged, scripted, or comedic performance as it is often difficult to confidently determine intent in platform content, and such material may still contribute to the circulation and normalisation of these interactions." They found the videos by searching hashtags and keywords commonly used by pickup artist grifters.
The more surreptitious the filming seemed, the researchers found, the more serious the harassment. "The data reveals a clear correlation between the 'covertness' of the filming modality and the severity of the harassment," they wrote. "This combination of first-person perspective and device concealment confirms that the means of production remain largely clandestine, facilitating a condition of low awareness among subjects and reinforcing the deceptive nature of wearable-mediated capture."
Meta’s Ray-Ban Glasses Users Film and Harass Massage Parlor Workers
“The shameless use of covert recording technology at massage parlours to gain likes, attention, and online notoriety is both disgusting and dangerous.”
Emanuel Maiberg
When Meta announced its Ray-Ban Meta glasses in 2021, Egliston said, he and several of his colleagues, including those on the research team for this paper, wrote that the company’s safeguards were insufficient. "The company’s answer to covert recording was a light on the device and an expectation that users would somehow just behave responsibly. That has plainly not worked, and it leaves the burden on the people being filmed rather than on the company that built the device and owns the platforms the footage ends up on." Last year, 404 Media reported on the ways people are modding Meta's smart glasses to disable the recording light. Ray-Ban Metas have also been repeatedly spotted on immigration agents during raids.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said last month that the platform would start removing harassing content. "If you're posting content that is taking advantage of people and harassing them, like a lot of these pickup line kind of videos that we've heard of and seen, then we're going to take the content down," Mosseri said. "We don't want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people and harassing them and then posting them on our platform. So we're trying to fight that every way we can." As of writing— almost a month after that announcement — I easily found pages and pages of Reels by men approaching women while wearing smart glasses where the women being filmed either don't seem to know they're being recorded, or obviously don't want to be filmed and repeatedly tell the man recording them to stop. This isn't even counting the endless videos recommended to me by Instagram's algorithm showing people antagonizing and filming retail workers and shoppers in stores using smart glasses.
What’s the Difference Between AI Glasses and an iPhone? A Helpful Guide for Meta PR
Meta thinks its camera glasses, which are often used for harassment, are no different than any other camera.
Emanuel Maiberg
In the pickup artist world, this content is both entertaining and instructive, the researchers wrote. It's superpowered by the proliferation of smart glasses like Meta's. "As these devices move from niche curiosities to mainstream products, smart glasses intensify this asymmetry through ambient capture," they wrote. "By leveraging their unobtrusive design, PUAs create point-of-view (POV) recordings that place the digital audience in the literal position of the practitioner. This technical capability covertly embeds the act of filming within the social encounter, effectively weaponising the subject’s lack of awareness. The result is a novel mode of 'borderline' harassment that often evades the scrutiny of existing platform governance mechanisms, as it lacks the overt markers typically required for a policy violation."
The harm doesn't end when the interaction ends, the researchers found. The long digital tail of these videos—which Instagram fails to properly moderate based on its own promises to crack down on this content—means the women in them are subjected to harassment long after they manage to get away from the man in real life. "Combined with the fact that 93.3% of these posts left comments open, subjects were frequently exposed to a digital afterlife of crude, abusive, and misogynistic commentary from the platform audience," the researchers wrote. "Comments frequently framed women’s rejection or discomfort as unnecessarily dismissive, including remarks such as 'she was acting rude' or suggestions that women should 'at least acknowledge' the men approaching them, while others minimised harassment by arguing that people who label such behaviour as harassment are contributing to declining birth rates."
I Have Thoughts About That Kylie Jenner Meta Glasses Ad
Meta’s new Starfire AI glasses, made in partnership with Kylie Jenner, are giving me the creeps.
Samantha Cole
The researchers wrote that they were inspired by the BBC's investigations into how women are targeted by Meta smart glasses wearers when they're trying to go about their daily lives. In one BBC report, a woman who was recorded and posted online by a man using Meta's smart glasses was harassed for weeks after the video went online, and said she was "bombarded" with phone calls because her phone number was posted with the video. "On one occasion, she says she picked up the phone and a man said to her: 'Do you know how stupid you are? Do you regret it? Do you know how easy that made you look?,'" the BBC reported. Men came to her workplace and repeated lines from the video and demanded her social media details, she told the BBC.
“I’ve been surprised by how firmly the ‘pervert glasses’ label has stuck. There’s a widespread aversion here that doesn’t seem quite as present for other surveillance or data-intensive products," Egliston told 404 Media. "But public sentiment — while perhaps meaning people will be less likely to wear the glasses — is not a governance mechanism."
Egliston said that Meta's content moderation record "doesn’t encourage confidence," but hopes to be proven wrong. "Our hope is that the current backlash, combined with emerging legislation imposing a duty of care on platforms, will force more substantive changes."
In every way this is set up to be a joke like any other short video, it even uses the trope of main character in a wig to represent their mom, but it isn't funny at all. It's just sweet and nice
you know what, now that I think about it- how much behavioral differences between young boys and girls are completely manufactured? by that I mean, how many would exist without the concept of women being subordinate to men? do boys actually struggle to behave more in school or do they struggle with the amount of women in authority positions? I don't believe we're actually so different at a young age once you get down to it
