Democracy Now! 2025-12-22 Monday

• Headlines for December 22, 2025
• "Who Are They Protecting?": Rep. Ro Khanna Urges Contempt Charges over AG Bondi's Epstein Redactions
• Rep. Ro Khanna on Venezuela Strikes, Zohran Mamdani, Trump-Kennedy Center & More
• Israel Approves 19 New West Bank Settlements as State-Sponsored Violence Escalates
• "Destroying Knowledge": Michael Mann on Trump's Dismantling of Key Climate Center in Colorado

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Happy Thanksgiving/taking everyone! As a special holiday bonus, here's an extended highlight reel from our two sold-out live shows at The Gutter in Brooklyn, NY this past October. Our guests were the amazing Briahna Joy Gray (night 1) and Francesca Fiorentini (night 2), with opening standup sets by Jess Salomon and Jeremy Kaplowitz. Special thanks to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes. Gobble gobble, y'all!

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Derek is joined by Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute to discuss the Southern Transitional Council’s recent territorial advances in Yemen, what they mean for the country’s already-fractured political order, and why the “internationally recognized government” remains mostly theoretical. They also delve into the history of southern secessionism, the dysfunction of the Presidential Leadership Council, and how Emirati-backed forces have consolidated control over much of former South Yemen.

Follow Annelle on Twitter.

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The Dead Ringers team are back to train their vocal firepower on the week’s news with an armoury of impressive impressions.

This week: Farage goes to a new school, The Snowman takes Keir Starmer on a Christmas journey, and Alan Carr: Special Negotiator.

This week's impressionists are Jan Ravens, Jess Robinson, Kieran Hodgson and Josh Berry.

The episode was written by: Nev Fountain and Tom Jamieson, Laurence Howarth, Tom Coles, Sarah Campbell, Sophie Dickson, Jon Holmes, Alice Bright, Rachel E Thorn, Jennifer Walker, Joe Topping, Alex Buchanan and G Watson.

Created by Bill Dare Producer: Jon Holmes Executive Producer: Richard Morris Production Co-ordinator: Caroline Barlow

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4

2025 has been a tremendous year for the artificial intelligence industry. Stock prices for AI companies skyrocketed, soaring beyond expectations and propping up an otherwise stagnant U.S. economy. But everywhere, there’s talk of an AI bubble — one even bigger and more threatening than the 2008 housing bubble or the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.

What makes this bubble so different? When is it likely to pop? And if it does, what does that mean for the rest of us? 

In this episode of Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with Ed Zitron and Sruthi Pinnamaneni, journalists covering the AI frenzy, to recap the year of the AI Bubble — and predict what will happen next.

To read Ed Zitron's blog, Where's Your Ed At, click here.

Click here to check out Sruthi Pinnamaneni's two part series on AI data centers.

Got three minutes? Please take our end-of-year survey!

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Democracy Now! 2025-12-17 Wednesday

• Headlines for December 17, 2025
• A Path to WWIII? Greg Grandin on Venezuela, Trump's "Madman Doctrine" & More
• Chile's Trump? Ariel Dorfman on the Election of Pinochet Admirer José Antonio Kast
• How Did Epstein Get Rich? The New York Times Investigates His "Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons"

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Chag Sameach! Danny and Derek are joined by independent scholar Joseph Scales to talk about the history of Hanukkah. They discuss the rivalry between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires that preceded the conflict; the Maccabean/Hasmonean revolt and the family's ascension to power within Judea; the Judean expansion; and much more.

Originally published November 27, 2021

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Just a quickie today. This post addresses a niche need that most readers probably aren’t facing. Joar Alexander Pablo von Arndt’s girlfriend recently bought a Framework 12 laptop and stylus and wanted to use it to take handwritten notes that she could later organize in Org mode.

That’s the type of thing that sounds like it should be doable with Emacs and, of course, it is. The solution they settled on was to use Xournal++ to take the handwritten notes and org-xournalpp to interface it to Emacs.

Sadly, it didn’t work quite right on the Framework 12 so they wrote a bit of Elisp to do the interfacing. It turned out to be pretty easy. See Pablo von Arndt’s post for the details.

This is another nice example of how you can use Emacs to solve problems with just a little investigation into what’s available and perhaps a bit of Elisp.

Update [2025-12-17 Wed 11:28]: Added link to Pablo von Arndt’s post.

We have Séamus, of Turbulance Podcast, to discuss Trump, Maduro, peace prizes, the middle East and Ada Lluch.

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In this episode of the Soberanía Podcast, hosts Jose Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth discuss: the reappearance of AMLO, the resignation of Mexico's Attorney General Gertz Manero, and the recent elections in Honduras. They delve into AMLO's return to public life, his new book, and the political implications of his actions. The resignation of Gertz Manero is analyzed in the context of his controversial tenure and the challenges facing Mexico's justice system. The hosts also explore the surprising election results in Honduras, highlighting the role of US intervention and the impact on regional politics. The episode concludes with the usual 'losers and haters' segment, where they critique an Obama-era figure.

A DSA member just won one of the most significant left-wing electoral victories in recent memory with Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York — despite red-baiting, anti-Palestinian smears, and a full-on campaign to demonize socialism.

But that victory has raised big questions: Why keep Jessica Tisch as NYPD commissioner? Why discourage a primary against Hakeem Jeffries — and then endorse him for Speaker? What does accountability look like when socialists actually win power?

To unpack all this, Rania Khalek is joined by the national co-chairs of the Democratic Socialists of America, Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique, to talk about Zohran’s win, DSA’s national strategy, Venezuela, Cuba, Palestine and how they plan to hold their elected members accountable. 

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Ronny Chieng covers the latest on the Trump administration’s petty changes to free-entry days at national parks, the president’s promise to bail out farmers after f**king up the economy, Melania’s attempt to spread some yuletide cheer, and Sean Duffy’s Department of Transportation press conference that turned into a d**k-measuring contest against RFK Jr.

On another edition of Who Won It Best, Desi Lydic and Troy Iwata recap the FIFA World Cup Draw and Peace Prize Ceremony, the biggest award show you’ve never heard of, where the balls were mingled, the Village People performed the “YMCA,” and Trump received a trophy, medal, and certificate before jetting over to the Kennedy Center Honors to make KISS’s big night all about himself.

Journalist, internet activist, and author Cory Doctorow talks to Ronny about the concept behind his latest book, “Enshittification,” which breaks down how tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have made the internet worse for everybody by locking in users only to turn on them. He also stresses how the blame for the “enshittification” of the internet shouldn’t be placed on consumers, but on policy makers, and points to anti-trust enforcement, tech worker unions, and interoperability as the keys to remaking an internet that benefits users instead of billionaires.

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Trump contradicts his phony FIFA peace prize by cranking up the heat on military action in Venezuela, a country Newsmax host Greg Kelly couldn’t find on a map, and Jon Stewart gets an assist from The Daily Show archives and a time-traveling Rob Corddry to show how MAGA’s drumbeat for war with Venezuela is Iraq all over again.

Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, education activist, and bestselling author, returns to The Daily Show to chat with Jon about her new memoir, “Finding My Way.” They talk about how much her life has changed since she first visited the show at 16, including graduating college and getting married, and how she came to realize she doesn’t have to be perfect. She also opens up about managing mental health and societal projections while pursuing activist work and the school for women she founded in Pakistan, which just graduated its first-ever class.

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Christian Tietze gave a very nice talk at the EmacsConf 2025 about Zettelkastens and their implementation in Emacs. The first part of his talk is about Zettelkastens and why you should be using one. He also discusses what type of information to put in an entry and the purpose of forward and backward links.

The second part of the talk discusses how Tietze uses Protesilaos Stavrou’s Denote package to implement his own Zettelkasten and give a demonstration of it in action. There are, of course, some dedicated Zettlelkasten packages like org-roam and org-node but Denote seems like a more flexible solution although it may lack some of the features of org-roam and its brethren.

My main complaint about the video is that it moves too quickly and is hard to follow in places. That’s especially true of the demonstration. On the other hand, Tietze probably had at least a soft time restraint for his talk and had a lot to cover.

Before the talk, Tietze published a post that outlined what his talk was about at a philosophical level and has a link to the conference page for his talk that contains an transcript of the talk and some of the material he shows in the talk. It’s worthwhile taking a look at this resource before watching the video to help you follow along.

The talk is 23 minutes, 18 seconds long so plan accordingly.

Nick and Ciarán discuss the recent White House National Security Document and Europe trying to pay for Ukraine's Defense

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Frank & guests Dee Allum, Hasan Al-Habib, Marcus Brigstocke & Bella Hull discuss the most fashionable way to wear a pizza, the most unfashionable way to wear a Tam o’Shanter and the tallest swimming trunks in the world

This is the panel game based on what we all sit down and do at least once a day – shop online and leave a review, as an all-star panel celebrate the good, the bad & the baffling

Everyone has an online life, and when the great British public put pen to keyboard to leave a review, they almost always write something hilarious. And our all-star panel have to work out just what they were reviewing – and maybe contribute a few reviews of their own... and more... So if you’re the person who went on Trip Advisor to review Ben Nevis as “Very steep and too high”, this show salutes you!

This is the second episode of series three of One Person Found This Helpful. To hear more episodes, just search "One Person Found This Helpful" on BBC Sounds.

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Danny and Derek welcome back Brendan James and Noah Kulwin, of the Blowback podcast, for a tour through their latest season, which takes the show to Angola. They discuss how Angola became one of the largest and least-remembered battlefields of the Cold War, Reagan’s return to proxy wars, Cuba’s decision to send troops without Soviet approval, South Africa’s “total onslaught” ideology, the Reagan era’s fanaticism, its echoes in today’s politics, and what happens when the U.S. exports its wars (and mythology) across continents.

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Aaron and Bryce discuss the increasingly unraveling spectacle of the late US Empire. 

Check out Bryce Greene's Newsletter!

Special thanks to:

• Dana Chavarria, production

• Casey Moore, graphics

• Michelle Boley, animated intro

• Mock Orange, music

The preponderance of Markdown formatted text in both websites and apps is a blessing and a point of friction for Org users. The content is there, but if you’re an Org user, you really prefer the text to be formatted for Org. If you have Pandoc installed, converting from Markdown to Org is trivial but laborious as it involves making the right command invocation with temporary files.

Thankfully, Emacs can automate this conversion as described in the workflow below:

• From the source app or website, copy the Markdown into the system clipboard. This step pushes this text into the Emacs kill-ring.
• In Emacs, invoke a command which converts the above Markdown text into Org, then pastes (yanks) converted text into a desired Org file.

Note that this workflow presumes that the Emacs kill-ring is integrated with the system clipboard and that pandoc is installed.

The following Elisp command cc/yank-markdown-as-org implements the above workflow:

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(defun cc/yank-markdown-as-org ()
  "Yank Markdown text as Org.

This command will convert Markdown text in the top of the `kill-ring'
and convert it to Org using the pandoc utility."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (with-temp-buffer
      (yank)
      (shell-command-on-region
       (point-min) (point-max)
       "pandoc -f markdown -t org --wrap=preserve" t t)
      (kill-region (point-min) (point-max)))
    (yank)))

This command can be invoked in numerous ways including by key binding, context menu, Transient menu, and directly via M-x. My preference is using the context menu as illustrated in the screenshot below to optimize for mouse copy/paste interactions between different apps.

Users interested in seeing how I’ve configured my context menu can read the source here. Users unfamiliar with Emacs context menus can learn more about it in my post Customizing the Emacs Context Menu.

Closing Thoughts

Implementing cc/yank-markdown-as-org turned out to be a lot more simpler than expected, as the command shell-command-on-region does the heavy lifting in abstracting away the pandoc command invocation and its handling of temporary files. This implementation can serve as a example for other conversions using the kill-ring.

A word of thanks to mekeor on IRC for reminding me that (point-min) and (point-max) exist.

Ankit Gadiya has a very nice post that explains and demonstrates how he uses Org for presentations. It’s a nice workflow that uses Org, Logos, Olivetti, and Pikchr to create and display his presentation.

Gadiya starts his presentations with an outline. That’s a natural thing to do in Org mode, of course, and he has things configured so that each header and subheader is the title of a slide. That makes it easy to move things around an restructure the presentation.

He uses Pikchr, a Pic-like language for line diagrams. I didn’t know about it and have never used it but I have used Pic a lot and really like it. I’ll definitely be checking out Pikchr since I don’t use the Troff suite much any longer.

A nice thing about Gadiya’s post is that he shows his complete configuration so it’s easy to replicate or adapt it. I like this approach much better than the fancier packages like Apple’s Keynote that I always find difficult to use because they offer so many features.

If you regularly—or even occasionally—find yourself giving presentations, take a look at Gadiya’s post. If you’re an Org user, you’ll find the workflow familiar and easy. He has a lot of good ideas and they’re all documented well in his post.

Last month, Senate Democrats warned that "Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade." Ironically, they used ChatGPT to come to that conclusion. DAIR Research Associate Sophie Song joins us to unpack the issues when self-professed worker advocates use chatbots for "research."

Sophie Song is a researcher, organizer, and advocate working at the intersection of tech and social justice. They’re a research associate at DAIR, where they're working with Alex on building the Luddite Lab Resource Hub.

References:

• Senate report: AI and Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade
• Senator Sanders' AI Report Ignores the Data on AI and Inequality

Also referenced:

• MAIHT3k Episode 25: An LLM Says LLMs Can Do Your Job
• Humlum paper: Large Language Models, Small Labor Market Effects
• Emily's blog post: Scholarship should be open, inclusive and slow

Fresh AI Hell:

• Tech companies compelling vibe coding
• arXiv is overwhelmed by LLM slop
• 'Godfather of AI' says tech giants can't profit from their astronomical investments unless human labor is replaced
• If you want to satiate AI’s hunger for power, Google suggests going to space
• AI pioneers claim human-level general intelligence is already here
• Gen AI campaign against ranked choice voting
• Chaser: Workplace AI Implementation Bingo

Check out future streams on Twitch. Meanwhile, send us any AI Hell you see.

Find our book The AI Con here, and MAIHT3k merch here.

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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park. 
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.