Greetings Horror Sickos, Listener, please light a circle of candles and begin to scrawl out the ancient sigils in salt, and begin the accursed chant … “Let’s All Go to the Lobby, Let’s All Go to the Lobby, and Grab Ourselves a Snack” That’s right! Spooky season is upon us and to inaugurate another edition of Ghoulvie Screamset Horrortober, Will Massacre and Hexa Deni are back with a selection of abominable and morally ruinous films. First up, in Return of the Living Dead (O’Bannon, 1985) an assortment of punks, working stiffs and slobs accidentally expose themselves to zombie gas and help bring out the nuclear bombing of Louisville, Kentucky in this documentary about a real thing that actually happened. This hilarious and goofball horror film asks two existentially terrifying questions: What if you could feel every second of being dead? And, do you want to PARTY???? Then in The Blob (Russell, 1988), a sci fi classic gets a grisly and unforgettable remake that features Kevin Dillon playing an motorcycle riding bad boy who smokes cigs, wears a leather jacket and has to save the small town that rejects him for being too cool from a giant blob that digests and dissolves everything in its path. This episode is free, but the rest of Ghoulvie Screamset Season 3 will be paywalled!

Co-hosts John Dolan & Mark Ames

Paul Sinha tests his audience in Leicester on their knowledge of their home county, Trivial Pursuit-style - with all the colours of questions, from geography to entertainment, getting asked. Can they fill the wedges, and can Paul answer their favourite questions, about crisps, bells and cricket?

To hear more episodes, search "Paul Sinha's Perfect Pub Quiz" on BBC Sounds.

Written and performed by Paul Sinha Additional material: Oliver Levy Additional questions: The Audience

Original music: Tim Sutton

Recording engineer: Jerry Peal Mixed by: Rich Evans Producer: Ed Morrish

A Lead Mojo production for BBC Radio 4

First stop of the new series is Oakham, nestled in the UK’s smallest county – Rutland.

Rutland has a village that's proudly twinned with Paris (even if the Parisians don’t know), has Europe’s largest man-made lake (which required flooding a local village) and hangs its horseshoes the other way round (so the devil falls out, obviously).

Joining Mark is Clare Balding, who’s also in town to take him on a ramble around Rutland, which you can hear in Ramblings, this Thursday on Radio 4.

This is the 14th series of Mark's award winning show where he travels around the country visiting towns that have nothing in common but their uniqueness. After thoroughly researching each town, Mark writes and performs a bespoke evening of comedy for a local audience. As well as Oakham, in this series, Mark be will also be popping to Wrexham, Cambridge, Lewisham and, Lerwick and Unst in Shetland.

There will also be extended versions of each episode available on BBC sounds.

Written and performed by Mark Steel

Additional material by Pete Sinclair Production co-ordinator Caroline Barlow and Katie Baum Sound Manager Jerry Peal Producer Carl Cooper

A BBC Studios production for Radio 4

In the week where Trump brokered a peace deal in the Middle East, buzz was generated at the Conservative Party Conference (honestly), the Home Office announces greater restrictions on protests, and the world's first footballer billionaire is crowned, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Scott Bennett, Ayesha Hazarika, Kate Cheka and Ian Smith to break down this weeks news.

Written by Andy Zaltzman.

With additional material by: Jain Edwards, Ruth Husko and Alfie Packham Producer: Rajiv Karia Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Coordinator: Giulia Lopes Mazzu Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

Nick has on Dave Braneck (sportswriter for DW and Jacobin) to talk about SPORTS! Wait wait don't leave, it's focusing on American sports being exported to EU markets and beyond. Globalisation! Geopolitics! Economies! You love that shit. Also Ciarán leaves a quick news update from paternity leave.

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The highly-anticipated astrology episode is finally here! This week Briahna talks to the incredibly warm and charming Oakland-based writer, astrologer, and host of the popular podcast Stars and Stars with Isa Isa Nakazawa about the roots of her own interest in astrology, why Brie has been attracting Cancer men, why looking at just your sun sign offers an incomplete picture, & what it means that Trump is a Leo rising. Once an astrology skeptic herself, Isa offers an explanation of why celestial events might have bearing on how we move through the world, and why an understanding of the stars and ourselves might be useful for a leftist community struggling to connect to each other and the broader world. (Skeptics should give this one a chance!)

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Séamus joins us to talk about Trump’s proposed “Gaza peace plan” and what horrific policies it would actually entail in practice, as well as the Democratic Party’s desperate attempts to triangulate on the issue. We also wade into the increasing possibility of regime change in Venezuela as well as ICE’s pillaging of Chicago apartment buildings. On the lighter side, we talk about Bari Weiss being given the keys to CBS news and Tyler Cowen’s Humbert Humbert-esque ode to an AI actress. Follow @Turbulence_pod on X for updates about when Séamus’s pod drops. NEW MERCH IS OUT NOW! Go to https://chapotraphouse.store/ and buy a new hat or shirt, especially our great new “Carousel Club” design. AND be sure to pre-save the date of October 28 for Will and Hesse’s LIVE WATCH PARTY of Re-Animator! Tickets available now – use the promo code CHAPO20 for 20% off! https://checkout.stagepilot.com/collections/chapo-trap-house

Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill return to talk more about the ceasefire deal in Gaza. We discuss what finally led to this moment, whether this ceasefire will be any different than the previous ones, and the future of Gaza, Israel, and the Gulf States. We then turn to the media’s coverage of Gaza: Jeremy’s new story on The Free Press’ “debunking” of the photos of malnourished Gazan children, the news that Douglas Murray and David Frum were writing speeches for an Israeli ambassador, a supposed document from Mohammad Sinwar, and Jacki Karsh’s pro-Israel journalism fellowship. Subscribe to Drop Site here: https://www.dropsitenews.com/ NEW MERCH IS OUT NOW! Go to https://chapotraphouse.store/ and buy a new hat or shirt, especially our great new “Carousel Club” design. AND be sure to pre-save the date of October 28 for Will and Hesse’s LIVE WATCH PARTY of Re-Animator! Tickets available now – use the promo code CHAPO20 for 20% off! https://checkout.stagepilot.com/collections/chapo-trap-house

Episodes of Devil's Chess Club--and all American Exception podcast episodes--are available first on Patreon [ https://www.patreon.com/americanexception ]. Lawrence Wilkerson and Gary Vogler join us to discuss and answer the question: Who controls US foreign policy in the Middle East—the US or Israel/Zionism? Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired US Army Colonel and former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Gary Vogler is a retired US oil executive and served in Iraq as the senior oil advisor to General Jay Gardner and Paul Bremer after the 2003 Iraq War. Vogler is also the author of the very important book, 'Israel, Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War: Undue Influence, Deceptions, and the Neocon Energy Agenda' [ https://libertarianinstitute.org/books/israel-winner-of-the-2003-iraq-oil-war/ ]. Special thanks to: • Dana Chavarria, production • Casey Moore, graphics • Michelle Boley, animated intro • Mock Orange, music

Following up on my recent posts about RSS [1, 2] here’s an article on everything (and probably more) that you ever wanted to know about RSS readers. It turns out that there’s all sorts of readers: paid, hosted, self hosted, on device, browser based, and more.

The article considers readers along two axes:

Deployment Mode

on device, browser extension, hosted, self hosted

Business Model

free, one time fee, subscription

In other words, where the data is stored and how much you pay. The article looks at over 30 RSS readers, classifies them according to the two axis, and briefly describes many of them.

They don’t, of course, talk about the best feed reader, elfeed. That’s understandable. Not even I would expect someone to adopt Emacs just for an RSS reader. I’ve used Reeder and Feedly and they were fine. When I used it, Reeder was free but is paid now. Feedly was always paid but I have a lifetime subscription from getting in early. They’re both hosted solutions

For me, elfeed hits to sweet spot. It’s free, on device, has a ton of features, and since it’s open source can be customized as needed. If you’re an Emacs user, you really should be using it. And who knows, maybe Org mode, magit, and elfeed will be enough to get you to give Emacs a try.

In any event, if you’re looking for an RSS reader, this is a useful article to find out what’s available and what their capabilities are.

Co-hosts John Dolan & Mark Ames

At this week's Labour Conference, Kier Starmer warned that Britain faces a 'fork in the road'. Helping Andy Zaltzman decide which way to turn are Ian Smith, Celya AB, Hugo Rifkind and Zoe Lyons.

Written by Andy Zaltzman.

With additional material by: Cody Dahler, Eve Delaney and John Tothill Producer: Georgia Keating and James Robinson Executive Producer: Pete Strauss Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

Watch Part 2 of our interview with Cory Doctorow, writer and tech activist, whose new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, is out this week. “Enshittification” is now in Webster’s Dictionary, and Doctorow relates the term he coined to the concept of technofeudalism as a way of understanding what went wrong for tech workers, and how platforms and apps like Uber are regulated. He also describes apps that are part of a “bottom-up resistance,” and his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for over 20 years, and how it is the first organization to have filed a lawsuit that names Elon Musk and DOGE by name.

Democracy Now! 2025-10-10 Friday

• Headlines for October 10, 2025
• After Gaza Ceasefire, "Massive Political Pressure" Needed to Prevent Israel from Restarting the War
• 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for Anti-Maduro Leader María Corina Machado "Opposite of Peace": Greg Grandin
• "Enshittification": Cory Doctorow on Why Big Tech Sucks, Keeps Getting Worse & What to Do About It

Download this show

Democracy Now! 2025-10-07 Tuesday

• Headlines for October 07, 2025
• "Trump's Invasion": Illinois Officials Denounce Troop Deployment to Chicago as ICE Escalates Raids
• Report from Gaza: Israeli Bombardment Enters Third Year Despite Ceasefire Talks in Egypt
• Maoz Inon Lost His Parents in the Oct. 7 Attack. Here's Why He's Still Calling for Peace.
• "Eyes of Gaza": Palestinian Journalist Plestia Alaqad Chronicles Life Under Israeli Bombs

Download this show

Tom Burkert has a nice post in which he extols the virtues of RSS. You might wonder what there is to extol. RSS is a simple protocol—the “simple” is in its name, after all—and it’s pretty easy to implement. That and the fact that it was free and open source was why it beat the industry attempt to preempt and monetize syndication.

Like many people, Burkert started off using Facebook to locate and consume content but he soon found that Facebook was making choices on which content he should see that he didn’t agree with. The problem with Facebook and most other social media is that they consider you the product, not the customer. That means that everything they do is focused on increasing engagement and serving ads. You and your needs don’t matter at all, only your eyeballs do.

As Burkert says, the solution to the junk content and user hostile feed algorithms, ironically, predates social media. It is, of course, RSS. There are no algorithms mandating what you see: you are in complete control.

I, of course, use the excellent elfeed to read my RSS feed from within Emacs but you don’t have to be an Emacs user—Burkert doesn’t seem to be—to enjoy the advantages of RSS. There are plenty of RSS readers available for all platforms and despite Google’s attempt to kill RSS by abandoning Google Reader, the protocol is still in wide use because, it seems, not everyone likes being a product.

Take a look at Burkert’s post for more reasons that you, too, should embrace RSS and for some suggestions for getting started with RSS if you’re a new user. If you’re stuck on Facebook or some other social media for your content, you really need to take a look at his post. And if you’re an Emacs user you really need to check out elfeed. Take a look at these excellent videos [1, 2, 3] from Mike Zamansky if you want to learn more and see it in action.

Democracy Now! 2025-10-08 Wednesday

• Headlines for October 08, 2025
• Rep. Ro Khanna: Republicans Could End Shutdown, Lower Healthcare Costs Today
• "Scary Precedent": GOP Blocks Rep.-Elect Adelita Grijalva from Taking Seat Amid Epstein Files Fight
• Bari Weiss to Head CBS News as Pro-Trump, Pro-Israel Billionaire Ellison Family Expands Media Empire
• "Stripped for Parts": Secretive Hedge Fund Accused of Plundering U.S. Newspapers

Download this show

Democracy Now! 2025-10-09 Thursday

• Headlines for October 09, 2025
• "Celebration and Sadness": Reaction from Gaza as Israel & Hamas Agree to First Phase of Ceasefire Deal
• A Ceasefire Deal, But Not a Peace Agreement: What Will Happen in Gaza After Hostages Are Released?
• 5 Days in Israel's Desert Prison: Jewish Flotilla Activist David Adler on Harrowing Detention Ordeal

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Subscribe now for the full episode and access to all breaking new specials.

Danny and Derek break down the first stage of the ceasefire deal reached between the U.S., Hamas, and Israel. They talk about the phased releases, Israel’s partial withdrawal, and the question of whether Marwan Barghouti will be freed. They also discuss Trump’s role in pushing the agreement, Gaza’s future under “reconstruction,” Netanyahu’s political calculus, and the shifting U.S. political landscape.

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tanrax/org-social:

Org Social is a decentralized social network that runs on an Org Mode file over HTTP.

You can create posts, interact with groups, make replies, mention other users, create polls, or personalize your profile. All this without registration, without databases… Just you and your Org Mode file.

It’s a ton of fun for us emacs nerds. Follow mine here:

https://jackbaty.com/social.org

TL;DR It’s a love/hate thing, with love in the lead.

Here are a few thoughts on how things are going so far.

I’m still using Omarchy. I really like the tiling window setup with Hyprland. I sometimes paint myself into a corner, but mostly it makes window management fast and efficient. Workspaces on Linux are so nice.

Everything on Omarchy can be done via keyboard. Once I got used to the bindings, this has made getting around, launching apps, moving windows, etc. convenient. I’m not against using a mouse, but It’s nice not to have to.

So far almost everything has worked without fuss. My Apple Studio Display works, as does its speaker volume, webcam, and microphone. I was able to print to my laser printer straight away, and never needed to install anything for it.

Speaking of installing things, using the little TUI wrapper over Pacman and the AUR is a dream. Launch the TUI, type part of the name of the app to install, and hit Return. Done. No app store, no DMGs to extract. Homebrew on macOS is pretty good, but it’s not as all-inclusive and consistent.

Mostly what I like so far about Linux is how I feel about using it. I like the feeling of “Hmm, what can I do with my computer, today” rather than, “I wonder what Apple is going to allow me to do with my computer, today.” Running Linux on this completely repairable and upgrade-able Framework laptop, I feel a sense of agency. It’s a good feeling.

That agency, however, comes with responsibility. I’m completely in charge, here. That means when things don’t work right (and sometimes things don’t work right), it’s on me to figure out some obscure way to fix it. I don’t know where anything is, yet. Thankfully, things have been working fine, but inevitably there’ll be some weird issue with the boot loader or Bluetooth will just quit working for no reason. That’s when the parts of Linux I don’t like will start.

I miss some things from the Mac. I miss BBEdit, Tinderbox, PopClip, DEVONthink, and others. I miss my photography workflow. Photo management and editing software on Linux is powerful, but it’s not fun to use. At all. When doing any significant photo management, I switch to the Mac for now. I don’t know if that will ever change. Capture One, Lightroom, and Photoshop are just too good.

Mostly, I miss having the standard Emacs bindings everywhere. It’s driving me nuts to type this post in a web browser, for example. How do people deal with text like this. Arrow keys? Gross. I just want C-f, C-b, C-a, C-e, C-n, and C-p, is all.

All I know is that I’m having a lot of fun right now.

A final roundup of critics of the Treaty of Versailles, including some big names.

I got asked how I manage papers, notes, and citations for doing research. I started writing out a very long Slack message, but it quickly passed the threshold where I ought to just turn it into a blog post.

The short of it: I’m an incorrigible Emacs user, so I do a lot through my editor of choice on my laptop. That said, Zotero is a fabulous piece of technology, and I rely on it heavily to get my work done.

General recommendations #

Use Zotero in some capacity. Zotero is great. You should use it at a minimum for collecting papers and keeping paper metadata. It’s completely free and open source. It has excellent apps for iOS and Android so you can read and markup papers on a tablet and access everything on your desktop, but that’s optional. It’s so smart about finding citation information: drag a PDF into it and it will look for the DOI or something and auto-populate the relevant bibliographic information. It’s not perfect, but it’s still pretty darn helpful.

When you’re starting out, I recommend using Zotero’s hosted syncing purely because it’s so easy to use. If you start being a paper packrat and need more than the 300 MB limit, you can self-host or pay a little for more storage. (I’m using 797 MB after several years of heavy Zotero use—I even have a few books in my library!) The lovely thing is you don’t have to commit to syncing up-front. You can start with purely local storage too if you want.

If you’re a LaTeX user like me, you should use the Better Bibtex package. You can configure it to make a .bib file for your entire library or just certain collections. I keep a big .bib file for my entire library and then separate .bib files for each paper I write. As long as I am the sole author, that is. My advisor prefers manually managing bibliographies, so what I tend to do is manually copy the reference information from my main .bib file into the .bib file for our shared paper.

My setup: hybrid of Emacs and Zotero #

I’m as close to an Emacs maximalist as you will find. Nevertheless, I prefer reading and most note-taking outside of Emacs. I read and annotate papers on my iPad, and Zotero syncs the annotations to my desktop.

When I’m writing papers, I use the Citar package in Emacs. This makes it easy to find references and insert citations. Works for Markdown, Org-mode, and LaTeX files. If you’re wondering whether or not it can do a particular thing, the answer is going to be “yes” or “there’s a package to do that” or “it’s easy to add that functionality” or “I don’t know but Claude could probably get you pretty close in modifying it to do that.”

I’ll still take some notes on a paper inside of Emacs, but Zotero is how I primarily manage annotations. When I do a literature review I’ll make a big note in Emacs and just link to the papers that I’m referencing.

Plain-text maximalist #

If you are a plain-text maximalist and like to sync everything via Git or something, then you should be using Emacs. If you are strong enough to resit the pull of closed-format tools for this long, Emacs is for you. It is not a text editor; it is a toolkit to build your ideal text editor. If getting started is intimidating, try out my starter kit, which is basically a set of sane defaults with helpful commentary on how to customize it further. Using Emacs will enable you to build a workflow that is exactly tailored to your idiosyncrasies. It’s an investment, but a worthy one.

So, if you are committed to the Emacs + plain text way, here is what I would recommend:

1. Still use Zotero to store papers & associated metadata. Don’t use it for annotations though.

2. Use Emacs and install the Citar package. It ships with a function called citar-open-entry-in-zotero which can help you jump from Emacs → Zotero entry. I use this a lot.

3. Use the Denote Zettelkasten-style personal knowledge management (PKM) system. This provides utilities to create notes with tags, links (and automatic backlinks!), etc. all in plain-text. Sync this with Git or whatever.

4. Tie Denote and Citar together with the denote-citar package. Now, when you search for a paper with Citar, you can open a notes file for that paper. When you do, you’ll get a split screen: paper on the right, notes file on the left. If you use the pdf-tools package (and you should) then you can even add annotations to the PDF inside of Emacs!

Build your own system #

The most important thing is that you build your own system. You have to own it. You might find it easier to adopt someone else’s system, but you should be intentional about every habit you acquire. Be prepared to iterate.

I used to be rather rigid with how I organized papers. I found that extreme structure was more constricting than helpful, so there’s a little messiness with how I’m organized, and I’m OK with that.

If you want to know exactly how I configure any of the above packages in Emacs, feel free to contact me.

Co-hosts John Dolan & Mark Ames

In the week where Trump addressed the UN, Lib Dems conferred on the beaches of Bournemouth, and a Seagull Summit came to Inverness, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Simon Evans, Neil Delamere, Tiff Stevenson and Cindy Yu to break it all down. Expect talk of the Burnham from behind, the Boriswave, and the wettest generation since the floods.

Written by Andy Zaltzman.

With additional material by: Jade Gebbie, Miranda Holms, Ruth Husko and Peter Tellouche. Producer: Rajiv Karia Executive Producer: James Robinson Production Coordinator: Jodie Charman Sound Editor: Marc Willcox

A BBC Studios Production for Radio 4.

In 1998, the world was ruled by Rayman. You could not go anywhere without seeing Rayman street art. Thousands of children died attempting to cut their own limbs off and suspend them from midair. All that changed when Solid Snake was brought into the third dimension. Brendan and Felix kick off their journey through the greatest story ever told by surfacing onto Shadow Moses. This is where Solid Snake realized he could be more than just a paid killer, Meryl Silverburgh witnessed the ugly reality of war, Roy Campbell was promoted from uncle to father, and Liquid Snake didn’t actually achieve much of anything besides scoring some sunglasses off of a former member of his dad’s love triangle. Put on your sneaking suit, let some strange woman shoot some crap into your arm, and soak your cardboard boxes in urine. It’s time to fight your brother through various states of undress.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to instantly unlock this episode and our entire premium episode library: http://patreon.com/badfaithpodcast

Matt Stoller, Director of the American Economic Liberties Project and king of anti-monopoly discourse, returns to Bad Faith podcast along with former Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who was recently fired by President Trump, to explain how Trump is weaponizing ostensibly independent federal agencies to advance his censorship agenda. As Matt argues, oligarchic control over the media is impossible without media consolidation, and the Jimmy Kimmel cancelation fiasco is in some ways secondary to the bigger problem of an undiversified media ecosystem. Bedoya, who is also the founding director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University Law Center, broadens the conversation into one about the founding fathers' original conception of the corporation, and the need to impose limits due to its fundamentally anti-democratic potential. Will Democrats finally trust the anti-trust pros to break up the powers that are buying America?

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Over at the OrgRoam subreddit, thephatmaster asks for some help in using org-roam to organize and write his research. As of this writing, he hasn’t gotten much response but there is a comment that recommends he take a look at org-transclusion. I hadn’t heard of it so I took a look.

The idea is that you can include content from another file in an org document by means of a link. It’s sort of like a # INCLUDE: but a bit more flexible. You can, for example, make changes in the destination file and have them reflected back to the source file.

You can also specify which lines you want from the source file and have only those imported. There’s also a nice integration with code blocks that the author, nobiot, talks about in this video (9 minutes, 45 seconds).

This looks like a mature package that’s been around for at least 4 years and is still be maintained with the last update 9 months ago. There’s a comprehensive manual available online as well as an info file. The software is available from GNU ELPA and so is easy to install.

This seems like a really good package that can help organize research and serve as a way of reusing research notes. Take a look at the GitHub repository for a list of ways you can use it.

It’s Chapo—in person! Will, Felix, and Brendan James of Blowback (formerly Chapo Trap House) gather at Will’s apartment to talk about Eric Adams dropping out of the NYC mayoral race. They then read a profile of Adam Jentleson and his new PAC, Searchlight, and its novel plan to win elections by pulling Democrats to the right. Also this episode: Pete Hegseth’s mysterious all-hands meeting, Trump finally releasing the files, and Peter Thiel’s obsession with the antichrist. And be sure to vote for American Prestige at the Signal Awards: https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting?utm_campaign=signal4_finalists_finalistnotification_092325&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio#/2025/shows/genre/news-politics And check out the new Blowback season! https://blowback.show/