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Links for Subscribers: April

The collection of our Signal chat links from April (into May) for paid subscribers.

Alex Lockwood

Alex Lockwood

— 3 min read
Links for Subscribers: April
The launch of Speak Up on April 30th at St George's Church, Bloomsbury. Image: Immo Klink.

Well, it’s been another hot one – April 2025 was the 2nd hottest on record. We wouldn’t choose to illustrate that story with a young child (no hat!) walking through a lovely field of tulips, but there you go.

Things heated up for us at Absurd Intelligence too, with four launches:

All four pieces of work are part of our ongoing strategy to convene the right people, construct the necessary narratives, and amplify the voices. So by any stretch, even if the climate context remains rgropkasmsamckla!^%dss***, we’re pulling in the right direction.

Much of which would not be possible without your support. Thank you.

Which is why we put these links together for you each month, as a thank you and insight into the spaces of thought, frustration, illumination and pragmatism that guides this work. We know from the stats you open these emails and click on the links so we hope they continue to be useful to you as well as us.

Taster for Ten

  1. REVEALED: The Fifty Worst People in the UK Today (here)
  2. I love this account – similar concept to The Ear of Britain ('ear)
  3. Get yourself a Grrrl Zine (here)
  4. The rise of end times fascism (fear)
  5. Roger Hallam’s newsletter post on how to answer fascists, we thought it was very good (here) (and Nuala has written about it too)
  6. Andrew Tate is Fuming Over Gary Stevenson (here)
  7. Storms and Wildfires in 2024 (here)
  8. So You Want to Be a Dissident (here)
  9. News From The Vestry (lovely words about Absurd Intelligence) (here)
  10. Grace A Forrest | Human Rights on Instagram (here)

Plenty for Twenty

  1. Academic Nenad Stojanovic on participatory and direct democracy (here)
  2. Doomscroll Performance at Sadie Coles HQ (here)
  3. I loooooove Judith (here)
  4. OpenAI’s Sam Altman Talks ChatGPT, AI Agents and Superintelligence (here)
  5. Here comes the earthquake (here)
  6. Climate action is very popular, so why don’t people realise it? (here)
  7. Reform's Arron Banks defends calling Bristol ‘little Somalia’ (here)
  8. How Just Stop Oil was policed to extinction (here)
  9. The India-Pakistan outbreak (here)
  10. The Folk Archive on Instagram (here)

What rhymes with thirty?

  1. “Absurd Intelligence ends the inaugural front page story in the new Observer. A sentence I didn’t think I’d ever write,” writes Charlie (here)
  2. This is interesting (on Geoengineering) (here)
  3. On Connection by Kae Tempest (here)
  4. Kneecap at Coachella, Pulp Summer and Music from a Dead Man’s Brain (here)
  5. Heat Strike on Instagram (here)
  6. Any independent political organisation must be built from community power, Jamie Driscoll and Andrew Feinstein tell Red Pepper (here)
  7. ‘Protest can shape the world’: Rebecca Solnit on the fight back against Trump (here)
  8. Green deputy launches leadership bid with eco-populism (here)
  9. If before we all go down with it AI can bankrupt or fire large swathes of lawyers at least that’s something 🤣 (here)
  10. Interesting on time and its nature (here)

Musical Interlude

Why isn't it spelled Fourty?

  1. You Be the Judge: Crime & Punishment (TV recommendation)
  2. Beyond Community | Indy Johar (reading)
  3. Keeping Farage from No 10 is ‘a battle for UK’s future, heart and soul’ (duty)
  4. Fixing England’s water isn’t just the right thing to do – it can be the start of Labour’s fightback (Clive Lewis for PM)
  5. Can the term ‘cloud fascism’ help us understand – and resist – the hard right? (Ece for world boss)
  6. David Bent’s Atelier WeekNotes w/c 7 Oct 2024 (oops, no, David’s the boss)
  7. Some of us liked this, others didn’t (healthy disagreement)
  8. Goddess: Live + Signing Tickets (no bosses, only goddesses)
  9. Local elections results (god no)
  10. The weird blog posts about how I might take on the mining sector (Clare’s campaign bid for universal overladygoddess)

Critical Interlude: Hannah Arendt in 10 minutes

Final Fifty-ish

  1. A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation (here)
  2. Police ‘fuelled information vacuum that led to Southport riots’ (here)
  3. Decolonising Health on Instagram (here)
  4. No more better stories! (here)
  5. Trump and Vance, again (here)
  6. I was thinking this all day yesterday (here)
  7. Reform continue to surge and we're missing the moment... (here)
  8. “They Cannot Tolerate Challenges to Wealth and Power” (here)
  9. The power and pitfalls of protest (here)
  10. “Science is best defence we have against believing what we want to” (here)
  11. Find out more about our Forum 2029 series of events (here)
  12. Ted Childish on Instagram (here)
  13. Committed: 4. Was Prison Worth It? (here)

And finally...

For the launch of Daddio!, Alex created a playlist of the favourite songs of the dad's of those who attended (or just favourite ‘dad’ songs) which is both cheerful and tearful and not a bad, eclectic mix. Enjoy.

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