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(1) Chartbook 432 "Writing column. Talking w peril" - polycrisis or stroke?
Tuesday February 3rd, 2026 at 9:27 AM

Chartbook
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Why do people, more specifically, rich, famous and powerful men, do the things they do?

Money, power, fame, sex, form a fungible flux.

But in what configurations do these impulses circulate? How are they organized and contained? What inner demons and desires drive them?

The deranging thing about the Epstein revelations, is how utterly disinhibited that flux can become.

It brings us back hard to what we actually mean when we talk about “polycrisis” or “rupture”.

Are such terms hard enough for what we are actually witnessing? What is actually going on?

In 2022, the FT declared polycrisis to be one of the words of the year.

For some people it was a call for a new and more complicated social-scientific model.

For others it was the opposite. Not a new model but an acknowledgement of the fact that none of the familiar models were working. The phrase pointed to a “knowledge crisis”.

To my surprise the most prominent person to endorse this more radical reading was none other than Larry Summers, in conversation with Martin Wolf.

At least publicly, what we were talking about back then were big social structural forces. These, after all, were the polite days of 2022.

Even at the time, critics suggested that the popularity of the concept of polycrisis was a symptom of “neoliberal order breakdown syndrome” (NOBS).

After the Epstein revelations and the reaction or non-reaction to them, we clearly do need a deeper motivational analysis, not to say therapeutic or even psychiatric evaluation.

Berlusconi - the anti-hero of the Bungaboys - would not even attend an Epstein party. He wasn’t into “pizza” and “grape juice”. He preferred better wine and food and less kidnapping.

Our end of the end of history is worse.

Mark Carney in his speech at Davos called on people to recognize hypocrisy and double standards that had always underpinned the talk of a “rules-based international order”.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

The “liberal international order” was not the only sign that we placed in the shop window of the Western world.

Rights. Decency. Respect for basic societal taboos. These were things that we claimed too.

At an even more elementary level, we claimed to be able to discriminate, to tell the difference between “good guys” and “bad guys”.

What the Epstein material reveals is not just the extent to which many figures of the establishment were involved in his world of sordid sex, but also their promiscuous mixing across political boundaries, the blurring of supposedly opposite positions.

In Epstein’s network the seemingly sharp lines between the liberal establishment - Clinton, Gates, Summers, Chomsky etc - and the supposed agents of polycrisis - the Russians, the Israelis, Trump and his cronies - were blurred.

There were no crisp lines of decorum. No one and nothing was beyond reach. Everything was up for grabs, whether that be “Snow White” or insider tips on the Eurozone crisis, bitcoin and Ukraine.

So when Summers talks about polycrisis what is he actually seeing?

Reading the Epstein correspondence from the first Trump term, both NOBS and polycrisis fall so far short. They, after all, imply some serious underlying commitments to the status quo. Some “rupture”.

Whereas what we are actually glimpsing through the released emails and txts are the slightly more cogent participants at a messy, dark, orgy watching from within their own derangement the worst of all take power.

Friday November 30 2018 - Monday December 3 2018.

As I realized with a shock, the most intensively reported exchange between Epstein and Larry Summers took place in November-December 2018, precisely the moment that Summers wrote a piece in the Washington Post that I have always thought of as one of the most insightful pieces on US-China relations of its era.

That exchange with Epstein was on Friday, presumably about Thursday night.

The WaPo piece came out on Monday, presumably finalized over the weekend.

That Wapo piece is dear to me. As much as an op ed piece can be.

If memory serves it came up again with Ezra Klein last week, though it does not seem to have made it into the transcript. It certainly did with Kaiser Kuo.

I keep coming back to it because as cogently as anyone has in Washington it poses the question: “Can the US live with the rise of China?”

“Can the United States imagine a viable system in years to come in which it is diminished to half the size of China, the world leader? Could a political leader acknowledge that reality in a way that permits negotiation over what such a world would look like?”

These are prescient and vital questions from Summers.

What difference does it make to realize the context in which this piece was composed?

For most people, the energy of writing comes from strange places. We would not want someone looking over our shoulder.

But, in this case the shocking thing is not that Summers had smart ideas while he was involved in locker room chat with a sex offender about a problematic love interest.

The shock is to realize the extent to which the language of the Washington Post piece resonates with Summers’ language in discussing his love life with Epstein.

In a bad dream you could see the Washington Post piece and the Epstein texts blurring into a single uninterrupted flow:

“Can anything hold back the ”yellow peril”? How do I contain my attraction? How do we get to a rational affair?”

“ I like relationships without drama”

We “require a viable strategy for addressing our legitimate grievances. Unfortunately, neither rage nor proclamation constitutes such a strategy. A viable approach would involve feasible objectives clearly conveyed and supported by carrots and sticks, along with a willingness to define and accept success.”

“Has she become nationalistic? Would not surprise me”

“goes back to family priority. Community . And you suffer the imprimatur of being part of the enemy hierarchy”

“It appears fate has weighed in”

“More exploitation by peril. Should I stop calling? As she is in china. i have no idea what is real.”

“meet fickle with fickle”

“Guess tough and mean is sexier”

“I gave you a chance you blew it off. I get it. It took me awhile because I had such strong feelings. But it is sinking in”

“Can the United States/Summers/West imagine a viable system in years to come in which it is diminished to half the size of China, the world leader?”

“Could a political leader/Summers/the West acknowledge that reality in a way that permits negotiation over what such a world would look like?”

“Admitting she is not secure. Will take some probing. She is admitting weakness.”

“While it might be unacceptable to the United States/Summers/The West to be so greatly surpassed in economic scale, does it have the means to stop it? Can China be held down without inviting conflict?”

“she thinks she is a soldier at war. No soldier wants to be called cute”

“We are in a long game. Lets see how and if she starts to wonder”

“I would discount any comment re Eg tienaman. But I think current signal … is genuine.”

“I’m not so sure that being mentored by me, having me support her child, being elevated to a leader on China in global economy by collaborating with me and getting to have me as partner if she can find courage to tell her parents is really so useless.”

“How about asking ? What would you need to feel secure?”

“While it might be unacceptable to the United States to be so greatly surpassed in economic scale, does it have the means to stop it?”

“i think the china trade conflict has a major effect. . i have spoken to many of my chinese contacts in different places. and its all weird. .”

“whatever sense of humor they used to fake is gone.”

“These are hard questions without obvious answers. But that is no excuse for ignoring them and focusing only on short-run frustrations.”

“Btw, do you know many that are not self absorbed?”

“Has she asked you to come out and write what a bad idea attacking china is?”

“is she spooked after the pseudo recruitment event?”

“A bit. She listened to me a bit and commented yesterday that the folk called her office”

“it will definitely take a face to face to figure out. hopefully horizontal”

“The hook is in”

“Suppose China had been fully compliant…”

“Hope springs eternal”

“China appears to be willing to accommodate Summers/United States on specific trade issues/matters of (commercial) intercourse as long as the United States accepts its right to flourish and grow,…”

“I predict she will only be interested in discussing Chinese economy. Having admitted vulnerability she will now need to deny”

“Strategy working as predicted.“

“That is a deal the United States/Summers/TheWest should take while it can. It can bluster but it cannot, in an open world, suppress China. Trying to do so risks strengthening the most anti-American elements in Beijing.”

“Trump, for all his failings, has China’s attention on economic issues in a way that eluded his predecessors. The question is whether he will be able to use his leverage to accomplish something important. That will depend on his ability to convince the Chinese that the United States is capable of taking yes for an answer, and on his willingness to go beyond small-bore commercialism”

Why are you up so late?

Writing column. Talking w peril

It feels as though we are inside a surreal live reenactment of Joan Scott’s canonical essay on gender as a useful category of analysis.

“A rational affair?”

Is that not exactly what we want too want?

That certainly is what Europeans were craving at Davos.

It is what Carney proposed. Start with honesty. No more hypocrisy. Variable geometry. Wide not deep. The strength of our values and the value of our strength.

But set all that talk alongside the exchanges between Epstein and Larry Summers - Carney’s sometime analogue - and the doubt creeps in.

Are we, like Summers, fantasizing about stabilizing our desires and needs in an inherently dangerous and uncertain world? Are we kidding ourselves?

Does it lay us open, to Epstein’s swift counter:

“Did you had a stroke … ?”

What are you thinking? Don’t you understand? “Rational affairs” are not how the world works.

Not in love. Not in politics. Not in life.

Epstein’s quip was meant as a brutal put down. And Summers meekly retreated.

But, perhaps, rather than retreating, what if we roll with the punch?

Perhaps, Epstein’s jibe actually contains a truth. As does his follow on: “You are looking to her to fill too many of your needs. Without you being able to fill hers.”

Part of the devil’s attraction was clearly that, at least on some occasions, he gave sage advice.

Better than ChatGPT.

With all this material, someone must be training an Epstein algo.

We are in 2026 after all, this isn’t the warm up act of Trump’s first term.

At Davos Carney spoke of a “rupture, not a transition”.

And we lapped it up. He struck a bold note, befitting of a leader. But did he promise too much?

Was it too clean. Too composed?

Too much the cool, put-together guy at the orgy?

After the last few weeks are we really feeling composed?

A rupture, is sudden and disorientating. Are we really feeling it?

Not so much neoliberal order breakdown syndrome, as something closer to what Epstein described:

A stroke.

No wonder we have sweet dreams of “rational affairs” and “variable geometries”!

Our condition is actually serious.

Humiliating.

“Knowledge crisis”, indeed.

Rupture?

More like polycrisis as incontinence.

It will be a long road back. There is no getting over this.

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Routine medical procedures can feel harder for women – here’s why
Saturday January 31st, 2026 at 5:56 PM

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Many women recognise the pattern. A routine procedure takes longer than expected. It’s more uncomfortable than promised. The doctor reassures them that this sometimes happens, or suggests anxiety or muscle tension might be playing a role. But often the explanation is simpler – and anatomical.

This mismatch between bodies and procedures isn’t related to rare conditions or specialist care. It reflects a recurring problem in everyday medicine. Many routine procedures were designed around male anatomy, and they don’t always work the same way on female bodies.

Take colonoscopy. It’s one of the most common investigations used to diagnose bowel disease and screen for cancer. Yet women are more likely than men to experience discomfort, require repositioning, or have an incomplete examination on the first attempt.

The reason lies in normal anatomy. On average, women have a longer and more mobile colon, particularly in the sigmoid segment that loops through the pelvis.

The female pelvis itself is broader and shallower, creating sharper angles as the bowel curves downward. These features make the scope more likely to bend and loop inside the bowel, slowing its progress and pulling on surrounding tissue – a major source of pain.

This isn’t abnormal anatomy. It’s normal anatomy that standard techniques don’t always take into account.

Urinary catheterisation is another routine procedure where anatomy matters. Although the urethra performs the same function in men and women, its length, course and anatomical context differ in ways that matter clinically.

In males, the urethra is long – around 18-22cm – and is usually described in three parts: the prostatic urethra, which is wide and fixed as it passes through the prostate; the membranous urethra, the narrowest segment as it crosses the pelvic floor; and the spongy (penile) urethra, which runs in a predictable course to a clearly identifiable external opening at the tip of the penis. Despite its length, the male urethra follows a stable path and ends at a prominent external landmark.

The female urethra is much shorter, usually about 3-4cm long, but lies within a more variable anatomical environment. From the bladder neck, it passes through the bladder wall and pelvic floor, before opening into the vulval vestibule at a meatus (the external opening of the urethra) closely related to the anterior vaginal wall.

Its position varies between individuals and across the life course, influenced by pelvic floor tone and hormonal status. In practice, this can make catheter insertion technically more difficult, increasing the likelihood of repeated attempts and discomfort – particularly in older women or those with atrophic tissue (thin, delicate tissue).

Lumbar puncture and spinal procedures show similar issues. Women tend to have a greater lumbar curve and different pelvic tilt, altering the angle at which a needle must pass between vertebrae. Mild spinal curvature is also more common in women. The procedure itself doesn’t change, but the geometry does, increasing the likelihood of multiple attempts and prolonged discomfort.

Model of a spine.

Women have a greater lumbar curve. Teeradej/Shutterstock.com

Even airway management, a cornerstone of anaesthesia and emergency medicine, reflects the same mismatch. Female airways are, on average, shorter and narrower. When equipment sizing and technique is based on a “standard” airway, women are more likely to experience sore throat and hoarseness afterward – effects often dismissed as minor, but rooted in anatomy rather than sensitivity.

Even something as commonplace as peripheral venous cannulation, the insertion of a small tube into a vein to deliver fluids, medications, or to take blood, reflects this mismatch. Women’s superficial veins are often smaller, less prominent and more mobile in soft tissue, making standard cannulation techniques more likely to result in repeated attempts, bruising and pain.

Design for variation, not exception

Doctors know bodies vary. In practice, many already adapt – choosing different patient positions, smaller instruments or altered techniques. But these adjustments are informal, inconsistently taught and rarely explained to patients.

Instead, difficulty is often bundled into vague categories: anxiety, tension, low pain tolerance or “one of those things”. The result is that women experience real, anatomy-driven discomfort without being told why, and may internalise it as a personal failing.

This matters. When discomfort is normalised or minimised, patients are less likely to return for screening, more likely to delay care, and more likely to mistrust reassurance that future procedures will be different.

None of this requires radical innovation. It requires naming the issue accurately. When procedures are taught and designed around a single reference body, predictable anatomical variation becomes an obstacle rather than a design feature.

Acknowledging that bodies differ – in length, curvature, mobility and spatial relationships – allows doctors to plan, explain and adapt more effectively.

Crucially, it also shifts the narrative. Instead of “this shouldn’t hurt”, the message becomes: “your anatomy means this procedure can be more challenging, and we’ll adjust it accordingly”.

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SpaceX Eyes 1 Million Satellites For Orbital Data Center Push
Saturday January 31st, 2026 at 12:15 PM

PCMag.com - Technology Product Reviews, News, Prices & Tips
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SpaceX is requesting to launch up to one million satellites to create a network of orbiting data centers around Earth. 

Late on Friday, the company filed the request with the Federal Communications Commission, describing the project as a “constellation of satellites with unprecedented computing capacity to power advanced artificial intelligence (‘AI’) models and the applications that rely on them.”

The plan is shocking in its scope, dwarfing the existing Starlink constellation, which currently spans over 9,600 satellites in Earth’s orbit. 

In one 8-page document, SpaceX describes the company’s proposed “Orbital Data Center system.” “To deliver the compute capacity required for large scale AI inference and data center applications serving billions of users globally, SpaceX aims to deploy a system of up to one million satellites to operate within narrow orbital shells spanning up to 50 km each (leaving sufficient room to deconflict against other systems with comparable ambitions),” the company wrote. 

The document

(FCC/SpaceX)

The same satellites would harness the sun’s energy, orbiting at “between 500 km and 2,000 km altitude and 30 degrees and sun-synchronous orbit inclinations,” the company adds. The orbiting data centers would also use “optical links,” or lasers, to connect with Starlink, using the existing satellite internet system to route traffic to users below. 

“Orbital data centers are the most efficient way to meet the accelerating demand for AI computing power,” the filing adds in bold, pointing to the growing energy costs of AI data centers on Earth. The company is also betting it can launch the space-based data centers at a rapid clip using SpaceX’s more powerful Starship vehicle, which is also crucial to upgrading Starlink with next-generation satellites. 

The filing

(FCC/SpaceX)

The company filed the request as SpaceX is preparing an initial public offering reportedly to help fund the orbital data center push. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has previously indicated his Starlink technology has already created a foundation to build out the network of orbiting data centers.

However, the 1 million satellite request appears to be unprecedented and will likely face intense scrutiny from the FCC, along with potential critics and rival companies. Earlier this month, the Commission cleared a SpaceX request to operate another 7,500 satellites for the second-generation Starlink constellation, including at lower orbits. But the regulator stopped short of granting permission for the full 22,488. 

Recommended by Our Editors

Details about SpaceX’s orbiting data centers, including their mass, were left vague. In the filing, SpaceX merely says that it “plans to design and operate different versions of satellite hardware to optimize operations across orbital shells.”

Satellite industry analyst Tim Farrar told PCMag: "This filing seems quite rushed and to be very early stage." But he said it provides a rationale for a reported merger between SpaceX and xAI, another Elon Musk company that was created to compete with OpenAI.

Farrar added: "SpaceX can't spend the $50B that the IPO is supposed to raise on its existing Starlink and Starship efforts, whereas xAI sorely needs as much money as possible to keep up with rivals."

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I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how President Trump's tariffs will affect the industry. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

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US judge rules Luigi Mangione won’t face death penalty in CEO killing case
Friday January 30th, 2026 at 9:01 PM

Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
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Judge rules out capital punishment, but 27-year-old still faces federal stalking charges and state-level murder charges.

A New York judge has dismissed murder and weapons charges against Luigi Mangione, meaning that prosecutors can no longer seek the death penalty in the case accusing him of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

While district judge Margaret Garnett dismissed the charges punishable by death in her ruling on Friday, the 27-year-old still faces two counts of stalking in his federal case that could lead to a maximum punishment of life in prison, as well as state-level murder charges carrying the same penalty.

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Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, previously pleaded not guilty to federal murder, weapons and stalking charges for allegedly gunning down Thompson in December 2024.

Garnett’s decision foils the bid of US President Donald Trump’s administration to see him executed for what it called a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America”. The judge is an appointee of former President Joe Biden.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference.

Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind, with police saying that “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Jury selection in the federal case is scheduled to begin on September 8.

The state trial hasn’t been scheduled yet, but Mangione had already entered separate not guilty pleas for murder, weapons and forgery charges in Manhattan state court.

This week, the Manhattan district attorney’s office sent a letter urging the judge in that case to set a July 1 trial date.

Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors last April to seek the death penalty against Mangione, following through on Trump’s pledge to pursue capital punishment.

Get instant alerts and updates based on your interests. Be the first to know when big stories happen.

Trump returned to office a year ago with a pledge to resume federal executions after they were halted under Biden.

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Best gas masks | The Verge
Thursday January 29th, 2026 at 10:39 AM

The Verge
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I was tear gassed by the government for the first time in July 2020 at one of the many Black Lives Matter protests that broke out all over the country. The feeling is excruciating, like your lungs are trying to kill you from the inside out. The sting in your eyes is painful, too. But oddly, after you’ve been tear gassed enough times, you mostly just resent the inconvenience of having to stand around and involuntarily gasp and sob. That summer, I learned the art of walking out of a cloud of tear gas — briskly, but not too briskly, lest you lose breath control and take in a huge huff of aerosolized pain.

I thought about this five years later, as I watched Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi appear on Fox News after Customs and Border Protection agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. “How did these people go out and get gas masks?” she asked, incredulously. “These protesters — would you know how to walk out on the street and buy a gas mask, right now? Think about that.”

As a longtime gas mask user, I can sympathize. There isn’t a lot of reliable information out there about how to buy a gas mask, especially for the specific purpose of living under state repression. But hopefully after reading this guide you’ll feel equipped to make an educated decision.

The best gas mask for most people

Parcil Distribution PT-100 Respirator Mask

The Good

  • Full face
  • Blocks out tear gas from both federal and local law enforcement
  • Adjustable straps to fit a range of head sizes
  • Filters included
  • Affordable price point

The Bad

  • Rubber straps can tug on your hair
  • Plastic cinching components broke five years after purchase
  • Does not fit with most bike helmets
  • Difficult to wear for longer than an hour at a time
  • Unclear how well the default filters handle particulates
How we rate and review products

The first time I went out into the Portland protests, I walked into a cloud of pepper spray and ended up crying and coughing while doubled over on a nearby sidewalk. So I bought some goggles. The next time, I was tear gassed. I bought better goggles and a half-face respirator. About a week later, I owned a full-face gas mask; one ex-military friend remarked that the gas mask looked more hardcore than the ones that the US Army handed out to joes. This was just silly, since the mask I had bought was technically a full-face respirator, rather than a proper military-grade mask, but I had to admit that my new equipment looked very extreme.

Dozens of my fellow journalists were already on the ground by the time I got there; as the feds escalated in force, we all upgraded our equipment bit by bit. The mask I got was pretty good. I practiced taking it out of my bag and pulling it over my head, anticipating the moment I heard the telltale hiss of a gas canister; I learned how to tighten and adjust the straps while on the move. With the mask on, I could stand in the thick pea-soupers of brownish tear gas that the feds were so fond of, and pull out my phone and start tapping out my reporting notes.

When I eventually sat down to write my article about the Portland protests, I had a strange kind of epiphany, if it can even be called that. Out in the real world, when drowning in tear gas and adrenaline, I only thought of the feds as an antagonistic, occupying force; later, in the confines of my home office, I found myself considering their perspective. But rather than adding nuance and clarity to the fucked-up warzone less than a mile from my apartment, I was more confused than ever.

What we’re looking for

Who we consulted

The Verge consulted journalists who covered the Portland protests in 2020, where federal and local forces regularly used tear gas against protesters over the course of four months.

Easy to use

It’s important for a gas mask to slide over your head quickly, even in a chaotic environment.

A comfortable fit and coverage

You may be wearing a gas mask for just a few minutes, or you may find yourself in the mask for several hours at a time. After testing against both federal and local law enforcement, we found that although a half-face respirator and goggles are better than nothing, they are not an adequate substitute for full-face coverage.

Durability

A quality gas mask should last through normal wear and tear, like getting beaten or thrown around by the police. The materials of a gas mask are especially important if a federal agent grabs you by your hair.

Value

The best gas masks run close to $400, which is not a price point that everyone can afford. Not everyone can shell out for the gold standard in gas masks, but fortunately there are still decent options for around $120.

Why did tear gas even exist? I wondered later, as I sat at my laptop to write my piece. As far as I could tell, all it did was make people angrier. If it neither killed nor neutralized, and merely hurt and enraged people, for what situation could it ever be appropriate? Why was it being used at all?

I struggled, too, with vocabulary. I was at my computer, trying to point to concrete proof to explain that the protests were protests rather than riots, but I found myself baffled as to what the hallmarks of a riot even were. I had thought that a crowd being tear gassed in the dead of night might be similar to a mosh pit at a concert, but riddled with fear instead of elation — a crowd pushing and shoving, overcome with heightened emotion. But I found that the people around me, even when they were screaming and throwing eggs and other produce at the feds, would apologize if they even slightly jostled me. I did worry about being trampled one time, while standing next to an underprepared television crew that had come without gas masks and kept panicking throughout the night. When did a gathering turn into a riot? Were riots even real?

I started polling my friends on whether they’d ever witnessed something they could describe indisputably as a riot. Everyone I knew had only ever seen clashes with the police that were disputed as protests, riots, or uprisings. There was only one outlier: a friend of a friend, a European who had once been caught up in a soccer riot. Tear gas had been deployed, and instead of exacerbating things, the tear gas had worked. The two supporters’ clubs had disengaged and dispersed.

This revelation had me reeling. I had spent my entire adult life thinking that riot cops existed to fight protesters, and although I had long been critical of police brutality, for some reason, I had come to accept that there were two sides to a conflict and that the police would be one of those sides. I had forgotten that there could ever be domestic conflicts where law enforcement were not themselves belligerents.

The best high-end gas mask

Mira Tactical Gas Mask CM-6M

The Good

  • Full face with excellent coverage and filtering
  • Military-grade
  • Comfortable
  • Adjustable straps don’t drag on your hair
  • Durable enough to survive a scuffle with a right-wing extremist, even if the bones of your hand do not

The Bad

  • Expensive
  • Filters not included
  • Can be heavy if you run it with two filters
  • You look like a character in Fallout 4
How we rate and review products

Mira makes the best masks that money can buy. Sergio Olmos, who has reported from both Portland and Ukraine, swears by Mira’s CM-6M specifically. Robert Evans of the Behind the Bastards podcast owns multiple Mira products and recommends all of them. His military-grade mask, he says, allows him to breathe while standing in “clouds of tear gas so thick I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.” He also sometimes uses a Mira respirator. During a street brawl between hundreds of Portland leftists and right-wing agitators, Evans was “soaked to my underpants in mace” used by the right-wingers. “But thanks to the full face respirator I was never blinded nor was my airway constricted.”

I kept the gas mask long after I had filed my draft and the piece had run. It still got some use now and then, but as the protests petered out, I eventually put the gas mask on my bookshelf as a memento of a surreal era, and as a reminder that fascism lurked just beneath the surface of American civic life.

The longer I wear the gas mask, the more the rubber seal presses against my skin. When it’s tight, it’s uncomfortable; when it’s loose, it slowly drags down and chafes the skin. I hate that you have to lean in real close in order to talk to people; I hate the vague sensation of being trapped inside a fishbowl. I also strongly suspect that the mask is not adequate protection against the particulates in tear gas from a health standpoint — I didn’t have a normal period for six months after the 2020 protests.

But even if the mask wasn’t handling all of the particulates, I was pain-free while wearing the mask, and that was the most important part in a chaotic, low-visibility situation where I had a job to do. My body still remembers what it feels like to get tear gassed, and even the sight of a deployed smoke grenade will make me tense up. I have never coughed, cried, or thrown up while wearing the gas mask. In 2025, I took the gas mask off my shelf. It now resides in my reporting bag. Its presence there is reassuring; I know I can do my work even when trapped in a chemical haze.

Also a great choice

3M 6800 Full-Face Respirator

The Good

  • Full face
  • 3M manufactures a variety of filters

The Bad

  • Filters have to be bought separately
  • 3M does not provide product information on which filters are best for government repression
  • No one can hear anything you’re saying
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Over the course of 2020, Suzette Smith (currently Portland Mercury) tried swimming goggles, “ski goggles with duct tape over them,” and other options before a reader gifted her a 3M 6800 Full-Face Respirator. “I’ve relied on those ever since,” she tells The Verge. Zane Sparling (The Oregonian) also uses a full-face 3M, which he says was the first option he found when he searched Amazon.

For a while, it felt like the world had forgotten about what happened in Portland in 2020, that this cataclysmic event over the course of four months that left so many of my peers battered both physically and emotionally had been memory-holed for being too heavy to grapple with. But as the feds surged into Minnesota, orchestrating an invasion bigger by several orders of magnitude, I realized that the past was not dead and buried. I could see the legacy of 2020 in photos from Minneapolis — the unmarked vans, the ICE agents dressed like right-wing militias, the protesters in gas masks and helmets. Even phone calls from other reporters asking what kind of gear I owned was a reminder that nothing is truly in vain.

The 2020 federal invasion of Portland ended with DHS withdrawing from the city — not because the protesters breached the walls or killed the feds or captured the castle, but because the protests simply refused to subside.

No matter how much tear gas the feds flooded into downtown, the crowds got bigger, not smaller. When the news of the van abductions spread, the protests swelled with people who looked like they belonged at an HOA meeting, rather than shoulder-to-shoulder with black bloc anarchists. Eventually, thousands would throng the park blocks in front of the downtown federal courthouse.

This was not a case of fans of rival football clubs getting too drunk and rowdy and then coming to their senses after a little jolt of weaponized capsaicin. Portland donned its gas mask and stood its ground.

As we’ve learned in the last year, Portland is far from unique. Cities across America have shown resilience and courage in the face of sudden abductions, unmarked vans, and masked agents. We do not have time to heave, cough, or weep — so we pull on our gas masks and walk forward into the mist.

What is tear gas for? It is for inciting riots. How did people go out and get gas masks? They ordered them online, because they do not want to riot.

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rocketo
4 days ago
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"A quality gas mask should last through normal wear and tear, like getting beaten or thrown around by the police. The materials of a gas mask are especially important if a federal agent grabs you by your hair."

one of those articles that just perfectly encapsulates the age it's written in
seattle, wa
acdha
4 days ago
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“I had forgotten that there could ever be domestic conflicts where law enforcement were not themselves belligerents.”
Washington, DC
sarcozona
5 days ago
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Epiphyte City
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Imperial boomerang - Wikipedia
Thursday January 29th, 2026 at 9:17 AM

Wikipedia - Recent changes [en]
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The imperial boomerang is the theory that governments that develop repressive techniques to control colonial territories will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens. This concept originates with Aimé Césaire in his 1950 work Discourse on Colonialism, where it is called the terrific boomerang to explain the origins of European fascism in the first half of the 20th century.[1][2] Hannah Arendt agreed with this usage, calling it the boomerang effect in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).[3][4][5]

According to both writers, the methods employed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany were not historically unique when viewed from a global perspective. Rather, the violence was an extension of the logic of European colonialism, which had resulted in the deaths of millions across the Global South for centuries. As such, the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities were only categorized as "exceptional" because they were applied to Europeans within Europe, rather than to colonized populations in Africa, Asia, or the Americas. This framework posits that the techniques of mass surveillance, forced labor, and genocide, previously perfected in colonial territories, were "boomeranged" back to Europe.[6] It is sometimes called Foucault's boomerang even though Michel Foucault did not originate the term.

According to Césaire, fascism resembled the cruel machinery of European colonization of Africa in the 1890s.[7] Aimé Césaire in 2003

In 1950, Aimé Césaire coined and described the term through his analysis of the development of violent, fascist, and brutalizing tendencies within Europe as connected to the practice of European colonialism.[8] Césaire wrote in Discourse on Colonialism:

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind—it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.

— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950)

In the original French, Césaire did not use the term "boomerang" and instead wrote un formidable choc en retour—which can be translated literally as "a formidable shock in return".[9] In previous English translations, the phrase "terrific reverse shock" is used.[8]

In his 1976 lecture Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault repeated these ideas.[10][11] According to him:

[W]hile colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported European models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power. A whole series of colonial models was brought back to the West, and the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.

Foucault's association with the concept has led to the term being referred to as Foucault's Boomerang, even though he didn't originate the term.[11]

Historians and social scientists have applied the concept of the imperial boomerang to analyse the transnational formation of security apparatuses, focusing on the effects of the United States' overseas empire. The imperial boomerang has been invoked to explain the ongoing militarization of police and their domestic deployment in response to political protest in urban centers.[12][13] Such deployment has proliferated worldwide,[14][15] considering that the globalization of militarized policing continues to be a crucial aspect of contemporary foreign policy of Western colonial powers such as the United States, whose early experiments with developing comprehensive coercive state apparatuses and counterinsurgency techniques began during the American colonization of the Philippines.[6][16][17] Focusing on how British and American colonial agents and dispatched military officials transplanted overseas counterinsurgency and police technologies back home, sociologist Julian Go argues:

We can better see how the history of policing is entangled with imperialism and recognize that what is typically called "the militarization of policing" is in an effect of the imperial boomerang—a result of imperial-military feedback.[18]

Some scholars suggest that the directionality of the imperial boomerang needs to be re-evaluated. Political scientist Stuart Schrader argues for a colony-centered explanation to the boomerang effect, especially in the case of the United States where imperial and racial violence predates the heyday of the American empire.[19] In her comments on Schrader's work, political scientist Jeanne Morefield writes:

Schrader's analysis goes a long way toward explaining the seemingly acephalic quality of American imperialism, a quality which contributes to its ongoing obfuscation. Behind the logic of "liberal hegemony" lies counterinsurgency and professionalized policing, modes of racialized power that structure the everyday lives of people in America and throughout the world while deflecting attention away from that power at every level.[14]

  1. ^ Chowdhury, Tanzil (June 2022). "The "Terrific Boomerang"". Goethe-Institut. Archived from the original on 17 July 2025. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
  2. ^ Cesaire 1978, p. 20. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCesaire1978 (help)
  3. ^ King, Richard H.; Stone, Dan, eds. (2008). Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History: Imperialism, Nation, Race, and Genocide. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN .[page needed]
  4. ^ Owens, Patricia (2007). Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN .[page needed]
  5. ^ Rothberg, Michael (2009). Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN .[page needed]
  6. ^ a b Woodman, Connor (9 June 2020). "The Imperial Boomerang: How colonial methods of repression migrate back to the metropolis". Verso Books. Archived from the original on 29 March 2023. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
  7. ^ CHRISMAN, LAURA (2003). Postcolonial contraventions. pp. 21–22.
  8. ^ a b Cesaire 1978, p. 14. sfn error: no target: CITEREFCesaire1978 (help)
  9. ^ Césaire, Aimé (1950). Discours sur le colonialisme [Discourse on Colonialism] (in French). Paris: Présence Africaine (published 1955). p. 7.
  10. ^ Graham, Stephen (14 February 2013). "Foucault's boomerang: the new military urbanism". openDemocracy. Retrieved 23 July 2024.[dead link]
  11. ^ a b "Stephen Graham, Foucault's Boomerang: the New Military Urbanism (2013)". 27 January 2014.
  12. ^ Graham, Stephen (2011). Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism. London; New York: Verso Books. ISBN .[page needed]
  13. ^ Go, Julian (16 July 2020). "The Racist Origins of U.S. Policing". Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
  14. ^ a b Morefield, Jeanne (June 2020). "Beyond Boomerang". International Politics Reviews. 8 (1): 3–10. doi:10.1057/s41312-020-00078-7. PMC 7399584. S2CID 220962507.
  15. ^ Schrader, Stuart (Fall 2020). "Defund the Global Policeman". n+1. No. 38. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
  16. ^ McCoy, Alfred William (2009). Policing America's empire: the United States, the Philippines, and the rise of the surveillance state. New perspectives in Southeast Asian studies. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN .[page needed]
  17. ^ Makalintal, Joshua M. (May 2021). "Dismantling the Imperial Boomerang: A Reckoning with Globalised Police Power". State of Power 2021 (Report). Transnational Institute. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
  18. ^ Go, Julian (2023). Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 17. ISBN .
  19. ^ Schrader, Stuart (2019). Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing. Oakland, California: University of California Press. ISBN .[page needed]
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