Violence begets violence, so many religions say. Americans should know. After all, the United States – a nation founded on Indigenous genocide, African enslavement and open rebellion against an imperial power to protect its wealthiest citizens – cannot help but be violent. What’s more, violence in the US is political, and the violence the country has carried out overseas over the generations has always been connected to its imperialist ambitions and racism. From the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on June 21 to the everyday violence in rhetoric and reality within the US, the likes of President Donald Trump continue to stoke the violent impulses of a violence‑prone nation.

Political violence is quintessentially American

The US cannot claim innocence – political violence shaped its past and defines its present.

^{Donald Earl Collins (Al Jazeera)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47871600

(I am not affiliated with the project at all, just an end user.)

Announcement: Retirement of Readarr

We would like to announce that the Readarr project has been retired. This difficult decision was made due to a combination of factors: the project's metadata has become unusable, we no longer have the time to remake or repair it, and the community effort to transition to using Open Library as the source has stalled without much progress.

Third-party metadata mirrors exist, but as we're not involved with them at all, we cannot provide support for them. Use of them is entirely at your own risk. The most popular mirror appears to be rreading-glasses.

Without anyone to take over Readarr development, we expect it to wither away, so we still encourage you to seek alternatives to Readarr.

Key Points

• Effective Immediately: The retirement takes effect immediately. Please stay tuned for any possible further communications.
• Support Window: We will provide support during a brief transition period to help with troubleshooting non metadata related issues.
• Alternative Solutions: Users are encouraged to explore and adopt any other possible solutions as alternatives to Readarr.
• Opportunities for Revival: We are open to someone taking over and revitalizing the project. If you are interested, please get in touch.
• Gratitude: We extend our deepest gratitude to all the contributors and community members who supported Readarr over the years.

Thank you for being part of the Readarr journey. For any inquiries or assistance during this transition, please contact our team.

Sincerely,
The Servarr Team

The github repo has been archived.

GitHub - Readarr/Readarr: Book Manager and Automation (Sonarr for Ebooks)

Book Manager and Automation (Sonarr for Ebooks). Contribute to Readarr/Readarr development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

Two babies died of starvation in Gaza due to Israel’s continuing blockade of vital aid. The deaths come as the US approved $30 million in funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food from its aid centres.

Babies starve to death in Gaza as US approves more GHF funding

^{Al Jazeera}

Normalization between Damascus and Tel Aviv means that hundreds of thousands of people died and a stable nation was destroyed, while every ethnic/religious group turned on each other, all so that Israel could usurp more territory and deal a blow to the Palestinian resistance. There’s no way to sugar coat it.

If Syria Normalizes Ties with Israel, It Is Complicit in Genocide - Analysis - Palestine Chronicle

As has always been the case, Palestine is the litmus test, and Damascus has so far failed it dramatically. 

^{admin (Palestine Chronicle)}

Almost 84,000 people died in Gaza between October 2023 and early January 2025 as a result of the Hamas–Israel war, estimates the first independent survey of deaths. More than half of the people killed were women aged 18–64, children or people over 65, reports the study, which was posted on the preprint server medRxiv last week1. It has not been peer reviewed.

First independent survey of deaths in Gaza reports more than 80,000 fatalities

Results align with other efforts to count the number of people killed amid the ongoing conflict.

^{Fieldhouse, Rachel}

https://healthimaging.com/topics/medical-imaging/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri/new-ai-enabled-helium-free-mri-system-earns-fda-clearance

Government condemns Glastonbury chants aired live on BBC (2025-06-28)

bbc.com/news/articles/c33514nr…
———

>> The [UK] government has "strongly condemned" chants at #Glastonbury Festival from rap punk duo Bob Vylan calling for "death" to the Israeli military and broadcast live on the BBC.

>> Rapper Bobby Vylan led chants of "free, free Palestine" and "death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]" during their set, which came just before Belfast rap trio Kneecap.

>> A BBC spokesperson said some of the comments were "deeply offensive", adding it had issued a warning on screen about "very strong and discriminatory language". The set will not be available to rewatch on BBC iPlayer.

>> Police said they were reviewing videos of comments made by Bob Vylan and #Kneecap to decide whether any offences had been committed.

#BobVylan #FreePalestine
@palestine@a.gup.pe @israel

Government condemns Glastonbury chants aired live on BBC

Chants from rap duo Bob Vylan were streamed live and called for "death" to the Israeli military.

^{Zahra Fatima (BBC News)}

It was the hardest day of my life. I’ve never felt humiliation like I did that day.

I hope food can get through soon and be distributed in a respectful way, without humiliation and killing. The current system is chaotic and deadly.

There’s no justice in it. Most end up with nothing, because there’s no organised system and there’s too little aid for too many people.

‘My journey to get aid in Gaza was like Squid Game’

Editor’s note: The following personal account of Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, was told to Palestinian journalist and MEE contributor Ahmed Dremly in Gaza City. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

^{Ahmed Dremly (Middle East Eye)}

It was the hardest day of my life. I’ve never felt humiliation like I did that day.

I hope food can get through soon and be distributed in a respectful way, without humiliation and killing. The current system is chaotic and deadly.

There’s no justice in it. Most end up with nothing, because there’s no organised system and there’s too little aid for too many people.

‘My journey to get aid in Gaza was like Squid Game’

Editor’s note: The following personal account of Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, was told to Palestinian journalist and MEE contributor Ahmed Dremly in Gaza City. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

^{Ahmed Dremly (Middle East Eye)}

Looking back, my subscription-ending journey—or perhaps more accurately, subscription-consciousness journey—was a product, at least in part, of post-COVID lockdown reflections on what I really need and how I’d really like to spend my time. The excess of my subscriptions had started to feel akin to hoarding, and I needed to clear space, even if most of that space was intangible. There was also the lightbulb realization that has become more and more common amongst Millennials, that, despite our monthly investments in accessing various forms of media, we don’t actually own most of the culture that we consume. What’s more, should the companies that do own that media go defunct or be sold to entities that we may prefer not to do business with, we really wouldn’t have much recourse—except to unsubscribe.

This could mean years and years of playlists and TV shows and films that we would no longer have access to because they were never really ours to begin with, ultimately leaving us with nothing. And while I’m not interested in owning many things from culture, save for books and some fashions, I do think ownership of culture in its various forms serves more than capitalistic desire. Our things can be physical memories of what we love or once did, what has been passed on and gifted to us, and sometimes, reminders of what we saved and scraped for—emblems of hard-fought earnings. We are robbed of this when we choose to rent something out of convenience or compulsion instead of mindfully acquiring things that are truly meaningful to us.

https://conversationalist.org/2025/06/25/soapbox-unsubscribe-subscriptions-community-streaming-platforms-netflix-spotify-amazon-capitalism/

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-06-26-2025-a5c3052d1d983329b5d9a2f3986811fe

“We want our publishers to stand with us. To make a pledge that they will never release books that were created by machines.”

Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Publishers

To Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and all other publishers of America: We are standing on a precipice. At its simplest level, our job as …

^{Literary Hub}