Aww, Radio and TV at this time of the year are full of Christmas contemplation – often paired with wonderful end of the year reviews... Don't you love it too?

NO?!
Then get ready for

RADIO IRRTUM!
↓↓↓ German version far below the English one ↓↓↓

Yes, the upcoming issue of #RadioIrrtum! will have NOTHING of this and be aired anyway this Saturday, 2024/12/21, 8:00pm UTC+1/Berlin time. At Alex Berlin FM at 91MHz or DAB+ K7D around #Berlin and worldwide at
alex-berlin.de/radio-livestrea… .

#Radio Irrtum! is a German language #radioShow exploring the sonic vastness of the #underground. Emitted transmissions may raise your attention for new unheard #music all over the genre spectrum all over the planet. Also it's totally fine to ignore that German language aspect - 'cuz it's all about the #music!

This time I make your Xmas presents basically wrap themselves in weird ways by just pushing out super evil sonic waves containing

- Hamburger Schule #PostPunk
- Polish #CasioPop - #Acid - #GrimeRap
- #DnB of various flavors
- #IDM - #technicalDeathMetal
- the best #Berlin #Punk I've ever played (!)
- #tapeLoopRomance
Yeah, a bit of an electronic overweight with all the DnB and IDM stuff this time – sorry about that… but this basically is what came across my "desk" this month.
At least there is #CreativeCommons included – coming right of the #acidDecember24 happening pulled of by the mighty #Basspistol crew (still running, you may still submit your selfmade tracks - I know, I will) and there is, lemme repeat that, really really well done Berlin punk in here.
If at least a bit interested in kewl new unusual #music, tune in! 📻
I'll post playlist + manuscript later here (provided I’m home, else it will come up the day after). And if you have questions? I'll gladly answer! Just ask!
CU all on Saturday! :)

↑↑↑ English version above, the German one below ↓↓↓

Vergesst Besinnlichkeit und Jahresrückblicke, hier kommt Radio Irrtum! :)
Samstag (21.12.), 20:00 über Alex Berlin auf FM 91MHz/DAB+ K.7D (Stream URL oben).

Die dunkel glitzernde Radiosendung, in der wir die planetenumfassenden Weiten des musikalischen Untergrunds erforschen. Unter deren Klängen sich Eure Weihnachtsgeschenke wie von selbst verpacken dank...

- Hamburger Schule Postpunk
- polnischem Casio Pop
- Acid
- Grime
- DnB verschiedener Ausrichtungen
- IDM
- technical DeathMetal
- super gutem Berlin Punk
- Tapeloop Romantik

Bisschen Überhang gibz in Sachen elektronisches Zeugs – hat sich diesmal so ergeben. Dafür auch wieder Creative Commons – und zwar vom Acid December Happening des Basspistol Kollektives. Und, ich sags nochmal: Großartiger Punk aus Berlin ist auch dabei!

Playlist + Manuskript nach der Show (spätestens Sonntag) hier drunter. Fragen einfach stellen – ich antworte (spätestens Sonntag)!

Bis zur Sendung… vielleicht? :)

Cory Doctorow’s prescient novella about health insurance and murder: ‘They’re going to be afraid’

Five years ago, the science fictionwriter Cory Doctorow published a short story whose plot might seem eerily similar to followers of the past few weeks’ news.
In "Radicalized", one of four novellas comprising a science fiction novel of the same name, Doctorow charts the journey of a man who joins an online forum for fathers whose partners or children have been denied healthcare coverage by their insurers after his wife is diagnosed with breast cancer and denied coverage for an experimental treatment.

Slowly, over the course of the story, the men of the forum become radicalized by their grief and begin plotting
– and executing
– murders of health insurance executives and politicians who vote against universal healthcare.

In the wake of the 4 December shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which unleashed a wave of outrage at the US health system, Doctorow’s novella has been called prescient.
When the American Prospect magazine republished the story last week, it wrote:
“It is being republished with permission for reasons that will become clear if you read it.” But Doctorow doesn’t think he was on to something that no one else in the US understood.

When he learned of the shooting, Doctorow’s first thought was one of horror
(“I grew up in the anti-nuclear proliferation movement, I don’t want anyone to shoot anyone ever”)
then of fear
(“I hope he doesn’t have a copy of my book with him”).
But from the alleged shooter’s Goodreads account, it appears that Luigi Mangione, who now faces charges of murder as an act of terrorism in New York, never read Doctorow.

👉 “I feel like the most important thing about that is that it tells you that this is not a unique insight,”
Doctorow said,
“that the question that I had is a question other people have had.”

In one part of the story, a man whose young daughter died after an insurance company refused to pay for brain surgery bombs the insurer’s headquarters.
“It’s not vengeance. I don’t have a vengeful bone in my body. Nothing I do will bring Lisa back, so why would I want revenge?
This is a public service.
There’s another dad just like me,”
he shares in a video message on the forum.
“And right now, that dad is talking to someone at Cigna, or Humana, or BlueCross BlueShield, and the person on the phone is telling that dad that his little girl
has. To. Die.
Someone in that building made the decision to kill my little girl,
and everyone else in that building went along with it.
Not one of them is innocent, and not one of them is afraid.
They’re going to be afraid, after this.”
“Because they must know in their hearts,” he goes on.
“Them, their lobbyists, the men in Congress who enabled them.
They’re parents. They know.
Anyone who hurt their precious children, they’d hunt that person down like a dog.
The only amazing thing about any of this is that no one has done it yet.
I’m going to make a prediction right now, that even though I’m the first,
I sure as hell will not be the last. There’s more to come.”

In the story, this was indeed only the beginning of the violence.
But in real life, Doctorow imagines very different solutions to the crisis of American healthcare.

“We have historically done things about oppressive corporate systems that are destroying people’s lives,
and we’ve done them, if not in living memory, at least not that long ago,”
he says, speaking of the trust-busting movement to break up Standard Oil and other monopolies in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“Corporate power was significantly more dystopian than it is today,
and we figured out how to deal with it, and it’s not like the political movements and the organizing that they undertook to get that done were the lost arts of a fallen civilization.”
The movement that brings single-payer healthcare to the US, Doctorow believes, will be a trust-busting one.

👉 “People don’t know that they’re all angry about the same stuff right now,” he says,
noting higher costs at grocery stores and tech monopolies.
“They’re actually all angry about the same thing.
And when they figure it out the coalition will be unstoppable.”

theguardian.com/us-news/2024/d…