Exhaustion + Wings = Free Free Free!

interview with Margaret Killjoy, video with sub.media, and more!

Oct 05, 2025

We’re outgunned a million to one...

Are you feeling it, things are just too heavy today? Then just scroll down, click on that link for the beautiful sub.media video or Margaret’s talented reading of some speculative fiction, and come back to the rest of this newsletter another day. It’s all good. Breathe. Feel the cool air way way above the earth.

Sorry I haven’t written anything in a while! I’ve been moving, then immediately after unpacking, packing up again for a temporary move for a temporary out-of-town job, while trying to finish the articles I did my research for this summer about the Chesapeake Bay and the lie of green growth, while going through a really intensive but oh-so-healpful cycle of therapy, and on the side, preparing for a big huge trip to Brazil to work with some comrades there – anarchists, organized workers, communities belonging to the Landless Workers Movement, and (to be clear all of these categories overlap) members of the Ka’apor and other Amazonian indigenous peoples. We’ve set our sights on the COP30, that masked ball where governments and capitalists dance around questions of climate change and ecocide while making themselves a whole bunch of money. Last year, the official conference for powerful institutions to make empty promises on climate change was in Azerbaijan, a petrostate that was at that moment actively engaged in ethnic cleansing.

Basically, me and the folks in Brazil want to take all these lies, the whole idea that states and capitalists would even be capable of addressing the causes of the ecological crisis at that mythical point in the future when they decide it’s something they want to prioritize, and blow that shit out of the water. While also highlighting all the effective, intersectional, anticolonial initiatives around the world that are restoring communities, healing ecosystems, mitigating the poisonous effects of capitalism, and making our collective survival more likely. And they do this despite few resources, marginalization by the media and academia, and police repression.

So anyways, yeah, some big things going on over here.

I remember there was a Sunday the other week when I worked 14 hours straight, cleaning and fixing things at home, dealing with stupid bureaucracies, then writing and researching and conducting an interview. That night I only slept 4 hours, mostly because of ongoing health problems. Then I got up at 6 in the morning and drove the old folks’ bus for 10 hours. Then I had dinner and did a little more writing on the couch, and reached out for more interviews for an article I hope comes out soon.

The day after that I gave an interview with Margaret Killjoy and Hazel on Cool Zone Media Book Club, wrapping up their podcast/ audio version of my sci-fi novella, Hermetica. It was really nice speaking with them (!!!)

Audio books are awesome, you should check it out from Episode 1 at this link.

Later that same day, I rushed off to the hospital for my trimesterly MRI. Which I’m not sure how I’ll pay for next time, since I’ll probably be losing Medicaid with the cutbacks. Cross your fingers for me that my tumor doesn’t start growing again!

Then, Wednesday and Thursday, back to the driving job…

So, sometimes I don’t have time for the newsletter. But I still got listening and writing to offer!

Ya want some audio, there’s the Hermetica audio book I linked above.

Ya want some video? I got some video for ya! Part III of It’s Revolution or Death dropped last month. This is a three part series of (kinda) short videos that dissect the lies, misrepresentations, and ineffective responses that are most likely to be passed off by the mainstream media and also by the mainstream climate movement (part i), that interview participants in amazing movements around the world that are stopping airports and pipelines, recovering food autonomy, and healing the land (part ii), and that look at helpful things we can do to increase everyone’s chances of survival even if we don’t live in a place with powerful anticolonial movements or there isn’t an insurrection going on anywhere within a thousand miles of us (part iii).

(By the way, insurrection and revolution aren’t things we can just wait for. For those who want to ponder this question more, here’s Anarchy and Insurrection by Alfredo Bonanno and “23 Theses Concerning Revolt” followed by “Social War, Antisocial Tension” by the Distro Josep Gardenyes. In the meantime, it’s a real thing that we also need to cultivate other skills, and figure out how to survive the despair in periods of reaction and pacification.)

I wrote the script and did some of the voiceover, R filmed the interview with me, and the absolute wizards at sub.media did the other interviews, along with all the sound mixing, image mixing, and expert editing. I felt like such a klutz working alongside them, it was such an honor. They’re so good at what they do!

Please, for the love of life on this planet, spread these radical fuckin videos everywhere you can! They’re free, they’re beautiful, they’re truthful, and they can help you and yours climb out of this pit of despair we’re all stuck in, not on the basis of false solutions but thinking about things that actually work, that are ambitious but within our means.

I think I can speak for the sub.media folks and for myself when I say, we do this work—whether it’s videos, researching, writing—out of passion, out of anger, out of crazy optimism that things might be better, out of the fierce commitment to remember our ghosts.

If you respect what we do at all, please pass it on, please spread it on social media, please print out a copy of any of the shorter texts and leave them someplace a stranger might pick them up, please recommend them to that one sibling or childhood friend who has different politics than you but still trusts you and loves you, please organize reading groups and film screenings, get this playing “accidentally” on the sound system of the coffee shop you work at, project it onto the side of a building at night.

We are outgunned a million to one. Our ideas are so much more compelling than theirs, because they’re truthful, and hopeful, and empowering, but they won’t spread all by themselves. Even a creature with wings needs a little help to take off, whether it’s the example of someone else flying, or just the faint whisper of a favorable wind.

I’m going to pass the virtual hat in a moment, because I got bills to pay and I’m getting kind of old to be driving a rickety old bus at just a little over minimum wage for much longer.

But seriously, speaking from the heart, there’s nothing more meaningful you could for me than spread my writing – if you like it. If you think it’s worthwhile.

Here’s a couple more things I’ve published in the last year or so. And if you’ve already read/watched/listened to everything I’m linking in this newsletter, lemme know in the comments and I’ll write something just for you!

Just over a year ago, I wrote “Turtle Lake” about ecology, trauma, grief, and memory, and about how all those things can live in one place, and maybe, even, heal there too. Around the same time I published an investigative article explaining how, in theory and in practice, more green energy actually leads to an increase in fossil fuel production, and how the whole idea of green growth is based on a number of omissions and lies. It’s on In These Times. I followed that up in February with, “Betrayed by Green Capitalism, Here’s How We Can Build a Livable Future,” which doesn’t give a copy-paste solution to the ecological crisis, but it does show how rooted networks can help us figure out and build the best solution for the specific conditions we face. Then in the spring, for Truthout, I tried to help us remember all the battles the far Right won over the last decade and a half to get away with the blanket censorship we’re all facing now. “Trump’s Censorship Campaign Draws on Decades of Infrastructure Build by Big Tech.”

Finally, an investigative article for Prism Reports about a place near and dear to my heart, the Chesapeake Bay: “Colonialism and extractivism catch up with the North Atlantic’s greatest estuary.”

Okay, here’s the hat: You can support my work by subscribing to this newsletter using the button at the bottom. You’re not paying for access, since I’m committed to making sure all of this writing remains available for free.

If you don’t want to support either of the corporations taking a cut, I get it. You can send me money through Paypal @PGelderloos

Crap, also an evil corporation. Almost as though there were something corrupt about banks, money, the whole system…

Here’s another option. You can buy one of my books from a local bookstore or straight from the publisher. Now, authors get 5% or less on book sales but this is still the best option since the rest of that money isn’t (better not be) going to Amazon, it’s going to independent bookstores and radical publishers, which need a lot of help.

Any other options? If you’re at a university, get me some money from the department or a student org and invite me out to speak. If you’ve got a trust fund or make six figures, slip me some cash and hell, I’ll fix up your garden for you or wash your dishes!

Anywho. Of my latest four books, two are from Pluto and two from Detritus, both great publishers to support.

The Solutions Are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below, on understanding the ecological crisis and how to abolish the forces that cause it.

They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us, on how our society is designed to erase collective memory, condemning our movements to repeat the same errors every generation.

Organization, Continuity, Community, practical theory for anarchists on how to understand organization and how to use it to build intergenerational movements and anticapitalist communities.

Hermetica, one of three and a half novels I’ve written but the only one published so far: it’s science fiction that deals with madness, surveillance, and breaking out.

And then, an older one from AK Press, another great radical publisher, Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation

That’s all I’ve got for now! The sun is down and my To-Do list isn’t much shorter. I hope you found something worthwhile. And even though I’m running two weeks late for this, I want to wish you all a happy autumn equinox, or spring equinox if you’re more than five thousand kilometers to the south of where I’m writing!

Pick up a glass of your favorite drink, take a deep breath, imagine the world we’re moving towards, and give a toast: to Abundance!

Bottoms up!