The 335th Block: Secrets and spies
This week…
Your reading time is about 5 minutes. Let’s start.
Your Wikipedia this week: Fifth column
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block was about corporate colonialism and language control.
CORRECTION NOTICE: Typo in the title. :(CONSPIRACIES & CRACKDOWNS
I tried investigating a mysterious media company. A police report was filed against me
Riddhi Setty for CJR:
One afternoon in June, I visited 347 West Thirty-Sixth Street, a New York office building with a jumble of businesses. Among the names on the doors were Pleroma Media, the International Business Times, and a law firm called Anderson & Associates. I had been looking into these companies, which I’d come to understand were connected in one way or another to a pattern of contributors not being paid for their work, for months at a time. The people with whom I spoke—nine in total, journalists and others, all of whom had been independent contractors, until they stepped away—told me that they understood themselves to be working for Pleroma Media; at various points, some of their paychecks came from Pleroma MGMT or, in the case of one person, from “IBT MGMT” and “IBTimes.” As of December of 2025, they said, they were collectively owed around forty thousand dollars.
Loosely linked:
Canadian universities set up a secret network to crack down on student Palestine demonstrators by Euan Thomson and David Slater for The Breach.
CBC identifies Canadian woman accused of spying at NATO military HQ by Aloysius Wong, Albert Leung, Jonathan Gatehouse, and Slyvène Gilchrist for CBC.
Kinahan cartel’s visas revealed by Connor Plunkett, Peter Barth, Beau Donelly, and John Mooney for Bellingcat.
EU to crack down on AI deepfakes, illicit imagery and hacking with new team in Brussels by Sam McNeil for AP.
Ceuta: civiles desarmados como arma de guerra híbrida en CTXT.
Xenia Fedorova : comment la France en est venue à prendre un arrêté d’expulsion contre la propagandiste russe par Ariane Chemin et Ivanne Trippenbach dans Le Monde.
What I read, listen, and watch
I’m reading Conflict Is Not Abuse (2016) by Sarah Schulman. I understand the ideas posited by the author, and to a large degree, I accept them with some caveats. But it’s the wider discourse about the book that makes me sometimes want to entertain the concept of gatekeeping knowledge. It’s similar to how people who attend a handful of therapy sessions start using “therapy speak” to shut down conversations and absolve themselves or others from accountability. The normalisation of mental health care is facing a paradox of success. People who don’t know enough about a subject shouldn’t be the one talking the most and the loudest about it. If you have critical thought and can contextualise information, this book is a good exercise. Otherwise, don’t read it.
I’m watching ENTR and France 24’s report on why Armenia’s underground drag scene is thriving.
I’m listening to a Conspirituality episode on climate and climate journalism.
Chart of the week
For the first time in almost two decades of Pew Research Center surveys, Canadians and Mexicans now view China more positively than the U.S. Who’d have thunk?