A few weeks ago, I drew up a flowchart to estimate the probability that Trump would establish a dictatorship in the US, which looked, at the time, like an even money bet.

We don’t need to speculate any more. Trump has announced the dictatorship, and there is no sign of effective resistance. The key elements so far include

• Extremists announced for all major positions, with a demand that they be recess appointments, not subject to Senate scrutiny
• A state of emergency from Day 1, with the use of the military against domestic opponents
• Mass deportations, initially of non-citizens and then of “denaturalised” legal immigrants
• A third term (bizarrely, the nervous laughter that greeted this led to it being reported as a joke).
• A comprehensive purge of the army, FBI and civil service

It’s clear that Trump will face no resistance from the Republican party. There’s an outside chance that the Supreme Court will constrain some measures, such as outright suppression of opposition media, but that won’t make much difference.

It’s possible that Trump will overreach in some way, such as carrying out his threat to execute political opponents before the ground is fully prepared. Or, his economic policies may prove so disastrous that even rigged elections can’t be won. But there is no good reason to expect this.

I can’t give any hopeful advice to Americans. The idea of defeating Trump at the next election is an illusion. Although elections may be conducted for some time, the outcome will be predetermined. Street protest might be tolerated, as long as it is harmless, but will be suppressed brutally if it threatens the regime. Legal action will go nowhere, given that the Supreme Court has already authorised any criminal action Trump might take as president.

The models to learn from are those of dissidents in places like China and the Soviet Union. They involve cautious cultivation of an alternative, ready for the opportunity when and if it comes.

The remaining islands of democracy will have some difficult choices to make. I’ll offer some thoughts on Australia, and others may have something to say about their own countries.

For Australia, the easy, and wrong, course of action will be to pretend that nothing has happened. But in reality, we are on our own. Trump is often described as “transactional”, but this carries the implication that having made a deal, he sticks to it. In reality, Trump reneges whenever it suits him, and sometimes just on a whim. If it suits Trump to drag us into a war with China, he will do it. Equally, if he can benefit from leaving us in the lurch, he will do that

Our correct course is to disengage slowly and focus on protecting ourselves. That means a return to the policy of balancing China and the US, now with the recognition that there is nothing to choose between the two in terms of democracy. We need to back out of AUKUS and focus on defending ourselves, with what Sam Roggeveen has called an “echidna” strategy – lots of anti-ship missiles, and the best air defences we can buy, from anyone willing to supply them.

I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on all this.

Note: I’d prefer not to have any post-mortems on what the Democrats did wrong. Any possible lessons won’t be relevant to the future. And a country where only a third of the population is willing to turn up and vote against dictatorship is headed for disaster sooner or later.

Over the past decade, spurred on by series like Formula 1 and the World Endurance Championship, the world of motorsport began to embrace hybrid powertrains. In addition to being a sport and entertainment, racing also serves as a testbed for new vehicle technologies, having pioneered innovations we now take for granted, like seat belts, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But that dalliance with electrification may be nearing its end as two high-profile series announce they're ditching batteries and electric motors starting next year in favor of sustainable fuels instead.

Formula 1 first officially allowed hybrid power in 2009, and by 2014, the series' rules required every car to sport a pair of complex and costly energy-recovery systems. The more road-relevant discipline of sports prototypes also began dabbling with electrified powertrains around the same time, with the first win for a hybrid car at Le Mans coming in 2012.

The budgets involved for those programs were extravagant, though. Until it instituted a cost cap, F1 team budgets stretched to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. In endurance racing, Audi and Porsche spent comparable amounts on their hybrid WEC campaigns, and while Toyota managed to make do with much less, even it was spending more than $80 million a year in the mid-2010s.

As the technology has matured, it made its way into other series—in 2022, both the World Rally Championship and the British Touring Car Championship adopted standardized hybrid systems with spec components that each team had to use. North America's IMSA WeatherTech series followed suit in 2023 by introducing the new GTP class—cars built to the LMDh regulations similarly use spec batteries, transmissions, and electric motor/generator units.

But the addition of hybrid systems in those series had more to do with making it socially acceptable for automakers to participate in them rather than with any great improvement to the racing. Indeed, at the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona, team principals told me for a fact that automakers like Acura and Cadillac would never have greenlit their IMSA prototype programs were it not for the hybrid aspect.

First BTCC

The BTCC grid for 2022, the first year for the series' hybrid regulations. Credit: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

Until now, it seems. At the end of October, the BTCC announced that starting in 2025, it will no longer use hybrid power. "The hybrid era was a great one for the BTCC. Six years ago, when we first announced hybrid, it was a technology still in its relative infancy within motorsport. We've successfully completed that program—and really have no more to prove in that respect—whilst others have yet to catch up," said Alan Gow, BTCC's chief executive.

Instead of using a small electric motor to add 60 hp (45 kW) for short boosts, the BTCC will instead look to the cars' turbochargers for the extra power. Losing the electric motor and battery pack also sheds 122 lbs (55 kg) in weight, which means 2025-spec BTCC cars should be more nimble and no less fast. And the cost for teams should be lower—until now, teams have been required to lease the hybrid systems for tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Instead, the BTCC will require all competitors to use a new fossil-free fuel called Hiperflo ECO102 R100, made by Haltermann Carless with a mix of synthetic and biological sources.

Then WRC

The WRC's announcement that it will also delete hybrid powertrains from its technical regulations came last Friday. Here, too, the motivation was to reduce costs, complexity, and weight, cutting 176 lbs (80 kg) from the mass of a Rally1 car. (Power will be cut slightly via a smaller air restrictor for the internal combustion engine to keep performance at the same level as today's WRC cars.)

"Following extensive dialogue with key stakeholders, it became clear that continuing to use the plug-in hybrid units provided under the existing supplier agreement was no longer in the best interests of the FIA World Rally Championship," said FI Chief Technical and Safety Officer Xavier Mestelan-Pinon.

Like the BTCC, the WRC will instead move to a fully sustainable fuel—again, likely from Haltermann Carless, which currently supplies the series with its control fuel.

Could F1 follow?

As Ars has reported, F1 is also adopting carbon-neutral fuels from 2026, although unlike the more cost-conscious WRC and BTCC series, in F1 teams will be allowed to work with the fuel supplier of their choice as a way to spur more technology development. To coincide with the new sustainable fuels, F1 cars are losing the expensive and complicated energy recovery system fitted to the cars' turbochargers, instead opting to make the electric motor that can harvest and deploy energy to the wheels more powerful.

Critics of the current F1 technical regulations won't find much solace from the 2026 regs, which only look set to cut about 66 lbs (30 kg) of mass—as a result, the cars will still be much longer and heavier than the lithe and nimble machines that raced until 2013.

That incoming ruleset will last until 2029, but earlier this year, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali revealed that the adoption of sustainable fuels could mean the end of turbocharged hybrid V6s from 2030. After all, if the fuel the cars burn doesn't contribute to climate change, there's no harm at all in their engines going back to naturally aspirated units with stratospheric rev limits and a screaming soundtrack to match. Here's hoping.

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I am scared, and the worst thing about being scared is that it’s making me cowardly, and I’m angry at myself for being cowardly.

An example: there’s this abortion fund that operates in my home state of Florida that I have been giving money to for a while now. And I know, because police did this to a bail fund in Atlanta that was doing nothing more than bailing out Cop City protestors who were arrested in the course of protesting, that I could, in future, maybe get in trouble for my donations to the abortion fund. In Atlanta, they made a raid and arrested all the people organizing the bail fund and then they charged them under RICO, for money laundering and racketeering. This is not what RICO is for. RICO charges broadly are intended to target organized crime, not protestors.1

In Texas, there’s legislation pending right now to charge abortion funds under RICO.

I live in a state, Massachusetts, with very good shield laws, but if the shield laws are somehow overridden by the federal government, I worry that my donations could be considered to be funding illegal activity. I worry that I could be arrested just for giving money.

Similarly, in the past year I joined, attended protests put on by, and gave money to a Jewish-led peace organization. Could a government hostile to organizations that call what is happening in Palestine a genocide decide that such organizations are supporting terrorism?

Absolutely.

And the list goes on.

I think about all the things I give to and do that the incoming government will be hostile to and my first, overwhelming, embarrassing instinct is to hide. Stop giving. Stop showing up. Say I changed my mind. I no longer support that. I’ve learned the error of my ways.

Doing this wouldn’t even make me safe, and I know it. I’m not a lawyer, and of course I want all the lawyers pushing back against that kind of bullshit as much as possible, it’s an incredibly important part of resisting autocracy.2 But I worry that somehow I could still get in vague trouble for actions I took in the past, and pretty much anyone can get into trouble with the law just from living their damn life, if the people who make or enforce the law are out to get them, which, incidentally, is why you should never, ever, talk to the police.3 I don’t think anyone’s coming after me, personally, right away, but I sure hope Jack Smith is working on his asylum applications, because I am really, really worried about him.

So I know this, I know there’s no real safety to be had, and yet I still have this overwhelming urge to just cancel all the donations, protest nothing ever again, keep my fucking head down, because actually I do not want to go to prison. I have been locked up and I did not like it. Nobody has even threatened me with a cage full of rats ready to eat my face, but still, I want not to exist in any way that will turn the eye of Sauron upon me.

That urge is exactly what Timothy Snyder was talking about in his essential little book On Tyranny, lesson 1 “Do not obey in advance.” Do not teach an autocrat what he can have for free, because you are afraid. Make him work for his power, at the very least.4

Roxane Gay says something similar in an op-ed in the New York Times (gifted article, so you shouldn’t hit a paywall):

[T]o suggest we should yield even a little to Mr. Trump’s odious politics, to suggest we should compromise on the rights of trans people, for instance, and all of the other critical issues we care most about, is unacceptable. It is shameful and cowardly. We cannot abandon the most vulnerable communities to assuage the most powerful. Even if we did, it would never be enough. The goal posts would keep moving until progressive politics became indistinguishable from conservative politics. We’re halfway there already.

“Shameful and cowardly,” she says. They are harsh words but I know they are true because I feel the urge myself, and that is exactly what it is: understandable, yes, but also shameful and cowardly.

***

I don’t consider myself an Obey person to begin with, certainly not an Obey in Advance one. I tell you about this because it takes a lot of fear to make me a coward, and that, apparently, is the amount of fear I am feeling right now.

But I don’t want to be a coward. I want to be brave.

So, I do what I always do when I am feeling small and scared and ashamed: I write about it. I am afraid, and I’m mortified at myself that in a moment that clearly demands bravery, I’m struggling already to be brave.

I want you to know I feel that way because I bet some of you are feeling that way too, and I want you to know that I am going to keep trying to be brave anyways, and I want you to keep trying to be brave too, however that looks. Whatever the thing you most need to take a stand on is. I don’t mean do nothing but be brave all the time. I don’t mean don't consider risk, don’t consider anything but rising to this moment, but I do mean realize that it is entirely possible that more and more parts of our lives may be criminalized and that therefore we may all end up as criminals, and we if that happens, we will all have to be brave together to tolerate that.

In moments like this I always come back to finding your people, your trustworthy co-conspirators, whether it’s a conspiracy of getting abortions for people who need them or a conspiracy of making soup or a conspiracy of making art about freedom, of speaking the truth to one another.

It has to be a we. And the we has to expand.

We don’t have good words for this crucial activity, unfortunately. “Networking” sounds like a professional mixer in a hotel conference room, “community-building” sounds like a lot of work involving bad snacks and couches of questionable origin, “building trust” like a ropes course, “organizing” like a lot of shouting. And, while I don’t dispute that those things are valuable activities also, none of them are what I’m talking about.

I mean start with 3 other people you trust enough to tell that you are scared and you feel like a fucking coward (which is what I had to do, before I could tell all the rest of you) and maybe you all hang out every other Tuesday night doing absolutely nothing but playing gin rummy and talking about the state of the world, and then you can build something from there. Build to actions. Build to more connections. Build to a larger solidarity.

I dunno, it seems real small and not at all enough, but I sort of think it might be the beginning of everything.

And, also, now is not the time for me to quit giving to the things I care about because I’m scared in advance. Now is the time to keep giving and know I’m among thousands and thousands of other people who are doing the same. There is safety in those numbers. Not total safety, because that’s not a thing, but more safety.

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On an entirely different aspect of the same topic, fear about the future, here are some of my prepper activities that I have been doing. Some of them I started before the election, and others I didn’t start till after. Some of them are always ongoing, because thinking ahead and being prepared for ordinary disasters is just how I am.

These may or may not feel important to you (they might just seem crazy, which I’m cool with) and you may or may not be able to financially swing them, but anyways here they are:

1. Making sure all the electronics in the household are in working order. For example, I’d been dragging my feet on getting my laptop screen repaired. I took it in this week and now it’s done. At the same time, making sure we’ve got household loaner machines for future repair needs. And, making sure everyone is using a good case for their phone. Phones these days, despite costing a zillion dollar and having a lot of glass on them and not liking water so much, we tend to treat like any other thing we’re carrying around in our pockets constantly. So I’m making sure we are protecting the phones with a slightly heavier duty case than is fashionable. Reason: possible upcoming supply chain disruptions and/or tariffs leading to more expensive repairs and new purchases as well as longer wait times.

2. For the same reason, ordering spare parts for household appliances that we anticipate needing soon (for us, this was a washing machine gasket we know we need to replace).

3. Also to hedge against supply chain/tariff/price gouging/inflation issues: stocking up on foreign goods we like in our household. Our big ones are Campari, Scotch, cocoa, vanilla, and other spices, as well as art and hobby supplies.

4. Restocking 3-d printer spools. There’s a 3-d printer in our home, and someone who knows how to use it. If we can’t buy a doodad, maybe we can make it.

5. We already keep a pretty tight hold on our passport renewal dates, but mine was due to renew at a time where I’m not positive we will have anyone left working at the state department to process it. (I know this sounds possibly overly dramatic, and I don’t care. If Elon Musk is in charge of a Department of Efficiency then things like renewing your passport will become the opposite of efficient.) So I sent it off early. If you or your kids don’t have US passports, now is the time. Also, even though we don’t plan to leave the country permanently (we considered that very seriously already during the Bush years, all the way to getting permanent residency visas to NZ, which we did not end up using), I did look again at our genealogy to see whether we could get second passports for any other country. Nope.

6. Vaccinations: I doubt that even if RFK, Jr. is confirmed that vaccines will come off the market immediately, but I’m making sure everyone in my family is up-to-date on vaccinations, particularly the Tdap, which should be renewed every 10 years and protects against tetanus and whooping cough (which is making a comeback in Boston this year), among other things.

7. Medications: I pre-ordered the next bottle of insulin for the cat. I’m making sure we have as much of our necessary meds on hand as insurance will pay for, and I’d advise folks especially to stock up on things like contraception, emergency contraception, and even mifepristone.

8. Generalized emergency preparedness stuff: we have a giant battery from Anker that we keep in case of prolonged power outages, and a car battery jumper in the car, and a hand crank weather radio, and miscellaneous other stuff like that. All that stuff needs upkeep (the batteries drain eventually whether or not they are used; water needs to be changed every so often, etc.). Do I anticipate all of our infrastructure to immediately fall apart come January 20th? No, this is stuff I do anyways. But with increasing climate disasters and decreasing involvement from the federal government (Trump has previously withheld federal disaster aid from states that piss him off) there is no time like the present to be prepared. I’m not talking guns and bunkers here. I don’t aim for preparedness to hold off the masses; I aim for it so I’m in a position to help my neighbors in disasters. Our backup battery won’t power our entire household; but it will charge my entire building’s phones more than once, if needed. Read Rebecca Solnit on disasters if you want to understand my approach more. If you have 0 idea where even to start on emergency preparedness, ready.gov will get you started.

In other news, winter is coming, despite the continued mild weather, and I’m starting to feel its weight and the weariness that comes along with it. Not just weariness, that is not the right word. The feeling of falling, endlessly, down a dark hole. The desire to stab myself in the face, over and over again. Despite everything I do to hold it at bay.

Still, I persist. I get out of bed. I go to my studio and I make art, I write, I send these little missives, I do resistance band workouts, I invite my friends to hang out, I notice weird light as I walk around the city, take pictures of it. I do what I can.

What else:

I am also accepting photo commissions, and if you are local to me in the Boston area and want to collaborate on a photo shoot or just let me take pictures of you, or visit the studio and make some art or conversation or conspiracy together, or play gin rummy, let me know. Smash that reply button or find me at all things www.amynewell.com . I also have some space for coaching clients, your first conversation is free.

Anyhow, onward and thanks for reading.

Till next update, xo, Amy

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Similar to many Humble Bundles we’ve featured in the past, Fanatical has started offering books alongside its selection of gaming bundles. To mark the occasion, through Nov. 24, Polygon readers can save an extra 7% on Fanatical book bundles by using the code FANTASYVERSE7 at checkout.

Fanatical is already offering a broad selection of books as part of these bundles, including classic issues from Dark Horse Comics, Hellboy graphic novels, and more. However, the bundles we’re most excited about are The World of The Witcher Book Bundle, and the Cyberpunk 2077 Graphic Novels Collection.

The World of The Witcher Book Bundle collects 12 graphic novels for just $9.29, including The Witcher: Ronin, a Manga inspired by The Witcher novels. You’ll also get access to the 216-page volume, Gwent: Art of The Witcher Card Game, which features illustrations used in the standalone version of the card game introduced in CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

If the neon streets of Night City are more your style, you can also pick up a comprehensive collection of the graphic novels inspired by Cyberpunk 2077 for just $7.43. In addition to the 2022 Hugo-award-winning Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams and five other graphic novels, you’ll also get the 192-page world bible, The World of Cyberpunk 2077, which features an impressive collection of illustrations and concept art detailing the lore of the CD Projekt Red game.

It’s been almost exactly a decade since we first featured the concentric, ceramic vessels of Matthew Chambers on Colossal, and in that time, we’ve come to find his sculptures no less stupefying.

From his studio in St. Lawrence on the Isle of Wight, Chambers continues to push the boundaries of the medium. The artist is known for nesting meticulously scaled forms inside slightly larger pieces, all of which are thrown on a wheel. Hypnotic and seemingly endless, the dynamic works appear like vast portals that descend into relatively small vessels.

For his most recent pieces though, Chambers has switched his focus from inner to outer, as the aligned forms shift in position to swell outward and upward. Each sculpture is an opportunity to explore a particular pattern, he adds, and now, that process involves extrapolating motifs and the limits of the spherical shapes.

After 18 months of back-to-back exhibitions, Chambers is now slowing down and returning to his studio to experiment and try new methods. His works will be on view with Cavaliero Finn at Collect Art Fair in February 2025, and until then, find more of his sculptures on his website and Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Concentric Forms Escape the Confines of the Ceramic Vessel in Matthew Chambers’s Sculptures appeared first on Colossal.

The Federal Communications Commission's plan to investigate and potentially regulate data caps is all but dead now, after President-elect Donald Trump's announcement that he will promote Commissioner Brendan Carr to the chairmanship role.

The FCC last month voted 3–2 to open a formal inquiry into how broadband data caps affect consumers and whether the commission has authority to regulate how Internet service providers impose such caps. The proceeding is continuing for now, as the FCC comment and reply comment deadlines are November 14 and December 2. You can view the docket here.

Broadband industry lobby groups knew they would face no possibility of data-cap regulation once Trump won the election. But they submitted their comments late last week, making the case that data caps are good for customers and that the FCC has no authority to regulate them—the same arguments that Carr made when he dissented from the vote to open an inquiry.

NCTA—The Internet & Television Association, representing cable firms including Comcast and Charter, told the FCC that what ISPs call "usage-based pricing" expands options for consumers and promotes competition and network investment. NCTA claimed that the offering of plans with data caps "reflects the highly competitive environment as providers seek to distinguish their offers from their competitors'."

Cable firms: Usage-based pricing does no harm

Data caps enable "innovative plans at lower monthly rates," the lobby group said. The NCTA also wrote:

Usage-based pricing is a widely accepted pricing model used not only for communications services, but also for the sale of many other categories of goods and services. Such consumption-based pricing equitably and efficiently ensures that consumers who use goods or services the most pay more than those that do not. Indeed, in the communications context, the notion that requiring very heavy users of a service to pay more than light users has long been determined to be a reasonable pricing structure. It would be economically unsound to prohibit broadband providers from engaging in usage-based pricing in the absence of any harm caused by such practices.

Carr and fellow FCC Republican Nathan Simington made similar arguments when they dissented from last month's vote to open an inquiry. Carr blasted what he called "the Biden-Harris Administration's inexorable march towards rate regulation," and said that "prohibiting customers from choosing to purchase plans with data caps—which are more affordable than unlimited ones—necessarily regulates the service rates they are paying for."

Many Internet users filed comments asking the FCC to ban data caps. A coalition of consumer advocacy groups filed comments saying that "data caps are another profit-driving tool for ISPs at the expense of consumers and the public interest."

"Data caps have a negative impact on all consumers but the effects are felt most acutely in low-income households," stated comments filed by Public Knowledge, the Open Technology Institute at New America, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the National Consumer Law Center.

Consumer groups: Caps don’t manage congestion

The consumer groups said the COVID-19 pandemic "made it more apparent how data caps are artificially imposed restrictions that negatively impact consumers, discriminate against the use of certain high-data services, and are not necessary to address network congestion, which is generally not present on home broadband networks."

"Unlike speed tiers, data caps do not effectively manage network congestion or peak usage times, because they do not influence real-time network load," the groups also said. "Instead, they enable further price discrimination by pushing consumers toward more expensive plans with higher or unlimited data allowances. They are price discrimination dressed up as network management."

Jessica Rosenworcel, who has been FCC chairwoman since 2021, argued last month that consumer complaints show the FCC inquiry is necessary. "The mental toll of constantly thinking about how much you use a service that is essential for modern life is real as is the frustration of so many consumers who tell us they believe these caps are costly and unfair," Rosenworcel said.

ISPs lifting caps during the pandemic "suggest[s] that our networks have the capacity to meet consumer demand without these restrictions," she said, adding that "some providers do not have them at all" and "others lifted them in network merger conditions."

ISPs: Pandemic doesn’t show caps are unnecessary

The NCTA tried to counter Rosenworcel's claim that the widespread lifting of data caps during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the caps aren't necessary.

"Because of the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic and with so many people working and learning from home, broadband traffic during the pandemic surged between 30 percent and 50 percent across mobile and fixed networks," the NCTA wrote. "Recognizing this national emergency, cable and other providers paused data plans and took many other steps to ensure Americans stayed connected to the Internet."

The NCTA argued that the temporary lifting of caps "does not change the fundamental economics of usage-based pricing... Providers were able to suspend usage-based pricing temporarily during the pandemic, recognizing that this was an extraordinary circumstance and that eventually schools and workplaces would reopen."

The FCC also received opposition from USTelecom, wireless lobby group CTIA, and America's Communications Association (formerly the American Cable Association). USTelecom claimed that banning data caps would force ISPs to raise prices.

"Requiring all users to pay for unlimited data would raise prices for consumers who use little data," USTelecom wrote. "This difference in price could be the deciding factor in whether an individual can, or wants to, subscribe to broadband. Moreover, requiring flat pricing plans with unlimited data would effectively require those who use less data to subsidize those that use more."

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