Status 2026-09-29

My old pals from the HC punk band Totalitär played in Malmö this weekend! A sold out show at Plan B! Congratulations!

I didn't go to the Totalitär show. Haven't really been in touch with any of them for over 30 years and, well, couldn't cope with all the people. Also: Sold out.

Apparently there was some incident after the show: two to hospital, eight arrested. Don't know anything about it, really.

Totalitär's first new album in 20 years!

https://totalitarsweden.bandcamp.com/album/totalit-r-s-t

The legends in Mob 47 played the day before. Again, I didn't go.

Speaking of Swedish punk, here's a message in tune with my mood:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csxPscy_V_Y

(Sorry for the Youtube link.)

"Mörda bilar - hata data" ("Murder cars - hate computers") with Välta stället, inspired by an epic graffiti from 1983 on an old water tower here in Malmö. Some history about it here (in Swedish), apparently written by someone who lives quite close to me!

https://loggfigur.com/2022/05/04/morda-bilar-hata-data/

More punk… In August I met Nina at her shop in Stockholm. We were both young punks spending time in Hudiksvall around the same time but we couldn't quite figure out if we had met before!

Yeah, sure, she was visiting from nearby Sundsvall, but many of us Hudik punx were often in Sundsvall and vice versa, only a train stop away. She was in Hudik a lot, apparently, and had a boyfriend there. She's a little younger than me, so we might just have missed each other.

I thought it was quite funny that her vegan shoe shop had moved to Götgatan, right next to where the Anarchist cafe Svarta månen used to be when I was a young teenager and was visiting my grandma in Stockholm. In the cellar the Anarchist magazine Brand had their office and a huge printing press.

Anyway, here's her fantastic hardcore punk band Śmierć. Texts are often in Polish so I don't necessarily understand them, but the song and the music are great. More melodic than most hardcore and with Nina on keyboards(!) and song! The band hasn't had any new material for a while, though. Don't know why.

https://smierc.eu/

https://smierc.bandcamp.com/

I saw my old favourites Einstürzende Neubauten live two days in a row! First at Malmöfestivalen, then in Uppsala on my birthday.

My friend Lars had arranged a picnic for me right outside the venue in Uppsala! He brought some bottles of cava, real glasses, real plates, and had baked a vegan chocolate cake! He also invited some really interesting people to our picnic! Soooo sweet!

When we got to the venue I, naturally, went to the bar at once. They didn't know if the beer was vegan, but the bar manager just happened to sit right next to me. She texted the head brewer and while we were waiting for an answer went to another fridge and found me a beer with an obvious vegan mark. A little later she looked for me in the audience(!) and told me that, yes, all their beer was vegan! Woooow. She got a hug.

EN has a new member, Josephine Luckshy, who is also the new live musical director, plays the bass and sings on some songs (at least the second encore in Uppsala, "Stella Maris").

EN's own "Bassist reveal":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxYBitr2E6E

As you probably know I'm adjacent to people working with transparency logs, specifically the Sigsum project.

Today the transparency.dev Summit 2026, a conference about transparency log technologies, started in Montreal. I should have been there but because of… reasons I'm not.

Schedule: https://transparency.dev/summit2026/schedule/

Stream here: https://www.youtube.com/@transparency-dev/streams

Shoutout to Nisse and Rasmus! Good luck!

• Nisse's talk: The TKey sign-if-logged tool.
• Rasmus' lightning talk: The diff between sigsum/v1 and sigsum/v2?

• Matt Haig: "The Midnight Library". A sweet novel with very good descriptions of how clinical depression feels.
• Nils Petter Löfstedt: "På Hvitfeldtska bodde vi". Photo book about the strange police occupation of the Hvitfeldtska school in 2001 when they surrounded the school with shipping containers. See also my blog post about Gbg 2001.

• Erik Gambini's film "After work". A film about how people work and don't work around the world and some interesting thoughts about what we would do if we weren't forced into wage slavery.

  I'm reminded of the immortal words of Utah Philips:

  Work is what you do for yourself. Toil is what you do for somebody else. Some day you're gonna pick up the phone and call in well.

• Tomas Bacoccoli: "En bastu i Umbrien". ("A sauna in Umbria"). An autobiography describing Tomas' life when his father goes further and further into dementia, with plenty of flashbacks from Tomas' life and his father's even more crazy life. Tomas and his family leaves very succesful careers and moves to a derilict wineyard in Umbria and starts a new life, first helping his father.

• Lol Tolhurst: "Goth: A history". Very personal and beautifully written history about mostly the early goth bands by one of the co-founders of The Cure.

  Much too litle about Sisters of Mercy but I imagine Andrew didn't want to talk to him. Not really a surprise, I suppose.

  Speaking of which, here's Lisa Cuthbert's version of This corrosion on piano:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1DUvTm-eHo

• Discovered the band Die Spitz: https://www.diespitz.com/

  Full performance live on KXDE:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBuwjdY9GRI

  Wow, just wow.

• Went to the reboot of "Resident Evil" with a very enthusiastic #3. It was enjoyable but not much of a story, really. And a very frustrating end. #3 happy though.