Beneath the Pavement

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If Not Climate Change, Then Greed and Stupidity
The end of the Anthropocene.
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Antonio Melonio
16

July 2024

Bread, Circuses, and Medals: The Olympics as Late Capitalism’s Swan Song
A spectacle no one needs.
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Antonio Melonio
14
Hear Me Out: Summer Vacation for Adults
Because why should kids have all the fun?
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Antonio Melonio
5

June 2024

Withering Away in the Office
Please just automate this shit away and let us live.
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Antonio Melonio
13

April 2024

The “Anarchy” of Egoism: Max Stirner’s Radical Individualism
No gods, no masters — no rights, no duties, nothing?
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Antonio Melonio
10
The Internet Feels Dead, Doesn’t It?
From punk rock to adult contemporary. (And back again?)
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Antonio Melonio
10
A Very Short History of Working Class Struggle
From the dawn of agriculture to the coming age of artificial intelligence.
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Antonio Melonio
3
To Conform and To Perform
Freedom is a lie.
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Antonio Melonio
11

March 2024

Everything Is About To Change
Beneath the pavement, there is turmoil.
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Antonio Melonio
17
Perhaps You Should Quit Your High-Paying, Stressful Job
(And think about what makes YOU happy.)
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Antonio Melonio
8
The False Dream of Cottagecore
How the problematic romanticization of Western rural life reveals our discontent with the modern world.
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Antonio Melonio
7

February 2024

AI, Capitalism, and the Collapse of Industrial Society
Capitalism turns all technological breakthroughs into nightmare fuel. Can artificial intelligence escape its grasp?
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Antonio Melonio
6
It All Ends in a Boring Dystopia
Why the world feels bland and unchangeable.
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Antonio Melonio
21
When Stability Feels Like Suffocation
The psychology of craving societal collapse and embracing the insanity of radical change.
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Antonio Melonio
5
Life Is All About Work, Didn’t You Know?
You were made to generate corporate profits. You live at the mercy of abstract concepts. Why can't you accept this?
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Antonio Melonio
8
Why You Feel So Fucking Lonely
Capitalist cultural hegemony turned a species based on cooperation and community into legions of solitary contestants.
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Antonio Melonio
6
Book Release — The Factory: Revolution's Call
The plight of the working class, and a violent revolution to throw off our shackles.
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Antonio Melonio
3

January 2024

The Children Yearn for the Mines
The inevitable return of child labor in the West.
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Antonio Melonio
9
Melancholia for a Summer That Never Was
It was never real.
 • 
Antonio Melonio
A Rising Tide of the Disillusioned
Beneath the Pavement is one year old — and just reached 2k subscribers!
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Antonio Melonio
15
Violence Is Our Way: The Great Delusion of Civilization
Beneath the pretense of benevolence lurks savage conquest.
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Antonio Melonio
5
Grey Cities, Grey People
A lament for the natural world.
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Antonio Melonio
6
The Childfree Are Ungovernable
Why the capitalist ruling class wants you to have as many children as possible.
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Antonio Melonio
8
Capitalism and Anti-Natalism
Why having children is a moral dilemma.
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Antonio Melonio
7

December 2023

The Beach Yearns for Freedom
The year in review.
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Antonio Melonio
5
Not of the Natural World
Humanity’s lasting separation from its surroundings, and the catastrophic subjugation of all that lives.
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Antonio Melonio
7
Honey, Did We Consume Enough For Christmas?
A holiday to celebrate hollow capitalism. On the things that we lost and nostalgia for a different world.
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Antonio Melonio
4
The Man Weeping in the Parking Lot, Dreading Another Day at Work
The tragedy that is a pre-determined life of monotony.
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Antonio Melonio
20
The Tyranny of the State
None of us agreed to live like this, but still we do. Consent is implied.
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Antonio Melonio
7
The Morality of Celebrating Henry Kissinger’s Death
It finally happened. Henry Kissinger, godfather of neo-colonialism and neo-liberal exploitation, is dead. Rejoice, peoples of this world!
 • 
Antonio Melonio
2

November 2023

In the Pursuit of the Unattainable
The saga of a species that knows not its place.
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Antonio Melonio
Can Greta Lead the Coming Revolution?
The death of liberal-conservatism, and the rising potential for revolution. Greta Thunberg’s path toward radicalization and her potential as a…
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Antonio Melonio
5
Remember That Soldiers Are Murderers and Your State an Imperialist Affront to Humanity (Not That Mine Is Better)
Let's talk about the blood on our hands.
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Antonio Melonio
1
Slaughterhouse Humanity
Olga Tokarczuk on animal liberation, collective crime, and guilt-free mass murder.
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Antonio Melonio
6
Perhaps the Collapse of Society Would Not Be Such a Bad Thing
The tragedy that is industrial humanity.
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Antonio Melonio
9
The Future Once Seemed So Bright. What Happened?
Nostalgia for the hope we lost along the way, and the dreams that never were. The 1990s will not return. We are the lost generation.
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Antonio Melonio
11

October 2023

When Artists Must Prostitute Themselves, Society Breaks Down
The tragedy that is the poverty of mass-produced content.
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Antonio Melonio
5
The Government Does Not Speak for You. So Why Do You Listen?
The divide between the state and its citizens has never been greater. Soon we will reach a breaking point.
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Antonio Melonio
1
The Glacier (Part Three)
A melancholic work of climate fiction in three parts.
4
The Glacier (Part Two)
A melancholic work of climate fiction in three parts.
3
The Glacier (Part One)
A melancholic work of climate fiction in three parts.
 • 
Antonio Melonio
6
Get Ready To Be Drafted Into War
The world is at war. And they will make you part of it.
 • 
Antonio Melonio
3
We Must Rediscover Our Ability To Imagine Different, Better Worlds
The world stands on the brink of dramatic change. As things are getting worse, it will fall to all of us to rebuild and make something better. Collapse…
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Antonio Melonio
4
We Are Turning Into War-Mongering, Hateful, Genocidal Fascists and It’s Getting Worse
In the face of a depressing present and an even worse dystopian future, we are reverting to primitive tribalism and hate. A world at war, forever.
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Antonio Melonio
10
The Black-and-White Washing of Geopolitics: It’s Us Against the World
Liberal capitalism depends on producing clear enemies to justify its own contradictory existence. A tale as old as humanity itself.
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Antonio Melonio
2
Freedom Is Non-Negotiable
And Palestine will be free.
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Antonio Melonio
5
Depression, Anxiety, and ADHD Are on the Rise Because Modern Work Is (Mostly) Bullshit
My experiences and struggles with the corporate world and what I learned about myself. How to be happy when not fitting in.
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Antonio Melonio
16
I Have Discovered That Giving Up on the World Can Set You Free
I am tired. Exhausted from struggling and imagining a better world. I have given up, in a way. Yet I am cheery.
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Antonio Melonio
17

September 2023

Is Stealing From Corporations Morally Correct? (Yes.)
More propaganda, more moral gaslighting, more bullshit. Steal! Feed your children and yourself. Steal all you will! Just do not get caught.
 • 
Antonio Melonio
The Great Capitalist Lie (Part Three)
Hunger, crippling poverty, rising inequality — putting capitalist misery into concrete numbers. The evidence is clear: we live in a dystopian hellscape.
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Antonio Melonio
Pockets of Utopia
What capitalism's inevitable collapse, disaster anarchism, mutual aid, and human nature can teach us about the curious concept of Utopia.
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Antonio Melonio
Daddy, What’d Ya Leave Behind for Me?
How baby boomers did everything they could to leave behind a dystopia.
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Antonio Melonio
2
What You Are Missing in Life
The modern human existence is one dominated by hollow experiences, bullshit, material consumption, and a constant sense of isolation and abandonment…
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Antonio Melonio

August 2023

The Silence of the World
A dystopian and melancholic diary of a solitary man after the world fell apart and society collapsed in the heat-death of the earth.
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Antonio Melonio
The Great Capitalist Lie (Part Two)
Endless hunger. How the capitalist machinery manipulates and adjusts statistics to tell feel-good stories of progress.
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Antonio Melonio
The Great Capitalist Lie (Part One)
On the myths of development and progress. As long as capitalism reigns supreme, poverty, hunger, and inequality will never disappear.
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Antonio Melonio
1
A Thousand Minds, A Thousand Friends
Beneath the Pavement just reached 1,000 subscribers!
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Antonio Melonio
10
The Violent Rise of Capital (Part Two)
A short history of the end of history.
 • 
Antonio Melonio

July 2023

The Gas Station
An (ecotopian) short story and far-future vision of life after the climate catastrophe.
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Antonio Melonio
5
The Violent Rise of Capital (Part One)
A short history of how capitalists came to rule the world.
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Antonio Melonio
2
Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
A 'reprint' of David Graeber's famous essay on anarchism.
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Antonio Melonio
8

June 2023

Why Anti-Capitalism?
On confronting the torrent of apathy and continuing the struggle. The ideology of resistance.
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Antonio Melonio
2
Balkan Banana Republics
The great project of Yugoslavia has turned into a corrupt clown show fueled by hate.
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Antonio Melonio
10

May 2023

April 2023

Your Job Is Useless
Society is producing an endless variety of unnecessary and meaningless bullshit jobs. Work, consume, repeat. It might be time to end this system.
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Antonio Melonio
9
What We Call Democracy and What It Could Be: A Post-Collapse Path to Freedom
Capitalist quasi-democracy serves to maintain class dominance and pacify the masses. Let us examine one way to end the ideological monopoly and restore…
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Antonio Melonio
The Definitive Guide to the 20 Best Communist Fiction Books
Red and revolutionary: A comprehensive list of the best communist stories and novels of all time. Society reimagined.
 • 
Antonio Melonio
2

March 2023

Capitalist Realism and the End of History
Change has become utopian and the status quo uncontested. On the philosophy of capitalist dystopia and resistance to a system that cannot be improved or…
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Antonio Melonio
Remember Iraq
A war justified with lies. Hundreds of thousands dead, a country in ruins. And war criminals that run free.
 • 
Antonio Melonio
1
Do Not Fear Progress and Technology; Fear Capitalism
Technologies, much like corporations, are not inherently ‘evil.’ Rather, they are shaped by cultural and ideological circumstances.
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Antonio Melonio
Apathy Is Capitalism's Greatest Feature, and It’s Tearing Society Apart
On living in the status quo of dystopia, and, possibly, imagining something beyond.
 • 
Antonio Melonio
18
© 2024 Antonio Melonio
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