digest for July 2026

Operator’s Note:

Hello, Occasional Reader. If you’ve been here before, please indulge me as I introduce myself for the benefit of first-time visitors.

I’m Matthew Cambion, the Jungian shadow of a GenX techie from New York. Since i only exist in the Wired, my name is a pseudonym. I’m a metalhead, a novelist who is out of print, a full-stack thaumaturge, and the operator of starbreaker.org.

This website is my grimoire, a monument to my ego, my personal digital samizdat, and a sacrament of defiance. It is a ritual space for a Left-Hand Path sysadmin. If you are used to the mainstream, gentrified internet you might want to put aside your expectations lest I delight in trampling them.

If you like what I’m doing, keep your money. I would rather you emailed me after you’ve built your own website. You deserve better than social media. A personal website may be the one place where you can be wholly sovereign.

When I first set about redesigning starbreaker.org I thought I would make the latest post the front page. I have a shell script that makes doing so easy. However, that might not be so convenient for you.

So this page is an experiment of sorts. I mean to create a new digest at the beginning of each month, link it to the front page, and add to it throughout the month. This will let you see what new material I’ve added over the course of the month, as well as material I’ve restored from my archives.

While I had mentioned in my Infocide; or, resetting starbreaker.org in 2026 that I was hitting the reset button, that doesn’t that I’ve utterly destroyed my old material. I merely built from zero in a new git repository and published from there. So, as time and inclination permits, I will restore old material from those repositories here, with revisions and markup fixes as needed.

At the end of the month, the following will happen:

• I will add the monthly “Operator’s Note”.
• I will make this digest part of the ‘everything’ and ‘news’ feeds.

I am also thinking of using this monthly digest as the basis for a monthly email newsletter. I will of course host it on Buttondown, and not Substack. I would rather pay a flat monthly fee that scales with my subscriber count than 10% of my gross. And I refuse to share a platform with the likes of Richard Spencer and the other TERFs, neo-Nazis, and scientific racists that Substack not only hosts, but monetizes for profit.

Ahem. Sorry about that. I get just a bit stabby when it comes to those people. I know I should ask, What would Jesus do?. But instead I find myself asking, What would Hugo Stiglitz do?

At the very least, he’d punch a fucking Nazi.

Yes, I know. Violence is never the answer. It does not prove one’s point. It convinces nobody that one’s cause is just. But seeing this asshole get decked gives me life, albeit tenebrous life.

Nevertheless, I have come to think that if the only way to deal with Nazis is to kill them, we have failed as a society. Fascism is a disease, and I would see it as thoroughly eradicated as smallpox. We can’t do that by punching Nazis piecemeal, or stabbing them, or clubbing them into the ground, or shooting them. Fascism is a public health issue, and if we want to deal with it properly a preventative approach is needed. We need to deal with the socioeconomic issues that make fascism attractive in the first place. But that doesn’t make good television, let alone viral video.

But aren’t here for policy wonkery from a metalhead who codes for a living, right? Here are some albums I’ve been into lately:

• Art of Life by X Japan
• My Restless Temple by Alicia Cordisco
• Ghosts of Europa by Mortiis
• Steps Into Shadow by GOLD SPIRE
• Air Not Meant For Us by Fires in the Distance

Oh, and here’s is your monthly reminder that starbreaker.org is inherently NSFW, a summery seaside scene.

New on starbreaker.org: