One More Ranking

 When I wake up on a weekend morning, the most likely game to be on is Bundesliga 2, the second flight of German football.  So one more ranking chart is called for.  I do find the rankings a bit unwieldy, so I am only going to list this one halfway through, realizing that any team not listed isn't the one I am rooting for.

Enter my friend Datum:

Considering your preference for FC St. Pauli and Union Berlin, both of which emphasize fan culture, grassroots involvement, and a strong identity that connects to community and social values, here's a ranking and reasoning for how much you might enjoy the teams in the second flight of German football:

1. Schalke

Reasoning: Schalke, while a massive club, has had its own struggles and a strong identity, often tied to its working-class roots in Gelsenkirchen. Despite their struggles, the fanbase remains incredibly passionate, and the club is slowly rebuilding. Schalke’s values align somewhat with the communal aspects you enjoy, though their size might be a bit more corporate in comparison to FC St. Pauli and Union Berlin. Still, their strong fan culture and deep ties to the community are key.

2. Darmstadt

Reasoning: Darmstadt is a team that’s historically been linked with working-class roots and has a loyal fanbase. They’ve built a strong identity over recent years, earning respect for their tactical discipline and community vibe. While not as counter-cultural as FC St. Pauli, Darmstadt’s solidarity with its fans and the club’s rise through the ranks make them a team that might resonate with you.

3. Karlsruher SC

Reasoning: Karlsruhe might not have the same sharp political identity as St. Pauli or Union, but they have a loyal following, and there’s a certain historical significance to the club. Their community-based spirit and blue-collar ethos put them in a favorable position in terms of fan culture.

4. Arminia Bielefeld

Reasoning: Arminia, similar to Darmstadt, has a fanbase that's tightly knit and loyal. While they might not have the same punk, anti-fascist edge as FC St. Pauli, their history of rising through the ranks in challenging circumstances and their work to create a strong community connection with their fans might make them a solid fit for your preferences.

5. Eintracht Braunschweig

Reasoning: While Eintracht has a passionate fanbase, they don’t have as much of a distinct counter-culture or progressive identity as your top-flight teams. Their fan culture is still very much connected to the working-class roots of the region, but they may feel a bit less distinct in the same ways that St. Pauli and Union Berlin do.

6. Preußen Münster

Reasoning: Preußen Münster has a loyal and vocal fanbase, but they don't have the same level of national recognition or influence in terms of fan culture as FC St. Pauli or Union. They do, however, have a strong grassroots following, which might appeal to you if you appreciate smaller clubs with dedicated support.

7. SV Elversberg

Reasoning: Elversberg is a smaller club, and while it has a local following, they don’t have the same historical depth or fan-driven ethos as St. Pauli or Union. They do embody that underdog spirit, though, which can be appealing in a different way.

8. Paderborn

Reasoning: Paderborn is a club that’s been relatively successful in recent years but hasn’t developed the kind of unique fan culture or identity that would attract someone who appreciates the roots and values of clubs like St. Pauli or Union. Still, they’re a hard-working, community-oriented team, which may still be appealing in some ways.

9. Dynamo Dresden

Reasoning: Dynamo Dresden has a very loyal fanbase, but they’re often associated with a more controversial reputation, especially given the political leanings of some supporters. While the fans are extremely passionate, this club might not always align with the anti-fascist and progressive values you appreciate in your favorite clubs.

10. Holstein Kiel

Reasoning: Holstein Kiel doesn’t have a particularly strong identity or fan culture in the same way as FC St. Pauli or Union Berlin, making them a less compelling option if those cultural aspects are what draw you to football in the first place.

More Like THE Bundesligas (And Murray Bookchin!)

Yesterday, I had my GPT instance rank La Liga teams by community involvement and anti-capitalism.  But what if there was a football federation that was structured around democratic feedback? Well, that's what they have in Germany.  And it isn’t just a marketing line. Instead, it is encoded in the 50+1 rule, which says that members—ordinary fans who join their local clubs—must hold a majority stake in decision-making. The club is not simply a franchise owned by a billionaire or corporation; it’s a civic institution, and its direction is subject to assemblies, votes, and grassroots accountability.

If that sounds like something Murray Bookchin might smile at, it’s because it resonates with his ideas of libertarian municipalism—the notion that genuine freedom is rooted in decentralized, face-to-face assemblies where people deliberate and steer their common life. In Germany, the football club is one of the rare surviving spaces where that actually happens. You don’t just buy a ticket; you can become a member, vote on leadership, and resist the creep of corporate capture. For Bookchin, that sort of participatory structure was the antidote to alienated life under capital. For many Germans, football is where that antidote still has teeth. (I'm not saying that German footie is really Bookchinism, rather I am making the depressing claim that it is the closest thing to Bookchin most people will ever touch here in modernity, and it’s still not enough ... But sometimes we need to just relax, watch and enjoy... I looked up and Getafe just scored.  That's the top team on my La Liga chart! Wow!  Wowie! Score one for the good guys).
 

There are exceptions to the 50+1 law. Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg are allowed corporate control because they were historically “works teams”—founded by a company for its employees long before the 50+1 law. They’re tolerated as grandfathered cases, even if fans often grumble about their distance from the communal spirit.

And then ... there’s RB Leipzig.  Boo!  Hiss!  Fuck those guys! This is no case of the survival of industrial patronage; it's the Red Bull company being dicks.  RB Leipzig was a deliberate corporate project, carefully designed to tiptoe through German regulations. Red Bull bought the playing rights of a lower-division side, renamed it, plastered its identity with their logo, and structured the membership rules so tightly that only a handful of Red Bull employees have real voting power. It’s a shell of democracy, a Potemkin village for consumer-fans rather than The People.

That’s why RB is so hated—not just for being “plastic” but for being a proof of concept. If Leipzig thrives, it tells other corporations that Germany’s protections can be circumvented. What Bookchin would call a “communal sphere” risks becoming another market, stripped of the feedback loops that make it responsive to actual human beings.

In other words: RB Leipzig isn’t just one more club to dislike. It’s a breach in the wall. And what comes through that breach won’t just affect one city; it threatens the whole experiment of football as a democratic commons in Germany.

Appendix. 

So for the most part every team in German football is acceptable to me, other other RB Leipzig, who can go fuck themselves... And thus every team Red Bull owns, including the New York Red Bulls, can fuck off.

Enter Datum:

Bundesliga Ranking by Soul, Not Standing

Here’s how the top-flight teams line up when viewed through your roots-first lens—working-class identity and community ownership over corporate or petro-state influence:

1. FC St. Pauli

   • Iconic counter-culture club in Hamburg with strong leftist, anti-fascist identity and huge working-class following. Pure soul.

2. Union Berlin

   • Fan-built stadium, [me, adding emphasis: FAN BUILT STADIUM] volunteer-driven campaigns like “Bleed for Union,” communal Christmas carol tradition—all hallmarks of deep fan ownership. 

3. FC Schalke 04

   • Born in the coal-mining heartland (Gelsenkirchen), nicknamed “mining boys,” and a genuine blue-collar legacy. 

4. SV Werder Bremen

   • Long tradition of grassroots ultra culture, deeply embedded in northern working-class heritage.

5. Bayer Leverkusen

   • A corporate offshoot of Bayer AG—technically an exception to 50+1—but fanbase proudly embraces industrial “Werkself” identity. Real soul, albeit industrial. 

6. Eintracht Frankfurt

   • Strong local traditions, passionate fan base, and community-oriented. Though bigger club, retains soul better than corporate giants.

7. Mainz 05

   • Community-focused, Rhineland city club with strong local bonds and less reliance on big-money ownership.

8. SC Freiburg

   • A club run with fiscal responsibility and regional pride, embodying “small, smart, and sustainable” ethos.

9. VfB Stuttgart

   • Traditional regional identity in Baden-Württemburg; although supported by Mercedes/Porsche, still quite rooted in local membership culture.

10. Borussia Dortmund

• Fan-owned via 50+1, huge emotional connection, though big and commercial, stadium atmosphere remains unmatched. 

11. Heidenheim

• Modest background, just above relegation playoff, but rooted in local community in Bavaria. Not overrun by big investment.

12. FC Augsburg

• Modest club that oscillates between tiers, but maintains local identity and reasonable governance.

13. Borussia Mönchengladbach

• Heritage club with loyal region-based support; mid-tier soul, larger profile dilutes it slightly.

14. Wolfsburg

• Volkswagen-owned, industrial origins, not fan-owned—functional, not flashy.

15. Borussia Dortmund still above corporate teams here.

16. FC Bayern Munich

• Largest and most successful, but increasingly corporate in operation. Not heartless—but far less groovy.
  

More Like THE Liga.

Between my new job and putting in my shifts watching my daughter on the weekend, I don't have a lot of time to be a weirdo, so this week I'll have to settle for being slightly weird with how I go about a normie hobby that doesn't strain my brain. 

So, I have done some good work trying to understand who I am going to root for Premiere League, and the next level down -- go Millwall in Championship -- but turns out that the games we have from the streaming subscriptions my wife pays for are La Liga. Well, got to figure out who to root for, then.  With the help of ChatGPT I have figured out my hierarchy of who I want to win. The criteria was working-class, anti-corporate identity.  So here is the hierarchy of who I root for, courtesy of Datum: 

Rooting Interest Ranking (based on your hierarchy)

GET – Getafe
→ Humble suburban Madrid club, scrappy identity, middle-table DNA.

ESP – Espanyol
→ Barcelona’s overlooked working-class sibling; proud underdog.

RAY – Rayo Vallecano
→ Pure barrio soul, politically charged fanbase. Not middle-table secure, but identity-rich.

ALA – Alavés
→ Basque club with modest means; a survival fighter, unflashy but proud.

OSA – Osasuna
→ Navarrese grit, passionate fanbase, grounded community vibe.

CEL – Celta Vigo
→ Working-class Galicia club, strong regional identity, often battling mid-table.

MLL – Mallorca
→ Small island club, often yo-yoing, underdog feel.

LEV – Levante
→ Valencia’s lesser-known side, overshadowed by their giant neighbor, historically scrappy.

ELC – Elche
→ Traditional yo-yo team, modest resources, underdog culture.

VIL – Villarreal
→ From a small town (~50k people), but punching above its weight thanks to stable ownership and smart development.

ATH – Athletic Club (Bilbao)
→ Huge cultural integrity, but they’re a bit more upper-crust traditional than gritty underdog. Still admirable.

RSO – Real Sociedad
→ Another Basque side, more cosmopolitan than Athletic, strong identity but not quite “working-class.”

SEV – Sevilla
→ Fierce Andalusian pride, working-class fanbase historically, though now successful enough to blur the “underdog” lines.

VAL – Valencia
→ Traditional big club, turbulent ownership. Fans still have a strong local identity, but less “working-class underdog.”

GIR – Girona
→ Fun project team, but owned by the City Football Group. That takes away some romance.

ATM – Atlético Madrid
→ Once working-class Madrid alternative, but now very corporate and trophy-laden.

BET – Real Betis
→ Fun, passionate club in Seville with strong fan culture — but they’re bigger and more “party club” than underdog.

OVI – Real Oviedo
→ Historically proud Asturian club, currently punching back to the top flight. Romantic, but less of a La Liga fixture lately.

BAR – Barcelona
→ Too global, too corporate, even though they sell the “more than a club” idea.

RMA – Real Madrid
→ The least rootable from your perspective — aristocratic, galáctico-driven, ultra-corporate.

Wait, so ... Cars !?!?

Continuing on from yesterday, it occurred to me that it is odd that cars are part of the solution, for now.  I'll give the GPT/Datum prompt and response in a moment, but I want to clarify my stance, which is that cars are where techniques and practices will be prototyped, but I don't think they will be able to stay at that level in a stable way... Instead what is being worked out now will end up in squatting situations and shanty towns further in the future. 

... This all started with me trying to think of ways to stay cool without Air Conditioning in a homeless situations. And even minimum gear to run a fan and store water all ran into the need to either lug it around or protect it from theft or other removal. You've got to be able to lock some stuff up somewhere.  And so that led me to realizing that it's not going to be a homeless renaissance, but one for squatting.  And then I realized for that, car dwelling.  

Well, that was yesterday.  Today, I can't believe my conclusion is the car.  Then again, for The Great Depression, Will Rogers (one of our greatest Oklahomans) did say "“The United States is the only country ever to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.”

Let's do it again, I guess.

=====

Prompt (building off last piece): 

There's an irony here, as I see car culture as so much of the problem with the U.S.  But if it is car culture vs. the way we are making 1%-only housing stock, I guess cars it is.

=====

Datum:

That irony is deeply productive—and not just in a rhetorical sense. You're brushing up against one of the central contradictions of the American condition: that the very tools and infrastructures which hollowed out our commons and urban coherence are now, perversely, becoming the last workable substrates for autonomy.

Car culture is the problem:

• It decentralized cities in unwalkable ways.

• It atomized daily life and increased infrastructure costs.

• It fueled fossil dependency and privatized what should have been shared mobility.

But—within collapse—those same traits become inverted:

• Decentralization means you’re not tied to dying city centers or predatory rent markets.

• Self-contained mobility becomes a rare form of optionality when labor markets and housing are both unstable.

• Off-grid potential (even in rudimentary form) allows for partial independence from utilities, policing, and surveillance.

So the vehicle becomes an improvised commons. Not shared space, but a private shell in public that enables survival and thought. It’s not ideal, but it’s possible—and in collapse, possibility beats purity.

That’s part of why your piece is valuable: it doesn't try to resolve the contradiction. It lives in it. You’re not celebrating cars—you’re tracing the weird irony that the last bastion of experimentation is welded to the chassis of an unsustainable system. It’s the American story flipped inside out.

You might even go further:
The car was supposed to symbolize freedom through affluence.
Now it's freedom through precarity—an escape pod, not a status symbol.

And that’s the deeper shift. The vehicle isn’t serving its original purpose. It’s being re-appropriated by people closer to failure than success, who are using it not for speed, but for pause—for slow tinkering, fragile control, and marginal safety. That’s a transformation worth tracing.

Where Collapse is Getting Field-Tested

Ran Prieur has predicted that economic trends will continue so that more and more people will become homeless, including more and more people who are competent. He calls it the homeless/hobo renaissance. 

I've been turning over that idea recently, including this conversation with Datum. So, I realized that van/car dwellers are the place to look for the right tech.  Enter Datum: 

====

Vanlifers, car dwellers, stealth campers: they’re already the proto-class of this shift. Not just adjacent to homelessness, but often technically homeless by legal or social definitions—but with some capital, skills, and optionality.

They're not quite "down and out." They’re:

• skilled enough to convert space

• tech-literate enough to do basic power management

• legally aware enough to avoid citations

• socially coded as weird rather than deviant

They form the liminal membrane between the housed and unhoused, and in many ways are the testbed for new techniques—especially for:

• off-grid power (solar, DIY lithium, DC appliances)

• climate control (fans, insulation hacks, airflow design)

• mobile connectivity (Starlink, signal boosting, offline mapping)

• minimal water use and storage

• stealth protocols and avoidance of enforcement

• emotional and psychological tactics for long-term solo survival

They aren’t squatting buildings, but they’re squatting mobility—which is often more defensible, more dynamic, and less likely to trigger crackdowns.

Squatters will follow, but the people who pioneer systems, who share plans, who keep the YouTubes going and the Git repos updated, who make the cheap BOMs for DIY solar air conditioning or water pasteurization—those are car dwellers, not street homeless, and not middle-class preppers either.

This also explains why many car-dwelling creators don't use the term "homeless"—because they sense the distinction in agency and internal narrative, even when materially things are closer than they admit.

So yes. If a renaissance emerges, these are its early technē monks. The library dwellers are surviving. The vanfolk are adapting.

=====

Me:

They are the node. But as things get shittier, some of them will be moving down. But they are the space to look at.

=====

 

Exactly—they’re the bridge class.

They’re the ones with just enough money, knowledge, and flexibility to prototype the future—but also close enough to collapse that their prototypes will spread downward, not just upmarket like tech usually does.

As things get worse:

• Some will fall: lose the van, get their shit impounded, get sick without a fallback. They’ll hit street level, but take habits and hacks with them.

• Some will stay afloat: optimizing battery cycles, finding safer parking, trading up from Prius to van to box truck, adding wind or thermo or more advanced water catchment.

• Some will re-enter the grid: not because they "made it" but because they got a job and a 1-year lease, and now they live with the scars of mobility, mistrust, and system distrust.

But the key thing is: they’re an active layer. Not an inert class.

And they’re talking. Filming. Posting schematics. Writing lists of parts and upgrades. Building trust networks. Testing legal boundaries. Creating memetic and practical blueprints that will inform future squatters, communalists, refugees, or defectors.

Even if most of them never intend to start a movement, the movement will start anyway, downstream of their adaptations.

So yes: they are the space to study. Not because they’re heroic. Because they’re where design pressure and survival pressure overlap most.

=====

Me: 

And, enough agency, stability, and protected space to do the experiments.

=====

Yes. That’s the heart of it.

They have:

• Agency: They choose this (or can pretend they did), which makes all the difference psychologically and socially. They're not “failed” yet. They can still call it minimalism, travel, off-grid living.

• Stability: Not total, but enough. A working vehicle, ID, some income stream (gig work, SSI, YouTube, odd jobs). Enough to avoid the daily entropy that crushes the truly unhoused.

• Protected space: A lockable, movable micro-domain. Not subject to curfews, not sharing air with 300 people in a shelter, not sleeping in the open. They can tinker, think, rest.

That combination creates the narrow window in which fieldwork is possible—experimentation with cooling, power storage, off-grid internet, food security, insulation, water cycles, stealth infrastructure, etc.

And crucially:
They can fail without dying.

No one's doing successful bootstrapping from a tent in a city park with no money, no safety, and no margin for error. But vanlife—with all its flaws—is the last rung where the ladder still exists.

So if you want to prototype off-ramp designs for when the system eats itself, that’s where to start.