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Moon Phase

Amidst the echoes of a fallen society,
this magazine stands at the boundary between what was,
what might have been and what could be.

@

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Enjoy a curated selection of offerings from around the web, we're bringing you underground culture at it's finest.

01/31/25

Killology, Philando Castile, and a Decade of Democratic Co-optation

Back in November, we posted about David Grossman, the top police trainer in the U.S., and his killology training—where he tells cops that murdering someone will give them the best sex of their lives. We talked about how this isn’t just one lunatic with a mic—this is the ideology being drilled into police forces across the country.

Today, a member of our audience sent us something chilling: a news article from 2016 showing that the officer who murdered Philando Castile was trained in Grossman’s killology methods. The same training. The same philosophy. The same system.

That was nearly a decade ago. What’s changed? Nothing. The police still kill over 1,000 people a year. The rich are never their victims—it’s always the working class, always the poor. And while this violence continues, what are the Democrats doing? Chuck Schumer isn’t pushing for reform. He’s not calling for justice. His biggest complaint? That police aren’t getting enough funding.

They absorbed Black Lives Matter, neutralized it, and went right back to business as usual—expanding police budgets, empowering the same system that kills us. They want us to think we have a choice, that they’re the lesser evil. But look at them—these are the same Democrats laughing at activists listing the names of children murdered in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide.

These people will not save you. They are not going to stop cops from murdering in the street. If we want real change, we have to build something outside of their kingdom, outside of their court. Power that works for us, not against us. Because the alternative? More names. More hashtags. More dead bodies in the street while they keep cashing their checks.

01/30/25

2025 - The HOUDINI Outlook or What's The Move Scoob?

Let’s talk about something a lot of people been asking: Are things worse now than they were in 2008?

Look man, I was just a kid then. I don’t remember shit about the economy or all the details of how bad things were, about how the Malcom in the Middle families lost their houses. But here’s what I do know: if you define the capitalist economy by how well it exploits the poor and enriches the rich, then yeah, the economy is thriving, it's fuckin' jumping. It’s doing better than ever.

But let’s talk about the real shit—the stuff that matters. Deaths of despair? We’re almost at 50 per 100,000. That’s nearly double what it was in 2008. Think about it, in 2008, there was hope. You remember those Obama posters? That sense that maybe, just maybe, they could turn this ship around?

Well, it’s 2025 now, we're grown-ass people. Let’s keep it a buck—this ship ain’t turning around. It hit the iceberg. It’s sinking. We’re taking on water, and the rich already grabbed the lifeboats. Meanwhile, the rest of us are out here scrambling, trying to keep our heads above water. And the worst part? We’ve accepted it. We’ve accepted that things are just gonna keep getting worse.

And Gen Z? My generation? Let’s talk about us. Are you even alive if you don’t have a future? If your future’s already been stolen from you, then you’re already dead. That’s why they call us Gen Z—we’re the zombies. The walking dead on a planet that’s already been sold out from under us. We’re staring down a future of collapse and despair, and we know it.

I look around, and I see the fear. I see the panic. And I realize that I’ve got this tiny platform, this little space on the internet to speak truth to power. It ain’t much, but it’s something. We’re in a dark room, and if I’m just the tiniest match lit, then that’s worth something. That spark matters. What do we gotta do now? Stand on business. Not just for ourselves, but for each other.

So, here’s what I’m gonna do.

One: Over the next month or so, I’m gonna work on a scaffold—a syllabus, if you will—of the culture we’re fighting for. What are our goals? What’s our belief system? What does it look like when the rubber meets the road? What does HOUDINI stand for? Not too long ago, someone in our audience said, “Anybody can be Houdini.” And you know what? That shit stuck with me. If anybody can be Houdini, then what are we trying to do? What’s the platform? What’s the vision? That’s the first step.

Two: I’m trying to move to Florida. Yeah, Florida. The heart of it. And I know what y’all thinking—"Florida? Really? The home of fascism in the United States? The test bed for repression? You wanna move there?” And to that, I say: Exactly. That’s the point. I wanna be on the ground, organizing with people who understand the stakes of the game. The harder they repress, the harder we strike back. Florida is the perfect place to organize radical action. It’s where the fight is hardest, and that’s where I wanna be. Shit is so much bigger than me you cannot fathom. You wanna help with this? Shoot me an email or message me on Discord.

Look, I’ve got this GoFundMe because they stole my paycheck, because they screwed me over just like they’re fucking over everyone else in the working class. So I’m sitting here thinking, is there anything I can do with this tiny-ass sliver of a platform I have to benefit the movement? To help the people? Because if you’re not using your platform, your clout, your power to push for something bigger, then you ain’t doing shit. You need to get out of the way.

That’s my mindset for 2025. We either get it or we don’t. I’m coming at this like Bardock in Dragon Ball Z charging at Frieza. I don’t give a fuck.


01/28/25

HOUDINI Magazine Presents... Beauty - Gough Interactive Track Teaser


EP out Spring 2025, only on HOUDINI
01/25/25

HOUDINI Magazine Presents... Vampire Bounce, a Night Fangs Mix



Show your fangs tonight.
01/25/25

Blood Club Now, Blood Club Forever - Listen to HOUDINI Magazine's Newest Obsession

01/23/25

Wage Theft—It’s Capitalism’s Blueprint

Let’s cut to the numbers: A 2014 study of low-wage workers in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles found two-thirds of workers had their paychecks violated in any given week. Researchers calculated 3 billion stolen annually in just those three cities. Extrapolate that nationally? 50 billion robbed from workers every single year.

Now rewind to 2012: Workers clawed back 933 million in stolen wages through lawsuits and complaints. Sounds like a victory——until you realize that “recovery” is a lie. It’s crumbs tossed back to the working class while the ruling class feasts on the rest. That recovery is 49 billion less than what was stolen according to the 2014 study. Which means: $49 billion in earned wages vanished into corporate pockets, unpunished. $49 billion dollars ripped from workers’ hands—not by masked bandits, but by CEOs, managers, and shareholders in suits.

It’s 2025. You think this got better? This isn’t a flaw. This isn’t an oversight. This is capitalism’s core function: stealing the value you create to fuel the ruling class’s grotesque excess. A reverse Robin Hood finesse, codified into law. Enabled by a society build on capitalism, on profit over people.

This isn’t accidental. This is how capitalism works.

This isn’t about “greedy bosses” or “poor management.” This is systemic. This is intentional. Capitalist economies are built on the theft of labor value—wage theft is just the bluntest, most visible expression of that theft. Under capitalism, your labor isn’t paid what it’s worth. Your boss buys your time for a fraction of the value you produce—that’s surplus labor value, the engine of profit. If you make 16 an hour but generate $100 in value, $84 is stolen from you every hour before you even clock out. Wage theft isn’t some “extra” crime—it’s the naked escalation of that theft. When they dock your pay, erase your overtime, or “forget” your final check, they’re not just stealing wages. They’re doubling down on the exploitation that props up the entire system.

Let’s peel back another layer of wage theft: 1099 abuse. Corporations don’t just steal wages—they steal your very status as a worker to dodge accountability. Imagine clocking 40 hours a week, doing the exact same job as a “regular” employee, but labeled a “contractor” on paper. No overtime pay. No healthcare. No unemployment insurance. No workers’ comp. And while your boss pockets the profits, you get stuck paying both the employer’s and your own share of taxes. This isn’t a niche scam—it’s endemic. From call centers to the warehouse, companies weaponize 1099 misclassification to turn workers into disposable cost-cutting props. Every misclassified worker, every stolen tax dollar, every denied benefit is a brick in the pyramid of profit. And when the whole thing collapses? They’ll blame you for not hustling harder.

They’ll gaslight you, of course. Blame you for not having a “rainy day fund.” Never mind that a majority of Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency. Never mind that you did everything “right”: worked yourself sick, budgeted like a spreadsheet martyr, skipped meals to keep the lights on. None of it matters when the company decides to “restructure” you into poverty. Under at-will employment—the law in 49 states—they can fire you for no reason, withhold your last check, and leave you stranded. Now you’re begging the labor board for help (good luck), hunting pro bono lawyers (they’re swamped), waiting week or months for 'welfare' or setting up a GoFundMe to survive (while Jeff Bezos spends $500 million on a yacht).

This is class war. I’m not speaking theory. At the beginning of this year, my 1099 job got “restructured” into oblivion. No warning. No severance. No final paycheck. I’d saved. I’d budgeted. I’d played by every bullshit rule of this rigged game. But when that check vanished, I was thrust into the gauntlet: Food or rent? What about money to get to the interviews? I’ve got skills. I’ve got hustle. But none of that shields you when the capitalist machine decides to grind you into paste.

They want you isolated. They want you blaming yourself instead of burning down their system. But here’s the truth: Wage theft is a pillar of capitalism. Bosses steal because they can. Because labor laws are designed to protect capital, not workers. Because fines for wage theft are cheaper than paying wages. Because the state exists to serve property, not people. Wage theft isn’t some “extra” crime—it’s the naked escalation of exploitation that props up the entire system. When they dock your pay, erase your overtime, “forget” your final check, or misclassify you as a contractor, they’re not just stealing wages. They’re playing the brutal game of capitalism: Workers exist to be drained, discarded, and replaced. And the state? It winks. Labor agencies are underfunded, investigations are rare, and penalties are laughable. There is effectively no social safety net in the United States. Websites like gofundme cannot and should not replace robust social services.

They’ve normalized this. They’ve made it mundane. But when 50 billion i stolen from workers every year—50 billion that could feed families, cancel medical debt, or build communities—something has to give. This is not a policy failure. This is capitalism working as intended.

They want us isolated, desperate, and too exhausted to fight back. They want us blaming ourselves instead of burning down their system. But here’s the truth: Our labor builds their wealth. Without us, their machines stop, their profits vanish, their empires crumble. Every dollar they steal is proof of their weakness—and our power.

If you’ve ever been cheated out of wages, if you’ve ever had to choose between groceries and rent, if you’re tired of being told to “pull yourself up” while billionaires rob you blind—it’s time to get angry. Share this post. Talk about wage theft like the felony it should be. Organize. Unionize. Fight back.

And if you’re able, support my GoFundMe here. I’m one of thousands this week alone whose survival hinges on mutual aid, because the bosses won’t pay up. But this isn’t just about me—it’s about all of us. Solidarity isn’t charity. It’s how we dismantle the system, brick by brick.

No more stolen wages. No more stolen lives.

Sources

Economic Policy Institute: Wage Theft Epidemic Report New York State Guide to Wage Theft Forbes: The Truth About the $400 Emergency Statistic
01/21/25

When It Comes to Bucking the System, Remember this Quote from Lil B, and Stay Based

Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive. When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, "You're based." They'd use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive. I started embracing it like, "Yeah, I'm based." I made it mine. I embedded it in my head. Based is positive.

—Lil B

Also, Our RSS Feed is currently broken, we are working on a solution.

01/20/25

In Case You Missed It: Here's Elon Musk, Richest Man on the Planet, Giving a Nazi Salute at the Presidential Inauguration Today


Our Thoughts on the Matter:

01/20/25

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Today in the States, This Photo from an Anti-Vietnam War Protest Remains One of My Favorite Photos from American History

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

Rev. Martin Luther King

April 4, 1967

Riverside Church, New York City

Read the Full Speech

01/19/25

Shoutout to Those Creating—Check Out This New Goat Format Podcast

Hey, if you didn’t know, now you do. HOUDINI Magazine rides with the Goat format, and a friend of the mag just dropped their first little test podcast. We thought we’d toss it your way. If you’re into retro Yu-Gi-Oh! or TCGs, card games, whatever—it’s two nerdy cats chopping it up.

Give it a listen. Hopefully, it’ll grow and evolve, but hey, just putting something out there is a big step. And that’s a nod to anyone out there making things. Doesn’t matter what your niche is or what corner of culture you play—keep at it. Building culture, carving spaces—it all starts with showing up. We see you. Let’s get it.



This Post Made Possible by Submissions from Viewers Like You
01/18/25

Erik Houdini on the Tiktok Ban

It’s strange how things shift. I remember as a kid marveling at the idea that 'authoritarian' countries abroad censored the internet. It felt like something out of a dystopian novel, real Brave New World shit. Back then, during the Stop SOPA/PIPA era, the internet was wild, open, and keeping it that way was fiercely defended. Countless websites blacked out in protest of SOPA/PIPA. Hundreds of youtubers raised awareness. Wikipedia even shutdown. People were ready to burn it all down to keep the internet free. But now? Things have shifted. Post-Trump, liberalism has morphed into this smug, elitist war machine. It’s all about "we’re the smart ones, the adults are in control" while propping up the same American imperialist foreign policy that’s been selling the "democracy" hustle for decades. And God help you if you criticize the media elites or the national security crowd—because somehow that makes you pro-Trump. They’ve turned dissent into a team sport. But let me make this clear: we’re communists. We don’t play that red vs. blue horseshit. We fight for the people, not the corporations or their government puppets.

They’ve built their castles on the bones of the powerless, fueled wars for profit, and worn the mask of "freedom" as they ransacked countries. They’d love to sink their claws into China, paint it as another grand liberation, just like they did in Iraq or Afghanistan. But real shit?—they don’t control the narrative now. Their game is slipping. It’s not 2003 anymore.

Power. It’s not this abstract thing floating around in the air. It’s people—men and women with names and faces, homes with addresses, with families, sitting in rooms we’ll never see, making decisions that kill and destroy so they can cash another check, climb another rung. They’ve been doing it forever. It’s how they’ve stayed on top. War is their currency. Destruction is their profit margin. This is their game plan. Iraq, Afghanistan, now the talks of “freedom” for Iran? "Protecting" Taiwan? Israel's "self defense?" It’s a repeat script.

You don’t need CNN or The New York Times to tell you what a place looks like anymore. You don’t need a reporter standing in front of a fake calender in a bombed out hospital building telling you the 'correct' narrative. You can see first hand the mass death of the U.S. Empire's imperialism, a year and a half of genocide in Gaza livestreamed. TikTok’s got folks side-eyeing the decaying strip malls of Kansas City versus futuristic urban cityscapes of random places in China. It’s all there in a swipe, unfiltered and undeniable. And that scares them. Because if people see it, they’ll demand better. And those in power? They’ve got no intention of giving it.

Go back in history. Think about the Great Depression, 1930s, right before World War II. The system was breaking, the Great Depression was proof it was ripping it apart, and FDR gave them the New Deal. Not because he was a hero, but because he had no other choice. Social Security, the Conservation Corps—all those sweeping reforms bought capitalism more time. It let the system breathe. Fast forward to now. They had the chance to do it again. They had Bernie Sanders, a chance to pivot, to give just enough to keep the wheels turning. And what did they do? They slammed the door shut. Twice. They said no, doubled down, clamped their jaws tighter. They’ve made their choice. Militarize the police against the population, and the Constution? The Capitalists might as well be wiping their ass with in. The facade of freedom? Cracked like a mirror in a shitty motel bathroom. And when the ruling class digs in like that, when they tell us, fuck you, when they refuse to bend, well, history tells us exactly what happens next: they break. They become their own gravediggers. Marx didn’t say that shit for nothing.

Banning TikTok is such a piss poor parlay, it almost feels like a gift. It’s their attempt to shut down the conversation, to pull the plug on a platform where people can vent, organize, share their stories. You take away a platform where people are venting about their shitty jobs, finding community, and organizing? What do you think happens? That energy doesn’t disappear—it festers. They fear the youth, the workers, the people waking up to their exploitation. They fear the truth being broadcast unfiltered. But fear-based decisions rarely lead to good outcomes. When you take away the people’s peaceful tools for change, you leave them no choice but to escalate. We know where this road leads, because it’s written all over history. The tighter you squeeze, the harder the backlash. Voting doesn’t work? People unionize. They protest. That gets crushed? They strike. And when strikes aren’t enough, it escalates—violent protests, riots, even assassinations. We just saw it not long ago: a CEO murdered, and people online and even Bill Burr on Jimmy Kimmel saying, “Good. He had it coming.”
That’s not random. That’s the next step in the chain. The material conditions keep declining, and the pressure keeps rising. Historical materialism 101: when you block the mechanisms for change within the system, revolution becomes the only option. It’s not theory—it’s the timeline.

In Chile, back in 2023, a largely non-violent revolution flipped the table, now that's one way to win the game. Nationalized resources, protected workers’ rights, put internet access into the constitution—actual 21st-century shit. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, demanding a new system, and they got it. That’s what they don’t want us thinking about. That’s why TikTok’s got them spooked. Because if we can see that happen somewhere else, we’ll start asking, “Why not here?” Why the hell not? They don’t want us asking why we can’t have the same here in the U.S. And here’s the thing—they’re scared for a reason. I’m in my mid-20s, and I know at least a dozen other people my age who are having these exact same thoughts. And if we’re thinking this, how many millions of others are too? If I were them, if I were sitting in one of those rooms at the top, I’d be losing my goddamn mind. A king's power is only made manifest because the serfs believe he is ordaned by God. Our capitalist kings are not ordained by God nor the people.

They’re afraid of TikTok because they know. They know we’re talking. Organizing. Learning. Planning. They can try to suppress it, but all they’re doing is speeding up the clock. The question isn’t if. It’s when. If not us, then who?

01/13/25

ur just a walking corpse - first teaser from gough

Gut-check. There's blood in the air, thick, sanguine and metallic. Red Room type shit. Murder music. It's the motherfucking witching hour. Where the fuck are you? Look around. Fog's closing in. Darkness rising, circling. The shadows—they’re hunting. What’s your move? What the fuck are you gonna do when the dark swallows you whole?

This is the first offering from gough—signed exclusively to HOUDINI. You’ve been warned.


01/10/25

thought i was at a party, but i was in my bedroom


01/08/25

Burning Behind Bars: The Value of Human Life in the Empire

On the top: Gaza On the Bottom: LA

Let me ask you something: What’s the worth of a human life in the American Regime? No, don’t answer. Let me show you instead. Picture this. You’re 15 years old. Your cell is concrete. Your window, if you even have one, is coated with ash. The largest fire in California history is half a mile away. Half a goddamn mile. Every breath you take scratches your throat. The guards say nothing. The supervisors do nothing. Your cell is starting to feel less like a room and more like a coffin. You wonder if this place will turn into a crematorium. You wonder if anyone on the outside even knows you’re here.

You think about the stories. How they left people to die in Katrina. 2004, New Orleans—rotting bodies floating in flooded cells, water up to the waist, no food, no answers. Just the silence of being abandoned. That’s what it means to be one of the forgotten. One of the expendable. You’re not just locked up—you’re erased.

This is the darkest corner of the empire. The black hole where the regime dumps its deliquent kids, its poor, its lost, its angry. You’re a kid, but you’re locked up, and that makes you nothing. Just another body in the machine. This is what the regime does. This is what it's always done. Call it what you want—prison-industrial complex, systemic neglect, capitalist realism—but at its core, it’s rot. The kind of rot you can’t wash off.

Let it sink in. The flames don’t discriminate. They won’t stop at the prison gates. If that fire reaches the detention center, every one of those children could die. Burned alive in their cells. Cremated by a system that locked them up, tossed away the key, and now won’t even bother to unlock the doors when the fire comes.

What does that say about the American Regime? About the so-called social contract we're expected to believe in? Because this—this shitstorm of neglect and cruelty—is the fine print. This is what it looks like when you’re not the one society cares about. No safety net, no second chances, no dignity. Just fire and smoke and the faint hope that someone, anyone, will come for you.

But let’s be real: they won’t.

They’ve got prisoners fighting these fires, getting paid $1.45 a day for risking their lives to save the homes of millionaires who probably wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire. Think about that. They’re out there choking on smoke, dragging hoses through hellish terrain, while the media worries about the Malibu beach houses. Oh no, P. Diddy’s mansion might burn. Oh no, the Bourgeois palaces might go up in flames. But those kids in the detention center? Fuck ‘em. They’re invisible.

This is what the regime is. Save the beach houses. Let the kids burn.

This isn’t a failure of governance. This is the system working exactly as designed. It’s a regime built on sacrifice—the sacrifice of the poor, the young, the voiceless, to keep the machinery running. It is a society built to protect Malibu’s mansions while imprisoning children and letting the detention centers burn to the ground with them in it. And how different is that, really, from the mass death we see pouring out of Gaza on our social media feeds every day? Children buried under rubble. Families obliterated by airstrikes. Lives erased in moments. The parallels are stark, and they’re horrifying. In both cases, the message is the same: these lives don’t matter to the regime. These deaths are acceptable. The system calculates, weighs, and shrugs.

Think about this: the only reason they care about beach houses burning down is because it’s profitable. The only reason they don’t care to evacuate these kids from the fire is because it’s profitable. And the reason mass death is being carried out in Gaza? Because it’s profitable. The only reason your neighborhood isn’t burning, drowning, or being shelled is because it’s not profitable to the capitalist regime—yet.

How long until it is? How much longer can we live under a system that places no value on human life? The fire is coming. For them. For you. For all of us. The question remains: Who will wield the flames?

Sources:

Advocates urge immediate action to evacuate incarcerated youth from high-risk fire zones
Prisoners Are Getting Paid $1.45 a Day to Fight the California Wildfires
ACLU Report Details Horrors Suffered by Orleans Parish Prisoners in Wake of Hurricane Katrina
01/08/25

Back When Phonk was Good

Click to View Full Size Poster
01/06/25

If It's The End of the Empire, What Comes After? Dream of the Miracle Escape. Dream HOUDINI.

01/06/25

The Fish Bowl - New Music to get Your Ears Wet

7 albums across 7 genres from 2025, we at HOUDINI Magazine think you should check out now.

01/03/25

HOUDINI Magazine's Zine Rack is BACK!

We currently have 15 zines in our zine rack, and we’re excited to add 4 to 6 new zines to our curated selection every month! Coming soon, we’ll also offer print copies of select zines for purchase. In the meantime, feel free to print and share! If it’s in our zine rack, it’s free to distribute.

Zines are a unique bridge between the ephemeral nature of the internet and the tangible reality of the physical world. Share the PDFs with friends across the globe—they can print and distribute them locally. It’s the perfect medium to revive in our hyper-alienated, terminally online age.

We're also testing our new RSS Functionality, so we would appreciate feedback in the guestbook on it!

Check out our Zine Rack Here
12/01/25