[swirling column] heavy notes of Dark Abundance but picking up Moderate-Abundance Synthesis as well with a surprising Red Plenty aftertaste at the end
(vague lyrics about history or economics) 🚰 https://linktr.ee/austwu
265 followers 325 following 437 posts
view profile on Bluesky
[swirling column] heavy notes of Dark Abundance but picking up Moderate-Abundance Synthesis as well with a surprising Red Plenty aftertaste at the end
If you ever wondered why some Wikipedia articles are titled "murder of ____" and others "killing of ____":
i think to some extent the commentariat in the US sees 'being part of the commentariat' as their class interest and are seeking to defend that
Detroit News republished a piece I wrote about democratic threats in America www.detroitnews.com/story/opinio...
"The gulf between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss" --
Shapiro didn't lower flags for Melissa Hortman, a great woman, but for the man who said this?
There was a lot of talk about the end of history in the 90s, but now we’re dealing with a glut of commentators who think that’s when history started
"[William] James' lynching [in Cairo, Illinois] on November 11, 1909. An estimated 10,000 spectators were present at the lynching." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynchin...
One of the specific people celebrating this was mainstream Republican Senator Marco Rubio
You'd think someone shot Mr. Rogers. Charlie Kirk was a piece of shit.
we are presently nowhere near the level of state collapse that "republic of china, 1947" was at --
There's a wide Gulf between not celebrating political violence and treating loathsome hate merchants like they are nationally important and respected figures you can pick somewhere in the middle, like a normal person and not do this nonsense
@ all of these youtube "preppers" anxiously anticipating the "big igloo" with the comforts of a power grid and central heating --
fwiw -- this is my preferred ideology --
Now in an esoteric, academic sense, I wonder *why* contemporary US political violence is so right-tilted for ex., there's plenty of DPRK posters who glorify its near-fanatical cult of revolution by arms - yet it remains confined to the online. Maybe it's abt. how toxic/chud-coded US gun culture is?
I think of this a lot as a first-gen immigrant from SWANA. For all the obsession most White Americans have with things like war, esp civil war, so few of them have experienced it. The relationship esp White Americans have with violence & dissolution of society frankly feels morbid yet naive at once
whereas the american "home front" during the second world war was unimaginably more prosperous than china was even in peace -- probably up until the 1990s-early 2000s at the earliest? (I welcome corrections on chinese economic history here)
chinese and koreans are likely little different about their media diet, but for ex. war films and tv shows in china about the 1940s are at once pretty popular (like in the US), but also almost always at least incidentally about the sheer destruction of infrastructure and society that the war brought
in the film 'civil war' there was an implicit subtext not dissimilar to what you're suggesting (I think) - that most people checked out of the conflict, and that the "civil war" was fed. remnants + small, motivated rebel bands chasing each other around w/ humvees and MRAPS across the american land
hmm ... many might be saying bsky.app/profile/gray...
and even then, for most americans, a war fought somewhere "else" (most americans live outside of the deep south). contrasting this to the korean war (covered the whole peninsula w/ local uprisings included), or the wars in china 1927-1949 -- also matters fought on, and over most of the home turf.
this is entering a little into the realm of "making up a guy to get mad at", but I also sometimes think about this passage in @iwriteok.bsky.social's "after the revolution", about the influence of a left-wing poaster in the lead-up to the dissolution of the US (ch. 6 here atrbook.com/book/page/2/)
hmm ... kind of vis-a-vis this bit from @contrapoints.bsky.social in 2020?
Something I think (and worry) about in the US is that in this country's isolation from the consequences of conflict, that the misplaced fantasies of playing warrior by one too many men might result in just enough unintentional blusters, until it is too late to walk things back.
I wonder if in my countries of heritage (china/taiwan/korea) the occurrence of total civil war and domestic uprisings within living memory, and all of their associated horrors, tamp down somewhat any perverse longing for civil conflict.
apropos of nothing --
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR1g...
Resolutely Uphold Lester Freamon Thought
this has been basically every single political assassination in the US over the past year. just completely brainrotted people lol
Cancel your NYT subscriptions bsky.app/profile/sena...
Whether it’s Republican politicians joking about the murder of Melissa Hortman or Democratic politicians expressing their condolences after the murder of Charlie Kirk, both parties have a extreme rhetoric problem.
The ultimate victory of Juche Korea will inavertedly be because its extreme restrictions on internet usage have incidentally protected its population from AI slop and social media algorithms, unlike the decadent world beyond the shining fatherland. (/s)
Cars expensive! Transit cheap! A new study finds that high transportation costs are driven largely by owning vehicles and people who live by rapid transit have a lower cost of living. We're absolutely shocked! (Just kidding, we aren't surprised at all.) 1/2
Just to emphasize: officially, as far as the federal government is concerned, Kirk is just some dude. No legitimate reason to give him state honors of any sort.
I have lots of waterfall videos and we all have hard days so I’m gonna end my nights for a while with Waterfall of the Night. First up: Upper Tahquamenon Falls in Luce County, Michigan. (There’s a smaller Lower falls.) The brown color is from tannins, leached from cedar swamps.
Vance Boelter, a Trump, GOP voting Christian nationalist, was radicalized in part by QAnon, the same conspiracy promoted by Trump and Republicans, even though they knew it had radicalized others to commit violence. Boelter had a hit list of 70 liberals. He killed Melissa Hortmann and her husband.
/2 We can, and should, discuss whether political violence is inevitable, or whether we’re fooling ourselves because we’ve been swimming in it for a long time. You can note that political violence against the Left (like Melissa Hortman) is treated differently than political violence against the right
Cycles of political violence have been worse in our country; see the 1960s. But the way the violence will be amplified and escalated, most commonly by feedback loops like social media, gives me a real sense of dread.
Even in a "dad history" film which waxes poetic about the dignity of military honour and duty, even to the point of personal ruin, removing weapons from society is also viewed in the film as a natural part of rebuilding society!
Although hardly a democracy, I think it's noteworthy that a scene in the Chinese film "Assembly" (2007) is dedicated to the postwar (~early-mid 1950s) decomissioning of arms used in the civil war and the War of Resistance Against Japan (~1927-1949).
if not friend, why friend-shaped??
It would probably be psychologically beneficial for Democrats to start talking excitedly about how we're going to rebuild stuff
a substantial percentage of the time. pinochet lost an election. the estado novo just had the army bloodlessly switch sides. franco's successor decided that he was going to let the social democrats rewrite the constitution. the czech communist party announced that it was simply leaving power.
As a general rule, I think it is better to have loved too freely, than to have not loved enough.
welcome to the cool zone, ig
the new york times is bad. like really, really bad. WaPo at this point is worse.
re:
This chart is wild. Near vertical direction on solar capacity globally, led by China. And as Ember notes in a new report today, that trend is accelerating with nearly 400GW new capacity in first 6 months of 2025.
What Is To Be Done remains the only question, and it still has but a single answer.
I don't think the fandomization of politics is good, actually
Transit funding cuts lead to faster climate change leads to economic catastrophe leads to more transit cuts. buff.ly/icmXK4O
and wishcasting aside, see generally -- bsky.app/profile/jlap...
... inshallah? 🧐 there are some opportunities for whimsy to be found in one's selection of postage stamps --
Preserving democracy and basic liberal values is the most important political issue in 2025 and Abundance has to make a choice about whether it is going to stand on the wall or join the barbarians besieging it
There is a perverse security to be found in cynicism and conceit (as conversely there is vulnerability in sincerity) -- but at what ultimate cost to self and society?
"Unconsolidated authoritarianism"
Harvard's Steve Levitsky said in April that "We are no longer living in a democratic regime" www.npr.org/2025/04/22/n... But what this is can be hard to describe. We tend to think in binaries, but there's a continuum from democracy to authoritarianism & we're headed the wrong way.
No clear answers on whether mommy disappeared entirely behind hands during game of peekaboo Mommy's face was not visible from behind hands, and experts say they can't be sure
2meirl4meirl ☹️
inshallah 🙏 (and for saint paul too!)
The postmodern state no longer has the capacity to marshal and equip massive industrial forces nor to sufficiently propagandize its population so it returns to pre-modern tactics of raids and skirmishes, you’re hearing it more and more
broke: china hawk woke: china dove bespoke: china owl
There's no remotely colorable policy argument for invading American cities with troops. The idea exists entirely as a performance to provide content for the GOP's base of reactionary bigots, who thrill to the idea of their enemies being brutalized by armed men and treaded war machines.
Cancel your NYT subscriptions
Anybody who believes Trump leaves office peacefully in 2029 is a bit delusional imho. I also think it's not totally obvious that waiting until 2029 to try to remove him from office is the best idea.
April of this year: Matt Yglesias Tweets his support for a national ID system that allows the government to demand you prove your citizenship at any given time. Yesterday: Matt Yglesias finally realizes the downside of this fascist policy when he realizes this could apply to him too
nothing ever happens bros are eating well
or higher ed. if you make my options into "the current system as it exists, warts and all" and "burn the america's universities down in the name of the culture war" it's not a difficult choice to make, but it's also a pretty shitty one.
the right wing position for the last few decades is that they will engage in naked schmittian friend-enemy politics while the suckers on the other team still try to be pluralistic, and it was always going to collapse under it's own weight.
Unexploded bombs from past wars continue to harm ecosystems and communities worldwide. Climate change is making these risks even worse. buff.ly/TpZTabX via @uk.theconversation.com
Real Estate: House With Cool Turret Thing
Which is to say a functional democracy can’t just give the people what they want. It has to call people, in their capacity as citizens, to be their better selves and want decent things. And maybe there’s an unseemly whiff of aristocracy around that, but it looks like maybe it’s not optional.
'a liberalism that builds'
Hey @blagojevism.bsky.social it now exists in the flesh
resource-intensive than driving and associated car infrastructure. I suggest here one thought on how to shepherd this transition, in the form of a unified regional transportation authority for the Twin Cities, along the lines of @translink.ca in Vancouver, Canada.
like on a more self-sufficient basis, especially if previously-set climate and traffic safety goals are still to be achieved in time (soon). One angle of approach is to reallocate resources away from highways and towards facilities for walking, bicycling, and transit, all of which are less ...
Glad to have this out in @streets.mn -- with the federal gov't axing support for active transportation left and right, and even mulling rescinding highway funding over percieved political slights, I think it's time for places like Minnesota to begin considering what transportation systems might ...
its 2026. the only legal jobs are ICE agent, AI server farm maintenance, and beef tallow renderer
We've been in the public health Cool Zone since at least 2021 kffhealthnews.org/news/tag/und...
apropos of nothing, watch (and read) "The Plot Against America"
Advice which served Philip Levin (age 10) in 1940s Newark, New Jersey would also behoove Justice Brett Kavanaugh (age 60) in Washington, DC today
They did it, they figured out the Star Wars fan service I would watch religiously even if it were absolute slop that went on for way too many seasons
It's called rUcKiNg 😤😤
I might just be out of the groove re: fitness, but I've perceived something vaguely sinister about the weighted vests (and maybe even running vests to a similar extent) -- in how they seem to mimic the 'plate carriers' and 'assault vests' which first gained currency from special ops mumbo jumbo :/
The abundant housing playbook via @harvard-jchs.bsky.social: Legalize middle housing in all residential areas Remove/decrease wasteful parking mandates Reduce min. lot sizes Increase lot coverage and reduce setbacks Streamline development review processes Modernize building codes
Mein fuhrer… Murdoch…. The WSJ published your birthday card to Epstein 15 minutes ago. I got the push notification
so for those keeping tally, so far today we had: SCOTUS re-firing an agency head a lower court had reinstated trump saying domestic violence is nbd trump's pedophilia celebration birthday card to Epstein released SCOTUS green lighting racial profiling and "papers, please" policing
republican loyalty is achieved through a shared secret
to put it even plainer: the united states state police are now engaging in mass arrests on the basis of race and nationality
Yeah. Once you catch the prayer-app grift, it really fits the mold.
Someone had a funny tweet about U.S. Space Command moving from Colorado to Alabama ("Why would you move it a mile further away from Outer Space?"), and I have the same question about first renaming the paper The Minnesota Star Tribune only to move the printing plant 150 miles outside of Minnesota?
I don't know if I'm more offended by the blatant blending of church and state, or by the tackiness of it all :/
😮😮
if drafts and scheduled posts were to return as well ... then we might truly be back 👀🤔
for now I've been using this as an ersatz workaround, but legit bookmarks would be a big event! bsky.app/profile/book...
To put this into context, the judicial warrant for the search at the Hyundai plant named just four people. Relying on that warrant, ICE detained nearly 500 people. DHS admitted that included U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and people lawfully here on visas.
The WSJ has another source saying that the Koreans on the site had valid visas as well. This means that we're going to see an end to foreign investment in the US for as long as there is a realistic potential for Republicans to be elected. www.wsj.com/world/asia/s...
jon ben-menachem 
