Professor of Sociology, Dartmouth;views my own. Author, 'Capital w/out Borders' https://shorturl.at/bGsLB and 'Offshore' https://shorturl.at/rTacl; words @washingtonpost.com, @nytimes.com, the Atlantic & the Guardian. All at brookeharrington.com
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My position on the "doomsday" risk of superhuman AGI is that if IQ offered you a decisive advantage, the world would be run by nerds. I think it's essentially a geek power fantasy. The returns on puzzle-solving skills rapidly diminish past some modest threshold.
Forgot to add that when confronted with highly-qualified women candidates, the American voting public not only chose a man, they rejected the women for a SERIAL RAPIST. Twice. There is no greater misogynist FU than that. Both times, a crystal clear message to women: know your place.
It's the woman part. Tens of millions of Americans were very happy to vote for a Black man...twice.
It’s Fred Hampton’s birthday
"woke alternative" Can we just pin these people down on camera and force them to define "woke?" Because wtf is this woman talking about? Sourdough has been around for millennia. I personally have hated it since my 70s childhood. Yes, it sucks, but it's the opposite of novel!
Yeah, gotta agree with you: "unnecessary politeness" will be the end of us in the US; it has destroyed our journalism and civil society, because we simply don't confront liars and charlatans. We need to import some Dutch journalists--like a Marshall Plan for information infrastructure in the US.
That Trump and Trumpism are fascist doesn’t explain the sheer vandalism of unleashing mass murdering mayhem via RFK to replace medical/scientific institutions of immense value and prestige with medieval peasant superstitions. That is a criminal madness facilitated by but above and beyond fascism.
All the things Republicans fear-mongered about during the Obama era--from Jade Helm to death panels--are now being implemented under Trump.
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I didn't even have to read the article to know that the "grandchildren" were both girls. Interesting choice by the editors to use the gender-neutral term rather than the word "granddaughters."
Yeah. I hope I live long enough to find out what really happened with the vote count in November 2024, because Trump not only winning every swing state but doing so by *just* enough to avoid a recount seems highly sus.
You've got a guest bedroom with your name on it in Italy.
"Hey baby, want to see my phlogiston?"--that's the line he's used to bag every blonde from Cheryl Hines to Olivia Nuzzi.
Science deniers love to adopt scientific *sounding* language to discredit science. RFKJr couldn't identify mitochondria with two hands a map, but he likes the sound of the word--thinks it gives him credibility. Next he'll be telling us he can spot phlegmatic humours from 20 paces.
Dr. Daskalakis's letter is both measured & excoriating. He writes that the "intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection & unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive & many if not all will suffer." #IllnessPolitics
May I suggest consulting "The Official Preppy Handbook?" It is known to soothe WASPs.
Ah, the seductive gaze of the mitochondria inspector...That's how he snagged Olivia Nuzzi. I hope you reminded RFKJr of his manners as a gentleman.
WHERE IS THE CAT
Are Ruth and Arnulf just camping out atop Erwin and Annette?
On the one hand, I'm glad Andrea Dworkin didn't live to see this utter shitshow led by a twice-elected serial rapist...but on the other hand, I wish she were still around to write about it. I miss her voice.
Sucks that feminism became politically verboten at exactly the moment when the right calcified into a masculinity death cult
They know their own people.
Hey fellow Chicagoan. We've got to let these jagoffs know how loathed they are.
Andrea Dworkin had these guys' number 50 years ago: the left bros whose splendid idealism stopped abruptly at their gleeful, often violent, exploitation of women. @moiradonegan.bsky.social has done a great job of trying to remind everyone about Dworkin's insights.
"if like 1-2% of the American public are misogynistic left-leaning swing voters, this is an almost entire explanation for the last three Presidential elections" is an uncomfortable truth
In 2024, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned Women know pay inequality has lifetime effect on future earnings - short term disability, unemployment, pension, Soc Sec payouts www.pewresearch.org/... #wiunion #wipolitics ##WomensEqualityDay
oh no
Single Taylor Swift was a huge problem for RWers, whose bedrock ideology is male ownership and exploitation of women, because she destigmatized being a "childless cat lady"--showed that it was fun and cool, not a punishment.
Kaylan! She's the best!
More on the uses of stigmatization and shunning to split apart fascist coalitions in @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social's best-seller "Strongmen," and in my piece with Alex Cooley in @foreignaffairs.com: www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-fede...
They don't feel shame, but they care deeply about status. Wanting to be liked--or at least envied--is their Achilles heel. We can use that against them:it's cheap, non-violent & effective. Social shunning of elites supporting Pinochet helped bring down the Chilean dictator: it can work here too.
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
We have to do something as a society about call bots for these companies like CVS and Walmart which one can spend up to 45 minutes arguing with a bot to reach a human. If we don't rise up and tell these companies we're not going to do business with them until they act, it's never gonna change!
And DJIA at 45,5k is such bad news: he's going to take that as the greenest of lights to go off on Powell.
Jeez, that's enormous--like a truck.
God that such an historically ignorant critique: have these people never heard of TR & FDR? Their superpower was being class traitors. Same for Pritzker.One of the sad lessons of US history is that very little of a progressive nature gets done in this country without wealthy turncoats--or bloodshed.
It's the socio-emotional equivalent of getting someone a Target gift card.
LOL. Misogyny predates class literally by millennia. It's not a cute little trick to distract from class conflict ffs.
Misogyny seems pretty significant given that Americans *twice* rejected women candidates in favor of a serial rapist.
Privatizing profits and socializing losses...that's the grifter's way. See also: the 2008 financial crisis.
Wasn't it @gtconway.bsky.social who pointed out that placing DC law enforcement under federal control--now equivalent to personal control by Trump--means no one can make the dictator leave? Control of transportation routes in & out of DC advances the same goal.
@gilduran.com is all over this in his coverage of the barbaric anti-humanism of the broligarchs: bsky.app/profile/gild...
The Techlords and Their Ideology Are Mortal Enemies of Humanity The techlords intend to bring humanity to the brink of collapse and then, in a magic trick, rise to power, saving the species or themselves as the last specimens. by @camargy.bsky.social www.commondreams.org/opinion/big-...
That's really the point, isn't it? The existentialists like Sartre and Camus would have had a field day pointing out how perfectly AI illustrates their thesis that most humans don't want the burdens of being human--free will is too much work.
Yeah. It's one of those record-scratch moments I'll remember for the rest of my life.
I am once again telling you: MAGA is a coalition of men against women. It's a coalition that spans the divides of race, religion & class. But misogyny is so pervasive in the US that most people can no more see it than they can see the air they breathe.
You're 💯 right.
Real "Decadent French Aristocrats in May 1789" energy here:
I'm incandescently furious at all the tens of millions of Americans who could have voted but chose not to...people DIED for that right over centuries, and they just threw it away because they weren't sufficiently entertained by performing their civic duties.
Republicans keep telling us not to "politicize" these shootings, but that's only because they understand that these shootings were entirely motivated by the political arguments they themselves have been making and entirely facilitated by the political campaign against gun control that they have led.
I think a lot about how the German university system a century ago was still the envy of the world and the place that everyone who was anyone had to go in order to be taken seriously as a scholar. I'm genuinely very sad to have lived to see my country metaphorically burned to the ground like this.
@shimminykricket.bsky.social : You have been summoned.
Our words will be used to power the lying machine. So like, what was the point of all our decades of training to find the truth?
As someone who was an adult when teenagers in the US were being threatened with federal prison time for torrenting Metallica songs, I'm like...wtf happened to IP in the last 20 years?
About a year ago, when I first learned that these fuckers had pirated my most-cited book, I emailed the publisher to let them know & said "What's your plan to deal with this flagrant copyright violation?" It was Harvard University Press, so I assumed they'd lawyered up ages ago. Nope. No plan.
It really does feel to me like a zombie movie, except that instead of staggering toward you mumbling "Braaiins" the zombies cheerily tell you about all the ways they've cheerfully thrown away their humanity.
I met a professor last month, appeared to be in his early 40s, who volunteered to me at a conference dinner that he'd used ChatGPT to compose a condolence email to his *best friend* upon the death of the friend's father. I was dumbfounded. Not only that he'd do that, but that he'd tell me about it.
That was Garry Wills' take right after Sandy Hook in 2012: www.nybooks.com/online/2012/...
The UK postal service isn't just suspending parcel mail to the United States, they've suspended all mail to the United States, so no one in the UK can send so much as a postcard to the US right now.
We're the canaries in the coal mine of social catastrophes: mass shooters, terrorism, dictatorship. Ppl engaged in those activities virtually always start with target practice on women, knowing no one stop them & we'll be blamed somehow...as if we're flies who made the bad boys pull off our wings.
I love this analogy.
Their contempt for the Humanities & Social Sciences is part & parcel of their contempt for humans; they regard us, at best, as failed machines. So they're constantly getting surprised by basic human activity that most middle schoolers understand intuitively--like the pursuit of status any cost.
It's probably illegal to reference French history and culture using Belgian cartoon characters, but when l'Académie française pounds down my door, I'm just gonna say "come at me, froggy bros!"
You are correct and your username is outstanding. You could definitely get 5 Sartres in a trenchcoat--he was just a smol bean.
I've never heard TK's voice before: it's *wonderful.*
By the same token, "nobody knew" always means "I, Trump, did not know."
It's worth reiterating that the administration has never wavered from the position that it sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to an El Salvador prison by accident. Everything they've done since is calculated to obscure that and punish him for existing as an example of their own stupidity and callousness.
It was ever thus in academia! Here's a recent literature review, capturing the past 30 years of research on the subject--full text, no paywall. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
It's not an American phenomenon: it's a human phenomenon studied all over the world. And it's not a racial phenomenon: welfare chauvinism can be triggered by any in-group/out-group categorization; these days, it's most often about immigrants, globally.
Perforation of Leon Trotsky's Skull Shows Uneasy Mix of Assassination and Brain Surgery
Instafollow.
Just here to express my excitement at seeing the phrase "welfare chauvinism" used on Bluesky! It is a topic on which I publish & one I think explains a lot about the seeming contradictions of "populist" voters--"I don't want to support welfare with my taxes & keep your mitts off my Medicare!"
Proud conservatives: "Medicaid is for lazy undeserving people, except for my son." Also proud conservatives: "Abortion is for irresponsible sluts, except me...I'm a good girl & pregnancy would ruin my life." Proud conservative MadLib: "____ is bad & wrong, but when I need it, it's good."
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
This was the ethos I grew up with, that wealth or success was *only* something to be proud of if it were earned with hard work. It was a value system shared by WASPs & immigrants alike. Only hoodlums & crooks wanted something for nothing. Remember these ads? Ran for years. youtu.be/aMPu99_Xvjw?...
That's so strange. Back in the 20th century, calling someone a "hard-working man" was a compliment! A guy who got good things without working for them was considered suspect, not quite above board.
Academia may not give you job security, flexibility, or wealth, but it will let you unexpectedly connect to eduroam in foreign cities
Smacked on the snoot with a rolled up copy of the Epstein files.
The Germans have a great word for that, meaning second-hand embarrassment: "fremdschämen."
Are you British? I've never seen the expression "cat that ate the candy." In the US, it's "the cat that got the cream" or "the cat who ate the canary." What will the cat get next?
MAGA as masculinity tantrum. They're showing dominance by marking their territory, like tomcats pissing in your shoes. bsky.app/profile/ebha...
Having to re-discover the territory explored by feminist authors of the 1960s & 70s--as if the works of Betty Friedan & Andrea Dworkin were cryptic texts written in Linear B--is extremely tiresome. The success of RWers in destroying even the memory of the feminist movement is very dispiriting.
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I called it!
Oh no.
For some reason, the ones I think will haunt me the most are the bright young men who proudly told me they cast their first-ever vote for the convicted rapist and felon, and the naturalized immigrants who told me they would never vote for a woman under any circumstances.
Joni Mitchell deserved it at least as much as Dylan.
Contrast if you will.
And it won't be named for the right Flo, either! Still can't believe she's gone and it's been nearly 30 years.
Have you been back? There's an incredibly museum now at Checkpoint Charlie, showing the insane risks people were willing to take in order to escape the DDR.
Once again illustrating that while Trump cannot be shamed, he CAN be manipulated into doing nearly anything by offering him *status.* HRC nominates him for the Nobel? Suddenly Trump swings from "Lock her up!" to "Let's be pals!" We should exploit this vulnerability more. bsky.app/profile/ebha...
With you. I don't think there's any precedent in US history for this. I'm honestly sorry to be alive to witness it.
Same. Same. It's the Upside Down. Worse than any horror story.
Waiting like a teenager for his prom date & clapping his teeny little hands for the bloody dictator... Is this the most humiliating spectacle ever created by a US president? __ Yes __ Hell yes Bonus: If you lived through the Cold War, does this image make your head spin? __ Yes __ Kill me now