Teacher, historian, and blogger. Born and raised in Nebraska, working in NYC, living in Jersey. Substack: I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I Try to Be Amused https://jasontebbe.substack.com/
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how are you even supposed to take spy movies seriously when laura loomer is making intelligence decisions oh, there’s an elaborate plot to steal the nation’s secrets? the ones being emailed to the lady who handcuffed herself to the twitter building? how dare they ruin one of the best genres
In the aftermath of Emmett Till's lynching, white supremacists called for federal troops to invade and occupy Chicago. "If the federal government intervenes in the interests of law enforcement anywhere, it should start in Chicago, crime capital extraordinary." h/t @larryglickman.bsky.social
this is going to sound stupid but it's entirely because we live in the era of postmodern fascism and because they wanted to post a video about them killing people for the base
unlike national politics, Philly schools are full of people who give a shit, who give far more than a shit, and it's appalling that we are failing them and our children so badly.
Much of what makes the current wave of AI problematic is not what it does, but who owns it, who benefits, and how it once again skews wealth into the hands of owners of capital. It’s politics, not tech.
T H I S ⤵️
Jesus Christ
Whether it’s Michelle Obama suggesting kids exercise instead of watching tv or RFK Jr. telling kids to drink raw milk instead of taking vaccines, both figures took a controversial approach to children’s health.
Graham Greene was good in so much but his small performance as a traumatized Vietnam vet in Pow-Wow Highway has burned itself in my mind. In a few gestures he suggests an entire world.
This Mortal Coil, _It’ll End In Tears_, 1984
Just a reminder: propaganda works by pervasive repetition, not logical consistency
As a friend recently put it: the venn diagram of people who assured us the gun violence was worth it because we need the guns to protect ourselves against a tyrannical federal government and the people cheering on Trump as he deploys the military to take over American cities is a circle
One of my fave moments in The Commitments, which taught me this.
I assumed that like the last president to serve non-consecutive terms the current one was getting a hush-hush medical procedure done this weekend, but maybe I’m wrong.
Margaret Atwood claps back to having The Handmaid’s Tale banned from Alberta schools by the UCP. It’s so good. #ableg #abpoli #abed
We liberals need to come up with a positive vision of what law enforcement should look like because right now, that job is outsourced to outright fascists and anarchist bed-wetters.
It always ends up being "you must be this cool to live here" and it's so stupid. I've lived here longer than the Subway Takes asshole, everyone should be welcome here, even him
Not to belabor the point but: I am not the weird one for being this mad at the Democratic Party and its leaders. Look at polls of your average rank and file Dem voters and how they feel about the party now. It is YOU who are out of touch if you’re asking why people are being mean to Dem politicians
trump can issue as many executive orders as he wants, perhaps coverage should reflect the fact that a lot of these have the legal force of a child's wishlist for santa
"...I will do my best to embody a different way of being, one deeper and more meaningful that has roots far deeper than Silicon Valley’s. Maybe that’s a fool’s errand in this day and age, but I’m too old to change course now. Hopefully it won’t be in vain."
"I will be back in the classroom with my students...at a time when the culture they live in, and even many educational institutions themselves, are devaluing the books that will be surrounding them in the room and the expertise they represent..."
I sorted through my classroom library yesterday, which prompted feelings of pride in a lifetime of learning and despair at seeing that learning devalued. open.substack.com/pub/jasonteb...
When you’re getting paid peanuts as a “visiting professor” to work 70 hour weeks while the football team gets whatever it wants (including canceling night classes on game days) you get radicalized.
I have never changed my mind about anything as I have about college football. Growing up in Nebraska in the 80s it was like a religion to me. Working in academia and seeing the ways it distorts universities and represents their indifference to learning made me abandon it.
I was a history lover already but Mrs Rutt in 4-6th grade let me read history books once I got my work done. Mr Locke in 7th grade had such passion for history, especially Ancient Greece. Mr Kerr in 12th grade AP Euro exposed me to deeper historical analysis. All gave me encouragement.
If you had to hear every meat head who got blasted on Busch Light down by the river when they weren’t telling racist jokes and slut shaming their female peers sing that song a cappella that respect would fade.
I’m from rural Nebraska and was in high school in the 90s so I can name some and I hate them all.
I remember when I quit my tenure track job two other newish colleagues left for greener pastures the same month and the people that gave us the least desirable classes and schedules and didn’t recognize our publications acted shocked, as if we were just going to accept it.
Educational institutions have two different attitudes towards new hires: 1. “Here’s an asset to our school that we should cultivate” 2. “Here’s someone we can force to shovel all the shit.” It is always funny to me that the leaders of type 2 never seem to understand their retention issues.
Considering their entire AI is built on intellectual property theft I’m not surprised.
Dear Americans, welcome to the thrilling game of ‘Did this dictator die or just disappear for a day?’ We’ve been playing it with Putin and Lukashenko for decades. Enjoy the suspense.
i saw people campaigning to move the UN to montreal. i would support that idea.
These are public employees who decided to leave rather than accept jobs where they actually did nothing. Remember that the next time they tell you that government employees are lazy and inefficient.
The Free State of Florida is now trying to ban *sidewalk chalking*
Davis’ weird dislike of Johnston was one of the best weapons the Union had.
Related, from Walter Benjamin, before he died fleeing the Nazis:
I've long said that America had entered its Brezhnev Years but I didn't think it would be this literal.
Read this www.liberalcurrents.com/let-it-burn-...
"I don't think he's coping well."
Officially prepared for the orange moron's national guard occupation (thanks @raygunsite.com )
He survived a horrible COVID case as an old man and an AR-15 attack and people who are elderly and ailing with top health care last a long time. Anyway I hate speculating on the Leader’s health like we live in a tinpot tyranny. We aren’t there just yet, and won’t ever be if I can help it.
It genuinely melts my mind how so many allegedly smart people are willing to simply discard the utterly crucial differences between the embodied, organic consciousness of human beings (and bees, and dogs, and fish) and the networked, disembodied simulacra of such that is an LLM.
making another Horst Wessel except this time one of the Beer Hall Putsch guys www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
New rule. A parent may only propose removing a book from the school library only after reading it in its entirety and delivering a book report to the librarian. Until then no discussion shall be entered into.
Fascism is impossible without a culture of denial. It is deeply unpopular and repellant. It cannot win unless millions of people actively convince themselves it is a passing phase or not as bad as it seems. This is why we’re stuck in this mess. jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/fascism-is...
take my views on this with a grain of salt I guess (I am on team pro-civility and anti-debate), but I feel like the "civil debate" discourse is totally committed to the worst of both worlds
I know many people who have worked in federal agencies and there are exactly zero of them that I would even begin to describe as "radical." They are people who believe in the work and find meaning in serving the public -- it takes a lot to get people like that walking out against their employer!
The book Dying of Whiteness is one a lot of coastal liberals need to read. (Said as someone who grew up in rural Nebraska, which is already losing a hospital.)
What is wild to me is that even parents who base their entire lives about getting their kids into elite universities don’t seem to care that those institutions are under attack.
It is upsetting that every year I teach my students about how the worst regimes in history could do what they did because ordinary people went along and participated and now I’m seeing it happen before my own eyes.
So how much longer is the whole damn country just going to keep whistling past the graveyard?
It's always been like this, and it's because the elites are essentially self-preserving, and civility has always been the tool by which non-elites are condemned.
What is depressing me nowadays is that the anti-literate culture that prevails in wider society is now becoming an element of the culture of educational institutions, which are supposed to by fortresses of literacy.
I am increasingly finding a divide in my life between the literate and the non-literate. I enjoy company with the literate, even if we disagree on things. I find time with the non-literate to be tiresome, even if we agree on things.
Wow, he actually did everything out of order. Tech bro, political influencer, Nazi, then anime gooner.
In a functional government, this would be a five alarm fire where Congress calls in Kennedy and asks him what the fuck is going on
Absolutely bonkers personalist regime stuff www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
Full resignation letter from Demetre C. Daskalakis, a CDC leader, does not hold back. "The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud."
The problem with having been bullied all through childhood is that I am firmly resolved never to endure that again, but in adulthood it's hard to robustly defend your self-respect without getting into trouble.
According to federal data, 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of those cities are Chicago. 8 of the top 10 states in homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states are Illinois. And yet Trump is sending troops here.
He's gonna make kids go to work camps because he can atmospherically deduce chakra misalignment.
it's easier to buy a gun in the united states than high-rise trousers
this is correct, and needs to be laid out in terms of the expansion of right-wing accelerationist ideology
i suspect we're going to run into the issue that no one is capable of understanding this nihilistic violence unless well read into these communities so people will use it as a means to attack
A list of terms Democrats should avoid to win elections: - Third Way - Public-Private Partnerships - Opportunity - Incentives - Deregulation - Tax incentives - Means testing - Woke
Democrats clean up in special elections because those contests draw highly engaged voters. We don’t talk enough about how voter turnout has gone up in presidential elections but it’s a lot of low info people who used to just not vote. It’s distorting things in a big way.
The thing is you don't get to say AI is equivalent to a professional until it does something that would get a professional fired and then its just a toy
"Share the longest period of time you’ve ever wept. Then, as a group, seat yourselves in order from shortest cry to longest cry."
Even Musk fans and reply guys are growing appalled at his efforts to push his AI model Grok by constantly reposting animations of scantily clad female characters. “Don’t post AI soft porn for at least one day challenge,” writes one.
Making them wear high-visibility vests over camo is such a good joke you couldn’t write it
This is such an embarrassing way to end a democracy.
I genuinely think part of the current political dynamic is that a lot of Dems -- especially your typical educated, affluent city-dwellers -- simply can't believe what's going on. Even though it's right there on the TV, right there in the streets, it's hard to shake the feeling of unreality.
Beyond parody
Also, Chotiner does this (should not be but is) revolutionary move where he listens to the answer instead of focusing intently on his next question, and occasionally repeats the answer back with a question mark at the end. It is incredibly effective. More interviewers should try it.
"Honey, I don't have much time. I've been arrested by ICE and they are sending me to a detainment center. I love you and the kids, I will be OK, please call our attorney" -- John Shin, DACA resident, speaking to his wife last week. She hasn't heard from him since www.fox13now.com/news/local-n...
one of the ways I've become more conservative is that I simply do not believe the government should be communicating like this, over and above the ideological content
If Obama or Biden had said this, it would be rightfully understood as them arrogating dictatorial authority to themselves, it would be the only thing anyone in the media or opposition would talk about for a year, and it would probably end their presidency. For Trump, it’s literally just Tuesday.
it was the coming of the Time of Glonzo.
I wrote this in response to the 80s AI nostalgia videos making the rounds. I think nostalgia is a mind-killer and it is getting especially bad with people my age who fear change and cling to an idealized past. jasontebbe.substack.com/p/take-it-fr...
Going to be wild to have Clarence Thomas and other members of the court write that even the appearance of impropriety is sufficient to allow the President to remove Federal Reserve members from office, and then head off to Harlan Crow’s yacht
Everything the rich have ever wanted is being delivered, a further weakened labor movement, a gutted regulatory regime, a public sector being strangled in a puddle. The rest was hokum invented by academic scribblers searching for a logical rationale for the rich to be more dominant.
media doesn't have to pretend that every statement from Donald Trump, a serial liar with a long record of proven falsehoods, has to be evaluated in a vacuum.
An M.I.T. study found that 95% of companies that had invested in A.I. tools were seeing zero return. It jibes with the emerging idea that generative A.I., “in its current incarnation, simply isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be,” johncassidysays.bsky.social writes.
I may live in Jersey but I like Connecticut pizza best and think my fellow Garden Staters need to admit the truth.
SCOTUS thought they could ride the tiger and get what they wanted ideologically. In exchange, they would give him everything he wanted except the Fed. Just leave the Fed alone and you can ignore all federal law. But it ended the same way it has for everyone who tried to ride the tiger since 2016.
To put a finer point on it, Pritzker is being presidential in a way Newsom is not. Newsom is doing a decent job trolling Trump for the lulz, but Pritzker is speaking with the gravitas this situation warrants, promising real accountability, with federal, state and local leaders standing behind him.
imagine going to an apex predator's territory and seasoning yourself first. we are literally cooked
a very bleak development in terms of my view of the world in the last few years has been both ‘the Israeli govt is much worse than I thought and deserves an enormous amount of criticism’ and ‘yeah a lot of people geniunely are just low-grade antisemitic’ both apparently being true.
"increasingly feels like" why do so many journalists refuse to analyze Trump's behavior in the context of his other behavior? This guy tried to overturn an election, talks like a dictator, admires dictators, asked generals to shoot protestors, and is sending the military only to blue cities.
Pritzker: Trump looked at the cameras and asked for me personally to say, Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city? Instead, I say, Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. Your remarks about this effort have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties
Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.
Those AI nostalgia videos prompted me to set the youths straight on how much the 80s sucked. open.substack.com/pub/jasonteb...
somehow, Rudolf Hess returned
As far as I can see, the social media age is as cataclysmic to the old order as Martin Luther and the printing press were.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, as well as the century plus of bloody conflict that took place.
Walz: "It boggles my damn mind that in the midst of a military takeover of our cities, the flaunting of the rule of law, that the press finds the need to talk about, 'Oh, there's a division in the Dem Party.' There's a division in my damn house & we're still married and things are good. That's life"
If you want to know how this can go horribly wrong, read accounts of Newark in 1967 when they called in guard units from rural Western New Jersey to patrol the streets during the unrest and they shot a bunch of innocent people because they thought every movement in an upstairs window was a sniper.
I am afraid of what will happen if they send a bunch of people with guns from rural Arkansas into the South and West sides of the city. My impression (I hope) is that these guys are too chickenshit to patrol those places.
Matt 