Angus Johnston
@angus.bsky.social
CUNY prof. Historian of, and advocate for, student organizing. @studentactivism from Twitter.
This feels like a good time for me to admit that the split I anticipated between fight/don't-fight and left/right in the Democratic Party has largely failed to materialize in 2026 statewide primaries.
Andrew Lawrence@ndrew.bsky.social · 16h agoif establishment candidates want to start winning primaries again all you have to do is say that rich people have too much money and that youll prosecute trump admin staffers and republicans that have broken the law
think a lot about how even in '12 after going "nah i don't think i will" about a bunch of things people wanted from him, obama still had enough sense to go "fucking private equity, am i right? these rich motherfuckers, am i right? and romney's one of them" instead of "you owe me your vote, peasants"
Andrew Lawrence@ndrew.bsky.social · 16h agoif establishment candidates want to start winning primaries again all you have to do is say that rich people have too much money and that youll prosecute trump admin staffers and republicans that have broken the law
It occurs to me that this is key to breaking down one of the ways that pro-AI and anti-AI people tend to talk past each other. There are things that AI can do *for* us, and that list of things is likely to grow. But I'm not seeing any serious examples of things that AI can do *with* us.
Angus Johnston@angus.bsky.social · 3mo agoThere is no way to do anything interesting in any sustained way in any field without immersion in that field. That's just a fundamental fact of being human, and there's no getting around it.
anyway, if anyone has a lead on jobs for a science journalist/writer who has been a planetarium director (meaning I can talk to the public), please let me know. I am *awfully* broke.
"Culver's is a decent road curd" is a tremendous take.
Shoe@shoe.bsky.social · yesterdayWhat is u doing
The decisive failure of GOP referenda in Kansas Amendment 1 and Missouri Amendment 4 yesterday is yet another reminder of something I've been saying for a while: Voters, even Republican voters, now regularly despise and repudiate GOP attempts to use them to destroy democracy.
Just learned TODAY that Orangina no longer has a US distributor, and hasn't for the last several years. Sigh.
Replaced w/o notice or allowing them to bid with 1.69 million dollar contract to a Virginia LLC weartv.com/news/local/p...
Pensacola’s 'Sewing Box' loses Blue Angels flight suit contract after 43 years
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- After more than 40 years, a Pensacola business says they will no longer make the Blue Angels' ceremonial flight suits.
weartv.com
Small on the scale of corruption, but I can’t stop thinking about this story about the Pensacola ladies who have been sewing suits for the Blue Angels for over 40 years. Their contract was for 127k a year, which basically kept them in business.
Listerine was originally developed as a surgical antiseptic, and didn't start being marketed primarily as a mouthwash until it had been around for nearly half a century.
Rory Blank@roryblank.bsky.social · 2d agoa real advertisement from a 1939 issue of McCall's telling women to put listerine on their heads for dandruff.
"Favorite color" absolutely feels to me like a thing that can either reflect a deep personal preference or a random selection you made in third grade and stuck with out of inertia.
Dawn@502eire.bsky.social · 2d agolegitimately fascinated by this, especially the “apparently” which says to me she’s not totally convinced. the human brain is such a ride
Watched E5 tonight, and the first painting we see at the arms dealer's house is a perfect example of the latter.
Angus Johnston@angus.bsky.social · 4d agoMe when Ride or Die is pandering to someone who is me-adjacent: “Ah. Clever. I see what you did there.” Me when Ride or Die is pandering to me specifically:
Things I and friends have done to calm an angry abusive man from further escalating and killing us or our children: -Smiled -Kept normal schedules in order not to trigger a fight -Appeased with kind acts (cooking, cleaning, favors) -Forced friendly tones and words
The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 4d agoRep. Max Miller: "My former wife has claimed that during a custody exchange at my home that day, I assaulted her…If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?"
I am not usually a "I can tell when someone's lying by looking at video of them" person, but damn. Just horrifying.
The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 4d agoRep. Max Miller: "My former wife has claimed that during a custody exchange at my home that day, I assaulted her…If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?"
Me when Ride or Die is pandering to someone who is me-adjacent: “Ah. Clever. I see what you did there.” Me when Ride or Die is pandering to me specifically:
This is absolutely my experience in spades. The average “resist lib” is extremely happy to see leftists march with them, and lend their aid to leftist work. People who go out and help others are (not surprisingly) much more likely to get along than people who spend all day arguing!
People who like to yell online do a lot of yelling online. People who like to do the work mostly just do the work. We are in a moment of stronger and more robust liberal-left coalition in the US than we've seen in many decades.
Melissa Gira Grant@melissagiragrant.com · 6d agoanyway I’ll be over here observing the actual collaboration across very different political groupings on the left, everyone from the anarchists giving some liberals the vapors to many other liberals, working to defeat the mass deportation regime, which has more potential than we yet know
Don't often stumble across words that are flat-out missing from @merriam-webster.com, but here's a big one: first-timer.
"WE THE FUCKING JUDGE SON" New York, I love you. I love you so fucking much. Via wali_talks on IG
MLB players are the thoroughbred horses of the human world in that if you take your eye off them for a second they will get loose and find some completely novel Looney Tunes way to suffer a catastrophic injury
I would go just for Baryshnikov's Tharp-choreographed Vysotsky solo. But I'd stay for the whole film.
I have purchased tickets, so it is now safe for me to say publicly that White Nights is playing at the Paris here in NYC on September 15, with a Q&A WITH ISABELLA ROSSELLINI.
Angus Johnston@angus.bsky.social · 5mo agoWHITE NIGHTS MENTIONED
The Deadline story on the retracted AI novel begins "The novel by [for a complicated set of reasons I have removed the author’s name]." (That's the piece's redaction, not mine.) 1. That's a VERY weird lede. 2. I am dying to know the reasons. 3. I suspect the name will be public knowledge by EOB.
AI Questions Spoil Book & Movie Heat On 'Call Me, I'll Hide The Body' Novel
That screeching sound you heard from international publishers and film rights buyers was an abrupt application of the brakes after a fevered pursuit of the unpublished debut novel.
deadline.com
If the seven kinds of bars I don't like were each a person, they'd be this crew.
Freakbeat Takeshi@fullykrausened.bsky.social · last wk.We're assembling a team of the weirdest looking think tank ghouls to fight the communist menace.
This was hugely true in the campus organizing world.
Chad Loder@chadloder.dev · last wk.One thing I miss about leftist Twitter in its heyday is the large number of random 400-follower accounts from local activists regularly doing actual activism. Very few of those people made it over to Bluesky, I know this because almost nobody I organize with locally is on here.
Like these are voters in the base, by and large. They’re not illegitimate insurgent outsiders, they are Democrats who would merely like the party to look a certain way. Precisely the same as any other voters. This is not weird or bad, it’s politics
While I’m as much a fan of the power structure of the mainstream national Democratic Party as many of not most of the people on here, I think it would be cool if more people across the board would internalize that voters who like DSA-coded candidates are in fact basically all Democratic voters
