my social life is much like the roman empire, in that it's diminishing and germanic peoples seem to be running what's left

‘Sally Carson wasn’t writing with the involved intensity of authors whose lives had been threatened, or irreparably damaged, by fascism. Like Michael, she is watching from a place of safety.’ Dinah Birch on novels that tackle the rise of fascism. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Dinah Birch · Born with a Hitler moustache: How to write about fascism

Sally Carson’s dissection of the question that has disturbed the European mind for decades – how did it happen? –...

lrb.co.uk

my sister is so excited about getting her cosmetology license i don't have the heart to tell her the USSR doesn't have a space program anymore

Wake up, workers of the world, a new second-person plural pronoun dropped.

despite all the praise by marxists for The Capital Order I was still surprised at how MARXIST Marxist it is, anyway, great book

Whenever I have like 2 beers in the afternoon and then go back to working on a sewing project I feel like I’m getting in touch with my 19th century seamstress ancestors

Attention Berlin!! 🥔 🚨🥔 get ready for free potato week 🥔 🚨 🥔 🚨 The Berliner Morgenpost is coordinating the free distribution of more than 4 million surplus potatoes. That’s more than 1 potato for every person in Berlin www.morgenpost.de/berlin/artic...

Vier Millionen Kilo Kartoffeln suchen ein Zuhause

Zum 100. Mal jährt sich die Internationale Grüne Woche. Zu diesem Anlass verschenken Berliner Morgenpost und Ecosia tonnenweise Kartoffeln. So können Sie mitmachen.

morgenpost.de

back to the daily grind (completing the unfinished project of modernity)

it's funny when watching US movies or tv shows i used to be like "man, they sure do use food poisoning as a plot device *a lot* in america..." then i learned their food poisoning statistics and it blew my mind. that's just how they live! people DIE of food poisoning regularly in the US. it's MAD.

Otto English@ottoenglish.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Your fact of the day: The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in six American citizens suffers a food-borne illness annually. In the UK, the figure is one in 132. bylinetimes.com/2020/02/28/f...

Abysmal statement from Canada on the illegal US action in Venezuela. It doesn’t matter how much you dislike Maduro, that doesn’t justify a violation of international law and the UN Charter. You can’t call on “all parties” to respect international law and not call out US lawlessness.

Anita Anand@anitaoakvilleeast.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Please see my statement on the situation in Venezuela:

Rubio is claiming that they did not need Congress permission because it was a law enforcement mission. The US is behaving as a global police state, extending its own arbitrary legal decisions to the whole world. This is not a problem just for Venezuela.

In before everyone else posts this classic new year's quote

We’re going to see Home Alone 2 in cinemas tonight and I’m wearing two pigeon-themed articles of clothing

“I find it disheartening that instead of a society that once valorized translators as intercultural communicators and professionals who could uphold a bilingual society, we're flattening culture with AI systems that don't allow for a more organic exchange between languages.”

AI Killed My Job: Translators

Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories.

bloodinthemachine.com

Coming soon in paperback! The Poetry of Class: Romantic Anti-Capitalism and the Invention of the Proletariat by Patrick Eiden-Offe www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2803-t...

More "free speech" in the Times, as "Lawyers for Israel" suggest that booksellers could be criminally liable for selling Sally Rooney's novels.

BBC under pressure over Sally Rooney’s Palestine Action support

The author of Normal People, which was a big hit for the corporation, said at the weekend she would donate money from her work to the proscribed group

thetimes.com

Hanging out and catching up with a friend who is trying to make it in the academic job market atm has revealed to me that academics are the people in the modern word who are most likely to have a legitimate serious nemesis. A reoccurring evil character haunting their life.

There is a GIANT grasshopper on my window. How do I get it to leave. Also, how did it get there. I live on the TENTH floor

Literal Brownshirt behaviour

LorennaCleary.bsky.social@lorennacleary.bsky.social · last yr.

What happens if you don’t do background checks or training for thousands of people and you give them all total authority? ICE has been caught looting and destroying property at Pittsburgh restaurants. They even tried to break into the safes. They loaded food, supplies and equipment into vehicles /

Bad news for Quebecers: I just overheard some clueless tourists look at the Quebec flag that flies from a building next to Brandenburg gate in Berlin and say “oh must be israel”

I’m giving away a signed & framed linocut print of The Mary Wallopers to raise funds for Gaza Go Bragh. www.idonate.ie/raffle/Print... The raffle will be running over on iDonate until the 17th and I’ll cover postage to anywhere in the world. Share with everyone and anyone!

The editors who published this should go straight to The Hague. I mean literally, according to the terms of international law such as it exists.

under late Capitalism we only have working situationships. all meaningful relations of labor have been slowly degraded into temporary exchanges of services just to keep up with your rent

I spent €12 on worthless Weimar-era hyperinflation money

Heidi #Reichinnek sprach heute Abend kurz nach der Abstimmung vielen Menschen aus der Seele🔥 #bundestag #merz #niewiedercducsu

bad news for marxist defenders of Canadian independence. Friedrich Engels writing from Montreal in 1888

hard to describe the kind of freak I am besides telling you that reading this kind of sentence literally gives me a rush of exhilaration

Guy on the train was obviously bothered by my talking (looking at me muttering under his breath) but it was unclear to me whether it was because I was talking about Ernst Meyer and communism/the communist party of Germany in the 1920s or because I have an annoying accent/ voice. The duality of life

Isn’t this simply true? A world where there is less economic growth _is_ a more zero sum world. We can’t avoid distributional struggles when the pie isn’t growing. The already rich and wealthy have been winning these struggles for 45 years.