Brian Jenkins
@jenkinsaway.bsky.social
sometime amateur reader of philosophy, software-maker, new music enthusiast
I am once again begging Hollywood to stop using the Greek alphabet for an Ancient World movie, if they can't afford to even throw a couple of quid at anyone with an inkling of the language. Unless they really think audiences are dying to see THS THDPSSSSPS
Monday is the deadline for public comment! The Heritage Foundation has been mobilizing its members to leave comments in favor of the rule change, so every unique comment matters (don’t use a form letter or copy/paste—similar comments are batched and treated as one).
Bethany Brookshire@beebrookshire.bsky.social · 2mo agoThere's an OMB rule change that would require political oversight of scientific grants, and could pull any that don't "reflect presidential priorities" Another country has tried this before! It was the USSR and it was called Lysenkoism. By @thsaey.bsky.social www.sciencenews.org/article/omb-...
Rape is a crime against democracy in the most immediate sense of equality between individuals and the premise that we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights.
reminder: John Woolman was a real American and is right there
Kylie Eleison@gonebabygone.bsky.social · 2mo agoIt’s a really funny runner how every issue in American history that apologists claim “no one” knew was wrong has a corresponding Quaker going “this is wrong”
There’s a remarkable amount of triumphalist, smugly self-congratulatory rhetoric in the chief’s Slaughter opinion. And I’m curious how it’ll register in 5-10 years when it’s recognized as the reason the United States is not allowed to have a neutral, nonpartisan body of experts that regulates AI.
Peak New York. With all of the energy of a real fan, watching this I immediately feel like a New Yorker again If your mayor can't do this, leave 'em
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo agoMamdani's speech at the Knicks parade was easily the best I've ever heard at an event of that sort. I posted the whole thing on YouTube for your viewing pleasure. Highly recommended.
Imagine reading this article and thinking Gender Studies is unnecessary as an academic discipline. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/u...
For His 80th Birthday, Trump Brought a Cage Match to the White House Lawn
nytimes.com
Remember this scene the next time a corporate reporter tries to insist that a rural diner full of white men in their 60s is somehow a more authentically "American" place, somehow more representative of who we are as a nation.
Greg Pak@gregpak.net · 3mo agoKNICKS IN FIVE KNICKS PRIDE BROOKLYN
The leftist that *hates* "bourgeois" art (which basically signifies anything exhibited or performed with the support of institutions, even grant funded) and is zealous about it is most reactionary to the forms of resistance that everyone seeks even under the most brutal oppression. "not like that"
Jay Hulme@jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 4mo agoMy biggest conspiracy theory is that telling working class people that engagement in the arts is a middle / upper class thing and to do so makes you a class traitor is a psyop to make them disengaged with themselves and the world and the beauty of being human, so that they accept worse treatment.
"A culture that cannot see through its images, that literalizes and instrumentalizes them, has already surrendered the imaginative ground from which transformative political life grows."
ACID HORIZON 👁️@acidhorizon.bsky.social · 5mo agoNew blog piece out. A long overdue philosophical and cultural theory approach to Boards of Canada embedded within a conceptual memoir. splitinfinities.substack.com/p/corduroy-p...
Always appreciate this point. "Meritocracy, by design, creates winners and losers. The more rigorous and competitive the promotion system, the larger the pool of losers who do not advance", and "when a leader offers them a second chance..the offer is not primarily ideological. It is professional."
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 6mo agoNew, at Can We Still Govern?: Christian Gläßel and @ascharpf.bsky.social have studied the formation of secret police in other countries. They explain the parallels with Trump's immigration enforcement. The key factor is career incentives not ideology. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-secret...
The real damage comes years later, with elevated cancer rates, leukemia clusters, respiratory disease, cardiovascular failure, neurological damage, reproductive issues. This is chemical warfare, with delayed carnage. Worse than radiation sickness. I am ashamed to be American today. 2/2
If you want to talk about LLMs being of use to people who aren't Musk and Altman and Zuckerberg, you have to talk about *power*, and how others could have it. You have to describe a credible alternative political economy. The bits and bytes don't actually mean shit without that.
These asshole twerps with no brains or education from DOGE really did use ChatGPT to find NEH grants to terminate ILLEGALLY - ruining hundreds lives and destroying hundreds of the greatest humanities projects and partnerships of our time. I’m overwhelmed with rage and anger all over again.
Joseph Rezek@rezekjoe.bsky.social · 6mo agoHuge NYT article on the back story of those two weeks in March/April 2025 when DOGE illegally terminated hundreds of NEH grants. Gift link!! www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...
and also the one desperately seeking an Alcibiades
SMBC Comics@smbccomics.bsky.social · 6mo agoOn the last Socrates joke, like a dozen people told me I should've called his nutritional supplements Himlock, and it just kills me that I didn't. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/athenian PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
Social media created this nonsense idea that not exposing yourself to hatred is isolationist. Choosing to not spend your free time with bigots isn’t living in a bubble. I don’t need to know what’s going on at X. I won’t be smarter or more knowledgeable or empathic by being there. Neither will you.
"Only a fragile rupture, an ontological stutter, separates us from the LLM’s inexorable symbolic drift. The machine is not alien, it is not something from another register. It is an obscene double, a grotesque parody of our own linguistic structure, our own obsessive metonymic chains." indeed
When the Machine Free Associates: Psychoanalysis in the Age of AI - European Journal of Psychoanalysis
journal-psychoanalysis.eu
The Sermon on the Mount, by Beryl Lewis, before 1965, 📸 by @ScottStrazzante
I wrote about reading Arendt in the age of ICE deportations: religiondispatches.org/2026/02/05/f...
The Ferocity of Responses to Tim Walz's Anne Frank/ICE Comments Are Revealing
When Minnesota Governor Tim Walz invoked Anne Frank while criticizing ICE deportations in his state, the backlash was immediate and fierce. Walz, who earned a master’s degree in Holocaust education, s...
religiondispatches.org
"zealots are tugging the strings feeding the id and starving the ego choking the light right out" thanks, Maynard
Puscifer - "The Quiet Parts" (Visualizer)
YouTube video by pusciferdotcom
youtube.com
One of the things about people showing up to protest for the first time, that many, many armchair theorists don't grasp, is the effect of seeing what happens with your own eyes, then seeing how media covers it, and what is said ABOUT YOU by media and political personalities/office holders.
Street Sharks Explained 🇨🇺🇵🇸@gaykwon.bsky.social · 8mo agoThis dude is intense and correct
Faculty Writing | Hannah Leffingwell | "The Dismantling of the New School" | @Jacobin | buff.ly/pBi5RgQ
A few months ago, ICE hired me I didn't sign and submit any paperwork. I almost certainly failed the drug test. I'm real outspoken about my opposition to the Trump administration, and I am extremely googlable And yet, there it was, in plain English. "Welcome to ICE!" My latest for Slate
You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.
What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We're all finding out.
slate.com
Sometimes I wonder: isn't the enjoyment of losing coupled with a faith in the cunning of reason what binds the left together though?
Rebecca Solnit@rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 8mo agoSeems like time to re-up: There's a reason why sports teams don't chant "I believe that we will lose" before a game, a reason so obvious that I'm pretty sure it needs no explanation in that context. Words have power. They not only describe but shape reality....
