Calvin Coon

“Slaveholders, colonial rulers, prison guards and the Shah’s police have all had occasion to discover that when nothing remains except force, nothing remains—period” Barbara J Fields

They spend their time on 4, maybe 5 streets max. And none of those streets house (or unhouse) people they’ve fucked over.

not sure there's a more embarrassing profession than ICE agent. Oh, you dress like a soldier to abduct sous chefs and throw flashbangs at protesters? Get a real job you loser

Exactly. As though the 2016 primary cycle didn’t get ugly between Donny, Marco, and Ted before they kissed and made up.

Screenshot of a Jacobin email of Piotr Dudek’s print of Marx and Engels having a beer, titled “Brotherly Love,” offered for sale as a Father’s Day gift.

For Father’s Day, yes, but so well-timed for other reasons too 😅 @jacobinmag.bsky.social

Boer on the Floor

While we’re at it.

Canvas & Blackboard are now both owned by Private Equity giants in the “data integration space,” meaning they harvest & monetize our identity & intellectual property…& our students’

We should be asking, what do these LMSs do that a $20/yr password-protected WordPress site can’t?

If you make me president of your university, I will find millions in cost savings by force-quitting shady EdTech contracts, & I will spend it all by giving faculty an annual budget to buy course books for their students.

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A classic

Did Brad Pitt write this post?

I read this thread last night, and woke up today and (unrelatedly) read the Wilderness Act of 1964. Defines “wilderness area” under law as “has at least five thousand acres.” The US can’t seem to get over the euphoria and ideology of endless space that gripped the first Euro settlers, I guess.

A reminder that, if you liked what you saw at target in 2021 better, you can always 1. Just re-wear it; or 2. Check out your local thrift stores.
Make June 2025 a Low-Consumption Pride Month!

Can we finally move on from corporations steering political and identity formation

a woman is sitting on a couch talking to two other women . ALT: a woman is sitting on a couch talking to two other women .

The doctrinaire neoliberalism of the Chicago School so far seems to be too entrenched in courts & financial institutions for hallucinatory MAGA protectionism to overcome.

Not only does it teach to read fast, but to get it (whatever “it” is) on the first try. You become a failure if you gotta go back to understand or appreciate it, and doing so years later is out of the question.

Using an elaborated code anywhere to supplement or replace restricted code?

I think it’d be interesting to put that in conversation with Bernstein’s elaborated vs restricted code. For example, if the Bible has lost ground as restricted code (allusion) is that where we see a rise in elaborated code (evangelism, apologetics, debating atheists, etc)? And are literary writers

What’s the different valence of “basement dwelling gamer” as against “immigrant receiving benefits without taxes” and “welfare queen?” Who’s being added to the cache of images to scorn?

I get the same sense in Patton. He tells us the weevils won’t leave enough cotton to sell but doesn’t seem too down about that. Says “you won’t get half a bale,” not himself.

Translation: “some people couldn’t stop saying slurs at work and had to keep meeting with HR over and over and over”

Notably missing “hacks” that disempowered communities actually do to survive: creating and maintaining non-market networks for exchanging goods and services.

Hear me out…an exaggerated version of Derridean double reading: first stable read in the grant application, let (interpretive) hell break loose once the bag is secured

Might work once? Might work just a couple times? But we gotta grow a rose in every crack we can, while we can

We learned from Breonna Taylor’s murderers’ case that you cannot defend yourself.

Are the weevils antagonists to or analogous to Black Southerners in your readings of Leadbelly and ZNH?

That’s fascinating; I’m about to read ZNH for comps, I’ve never read her before.

That Leadbelly line makes me think of Patton’s boll weevil, who “ain’t got ticket fare” to go north. Poor creatures further impoverishing poor humans.

And because precedent is functionally God (or at least holy scriptures), one can transpose “a no to God” onto “a no to precedent.”

I think this is connected to many cons’ rhetorical work to pose queerness as novel, occurring only lately in human history. If a new thing, then it can be posed as the negation of religion (ie Christianity) instead of substantive itself, a no to God instead of a yes to anything else 🤔

Screenshot of Nelly’s Country Grammar album artwork from Spotify.

On that note, graphic design peaked in 2000! The emphasized strong torso + head tilt + implied line intersection between head and Arch, suggesting Nelly is in fact the other half of the Arch and therefore IS St Louis. Genius. We’ve been on a downhill slide in our aesthetics ever since 😔

Need to write a paper on some rappers appealing to being country and comparing that against rappers appealing to being street, hood, etc for authenticity/credibility. Southern rap especially in the early 2000s really repped rurality, what’s going on there?

Interesting; I’m offering a reading of Patton’s Mississippi Boweevil Blues at a symposium in early May, to test out a reading that might go in my dissertation. I’d love to hear more about what you’re doing!