Jim Pyke

a man in a suit and tie is smiling ALT: a man in a suit and tie is smiling

If #a2council are "fascists," then they're the most ideologically flabby, most conciliatory ones the world has ever known.

And no, Stephen, the "definition" of "fascists" isn't "elected officials with whom Stephen Lange Ranzini disagrees."

Also, regarding ElNel, as always...

Seems bad.

I've seen very disturbing horror movies, so I'm picturing secret black market organ harvesting labs filled w/ ppl of all ages kidnapped off the streets by masked men.
Apparently rather than a horror movie, tho', it's just "America" now.
And it's *illegal* to interfere w/ it if you see it happening.

I love this explanation of ranked choice voting.
The fact that they're using Duplo blocks adds a bonus bit of hilarity because Duplos are Legos for babies – that's how simple and safe RCV is!

On the positive side(?) this video demonstrates that the storytelling capacity of AI is improving.

“No Kings?” But No Direction Either An open letter to the so-called movement…I AM gonna go in on y’all, it comes from love, but that don’t mean it needs to be tender. I wasn’t born yesterday, and I wasn’t raised on apathy. I was raised by Alabaman civil rights activists, people who risked their lives, their jobs, and their safety because they believed that change wasn’t something you wished for; it was something you built, step by step, demand by demand, until the system had no choice but to bend. I grew up on stories of sit-ins, boycotts, marches that were dangerous but disciplined, and strategy meetings that stretched into the night. I was raised to believe that protest is sacred work. So when I see these “No Kings” protests, something in me don’t sit right. I know the spirit behind them. I know the urge to stand up, to reject authoritarianism, to say that no one man is above the people. But y’all got spirit and no structure? Friend, that’s wind. It howls for a moment, maybe rattles a few windows, then dies out. I am not criticizing for the sake of tearing down. Y’all gon’ get this work today.

I am speaking because I was raised by people who taught me that silence is complicity, and confusion is costly. What I see right now looks like confusion wearing the clothes of conviction. I keep hearing that the “No Kings” protests are about rejecting authoritarianism in America. Fine. But what does that mean? What are the concrete demands? What does “rejecting authoritarianism” look like beyond a catchy sign? Protecting voting rights? Holding police accountable? Ending migrant detention?Stopping the erosion of free speech? If you can’t tell me, then you are IN A MOMENT, NOT A MOVEMENT When I look across the country, I see a patchwork. In some cities, the “No Kings” march is tied to Palestinian liberation. In others, organizers insist that it’s only about Trump and his return to power. Some chapters call for ICE to be abolished; others are waving flags and singing the national anthem. I even saw posts online telling people not to bring certain flags, not to make it “about other issues.” But how do you talk about authoritarianism without talking about the people who already live under its shadow, Black folks, immigrants, Indigenous communities, poor people, disabled people, queer and trans people, Palestinians, Sudanese people, Congolese people? You can’t.

And yet, that’s exactly what’s happening. The messaging is fractured because the foundation is thin. People are doing what they want wherever they are, not because they’re bad or lazy, but because no one gave them a clear direction or a shared framework. There’s no agreed-upon set of demands, no theory of change, no next steps. Resistance without a plan isn’t revolution. It’s catharsis. My grandparents’ generation didn’t march just to be seen; they marched to win. They studied power, who had it, how it worked, and how to disrupt it. They had demands: desegregate the buses, pass the Voting Rights Act, open the schools, protect the ballot. Those weren’t slogans; they were battle plans. When they chanted, it was in harmony with policy work, legal strategy, and grassroots organizing. Every action fit into a larger campaign. What I see in No Kings is what happens when protest becomes a performance of moral alignment instead of an instrument of structural change. When people say “we’re saving democracy” but can’t define what democracy looks like for those who’ve never fully lived inside it. When the goal is to trend, not to transform. And, I get it. People are tired, scared, angry. They’re watching the country tilt toward something dangerous, and they want to do something. But we can’t afford to confuse motion with movement. You can march every day from now until election day, but if you don’t have a plan for what comes after the chant, then you’re not building power; you’re burning energy. So here’s my question to the organizers and participants:

Where’s your head at? What’s the strategy after the signs come down? What’s the infrastructure you’re leaving behind in the neighborhoods where you’re marching? Who are you centering…and who gets left at the edges? Because if this is just “Trump No Good,” y’all already lost. The real fight is bigger than one man. It’s about the systems that allow any one man to hold that much sway. It’s about the normalization of militarized policing, the criminalization of dissent, the rollback of civil rights, the silencing of the vulnerable. If you’re not naming those things explicitly, you’re just treating the symptom, not the disease. I want to see a movement that knows itself. You need a north star, that builds coalitions around clear goals, that uplifts the voices of those most impacted by state violence, not just the ones most comfortable with a microphone. If No Kings truly means no kings, then it must also mean no coronations of moral purity. No hierarchy of whose suffering counts. No “unity” that asks the marginalized to be quiet for the sake of optics. So I’m asking… with love, with history behind me, and with the ghosts of those who bled for the right to stand in the street watching, where are y’all going? Cause I wanna come too, but you marching in circles is still standing still.

#a2council
Some tryna make zoning flexible to increase housing equity & make room for more ppl in a job center & climate refuge.
Others tryna limit flexibility to triplexes.
Still others even balk at that.
Maybe harsh to say authoritarianism begins in our neighborhoods.
Maybe still correct to say.

I knew she was a gross-out comic, but this redefines the term in a much worse new way.

Underappreciated reply.

So in other words: mission accomplished.

An entirely true sentence.

I was excited to see that my local public library had a copy on display in their main lobby when I was there this past weekend 💖💖

Proud & privileged to have spent just a little time - mostly in my teen years - in and around Portland thanks to the fact that my dad and stepmom lived there for a while in the mid '80s.

a woman is driving a car and talking to another woman . ALT: a woman is driving a car and talking to another woman .

It doesn't seem like he's "beyond words" so much as being unable to say any words that have any truth to them in any way whatsoever.

This whole thread, tho'
OMG

a woman says " you 're not a lot of fun " in an advertisement for dungeons & dragons ALT: a woman says " you 're not a lot of fun " in an advertisement for dungeons & dragons

Dear Mr. Crockett...

I think you left out a word or two from this headline.
Something like "Falsely" or "Without Evidence".

YouTube video by kristkrst I make Laws - Charlie Manson

I am constantly reminded of this...

$476K contract OK’d to plant 1,000 new trees along Ann Arbor streets See where Ann Arbor plans to plant 1,000 new trees along city streets.

The next time you hear someone say that #a2council doesn't care about the trees in Ann Arbor, please feel free to call them a liar. If possible, please do this directly to their face.

Johnson: a liar, has once again lied.
The law is straightforward and clear.

I think what I found so uniquely annoying about it was I felt it aspiring to be more critically incisive regarding the industry than it ever managed to be because it couldn't help itself from wanting to be liked by people in the industry.
It clearly succeeded at the latter. People like cartoons.

Has it been edited down to 12 pages yet?

Apparently the fact that Bandcamp Friday is trending here is somehow contributing to the Bandcamp site having a hard time handling all the traffic.

The most concise & incisive one-sentence critique of Chappelle you will ever see.

I wish it were less true that having a shit ton of money brings out the worst in a great many people.

It was clear when this was written and still, six years later, no one who could do something about it is doing anything about it.

Bill Burr is interesting because he always seems to be just about to have an epiphany and then never does.

9 minute video that will improve your day by helping you understand some things more deeply

See also:

Click through for a glimpse of why many of us insist that #a2council 's NIMBY appeasement strategy of locking down missing middle housing options w/ a 3-unit limit on the majority of A²'s residential land will not result in anything close to a solution to our housing crisis.
Flexibility is the key!

I think Klein's thinking as expressed here exposes the way in which he (and many others) have - with their influential voices - been deeply complicit in directing the popular understanding of "politics" toward being "a set of power games" & away from being "the process of policy making".