Nate Holdren

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. "Yes... hahaha... yes...!" he muttered.

Extreme Millennial voice: can we go a few years without a huge disaster

My entire adult life (first voted in the 2000 election) has been a cavalcade of American social decay and catastrophe. At least phones are more powerful now

we are enabling the slow and painful death of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including children. we’ve just been letting Israel commit this war crime for nearly 2 years.

may we never be forgiven for this.

congrats!

This is from @nhold.bsky.social on a number of things but I'm especially interested in the points about the barriers to transforming institutions that currently exist to manage or remediate the harms of the system into something that might be the basis for a critique of that system.

idk if I can connect the dots exactly but to my mind this is closely related to how we should think of practical activity as building democratic popular power in tension w/ the state more than getting the state to deliver. (I'm here basically just aping some of the little Raymond Williams I've read)

I appreciate you engaging my stuff Eric, thanks so much! fwiw I feel my views on this particular stuff are very rudimentary - basically, marxists should take up marxist concepts rather than nonmarxist ones, and when the former don't exist, we should make them. (tbf: 'what's a marxist concept?' idk!)

thread

(“here’s me” voice) here’s me

Recognition of Palestine now is more about attempting to (re-)normalise the Israel's place in the regional order than anything else.

hey bluesky, I wrote this on some stuff I was trying to think through - the heart is my trying to take @pashukanist.bsky.social's analysis of the limits of opposition to the Iraq War and to the Tories in the UK and apply it to the US rn. I'd appreciate if you read it.

bsky.app/profile/jour...

The Future of Revolution, book review and response You should read Jasper Bernes’s recent book The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising. In what...

hey bluesky, I wrote this about why you should read Jasper Bernes's new book The Future of Revolution. (In the 2nd half I nitpick on a few points in a spirit of 'let's run with it in THIS direction, not THAT one'. That matters less, the main point is read the book!)

buttondown.com/nateholdren/...

I am in this picture and I don't like it

A few scattered thoughts on BLS:

Trump would have done better to install a loyalist before the jobs numbers started looking like trouble. The post-revision tantrum and sacking will make it, if anything, harder rather than easier to cook the books without anyone taking notice (1/x)

(please forgive my failing sense of humor)

Situating concrete aspects of social murder and response to it within capital's circuits I want to try something. Specifically, I want to try to situate harms generated by capitalist society, and more specifically, means of responding to those...

hey bluesky, they keep giving me access to a computer and I keep typing on it, I can't help myself why does the lord continue my torment please -

buttondown.com/nateholdren/...

still could! just saying!

Capitalism & Disability: A Symposium on the Work of Marta Russell The modern disability rights movement has been primarily oriented around seeking labor inclusion through the expansion of civil rights statutes. Despite this, few disability theorists have approached…

@avierkant.bsky.social and I also did an amazing symposium on Marta Russell with @kmtani.bsky.social for @lpeblog.bsky.social in 2022, featuring contributions from @nhold.bsky.social, Ruth Colker, Jules, @deanspade.bsky.social & Liat Ben-Moshe

On Marta Russell’s Money Model of Disability A Marxist approach to impairment, disablement, and chronic illness under capitalism

With budgetary attacks on Medicaid underway, it’s a good time to revisit Marta Russell’s money model of disability—a Marxist theory of disablement that explains how even the most neglected care systems become profitable under capitalism.

I wrote about it in 2021 on Blind Archive

chart: capital expenditures, quarterly shows hockey-stick like growth in the capex expenditures of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and meta, almost entirely on data centers in the most recent quarter it was nearly $100 billion, collectively

The AI infrastructure build-out is so gigantic that in the past 6 months, it contributed more to the growth of the U.S. economy than /all of consumer spending/

The 'magnificent 7' spent more than $100 billion on data centers and the like in the past three months *alone*

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sili...

What are they hiding? You don’t get to slam the door on a Member of Congress during a routine ICE visit. I’ve toured this facility before—so why am I suddenly a “security risk”? My team requested permission. They had no right to deny us. They’re clearly afraid of accountability.

The person who invented the video game joystick has disappeared, they down right up and left.

they need to bring conveyer carwash technology to household showers. if i got sprayed with multicolored soap and squeezed between giant felt rollers every morning i think i might be able to face going to my computer job.

Immigration agents told a teenage US citizen: ‘You’ve got no rights.’ He secretly recorded his brutal arrest Video from Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio, 18, puts fresh scrutiny on the harsh tactics used to reach the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement targets

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Comafields / Imaginary Festival, by Burial 2 track album

hey bluesky, I wish a very happy new Burial release to all who celebrate.

burial.bandcamp.com/album/comafi...

Progs & mods lamenting “Congress not doing its job” need to accept that a slim majority of our legislature is fully on board with the executive’s agenda and is very much doing its job to further it. Why the make-believe about a Sleeping Beauty “good” Congress waiting to be roused into anti-Trumpism?

1 like = 1 piece of lore from the MEET THE DEFENDERS comic Marvel would never let me write in a million years, I'm serious, they would literally put the company in receivership rather than let me write a Defenders comic even though it would be so good y'all

Dropped cases against LA protesters reveal false claims from federal agents Revealed: records show border patrol gave inaccurate testimony about people it jailed. Prosecutors now face ‘embarrassing’ dismissals

NEW: Border patrol made false claims about Los Angeles protesters it jailed, misrepresenting basic facts of events that were filmed. I obtained records of officers acknowledging + "apologizing" for errors

The DOJ is now dismissing cases, an embarrassment for Trump-appointed US attorney Bill Essayli

Fascinating thread which makes me feel like I should know a lot more labor history