Samuel

unbelievable. way too young. we've lost a giant

You don't have to judge Columbus by the standards of today. His tenure as governor of Hispaniola was so horrific that he was dragged back to Spain in chains to answer for his many crimes.

Plus he never set foot on any land that would ever be a part of the United States of America.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants. Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

“They are beneath analysis.” Kiese Laymon.

Rather than seeing this as a political project, I would suggest it's better to see this as a reflection of an economy increasingly centered around the extremely niche emotional needs of people with billions of dollars to spare...

a reminder that most of the time what appears to be hypocrisy is in fact a coherent statement of values

plenty of things going against the right globally: Bolsonaro's conviction in Brazil, the defeat of the right wing in Norway's election, the student strikes and Saba Saba protests in Kenya (brutal as the repression there was), the EU's von der Leyen pursuing sanctions and trade suspension for Israel

i’m not going to be lectured about political violence by people whose politics is violence

This is class solidarity.

In case you’re at all confused.

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist. Robert Jones Jr.

Seeing this quote floating around today misattributed to James Baldwin, as it has been for years. It was written by Robert Jones, Jr., author of THE PROPHETS, who long blogged as “Son of Baldwin.” I even saw a so-called AI summary attributing it to Baldwin 😭😭

I'll say again, you want to know where your red lines are. When do you use your voice? When do you remove your labor?

I want to note, because the initial article doesn't make this clear, that the professor being taped in the video is calm, clear, and patient with the student. Furthermore, the professor appears to be teaching absolutely basic medically accepted science & history of gender expression.

One of the bitter ironies of American politics is that nobody is more committed to political correctness, in the traditional sense, than the reactionary centrist/classical liberal set. The People can't be trusted with revisionist or deviant sources, which might lead them astray.

have been also learning lately that data centers primarily draw water from public drinking water systems
with huge implications for access, infrastructure quality, cost of buildout, and water rates for residential customers who already usually subsidize industrial use, in addition to capex

This one I do take personally. The custodial staff IS staff. I take them as seriously as anyone else who cares for and interacts with kids in a school. They break up fights, befriend kids, clean up after them and make the built environment reflect the school’s values — how kids see themselves.

Adrian Vermuele laid it bare recently: for the right, “crime” doesn’t mean crime, it means people acting in ways that we feel are socially unacceptable, and that we should be able to deploy force to intimidate.

Firing and demoralizing feminized jobs as enemies of the state while brazenly bribing men with violent jobs that almost instantly puts them into the middle of middle class is very basic gendered warfare. Fulfilling the manosphere’s promise.

My latest in the new edition of Hammer and Hope.

You have more money than God. But you want incentives to do good, moral things?

and if they decide that, at the very least, these futures are not the sort they wish to endorse, they ought to consider what they can and are responsible to do as a school to starve the agency.

The student newspaper.
This fell. To the student. Newspaper.

on the one hand we should want people to change their mind so we can stop what's happening now. On the other hand there need to be costs for the ghoulish behavior that got us here, as these people absolutely will do this again given half a chance

Yale from New Haven says: “This is insanely low, racist, and desperate. Glad to see they’ve just decided to be a tabloid. It sounds like he clarified it well enough with writing in “Ugandan.” Truly insane (and just unacceptable) that this was framed like this. Or reported at all! Who cares!” Jennifer from Oregon says: “Please, please do not do hit pieces on this man who is one of the few sources of hope that most of us have in this country. Just stop.”

PD from Brooklyn says: “This really does not feel newsworthy, when you see he made his best effort to clarify the check-box identity markers he was offered.” Paul from Ohio says: “I’m a middle-aged white dude from the midwest. Not a socialist or communist, and never heard of Mr. Mamdani prior to this mayoral race. But I have to say that the coverage of this guy, including by these reporters, seems biased against him. Who cares what boxes he checked on a college application for a college to which he did not even get admitted? It tells us some things about some people. But none of them are Mr. Mamdani.”

Taylor from New York says: “The media is desperately looking for anything they can use to smear this man. Adams and Cuomo have well-documented scandals that have landed them in legal trouble. How about we focus on the real corruption in this city”

Ed the Rabbit from Baltimore says: “So you got a hot tip from a eugenicist and gave him anonymity in order to "out" an Asian person who was born in Africa as a person who checked some boxes on a form and thereby claimed to be "Asian" and "African American" before he officially became American, in an attempt to gain admission to a University his mother already worked at—and failed. This is not your finest hour.” Robin from Greenpoint says: “Yep. More qualities about Zohran that I identify with. More nuances I see reflected in more New Yorkers.”

Reading through some of the top comments on the NYTs latest story about Zohran Mamdani

To Live and Fight in LA: People’s City Council on the Growing Mobilization in the Streets Against ICE In early June, demonstrations exploded after ICE carried out militarized raids in working-class communities and workplaces in Los Angeles, CA, leading to large confrontations between ICE, the LAPD, an...

"What we are seeing right now cannot be understood w/o recognizing the impact of how organizers responded during the fires in January...the 2024 student intifada, the 2020 uprising...tenant organizing spearheaded by LA Tenants Union, and the mutual aid efforts in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic."

ICE targets Iranian man living legally in Buffalo ICE is apparently targeting an Iranian family in Buffalo who is in the United States legally. Neighbors have rallied to his defense.

Buffalo - For nearly a week, immigration agents have targeted a block on the city’s West Side, seeking to detain an Iranian man living there.

His neighbors aren’t having it. Dozens have organized themselves into rotating shifts to do "ICE watch" @indiab.bsky.social

screenshot of a Facebook post by Corey Robin, which says: "By the way, did you all notice how Zohran made affordability a central issue of his campaign without selling out trans kids or shitting on immigrants? Might be some lessons there. Just a thought."

he's right and he's right to say it

Fox News screen showing Mamdani’s platform, next to a photo of him HOUSING AFFORDABILITY • FREEZE THE RENT • BUILDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING CREATING CITY-OWNED GROCERY STORES • FARE FREE BUSES LGBTQIA + PROTECTIONS LABOR • EXPANDING AND PROTECTING GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE CITYWIDE • MAKING NYC AN LGBTGIA+ SANCTUARY CITY RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE TO $30 BY 2030 TRUMP-PROOFING NYC END ICE COOPERATION ZOHRAN FOR NEW YORK CITY

This is an image maga is posting to stoke fear of Mamdani. A list of things that sound awesome

the reaction to Mamdani's campaign is clear proof that centrism is a reactionary ideology, and has nothing to do with a pragmatic desire to win.

Adding on to this, I'd like to point out that it shows the Democrats are far more interested in suppressing the left than fighting fascism.