Grumpy Lefty Carpenter

Possessor (2020)

logging on

Thems fightin' words! (RE: the bumper sticker, not the post).

If I had explain American history in one sentence, I could do worse than "John Brown was hung for treason, but Robert E. Lee was not."

Totally crazy.

It was an old wrestling injury that did him in.

every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

“We assume that car use is an incompressible liquid that must be routed somewhere. But it’s more more like a gas that fills whatever space it is given.”

—Ian Lockwood, Harvard Loeb Fellow, transport planner.

This is the Antifa 'network' they were talking about.

It's a patch of Pumpkin Kush.

It's so funny that Republicans consistently lay out exactly what the Democrats should do/campaign on doing for the most easily guaranteed wave of victories in history and then the Democrats dutifully refuse to ever even consider it.

One way of thinking about the AI bubble is that it's the final gasp of a grift based on specialized GPU's instead of tulips, a logical continuation from crypto and NFT's and the metaverse.

Like, there's nowhere else for it to go, no other magical use for this shit other than as electronic waste.

Like, there's nowhere else for this shit to go.

Using the magic beans to fuel a plagiarism machine that gets shit wrong, tells people to kill themselves, and seduces kids, is their last best hope for the magic beans they've literally bet all the money on.

if i've learned one thing from doing union stuff while also doing other forms of organizing, it's that you're better off with people you disagree with who are nevertheless trying to do the same thing as you than with people you agree with who aren't trying to do anything

Wasn't even fired, just "suspended indefinitely", which turned out to be 4 days.
Why? It was The Money™ - backlash was going to hurt the future income stream, and more importantly, the stock price. This whole thing illustrates the danger of extreme media corp consolidation as much as anything else.

A series of four images with black text on a white background, containing a long reflective passage about how authoritarianism and oppression gradually take hold unnoticed. First image: The text explains how small, seemingly inconsequential steps—each justified or regretted—prevent people from recognizing the larger process until it’s too late, comparing it to a farmer not noticing corn growing until it towers overhead.

Second image: A colleague explains how each act is only slightly worse than the last, leading people to wait for a shocking turning point that never comes. Fear, uncertainty, and the desire not to stand alone stop people from resisting. Outsiders seem content, and those who sense danger are dismissed as alarmists.

Third image: The text describes how, eventually, a small personal incident shatters self-deception, revealing that everything has changed—society, spirit, and morality. People accept things once unthinkable. Life feels normal on the surface, but principles have eroded. When realization comes, it’s too late—people are compromised by inaction.

Fourth image: The writer notes how friends drift away, meetings shrink, and isolation grows, weakening resistance further. The long-awaited great occasion for mass opposition never arrives. Instead, oppression progresses step by step, each act numbing people to the next. The example is given of Nazi Germany, where atrocities escalated gradually, making it harder to resist at each stage.

From Milton Mayer's "They Thought They Were Free"

I first read it in November and I'm rereading it now. It crushing feeling the exact same things as this academic did. It's the same process.

Looks amazing, and really hard!
Feel like one of those magnifying mirrors would help.

See my pinned post.

David Tennant coded.

01: A girl labeled 'Artists' is holding a drawing tablet and pen under her arm. She is wearing round glasses and a blue sweatshirt. She has messy dark-brown hair and a brown skin-tone. She says "We don't really wanna MAKE A.I. art." 02: A guy labeled 'Art Enjoyers' holds his hand out while speaking. She is wearing a purple and yellow hawaiian shirt with a floral pattern over a white t-shirt, and has red hair and a light skin-tone. He says "We don't really wanna SEE A.I. art." 03: Behind them both, there is a cute girl in a business suit with a pink tie. She is blushing a bit and has pink eyeshadow, and looks upset. Her messy shoulder-length hair is parted in the middle, and held by two hairclips: one that looks like a red arrow pointing down, and one that looks like a green arrow pointing up. She says "Um ... I-Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" She is labeled 'Shareholders'. 04: She puffs up her cheeks and pouts, a tear is on the verge of falling from one of her eyes. 'Artist Enjoyers' Guy is now in front of her yelling "AH!! SHAREHOLDERS-CHAN!!" while 'Artists' Girl is in front of her yelling "WE'RE SORRY WE HURT YOU!!!!"

Hey - fats, protein, carbs, simple sugars...just need some insoluble fiber and vitamins 🙂

The thing about PBS is that LeVar Burton was to me what MrBeast is to kids today.

I'm feeling personally attacked.

If you’re not actively choosing an ideology based on careful investigation then I guarantee one is already winding its way through your soul right now and making you its puppet.

Sooo I was at a coffee shop and the girl in line behind me decided to ask if I’d heard about Jesus.

In the United States.

In 2025.

“I have heard the sales pitch, yes,” I said. “I’m happy with my current religious services provider and not looking to make a switch.”

It's just centrist liberals that use the term, who are basically self-reporting on their own lack of a moral compass. Conservatives used to complain about "litmus tests", esp. with respect to abortion, but now they just call everything "woke".

Let me clarify and refocus the conversation - imo, non-violent change is best, but non-violence as a tactic only works if your opponent has a conscious and acknowledges your humanity, or at least perfomatively acts as such, and there's a plethora of examples where non-violent action would be futile.

EVAN GREER AMAB/ACAB RELEASE PARTY SAT, SEPT 20th AT DEEP CUTS 7pm DOORS. $10 tickets. 18+ Special guests: Brandie Blaze, Time & Place, Josh Kantor, Casey Neil and more

JUST ANNOUNCED! I'm throwing a party to celebrate the release of my new album, AMAB/ACAB on Sep 20th at @deepcutsrocks.bsky.social in Medford, MA.

I'll be playing the whole album with a full band!

Fire lineup spans hip hop to folk punk with BRANDIE BLAZE and TIME & PLACE

🎟️ dice.fm/partner/deep...

And Toussaint Louverture, Simon Bolivar, Ho Chi Minh, and Castro, amongst others, would provide counter examples.

They live underwater in their larval stage for, according to the interwebs, a period of weeks to years even.

"It is so much easier to break things than to build things, which is why, in this cannibalistic phase of capitalism, the easiest and most profitable path to value extraction will almost always incentivize breaking things."