Matthew Wilson

Oh good, he can recapitulate Bush the Lesser's greatest policy blunder.

Yeah, that was peak Baltimore.

All I really want is old baseball twitter, old Baltimore twitter, weird Anglican twitter, and conversations between humanities and social sciences profs that I can follow. And that's all pretty much here.

Seems like the hysterical "You guys hafta come back to Twitter" posts on Bluesky have sort of tailed off recently, today's outbreak notwithstanding. The truth is that X is a terrible user experience and Bluesky is mostly fine for most Bluesky users, so 🤷‍♂️

Oh, that's funny. I think lots of people with German surnames did that during WWI.

Oh and Frank Somerville was a long-time parishioner at GASP and a long-time religion writer for the Sun. He died three or four years ago.

My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Livingston. Mary was her first name. We might be cousins.

My backyard thermometer reads 32 now, so the witching hour has arrived.

Looks like the eastern shore is going to get both snow and big wind. Joe she stays inside!

It's 9:00 and the snow is barely even sticking to car roofs here in southeast Baltimore. I'm calling a bust.

This is Muggsy Bogues erasure.

I don't often get in a huff about NYT Games, but that Spelling Bee doesn't recognize 'concomitant' as a word is absurd. It's a word! I demand my 15 points 😂

Baltimore: We Try (some exclusions may apply)

There is a venn diagram of "We need to believe that AI can develop a real consciousness," "I now adhere to a truly bizarre health routine" and "I need all the money possible and I need it just for me," and at the center of it is "I am terrified of dying and I don't know how to fix that"

16 so far this year in Baltimore, so we're on track to match but not beat 2025.

Each year Lent finds me in a different place emotionally/mentally/spiritually. This year I'm ready -- eager -- for rupture -- a break with old patterns. It's been rainy and gray in my life for too long. I'm starting with a return to the daily offices at the very least. ⚓️

Seat belts save lives!

Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign marks a historic breakthrough in American politics. It is the first time that a "social democratic" platform has been presented in the mainstream of American politics and attracted significant mass support. The journal- istic cliche was, and is, that Jackson's program is "extremist," vague, outrageously expensive. In fact, as a correspondent for the London Financial Times reported, only in Ronald Reagan's America could Jackson's eminently moderate and sensible ideas be seen as far out. Those ideas, on full employment, health, North-South and the like, are familiar to readers of Dissent, members of Democratic Social- ists of America, and the broad democratic left. They are, more or less, what we have been talking about during the past decade and in some cases the people who articulated them for Jackson came from our world.

His appeal to working people--he is the most pro-union candidate in recent memory- did not always translate into votes but won him very real respect even from many who cast their ballot for another candidate. In Iowa, it is clear that he had an appeal to farm families in small communities that saw few blacks. And, more predictably, he suc- ceeded very well with the new-class vote in the college towns and urban centers. Third, Jackson has broken some racial barriers. Let there be no mistake about it, there was a "backlash," particularly in some of the later primaries. But what is remarkable is that in every state Jackson significantly increased -and some- times doubled - his percentage of the white vote in 1984. When the campaign began, even though I supported Jackson I felt that the racism of the society would limit him much more than it did in fact. And one of the reasons why he succeeded in this area is that his social democratic class appeal reached across color lines, in some cases moving even former George Wallace voters.

Went back this morning and read @dissentmag.bsky.social's coverage of the Jackson campaign in 1988; I think it is Michael Harrington's "A Case for Jackson" that holds up the best dissentmagazine.org/article/a-ca...

There's a bunch of Wiseman films on Kanopy. Well worth a watch. But what a loss.

And we should make it much easier to become citizens, because neighbors who become fully part of civic life make for a stronger community.

Immigration is an unalloyed good, and immigrants themselves are awesome. Spread the word.

I unironically love curling. I could watch it every day.

So glad you're back. Missed you and the kitties.

Happy valentine's day ❤️

And we know from the semi-literate messages in the Epstein Files that "reducing excess population" is a central obsession for our billionaire overlords. But they can't just come out and say that they're trying to off a billion human beings, so they do it quietly. A little here, a little there.

It strikes me that so much of the current administration's policies are quietly about eugenics. Eliminating USAID funding abroad, SNAP benefits at home, health insurance subsidies, science-based nutrition and vaccine guidelines, etc. will all kill poor people.

👇👇

Oh the huge manatee!

My high school is (or, uh, was) pretty badass. Among the illustrious alums are filmmaker Robert Altman, writers Calvin Trillin and Evan Connell, and both H. and R. Bloch of tax preparation fame.