@davidpritchett.bsky.social
Author of Mossback: ecology, emancipation, and foraging for hope in painful places https://tupress.org/9781595349910/mossback/ tracker, disciple of wonder, student of curiosity davidpritchett.substack.com davidpritchett.net
i find this image so fascinating. it is both a literal example of authoritarianism but also a second-hand reproduction of the aesthetics of other authoritarian states. it's like a simulacra of authoritarianism whose purpose is to attempt to make the simulacra real.
staging a show-and-tell about a fake genocide during a real genocide to the government that has done the most to seek justice for that real genocide is designed to break our brains. They know what they are doing. www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/w...
Things only happen cos leftists make them happen (sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-...). Even to the point that far rightists wouldn't have been racist unless, alas, the left exercised their monopoly on agency to make them so. One of the genuinely puzzling features of our ideological landscape!
The response to this piece on end times fascism co-authored with @naomiaklein.bsky.social has been pretty astounding. I'm reposting in case you missed it.
The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. We must build a movement strong enough to stop them.
“If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear.”
She was about to get married; a film about her life in Gaza had just been finished.
10 of her family were killed with her.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
I am reminded of a thing I like to say about lying and it being bad for the health of society
Ron DeSantis is pushing to let employers schedule children as young as 14 for an unlimited number of hours, including overnight shifts.
At the same time, Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would let employers pay kids below minimum wage.
www.orlandoweekly.com/news/florida...
In place of that knowledge is a vastly complex distribution of knowledge labor that demands mutual respect across domains. I express the trust in the roads, mechanics, and manufacturers every time I get behind the wheel of my car.
A lot of things are breaking right now, but possibly most alarming is the straining to breaking of this otherwise invisible net of social trust that is as necessary as the road, power lines, and water pipes. Indeed, it is the implied social contract infrastructure of all of those tools.
I expanded my thread on the Kristi Noem video into an essay here. slowcivilwar.substack.com/p/thats-bait (And yes, I know substack is a problem. Migrating soon.)
I wish people who want to be defeatists would start by defeating their own urge to spread their spirit of surrender. It's not helpful and it's not an accurate assessment of the present or the possibilities. Yes, we're in a hideous crisis. Yes, there's lots to do and lots of people trying to do it.
Trump has rescinded Biden’s Executive Order 14087, “Lowering Prescription Drug Costs for Americans,” which included things like lowering state Medicaid costs for the most expensive therapeutics, reducing Medicare payments for proven drugs, and creating a flat, $2 Medicare copay for generic drugs
Mountain lion, meadow vole skull in a great horned owl pellet, old black bear print, and kangaroo rat among other tracks found this morning.
So pick a trail to follow, and be a bit more tied to the creatures with whom you share the landscape. Stalk the lion and feels your claws grow, your hunger roil. Pursue a deer and feel the antler nubs sprout from your scalp.
open.substack.com/pub/davidpri...
Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias.
He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was ProPublica reporter @josh-kaplan.bsky.social.
propub.li/3DGXECO
I talked with my friends @prisonculture.bsky.social, @deanspade.bsky.social, @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social, and @shaneburley.bsky.social about activism and organizing in 2025 and how we should move into the next phase of struggle.
The bigger question in my mind is which universe does not have is careening toward many crises steered by a plutocracy? Hope is a thing with multiple quantum states…
www.newsweek.com/google-quant...
I don’t have a million dollars to donate like Zuckerberg or Bezos, but as an act of good faith toward our new president’s inauguration, I’ve decided to donate this intricately bespoke suit for him to wear.
We need elders. All of us…
Thinking with woodrats about how to make this place more beautiful.
open.substack.com/pub/davidpri...
PEN International has launched an archive to commemorate the lives & work of the many writers so far killed in Gaza.
It is a detailed honouring of each person.
“I am Nour El Din Adnan Hajjaj, a Palestinian writer, I am 27 years old & I have many dreams...”
www.pen-international.org/war-on-write...
This is not wishful or optimistic thinking on my part because I think a U.S. with a lot more violent insurgency is going to be a bloody nightmare that will harm a lot of people who aren’t rich or powerful.
"What we’re called to ask is why the murder of one man must be described as unspeakable violence, but the systemic denial of life to 100,000 people is an acceptable business practice."
Dom Helder Camera called institutional violence "the mother of all violence".
www.jphilll.com/p/whats-a-li...
Are you a CrossFit guy? I enjoy the workouts, but yeah, every place I’ve been drips with blue lives matter culture.
I went to the preserve by my house with my little one, Tegan, and we took a moment to marvel at this woodrat den. What a magnificent creature to build a structure a thousand fold its own size, which will last decades longer than its own life. Makes me reflect on what structures he’ll inherit.
For @emergencemagazine.bsky.social , I wrote an essay about how trees help us think about time—what we should preserve from the past, what we owe to the future, and how the two bleed over in the bodies of trees.
emergencemagazine.org/essay/dendro...
I’d love to be added as well, if you don’t mind. Thanks for creating this!
Merry Christmas. My ass is staying right here until you give me figgy pudding.
