Another Excellent Tiny Desk Concert: WILLOW

On a call ahead of her Tiny Desk taping, WILLOW told me that she “just wants to feel it and be in the vibe.” Many artists worry about having to tailor their music for the space, but if done right, a beautiful synergy can be achieved. With boundless energy and magnetic stage presence, the artist’s exceptional vocal range and musicality left the audience spellbound.

Despite being only 23 years old, the singer-songwriter and musician Willow Smith is a vet when it comes to this music thing. She’s been consistently making music and on a journey of sonic exploration since she was just 9 years old and is about to put out her sixth album, empathogen, in just a few days. Zach Tenorio on upright piano kicks off the show, cueing the first few bars of the jazz-infused, odd-meter vibes of “Symptom of Life” from the new album, later complimented by trippy Ebow effects courtesy of Liso Lee on guitar.

Then, a couple throwbacks: a stripped down arrangement of “Split” from the 2022 album and fan-favorite “Wait a Minute!” from her 2015 album ARDIPITHECUS, which undergoes some mind-blowing bass riffing from Mohini Dey. Dey continues with some severe stank-face on a world premiere of the funky, bass-heavy “Run!” from the upcoming album, locking in tastefully with The Pocket Queen on drums. Closing the set with “Big Feelings,” the band gets busy while WILLOW’s vocals soar, effortlessly teetering between emotive highs and lows, leaving us all wanting more.

— Ashley Pointer | May 1, 2024

SET LIST
“Symptom of Life”
“Split”
“Wait a Minute!”
“Run!”
“Big Feelings”

MUSICIANS
Willow Smith: vocals
Liso Lee: guitar, vocals
Zach Tenorio: keys
Mohini Dey: bass
Taylor “The Pocket Queen” Gordon: drums

TINY DESK TEAM
Producers: Ashley Pointer, Bobby Carter
Director/Editor: Maia Stern
Audio Technical Director: Josephine Nyounai
Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Kara Frame, Alanté Serene
Audio Engineer: Hannah Gluvna
Production Assistant: Elle Mannion
Photographer: Zayrha Rodriguez
Tiny Desk Copy Editor: Hazel Cills
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

#willow #tinydesk #nprmusic

Jump to bottom

189 comments

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 2:39:19pm

re: #103 Randall Gross

FFS

[Embedded content]

Jesus H. Fucking Christ, people. Reactionary legislation like this has never worked out well.

William Lewis May 1, 2024 • 2:42:21pm

From downstairs:
re: #118 Randall Gross

Meanwhile, Sam thinks he’s making Jarvis…

[Embedded content]

Hey Sam? I got a bridge for sale. Cheap!

gocart mozart May 1, 2024 • 2:50:52pm

An outside agitator is caught in the act of trying to vandalize private property. https://t.co/AIU8ZbBBkk

— Edwin Mix (@EdMix13) May 1, 2024

🐈 Crush White Christian Nationalism 🐈 May 1, 2024 • 2:51:54pm

re: #3 gocart Mozart

Attention-seeking. She wants to hold onto the job she’s terrible at.

Randall Gross May 1, 2024 • 2:55:20pm

Molly White reminding us that the web is still really what we make it.
citationneeded.news

EPR-radar May 1, 2024 • 2:58:09pm

re: #4 🐈 Crush White Christian Nationalism 🐈

Attention-seeking. She wants to hold onto the job she’s terrible at.

It’s not really that she’s terrible at the job, since that would imply an attempt is being made to do the job.

It’s that her view of her job is subject to the 100% reality distortion field so characteristic of Republicans these days. She thinks her job is to perform clown shows for the GOP base, and in terms of getting votes from said base, she’s not wrong.

The fact that members of Congress aren’t supposed to be literal circus acts is one of those reality-based things Republicans love to ignore.

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 3:00:13pm

— Charles Johnson (@charles.littlegreenfootballs.com) 2024-05-01T21:58:10.000Z

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 3:00:28pm

re: #6 EPR-radar

Republicans and Democrats agree that their job is to make their constituents happy. Where Republicans break with reality is that they believe “their constituents” is the same group as “people that vote for them.”

🐈 Crush White Christian Nationalism 🐈 May 1, 2024 • 3:01:50pm

Lol.

This Will Ruin My Life and Career’: Cheating Site Ashley Madison Is Overflowing With Sextortionists

Ashley Madison promotes itself as a dating site that helps people cheat on their partners. But newly released consumer complaints filed with the FTC, obtained exclusively by Gizmodo, should probably give any potential cheaters pause. The site is lousy with extortion attempts, to put it mildly.

Gizmodo filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all complaints lodged with the FTC over the past five years, and the federal agency says it located 282 in total. The FTC released 200 complaints, most involving extortionists who trick users into giving them naked photos or having a video chat. The extortionists then turn around and demand money, telling the victims that if they refuse they’ll be exposed to friends, family, and employers.

“She took a screen recording of my face and genitals and they started demanding I pay her or she would upload the video and ruin my life,” one typical complaint from a user in Texas reads.

Most of the sextortionists appear to be asking for roughly $1,000 or $2,000 at first, though that can escalate quickly, even if an initial payment is made.

“A lady messaged me and told me she found out my wife’s name, Facebook, and our home address and is demanding $2,000 or she was going to send the information from my profile to my wife,” another complaint from Arkansas explains.

People who say they paid the extortionists often complain that it didn’t stop the scammers from demanding more payments. And that results in a predictable downward spiral of futility for the victims.

gizmodo.com

Dangerman May 1, 2024 • 3:05:00pm

because of what’s happening to the leader of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Kristen Clarke, right now

she did not lie. full stop.

Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 3:06:35pm

Kate Campbell & Emmylou Harris - Crazy In Alabama (1998)

I heard Odessa’s mind was sick
That she was crazier than hell
The police caught her turning tricks
Down at the Blue and Gray motel
Odessa was the neighbor’s maid
She had ten mouths at home to feed

They bussed her kids to Birmingham
And put her in the county jail
Nobody seemed to give a damn
They say a white man posted bail
My dad said not to breathe a word
I told my brother all I heard

And the train of change
Was coming fast to my hometown
We had the choice to climb on board
Or get run down

And It was crazy, there were grown men fights
Over segregation and civil rights
Martin Luther King and the KKK
George C. Wallace and LBJ
And when the National Guard came in
I thought the world was gonna end
It was crazy in Alabama
Kate Campbell

Dangerman May 1, 2024 • 3:08:01pm

re: #8 Nerdy Fish

Republicans and Democrats agree that their job is to make their constituents happy. Where Republicans break with reality is that they believe “their constituents” is the same group as “people that vote for them.”

i do not agree with this anymore

i think the R’s dont even gaf only about the people who vote for them.
they just care that they vote for them

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 3:09:01pm

Mastodon

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 3:09:09pm

re: #12 Dangerman

i do not agree with this anymore

i think the R’s dont even gaf only about the people who vote for them.
they just care that they vote for them

Oddly enough, I find myself agreeing more with you than with myself.

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 3:18:50pm

from downstairs:
re: #36 darthstar

Please tell me this isn’t a thing…

[Embedded content]

Okay…this was a photo shop.

nines09 May 1, 2024 • 3:18:57pm

Wednesday Emmy Lou.
One of my faves.

Youtube Video

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 3:24:44pm

from this morning…Wiley is the creator of the comic Non-Sequitur - worth a follow for that alone…

Mastodon

I got one reply which I thought was interesting:

Mastodon

gocart mozart May 1, 2024 • 3:43:11pm

The flag was too flacid.

— Edwin Mix (@EdMix13) May 1, 2024

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 3:45:07pm

Now on the Scooby Doo episode of The Venture Bros.

Dangerman May 1, 2024 • 3:45:14pm

re: #14 Nerdy Fish

Oddly enough, I find myself agreeing more with you than with myself.

i have that effect on people //

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 3:55:25pm

re: #18 gocart mozart

She’s no stranger to a jail cell. Arrest her for trying to incite violence.

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 3:56:20pm

so far we have a bike chain, a single broken window, the wife of a guy George W. Bush prosecuted because Bill O’Reilly told him to, and a 63-year-old lady who asked people to calm down

— CHOAM Nomsky 💭 (@thielman.bsky.social) 2024-05-01T22:50:41.441Z

Captain Ron May 1, 2024 • 3:56:24pm

DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Sales Of Lab-Grown Meat, Claims Leftists Are Plotting To Make Everyone Eat Bugs https://t.co/Lys1xzj6DG pic.twitter.com/cQjWSwEdXE

— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) May 1, 2024

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 4:00:11pm

Sometimes, our kids can see things more clearly than us adults. That seemed to be the case in Hanover County, Virginia, this week, where a high school student is speaking out after the local school board “censored” her Gold Award Girl Scout project while they were ostensibly congratulating her for her achievement.
Girl Scout Kate Lindley’s “Gold Award” — the highest award given to Girl Scouts — was given to her to recognize the work she’s done to fight book banning in her community. But the Hanover Board of Supervisors, which has a history of “de-selecting” books, took all mention of book banning out of her personal statement when honoring the four girls who completed projects this year.

Earlier this year, Lindley installed “Banned Book Nooks” into two businesses in the area (Morr Donuts in Mechanicsville and We Think In Ink in Ashland) and created a “Free to Read” website that helps connect people to banned books online. It was all in response to Hanover Schools banning a list of “offensive” books in 2023.

Lindley has said that her project “exposes more community members to these titles, hopefully ending their demonization.”

Four different girls received a Gold Award this year, but when the school board read about each girl’s accomplishments, Lindley’s self-submitted description was altered to take out all mention of banned books.

It’s almost as if censorship leads to more and more censorship.

She read her uncensored paper out loud.

Then the crowd got into calling the school board out, followed by one of the board members talking about porn in schools.

scarymommy.com

Also, she looks like a force to be reckoned with:

DodgerFan1988 May 1, 2024 • 4:02:19pm

Sometimes it’s so obvious what X is for https://t.co/Pd926xzeYM

— Luke Zaleski (@ZaleskiLuke) May 1, 2024

Nojay UK May 1, 2024 • 4:03:09pm

re: #23 Captain Ron

The Pharmacognosy research students I used to go shooting with had a freezer in the lab for specimen storage. They were working on brain-barrier drug interactions and went through a lot of lab-grown rabbits in the process. They only needed the heads for the research though and as you Yanks would say, “There’s some good eating on those critters.”

A typical gag for a new lab assistant was to get them to open the specimen storage fridge for the first time, to be faced with rows of rabbit heads all lined up on the shelves looking at them accusingly.

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 4:06:52pm

re: #26 Nojay UK

“There’s some good eating on those critters.”

The last time I heard a Yank say that was Lord of the Rings.

Shiplord Kirel: From behind wingnut lines May 1, 2024 • 4:07:39pm

re: #18 gocart mozart

[Embedded content]

Should have just sucked it up.

First As Tragedy, Then As Farce May 1, 2024 • 4:08:05pm

re: #25 DodgerFan1988

HOLY SHIT you mean they can TRANSLATE now? whoah

Vicious Babushka May 1, 2024 • 4:11:51pm

Mastodon

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 4:13:56pm

Mastodon

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 4:14:22pm

UT Dallas had a protest today, and it was peaceful until the cops showed up and started arresting kids.

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 4:15:13pm

re: #30 Vicious Babushka

Today Yale Divinity school put up a video with a take on Christian Zionism as a long-running cause of these problems:

Coloniality, Racial Reasoning, and the Imagined Built Environment of Christian Zionism

I’ve only watched the first part of it… Yale is not my favorite enclave of academics, but still a talk about “Christian Zionism” is worth a gander.

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 4:16:19pm

re: #23 Captain Ron

DeSantis Signs Bill Banning Sales Of Lab-Grown Meat, Claims Leftists Are Plotting To Make Everyone Eat Bugs

From a post downstairs:

21st century fascism also exploits the capitalist brain worms that convince people that their identities as consumers matter* by asserting that society’s disappointment are the result of malefic others forcing their way in to exclusionary interests groups. Gamers, people scared of eating more vegetables, people uncomfortable with media involving more diverse characters, are engaging with a purely consumerist “socialism of fools” where the state must act to preserve the ephemeral meaning of their consumption by empowering exclusionary practices.

Only slightly less depressing than “I need the state to reconstruct gender through force of law because I not only have a right to ogle video game boobs, but also a right to ogle of video boobs and be cool and never a subject of observation.”

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 4:23:15pm

another one for the “the george floyd protests represented a social reproduction crisis for the nation’s elites”

— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie.bsky.social) 2024-05-01T13:05:06.809Z

sizzzzlerz May 1, 2024 • 4:26:22pm

re: #8 Nerdy Fish

Republicans and Democrats agree that their job is to make their constituents happy. Where Republicans break with reality is that they believe “their constituents” is the same group as “people that vote for them.”

No. Their constituents are those who pour vast sums of money into their “election” coffers. The money is then used to sway the voters to vote for them so that they can remain in office and repay donors with legislation favorable to their causes so that they will continue to donate more money.

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 4:26:30pm

sugarcreek.bsky.social

Peaceful protest set up at 5 a.m., DPS, Richardson police now on campus tearing down the encampment. News saying Jewish students feel threatened

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 4:27:34pm

Got a text from one of the wine clubs I’m in to say my card didn’t go through (I had it replaced two months ago) for my quarterly shipment. So I called today to update. I asked, “What plan am I on?”
The woman at the winery said, “Three bottles, quarterly - you have in person pickup as your default setting.”
“Oh,” I said…”I haven’t been up the hill in a bit, I suspect I have another shipment or two to pick up.”
She said, “Let me check your account…oh, it looks like you have eight quarterly allotments to pick up.”

Fuck. I wonder if there are other wine clubs charging me 200 bucks every couple of months and just stashing my wine. So it looks like I’ll be driving home from work on Friday via Skyline Blvd since I’ll be over the hill in Palo Alto anyway.

Backwoods Sleuth May 1, 2024 • 4:31:06pm

Mastodon

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 4:31:47pm

@swin24.bsky.social

I can comprehend the impulse by some to compare what’s going on on college campuses now to universities in Germany as fascism was on the rise, but one way it’s different is the protesters now generally want to see fewer women and children killed, while Nazi agitators in the 1930s wanted the opposite

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 4:35:41pm

MTG Cites Antisemitic Fable Jews ‘Handed Over’ Jesus To Be Killed
The example of “classic antisemitism” was her reason for opposing a bill aimed at preventing antisemitism.
talkingpointsmemo.com

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 4:37:10pm

Mellow synth jam…but cute title

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 4:37:18pm

re: #42 darthstar

Mellow synth jam…but cute title

v

Mastodon

Backwoods Sleuth May 1, 2024 • 4:44:09pm

Mastodon

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 4:44:23pm

@emilylhauser.bsky.social

So apparently the do-nothing House has taken upon itself to pass an Antisemitism Awareness Act which would, if made law, codify the IHRH definition of antisemitism. All of that is bad. Very bad. Very, very bad.

Here’s the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which is actually useful & good.

jerusalemdeclaration.org

Antisemitic:

Holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s conduct or treating Jews, simply because they are Jewish, as agents of Israel.

Requiring people, because they are Jewish, publicly to condemn Israel or Zionism (for example, at a political meeting).

Assuming that non-Israeli Jews, simply because they are Jews, are necessarily more loyal to Israel than to their own countries.

Not antisemitic:

Supporting the Palestinian demand for justice and the full grant of their political, national, civil and human rights, as encapsulated in international law.

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 4:45:57pm

bsky.app

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 4:47:03pm

Remember the last fifteen years in which the elite consensus was that queer and Latino and female and Muslim and Jewish students were all over-sensitive when they said they “felt unsafe” when the alt-right was invited to campus?

Because that’s the context of the current people with power doing all this stuff.

Yeah, those Jewish kids are understandably scared and steps should be taken to make them feel protected, but the people answering that fear right now have a history of belittling the fears of other people…very consistently…and I don’t think they’ve suddenly become sincerely concerned.

They’re acting the way they are because this time they identify the threat as from the left. The previous rightwingers were uglier, literally there with no pretext but their ugliness, but were viewed as presenting acceptable alternative viewpoints because they…white people with money…view them as acceptable alternatives.

They have a pretext to hammer down whatever got levered up by people watching George Floyd suffocate to death calling for his mom. This is reinforcing that actually those people in Portland didn’t have a right to self-defense when the cops sided with their assaulters. Everything is fine, there are no problems, we’re going to rule out all the other opinions as terrorism so you don’t make a mistake we have to beat you for.

Keep this in mind, because the timer is now running down on how fast they’re going to flipflop again when it’s the right doing antisemitism but with full institutional backing because the antisemitism is baked into the religion, the racial constructs, and the explanatory structure for why capitalism doesn’t actually reward people.

Well…I mean, flipflopping above and beyond the standard denial-field generator that allows them to not notice that Musk is a cryptonazi running a site that gives ad revenue to a giddy assortment of falangists, eugenicists, and nazis.

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 4:47:17pm

@tomscocca.bsky.social

The New York Times is reporting that the lone non-student the authorities have been able to come up with so far “was not at Columbia when the police arrived on Tuesday night and made dozens of arrests”

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 4:53:06pm

What this appears to mean is that police were called to UCLA campus because of vigilante assaults against peaceful protesters yesterday, stood by while anti-genocide protesters were brutalized, and now intend to take the opportunity to end the encampment and further punish those protesters. Fucked.

— Nathan Kalman-Lamb (@nkalamb.bsky.social) 2024-05-01T23:09:08.063Z

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 4:58:19pm

re: #33 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

Like a great many liberal arts profs/authors, he tends to value the quantity of words…

Anyway, the real meat is in the Q&A, starts around 1:15:00 or so. And watch it on 1.5x .

Bottom line, and this is not new to me but may be to others, is that the rise of millennialism in Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries led to identifying owning land with the promise of god.

Which is a very colonial mindset.

re: #41 jaunte

Of course she does. She’s playing all the bad Christian tropes she can. She’s the ugly side of Christianity made flesh.

Lancelot Link Returns! May 1, 2024 • 5:00:24pm

re: #37 jaunte

Peaceful protest set up at 5 a.m., DPS, Richardson police now on campus tearing down the encampment. News saying Jewish students feel threatened

They felt threatened, like George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse

DodgerFan1988 May 1, 2024 • 5:05:51pm

Both sides now chanting “F***” Joe Biden” pic.twitter.com/Jbt7TU1b9b

— Maven Navarro (@MavenNavarro1) May 1, 2024

Horseshoe Theory

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 5:05:52pm

re: #51 Lancelot Link Returns!

They felt threatened, like George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse

They’re kids dude; they do feel threatened.

Shit, I can remember being that age and feeling threatened by all kinds of agitation and yelling, and didn’t have to negotiate the kind of semantic overlap these kids are dealing with.

The problem lies in what people with power…which the students do not have regardless of which side they’re on, look at what happened with the alt right years ago…are using that fear as a pretext for something they want to do anyway.

As Bouie said above, this is a crisis of social reproduction: people whose power emanates from the status quo are once again panicking that the youth aren’t settling down and confirming their worldview by echoing it back them.

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 5:08:41pm

Scorching temperature take over parts of South and South-East Asia | The World

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 5:09:11pm

re: #52 DodgerFan1988

[Embedded content]

Horseshoe Theory

The Horseshoe is an artefact of “the center” fucking up so bad that people need an entire alternative explanatory structure to feel anything other than desperation and alienation.

It exists, but it means the exact opposite of what centrists think it means.

teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 5:09:36pm

re: #35 The Ghost of a Flea

This Is How Power Protects Itself | The Nation

A Cranky One May 1, 2024 • 5:10:53pm

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:13:03pm

re: #9 🐈 Crush White Christian Nationalism 🐈

Oh, you mean THIS Ashley Madison site—the site that named Tooty Frooty Newty as The Adulterer Of The Century?

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 5:14:25pm

Like, centrists can just be dismissive when leftists turn up because it’s utopian in nature. I’m one of them, with my material conditions and my distrust of hierarchical structure yadda yadda; we’re always going to be challenging, so much so that we become a drone in the background.

But when fascists turn up that’s the red “You fucked up so bad people need to believe in space lasers and the Illuminati to explain why society sucks, and want to fix things with magic and revenge because you couldn’t keep the bezzle going” light blinking at a faster and faster rate.

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 5:14:35pm

re: #52 DodgerFan1988

I wonder if this is the start of something bigger.

Or if it will peter out.

My gut feelings are not so great on these things… I think I’m at the age where I am more concerned about my developing arthritis…

TXY2Y290dHhQaFhXLzcyLzlYbVZtd2xPTGZtenVjSmgwZ01jZHo4QnY3RHAyVk5IWG5oZnowa1JvZ2YzendHek5hUExBSVJqMkM2d25wSXhoWGYvREtibXFUNVVSTDRGdjVGVWR2emVoYkFRMERpZGJPdGhYWTFjWHR0bjJxQy9XUUg1bVVUWUIzTnlCZGhLVDhNcWtseXdPbkVubnhQM1hndGJ1QnFoSzNlcTgxOUs4WVB0NVBvVi9hNG9kUFhwSlQ5Zk9hMm9oeXhlVmlSMTk0VU5qdz09Ojo4rEaMXLC3nxOQ03OEPB7r

Anyway, I see the Dems benefitting from the abortion backlash, but failing on so many other fronts that can motivate people to vote for them.

Herein is the problem: Donald Trump can win.

Even if he is behind bars.

Then what?

gocart mozart May 1, 2024 • 5:17:16pm

💥 https://t.co/oJIc8cEUkF

— Edwin Mix (@EdMix13) May 1, 2024

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 5:19:00pm

re: #53 The Ghost of a Flea

When I was in college in 1989, friends of mine set up a cardboard encampment on the quad to see what it felt like to be homeless and to raise awareness during spring break. A cold front decided to come through and it was freaking cold and I wimped out.

And half way though the week, a jock pulled a knife on the group while I was talking to my friends because of something.

EPR-radar May 1, 2024 • 5:19:08pm

re: #51 Lancelot Link Returns!

They felt threatened, like George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse

The Powers That Be are using legitimate concerns of Jewish students as an excuse to purge equally legitimate protests against US complicity in Israeli excesses in Gaza.

I’m sure there are a few Ben-Gvir types among these Jewish students that welcome this fascist development and deserve to take heat for that support. But the rest don’t.

A Cranky One May 1, 2024 • 5:19:42pm

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 5:21:20pm

re: #55 The Ghost of a Flea

So you think the reason the Right wants a dictator is because things are messed up?

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 5:22:41pm

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 5:23:52pm

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 5:24:28pm

re: #67 darthstar

[Embedded content]

Oh, no. I 100% guarantee they did that intentionally.

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:24:33pm

RIP Duane Eddy.

The man whose guitar licks brought Peter Gunn to life crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

variety.com

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 5:25:51pm

Erin Biba erinbiba.bsky.social

If your anti-bigotry bill has bipartisan support, and one half of those supporters are self-proclaimed, full-throated, unashamed white supremacists, maybe you should ask yourself if your bill is actually anti-bigotry.

geoffrey @parsnip.bsky.social

the federal government, led by an ascendant explicitly white christian nationalist faction in control of one of the two major parties, producing a legally enforceable definition of antisemitism is one of the worst things i can imagine for american jews, and the congress just passed precisely that

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 5:28:27pm

good freaking grief

— Charles Johnson (@charles.littlegreenfootballs.com) 2024-05-02T00:23:55.000Z

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:30:08pm

re: #71 Charles Johnson

Charles I thought the JDL went inactive after Irv Rubin committed suicide.

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 5:30:29pm

re: #65 Belafon

So you think the reason the Right wants a dictator is because things are messed up?

My albeit simple take is that in times of distress the “right” leaning folk tend more towards wanting a strong-man than other folk do.

In that Yale video I posted, the speaker in the Q&A mentions that the deal a state makes with its citizens is that the state will protect you, but then demands your children as payment.

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 5:30:31pm

“…Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday it “was a beautiful thing to watch” New York police officers raiding a Columbia University building occupied by pro-Palestinian students, and called on officials to crack down on campus protests across the United States.”
reuters.com

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 5:31:06pm

re: #52 DodgerFan1988

[Embedded content]

Horseshoe Theory

Expect this to escalate with help from the usual suspects in the GOP. Comer and Jordan may even have committee investigations of Joe Biden’s involvement in the campus protests.

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 5:31:16pm

re: #72 Joe Bacon ✅

Charles I thought the JDL went inactive after Irv Rubin committed suicide.

Apparently not - somebody replied that they showed up at UCLA with JDL flags.

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 5:31:30pm

“New York was under siege last night,” Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, praising the police officers for arresting about 300 protesters at Columbia and City College of New York who he referred to as “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers.”

Sleepy Don wants to have them shot.

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 5:32:01pm

re: #74 jaunte

“…Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday it “was a beautiful thing to watch” New York police officers raiding a Columbia University building occupied by pro-Palestinian students, and called on officials to crack down on campus protests across the United States.”
reuters.com

The more violence and chaos is in the news, the better it is for him as he’s running on a campaign of hate.

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:32:07pm

re: #75 darthstar

Expect this to escalate with help from the usual suspects in the GOP. Comer and Jordan may even have committee investigations of Joe Biden’s involvement in the campus protests.

We know that’s coming. No doubt the usual assholes at FAUX, OANN & Newsmax will beat the impeachment drum over this.

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 5:34:04pm

re: #78 darthstar

The more violence and chaos is in the news, the better it is for him as he’s running on a campaign of hate.

I will not be surprised if next Trump directs his followers to go to these protests and “rough them up”.

Well… maybe they already have, given the support for Trump that exists in some police forces.

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 5:35:13pm

Great. Proud Boys, tons of neo-Nazi groups, MAGA shitheads everywhere, and now the JDL is back. Just what we fucking need.

teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 5:37:05pm

Shit’s gonna get a lot more weird before it gets better. I’m hoping for a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel ousting their current psycho government posthaste.

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 5:38:25pm

Mastodon

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 5:39:43pm

The Republican Party has a big interest in making shit worse, as bad as possible.

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:41:14pm

re: #76 Charles Johnson

Apparently not - somebody replied that they showed up at UCLA with JDL flags.

DAMN. I remember how fucking obnoxious Irv Rubin was especially during the Clinton impeachment. He was on every damn right wing station demanding Clinton’s arrest for immorality. If only Larry Flynt released the dirt he allegedly had on Rubin.

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 5:41:42pm

re: #84 Charles Johnson

The Republican Party has a big interest in making shit worse, as bad as possible.

How long until we learn that prominent Republicans, like Elise Stefanik, were pressuring university boards to “do something” about the protestors on their campuses, perhaps with threats of dragging them before a Congressional inquiry if they didn’t?

Lancelot Link Returns! May 1, 2024 • 5:42:04pm

re: #55 The Ghost of a Flea

When i think of “horseshoe theory” I’m thinking of Bob Avakian’s homophobia
I’m thinking of lefty Putin supporters
I’m thinking of the rich kids at Jacobin Magazine
I’m thinking of Glen fucking Greenwald

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 5:42:16pm

re: #84 Charles Johnson

The Republican Party has a big interest in making shit worse, as bad as possible.

Sad but true.

The current GOP has pretty much no embodiment of what the likes of Ike and N. Rockefeller embraced.

The current GOP has become the basket into which so many bad things have collected, as more or less a front for those with ill-will.

That one of the two major parties has gone so far off the rails is troubling.

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:43:19pm

re: #86 Nerdy Fish

How long until we learn that prominent Republicans, like Elise Stefanik, were pressuring university boards to “do something” about the protestors on their campuses, perhaps with threats of dragging them before a Congressional inquiry if they didn’t?

Oh we know that’s what those motherfathers have been up to.

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:44:48pm

re: #88 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

Just wait till the Libertarian Party decides to nominate Trump as their candidate just like the California American Independent Party did in 2016.

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 5:44:59pm

re: #78 darthstar

The more violence and chaos is in the news, the better it is for him as he’s running on a campaign of hate.

Exactly, he wants it to get worse, so he’ll say whatever it takes to make that happen. If his brain hasn’t turned into cream cheese yet and he can follow directions.

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:46:19pm

re: #91 Charles Johnson

And we can count on the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press to go all in with shutting down the campus protests just like they shut down Occupy.

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 5:46:45pm

re: #92 Joe Bacon ✅

And we can count on the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press to go all in with shutting down the campus protests just like they shut down Occupy.

And BLM.

Unabogie May 1, 2024 • 5:48:21pm

Mastodon

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 5:48:46pm

Biden needs to make a significant break with the Netanyahu regime. This is damaging, and it’s not worth it, from any ethical or moral standpoint.

He could at the very least change US support in some way, so we’re not directly fucking paying for the goddamned bombs. Increase humanitarian aid by a proportional amount. Hey, there’s a concept.

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 5:52:12pm

Let’s check in with Cuckoo For Cocoa Puffs running mate!

RFK Jr.’s Running Mate Parrots Right-Wing Talking Points About Abortion

thedailybeast.com

Nicole Shanahan says in a new podcast that most women considering an abortion would not go through with it if they were provided the necessary resources.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate Nicole Shanahan weighed in on the pair’s stance on abortion rights in a new podcast, declaring that Kennedy believes “every abortion is a tragedy” while insisting that most women considering an abortion would not go through with it if they were provided the necessary resources.

Shanahan was interviewed by former ESPN anchor Sage Steele for thea May 1 episode of her weekly podcast, the Sage Steele Show. During the conversation, Steele brought up a discussion she said she had with RFK Jr., in which he allegedly said he supported a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy up until the moment of birth.

“That is not Bobby’s position as I understand it,” Shanahan responded. “My understanding with Bobby’s position is that every abortion is a tragedy, is a loss of life. My understanding is that he absolutely believes in the limits on abortion.”

She went on to say that her running mate only thinks women should feel like it’s their choice—not that it actually should be.

“If you’re forcing a woman to have a baby, that is a very painful situation for that woman to be in,” she said. “What you need to do is create an environment in which that woman realizes this is a beautiful opportunity to become a mom and to welcome a new life into this world, and that it is the most sacred, wonderful thing.”

“I think that’s what Bobby means,” she added, ” I think Bobby means it should always feel like you are moving into this moment on your own accord.”

…even when a 10 year old girl is raped, RIGHT NICOLE? RIGHT????

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 5:55:23pm

Entrenched power will always fear and suppress demographic change.

teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 5:55:29pm

re: #82 teleskiguy

Shit’s gonna get a lot more weird before it gets better. I’m hoping for a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel ousting their current psycho government posthaste.

The Netanyahu coalition (with the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir in the government, that dude is a fucken goon) was already on super shaky ground with their plan to overhaul and weaken the judiciary. There were huge street protests every weekend in Tel Aviv, hundreds of thousands marching the streets in opposition to the Netanyahu government.

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 5:57:56pm

re: #95 Charles Johnson

Biden needs to make a significant break with the Netanyahu regime. This is damaging, and it’s not worth it, from any ethical or moral standpoint.

He could at the very least change US support in some way, so we’re not directly fucking paying for the goddamned bombs. Increase humanitarian aid by a proportional amount. Hey, there’s a concept.

Agree, and we can also watch Hamas attack it.

100

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 5:59:24pm

So Jerry Seinfeld is like “Everyone’s so punitive they killed free speech you can’t even do comedy anymore” while his wife hires vigilante anti-Palestinian goons to beat the shit out of campus protesters? Cool cool cool

— Jesse Myerson (@jessemyerson.bsky.social) 2024-05-02T00:47:01.190Z

101

🐈 Crush White Christian Nationalism 🐈 May 1, 2024 • 5:59:39pm

re: #96 Joe Bacon ✅

She said “most,” which might even be true, as in more than 50%, if the support was large enough.

If having and raising kids was financially advantageous rather than incredibly expensive, a lot more women would feel like they’re in a position to do so, rather than feeling like their existing family will go hungry because of the increased expenses.

You still can’t force women to have babies, and Republicans would never actually go for supporting pregnant women so they can become mothers if they want to.

102

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:01:37pm

UCLA students describe violent attack on Gaza protest encampment: ‘It was terrifying’

— Unofficial Guardian (World) Bot (@guardian-world-rss.bsky.social) 2024-05-02T00:05:54.593332+00:00

103

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 6:01:58pm

re: #100 goddamnedfrank

The way I hear the story, dude, is that the Israeli supporters put up a screen showing October 7th, then a group of Palestinian supporters tried to tear it down and beat a girl, and you’re going to get onto the Israeli supporters for retaliating?

104

Patricia Kayden May 1, 2024 • 6:05:59pm

re: #10 Dangerman

I disagree. We’re not dumb. We’ve heard Republicans say over and over that Roe needs to be overturned. We should have elected Secretary Clinton after seeing how McConnell stopped President Obama from getting Garland on SCOTUS.
Purity ponies allowed Trump to win and here we are. Saying that Conservative justices lied is kind of silly when we’ve seen the restrictions Republicans have placed on abortion for decades.
Rant over.

105

Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 6:10:50pm

re: #103 Belafon

The way I hear the story, dude, is that the Israeli supporters put up a screen showing October 7th, then a group of Palestinian supporters tried to tear it down and beat a girl, and you’re going to get onto the Israeli supporters for retaliating?

The guy with the club and the hockey mask is almost always the good guy. Watch a movie.

106

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:10:59pm

Remember this photo from earlier today?

A retired teacher saw inspiration in Columbia’s protests. Eric Adams called her an outside agitator | AP News

apnews.com

— Charles Johnson (@charles.littlegreenfootballs.com) 2024-05-02T01:10:10.000Z

107

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:11:53pm

I’m beginning to get irritable about deliberate propaganda being posted in LGF comments, tbh.

108

austin_blue May 1, 2024 • 6:12:08pm

re: #4 🐈 Crush White Christian Nationalism 🐈

Attention-seeking. She wants to hold onto the job she’s terrible at.

Lauren isn’t making it out of the primaries. Dead candidate walking.

109

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 6:12:29pm

re: #103 Belafon

The way I hear the story, dude, is that the Israeli supporters put up a screen showing October 7th, then a group of Palestinian supporters tried to tear it down and beat a girl, and you’re going to get onto the Israeli supporters for retaliating?

LOL, is that what you heard, dude?

110

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 6:12:52pm

If you’ve got a little spare money, you can by a rece tly decommissioned supercomputer:

On Tuesday, the US General Services Administration began an auction for the decommissioned Cheyenne supercomputer, located in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The 5.34-petaflop supercomputer ranked as the 20th most powerful in the world at the time of its installation in 2016. Bidding started at $2,500, but it’s price is currently $27,643 with the reserve not yet met.

The supercomputer, which officially operated between January 12, 2017, and December 31, 2023, at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, was a powerful (and once considered energy-efficient) system that significantly advanced atmospheric and Earth system sciences research.

arstechnica.com

111

teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 6:13:33pm

re: #106 Charles Johnson

The one that Shropshire Slasher posted without comment that there were terrorists, from a story he posted from the fucken New York Post?

I don’t recall, sir.

112

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 6:14:01pm

re: #95 Charles Johnson

Biden needs to make a significant break with the Netanyahu regime. This is damaging, and it’s not worth it, from any ethical or moral standpoint.

He could at the very least change US support in some way, so we’re not directly fucking paying for the goddamned bombs. Increase humanitarian aid by a proportional amount. Hey, there’s a concept.

But that is probably not possible.

US aid to Israel is part of the funding bills that Congress passes.

Trump was impeached for trying to deny Ukraine of the aid it was given by law.

I think the best Biden can do is make a public statement that the US-Israeli relationship is being damaged to the point that if the Israeli government does not change then the rift may become irrevocable.

Some people may wince at the US meddling in another country’s internal affairs, but I think Biden will be right to take such a public stand.

113

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:14:56pm

re: #111 teleskiguy

I think that was it, if my memory hasn’t failed me.

114

teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 6:21:58pm

re: #113 Charles Johnson

I read the comments here, to a fault. It’s weird knowing I’ve been reading the comments here for 20 years.

115

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:22:16pm

re: #103 Belafon

Yeah, all they did was put up a giant screen that played all night with images of graphic violence, as if the people in the encampment somehow were responsible for it, and then in the morning those people tried to take the giant screen down, so the brave inoffensive patriots beat them with bats and steel pipes. What’s the big deal anyway?

116

First As Tragedy, Then As Farce May 1, 2024 • 6:23:11pm

re: #112 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

I think the best Biden can do is make a public statement that the US-Israeli relationship is being damaged to the point that if the Israeli government does not change then the rift may become irrevocable.

This might actually work if half the country didn’t think Israel was crucial to their End Times fantasies.

117

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 6:25:02pm

re: #116 First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

This might actually work if half the country didn’t think Israel was crucial to their End Times fantasies.

See my previous posting of the Yale video.

There is never, IMO, a good ending to anyone who claims “god told me to do this”.

It’s just a bad way of human-thought.

118

Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 6:26:40pm

re: #117 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

See my previous posting of the Yale video.

There is never, IMO, a good ending to anyone who claims “god told me to do this”.

It’s just a bad way of human-thought.

The Dauphin is on line 3 from Rheims.

119

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 6:26:58pm

re: #118 Decatur Deb

The Dauphin is on line 3 from Rheims.

Joan of Arc was unavailable for comment.

120

🐈 Crush White Christian Nationalism 🐈 May 1, 2024 • 6:28:20pm

Doctor Who will be back in 9 days.

Stars of ‘Doctor Who’ talk hit Disney+ series

121

TedStriker May 1, 2024 • 6:29:26pm

re: #65 Belafon

So you think the reason the Right wants a dictator is because things are messed up?

TBH, they don’t need any reason other than power and dominion over all others.

122

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 6:30:05pm

re: #65 Belafon

So you think the reason the Right wants a dictator is because things are messed up?

Not a hard yes…but yes?

(I’m suddenly self-conscious of how much I’m writing these days.)

There are real problems right now, and most of those problems are systemic in ways that there’s not really a clean culpability, or where the system with which we live—capitalism—so incentivizes the problem that clearing out the culprits just makes room for new perpetrators. People are both alienated socially and in precarity economically, and conservatism does not allow for the possibility that these outcomes are logical endpoints of the base assumptions of the systems they value.

Dictators in general are appealing because they piggyback on the mystique of a True Monarch that can get shit done by virtue of their inherent superiority. The conceit is that they can cut various Gordian Knots inherent to governance…this is technically true but misses a larger point that “ignoring all forms of expertise and testing to implement policy created on impulse, guided by goons positioned for their loyalty” is not really efficient unless your goal is for government to simply rake in value and distribute among the dictator’s drinking buddies.

(This is why the Leninist idea of a vanguard produced a Stalinist gangster state: the theoretical framework doesn’t matter compared to the reality of where power lies…ever…including when the framework is a justification of monarchy.)

In the case of the US, I’d say there’s very much as Foucault’s Boomerang thing happening: we’ve spent a century prescribing dictators to the world as a solution for systemic problems; it was our alternative to the Red Menace, and there was an explicit quasi-utilitarian, paternalistic, argument that all those other people must be protected from exercising democracy the wrong way, and that anyone that advocated for more social democracy and less private ownership was sinister and deserving of punishment.

Reagan made it into an axiom that the left within the nation should be viewed as either childlike or sinister for the advocacy of collective uplift, and in the years since the argument applied abroad has been applied domestically. With Trump, we are watching a natural continuation of that logic—helped along by the normalization of conspiracist frameworks to make Democrat president illegitimate but also to justify a war of both retaliation and (attempted) plunder—to it’s logical endpoint: America is so riddled with “woke” or “leftism” or “Cultural Marxism” that we need a paternalistic all-powerful leader to punish the wicked and uplift the good…the conservative…exclusively.

123

teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 6:30:32pm

It used to be hard to get an LGF account. Charles would open registration and close it whenever. I still remember when I caught an open registration window, in my non-trad student college apartment on campus at then Western State College in Gunnison, CO. Late December 2008. I’d been daily visiting the site for four or so years by then. I first heard about Little Green Footballs on Matt Drudge’s Sunday night radio show where he interviewed Charles. I heard the interview at work at a restaurant at the base of the Steamboat ski area.

A little background.

124

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 6:31:09pm

Shawn Fain: May Day 2028 Could Transform the Labor Movement—and the World

The UAW President is calling on unions everywhere to align their contract expiration dates for mass impact.

inthesetimes.com

Oh my Wobblie Great Grandpa would love it all the unions synchronized their contracts to expire on the same day!

We are fully preparing to strike on May Day 2028, which is critically important for several reasons.

The first is that, to reshape the economy into one that works for the benefit of everyone — not just the wealthy — we need to reclaim our country’s history of militant trade unions that united workers across race, gender and nationality.

Now, about 138 years later, May Day is celebrated as an official holiday in countries from Argentina to South Africa to Sweden to Hong Kong, just about everywhere — except its country of origin.

That’s not a coincidence. The billionaire class and their political lackeys have done everything they can to white out the true history of the working class in our country.

We wanted to ensure our contracts expired at midnight on April 30, 2028, not as a symbolic gesture, but as a rallying cry. We’ve asked other unions to join us in setting their contract expiration dates to May Day 2028 in hopes the labor movement can collectively aspire to building the power needed to change the world.

We form unions in our workplaces because we know we have far more power together than we do as individuals. What is true for workers in one workplace is true for workers across all workplaces. When unions organize together across industries and countries, our power is exponentially amplified. The fact is: without workers, the world stops running.

If working people are truly going to win on a massive scale — truly win healthcare as a human right, win pensions so everyone can retire with dignity, win an improved standard of living and more time off the clock so we can spend more of our time with our family and friends — then unions have to start thinking bigger.

There’s been talk about a ”general strike” for as long as I’ve been alive. But that’s all it has been: talk.

If we are serious about building enough collective power to win universal healthcare and the right to retire with dignity, then we need to spend the next four years getting prepared.

A general strike isn’t going to happen on a whim. It’s not going to happen over social media. A successful general strike is going to take time, mass coordination, and a whole lot of work by the labor movement.

As working people, we must come together. We can no longer allow corporations, politicians and borders to divide us.

It’s time we reclaimed May Day for the working class.

That’s what our May Day contract expiration is all about.

125

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:32:59pm

re: #124 Joe Bacon ✅

Shawn Fain rocks.

126

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:34:24pm

re: #123 teleskiguy

I remember after doing that Drudge show thinking, “Man that was a weird motherfucker.”

127

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 6:34:30pm

Follow the money, folks!

Follow the money!

Jessica Seinfeld and Bill Ackman Fund Pro-Israel Counterprotests at Colleges

The cookbook author and the billionaire culture warrior have publicly put up cash for controversial campus counterprotests.

Jessica Seinfeld, cookbook author and wife to comedian Jerry Seinfeld, is funding a pro-Israel counterprotest at UCLA—where violence broke out Tuesday night after a mob attacked demonstrators inside a pro-Palestine encampment.

A GoFundMe for the effort, which Seinfeld promoted in an Instagram story this week after contributing at least $5,000, has since made the majority of its donations anonymous. The fundraising page has raised more than $93,000 as of Wednesday and also changed its organizer name and description since launching over the weekend.

The Daily Beast left messages for reps for the Seinfelds.

“I just gave to this GoFundMe to support more allies like yesterday’s at UCLA,” Seinfeld wrote this week. “More cities are being planned so please give what you can. Donations are annonymous [sic]. We will continue to share our light and love, as proud American Jews.”

It’s unclear whether Seinfeld coordinated with the GoFundMe to make donations anonymous after they’d been public earlier in the week. Nor is it clear whether supporters or organizers of this fundraiser were among the 100 or so counterprotesters, some wearing masks, who ripped down barricades or tossed objects including fireworks into the camp opposing Israel’s war on Gaza.

Still, it hasn’t stopped X users from roasting Seinfeld.

One observer, who shared video of a mob violently attacking the encampment, wrote, “Jessica Seinfeld must be elated seeing her 5k donation come to fruition.”

A University of California president parody account posted that campus cops were “ready to step in and continue the assault once the counterprotesters tuckered out but Jessica Seinfeld’s Zelle payments kept their fighting spirits high into the wee hours!”

thedailybeast.com

128

Nerdy Fish May 1, 2024 • 6:35:56pm

re: #124 Joe Bacon ✅

That is a boss-ass move, and I am here for it.

129

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 6:36:50pm

re: #127 Joe Bacon ✅

Unfortunately that just plays into the trope of Jewish money being the root of all evils.

130

Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 6:37:18pm

re: #126 Charles Johnson

I remember after doing that Drudge show thinking, “Man that was a weird motherfucker.”

Pretty much every time I did a right wing radio show I thought that same thing. It never felt right.

131

Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 6:38:17pm

re: #129 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

BOTH SIDES are doing their best to validate their stereotypes.

132

teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 6:38:37pm

re: #126 Charles Johnson

Drudge has done an excellent job keeping a low profile. He still does his thing and nobody talks about him, not in a long time in my estimation. I check his site once a day because he is clearly anti-Trump and some of the headlines are genuinely funny. Full circle shit.

133

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 6:48:23pm

‘Denied’: Judge smacks down ex-Trump lawyer’s ‘urgent request’ for delayed disbarment ruling

Former Donald Trump lawyer John Eastman — who aided the former president in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election — was handed a loss Wednesday amid in his efforts to continue practicing law.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports via X (formerly Twitter), “JUST IN: The judge who recommended John Eastman’s disbarment denies his urgent request to delay her ruling, which resulted in his automatic suspension from practicing law. She cites the gravity of his misconduct and his refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing.”

This comes one month after California State Bar Judge Yvette Roland ruled that “Eastman violated ethics rules when he helped to orchestrate the ex-president’s ploy to overturn the 2020 election,” according to Politico.

Although the former Trump attorney was given the option to appeal, Politico noted that Roland’s ruling forced Eastman’s law license into ‘inactive’ status during pending review — meaning he was barred from practicing law in California.

Roland’s Wednesday ruling reads: “[Eastman] has provided declarations from his current clients who express a strong desire for him to continue representing them in their ongoing matters. However, the court made no finding that Eastman’s ethical violations resulted in client harm. Instead, the court found that disbarment was the appropriate sanction for Eastman’s misconduct in part to safeguard the public.”

It continues, “The court’s decision determined that Eastman made deceptive and misleading claims in legal documents, public forums, and other contexts concerning the 2020 presidential election and the extent of Vice President Michael R. Pence’s authority to override the electoral process.”

Furthermore, the judge wrote, “Eastman’s motion fails to demonstrate that he no longer presents a threat to the public. Despite his clients’ desire for Eastman to continue representing them, based on the gravity of Eastman’s transgressions, particularly those involving moral turpitude, and the increased likelihood of future misconduct due to his refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing, there is insufficient evidence to justify a stay of his involuntary inactive enrollment.’”

Roland concluded, “Accordingly, Eastman’s motion to stay the court’s March 27, 2024 order placing him on inactive enrollment or in the alternative, imposing interim remedies in lieu of inactive enrollmentis DENIED, no good cause having been shown.”

alternet.org

134

Joe Bacon ✅ May 1, 2024 • 6:53:25pm

135

Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 6:54:15pm

re: #134 Joe Bacon ✅

Ah. The Slow Knife.

136

Patricia Kayden May 1, 2024 • 6:56:59pm

137

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 6:57:12pm

re: #131 Decatur Deb

both sides

138

EPR-radar May 1, 2024 • 6:57:14pm

re: #135 Decatur Deb

Ah. The Slow Knife.

History is such a problem for Republicans, when they don’t get to lie about it.

139

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 6:58:07pm

re: #87 Lancelot Link Returns!

When i think of “horseshoe theory” I’m thinking of Bob Avakian’s homophobia
I’m thinking of lefty Putin supporters
I’m thinking of the rich kids at Jacobin Magazine
I’m thinking of Glen fucking Greenwald

Okay, so the more sincere response is

“the horseshoe doesn’t meaningfully exist, for people are perfectly capable of contradictory beliefs because the entire notions of left and right are a convention, and individual components of such that are viewed as intuitively of-one-side are in fact entirely available to be held by a person that otherwise views themselves as coherently ‘of the left/right.’

That the purported “center” also experiences fluxes in belief should be just as notable if the dichotomy were meaningful, but the convention does not exist to accurately describe the possible recombination of ideas but instead to create an artificial sense that there exists a point of consensus that is the reasonable balance of a thesis and an antithesis, when in actuality the policy of the purported “center” is it’s own ideology and perfectly capable of radicalism.

The very common transition from ‘center” to right should be just as notable and indicative of self-contradiction as the supposed lapse from left to right, because the concrete values involved are just as meaningfully distinct.”

And…frankly…horseshoe theory is the Stab in the Back myth for liberals, where everything would be copacetic except the leftists went and fucked up again. This narrative is so valued that it’s applied even when the “leftists” aren’t leftists, and load-bearing important because there’s just an ongoing project of ignoring that a bunch of center-left people shit in the collective bed whenever their money is on the line.

But specifically: Greenwald was a libertarian and nobody should have been surprised by his turn because he’s a self-involved contrarian with a chip on his shoulder.

“Rich kids at Jacobin” are not contradicting themselves if their politics don’t match the anticipated politics they should have on the basis of their inherited advantages, that’s some shit that liberals like to imagine is a deal-breaker for leftists that actual leftists that know history view as bullshit:”there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” means that everyone’s trapped by the same system not that you’re bad person for being able to afford stuff. This argument is “if you’re socialist give away all your stuff” for people that do NYT crosswords.

And red-browns are tiny number of people that are capable of seeming loud only because social media literally puts stuff in front of your eyes that makes you upset and want to post more. Also…they’re just fascist by tendency because when you strip out the “everyone” part of “everyone should be uplifted” you’re just not grokking the idea that Marxists and anarchists expand upon the notions of personal liberty in ways that erode all distinction that restrict a person from what they need to live. If definitions matter in categorizing right and left, then announcing yourself as “left” but rejecting the basic axiom of the major leftist tendencies just makes you an reactionary with slightly larger vocabulary. I mean…Strasserism was a real thing and it was to left of Hitlerian national socialism but it was still nationalist and thus chauvinism: the same things applies to modern red-browns whether their chauvinism is toward America or Russia.

Either the dichotomy is real and the horseshoe people are simply right wingers, because the “right” portion of their views is incompatible with the definitional motives of the “left” or the whole framework is just a convenient shorthand.

140

Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 7:01:27pm

re: #137 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

Did you base that kid on Alfred E. Newman?

141

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 7:05:20pm

re: #140 Decatur Deb

I let DALL-E 3 do all the work.

The Nightcafe front end runs the prompt through ChatGPT-4 first, even when you tell it to minimize any such alterations.

142

steve_davis May 1, 2024 • 7:06:02pm

re: #33 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

Today Yale Divinity school put up a video with a take on Christian Zionism as a long-running cause of these problems:

[Embedded content]

..

I’ve only watched the first part of it… Yale is not my favorite enclave of academics, but still a talk about “Christian Zionism” is worth a gander.

Paul Tillich did not mince words when it came to American nationalistic Christianity:

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darthstar May 1, 2024 • 7:06:38pm

re: #102 Charles Johnson

[Embedded content]

I see someone showing up at a peaceful protest dressed like that carrying a bat deserving [not publicly sayable] solution…the other Boogaloo Bois/PBs/Oathcreepers will get the message. It only takes a couple of examples to send the message. Arresting with extreme prejudice also works, but that implies the cops aren’t sympathetic to the assholes there to cause damage and escalate tension.

Fox News can do a profile story about what a great model Ashlii Babbit citizen they were before they got misled into thinking what they were doing was cool.

It’s really time for society as a whole to tell people like this they aren’t welcome…it doesn’t matter how nice they can be at family gatherings when they aren’t masked. Fuck off and stop trying to destroy our country.

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Charles Johnson May 1, 2024 • 7:08:32pm

re: #143 darthstar

amen brother

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darthstar May 1, 2024 • 7:09:32pm

re: #143 darthstar

edited for content…time for another self imposed internet timeout.

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TedStriker May 1, 2024 • 7:11:55pm

re: #134 Joe Bacon ✅

[Embedded content]

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teleskiguy May 1, 2024 • 7:13:49pm

A song my Dad saw, it was his last rock show he ever went to…

Nemo (06.19.22 Vail, Colorado) (Live)

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The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 7:15:06pm

re: #139 The Ghost of a Flea

Actually, let’s build a hatchet version:

Discard the self identification language and the core propositions of “left” and “right” amount to proposals about the distribution of material welfare and different levels of acceptable exclusion.

The “right” proposes frameworks of distribution in which hierarchy is load-bearing and exclusion is a consequence of natural distinction between types, with different tendencies proposing different ranking systems of type.

The “left” proposes frameworks of distribution in which hierarchy is flattened intentionally and exclusion is exercised on the basis of hazard to collective welfare, with different tendencies proposing anything from zero exclusion to sharp punitive exclusion of those that attempt to hold surplus value while others lack basic necessities.

The “horseshoe effect” is when a leftist starts proposing a hierarchical typology, which is not “the two sides touching in their unreasonableness” but “decided to go against the basic premise of your tendency’s framework because some form of exclusion is so valid that it’s preferable to retain it than the base premise of the rest of your framework.”

But that’s…awkward because it accurately describes all kinds of people that switch to “the right” including those that started out as liberal—purportedly reasonable center left in tendency—because there was just one thing they couldn’t get over.

Terfs for example.
People that felt America had to defend itself against terrorism by invading Iraq.
People that voted for Trump “because taxes.”

It works this way because the principle of exclusion isn’t one wing of two symmetrical wings, it’s an infinite pit and anyone can choose how deep they’re going to descend at any time.

Rightists don’t leap left because they’re climbing out of the pit, accepting more watered-down versions of exclusion as acceptable, until they hit their limit. Leftists that dwell too deeply on exclusion as a punitive measure just…fall down.

Which is also awkward, because the describes not only what happens to red-browns (if we treat their mush brain analysis in good faith, itself a mistake) or Stalinists but to liberals who a get a bit too deep into schadenfreude and start finding excuses to get righteously angry at certain types of people.

All those Democrats who jumped on the Reagan train.
Nu Atheists.
Crunchy people mad at vaccines.

The tendency of the “center” in this hacked-down version is to propose that there is a balance between exclusion and leveling…except that’s just exclusion with a parsley garnish, and how “centrists” vote is indicative of that: they want their treats and will vote for an model of exclusion that guarantees they keep their treats.

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 7:20:18pm

re: #142 steve_davis

Tillich was spot on.

The Yale speaker made a point that in the past 4 centuries of Protestant belief, eschatology was increasingly understood through colonial eyes.

Thus the promise of Jesus returning has morphed into Jews needing to be in a geographical context, so that they can be converted/judged upon the Return.

Thus (and the speaker did not go this far) why the British Empire (the biggest colonizer ever if merely looking at land area) had the mandate in Palestine.

The lack of looking at the Eschaton with other theological eyes (to get back to Tillich) is where the fundamentalists, such as in the US, have gone wrong.

All that the Parousia now means to so many American Christians requires a colonial view of geography.

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Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 7:20:31pm

re: #141 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

I let DALL-E 3 do all the work.

The Nightcafe front end runs the prompt through ChatGPT-4 first, even when you tell it to minimize any such alterations.

What were the terms that generated the almost-Commonwealth flag?

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 7:22:06pm

re: #150 Decatur Deb

What were the terms that generated the almost-Commonwealth flag?

None.

I just wanted a boy holding a sign that said “both sides”.

The nature of the flags were all inserted by ChatGPT and DALL-E.

Maybe we’re seeing some bias built into the AI.

152

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 7:24:18pm

It’s like asking these tools for an image of a woman.

Usually said output will be too pretty.

And if you ask for a young woman you are likely to get a sexy pose.

The LLM makers know what the people want.

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goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 7:25:58pm

The physical assault on Daily Bruin student reporters by pro-Zionist counterprotesters at UCLA appears to be premeditated, reports the Los Angeles Times.

This is very bad!

www.latimes.com/california/s…

— Alex Ip 葉清霖 (@alexip718.bsky.social) 2024-05-02T02:01:21.208Z

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goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 7:33:23pm

Daily Bruin news editor Catherine Hamilton, 21, told The Times she recognized one of the counterprotesters as someone who had previously verbally harassed her and taken pictures of her press badge. The individual instructed the group to encircle the student journalists, she said, before they sprayed the four with mace or pepper spray, flashed lights in their faces and chanted Hamilton’s name.

As she tried to break free, Hamilton said, she was punched repeatedly in the chest and upper abdomen; another student journalist was pushed to the ground and beaten and kicked for nearly a minute. The attack was first reported in the Daily Bruin.

“We expected to be harassed by counterprotesters,” Hamilton said in an interview Wednesday, adding that every Daily Bruin reporter was instructed to use a buddy system, to report from outside the encampment and to leave the area if it became unsafe. “I truly did not expect to be directly assaulted.”

…

Hamilton, who has been a reporter for three years, said that she believed her identity as a journalist would have prevented her from being assaulted. Instead, she said, it made her a target.

“I have never feared for my safety or the safety of my fellow Daily Bruin staffers” until last night, she said. “I was on edge the entire time looking for the three others who were with me to make sure that they were safe. Because I could not trust that they would be.”

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Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 7:35:37pm

re: #153 goddamnedfrank

Now, a growing mistrust of the media has all but normalized the current aggressive treatment.

Where could anyone get the impression that news is fake?

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The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 7:41:47pm

Reactionaries when they were doing campus agitation: pussy leftists think speech is violence, the alt right isn’t hurting you by saying stuff.

Also reactionaries: we’re going to organize a posse to attack a whole crowd of people and journalists because we feel attacked by their words.

LA Times reports UCLA encampment was attacked by 200 pro-Israel counter protesters who screamed “Second Nakba!” and tore down encampment barriers.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/live…

— Nathan Kalman-Lamb (@nkalamb.bsky.social) 2024-05-01T11:13:19.190Z

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 7:42:27pm

re: #152 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

To whit:

Nightcafe SDXL 1.0 “young woman”

Nightcafe Dreamshaper XL “young woman”

Nightcafe CrystalClear XL “young woman”

Three of the most popular models on NightCafe, given a simple two word prompt “young woman”.

The models clearly have a type.

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The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 7:43:37pm

The right-wing attackers were allowed to continue their rampage for 3 hours without police stopping them.

Attackers threw large explosives into the camp, injuring several people and one dog.

The right-wingers also attacked multiple journalists including student reporters from UCLA’s Daily Bruin.

— Chad Loder (@chadloder.bsky.social) 2024-05-01T21:34:05.818Z

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jaunte May 1, 2024 • 7:48:54pm

@tusk81.bsky.social just reminded me

Emmylou Harris - Boulder to Birmingham

160

(((Archangel1))) May 1, 2024 • 7:49:51pm

re: #157 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

To whit:

[Embedded content]

Three of the most popular models on NightCafe, given a simple two word prompt “young woman”.

The models clearly have a type.

Tried the other models out of curiosity:

RealVisXL3

Real Cartoon XL

StableCore

SDXL Pro

161

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 7:51:59pm

But hey guys, you were just repeating what you heard, just like that thing about UNRWA being riddled with terrorists that turned out to be a lie. Remember, the important thing is that your intent, running DARVO for street goons and shitting on naïve leftist kids, was good. After all what are a few broken bones and children dying from kwashiorkor when you can just regurgitate righteous feeling allegations and then wash your hands of the consequences.

Don’t beat yourselves up and remember, fuck them kids.

162

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 7:53:19pm

re: #160 (((Archangel1)))

The idealism of perfect beauty is a heavy burden these models put onto real women.

Which of course is just the AI reflecting our already existing social norms.

163

Decatur Deb May 1, 2024 • 7:54:25pm

re: #160 (((Archangel1)))

If the machine learning dataset were complete, the “young woman” would be about 16, with a SE Asian appearance.

164

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 7:54:58pm

re: #157 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus
re: #160 (((Archangel1)))

If AI doesn’t make your dick hard, it it really art?

165

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 7:55:13pm

@theglobeandmail.com

Judge rejects injunction request to force McGill protesters to leave: Ruling states that the students who sought the injunction failed to prove that the protests endangered their physical safety or prevented them from attending class

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Belafon May 1, 2024 • 7:57:21pm

re: #116 First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

This might actually work if half the country didn’t think Israel was crucial to their End Times fantasies.

That half of the country isn’t going to vote for Biden anyway.

167

A Three Hour Tour May 1, 2024 • 7:58:14pm

re: #92 Joe Bacon ✅

And we can count on the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press to go all in with shutting down the campus protests just like they shut down Occupy.

Ah, the return of the Rapey McStabby narrative.

168

Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 8:00:27pm

re: #164 darthstar

If AI doesn’t make your dick hard, it it really art?

I changed the prompt to “realistic young woman”, hoping the results would represent real women:

Nightcafe SDXL 1.0 “realistic young woman”

Those might be “realistic” if its an auditioning for a cover shoot.

The models are trained to interpret “real” as in “photorealism”.

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darthstar May 1, 2024 • 8:01:53pm

re: #168 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

They all look like extras in a zombie movie…or leads

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goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 8:02:42pm

re: #158 The Ghost of a Flea

Basically it was a pogrom. The only argument against it being a pogrom is that the protestors don’t have a unifying racial or religious component but were instead attacked over ideology.

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Randall Gross May 1, 2024 • 8:03:27pm

I had no clue about this — but I knew who it was as soon as I saw that old B&W photo
Good Segment from Chris Hayes

Chris Hayes: Why campus protests are ‘the easier debate’

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Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus May 1, 2024 • 8:03:40pm

re: #169 darthstar

Look carefully at the eyebrows and notice how similar they all are.

And yeah, it’s cover photos for a casting director for a rip-off zombie movie.

173

darthstar May 1, 2024 • 8:04:23pm

re: #169 darthstar

Maybe add hot pants and hard nipples to the prompt… could generate something more little house on the prairie…or not

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darthstar May 1, 2024 • 8:06:09pm

re: #173 darthstar

Maybe add hot pants and hard nipples to the prompt… could generate something more little house on the prairie…or not

Seriously, though, AI is a reflection of the programmer, and those guys are apparently lonely.

175

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 8:06:40pm

re: #161 goddamnedfrank

And what I read was wrong. I will admit that.

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darthstar May 1, 2024 • 8:07:41pm

Time for a few episodes of Eureka. Fun show.

177

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 8:09:18pm

re: #170 goddamnedfrank

Basically it was a pogrom. The only argument against it being a pogrom is that the protestors don’t have a unifying racial or religious component but were instead attacked over ideology.

So not a pogram. Republicans attacking Democrats is not a pogram.

178

jaunte May 1, 2024 • 8:10:31pm

@cait.bsky.social

i saw this picture and turned my phone around to show my husband, who was at that moment turning his phone around to show this picture to me

179

(((Archangel1))) May 1, 2024 • 8:10:35pm

re: #170 goddamnedfrank

As a descendant of those who barely survived actual pogroms - a word whose meaning is “violent riot incited with the goal of massacring an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews” - not that many generations ago, trivializing that word is an automatic downvote.

180

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 8:11:16pm

If there’s anything that could make me think the rich have a cabal that runs everything it’s Hamas attacking Israel and Israel retaliating the way it is in the year of the most important election in the US.

181

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 8:11:22pm

re: #177 Belafon

So not a pogram. Republicans attacking Democrats is not a pogram.

A crucial element of a pogrom is when the police take a side in a riot, either actively or by passively allowing the riot to occur. The police stood by and did nothing, allowing the attack to go on for hours.

Feel free to nitpick if it makes you feel better.

182

Belafon May 1, 2024 • 8:17:03pm

re: #181 goddamnedfrank

A crucial element of a pogrom is when the police take a side in a riot, either actively or by passively allowing the riot to occur. The police stood by and did nothing, allowing the attack to go on for hours.

Feel free to nitpick if it makes you feel better.

Actually, the crucial element is the intent of elimination of a religious or ethnic group because of who they are. This was violence for sure, and everyone should be arrested, but it’s not a pogram.

183

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 8:17:22pm

re: #179 (((Archangel1)))

As a descendant of those who barely survived actual pogroms - a word whose meaning is “violent riot incited with the goal of massacring an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews” - not that many generations ago, trivializing that word is an automatic downvote.

OK, cool. Settlers are engaging in pogroms all over the West Bank now, with incidents labeled such by IDF officers themselves. So I have no intention of caring about your weird hypocritical hypersensitivity surrounding the word.

184

Semper Fi May 1, 2024 • 8:17:57pm

re: #178 jaunte

@cait.bsky.social

i saw this picture and turned my phone around to show my husband, who was at that moment turning his phone around to show this picture to me

[Embedded content]

No matter how bad the bump shop is they’ll look as good as new.

185

The Ghost of a Flea May 1, 2024 • 8:18:08pm

re: #170 goddamnedfrank

Basically it was a pogrom. The only argument against it being a pogrom is that the protestors don’t have a unifying racial or religious component but were instead attacked over ideology.

I’d call it a White Terror, just like Patriot Prayer in Portland. It has less semantic load but captures how we’re looking at another aspect of Foucault’s Boomerang: contras who view all their actions as self defense and preservation of peace while escalating violence, allowed to operate by law enforcement or even functioning as irregulars.

186

goddamnedfrank May 1, 2024 • 8:20:53pm

re: #185 The Ghost of a Flea

I’d call it a White Terror, just like Patriot Prayer in Portland. It has less semantic load but captures how we’re looking at another aspect of Foucault’s Boomerang: contras who view all their actions as self defense and preservation of peace while escalating violence.

Yes, with the armed “law enforcement” agents of the State taking a clear side.

187

Randall Gross May 1, 2024 • 8:28:56pm

Recommend everyone watch the latest Chris Hayes segment, we are getting wrapped around the issue by talking about the protesters and their treatment ahead of the issue itself.

Which is the progromit (Old Russian - to destroy through violence) of Gaza, the people who live there, and the children who used to live there and who no longer do.

Chris Hayes: Why campus protests are ‘the easier debate’

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