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Andrew Barker

@barkerrant.bsky.social
480 followers 124 following 1.1K posts

Echo chamber enjoyer

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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This is a wonderfully written piece. I especially love the phrase “the arithmetic of trophies.” 20 years ago, the team I support was handed a trophy after the fact, and I still don’t know how to feel about it. “We were the best runners-up in a competition no one won” is the best I can put it.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Love this, and his phrase “the arithmetic of trophies.”
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Masterpiece. I come back to Palomino a lot too — that one deserved more.
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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
there are PLENTY of writers who come from a blue collar background and have worked in the trades and i can't remember ever seeing one of them publish an op-ed about how everyone should pivot to hard, painful physical labor
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is probably true, but when the purveyors of this tech — who happen to be among the richest and most powerful people on earth — are busy spinning some of the wildest bullshit I’ve ever heard in its favor, I’m less concerned that some regular dude saying “AI sucks lol” doesn’t have all the facts.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I literally did a spit take when De La Soul’s catalogue finally hit streaming and I saw “Eye Know (feat. Otis Redding).”
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darth™️ @darthbluesky.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
trump going on an emergency 17 state media tour to support republican candidates before the midterms and he is going with “nobody knows that dumb has a b on the end”
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
A genuinely legendary feat of agenting to get Marc Forster hired to direct both this and a Bond movie even though he’d never previously directed an action movie and clearly had no idea how.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
He often flies under the radar because he’s not a sweaty cartoon like Hegseth or a deranged psycho like RFK, but Carr is one of the most flagrantly, shamelessly degenerate public officials I’ve ever seen. No interest in pretending otherwise, just out there loving every minute of this.
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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you want "personalized music" made just for you pick up a fucking guitar. Or else break the heart of someone who already has.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Even putting aside the “desperate attempt to brush off what should be a career-ending faceplant” part, weren’t right-wingers trying to claim Caitlin Clark as one of their own, like, a couple months ago?
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
100%. This was supposed to be a multi-week story for them. Trump was going to add “Jack Smith in Atlanta!” to the list of non-sequiturs he adds to the ends of all his posts. Still a decent chance they go ahead with it regardless.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
He really should have been prepared for an inch-perfect execution of a totally improbable shot that hardly anyone would even attempt outside of the training ground.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Very much so. Glad I made it all the way through, because K Callan has a scene in the last episode that is one of my favorite television scenes in many years. But it definitely lost its rhythm for several episodes there.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” held the record for longest-running No. 1 for 23 years. I remember that song. It was very big. But at no point did it ever feel like Mariah or Boyz II Men’s most popular song. I’m guessing most under-30s have probably never heard it. Charts are funny.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Iñarritu is never more exhausting than when he’s trying to be funny.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
everyone who's ever joined in an online pile on should read this.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Enrollment in the Cal State system is something like 30k short of half a million.
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Mike Ginn @shutupmikeginn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
“Middlebrow” is the perfect level of brow for a movie to be. if you want smarter read a book if you want dumber read some posts
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Somehow it’s often the same people who love to tell me about the distinct cultural differences between two adjacent neighborhoods in Boston who will then broadly generalize about a city that’s 10x larger with 5x as many people.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This bassist here can’t argue with any of these.
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Michael Stahlke @michaelstahlke.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Right before I left twitter for good, I got into some real humdingers because I thought it was irresponsible to detonate thousands of explosive devices when you had zero idea where they were located.
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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A warning about the supposed final Fall album that’s coming out soon: it is NOT a real Fall album, it’s just Mark E Smith rambling nonsense over music that has no connection to the vocal
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
We even have a whole term to describe the comedown period when one realizes that owning an item is less exciting than shopping for and buying it was.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
At one point I had three different companies offering me a settlement-mandated year of free credit monitoring within the same year. Like, sure, okay, guess we’re all square then.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Finally listening to the new Carly Rae Jepsen, which is pretty great. I do think she could have lost a track or three and made “Amalfi Coast” at least three times longer. Few pop songs from this decade are screaming for a Neil Bogart-style 12” treatment like that one is.
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Dr. Stephanie @punkrockscience.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The fact that every major news outlet includes vocal tics and hesitations when it’s a woman saying “like” and not when it’s a man saying “um” is itself wicked telling.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We have a bunch of tiny baby lizards that recently hatched in my backyard, which are roughly cockroach-sized. Every single time I see one I go, “a roach! I’m gonna squish that bastard into a… No wait, baby lizard! Carry on, little buddy. Hope you’re having a great day.”
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
It took me an entire week before I figured this out.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Flashback to the time my college girlfriend brought her Thai roommate along to the Thai place to order for us because she thought they were underestimating her heat tolerance. Two hours later, she was seriously considering going to the hospital.
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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
"This election is about the threat of trans kids" is the worst possible messaging for Dems yet so many candidates are leaning into it. No voter will flip R->D over it. Low-info voters read this as "you're focused on bullshit that doesn't affect me" while the base reads this as "you're an asshole."
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Kid: I’m going to have a slice of cake for dinner. SCOTUS: No you’re not. Kid: Very well. I’m going to have a slice of cake for dinner, then put razor blades in the rest as a home security measure in case thieves break in and try to eat the cake. SCOTUS: That’s more like it.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
As trade paper vet, it’s funny how much the AI films scams resemble pre-AI film scams. Actress who’s never actually acted? Classic. Film that privately screened at a hotel room in Cannes while the Cannes Film Festival is ongoing and thus you could technically say “premiered in Cannes”? Long history.
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Garth Marenghi's Catbus @catbus.phd · 18/09/2026
he donated it all to two charities, Guide Dogs for the Blind & The National Autistic Society as big a piece of shit as Morrissey is, that's how awsome Johnny Marr is
share.google
The Smith's Johnny Marr's guitars sell for almost £4m at auction
One instrument was used on the The Smiths' debut album and also appeared on the cover of Oasis's debut single.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
When I moved from Arkansas to LA as a kid in the ‘90s, the near-total absence of mosquitos was truly shocking. In the best way — I soon stopped associating summer with being itchy 24/7. Fast forward 30 years, and my citronella candle and mosquito repellant budget is starting to become a problem.
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Lauren Dracula 🧛‍♀️ @beavisetc.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Carly Rae Jepsen album release day is a very important holiday for a certain type of late 30s-early 40s white guy. Please be respectful of their religious practices today
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Same guy, a year and a half ago3
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I love how all of Axl’s stage banter was perfectly calibrated to go massively viral on social media, which wouldn’t exist for another 15 years. Another classic: youtu.be/KR6KI0h1gbU?...
youtu.be
Guns N' Roses - Double Talkin Jive
YouTube video by Rikki Roxx
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Was supposedly a way for draftees to intentionally fail their physical back during Vietnam.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Don’t forget “here because of (video game or TV show I’ve never heard of)?”
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Legitimately great!
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
One of the most important moments in my musical education: My gloriously Afroed, 70s refugee 5th grade basketball coach hears me blasting this cover way too loud on my Walkman. He asks: “You’ve heard the original, right? No? Oh man. I’m gonna bring you a tape tomorrow.”
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Are you a person who listens to and enjoys country music from this or any other era? Failing that, have you eaten dinner at a Texas Roadhouse within the last year? Great, you likely have a more sophisticated understanding of why country is trending up than the NYT op-ed, and don’t need to read it.
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Annalee @flowerhorne.com · 11/09/2026
There are very real safety concerns we need to address with generative LLMs. Deepfakes, privacy, AI psychosis, etc We don't need to entertain goofy nonsense from people claiming they're inventing the torment nexus from the science fiction classic "Dipshit That's Not The Torment Nexus Go Outside."
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Comforting to learn I’m not the only one annoyed beyond all reason by this.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Discovered she was opening when I got there just in time for her last song.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Google changed its algorithm slightly.
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I’ve lost interest in trying to psychoanalyze the man, but it is pretty fascinating. Never had a pet in his life, never owned a ranch in Wyoming or wherever, rarely outdoors unless on a golf course, thinks forest fires are caused by the forest’s janitorial staff not sweeping it often enough…
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Andrew Barker @barkerrant.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
On my 15th birthday I was inexplicably given a Hank Williams boxed set as a gift. It took me months to get around to listening to it, but once I did I barely listened to anything else for a while. Had previously assumed that genre/era had nothing to offer me; turned out I was very wrong.
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