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Ben Alpers

@benalpers.bsky.social
3.1K followers 1.7K following 5K posts

Professor of US History. Author of HAPPY DAYS: IMAGES OF THE PRE-SIXTIES PAST IN SEVENTIES AMERICA (Rutgers University Press, 2024). Opinions are entirely my own. He/him.

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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The vulgar Straussian "we need to preserve liberal education for future gentlemen (and for those tiny few capable of philosophy)" elitist vision of higher ed has been replaced by the idea that machines will be both the gentlemen and the philosophers, so liberal education is entirely fruitless.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Tho to be fair to Tillis (and most of his ilk), they're better described as #MostlyTrump .
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The #SometimesTrump Republicans like Tillis have no constituency whatsoever in their party. And it's hard to see what advantage they'd have even within a post-MAGA GOP, which is itself a fantasy.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
"Jeff Crank" is such a perfect name for a MAGAt.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
No discussion of covers is complete without mention of this deathless classic: youtu.be/ysUjYAi0WcQ?...
youtu.be
Hurra Torpedo - Total Eclipse Of The Heart (live)
YouTube video by frozentoast
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
There are so many great covers out there... youtu.be/vwVX4cG6F9s?...
youtu.be
LERA LYNN // WOLF LIKE ME // TV ON THE RADIO
YouTube video by Lera Lynn
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
It's an album, actually... youtube.com/playlist?lis...
youtube.com
Sings: The Who Sell Out - YouTube
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Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
They hounded Aaron Swartz to death for downloading papers from jstor but society is now supposed to just accept mass theft because this thing can write that TPS report *for* you. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_S...
en.wikipedia.org
Aaron Swartz - Wikipedia
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 06/10/2026
Can we fast forward to the eagle and liver part.
gizmodo.com
Sam Altman Thinks He's the Prometheus of Silicon Valley
In a new interview, Altman compares AI to fire and OpenAI to the Greek god that gifted the power to humanity.
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B @judi-hench.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Meme from Peaky Blinders. Cillian Murphy is instructing his men, "No hate-watching! No! Fucking! Hate! Watching!"
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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Biden: The MAGA wing, well gosh, listen, they’re, it’s, a bit of a flirt with fascism, no kidding around Media: Democratic rhetoric invites political violence Trump: The nuclear flames that burn every mongrel soul in San Diego will be a cleansing fire. Media: Trump makes his case in Nebraska
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
human interest writers watch even one episode of the twilight zone challenge
Opinion       sherry turkle 

AI claims it can resurrect
the dead. I tried it.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
It's worth remembering that Pre-Woke Bill Kristol played a big role in selling Palin to national Republicans in early 2008.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
In fairness, he has a better chance of governing Hilton than he has of governing California. Might be a sensible pivot!
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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Social media is a paranoia machine. It makes connections explicit, though not transparent. It not only allows you to trace ties between people, institutions, and events, but also continually produces new ties. On social media, everything becomes connected, and thus potentially suspicious
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Miles Grant @milesgrant.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
The NY Times framing every fascist as tough strong & brilliant, and not a dumb racist liar, is one of many ways the NY Times tells Democrats that they are Not On Our Side, and Dems mostly choose not to listen
nytimes.com
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s ‘Machine Gun,’ Has a New Gig at Fox News
A fierce and nimble speaker, Ms. Leavitt is the second of Mr. Trump’s former press secretaries to join the cable news network.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Kinda hilarious that Bluesky considers that image of Liberty to be "adult content."
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Joining a hallowed list that includes John Glenn, Wesley Clark, and Fred Thompson, among many, many other non nominees.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
A trailblazer for his community, Dennis Hastert will always be remembered as a person whose success helped enable other abusers and pedophiles to achieve leadership positions in the Republican Party.
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People's Government of the Pelargir Commune 🇺🇦🇱🇹🇵🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 @dov.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
the other thing is that a lot of gentiles, from what i can tell, simply do not understand that asking a jewish person, even an anti-zionist, to never interact with members of the community who are in fact zionists, is really fundamentally antithetical to the nature of jewish communal life
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Though, to be fair to the party's empty suits in Congress, the (shrinking) GOP primary electorate remains supportive of Trump.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Also the number of GOPers in Congress who are not ideologically committed to MAGA is tiny. Not only are there no Republican moderates, there are few flexible nihilists willing to follow wherever the political winds blow.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Things change. When I moved to Oklahoma in 1998, both houses of the state legislature had been in Democratic hands for all but four years of the state's history. That changed in 2005. Since 2011, Dems have been reduced to a small minority in both houses.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Also, if one looks at, e.g., business schools, many engineering departments, law schools, economics departments, and much of the faculty at institutions affiliated with theologically conservative religions, you'll quickly find that not all academics vote Democratic.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Rather than acknowledging the attacks as the problem, the focus on "public trust" ends up inevitably being about building a university that the far right won't attack. This is both bad for American higher education and fruitless. The attacks won't stop until the foxes are in charge of the henhouse.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
"Decline of public trust" discourse is the "stop hitting yourself" of educational reform. Public trust has declined because of a relentless, baseless attacks on higher education from the right.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
And hostility to the continuing existence of Jews in the diaspora is a shared value between Zionism and far-right, antisemitic parties and states around the world.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Please, for the love of God, leave me behind with all the books because you don’t read. I want to be left behind!
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Holly Brewer @earlymodjustice.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
“Now is not the time to quit, quietly or no. •Academic freedom is nothing other than intellectual autonomy from state, church, and corporate interests; •shared governance is workplace democracy; •peer review is a horizontally-run system of democratic expertise.”
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
As a transphobic male senator, there is nothing more important to me than protecting women's sports. Here's why it never occurred to me that Jack Smith, a man, would choose to attend a women's college basketball game. by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO)
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The Oklahoma Democratic Party foolishly endorsed an effort to bring Jungle Primaries to our state. Luckily they failed to get enough signatures to put it on the ballot.
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 01/10/2026
Want to learn about the history of our city?  Well you’re in luck. This month, we’re hosting a massive scavenger hunt across the city — all about the history of organizing in NYC. Sign up at organize.nyc.gov and come see the city through the eyes of the people who built it.
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Stew Smith @stewbiedoo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Even when an execution goes "correctly" it's no less a barbaric act. Do not let anyone try and tell you that lethal injection is the "humane" way to do it. There is no humane way to execute someone. /2
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The Venn diagram of folks who accuse other folks of saying "vote harder" and folks who claim to oppose Republicans but refuse to vote for Democrats is close to a circle.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I don’t trust the mainstream media, but I feel like the primary alternate model, getting the news from the posts of a 14 year-old Romanian schizophrenic shitposter named “G00n3R the Swamp Pervert,” is not necessarily a superior alternative.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I'm uninteresed in supporting Kamala Harris in the 2028 primary, but I'm really hoping she runs because Newsom says he won't if she does. And I find him totally exhausting and aggravating.
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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"For America to right itself, we need changes on the scale of Reconstruction and the New Deal. And I worry that’s not going to happen if Democrats and the broader anti-Trump left are taking their cues about what’s necessary and politically possible from the Times." newrepublic.com/article/2160...
newrepublic.com
The Left Must Fight The New York Times’ Monopoly Too
The paper’s editorial vision is out of step with the robust liberalism needed today.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Tbh, I go back and forth on that view, both as a description of reality and as kind of useful political rhetoric (it can be the latter even if it isn't the former.)
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Those founders, who believed in those principles, also baked chattel slavery into that Constitution. The glass half full take on our current circumstances (and the founding) is that those principles, even when being violated in practice, had (and have) aspirational weight.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
That political protestors received harsher punishment than rapists is absolutely relevant. What they were protesting shouldn't be relevant...though the fact that you think it is illuminates the politics of underlying the disparity in punishment.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
You're the one tying this to Gaza (which is, as you say, not relevant). What is relevant is the vicious crackdown on student political dissent that occurred not just at Cornell, but at campuses around the country.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
TRAIN TO BUSAN
static.klipy.com
Gong Yoo Runs from Zombies in Train To Busan
Alt: Gong Yoo Runs from Zombies in Train To Busan
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
static.klipy.com
Mary Tyler
Alt: Mary Tyler Moore throws her hat in the title sequence from THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
youtu.be/0oox9bJaGJ8?...
youtu.be
Booker T. & The MG's - Green Onions (Official Audio)
YouTube video by RHINO
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Local sports coverage already does a fair bit of this.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
So you mean Super Intelligence?
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW
static.klipy.com
Rhps Riffraff
Alt: Riff Raff, Magenta, and Columbia dancing in front of Rocky's tank.
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
static.klipy.com
Monty Python's Flying Circus Title Sequence by Terry Gilliam
Alt: Monty Python's Flying Circus Title Sequence by Terry Gilliam
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Are you a Republican? Do you have a spare hundred million or so to contribute to the Ballroom or the Arch?
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