Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialPavlos Roufos @proufos.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Back in March 2023, I had written a long thread for (awful) twitter on the question of police violence and mainstream liberal support for it. 1/ 12711
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I get that this is maybe a me thing, and some scintillating panel talks stand out in my mind as vivid counterexamples, but even in those cases I find I have to re-listen repeatedly to take it in as thoroughly as I would like, with every pass more time consuming than reading. 040
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/10/2026The pivot away from text has been a miserable downgrade in my everyday engagement with information. I've not bothered hitting play on *so* many a/v links I would have eagerly read a few thousand words on. Aside from “shooting the breeze” podcast banter the format is near useless for me. 1101
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Absolutely, or in an oft-cited example, people doing heartfelt goodie-goodie Picard runs in Mass Effect would dutifully kill 500 subsidiary enemies per level, then mercifully spare their employer would gradually max out their morality meter. 000
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/10/2026 There's no utilitarian moral valence to "enacting or expressing symbolic sadism or evil," but that correct judgement about utilitarian morality isn't a particularly all-encompassing. Most people in my experience posit deontological moral values, e.g., even if they're mostly utilitarian. 110
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I don't think I have insight to judge a random person who did the Sims pool thing, I think, were *I* to do it myself, specifically, for a transgressive frisson ala "mowing down pedestrians gta III," that I would find it fucked up in myself. 100
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/10/2026I didn't say it said something about a person's willingness or desire to murder or steal, or that it "says a lot about a person." 100
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 30/09/2026re: videogames causing violence panic, I was there, playing videogames before it all. Played the Sims 1, and from the first time I heard of people torturing Sims, thought it was a weird fucked up thing to do, not because the electrons were suffering. 200
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 30/09/2026I said it *wasn't* like torturing ants to death, in a specific way you don't seem interested in, which, fine, but, that's not what I said. I don't think you're "clarifying" my views or the prior persons' in the way you say you are. 100
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Yeah that's also not ideal? I wouldn't exactly put it on par with burning ants with lenses but... why do it? Fantasizing about burning ants with lenses, also better than burning ants with lenses. But why? "Oh did you never build a tower of blocks and knock it down," yeah I did, way less creepy imo 100
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 30/09/2026In both instances I expect people to continue saying "no no, it's just B being B" but I feel like I've gathered enough information 000
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Not to disagree, but UK politics 2015-2026 and US politics around e.g. Mamdani and other left political figures subject to delegitimization suggest to me perhaps blindness in the right eye and lurid-to-hallucinogenic "hyper-vigilance" in the left is also about contemporary left-right power contests 001
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Always thought the sneering and preening would get this guy in the end but I had imagined something less abject. 010
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I just assumed they'd be seeing 2029 through whatever bizarro-vision goggles they wear in order to believe any of the things they do are good or worthwhile. Huge increased majority from combating extremism while stopping boats, living within Britain's means but supercharging the economy with AI 020
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I guess I hadn't quite connected the dots when you were talking about winning by exclusively impressing FBPE centrists with "doing an early election, which at present might be winnable off FBPE centrists" because the past 2 months were so utterly incomprehensible to me as a pre-election campaign 120
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 25/09/2026As lurid and irrational as a lot of the key actors are I have very little faith in these right wing splits lasting. FPTP would powerfully militate against it even if there weren't a unique press-mediates mandate of heaven situation ongoing. 120
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I didn't notice any personal attacks on Mr. Havemann in Ms. Feldman's response to his calling her part of a "Tokenjudentruppe." Which - does this require explanation? - is not normally something you do and then turn around and whimper about "attacking" people. 030
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 18/09/2026I can't bring myself to make a suitably specific and cutting school of athens joke because it would require thinking about these people several more minutes 010
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 18/09/2026There was a fake "news story" version, not Gere-related, on the "John Boy and Billy" syndicated radio show that went quite viral in the late 1990s, to the extent that there's a clipping reporting on it in the Guardian circa 1997. I think pre-youtube it spread as a "funny .wav file," basically. 130
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialJane @jane.meangirls.online · 17/09/2026what do you think happens when a bunch of people see this ad over and over again that aren't already dedicated allies? even if it doesn't sway their vote because it's not the most salient issue for them it still has an effect on them. they're still going to internalize some of this. 135516
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Not sure how universal this was but there were always giant tables full of of hotdogs in top-cut buns (with non-carbonated McDonalds orange drink in coolers) after the Terry Fox Run when I was in elementary/jr. high and I would house those things annually. 110
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialDavid Marcus @davidmarcus.bsky.social · 14/09/2026"The social contract is no longer working: Going to college does not ensure anything other than...often low-paying work." @alexnpress.bsky.social in Fall Books on @noamscheiber.bsky.social's new book and the making of the millennial working class www.thenation.com/article/soci...thenation.comThe Making of the Millennial Working ClassA new book follows a rising generation of labor organizers as they attempt to unionize their workplaces. 28926
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Although NLR unfortunately does feature some of this same - I'm sorry, I can't be bothered to sugarcoat it at this point - Red-Brown stupidity as this article on occasion. 040
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialrose @breadnrosie.bsky.social · 15/09/2026i think it should be more commented on that jacobin put out a 57 page report that basically says candidates need to moderate on social issues, in particular trans rights 381313229
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 15/09/2026It's a definition that excludes me (lowest quintile, physical labor in a union job, waged work for decades) because I went to school, but includes small businessmen who worked for their family firm and have a nominally low salary. All so they can spit out Working Class wisdom like: 020
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 15/09/2026See, I'm not giving Chibber (or not even just in Jacobin, Streeck etc) any benefit of the doubt; you look at the familiar "moderate culturally for the horny-handed sons of toil" policy takeaways in the post prior - *that's* why they have such a bespoke, education-barred "working class" definition. 110
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Great book, nice illustrations. Was my big intro to revisionist 1940 interpretations - put me onto John Cairns and Don Alexander. 100
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialcee @cee.wtf · 04/09/2026throng.cee.wtf i've invented a new way to browse bluesky 35482171910
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialJoel Pinckney @jpinckney.bsky.social · 01/09/2026New one today for @defector.com: in the wake of the most recent declaration of reading's demise, I was curious what booksellers, almost always ignored by the post-literate prognosticators, made of such claims. Here's what they told me:defector.comWhat Do Booksellers Make Of “The End Of Reading”? | DefectorIf you haven’t yet encountered the cover story for the August issue of The Atlantic, I have some bad news to share: “The End of Reading Is Here.” It’s an intentionally provocative headline for a sligh... 1023480
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/09/2026the way David Fincher had Michael Fassbender's character smithsmaxxing in The Killer was unfortunately a perfect touch 040
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 31/08/2026I was going to make a joke about doing a Pentagon Wars (1998) spiel in August 2026 with a magically depoliticized worldview (because politics stop both 'at the water's edge,' and also 'at some point in time prior to 2016') but as it turns out this would be to undersell how weird the worldview is 000
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 25/08/2026You aren't a qualified historian of fascism or a talented amateur. The issue is not "people being provoked by your upsetting truths." 020
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 20/08/2026was this downstream of people being mad about that Haus comic from the first Trump administration? 010
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 17/08/2026I think MacLeod was pointing out the deaths, not agreeing with the WSJ article (by Claremont/AEI guy Sadanand Dhume) 000
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.social404 Media @404media.co · 17/08/2026SCOOP: 404 Media placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it. What did we find? It ended up at an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. Yes. This is literally the logo outside the Amazon warehouse door. Read now:404media.coWe Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training FacilityWe placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books. 15162283922
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 15/08/2026As a bonus, the book works (intentionally or not) as a very pointed subversion of Le Carre's wider "George Smiley deals in squalor and lesser-evils, but he is ultimately humane and correct about which evils are lesser" self-satisfaction. 100
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 15/08/2026I can't remember if it was you who said you didn't like Le Carre, but from the point of view of "book whose disparate elements coalesce into an elegant frozen nightmare," The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is an all timer imo. Also much shorter than most Le Carre, without suffering for it. 120
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 09/08/2026I can't make myself stare at these ppl (and I didn't appreciate the need a decade ago) but I wish I had some kind of "proof folder" with screenshots like this from the various malignantly evil and racist "centrists" and "moderates" so I could just email it to normies who argued wrt their character. 000
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 07/08/2026Media and government (after government) who will genuflect to these men and their 'reasonable concerns' all the way down. 020
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 06/08/2026Not being doomer about outcomes but IMO as long as the fundraising structure for "centrist/moderate/leadership" is content to lose elections (*profitably* lose them, for the funding/operative/candidate ecosystem), being a spoiler and trading space for time is a lower bar than "beating" the left. 021
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 03/08/2026Listed as "the" Eagles in Robert Christgau's satisfyingly prosecutorial CG reviews. 010
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialmichaelbarenboim.bsky.social @michaelbarenboim.bsky.social · 02/08/2026To be blunt: this language is not acceptable to be used about human beings, and the fact that the Tagesschau, Germany's main TV news outlet, sees fit to do so on their YouTube channel tells you basically everything you need to know about mainstream media in Germany @tagesschau.bsky.social 412332
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 02/08/2026I "never got" covid, or rather any time through the pandemic I felt I might have a cold, I tested, and it was always negative, but presumably I had it asymptomatically at some point. (Worked in health care and also had very frequent PCR screens, never popped.) Sense of smell barely exists now tho. 030
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 01/08/2026I've just seen years of BSW-style attempts to do "left, except right on borders and migration" (the negation of internationalism) as a political project or intellectual proposal. I've consistently not liked Vivek Chibber's takes nor have they led me to trust this is not that. 010
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 31/07/2026This is the modern reality. Turning *that* kind of "security guarantee," of all things, into a sacred cow with which to bludgeon fellow NDPers? 030
jtownsend.bsky.social @jtownsend.bsky.social · 31/07/2026If you're gonna quit the NDP quit the NDP, or can this half-in half-out attack on people having different opinions than you - sorry, "mobbing the microphones" - in defence of, what, our dead letter alliance? Did you miss the last *hundred* times NATO sec gen Mark Rutte tongue-bathed Trump's boots? 160
Reposted by @jtownsend.bsky.socialJoseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 21/07/2026New from 404 Media: a company is selling tons of old books specifically to AI companies and says they have a strong NDA to never reveal which AI company bought all of the books. They don't want headlines of 'we scanned and destroyed millions of books for AI' www.404media.co/ai-companies...404media.coAI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI SlopISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.” 17517316
