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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

The photo honestly looks like it could be from the US occupation of the Philippines.

Cover story of the New York Evening Journal, May 5, 1902. Headline: "Kill every one over ten" - General Jacob H. Smith.

Editorial cartoon showing a column of US soldiers firing at Filipino children who are bound and blindfolded. The caption below says, "Criminals because they were born ten years before We took the Philippines."

History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 09/10/2026

Abbie Sweetwine retired from the Air Force as a major in 1969. She spent most of her life in Florida, where she was born, and passed away at age 87 in 2009. She is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Photo of Abbie Sweetwine in US Air Force uniform

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 20/09/2026

We're still doing this hackneyed shit? If you bemoan the fact that virtually no elected officials or powerful people in the US are committed to the full reversal of everything the Trump administration has done, why is it not fair play to point out that AOC fits squarely within that category?

Post from Jessica Ellis

Oh look men are here to tell me what they think of AOC again

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 16/09/2026

"Marge everything is corrupted by capital. Have you ever sat down and read this thing? Technically the way we close a car door is fascist.” Maybe we should have taken that idea more seriously. Just saying!

Reverend Lovejoy holds a copy of Theodor Adorno's 'Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life'. He says, "Marge everything is corrupted by capital. Have you ever sat down and read this thing? Technically the way we close a car door is fascist.”

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 10/09/2026

By all means, take unsolicited advice on how to deal with tech fascists from a guy who has almost certainly contributed to the militarization & crass commercialization of space and the decision to financially support Israeli missile systems like Iron Dome and David's Sling.

Guest Commentary Written By
Dave Vorland

Dave Vorland leads the Blue Horizon Project at Chamber of Progress. He has served in the Obama and Biden administrations and worked in space and missile defense policy.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 04/09/2026

What am I supposed to do, *not post* this because I got blocked lol?

Patrick Iber:
The USSR was not popular in the US during the Cold War, and anybody who couldn't deal with the Democratic system was confined to the very margins of politics. It was not popular in most of Western Europe. It was not popular in Eastern Europe, where people fought for liberation from it.

Superhans from Coldplay: People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people, Jeremy.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 03/09/2026

Here is a photo of SS Canberra returning from the Falklands. She looks run down, but arguably not quite as bad.

Ocean liner SS Canberra entering Port of Southampton on her return from the Falklands War. The outer decks are crowded with troops. She is surrounded by a flotilla of small boats sailing alongside to greet her. Photo posted to r/Ships by user u/Dr-Historian

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 29/08/2026

So I saw an AI Slop video that was posted to some Reddit anti-AI sub in which Ibrahim Traore "hand selected" scientific experts and directed them to revive Charlie Kirk. I literally cannot tell whether this is a hackneyed attempt at liberal satire or not.

Screenshot from AI slop video in which Ibrahim Traore and a team of hand selected Burkinabe scientists have revived Charlie Kirk. Ibrahim Traore and Charlie Kirk are hugging in front of a gaggle of reporters at what appears to be the UN General Assembly. Charlie Kirk is peroxide blonde for some reason.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 13/08/2026

I'm not just being derisive, either, the logic is largely identical. And the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was eventually amended to sterilize the "Rheinland bastards."

Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor

Moved by the understanding that purity of German blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

§1
(1) Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or related blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law.
(2) Annulment proceedings can be initiated only by the state prosecutor.

§2
Extramarital relations between Jews and citizens of German or related blood are forbidden.

§3
Jews may not employ in their households female subjects of the state of Germany or related blood who are under 45 years old.

§4
(1) Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich or national flag or display Reich colors.
(2) They are, on the other hand, permitted to display the Jewish colors. The exercise of this right is protected by the state.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 10/08/2026

Really? Surely it wasn't The Atlantic! You don't say!

In a 1971 article in The Atlantic Monthly, and in his posthumous 1994 book with the political scientist Charles Murray called The Bell Curve, Herrnstein argued that intelligence was a major missing factor in analyses of American society. Challenging a taboo among intellectuals and social scientists, Herrnstein and Murray argued that intelligence was measurable by IQ tests, stable over the lifetime of the individual, largely heritable, and predictive of a variety of social outcomes (even when confounding factors were controlled) such as income, crime, health, and rates of marriage. In his 1971 article, Herrnstein argued that as racism and class bias diminished, and cognitive abilities came to play a greater role in technology-driven economies, heritable differences would account for a larger proportion of class differences, and could eventually lead to a genetic, meritocratic caste structure. Most controversially, Herrnstein and Murray suggested in one chapter that the black-white IQ gap would be difficult to eliminate, in part because its causes were both genetic and environmental. Despite the authors’ insistence that a genetic contribution to race differences was not central to their argument, this hypothesis dominated the critical discussion of the book, and remains controversial even among scientists who accept their other conclusions. The analyses in The Bell Curve are still widely debated today.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 08/08/2026

Bit of a tangent, but this was probably the best book I ever got at a Scholastic School Book Fair. I wish they had included someone less problematic in John Muir's place, but not too bad for a book made for elementary school kids in the 1990s.

Scholastic Biography

Four Against the Odds: The Struggle to Save Our Environment

Title is printed in white serif font, with subtitle in the same font but green. A manila yellow field with green border, separated by a thinner red border.

Cover photos on right side of field show the subjects of the book: John Muir, Lois Gibbs, Rachel Carson, and Chico Mendes.

Author: Stephen Krensky

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 08/08/2026

Whenever Trump is president, "the hood" temporarily morphs into the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Meme presumably made by a white MAGAt posing as a "Black Republican".

First image, captioned 'The Hood Under Obama', is of a generic looking single-story multifamily housing development with brick facade. There's a metal fence around the complex and the landscaping is kinda sparse, but it's honestly not even that bad.

Second image, with the caption "The Hood under Trump", shows the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Third image, same as first, with caption, 'The Hood Under Biden'.

Fourth image, same as the second, with the caption, "The Hood Under Trump Again!"

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 07/08/2026

Already I am seeing media outlets include subheads attributing the capture of murder suspects to surveillance tech like Flock. This is a choice to be complicit in an effort to enable oligarchs to retain permanent control via establishment of ubiquitous surveillance.

The Fresno Bee

News Alerts

Crime

Update: Suspect accused of killing ex-girlfriend returns to Fresno, turns himself in.

Police Chief Mindy Castro said detectives used Flock cameras to track down the suspect in Salinas.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 07/08/2026

When the official U6 unemployment rate is lower than the real headline unemployment rates.

Smiling US flag emoji with sunglasses, giving enthusiastic thumbs up

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 07/08/2026

AI evangelists are never beating the anti-Blackness charges!

Pro AI meme from Reddit in which the anti-AI side of the argument is represented by Morty from Rick & Morty, who just happens to be edited to be wearing a silk sleeping bonnet FOR SOME FUCKING REASON!

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 07/08/2026

This reminds me of a passage in Robert Webb's book, 'How Not to Be a Boy', in which he describes his father's...limitations.

I started keeping a diary after my 17th birthday. Early in March 1990 I wrote:

“My concern for Mum deepens. I’m quite ashamed to realise that this is the first reference in this diary to worrying about anyone but myself. Mum has been in hospital since last Friday with what was supposed to be a chest infection. In fact she has a few cancerous cells on her lung. She might have to have chemotherapy. Jesus Christ I’m so worried – I love her so much. I must resolve to be less selfish, to talk to her about things more often. Life without her is unthinkable. Literally unthinkable.”

And then, at the end of an entry a few weeks later:

“Found out for sure, the week before last, on Wednesday March 21st, that Mum definitely isn’t going to recover. She has about four months. I don’t want to talk about it. Even to you.”

That day, I had arrived home from school and felt a sudden tightness in my chest. Dad’s van was parked neatly outside the bungalow.

Dad is at the kitchen table with Derek, Mum’s second husband. He starts talking and the world ends.

“Y’mum’s poorly, boy. It’s terminal.”

You can get quite a lot of juice out of that word “terminal”, if you speak with a Lincolnshire accent and are quite drunk. The way he says it, the “er” sound is dug from the very depths of his diaphragm.

I look across at Derek, who is leaning an elbow on the table with a hand covering his mouth. He nods a tiny confirmation. Incredibly, somewhere in the room, Dad is still talking. “It’s ’orrible, boy, but that’s life. Now, I don’t know if you want to come and live with me or … ” he looks around the kitchen, “I mean, you’re probably going to need a cleaner, Derek, because … well, it’s hard keeping a place clean.” Derek nods. “Josie, who cleans my house, she could probably come and do a couple of hours a week.”

Derek says, “What does she charge, like?”

“Well, I give her a fiver, mate.” Derek is alarmed by the prospect of paying Josie £5 and he’s about to haggle, but stops because he’s noticed I’m crying.

“I know, boy,” Dad says, “it’s ’orrible.”

Here I am then, with Mum about to vanish, stuck here in the kitchen with the Idiot Brothers talking about Dad’s cleaner.

When Dad leaves, I notice that on the side of the van is painted the name of his business, which today looks less like an advertisement than like a rare flash of self-awareness: Paul Webb, Ltd.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 07/08/2026

This is just an inferior version of a 19th-to-mid-20th century Parisian pissoir.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 07/08/2026

The recapper-ification of "news media" continues unabated.

USA Today headline: Watch Trump dash across stage after wandering toddler in Las Vegas

•Trump chased a toddler across stage during Las Vegas speech after child wandered while parents spoke

•Parents sake thousands through no-tax-on-tips and overtime policies, investing in education and Trump accounts.

•Las Vegas tourism dropped 7.5% in 2025, losing 3.1 million visitors compared to 2024.

•Trump highlighted second-term initiatives including tax breaks on tips, overtime, and lower prescription drug prices.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 06/08/2026

Though on the bright side, I used it to reunite an adorable kitten who I found scared at a gas station near a busy, high speed intersection with her concerned human family.

Iris, the lost kitten who I found at the Chevron at a busy 4 way intersection.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 06/08/2026

John C. Calhoun and the ideological forebears of American liberalism approve this message.

Joe McBride on Xitter:
I did not hold back tonight.

The United States cannot allow two of its greatest freedom fighters to be sent to the United Kingdom for execution. (SIC?!)

Free Andrew and Tristan Tate. (SIC!!!! And SICK!!!!)

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 06/08/2026

His truth is marching on... "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 03/08/2026

I know Threads has effectively created a feed algorithm that nourishes and deepens mental anguish & spiritual angst but these people need to have the stupid slapped out of them, pitilessly. YouTubers taking heat for cooking their brains & the planet simultaneously with LLMs ain't the core problem

Threads post: This Hank Green discourse really highlights how many people are just broken, and how fucked the left is.

Top reply:
yup. AI poses serious social, economic and environmental threats that need a collective, systemic response.

but instead, the online left opts for identity politics, moral absolutism, posturing, performance and hounding individuals for their lack of purity.

you could argue, for example, that the left caused the rise of the manosphere by excluding cishet identities in progressive spaces

potential allies get marginalised, people hide their AI use out of shame and nothing changes

2nd reply
Far too many people thinking they are better because they haven’t been able to admit to their own shortcomings.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 01/08/2026

Every time I see pea fowl, it reminds me that birds are dinosaurs.

A peacock with its neck erect, looking to its left.

Same peacock, neck lowered, about to poach some cat food

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 16/07/2026

Just dug up a few charts and short excerpts that I think are useful. Tried to make the alt text as useful as I could, given the limitations of describing charts in particular.

Chart showing that as Indonesia moved from the "cultural" to "corporation" system of production, rice production rose dramatically while consumption levels were virtually stagnant. All the increased production was exported to wealthy countries.

Chart showing the inverse relationship between consumption of nonrenewable natural resources in colonized countries and import of manufactured goods (made with their raw materials!) from the industrialized first world to the global South.

Rich countries' resource availability is augmented; the global South has its resource availability diminished. Handicrafts are also destroyed in the colonized countries, furthering their dependence on imported manufactured goods.

Comparison of production and consumption levels for bauxite/aluminum, copper, and Wolfram (tungsten) between first world, third world, and planner economies. With commentary on the general pattern.

Comparison of rice and wheat yields in tons per hectare between China and neighboring and/or peer countries.

Chinese agriculture was made more productive by China's own Green Revolution, which took place while Mao was still alive, in the late 60s/early 70s

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 03/04/2026

Even Germans who lived under, and accepted, the Nazi government believed that the US was a monster state. In They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer, a retired civil servant recalls how they viewed America as a land of dishonest politicians & gangsterism.

"We hear a lot about America," said Policeman Hofmeister, "not only now, but all our lives we have heard a lot, because so many of us have relatives who have gone there. Now we always say in Germany, 'Monarchie oder Anarchie'; there is nothing in between, and Anarchie is mob rule. We have heard of your American cities ruled by gangsters working with dishonest politicians who steal the people's money and give them poor service, bad roads, and such, charging them always for good roads or good sewers. That we have never known here in Germany, not under the Kaiser, not under Hitler. That is a kind of Anarchie, maybe not mob rule but something like it."

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 01/03/2026

US imperialism is the principal enemy and those who join it in attacking its enemies are helping the American empire whether they want to or not. Also, why the fuck drag Xi Jinping into this when China has a better record on women's rights than the US?

"we have our internationalism so backwards that the male left gets away with berating us for our support for women's uprisings abroad cannot be turned into justification for imperialist intervention without a fight at home. You will never convince me radicalizing women need to give a shit about some dusty old prick whether it's Khameini (sic) or Trump or Xi Jumping. You have the responsibility of building so this doesn't happen when women try to free themselves.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 01/03/2026

My condolences. I went through that same cycle a few months ago when my beloved Hiss passed away unexpectedly. You inevitably miss seeing them and miss the ways they'd make their presence known.

A brown and black tabby with wiry fur and little angel face, laying on a bed and reaching his paw toward the camera.

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 25/02/2026

So did "cartoonshateher" deactivate their account because they were tired of getting ridiculed for writing an article that, quite literally, suggested that children riding on public transit need to choose between avoiding eye contact with people with behavioral health issues or be murdered?

I do not take my kids on public transit within the US. Young children cannot "just avoid eye contact.' Young children will see someone freaking out, and perhaps start freaking out themselves, which will draw attention to the family. Young children will point and say, "That man is crazy." If we must "avoid eye contact" to avoid being murdered, that's a great argument for "subways are unsafe for children."

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 03/02/2026

I love when Northern Europeans on Reddit wax poetic about the ubiquitous moral depravity displayed by the US ("western") political elites, only to smugly dismiss the notion that communist revolution is part of the solution in a single, terse sentence that offers no reasoning. Fucking Reddit belt

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 28/01/2026

Every time I program my washing machine thusly, I think about how Zelensky said, "It's cool, it's normal.", concerning the lionization of Stepan Bandera in contemporary Ukraine.

Digital washing machine control panel. Water temperature is set to "cool". Soil level is set to "normal". Zelensky thinks Bandera worship is "cool" and "normal".

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 21/01/2026

There are, in fact, triops, and I only mention this because I think they kick ass.

Triops longicaudatus, detail of titular 3 eyes

3/4 of Triops longicaudatus (longtail tadpole shrimp) in what appears to be an aquarium

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History is a Teacher (No Pupils though) @needmoretrains.northsky.social · 07/01/2026

People occasionally bring up the fact that the CIA is largely comprised of a bunch of self-regarding, upper-middle dweebs with expensive private educations but, my God, they do not bring it up often enough! Look at this gaggle of creatures.

The CIA "mole hunt" team that identified Aldrich Ames as the source of the intelligence leaks, c. 1990.

A bunch of doofuses.

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