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Robert Owen

@petit-a.bsky.social
563 followers 1.3K following 1.3K posts

Gen X phd, thrown into the briar patch of commerce. Pseudonym.

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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I took ChatGPT for a spin on subsumption: "The ultimate object of subsumption is subjectivity. It's not that machines become human, but that human productive capacities become increasingly indistinguishable from properties of capital."
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Gabriel Flynn @gabrielflynn.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I went to a Zumba class, and danced my anxieties away
Adorno
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Wonderful book. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzKi...
youtube.com
Timothy Mitchell presents The Alibi of Capital
YouTube video by Verso Books
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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 06/08/2026
A central part of why it seems like powerful, rich people live in a consequence-free world is that the social incentives to hold them to account have withered. www.ctinsider.com/columnist/ar... 𝟏𝟐-𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞-𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
“The economic void generates a financial horizon for nihilism. When money escapes into infinite debt, it obliterates the basis for any account of value grounded in the classical categories of land, labor, and capital.” — Currency of Nihilism (54)
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
“When no way out is left, the destructive drive becomes entirely indifferent to the question it never posed quite clearly: whether it is directed against others or against its own subject.” Minima Moralia (67)
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Gallifreyan Jedi @jediofgallifrey.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
the liberal dilemma: you hate donald trump but you love the conditions that led to donald trump
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
“Luridly the horror of the ending lights up the deception of the origin.” — Adorno, Minima Moralia (145)
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Democrats are a party of capital over labor — with a smiley face added. It’s all been a charade. Leadership would rather die than become a Party of the People.
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Rick Perlstein @rickperlstein.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Mr. Greenspan, he dead. rickperlstein.substack.com/p/speak-ill-...
rickperlstein.substack.com
Speak Ill of the Dead—Early and Often, Please.
Alan Greenspan's monstrous legacy: an "Infernal Triangle" preview
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
nybooks.com
Gulliver’s Warning | Fintan O’Toole
Like Gulliver in Lilliput, “greatness” in the political realm depends on the existence of a group deemed puny or weak.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Democrats won’t decide if they are a party of capital or labor. Being neither clearly, they get mauled, over and over again, by absolute lunatics.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Revenge porn is the only thing Trump really has delivered for MAGA.
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Matthew Sheffield @matthew.flux.community · 01/05/2026
Dawkins is a great example that when you have a naturalistic view of "real patterns" but don't have a process ontology, you will end up in metaphysical dualism unintentionally. Minds are not software, they are what specific bodies are doing as they engage with the world.
flux.community
It’s like this: Why perceptions are our realities - Flux
Minds do not create experience, experience creates minds
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
human beings expect the world….to be set ablaze by a universal power which they themselves are and over which they are powerless.” — Dialectic of Enlightenment
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Matthew Cobb @matthewcobb.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Reasons to be alarmed #162. You may recall that in DR STRANGELOVE a crazed US general launched WW3. Well now we have religious nutcases in the US military who want to induce the Rapture / Second Coming. We also increasingly have AI control of weapons, and AI will believe whatever you tell it…
theguardian.com
US troops were told war on Iran was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’, watchdog alleges
Religious freedom group says 200 troops sent complaints of superiors using extremist Christian rhetoric to justify war
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Enshitification (Cory Doctorow) is just a specific example of sabotage (Veblen). The best and most competitive American companies do everything they can to sabotage markets and collect rents. This is the foundation of the America way of life.
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jessica jonestown @newfoundgloryhole.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
liberals don't want 💀FASCISM💀 liberals want 🌈fascism🌈
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
The reason the Democratic Party is incapable of fighting fascism is that fascism is itself a way to resolve tensions between capital and labor. Republicans have found their path to resolution (fascism), Democrats still don’t know what the question is.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
If the stock market keeps going up, Trump is free to do anything he wants. Lots of folks are angry, but how many are selling US equities? Those precious "portfolios" are pulling the kids into a fascist abyss.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
America can build more housing, but the existing financial system will keep prices out of reach. The financialization of assets moves faster than construction. www.brookings.edu/articles/qua...
brookings.edu
Quantitative easing and housing inflation post-COVID | Brookings
Aaron Klein and Alan Cui assess the impact of the Federal Reserve's actions during the pandemic on the price of housing
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Skyrocketing inequality created the material foundation for mass disillusionment with the American system. Assets get bailed out (market go up), and most people get left behind. Mainstream Democrats still have no theory/critique of that political economy.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...
lithub.com
Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani
It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
If lumpen proletariat is understood as a social location of resentment, then Trump is clearly in the mold of Napoleon III. He has assembled the same cross-class, grab-bag collection of disaffected lumpen that kept Napoleon III in power for decades.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
Probably a good time to be reminded that Disney has been a hell-hole for a long time now. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-m...
thebaffler.com
The Magic Kingdom | Sarah Marshall
Capitalism, like all abusive relationships, creates a sense of learned helplessness in its victims. We are complicit in what it makes of us.
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Brexit Bin 🇪🇺 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 @brexitbin.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
"A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud." ~ George Orwell
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
"The concrete wealth of America is vanishing into a black hole of pure financial destruction. Nothing is created from this destruction, while the financial class is expropriating the outcome of the general labor force and the general intellect." Berardi, Uprising
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
The American idea of a perfectly free market is a practical and theoretical lie. Working Americans got carved up by rent-seeking financial professionals — who know better.
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OtakuNoCreepo 🎃🇺🇦🇵🇸 @wessoman.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Nothing says "Chicago School of Economics" better than losing all your real hard money investing in fake soft money.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
The bottom 50% of wage earners in the US have an average savings of $4805, in China it’s $9760. So, 50% of Americans have nothing at all. These folks need radical change and fast. I don’t think corporate Dems grasp the urgency of this level of inequality — it destroys democracies.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
“We are promoting catastrophic policies, for only catastrophe — that is, the collapse of the liberal system — will clear the way for the new order…. Every weakening of the system is good, very good for us.” Gregor Strasser (1929)
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Is it a party of labor or capital? Republicans papered over their labor-capital divide with ethno-fascism — and that works pretty well for them. Until the Democratic Party resolves its labor/capital divide — or finds a gimmick to paper that over — it will continue to decline.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Democracy in America began to make its exit when the USA abandoned its industrial middle class and let entire cities collapse. A decades-long bipartisan consensus made this disaster. This moment is simply the end of a story we told ourselves about capital and labor.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
America shifted to privately-owned retirement accounts in the 1980s. Educated professionals were best positioned to take advantage of that and many have huge stock market gains. Thus, they are structurally more aligned with capital than labor. This is why the Democratic Party never does anything.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
In language, AI occupies the position of the pervert — it identities completely with the user’s enjoyment. So, it’s a bootlicker by design. And the most extreme bootlickers are….fascists.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
The real villain here is the professional managerial class. These folks are well-educated and diversely invested in a portfolio of stocks devoted to destroying the earth — and they despise labor.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
There is no successful politics without enjoyment. Republicans are having FUN. Yes, it's revenge porn craziness -- but it's FUN. Democrats are blandly campaigning to "save the system" -- but this (crisis capitalism) IS the system.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Race is, among other things, a capitalist strategy for pricing and devaluing labor. America is stuck in this colonial doom cycle until it breaks (or is broken by) the capitalist/military devaluation of life.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
I know Trump stands for right-wing enjoyment — lurid revenge fantasies and the like — and he delivers a lot of that. Do Democrats have any left-wing enjoyment — or is it all just facts and programs? What thrills are on offer?
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
Are Democrats ever going to decide between low-wage globalism (good for stock/401ks) and American labor? The party is drowning in this unresolved contradiction.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
DOGE is Pizzagate at scale.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Trump is acting out the collective rage that millions of Americans feel against the professional managerial class (professors, lawyers, doctors). The PMC was once aligned with labor but abandoned them during globalization/offshoring. This is the payback — rage and destruction.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
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Gallifreyan Jedi @jediofgallifrey.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
sometimes i still think about how we were willing to settle for bernie sanders and rather than accept that coalition and the landslide victory that would have resulted, liberals decided to violently shit their pants for 10 years instead
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
This seems like a good time for Democrats to decide whether they are a party of labor or capital.
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Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 12/02/2025
The Corporate Coup in Global Context Join @naomiaklein.bsky.social, @chenjerai.bsky.social, @astra.bsky.social, & @keeanga.bsky.social for an emergency town hall Monday, February 17th at 5:00 pm ET RSVP to attend: www.tickettailor.com/events/hayma...
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
America has been hollowed out by unregulated capital. Authoritarians say all this misery has been caused by “the other.” They did it. So, off we go, on this completely pointless and self-destructive search for our lost capitalist enjoyment.
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Robert Owen @petit-a.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
If borrowed money pulls forward future demand, what happens when the rest of the future arrives?
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