Reposted by MWhiteNicholas Slayton @nslayton.bsky.social · 2hThe Pentagon quietly updated the Iran war death toll Friday, its first update since Sept. 29. The new figure includes a soldier whose death was previously announced but not counted in the war casualties and a sailor who died last month. Both are non-hostile deaths. taskandpurpose.com/news/pentago...taskandpurpose.comPentagon raises Iran war death toll to 21The number of U.S. troops who died in the course of the war includes a soldier who died in March and a sailor who died in September. 0146
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 58mEvery cop - sorry, ever "LEO" - should dress like this on duty, no exceptions. I am NEGATIVE joking. Its a PUBLIC SAFETY JOB. jumping out of vans to grab people? you still need to look like your primary concern is the SAFETY of the PUBLIC. All the camo and hoodies is Make-A-Wish-Kid weakness. 011
Reposted by MWhiteescapedexplorer.bsky.social @escapedexplorer.bsky.social · 2hLiterally, anyone who's ever used the term "gray man" unironically has a 1911 in a spring-loaded button-actuated armrest SPECIFICALLY to throw a .45 slug through the car door at someone *for specifically this situation* that used to basically be nonexistent in the US until ICE started doing it 0153
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 1hUNIFORMS. ALL OF THEM. ALL THE TIME. ***NOT CAMO*** UNIFORMS. i dont know why this isn't the loudest talking point. if you could bring the public around on this, you'd break their spirit because the THUG is the brand and the LOVE IT 141
Reposted by MWhiteAndy Hoberek @thathoberekguy.bsky.social · 2hThis is what happens when you eliminate your Women’s and Gender Studies program. 118247
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 2hWeird how a guy who loves death so much that he is gonna livestream one keeps miscounting the bodies of his own people he sent to die. 040
Reposted by MWhiteMake Opening Day a National Holiday @chriscardsfan.bsky.social · 3hI love this country. 3364
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 3hits fine to always punch nazis. its like Rock Stars can always be drunk and smoke weed because they are rock stars and we, as society, let it go. nazis are always fine to be punched or hit with bricks. little singularities in our social contract 020
Reposted by MWhiteUrsula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 5hThere is no death for an otter, only life to the end. 04910
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 8hBut i heard it last night, and my mind was wandering and it popped into my head that NO WAY did Robert Palmer think that deeply into these lyrics. Is he just getting a random doctor to confirm he's in love with his GF? anyway, 4 decades of hearing a song one way and then suddenly its the other way. 000
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 8hThis was probably one of the first 'rock songs' i ever heard, cuz it was on a TV show when i was, like, 5. maybe 7. Since then, it stuck in my head as the catchy little ditty with the clever hook of being a song where a singer falls in love with the doctor who has to diagnosis him. Clever!/ 100
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 8hPosted last night, deleted, but im putting back up, cuz im stil thinking about it: Robert Palmer 70s, lyrics: "Doctor Doctor, gimmer the news I got a (beat!) BAD CASE of lovin' you" He's in love with the ACTUAL Doctor, right? This woman who went to Med School, and the song's about her, right? 100
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Both of them are an obsolete franchise in a larger enterprise that desperately wants them gone but they ain't leavin'. 010
Reposted by MWhiteDark Laughter @darklaughtertdb.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Look out kid, it's somethin you did. God knows when, but you're doin' it again... 0102
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Sex so good that if the sex was on one channel and Michigan football was on the other, i'd watch the sex even if the picture was fuzzy. 000
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Seriously, its an American classic. features.apmreports.org/in-the-dark/...features.apmreports.orgIn the Dark, Season 2 (Curtis Flowers) | Podcast | APM ReportsWe investigate the case of Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Winona, Mississippi, who was tried six times for the same crime. Flowers spent more than 20 years fighting for his life while a white prosec... 010
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 09/10/2026"The True Crime Podcast Era" traces to Serial, a pod which time has essentially unraveled. The REAL Gen 1 Pod That Changed The World was In The Dark, which freed Curtis Flowers (season 2). If you've never listened to it, do so this week. It is funny, astonishing, smart, sad and utterly American. 140
Reposted by MWhiteTK_Wharton @tkw.bsky.social · 08/10/2026On my walk by McGehee today. Two of these doomed oaks are massive and likely greater than 150 years old. What a lovely space they’re about to destroy 31711
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Its one of those horrible times when you can tell the writer is 100% vamping and showing off and just rubbing your face in how good they are at writing and there's nothing you can do about it because they are. 010
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 09/10/2026now you can fall asleep tonight probably pretty easily but with sadness knowing you won't sleep THAT good. 010
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 09/10/2026DAMN, this site is absolutely marinating in AWFULNESS tonight. So here's my thread from earlier on finally, 3 decades after high school, FINALLY reading The Great Gatsby (always skipped movie versions thinking "someday I'll read it...." and now I have!) 220
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Oh shit, i just accidently invented the Final Boss of Officer-vs-Enlisted memes 000
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Anyway, I finally read the Great Gatsby and I am SOOO bummed i never was one of those kids forced to read it and - UGH! - TAAALK about it in high school. 220
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026They are powerless individuals but, in the end, their very existence is what ends the novel, the world of the 4 rich kids and ends Gatsby himself. 100
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Gatsby even says, in the end, that its a story about the West, or at least Westerners, which, well, he means Kentucky but whatever. I liked how he put the One Poor People In The Book at the center of both the geography - halfway to NYC from LI — and at the crux of the plot in the finale. 100
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026It reads like A River Runs Through It, perfect in every word, with characters too drawn perfect to live long, which makes sense cuz Fitzgerald and Maclean were contemporaries and they cover close to the same timeframe 120
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” that's what he finishes on. 121
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.” I mean, that's PAGE ONE 111
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Perhaps the most cynical take is to think Fitzgerald wrote the book, with its comicly-extreme and paper-thin characters and hyper-polished glitz, because he had all those dozens of great, biting lines in his head, and needed a story to deliver them with. 110
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Reading it certainly sets you to thinking that Gilded Age was The Most American of Times, but then you can also decide that that is the case for the 1880s and cattle drives if you read Lonesome Dove. 110
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Then he came back and - now that i think about - pulled a Thomas Shelby. 120
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Literally, Gatsby was an infantry officer, LT-thru-Major, at the Marne and the Meuse-Argonne. he describes one engagement with a hint of The Lost Battalion. and after all that, the impact of his service on his life (and the plot) is that... he then did a semester at Oxford before he came home 120
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026But of course, if you take Nick out of the story, the story happens anyway. he's just there for us. I also like that both Gatsby and Nick are WW1 vets or some fairly in-the-shit fighting and it... never comes up, other than to establish chronology. 130
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026And ALSO, Nick went to Yale with Tom. He's connected, individually, to each of the three, by completely unplanned and seperate coincidences. Sure, OK 130
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026when you say it outloud, its fairly ridiculous set-up: rich kid Nick but the GOOD KIND Falls effortlessly into wall st AND a perfect house, next to Gatsby, and across the water from Tom and Daisy who is not only Gatsby's old flame, but Nick is RELATED to her, and its all a coincidence. 120
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026...of course, as another cliche goes, it was 'kids' who knew what the Beatles were when they first heard them, so maybe not? also: is it a 'novel?' *I* liked it at 110 pages, with 4 ppl, one setting and 3 quick acts. *MY* kind of novel, but i get it might be a short story that broke containment 120
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026above everything else, its just gorgeous writing. i cant imagine the millions of high school kids its been assigned to being able to appreciate it, because they're kids and its writting is such a perfect mastery of the skill, which kids would almost never realize. of course..... 130
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I finally read The Great Gatsby, in little rushes over the summer when i could, and then the whole second half in one sitting the other night. the huge cliche is that its the greatest of all the 'great american novels' or at least the first and model one, but who's to say? Its certainly incredible. 190
Reposted by MWhiteWard Q. Normal (he/him) @wardqnormal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Dennis Hastert and Jim Bakker in the same day. It’s not the main event, but it’s not nothing. 916729
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Quit note to say goodbye forever for this AI shitslop of dead Americans 000
MWhite @pjmatt.bsky.social · 06/10/2026sometimes i think of a clip i saw of him capturing this exact idea, but as quip - "Life is incredible. you can walk around, you can wear a hat, you can do whatever you want." 010