Ash Higgins
@ashhiggins.bsky.social
1.5K followers 3.8K following 12K posts
“From the ground, we stand; From our ships, we live; By the stars, we hope."
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ashhiggins.bsky.social
Just posting this again because I can: a new humanity, forged in the crucible of intergalactic war has spread throughout the galaxy; among them are millions of Muslims who must return to Earth for Hajj. Meet the crew: 🧵
ashhiggins.bsky.social
Form goes out the window, yeah.
Reposted by Ash Higgins
swin24.bsky.social
I get the sense that a staggeringly high percentage of guys who earnestly say with some regularity “fuck around and find out” simply do not understand that the real life versions of the street or bar fight they are picturing typically last a few seconds, don’t have defined winners, and look stupid
Reposted by Ash Higgins
audiosand.bsky.social
Small detail re: the former station reporter now FPropagandist who complained NPR "inserted" the word racist into a headline. I was an NPR correspondent covering race. I had to fight tooth & nail to call objectively racist things racist.

I was also told that systemic racism was a "contested topic"
Reposted by Ash Higgins
blackazizanansi.blacksky.app
*hair gets greyer*
bleary.off-the-records.com
If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.
Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?
ashhiggins.bsky.social
Let’s be real, that five year window of minimalist covers sung by young women gave us a lot of bangers youtu.be/6LGbhD9ZJC8?...
Sweet Child o' Mine
YouTube video by Taken By Trees - Topic
youtu.be
ashhiggins.bsky.social
It’s even more haunting than the original and that’s saying something
ashhiggins.bsky.social
I honestly think all this “take Kamala Harris to task despite her not being in charge of literally fucking anything” energy would better spent some other way.
ashhiggins.bsky.social
Shout out to the nice Uber delivery driver who didn't speak a word of English for trying not to absolutely lose it when I butchered his native tongue like a blind ferret with a straight razor. And big fuck you to the guy who got up in our business because "Spanish bad," or some shit.
ashhiggins.bsky.social
Pretty sure the guy who had an article written about him in Harper’s in the late 1890’s with the sub head “the Good Bad Guy” wasn’t much of a saint.
Your ancestors were not evil
Reposted by Ash Higgins
genxjamerican.blacksky.app
NYPD literally rioted over Mayor Dinkins’ proposal for an independent civilian review board for complaints against the police back in the 90s. They gave Bill de Blasio hell too.
edithpusi.bsky.social
It’s bad I think because it’s framing Mamdani as anti-cop, when in reality, the NYPD has a history of intentionally undermining the mayor when the mayor doesn’t bow down to them (see: M. Bloomberg)
Reposted by Ash Higgins
hntdove.bsky.social
Ea-Nāşir's perfidy seems eternal!
Comic

Panel one. Stick finger singing, "Raindrops on rose/ And whiskers on kittens."

Panel two. Same stick figure holding pot and singing, "Bright copper kettles leave/ ...Flakes on my mittens!?"

Panel three. Same figure still holding pot and singing, "Hey, these are stone with a copper veneer!"

Fourth panel. Same stick figure has put down pot and is singing, "I've been bamboozled by Ea-Nāşir!"
Reposted by Ash Higgins
murshedz.bsky.social
“[T]he broader aim of all this agitprop is far uglier. Trump has employed a form of state propaganda that may be unrivaled by any presidency in modern memory, and these MAGA influencers are generating material for that vile effort.”
gregsargent.bsky.social
This MAGA propaganda is deeply sinister. Stephen Miller has been lying about Portland/Chicago relentlessly. It's core to his project: He's trying to establish quasi-absolute power for Trump to simply invent pretexts by fiat to justify whatever abuses he launches. 5/

newrepublic.com/article/2016...
Reposted by Ash Higgins
nicholasgrossman.bsky.social
Hannah Arendt distinguished totalitarianism “from other forms of political oppression known to us such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship” in that totalitarianism seeks to subjugate civil society and private lives, not just political opponents, using psychological, not just physical, repression.
editorialboard.bsky.social
I saw the new George Orwell documentary last night. It’s called 2+2=5. I have been a little bit squeamish about applying the word totalitarian to Trump and the Republicans. Not anymore. We are experiencing a totalitarian movement. There’s no question.
Reposted by Ash Higgins
dieworkwear.bsky.social
About a month ago, the Trump administration got rid of the de minimis exemption, whereby packages valued under $800 could slide in without import duties. Now there's a backlog as the government can't process all of this paperwork, leading to UPS just destroying packages
Business Insider headline reads: UPS is telling customers that their packages coming to the US are marked for destruction.
Reposted by Ash Higgins
badideas.bsky.social
Holy shit someone uploaded the entire stage play adaptation of the Yakuza videogame series with English subtitles and it’s glorious and 500x better than the Amazon show youtu.be/Z2Msr4si6dU?...
ashhiggins.bsky.social
About a year A friend of mine came out to me as a trans man recently and asked me to help them be more manly because they think I'm just that good at being a man. Part of me is like "FUCK YEAH BRO" and another part of me is like "I'm a fucking doofus."
Reposted by Ash Higgins
eddsmitty.bsky.social
(719 prisoners at the time of the uprising; facility was built for 400), harsh conditions, and racial tensions. Black soldiers who were 11% of U.S. troops and well over 90% of the inmate population, faced disproportionate punishments. The uprising (cont)

www.npr.org/sections/cod...
The Forgotten History Of A Prison Uprising In Vietnam
Long Binh Jail was a prison for American soldiers on the outskirts of Saigon with notoriously harsh conditions. In 1968, a group of black inmates were fed up with their treatment and the war.
www.npr.org
Reposted by Ash Higgins
explaintrade.com
This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.
Well – no. Bluesky may or may not be, as one centre-right friend who felt unwelcome put it, “self-righteous island”. But the idea that’s why we went is nonsense. That I’ve largely stopped posting on a site that’s done more to shape my career and social circle than the rest of the internet combined is less about avoiding rival opinions (I love arguing with people who are wrong!) than with the fact the site simply became unusable. It stopped generating the things (good jokes, interesting debate, clicks) I wanted; it became extremely good at generating the things (racists, pornbots, racist pornbots) I did not.