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ian

@ismathers.bsky.social

1K followers 690 following 7.4K posts

he/him mathers totonto

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · Jan 1

Ripping this off from many (directly from @tomewing.bsky.social): in 2025, I play to a new-to-me record a day. Partly to prevent year-end listening being so clogged (AGAIN), partly just because I keep finding myself going "I should play more records" and doing nothing about it. Thread to follow.

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1h

"Caribbean Queen" was played often enough by my shitty hometown radio station when I was a kid that it took me years to realize that, actually, it rules (and it was almost on my ballot)

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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 3h

No one has ever been this far into the cool zone before

Unusual Whales @unusualwhales.bsky.social · 2d

AI bubble now 17 times bigger than dot-com boom and four times larger than subprime crisis, per MW

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 2h

at least my "Prince does not need my vote" rule and love of "Egypt, Egypt" make this marginally easier than the last two groups

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 2h

even that is unfair to "Nightshift" and "Tenderness," either of which could have easily gotten my vote in different groups

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 2h

and already, ugh, not going to vote against my own nomination but maybe Klymaxx needs my bonus more

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 2h

"Smooth Operator" vs "Jungle Love" is brutal, might have to use my bonus already?

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 2h

damn, I didn't even know there was a single edit of "I Didn't Mean To Turn You On," I would have specified album version otherwise! Unimpeachable classic in any form, anyways

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 2h

This is a great group, but I would humbly submit that Cherrelle's "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On" stands out even among them (especially, and it's my fault for not specifying it, the full album version). Please consider voting for it, in any version!

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 13h

it is genuinely not a knock on the other three songs here to admit this is a very easy vote for "Just Be Good to Me"

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julie muncy @julie.radiantarray.io · 15h

it is vital, vital, for the health of our society, that peter thiel not be allowed to read berserk

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 2d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 13h

can we not claim him? i'm not sure what this is, but straight people don't like it either

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Chris Piuma @wordgarbler.bsky.social · 18h

Poetry isn't there to "mean" something, it's there to get you high.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 18h

happy birthday!

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 19h

"i know we all feel the same way" cannot possibly confirm or deny, because i don't know whAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 19h

I actually hate it even more when it's vagueposting about events and not other posters. not everyone has seen what you're talking about! just say it FFS!

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