Author | Lightnews

Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 1h

Have you read this book by McNally? Touches on a lot of these themes!

Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

The perfect book for Halloween! In Monsters of the Market, McNally explores the history of zombies, vampires, and other monsters, arguing that their origins are tied to socioeconomic and cultural changes experienced by the working class under capitalism. #booksky #halloween

The book Monsters of the Market by David Mc ally sits on fall leaves next to pumpkins

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

Stories of zombies and the occult are growing in popularity in Africa as capitalism takes hold. McNally analyzes recent works of fiction set in Africa and also urban legends about witches, head-hunters, and more.

Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

The origin of the zombie trope is fascinating. The idea originally came from Haiti, and focused on the zombie-laborer, a being without personality or language, reduced to its physical capacity to work.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

McNally continues to explore how the occult is used as a metaphor for capitalism. He lists countless examples of Marx referring to vampires and specters, dead labor controlling living labor, the sorcery of capital and the alchemy of money.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

Frankenstein's Creature is a metaphor for the proletariat. Cobbled together from disparate pieces and thrown into the world with no possessions, he works at night for a family without their knowledge and teaches himself to read. His labor goes unseen, unappreciated, and eventually they reject him.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

This is the social cauldron in which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

Laws were passed allowing "anatomists" to claim the bodies of criminals, and eventually any unclaimed body in the poor houses. The working class resented the posthumous humiliation of the anatomist's blade and would fight for the bodies taken from the gallows to save them from further denigration.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

Technological advancement and the empiricism of the Enlightenment created a culture fascinated with the human body--so much so that dissections became a popular form of public entertainment complete with musical score. But beneath the scientific veneer was a punitive core.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

The book begins in England where the enclosure of the commons had broken up traditional communities and thrown people into rapidly growing cities.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7h

The perfect book for Halloween! In Monsters of the Market, McNally explores the history of zombies, vampires, and other monsters, arguing that their origins are tied to socioeconomic and cultural changes experienced by the working class under capitalism. #booksky #halloween

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Reposted by Left Coast Reads 📚🌹

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 1d

"When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity." - CLR James, "The Black Jacobins"

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 1d

Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana blames SNAP recipients for not stockpiling a month's worth of food.

He ends his tweet with "stop smoking crack."

Rep. Clay Higgins:

There are 22 million American households receiving SNAP benefits for groceries, at $4200 per year on average.
Try to get your head wrapped around how many pantries you can stock with $4200 dollars in properly shopped groceries.
Any American who has been receiving $4200 dollars per year of free groceries and does NOT have at least 1 month of groceries stocked should never again receive SNAP, because wow, stop smoking crack.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 1d

Imagine how the mainstream media would cover this if three people had been shot last night within a one mile radius.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 1d

Mamdani/Halkias 2028
We're taking the white house babyyy @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

Comedian Stavros Halkias post on instagram showing that he voted for Zohran Mamdani for NYC Mayor

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 2d

As a child I called my babysitter "Aunt." No actual relation to me. This is very common and the media are showing their whole ass by pretending like this is some sort of scandal.

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2d

It's funny to me that this has basically led to a search for "is there a culture group that does not do this?" and so far the answer seems genuinely to be "no".

Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 4d

lmao

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 2d

Growing up I called my baby sitter "Aunt." No relation to me. This is a very common thing and the media are showing their whole ass by pretending this is some sort of scandal.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 3d

It's posted by an AI hiring firm. It doesn't say which specific company you would work for.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 3d

This is part of the bullionaires' plan to further control what we see and to shape politics to their own ends.

Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 10d

There are now job listings on LinkedIn to identify and provide "corrections" when AI model outputs are too left-wing.

LinkedIn job posting talking about identifying and correcting progressive outputs and making sure they represent conservative ideas accurately and coherently

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 4d

His soul goes marching on!

Reposted by Left Coast Reads 📚🌹

Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7d

A huge issue for Biden which is often overlooked is that the expansion of benefits during the pandemic was ended rather abruptly with catastrophic results. The overall poverty rate and child poverty rate were higher at the end of his term than when he started! @stephensemler.bsky.social

Chart showing the implementation and removal of various pandemic relief/anti-poverty measures

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7d

Pandemic relief worked! And then they ended it. Guess what happened? Poverty increased! If you give people money, food, and low cost healthcare, protect them from eviction, and pause their student loan payments, their lives get a lot better.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 7d

A huge issue for Biden which is often overlooked is that the expansion of benefits during the pandemic was ended rather abruptly with catastrophic results. The overall poverty rate and child poverty rate were higher at the end of his term than when he started! @stephensemler.bsky.social

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 8d

Compare this with Mamdani's campaign output which feels authentic, optimistic, and confident. The juxtaposition with this AI trash from Cuomo is astonishing.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 8d

It's been like pulling teeth to get Dem leadership to endorse Mamdani and THIS is his competition.

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · 9d

Andrew Cuomo’s campaign just posted — and quickly deleted — this AI-generated ad depicting “criminals for Zohran Mamdani.”

Features a Black man in a keffiyeh shoplifting, an abuser, a trespasser, a trafficker, a drug dealer, and a drunk driver all declaring support for Mamdani.

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 10d

Good stuff here 👇

Pluto Press @plutopress.bsky.social · 10d

💥40% off all Pluto books until October 28th!💥

plutobooks.com

A stack of various Pluto books against a white backdrop. Books piled on top of each other in a neat stack. Titles include, Radical Antiquity, Fascist Yoga, The Feminist Art of Walking, The Backstage of the Care Economy, Renters Unite, The New Racial Regime, Radical Abundance, Red and Black in Harlem and Jamaica, Naseej, The Forgotten Era and Drax of Drax Hall. Black text reads 40% off all books until October 28th

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Left Coast Reads 📚🌹 @leftcoastreads.bsky.social · 10d

These tools do not operate independently of the people who own them. And they'll pay you $70/hr to make sure the computer doesn't say anything bad about Nazis.

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