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J. C. Cantwell 🌻

@segfaultvicta.aludel.xyz

5.9K followers 3.1K following 9.7K posts

Social Justice Bard. They/them. Gay; tired. "Maybe when it happens, you'll sink deeply into your chair and sigh loose a breath you didn't know you were holding. It is a pronoun. It is an event. It is a place and a time and a certainty."

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J. C. Cantwell 🌻 @segfaultvicta.aludel.xyz · Aug 1

brother, nobody calls you a fuckin dipshit because you Dared To Push Back Against Woke

they call you a fuckin dipshit because you’re a fuckin dipshit. it’s really not hard, and if you weren’t a fuckin dipshit, you’d understand it.

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Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 20h

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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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 17h

This seems true, but it has pretty dark implications, because the consistent historical trend is for radicals of this sort, when stymied, to ramp up the violence in an effort to break through.

I think some folks are expecting a 'soft' Hungary-style tyranny and I don't think that's in the cards.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 18h

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 19h

What he’s railing against is a profound shift in culture, status… He’s obsessed with the idea that America is controlled by a leftist “ruling elite” - but “elite” isn’t defined socio-economically or by political power, it means something like: Getting to define “real America” and who gets to belong.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 1h

"is it possible to mock Israel somehow for its essentially parasitic nature without engaging in antisemitism?"

No. Why do you want to?

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 1h

It's someone who either a: understands that overt antisemitism is coded as a Bad Person Belief, and/or b: has some ludicrous and patronizing idea that Real Jews are defined as tokens, victims and allies alone, elevated entirely for the good they provide other identities.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 1h

In other words: once you are condemning the essential nature of a population as fundamentally false, parasitic & evil, you have entered Nazi territory, whether you admit to it or not.

Saying "it's not antisemitic, Jews and Israelis are unrelated," is the fig leaf of a coward.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 1h

Israel is a Middle Eastern state whose local politics favor a particular religious demographic, and that has done some horrendous things.

That's not a question of Essential Nature, it's a question of a government policy. If you are condemning nature there's only really two solutions you leave.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 1h

People discovered a taste for an acceptable bigotry, fueled by marinating their brains in visceral atrocity footage. They realized what every antisemite in history has realized: hatred of Jews is an excellent binding agent for social movements.

And they don't want to give it up. It's that simple.

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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 1h

It genuinely is not actually hard to condemn the actions of the Israeli state without engaging in blatant, naked gutter antisemitism.

The issue isn't that this is some nuanced and complicated topic, the issue is that people want to do antisemitism because they have discovered bigotry feels good.

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GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 1h

that’s the ballgame for american soybean farmers

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 1h

China’s soybean imports hit a record high for the month of September, even as the country avoids US supplies amid a resurgence in trade tensions between the agriculture powerhouses

China’s Soy Imports Hit September Record, Despite Avoiding US

China’s soybean imports hit a record high for the month of September, even as the country avoids US supplies amid a resurgence in trade tensions between the agriculture powerhouses.

bloom.bg

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 2h

the reason israeli food is so much like other middle eastern food is that middle eastern jews ate more or less what their neighbors did until their neighbors burned them out of their homes

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 11h

Ultimately, the death of US manufacturing is about this attitude. It's easy to say "buy american or stfu" because virtue signaling is free. But it's hard to actually sustain a business because many Americans simply don't want to pay what it costs to produce things ethically in this country

Someone on Twitter replies to me: "meh. buy american or stfu."

Two hours later, in a separate thread, the write: "$30 for a single button-up is ridiculous unless it is decent quality silk."

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 11h

I interviewed one of these factory workers in Los Angeles. She gets paid three cents to sew a zipper, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt.

This is how fast fashion brands like Fashion Nova can put "Made in USA" tags on dress shirts that retail for only $25

"Every day at 6 am, Bilma boards a bus that shuttles her to downtown Los Angeles’s Fashion District. When she reaches the garment factory an hour later, she starts working immediately, without punching in. Like thousands of other garment workers in the United States, Bilma’s wages aren’t tethered to the clock but rather to the quantity of operations she executes. Three cents for a zipper or sleeve, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt before she passes it onto the next sewing operator in line. Assembling an entire dress earns her a mere 15 cents. Bilma toils away on garments primarily for fast-fashion labels such as Fashion Nova, Lulus, and Lucy in the Sky, who prioritize quickly stocking on-trend items over the quality of materials. These companies peddle things like $80 maxi dresses, $25 poplin dress shirts, and $5 crop tops, all modeled by beautiful people and bedecked with the tantalizing promise of low-cost glamor."

"This worker payment system, known as “piecework” in the garment industry, is how US-based manufacturers can sidestep labor laws that require companies to pay at least the minimum wage. Rather than compensating Bilma for the exhausting 12-hour shifts—a regimen that, according to LA County’s minimum wage requirement, should yield $202.80—her pay is determined by the individual tasks she performs, which can fluctuate daily. Despite her adept handling of hundreds of garments a day, Bilma’s earnings typically linger around $50 per day. That’s $300 weekly for the standard six-day grind and $350 if she opts for Sunday labor. Doing what she can with this modest income, Bilma spends $400 a month to live in a two-bedroom apartment with six other people, some of whom are day laborers. In this crowded arrangement, two occupants squeeze into each bedroom, while two more lay claim to the living room. Bilma sleeps in the corner of the bustling kitchen."

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 11h

This two-parter below is exactly why it's hard to make clothes in the United States.

Let's look at how much it costs to produce a button-up shirt in the US. 🧵

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 11h

It's hard to help Americans left behind because so much of US identity is rooted in individualism. The average American conservative holds all three positions at once:

— Virtue signals about supporting US manufacturing
— Against raising the minimum wage
— Buys foreign imports because they're cheap

HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "I'm willing to pay more for quality products if they are made in America, by Americans, who are paid a decent income." The tweet shows Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" painting, which is often used to show the tweeter is expressing a brave opinion.

HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "MINIMUM WAGE JOBS WERE NOT MEANT TO BE A CAREER. Why does no one understand this? Entry level jobs are STEPPING STONES to better jobs. No one wants to work towards that though."

HardPass4 on Twitter tweets: "Buy $5 gloves instead of $50 ones. Trust me." The tweet shows a box of "Gorilla Grip" gloves.

The label on Gorilla Grip gloves show they're made in China.

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GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 3h

several congresses, mostly but not all republican, have worked very hard for this outcome

Department of Angela @angelaisms.bsky.social · 3h

There’s also the fact that a multitude of Americans have come to believe that there’s a “make economy good” button built into the Resolute Desk.

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Democracy Dies in Dorkness @lizamazel.bsky.social · 4h

It's apt, because this sorry excuse for the government is the end stage expression of that belief. To a one, this is a bunch of nihilistic sociopaths: greedy, vulgar, cruel, smugly ignorant, gratuitously destructive. They say "virtue signaling" because they are virtue destroying.

It's enough now.

Edward Brennan @whimsywriter.bsky.social · 4h

We have spent 50 years teaching people that life is a transactional game with winners and losers. That it is all about your personal improvement, your personal gain. All about one's own gains with screw others first game.

Caring for more than yourself has always been the noble path, not this trash.

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Dana Houle @danahoule.bsky.social · 4h

That’s a key to the determined resistance to ICE in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago; it’s a racial plurality neighborhood (about a third white, about a third Latino, remaining third Black & Asian), & the non-Latinos have banded together to protect their neighbors from Kavanaugh sweeps.

Luigi de Guzman @ouij.bsky.social · 5h

The fact that protests now feature people who don’t normally have to worry about what might happen to them in an adverse encounter with security forces is a HUGE DEAL.

It means that the “real” victims don’t have to suffer alone. It means that some people care about something more than themselves

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 8h

Someone in my mentions is upset because these people haven’t suffered the worst at ICE’s hands and therefore they shouldn’t be praised for being out on the streets?

Yeah, no. To push back on these people we need everyone — especially those with relative privilege — to get up and get involved.

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Nick Turse @nickturse.bsky.social · 4h

Trump: “We took the freedom of speech away”

That's it.

That's the quote.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 8h

If you try to quote dunk on someone and then they ether you in the replies and get more interaction than you, well, you gotta pack it in

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 8h

Matt Stoller being very Matt Stoller, calling someone else a "classic left poseur snob"

Matt Stoller being eviscerated by @dieworkwear.bsky.social

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Alexander Chee @alexanderchee.bsky.social · 5h

Menswear Guy increasingly seems like the only one who really studied the blade, is the thing.

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 4h

there is no solid proof he is in the checkout line, only circumstantial evidence. but there is much more circumstantial evidence than i expected

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 5h

he has been talking obsessively about the afterlife for some time, he is missing for chunks of time, his aides are trying harder than usual to show he’s fit, his public appearances show someone in visible physical decline, and jd vance talked impromptu about being prepared to assume office

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11h

Trump: "I don't think there's anything that's gonna get me in heaven. I think I'm not maybe heaven bound. I may be in heaven right now as we fly on Air Force One. I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to make heaven."

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 6h

to be clear some people want to fuck the drone and that is fine I guess, please don’t give yourself a horrible rotor injury

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 6h

it’s fascinating and I wanna know how one thinks “ah, this person must want to fuck the drone”

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