James 🎃 Harbeck
@sesquiotic.bsky.social
4.8K followers 1.5K following 8.9K posts
Louche left-wing nerd. Words, food, music, beverage alcohol. MA linguistics, PhD theatre. jamesharbeck.com, sesquiotic.com
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Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
fungocrat.bsky.social
Welcome to bluesky new users! This website reflects to each user the contents of their heart. Everything that annoys you about it is a warped mirror of your wickedness.
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
hockeyviz.com
I've lost track of the number of times I've said to students something isomorphic to "it's not that you're wrong, it's just that if you keep thinking about things like this you'll never get to where you're right"
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
angus.bsky.social
Seeing people say that "by the numbers" Stancil is right about No Kings being bigger than the civil rights mvt. But no. That's not how any of this works.

It's like saying I'm a bigger organizer than Greta Thunberg because I'm taller. It's not technically true, it's just stupid.
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
audrelawdamercy.bsky.social
‼️ this is one of the reasons why the Musk shutdown of USAID broke me, like

Congress said 'we're allocating these funds to save lives'

a random asshole with too much money and unresolved bitterness about the end of Apartheid said 'no you're not'

so the funding disappeared??

and people are dying??
hunterub.bsky.social
There's literally no reason for Congress to exist if any random freak in the presidential orbit can nullify laws and seize federal funds. All of this is plainly illegal, but Mike Johnson leads the most corrupt Congress in US history (and by a wide margin.)
reuters.com
White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers reut.rs/4qjMIyT
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
pookleblinky.bsky.social
Altman: the next update will *not* tell people to kill themselves in order to attain quantum resonance with god.

Everyone: yeah that'd be pretty nice

Altman: It will *not* tell people to murder their spouses.

Everyone: cool, good feature.

Altman: and you can fuck it
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
billamend.bsky.social
Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…
sesquiotic.bsky.social
"When I was a kid, everything was pure and clean and simple. Why can't we have that anymore?"

"You're not a kid anymore. Sorry for your loss of innocence. You could have taken the opportunity to grow up."
paulisci.bsky.social
A Brief History of Let’s Bring Back The Good Old Days

🧵
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
davidho.bsky.social
ICE agents kidnapped a US citizen in Chicago because she didn’t “look” American to them. She even had her US passport on her. 🤬
ICE Detains Citizen After Saying She Doesn’t “Look Like” Her Last Name
She even had her U.S. passport on her.
newrepublic.com
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
chrisgloverndp.bsky.social
Ford's gravy train

Clients of Ford's campaign manager received $100 million from the Skills Development Slush Fund.

The Auditor General called the fund "not fair, transparent or accountable."

#ONpoli
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
kashana.blacksky.app
The funniest part of all the billionaires are building bunker stories is the part where they’re sure the class hierarchy will survive the apocalypse.
aelkus.bsky.social
www.bbc.com/news/article...

"I once met a former bodyguard of one billionaire with his own "bunker", who told me his security team's first priority, if this really did happen, would be to eliminate said boss and get in the bunker themselves. And he didn't seem to be joking."
Tech billionaires seem to be doom prepping. Should we be worried?
The debate is ramping up about what happens if - or when - computer intelligence overtakes humans
www.bbc.com
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
pookleblinky.bsky.social
The accepted term for these freaks is "violence geeks"
They're *itching* to be just as violent as the normal people doing normal things around them.

www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/violence_gee...
Violence Geeks
Violence Geeks: An obsession with violence
www.nononsenseselfdefense.com
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
pookleblinky.bsky.social
The same multibillion dollar fear and paranoia industry also hits other people.

You're just going about your business, next to a guy who is completely convinced he's living in a fucking cormac mccarthy novel.
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
tzraick.bsky.social
Shame is an essential element of any functioning social order.

Some people don’t have guilt. We can’t rely on their own internal morality, bc they have none.

We all need to collectively reenforce these norms and the only -and best- way to do that is through shame.

We all need to reenforce this.
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
"A key aspect of the way we lived with each other before these self-styled epochal developments [post-2020] involved exactly the “social shame and cultural pressure” that Klein and other influential voices now come to condemn"

tapping the 'bring back shame' sign
www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
antlervel.vet
Hey man. No big deal, don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just kinda noticed your mise isn’t very en place today
sesquiotic.bsky.social
One film photo of a sign each day, all month.

15. Leica IIIf, Kodak Gold 200, can't remember which lens. Adelaide Street at Morrison Street, Toronto.
A young woman in black and grey running clothes runs past the corner of a two-storey bright yellow brick building. There is a glass door at the corner with the word ENTRANCE over it, and above that OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, and above that ROTBLOTT'S DISCOUNT WAREHOUSE 443 ADELAIDE ST. W. 416-703-0456. Other signs are cut off by the left edge of the frame. A NO EXIT sign in a darker yellow stands between the building and the street that runs along the side of the building leading away from the camera. In the background, a large geometrically complex building is under construction, and a tower crane rises above it. Other buildings and a few tree branches surround the scene.
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
originalsp.in
Korol is a US citizen. Her family hasn’t heard from her since she was taken, public charges haven’t been released—what crime did she even commit? 2nd-Degree Woodwinding?—and there has been no explanation for her “renditioning” across state lines.

We’ve moved into a new phase of Trump lawlessness.
originalsp.in
A musician, Oriana Korol, was peacefully playing clarinet with her protest band outside ICE facilities in Portland, OR.

When the band started playing “Ghostbusters,” ICE thugs suddenly poured outside, slammed her into the mud, arrested her and took her to a jail 9 miles away in Vancouver, WA.
Musician playing ‘Ghostbusters’ outside ICE facility is arrested by agents
‘Taking us citizens out of state to detain them without charge is a new action from the Feds and should be opposed,’ her band said
www.independent.co.uk
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
robmacwolf.thevoice.dog
When we write or draw porn or erotica, we get banned from having a bank account and our livelihoods get seized even if we give it away for free.

When billionaires steal what we've written or drawn to churn out a slop-approximate of porn, they're allowed to charge for it.
mattburgess1.bsky.social
Oh good, ChatGPT is getting "erotica for verified adults" later this year
We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.
sesquiotic.bsky.social
Brought home a souvenir T-shirt
A shirt with an arc over a silhouette of bottles and, in a curiously familiar script, the words Malt Whisky
sesquiotic.bsky.social
One film photo of a sign each day, all month.

14. Leica IIIf, Canon 50mm f/1.4 LTM (I think), Kodak Gold 200. Queen Street near Jones, Toronto.
A wire-link metal fence with a mid-century brick building out of focs behind, and some branches and minor greenery; on the metal top bar of the fence is a rectangular white plastic sign with a basic left-pointing arrow made with red lines and, inside it, in red letters of a tropical kind of style, the words Tango Patio
sesquiotic.bsky.social
One film photo of a sign each day, all month.

13. Leitz Minolta (Leica) CL, Voigtländer 40mm f/1.4, Fujicolor 200. Location on the sign.
A weathered old one-storey industrial building with screened-over windows with air conditioners and a single grey metal door in a doorway that appears to have been bricked down from a larger opening. Over the door, in a simple serif font on white, is a sign that says UNIVERSAL DRUM and, in modern sans-serif, 110 GLEN SCARLETT RD., and to the left of these a line drawing of a steel drum with the letters U D R.
sesquiotic.bsky.social
Oops! I was busy travelling and missed a couple of days. Here we go:

One film photo of a sign each day, all month.

12. Leica IIIf, Fujifilm 400, Canon LTM 50mm f/1.4. James Street, Hamilton.
A storefront with a sandwich board that says, in rough lettering on white, MARTELLO HAS A BIG ASS PATIO OUT BACK. If you look at the window behind it (at an angle) you see "Did you know? WE HAVE A BIG ASS PATIO OUT BACK!"
Reposted by James 🎃 Harbeck
moiradonegan.bsky.social
Like much of that this regime does, the murders of Venezuelan fishermen and boat passengers seem to be being conducted for the sake of making social media content that demonstrates Trump’s masculine dominance. So one way to describe them is as snuff films.
normative.bsky.social
There is no conceivable argument that these ships, even if we assume they were carrying narcotics, could not be dealt with in some other way. I think we can just drop the caveats and say: This is mass murder.
chrislhayes.bsky.social
Unless and until some kind of compelling legal and moral argument is presented as to why this is a legitimate use of deadly force, this is just…mass murder.