Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matt Baldwin

@thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social

3.9K followers 380 following 26K posts

Writer, photographer, cyclist, naturalist, martial artist, tall ship sailor. The Pirate Guy of Blue Sky, apparently. Mexican-American. No kings in America. He/him. San Diego, CA.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · Nov 8

Have picked up a lot of new followers recently, so: a (re)Dedication of Principles:
1) this is a diverse and queer-friendly place, inc. trans people
2) zero tolerance for anyone sharing, defending, or promoting AI "art"
3) I have a lot of interests, so expect posts covering a wide rage (con't)

10 6 160

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 15h

I…..still have the phone number for my childhood home, a place I have not lived for almost 30 years, fully memorized.

bleary @bleary.off-the-records.com · 18h

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?

3 1 10

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 19h

S’up, Oakland? In the Bay for a few days to play.

The sign and waiting area at the Oakland airport BART station.

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 21h

ANNUAL REMINDER: among his other inhuman acts, Christopher Columbus was such a torture enthusiast during his time as governor of Hispaniola that Ferdinand & Isabella, the same monarch who created *the Spanish Inquisition* had him hauled back to Spain in chains for trial. He deserves NO celebration.

1 8

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 21h

*waves back from 105*

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 21h

Shout-out to everyone who turned up to the airport at 6 a.m. in their pajamas for early-morning travel to their destinations.

1 5

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

Our correspondents reached out to Death for a response to this comment from President Trump.

2 1 4

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

Also: shellfish and crustaceans are typically not considered kosher within the Jewish faith. This is multi-layered antisemitism.

4 12

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

Exactly! And if 2000+ people are suddenly going to be paying attention to the things I say, I think it’s actually pretty important to not say anything that I can’t back up with a reasoned argument, and not just vent my spleen in whatever direction I feel like.

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

Last year a thread of mine on pirate history went wildly viral and I picked up ~2k new followers literally overnight, up from ~500. I feel an incredible weight of responsibility to have care in what I say to that audience, and I don’t understand people who do not.

1 2 14

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

REMINDER, fellow Bluesky aviators: we don’t reward this kind of clout-chasing, rage-bait click-farming with engagement around here, we just silently banish it off to the cornfield forever.

Block and Ignore — it’s the Bluesky way!

A skeet by Sally Jenkins, promoting a pro-Bari Weiss piece in the Atlantic that is blatant rage-farming. Her comment: “Ratio me. Please. It's a badge of honor. If you don't like a link, go follow some chicken-heart who needs the approval of the thought-police.
Caitlin Flanagan of @theatlantic.com is a tremendous writer and this piece is an excellent read.” Just block her.

2 8

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

Peter Thiel being deeply invested in a massive, ego-flattering misread of WATCHMEN isn't entirely surprising, but "ONE PIECE is about the antichrist, actually" is the kind of thing that makes normies sit up and go, "oh OK, this man has a cuckoo clock where his brain is supposed to be."

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1d

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.

1 7

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

"Spontaneous pumpkin patch that popped up when our tree fell down" feels like a sentence from the first paragraph of a horror novel, be careful dude.

1 1 9

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 1d

What part of "we know" was unclear?

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

The Rockies are a highly effective natural barrier against east coast opinions, when will these people learn.

2 25

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

Hey, that's my 'hood!

Reposted by Matt Baldwin

Ify Nwadiwe @ifycomedy.com · 2d

I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.

450 6.4K 21K

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

...........................................................

please tell me this isn't an actual quote from the movie

1 1

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

Remember when people made fun of MORBIUS online so hard that Sony execs convinced themselves that meant there was actual audience demand for it and re-released it into theaters, only for it to flop *twice* in a single year?

Yeah.

1 8

Reposted by Matt Baldwin

Dr Eleanor Janega @goingmedieval.bsky.social · 2d

If I see you posting AI slop, it's an instant block. Even if you think it's cute or says a lot about society. If you are purporting that some AI slop is real news, I will report you for misinformation, and then block you. Sloppers should be marginalised.

15 180 1.1K

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

I mean, at basic storytelling ground level, that’s just THE MATRIX.

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

To some of you on the timeline right now: Woody Allen turning out to be a grotesque shitheel does not diminish Diane Keaton’s performance in ANNIE HALL, and it’s OK not to caveat your praise of the latter with condemnation of the former.

We know.

2 4 82

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

I really like that dude’s Paleofuture work and thought he had some good insights on how history informs the present, but he’s gotten increasingly cynical the last few years and I finally had the mute him in the run-up to the election. The moment I did 80% of the doomerism in my timeline *vanished*.

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

A philosophical question for the skyline on this Saturday morning:

Have the Portland protestors successfully reclaimed the frog as a symbol from all the Pepe-bearing white supremacist right-wingers?

2 1 6

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 2d

Dating someone in the early 2010s who was really into self-help was eye-opening terms of seeing how that industry functions to industrialize pathological narcissism.

4 51

Matt Baldwin @thisbrokenwheel.bsky.social · 3d

Took two hours to go watch a movie and I come back to find that my entire timeline is now baseball.

4 25