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ian

@ismathers.bsky.social

1K followers 690 following 7.3K 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 · 8h

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 · 11h

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 · 9h

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 · 14h

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 · 14h

happy birthday!

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 14h

"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 · 15h

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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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 21h

honestly, all the leftovers already being eaten and not having anything to carry with me in the bus home is kind of a relief

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

so we did thanksgiving dinner saturday (deep fried turkey!), ate leftovers all day today, and now we're sitting around a fire before driving home tomorrow. think this might be the new meta

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

in a sense, yes

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

Their Raintown LP is superb

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

so we did thanksgiving dinner saturday (deep fried turkey!), ate leftovers all day today, and now we're sitting around a fire before driving home tomorrow. think this might be the new meta

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

oh no I'm so sorry

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

oh damn

ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

i don't think this was always the case!

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ian @ismathers.bsky.social · 1d

in addition to..... everything else, is it not constitutive of thirst traps that they have _intent_ (to trap, as it were), and so if someone is unaware they are necessarily not doing that? these pricks can't even be internally consistent

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st ajora says trans rights @ae2501maeth.bsky.social · 1d

file under: lessons which i would like to trepanate several billion skulls and jab deep into the quivering masses found within

screenshot of a tumblr post:

o-craven-canto
Oct 5
To some degree being a good writer counts against someone's compellingness when you are reading them for information rather than pure aesthetic pleasure. Pepole like GK Chesterton and Sam Kriss are freakishly good prose writers, and precisely for that reason you cannot trust their content once you realize they would sound equally convincing regardless of the position they're defending.

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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 2d

Guess people are talking about thinking "the stripper likes you" so good excuse to share this one by @raxkingisdead.bsky.social www.welcometohellworld.com/the-time-it-...