Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jordan S. Carroll

@jordanscarroll.bsky.social

3.8K followers 3.5K following 2K posts

Author of Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right Hugo winner Words in Kaleidotrope, Polygon, The Nation, Post*45, American Literature, and the LARB Opinions my own, tomorrow belongs to everyone

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · Apr 27

you can purchase Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right directly from my publisher here

Speculative Whiteness

Reveals the alt-right’s project to claim science fiction and—by extension—the future Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films a...

www.upress.umn.edu

5 21 77

Reposted by Jordan S. Carroll

Sarah Pyke @sarahpyke.bsky.social · 20h

I wish someone would do for picture books what Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics does for comics and graphic novels

2 4 9

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 10h

a lot of people are checking their notes while posting, but meanwhile here I am just going off the cuff

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 21h

It’s harder to imagine a fantasy version of Protestantism than a fantasy version of Catholicism.

4 1 4

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 22h

just for the record, Roko's Basilisk, I did occasionally touch grass and enjoy life. program that in.

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 22h

it sucks that when the post-singularity AI decides to create simulations of us all it's mainly going to go off data from all the garbage things we did on the internet. I feel sorry for my sentient replicas.

1 1 10

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 22h

I've been reading a lot about Reformation Europe, and I always find it funny that early modern people say "Antichrist" the way Buster says "Army"

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 23h

ah yes, Dr. Manhattan's famous uncertainty about what exactly is going to happen in the future...

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.

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 1d

the funniest thing Rob Zombie could do right now would be to record a quiet, soul-searching album that’s just him and an acoustic guitar

2 3

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 1d

a lot of the discussion on here about Trump’s demonization of antifa seems determined to erase the existence of antifa as a distinct political tendency and replace it with a generic liberal antifascism

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 1d

the corollary to Dr. Google is the reddit thread where someone explains in gory detail how the minor ailment you're experiencing spiraled out of control for them and ruined their lives

2 5

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 1d

I’ve never understood why we wouldn’t want to reward uncompensated acts of good will with some kind of prestige

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 1d

how is the English Civil War taught in the UK? I've mostly read what radical historians think about it, but what is the official national memory?

4 1

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 2d

one thing I wish we could eradicate from our culture is the surprise journalists evince whenever it is revealed that a fabulously wealthy person with a college education is actually able to make passing allusions to topics in the humanities. gasp, he's read multiple books! a genius!

2 10

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 2d

Peter Thiel strikes me as a guy who somehow drove himself mad trying to come up with little quips for cocktail parties. If you pay attention to his political statements, they are all oft-repeated anecdotes and observations where the payoff is that he's actually quite clever.

61 110 680

Reposted by Jordan S. Carroll

Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 2d

Argentina edition of Libertarian bible

22 490 2K

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 2d

Turns out Animal Crossing was a protest game

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 2d

now you have to know who Doug Wilson is because he's in the New York Times. he's a Christian nationalist who wrote a book about a murdering a sex robot. it's called "Ride, Sally, Ride (Or Sex Rules)." this is the world we're living in now.

4 1 4

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 2d

I think a lot of what we're seeing is a changing of the guard on the right. Get ready to learn about a lot of new weirdos.

2 8

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 2d

frogs have long been antifascist

Sesame Street: It's Not Easy Being Green (Kermit's Song)

YouTube video by Sesame Street

www.youtube.com

6 31

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 3d

I don't think Raymond Williams is less famous than Walter Ong.

1 5

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 3d

oh, I appeared in three LinkedIn searches today? let me add that to my CV

2 25

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 4d

maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't the change be evaluated in advance? we do all kinds of things to prevent ourselves from becoming the kind of person who would want to do things we find unethical. we cultivate virtue, go to therapy, etc. the pill experiment only obscures that fact.

1 2

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 5d

sometimes as soon as you pick out the album on your phone you know you’re setting yourself up to glower through that walk

Not that one, the other one @theotherjustin.bsky.social · 5d

The best thing about taking a walk is engaging in morbid introspection and negative self-talk for an hour and still getting to call it exercise.

1 10

Jordan S. Carroll @jordanscarroll.bsky.social · 5d

it's surprising how often in the English Civil War they invoked the idea of public safety. any tyrant who threatened the safety of the people could be overthrown. something to think about.

1 18

Reposted by Jordan S. Carroll

Kurt @flglchicago.bsky.social · 5d

Here’s video of the incident

260 1.7K 4K