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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 19h

the only role my students will give me is "unreasonable authority figure"

mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 1d

you know how with most things, it’s like, nobody remembers that cringey thing you did or said. No one’s thinking about that.

a few years ago i ran into someone and, nightmarishly, they said “hey remember that time we were at that party…” and proceeded to recall exactly what I had hoped they forgot

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 2d

i’m not high IQ, i just talk a lot

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

i suppose a generous counterargument could be that someone in chapel hill would be highly motivated to cry out for more YIMBYism, just as someone in a murder capital like Baltimore would cry out for less murder

anyway my favorite Derek fact is that when I proved he read a table wrong, he blocked me

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

In general, I just don’t think Derek is a very sophisticated thinker. (His hopelessly bad writing is a separate issue.) but I can’t figure out which i find more annoying: that he’s so arrogant and insecure, or that he genuinely seems to think he understands the things he talks about

Reposted by mike cavalier

Sarah Hayden @wearyourshaydes.bsky.social · 5d

😮😮😮 anxiety is AI, generative slop based on my previous feelings with none of the context that created those feelings in the first place and no way to ever create something truly new

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 5d

‘dear rax, how can i make sure i’m ready for the day my very sick mother dies?’
www.patreon.com/posts/140925...

Your question was whether there's a way to prepare for your mother's death, not whether there's a way to worry less about it, and I'll take a stab at answering that question using my experience with my father's as an example. No, you can't prepare for it. It will be like nothing you've felt yet. Maybe you think that if you worry about it really well—if you devote yourself to this anxiety, if you memorize your fear like a prayer—you can defeat it before it defeats you, like Roman's "pre-grieving" on Succession. But it didn't work for him because it doesn't work. Authoritative as it can feel, anxiety is incapable of describing anything it hasn't actually seen, like the death of a parent. All it can do is push us around various ugly landmarks in our minds: awful experiences we've already had, pains we've already processed. Anxiety is the blustering cokehead cousin of self-soothing. It brags about everything it knows to conceal the fact that it doesn't know anything. You can't feel what you haven't felt until, well...until you feel it.

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

And actually, Henry Jenkins would probably also say that Derek is wrong, as he displays a naive understanding of how the internet works. it’s not just a constant flow of content that you can only passively digest. it’s something you can also respond to and interact with

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

Derek’s saying the Internet is getting worse because Williams’ “flow” is everywhere now. But Williams never said flow was bad! He was describing a neutral fact: TV chops up shows with ads into a “flow” of mixed content, and this was a choice made by TV executives, not a technological inevitability.

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

the problem with quoting Raymond Williams is that he *disagreed* with the kind of technological determinism that Derek is indulging in.

Williams thought that McLuhan was too apolitical, and didn’t pay enough attention to how *people* and cultural practices determine how a medium actually gets used

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

but more importantly, Derek is trying to say that because everything is turning into television, this is making everyone more antisocial and causing people to have a less active life-of-the-mind. (Speak for yourself, dipshit!)

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

in his post “everything is television,” Derek argues all media is becoming similar. what he doesn’t know is that this is not a new or original insight. in media studies, this is called “convergence.” the theorist he should be citing is Henry Jenkins www.derekthompson.org/p/why-everyt...

Everything Is Television

A theory of culture and attention

www.derekthompson.org

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

I truly hate this guy, but sometimes I feel guilty about it since he’s unemployed

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 5d

finally I get to say this with authority: Derek is absolutely not demonstrating here that he read the books he’s referring to

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 7d

she’s talking about height, but sounds like dick to me

mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 7d

when your accountant needs you to return his calls

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 7d

this is so funny it’s like a real life clickhole quote

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 7d

reposting from the other site? forgive me Bluesky for i have sinned

mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 7d

do not fear the hyperllink www.ienjoymusic.net/taylor-swift...

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Reposted by mike cavalier

molly mary o'brien @missmollymary.bsky.social · 8d

skipping to the kicker (football pun, yes, INTENDED) for those who fear the tapping of the hyperlink

There is finally a sense of fatigue about this attitude, not a moment too soon. I will be the first to promote millennialmaxxing, aka the embracing of the positive attributes of my generation…ooo is that the sound of “Paper Planes” wafting in? Finger guns up!!...but there are attributes we must let go of. The vaguebooking, the surface-level feminism, the performative misandry, the incessant banging of the nostalgia gong (truly we are the children of boomers). You can’t act like a pick me without possessing a single reason to get picked. You can’t call your album nothing but bangers* if you don’t know what a banger is. Brat at least knew this.

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mike cavalier @mikecavalier.bsky.social · 8d

best ad I get lately says “calling all New Orleans freaks! Are you ready for some goth. techno. industrial. freakshit? Bloodrave 2025!!!!!” so flattering, but no, i am not ready

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