Michael Macher
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michael-macher.bsky.social
Michael Macher
@michael-macher.bsky.social
390 followers 1.2K following 240 posts
Sub specie aeternitatis
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michael-macher.bsky.social
The "born this way" framework truly is the definition of a "low ceiling high floor" approach to human freedom.
December 5, 2025 at 6:20 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Perhaps social theory can explain what moral theory cannot justify.
Cursed image of a flyer promoting tech CEO Bryan Johnson's livecast of a magic mushroom trip feat. a cast of charlatans and mediocre internet personalities).
November 30, 2025 at 3:02 AM
michael-macher.bsky.social
October 22, 2025 at 2:56 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Circa 2022. Still not surpassed.
A protester holding a sign that reads: "eat this ass SCOTUS."
October 18, 2025 at 6:51 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Some incredible details in this profile of the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who has been playing "a game of chicken with the regime" since 2010.

www.vulture.com/article/jafa...
Article text that reads: "till, they were raided once by police, who swarmed the production as they were filming in the Shahrak-e Gharb neighborhood in the summer of 2024. No one quite knows how their location was leaked—maybe it was because it was their second day filming in the same location, Jafari says—but Panahi and his team were prepared." Article text that reads: "They slid an empty memory card into a camera and handed it over. Editor Amir Etminan had all the footage filmed until that point saved on his laptop in the back of the car, along with a bag of prop SLR cameras that wedding photographer Shiva uses in the film. As the police were searching his car, Etminan feinted toward the bag of cameras and pretended to be protecting them passionately, leading the authorities to believe they held footage." A quote from Iranian director Jafar Panahi that reads: "You will ask yourself, How could a regime with all this apparatus allow you to even make a film like this? But because I’m inside, I know how to find my way through the crevices and the pathways. I know how to go through the street and come back...This film is made for a time for which there is no history yet."
October 14, 2025 at 1:16 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
An image of TFP "reporter" Olivia Reingold with text overlay that reads: "pretty shocking."
October 7, 2025 at 12:49 AM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Crucial point here: federal discretion plays a massive role in defining the terms and limits of immigration policy; and the use of discretion is one way to get at what is novel in Trump's enforcement regime.

radleybalko.substack.com/p/yes-the-tr...

via @radleybalko.bsky.social
Article text: "Moreover, the law does not “mandate” that people seeking asylum “be detained until their case concludes.” The law gives the executive branch discretion. The Trump administration has chosen to exercise that discretion in a way that maximizes its ability to detain and deport people. And as we’ll see, they’re also going way beyond even what the outer parameters of the law allow."
October 4, 2025 at 3:58 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
A bop.
An excerpt from the Slant manifesto: "we are looking for a society where the genuine personal openness which the experience of culture can provide has been generalised to the level of a whole way of life."
October 3, 2025 at 7:59 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Eagleton and Cunningham were playing in the pocket on this one.

From the "Slant Manifesto" (1966).
Pictured: an issue of the Catholic leftist journal "Slant." An excerpt from the Slant manifesto: "for the question is not whether we prefer a loving to a cruel father, but whether, in church and society, the implications of fatherhood make the image of a father desirable at all." An excerpt from the Slant manifesto, continued: "the liberal pressure toward 'solving' a structural problem by personal kindness must be resisted as mystification..."
October 3, 2025 at 7:58 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Submitted without commentary.
A screenshot of an article titled "My Favorite Actress Is Not Human" written by the economist Tyler Cowen, who writes: "...if you wish to see a virgin on-screen, this is one of your better chances." Elon Musk tweeting "nice" to a picture of a scantily clad AI companion. Screenshot of an article about how ex investor and Business Insider founder Henry Blodget created an AI co-worker and then sexually harassed her.
October 2, 2025 at 11:28 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Incredible vibes at this local public library in Paris.
An issue of Histoire magazine featuring Marc Bloch on the cover. A shelf of various manga books. A sign in French for the Naguib Mahfouz public library in Paris.
October 1, 2025 at 9:40 AM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Insightful piece on the relationship between elite/media framing and desire.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...
September 27, 2025 at 8:28 AM
michael-macher.bsky.social
September 22, 2025 at 4:53 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Real this guy hours.
September 18, 2025 at 3:15 AM
michael-macher.bsky.social
So you're telling me Kimmel was pulled...
September 17, 2025 at 11:53 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
If "neutrality" can't be found, just invent it.

This piece resonates as the media works overtime to spin up a false reality around Charlie Kirk.

bidoun.org/articles/hou...
September 16, 2025 at 7:14 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
This by @vermontgmg.bsky.social provides a more accurate view of the seemingly contradictory policy dynamics within the Trump admin.

www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/who-actual...
September 14, 2025 at 11:55 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Exactly. The real story here is that Trump is unwilling or unable to reign in workplace raids despite half-hearted rhetorical gestures to the contrary.
September 14, 2025 at 11:43 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Excellent read on the evolution of Israel's military and defense industry since 1948.

www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/isr...
Screenshot of text that reads: "The genocidal campaign Israel is waging in the Gaza Strip marks a disruption to the decades-long status quo. Since October 7, Israel’s military industry has increasingly sought to supplement its overwhelming dependence on military imports with its own domestic production—a return to its origins in militia-nation mobilized for constant hostilities. The shift has been qualitative and quantitative. In producing for domestic consumption, the Israeli military-industrial complex has begun to recompose its production profile around low-tech arms designed for brute destruction and displacement, for products and practices more akin to its founding strategy." Screenshot of article text that reads: "The transition to a strategy of maximizing destruction has also triggered a return to domestic weapons manufacturing. In the Elbit Systems shareholder conference of 2025, the trend was clear: Israel remains dependent on arms imports, but is attempting to procure as much as possible from domestic companies in order to evade the impact of the growing military embargo against it. Elbit Systems’ share of exports dropped from 79 percent in the first quarter of 2023 to 58 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024. But this recomposition of demand around the company’s founding domestic buyer has not reduced sales."
September 8, 2025 at 2:50 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
"Thoughts without content are empty, vibes without concepts are blind." - Immanuel Kant
September 6, 2025 at 1:46 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
China Meiville's elegant rebuttal of Perry Anderson in @lrb.co.uk explains why we shouldn't let reactionary liberals selectively invoke "democracy" (or its realist variant: "public opinion") to justify moving rightward on immigration.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
A screenshot of a London Review of Books letter that reads: "Second, Anderson says that voters have usually not been consulted about ‘either the arrival or the scale of labour from abroad’. But then, after decades of neoliberalism, what are voters usually consulted about? And on what policies do their opinions have an effect? There is no democratic mandate for almost anything: pouring shit into rivers; declining real wages; the financialisation of public goods; skyrocketing inequality; the destruction of the universities; the underfunding of hospitals; and so endlessly on. To demand that the left should concern itself with the lack of democratic accountability tout court would be welcome, if hardly innovative. But instead, it is only immigration that Anderson cites on this point. Why? To suggest that among all the instances of democratic deficit, the left – like the right – should focus particularly and urgently on this one speaks of a political unconscious (or consciousness) for which immigration is distinct from and more pressing than other concerns, and that its terminology – like ‘local’ and ‘migrant’, ‘national’ and ‘foreign’ – must be considered meaningful political grundnorms, rather than ideological tools."
September 6, 2025 at 5:13 AM
michael-macher.bsky.social
A revealing quote from an ICE field office director during an ICE jobs event in Arlington, TX. If a population has no legal rights, law enforcement retains the option to detain and remove them "before" a crime is committed.

The goal is to extend this condition to all populations deemed a threat.
August 31, 2025 at 2:48 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
Obsessed with this random injection of literary flair in a 2020 report on DHS's crisis of morale.
July 9, 2025 at 8:10 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
July 8, 2025 at 11:24 PM
michael-macher.bsky.social
June 25, 2025 at 12:22 AM