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ericcalkins.bsky.social
oaf who’s too online for his age Sometimes I chat on Twitch streams as zero_history (temporarily “TheNextPoggingBarrel”; long story…)
453 posts 192 followers 765 following
Prolific Poster

the story today is of a profoundly low energy military parade being met with millions of americans in nationwide protests denouncing the dictatorial pretensions of the president

Every single conservative is a stupid Nazi hog and nothing they say will ever be worth listening to

The idea that this political violence is the consequence of people on both sides cheering it on seems like a sympathetic point but just doesn’t hold up to history. In my adult life, I’ve seen people on the right do everything from kill politicians to kill regular citizens, and it’s shrugged off.

They launched a coup, suffered no consequences for it, won back power, and have used the power to pardon everyone involved while remaking the country through violence and intimidation. It’s just ridiculous to talk about the political violence of yelling at ICE agents within that context.

“A deranged maniac impersonated a police officer and killed lawmakers but if you’re an immigrant be sure you immediately comply with plain clothes people who won’t identify themselves telling you to get in a van”, what a fuckin country

PSA for everyone going to protests

Every flashbang could instead be a meal for a poor kid. Every hotel room for a National Guardsman deployed to fire at our neighbors could house a homeless vet. Every "less-than-lethal" bullet pulled from a journalist's eye could be already needed healthcare for anyone else. All of this is a choice.

Genetic material shed by tumors can be detected in the bloodstream three years before cancer diagnosis, according to a study led by investigators at Johns Hopkins University. That study was made possible with federal funding. Now, many studies like this are canceled. hub.jhu.edu/2025/06/04/...

This is a real thing being posted and circulated by the Department of Homeland Security, referring to undocumented immigrants as “foreign invaders” and urging good Americans to turn them in. (I’ll leave it to BlueSky historians to find comparisons to WWII era materials.)

Rich white men, use your platform. Don't be such fucking cowards all the fucking time, you have one life to live. How much money do you really need in a lifetime? Christ. How can you just sit there watching young women - especially young women of color - taking every risk, speaking truth to power?

well this sure seems extremely bad

Centrist brain requires regularly forgetting everything politicians on the right do, while simultaneously remembering every time someone on the left said something mean online

not the main issue here but i'd really appreciate it if democratic politicians spoke out in support of big-city life and culture with the same energy and reverence that all politicians have for small towns los angeles is "real america" and so are all the other big cities the president hates

Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

You *must* swallow your impulse to parse and nitpick and find fault with protestors’ actions right now. We need solidarity so badly. It’s literally all we have. I am begging you, as a mother of 2 kids who is terrified of martial law, to find it in yourself to support the protestors. We need you.

The only people doing the violence are ICE thugs.

This is a fever dream. The city is not under migrant occupation. This whole thing kicked off because ICE began an intense operation across the city to raid Home Depots and nail salons and places where random undocumented immigrants might be going about their day working a job.

every day there's some fresh actual nazi shit that 99% of people were never taught is actual nazi shit

I know that this symbol is used - and favoured - by trans people in other contexts but, in the context of signalling segregation, it feels pretty on the nose that the trans symbol is the only one that doesn't depict a person.

Jesus fucking Christ a bunch of *children* committed an acid attack against a trans woman in Philly. this is what this fucking ever-escalating rhetoric gets us; children are radicalized before they can even conceptualize of the weight of their actions www.inquirer.com/crime/acid-a...

solidarity with LA. fuck ICE.

And thanks to a generation of reactionary centrists, feckless Dems, autocratic GOPers, and a TV culture of non-stop crime shows and bleeds-it-leads news, we spent TWENTY-FIVE YEARS of declining and low crime rates building out that police-state style police system at EVERY level of government.

“A Busy, Busy Day at the Airport” By Ruben Bolling Genius. Click in.

Fantastic that civilization itself is being endangered by, basically, the digital version of Fletch

This kind of clear, direct explanation of what’s happening is basic journalism and yet it’s surprising to hear it stated so forthrightly in this mealy-mouthed era.

Ron DeSantis stranded drivers at a bridge with no warning just to stop rainbow colors from appearing on it.

The United States Justice Department micromanaging how the Harvard Law Review’s internal reprimand of a student editor is insane

The more time goes by, the more I loathe early to mid aughts me and want to go beat the shit out of him with his copies of Kurzweil’s breathless AI cheerleading books.

The intellectual crime of being against massacring starving people when they crowd aid trucks, of bombing hospitals, of targeting journalists and doctors for death, killing tens of thousands of children--all in the vain hope of avoiding repercussions from the criminals behind these atrocities.

“We’re closing the door on some of the filth read before the Committee over the past two years.” So these people haven’t read any books. He’s not even familiar with Romeo & Juliet, he admits. They’ve passed a whole book banning bill based on excerpts of books they heard in committee hearings.

As I've said before, what we're dealing with fundamentally here, and have been dealing with for some time, is evil. Our political norms and political media prohibit talking about a mainstream political faction this way. But it is the truth. It needs to be known and it needs to be said.

Standing up for the silent majority of voters who celebrate and treasure their right as Americans to owe $11,000 for getting rushed to the hospital on one of the worst days of their lives. It's called "being moderate" and it's how you win elections.

Given Musk’s obsession with the Great Replacement, birth rates and racial hierarchy, it’s hard to see his decision to mass murder millions of the poorest people on earth as anything other than genocide based on eugenics.

We're all going to die from preventable illnesses because the government is using ChatGPT. Jesus.

Party of death.

the Leaky Pete scandal grows. The mainstream media has lost interest in the biggest national security breach in the last 50 years because they like Leaky and Trump and want to help them rule over us.

Republicans hate the First Amendment almost as much as they fetishize the Second.

"Should we do something? It feels like we should do something. Hopefully, I’ll feel more like I can dedicate the brain space to that just as soon as I finish my work, which is tuning this glockenspiel."

youtu.be/7c9YDgL5yDA?...

youtu.be/BHb11cPt-jg?...

I find this full-throated amorality fascinating. To hell with values and persuasion. Why lead when you can just follow?