itsjohn.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Generative AI has helped me to understand why, in Star Wars, the droids seem to have personalities but are generally bad at whatever they're supposed to be programmed to do, and everyone is tired of their shit and constantly tells them to shut up

submitted 5 days ago • 32 comments

they accuse MAGA of living in a fantasy world, but liberals are going to pretend this fact isn't true 'til their dying breath

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

I don't understand how the Times can never determine whether Trump is lying but can say with certainty when he is joking.

submitted 12 days ago • 158 comments

This passage from @benjamincarterhett.bsky.social's book on Hitler's rise to power has long haunted me for the way it describes how so many ordinary Germans had their minds & souls gradually rewired by the changing political climate of the 1930s. Watching something similar happen here is terrifying.

submitted 15 days ago • 43 comments

"Why aren't young people protesting?" Consider—because they all got their shit rocked by police and prosecutors last year trying to stop a genocide, and you abandoned them.

submitted 18 days ago • 164 comments

'From Pentonville Road Looking West, London, Evening' (1884) by John O'Connor (London Museum)

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

To be fair, “Trump” stands for one whole party and parts of the other as well as substantial sections of the media, without whom none of this assault on higher education and research would have been practicable. But let’s run another profile of Chris Rufo or a piece on woke Oberlin kids taking over

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

Part of fascism is the idea that the Leader is a sort of spiritual medium with the race’s/Volk’s race spirit. He has a direct line to the ghost-in-the-blood of the true race. So, he can act erratically because he’s just responding to the immediate needs of the Volk essence.

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Bully: Hey Columbia, gimme your lunch money. Columbia: Here you go. (He'll leave us alone now, right?) Bully: Gimme a year's lunch money, Columbia. Columbia: OK, here you go. Bully: Hey Harvard, gimme two year's lunch money. Harvard: No. Bully: Uh... that lunch money request was an accident.

submitted 26 days ago • 83 comments

Congrats to MLB for putting out “Jackie Robinson, a post-racial story about a guy who we celebrate massively for mysterious reasons.”

submitted 29 days ago • 41 comments

One thing I wish people understood about authoritarianism is life often looks more or less the same. Troops aren’t marching down the street every day; people go to restaurants, have their office jobs. But everyone knows that stepping out of line, even slightly, can derail your life with no recourse

submitted 31 days ago • 124 comments

NEWS: ACLU of PA has filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Pittsburgh claiming that the school violated the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendments when it put its SJP chapter on an indefinite suspension last month. Story TK www.aclupa.org/en/sjp-pitt

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Feels like we are in a threshold cascade: I will join as long as X percent of my alters join. You will join as long as Y percent of your alters join. These sorts of things can domino through networks but they can also come to an abrupt halt if a pivotal node does not reach its threshold.

submitted 30 days ago • 11 comments

Men are too emotional to be president.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

#OtD 9 Apr 1898 Paul Robeson, African-American singer, actor, communist and former shipyard worker was born. He was involved in anti-fascism, the civil rights movement and workers' struggles, and was blacklisted under McCarthyism stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1087...

submitted 36 days ago • 3 comments

I scanned dozens of newspapers from around the U.S. & world. On average, international newspapers cover the widespread protests against Trump/Musk and for democracy much more prominently on their covers than those in the U.S. This isn’t due to deadlines, protests were daytime in the U.S. #handsoff

submitted 39 days ago • 132 comments

"Authoritarian governments around the world know that universities are spaces of independent thought and thus potential threats. From Hungary to Turkey to Russia, breaking their independence is an early step in the consolidation of control."

submitted 40 days ago • 3 comments

“The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for this administration” My NEH grant has been terminated Incredible when the funding for your book about the educational culture wars is cut as a result of the educational culture wars You can’t say history isn’t relevant

submitted 41 days ago • 135 comments

We are learning in real time which colleges & universities are for real & which are not. It's not something we necessarily wanted to learn, but DAMN! Let's make the most of it! Tufts shames the Ivies, for damn sure. And stays true to it's Universalist roots.

submitted 42 days ago • 3 comments

This is a very clear explainer of the structure of university Boards for those outside academia. This is who is bowing to the Trump administration.

submitted 44 days ago • 1 comment

Happy Transgender Day of Visibility. To the Transgender community in Illinois and around the country: You deserve to live your life proudly and openly. We see you and we will protect you.

submitted 45 days ago • 64 comments

We need to think very hard about Vichy. And also, if we ever get the chance, denazification some day.

submitted 49 days ago • 0 comments

Will is right on the money here. This is the thought police. This is the gestapo. We are living under an authoritarian regime that is only going to get more ambitious in scope.

submitted 49 days ago • 0 comments

A supermajority of the nearly 1,000 resident physicians and fellows at the University of Minnesota filed to unionize in one of the largest union drives in the state in recent years, SEIU’s Committee of Interns and Residents union announced on Monday. minnesotareformer.com/2025/03/24/m...

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

We shall postpone fighting on the beaches, we shall keep an eye on the landing grounds, we encourage everyone else, should the right circumstances come, to fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall eventually retreat to the hills; we shall never explicitly surrender.

submitted 53 days ago • 173 comments

every college, corporate, and nonprofit president right now

submitted 54 days ago • 127 comments

Letter from the US's political prisoner from his jail in Louisiana www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

Roses are red Violets are blue

submitted 56 days ago • 2578 comments

Letter signed by members of the Columbia History Department urging resistance to the Trump Administration's efforts to dictate university policy. "Should this control be realized, here or elsewhere, it would make any real historical scholarship, teaching, and intellectual community impossible."

submitted 56 days ago • 66 comments

happy wood anniversary to all who celebrate

submitted 57 days ago • 46 comments

submitted 57 days ago • 4 comments

There’re so many neoliberal corporatist non-words in this article that I can’t understand what they’re truly planning for my beloved British Library. www.standard.co.uk/business/bri...

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

Trump: the streets will run like rivers with the blood of my enemies. Their heads on spikes will adorn Congress and every federal building and court. Chief Justice Roberts: Actually the GSA is in charge of federal court decorations in consultation with the judicial counsel

submitted 58 days ago • 76 comments